Q: Does Fame Drive You Crazy? Although being famous might sound like a dream come true, today's stars, feeling like zoo animals, face pressures that few of us can imagine.They are at the center of much of the world's attention.Paparazzi   camp outside their homes, cameras ready.Tabloids   publish thrilling stories about their personal lives.Just imagine not being able to do anything without being photographed or interrupted for a signature! According to pyschologist Christina Villarreal, celebrities--famous people--worry constantly about their public appearance.Eventually, they start to lose track of who they really are, seeing themselves the way their fans imagine them, not as the people they were before everyone knew their names."Over time," Villarreal says, "they feel separated and alone." The phenomenon of tracking celebrities has been around for ages.In the 4th century B.C., painters followed Alexander the Great into battle, hoping to picture his victories for his admirers.When Charles Dickens visited America in the 19th century, his sold-out readings attracted thousands of fans, leading him to complain   about his lack of privacy.Tabloids of the 1920s and 1930s ran articles about film-stars in much the same way that modern tabloids and websites do. Being a public figure today, however, is a lot more difficult than it used to be.Superstars cannot move about without worrying about photographers with modern cameras.When they say something silly or do something ridiculous, there is always the Internet to spread the news in minutes and keep their "story" alive forever. If fame is so troublesome, why aren't all celebrities running away from it? The answer is there are still ways to deal with it.Some stars stay calm by surrounding themselves with trusted friends and family or by escaping to remote places away from big cities.They focus not on how famous they are but on what they love to do or whatever made them famous in the first place. Sometimes a few celebrities can get a little justice.Still, even stars who... What is the author's attitude toward modern celebrity? A) Sincere. B) Sceptical. C) Disapproving. D) Sympathetic.
A: D


Q: Dogs have an understanding of fair play and become angry if they feel that another dog is getting a better deal, a new study has found. The study looked at how dogs react when a companion is rewarded for the same trick in an unequal way. Friederike Range, a researcher at the University of Vienna in Austria, and her colleagues did a series of experiments with dogs who knew how to respond to the command "give the paw ". The dogs were normally happy to repeatedly give the paw, whether they got a reward or not. But that changed if they saw that another dog was being rewarded with a piece of food, while they received nothing. "We found that the dogs hesitated significantly longer when obeying the command to give the paw," the researchers write. The unrewarded dogs eventually stopped cooperating. Scientists have long known that humans pay close attention to inequity. But researchers always assumed that animals didn't share the trait. "The argument was that this is a uniquely human phenomenon," says Frans de Waal, a professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta. That changed in 2003 when he and a colleague did a study on monkeys. The monkeys had to hand a small rock to researchers to get a piece of cucumber in return. They were happy to do this. But if they saw that another monkey was getting a more delicious reward, a grape, for doing the same job, they would throw away the food and rock, and at some point just stopped performing. In that experiment, the monkeys considered the fairness of two different types of payment. But when Range and her colleagues did a similar study with their trained dogs, testing to see if dogs would become upset if they only got dark bread when other dogs received sausage, they found that as long as the dogs got some kind of food payment, even if it wasn't the most delicious kind, the animals would play along. How did the dogs in Range's study react to the order of "giving the paw"? A) They took the order even without being rewarded. B) They took the order only when rewarded. C) They turned a deaf ear to repeated orders. D) They hesitated longer when given repeated orders.
A: A


Q: "People are ruder today because they are rushed and more 'time poor' than ever before," says Patsy Rowe, " _ " Due to our strong attraction to electronic equipment it is a wonder more people don't wake up each morning and greet the singing birds with a complaint about the noise. Here are some examples of rudeness. Some people prefer to do almost everything over the internet. To them, dealing with an actual human is like an evolutionary step backward. It feels very slow because humans don't work at 4G speeds. When you have dinner with friends, you will often notice someone paying more attention to his mobile phone. We have programmed ourselves to think that every new message brings life-changing news, so taking calls and checking our texts are more important than talking to the people we are with. What is worse, some people even tend to send anonymous  rude messages by email. However, rudeness is never acceptable. Don't assume it is OK to be rude if the person you're in touch with won't recognize you. If you have something awful to say, have the courage to face the person and say it, write a letter or email and sign it, or forget it. Upsetting people with unsigned messages is cruel and annoying. We shouldn't blame technology for our shortcomings. Technology is here to help us, but we should not allow it to take over our lives. An important step is admitting our shortcomings. People spend a lot of time pointing out bad manners but it would be even more helpful if we'd publicly recognize good manners when we see them. The author thinks sending unsigned awful messages is   _  . A) ridiculous B) hateful C) acceptable D) reasonable
A: B


Q: People who traveled in the past had to put up with many discomforts which we do not have nowadays, and of course they traveled far more slowly. Roads were bad indeed and you often found you could not get along at all because of the mud. In dry weather many places were thick in dust and when it was stormy, trees might fall across the road and it was nobody's business to clear _ away. Ordinary people traveled on foot or on horseback, but everyone who could afford it kept a private coach. There were public coaches too. called "stage coaches" because long journeys took several days and were done in stages, with stops over night at inns. Some stage, coaches ran only in the summer months. Others all the year around. They were very slow and crowded and passengers often became in on the way because of the swaying  . Break downs were frequent, since many roads were not smooth. So a coach might very easily turn right over. Early in the century coach and wagon builders were encouraged to put very wide wheels on their vehicles. So that these might level the roads a little. But many people complained of this since it slowed travel down a good deal. Most travelers during the 18th century wrote bitterly about the state of the roads. One visitor to Sussex took six hours to travel nine miles in his coach; another wrote to a friend that on time of his journeys "almost every mile was marked by the overturn of a carriage". The sentence "almost every mile was marked by the overturn of a carriage" suggests that   _  . A) the coaches were of poor quality B) the writers liked to describe the road bitterly C) the road condition was really poor D) travelling about in the past was extremely slow

A: C