WASHINGTON--US President Barack Obama said Thursday that he had known about NBA star Jeremy Lin's talent long before the"Linsanity"phenomenon swept the sport. "I knew about Jeremy before you did because Arne Duncan, my secretary of education, was captain of the Harvard team,"Obama told the famous US sportswriter Bill Simmons in an interview. "When Arne and I were playing, he said,'I'm telling you, we've got this terrific guard named Jeremy Lin at Harvard.'And then when one of my best friends, whose son is a freshman at Harvard, went for a recruiting trip he saw Lin in action, so I've been on the Jeremy Lin bandwagon for a while,"said the president, who is a Harvard Law graduate. Lin, the New York Knicks' point guard, though he was cut twice in December 2011, had had a sudden rise in the past month to high points scoring stardom in Madison Square Garden, the world's biggest basketball stage. He is the first Chinese-American player in the NBA. He has already developed a devoted following among many Asian-Americans and in China, Taiwan, the Philippines and other countries. Clicks to the NYKnicks. Com website _ as basketball fans from around the world search for Lin's news and highlights. "He seems like a wonderful young man. It elevates this great sport all round the world,"said Obama, a Chicago Bulls fan."And what's been encouraging is to see how fast the sport has bounced back recently."But he sounded a note of caution on how much basketball costs to watch. "It's really important for professional athletes and sports owners to just remember you got a whole bunch of folks out here, all across the country, who invest so much in their teams. All they ask is not to be so selfish that you're not looking out for your fans,"Obama said. President Obama finds it encouraging that _ . A) Chicago Bulls is playing wonderfully B) Jeremy Lin is becoming more popular C) NBA matches have returned to normal D) audience is concerned about basketball
C
Last Friday my brother and I were driving home together after doing some shopping and gave our attention to an interesting conversation. Because of this distraction my brother took a wrong turn. Unfortunately, the wrong turn took us towards a bridge and we had no way to turn back. Unwillingly, my brother paid the bridge fee and drove on. He was clearly frustrated by the mistake and the needless waste of $4. We eventually reached an exit and, as we took it, my brother noticed a young fellow pulled over to the side of the road. He came out of his car and tried to phone someone. I was busy trying to figure out which way we would go next but my brother pulled over and asked the guy if he needed any help. And he did. He had a flat tire and needed a tool to get it off. My brother gave him a wrench, and then began to help him change the flat. The young man said that this had been a bad week for him: earlier he had gotten into a minor car accident, and now this flat on his way home from work. But he called us "a breath of fresh air" and kept thanking us because he really would have been stuck if we hadn't come along. After we finished the job he thanked us again and pulled out $20 from his pocket and tried to give it to us. "No," I said. "We were never supposed to even get on that bridge,we took a wrong turn. But now we know why we did. It was to help you. Thank you for turning our mistake into an opportunity to serve." What I loved most was that my brother was able to see a chance to help. His reaction in the situation is a lesson for everyone and we felt so good the rest of the day. What did the young man mean by calling the writer and his brother "a breath of fresh air" ? A) He had been in the hot sun waiting for help for so long. B) His car's air conditioner was broken. C) They calmed him down by offering him a cold drink. D) They changed his bad luck and the bad mood he was in.
D
Q: Modern inventions have speeded up people's lives amazingly. Motor-cars cover a hundred miles in little more than an hour, aircraft cross the world a day, while computers operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love of speed seems never-ending. Every year motor-cars are produced which go even faster each new computer boasts of saving precious seconds in handling tasks. All this saves time, but at a price. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an airplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag; our bodies feel that they have been left behind in another time zone. Again, spending too long at computers results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also have then danger according to some scientists; too much use may transmit harmful radiation into our brains, a consequence we do not like to think about. However, what do we do with the time we have saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We are so accustomed to constant activity that we find it difficult to sit and do nothing or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long gone when we might listen quietly to a story on the radio, letting imaginations take us into another world. There was a time when some people's lives were devoted simply to the cultivation of the land or the care of cattle. No multi-tasking there; their lives went on at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors faced; they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to fashion tools from wood and stone. Modern machinery has freed people from that primitive existence. The new products become more and more time-saving because _ . A) our love on speed seems never-ending B) time is limited C) the prices are increasingly high D) the manufacturers boast a lot
A: A
Q: It is said that most people have not more than 30 friends at any given time, and 400 over the whole of their lives. However, on social networking sites, most users have about 150 friends. If these numbers are correct, then friendship means different things in different situations. Also, there are no rules about friendship. There are no instructions about how to make friends, how to keep friendships going, and how to finish friendships if we want to move on. People have very different opinions about this: some people would die for their friends and they value them more than family. Others say that friends are temporary, only there to help each other until they are no longer needed. If people with such different views become friends, this can lead to problems. Because of these different definitions of friendship, it is easy to be unhappy about our friendships. We may want them to be deeper or closer, or we may want to have more friends in our lives. Sometimes we simply do not have the time to develop our friendships, or we fear we have left it too late in life to start. If we move to another country or city, we have to find ways to make new friends again. This dissatisfaction shows us how important friendships are for most of us. We should not think that it could be too late to build friendships. We also need to understand that the need to be around other people is one that is shared by many. Therefore, we should not be too frightened about starting to talk to people who in the future may become our friends: it is likely that they too would like to get closer to us. Remember what people say: strangers are friends we have not met yet. What is the author's attitude towards talking to a stranger? A) Uninterested. B) Cautious. C) Doubtful. D) Positive.
A: D