[单项选择]The Nature of Civilizations
During the Cold War the world was divided into the First, Second and Third Worlds. Those divisions are no longer relevant. It is far more meaningful now to group countries not in terms of their political or economic systems or in terms of their level of economic development but rather in terms of their culture and civilization.
What do we mean when we talk of a civilization A civilization is a cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities, religious groups, all have distinct cultures at different levels of cultural heterogeneity. The culture of a village in southern Italy may be different from that of a village in northern Italy, but both will share in a common Italian culture that distinguishes them from German villages. European communities, in turn, will share cultural features that distinguish them form Arab or Chinese communities. Arabs, Chinese and Westerners, however, are not part of any broader cultural entity. They constitute civilizations. A civilization is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans form other species. It is defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people. People can and do redefine their identities and, as a result, the composition and boundaries of civilizations change.
Civilizations may involve a large number of people, as with China("a civilization pretending to be a state," as Lucian Pye put it), or a very small number of people, such as the Anglophone Caribbean. A civilization may include several nation states, as is the case with Western, Latin American and Arab civilizations, or only one, as is the case with Japanese civilization. Civilizations obviously blend and overlay, and may include sub civilizations. Western civilization has two major variants, European and North American, and Islam has its Arab, Turkic and Malay subdivisions. Civilizations are nonetheless meaningful entities, and while the lines between them are seldom sharp, they are real. Civilizations are dynamic; they rise and fall; they divide and merge. And, as any student of history knows, civilizations disappear and are buried in the sands of time.
Westerners tend to think of nation states as the principal actors in global affairs.
They have been that, however, for only a few centuries. The broader reaches of human history have been the history of civilizations. In A Study of History, Arnold Toynbee identified 21 major civilizations; only six of them exist in the contemporary world.According to the passage, what is a more meaningful way now to group countries as compared with the Cold War period
A. In terms of political systems.
B. In terms of the level of economic development.
C. In terms of the culture only.
D. In terms of culture and civilization.
[单项选择]
Clipper Ships
Clipper ships are small, lightweight vessels with three masts that boast a massive array of sails which allow them to move extremely quickly. The name "clipper" is thought to come from the fact that the bow of such a ship seems to cut through water as it advances, something also true of older types of ship. Certainly, people were using the expression "to go at a good clip" to mean "to travel quickly" long before the advent of the clipper ship, so the explanation seems to make sense. In fact, it is difficult to date the emergence of the first true clipper, since the word was liberally applied to several speedy ships from the early 19th century that did not possess the technical specifications to qualify as clippers under the later definition of the term. What is known, however, is that by the 1840s, several shipyards were engaged in building vessels that were recognizably clipper ships.
The great advantage of the clipper
A. adequate.
B. reputable.
C. disregarded.
D. unreasonabl
