Being a man has always been dangerous. There are about 105 males born for every 100 females, but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity, and among 70-year-olds there are twice as many women as men. But the great universal of male mortality is being changed. Now, boy babies survive almost as well as girls do. This means that, for the first time, there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when they are searching for a mate. More important, another chance for natural selection has been removed. Fifty years ago, the chance of a baby (particularly a boy baby) surviving depended on its weight. A kilogram too light or too heavy means almost certain death. Today it makes almost no difference. Since much of the variation is due to genes, one more agent of evolution has gone. There is another way to commit evolutionary suicide: stay alive, but have fewer children. Few people are as fertile as in the past. Except in some religious communities, very few women have 15 children. Nowadays the number of births, like the age of death, has become average. Most of us have roughly the same number of offspring. Again, differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take advantage of it have diminished. India shows what is happening. The country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for the remaining tribal peoples. The grand mediocrity of today—everyone being the same in survival and number of offspring—means that natural selection has lost 80% of its power in upper-middle class India compared to the tribes. For us, this means that evolution is over; the biological Utopia has arrived. Strangely, it has involved little physical change. No other species fills so many places in nature. But in the past 100,000 years—even the past 100 years—our lives have been transformed but our bodies have not. We did not evolve, because machines and society did it for us. Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution: they “look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension“. No doubt we will remember a 20th century way of life beyond comprehension for its ugliness. But however amazed our descendants may be at how far from Utopia we were, they will look just like us.What used to be the danger in being a man according to the first paragraph? A lack of mates. A fierce competition. A lower survival rate. A defective gene.

If a farmer wishes to succeed, he must try to keep a wide gap between his consumption and his production. He must store a large quantity of grain 【B1】 consuming all his grain immediately. He can continue to support himself and his family 【B2】 he produces a surplus. He must use this surplus in three ways: as seed for sowing, as an insurance 【B3】 the unpredictable effects of bad weather and as a commodity which he must sell in order to 【B4】 old agricultural implements and obtain chemical fertilizers to 【B5】 the soil. He may also need money to construct irrigation 【B6】 and improve his farm in other ways. If no surplus is available, a farmer cannot be 【B7】 . He must either sell some of his property or 【B8】 extra funds in the form of loans. Naturally he will try to borrow money at a low 【B9】 of interest, but loans of this kind are not 【B10】 obtainable.【B1】 other than as well as instead of more than

As I’ll be away for at least a year, I’d appreciate ______ from you now and then telling me how everyone is getting along. hearing to hear to be hearing having heard

Greatly agitated, I rushed to the apartment and tried the door, ______ to find it locked. just only hence thus

Doctors see a connection between increased amounts of leisure time spent ______ and the increased number of cases of skin cancer. to sunbathe to have sunbathed having sunbathed sunbathing

Unless you sign a contract with the insurance company for your goods, you are not entitled ______ a repayment for the goods damaged in delivery. to with for on

He spoke so ______ that even his opponents were won over by his arguments. bluntly convincingly emphatically determinedly

It is announced that a wallet has been found and can be ______ at the manager’s office. declared obtained reclaimed recognize

______ to some parts of South America is still difficult, because parts of the continent are stilt covered with thick forests. Orientation Access Procession Voyage

Mr. Smith had an unusual ______: he was first an office clerk, then a sailor, and ended up as a school teacher. profession occupation position career

The mayor is a woman with great ______ and therefore deserves our political and financial support. intention instinct integrity intensity

If the letter (to be mailed) (was placed) on the writing table an hour ago, it (is) certain (being) there now. to be mailed was placed is being

Most newspapers, (while devoting) the major part of (its) space to recent events, usually manage to find (room) on the inside pages for articles (on) some interesting topics. while devoting its room on

One sign (by which) you are making progress in (an art) such as painting or photography is (that) you begin to realize how much (there is) to learn. by which an art that there is

(Continued) exposure to stress has been linked to (worsened) functioning of the immune system, (leaving) a person more liable (for) infection Continued worsened leaving for

A history of long effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the Untied States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industrial unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world’s best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed. It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980% Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea’s LG electronics in July.) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America’s machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had invented and which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty. All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. Tile mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the cause of America’s industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas. How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yield to blind pride. “American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learned to be more quick-witted“. According to Richard Cavanaugh, executive dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our business are improving their productivity“. Says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look hack on this period as “a golden age of business management in the United States“.The U.S. achieved its predominance after World War Ⅱ because ______. it had made painstaking effort towards this goal its domestic market was eight times larger than before the war had destroyed the economies of most potential competitors the unparalleled size of its workforce had given an impetus to its economy

On a rainy day I was driving north through Vermont ______ I noticed a young man holding up a sign reading “Boston“. which where when that

Christie stared angrily at her boss and turned away, as though ______ out of the office. went gone to go would go

The roles expected ______ old people in such a setting give too few psychological satisfactions for normal happiness. of on to with

It wasn’t so much that I disliked her ______ that I just wasn’t interested in the whole business. rather so than as

The 215-page manuscript, circulated to publishers last October, ______ an outburst of interest. flared glittered sparked flashed

What does the example of India illustrate?

The author argues that our bodies have stopped evolving because ______.

Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?