February 28th, 2009 2:54 am GMT I have to say that am shocked at just how bad the new music is. This cannot be the same band that produced great albums such as HTDAAB and ATYCLB! This is awful! They either do not care anymore, or have completely lost it. I never thought U2 would become irrelevant, but they have officially become one of those bands that you will now say, "Remember when they were great?" ----- Posted by Ronald Harris February 28th, 2009 8:29 pm GMT Total drivel, Mr Harris. The new album is great, far better than the safe, cynical HTDAAB and ATYCLB. U2 have become inventive again, like they were in the 1990s. thank goodness! ----- Posted by Dan March 3rd, 2009 12:09 pm GMT Agree, Dan. The new album is the best since Actung Baby. Magnificent is an anthem in the waiting, Breathe is unbelievable, and Stand Up Comedy is absolutely outstanding----- to name just three! Loving the new sound, pure class as usual. ----- Posted by Martin March 4th, 2009 7:43 pm GMT Totally agree with you guys. This album is unbelievable. Breathe is definitely a great song, same with Moment of Surrender. I bet their upcoming tour will be amazing. If you haven't bought the CD yet, you should. I bought mine on Amozon.com for $3.99. I couldn't believe it. ----- Posted by Josh Briggs Martin and Josh Briggs both like the song   _  . A) Magnificent B) Moment of Surrender C) Breathe D) Stand Up Comedy
C


Want to be a happy married couple? Consider having kids. A new study found that having children boosts happiness.And the more, literally, the merrier. But unmarried couples shouldn't expect to find greater happiness through child-raising.The study, published in the Oct.14 online edition of the Journal of Happiness Studies, suggests that having children has little or no effect on boosting happiness among couples who aren't hitched . The findings contradict previous research that suggested that having more offspring doesn't lead to greater happiness and might even make people less satisfied with their lives.One theory behind the conclusion is that parents don't receive many rewards in return for the hard work of raising children. The new study, however, notes that parents say children are one of the most important things in their lives, if not the most important. The study found that life satisfaction for married people -- women especially -- goes up the more kids they have.Single, separated and co-habiting people, by contrast, report negative experiences. "One is tempted to advance that children make people rich under the 'right conditions' -- a time in life when people feel that they are ready, or at least willing, to enter parenthood," Dr.Luis Angeles, of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, said in a news release from the journal's publisher."This time can come at very different moments for different individuals, but a likely signal of its approach may well be the act of marriage." Which of the following can be inferred from the passage? A) The more children women have, the happier they are. B) The more children the married women have, the more unsatisfied they become. C) Raising kids can give any person happiness. D) Without marriage, one woman had better not raise kids.
D


Q: With smart phones taking the world by Storm, a phone that can only send and receive voice calls and text messages may seem like a relic from a bygone age. Yet in East Africa,simple phones like these are changing the face of the economy, thanks to the mobile money services that are spreading across the region.     Using the text-messaging function built into the GSM system used by most cell phone networks, these services allow people without a bank account or credit card to use their phone as an electronic wallet that can be used to store. send or receive cash.      It works like this: you pay cash to your local agent who then tops up your mobile money account using a secure form of text messaging. That money can be transferred to another person by sending a message to their cell phone account.      For some the system is a lifeline. "If I didn't have my mobile phone. I would be very poor, "says Neyasse Neemur, a mother of four children who lives in northern Kenya. "Now I can sell fish."      Neemur took up fishing in July last year, but making money from it was a little tricky, especially as Turkana people do not usually eat fish. A truck from Ethiopia to Tanzania passes through her village once a week, and she arranged to have the driver transport the fish several hundred kilometres south to market in Kisumu, where her  s sell the fish.     "I get the money transfer immediately." says Neemur. "Then I can pay for my children to go to school and for vegetables and beans," she adds, "so I don't need to eat fish."     According to the Central Bank of Kenya, payments worth around l billion Kenyan shillings($13 million)per day were transferred through Kenya's mobile money systems in 2009, equaling the country's credit card transactions . The bank expects mobile money transfers to overtake credit cards in 2011. What can we learn about the simple phones in East Africa? A) They might help the local people apply for a bank account. B) They will replace the banks completely in the near future. C) They provide a safe means for the locals to do business. D) They can do nothing except send and receive calls or messages.
A: C


Q: If you want to learn anything at school, you need to listen to your teachers. Unfortunately, millions of kids can't hear what their teachers are saying. And it's not because these students are _ . Often, it's the room's fault. Building architecture and building design can createecho -filled classrooms that make hearing difficult. Children with hearingimpairments suffer most from noisy classrooms. They sometimes can't hear questions that other students ask in class. Compared with kids with healthy hearing, they have a harder time picking up new vocabulary words by hearing them in talking. Even kids with normal hearing have a harder time in the classroom when there's too much noise. Younger children in particular have trouble separating important sounds - like a teacher's voice - from background noise. Kids with learning disabilities and speechimpediments and kids for whom English is a second language also have a harder time learning in noisy situations. In recent years, scientists who study sound have been asking schools to reduce background noise, which may include loud air-conditioners and pipes. They're also targeting outdoor noises, such as highway traffic. Noise reduction is a big deal. Why? Because quieter classrooms might make you smarter by letting you hear your lessons better. "It's so obvious that we should have quiet rooms that allow for access to the lesson," says Dan Ostergren, a hearing scientist. "Sometimes it surprises me that we spend so much time discussing this topic. I just want to go. Why is this hard for anyone to grasp?" What would be the best title for the passage? A) Classroom design B) Noisy classrooms C) The sense of hearing D) Disabled kids

A: B