[填空题]In course of time, old customs, conventions and observances ______ (有被忽略的趋势).

[简答题]Though in the course of time the firm employed some of America’s finest artists, artistic excellence could certainly not be counted among the firm’s real goals. (Passage Four)

[单项选择]

Every time an old building is torn down in this country, and a new building goes up, the ground floor becomes a bank.
The reason for this is that banks are the only ones who can afford the rent for the ground floor of the new buildings going up. Besides, when a bank loans someone money to build a new building, it usually takes an option for the street-floor facilities.
Most people don’t think there is anything wrong with this and they accept it as part of the American free-enterprise system. But there is a small group of people in this country who are fighting for Bank Birth Control.
This is how Huddlestone Hubbard, the BBC’s chairman, explained it.
"Whenever you see an old building torn down," Hubbard said, "you usually see a candy store, a dry cleaner, a delicatessen, and possibly a florist torn down with it. These shops are all replaced in the new buildings with a beautiful glass, aluminum, wall-to-wall-carpeted money
A. practically every new commercial building erected today is owned by a bank
B. banks are attempting to drive small merchants out of service
C. new banks are not assets to a neighborhood in spite of their attractive appearance
D. by occupying ground floor space in new buildings, banks are replacing neighborhood shopping conveniences

[填空题]Old time Australian homes usually had no sliced bread and washing had to be done by hand.

[填空题]Contrary to the old warning that time waits for no one, time slows down when you are on the move. It also slows down more as you move faster, which means astronauts (宇航员) someday may (26) so long in space that they would return to an Earth of the (27) future. If you could move at the speed of light, your time would stand still. If you could move faster than light, your time would (28) . Although no form of matter yet (29) moves as fast as or faster than light, (30) experiments have already confirmed that accelerated (31) causes a traveler’s time to be stretched. Albert Einstein predicted this in 1905, when he (32) the concept of relative time as part of his Special Theory of Relativity. A search is now under way to confirm the suspected existence of particles of matter that move at a speed greater than light, and therefore, might (33) our passports to the past.
An obsession (沉迷) with time—savi