Dear Sir, Just over six months ago, I saw an advertisement in the Morning Mail for a set of the complete works of William Shakespeare.Your company, Cosmo books Ltd , offered this set ( eight books of plays and two books of poetry) at a "remarkable" price: fifteen pounds and fifty pence, including postage and packing. I had wanted a set of Shakespeare's plays and poems for some time, and these books looked particularly attractive, so I sent for them. Two weeks later, the books arrived, together with a set of works of Charles Dickens which I had not ordered.So I returned the Dickens books to you, with a cheque for fifteen pounds and fifty pence for the works of Shakespeare.Two more weeks passed.Then there arrived on my door step a second set of the works of Shakespeare, the same set of novels by Dickens and a six book set of the plays of Moliere, in French.Since I do not read French, these were of no use to me at all.However, I could not afford to post all these books back to you, so I wrote to you right away instructing you to come and collect all the books that I did not want, and asking you not to send any other books until further notice. You did not reply to that letter. Instead you sent me a bill for forty two pounds, and a set of the plays of Schiller, in German.Since then, a new set of books has arrived every two weeks, the works of Goethe, the poems of Milton, the plays of Strindberg; I hardly know what I have.The books are still all in their boxes, in the garage, and my car has to stand in the rain outside. Please send no more books, send no more bills, send no more angry letters demanding payment.Just send one large lorry and take all the books away, leaving me only with the one set of the complete works of Shakespeare for which I have paid. Yours faithfully, SIMON WALKER The tone of the letter is that of_. A) bitterness B) respect C) annoyance D) humor
C
Soaring divorce rates around the globe are the environment, American researchers suggested in a study released on a Monday. Michigan State University researcher Jianguo "Jack" Liu and his assistant Eunice Yu said the increasing number of divorces leads to more households with fewer people and greater consumption of water and energy. They said housing units require space, construction materials and fuel to heat and cool, regardless of the number of inhabitants. For example, in the United States in 2005, divorced households consumed an extra 73 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water. An additional 38 million extra rooms required heating and lighting that same year due to divorced households. That costs $6.9 billion in extra utility costs per year, Liu said, plus an added $ 3.6 billion for water, in addition to other costs such as land use. "A married household actually uses resources more efficiently than a divorced household," Liu said. He said that in cohabitating household, people will watch the same television, share the air conditioning and heat and use the same refrigerator. All things use energy at a regularly stable rate, regardless of the number of users. Liu said he was not condemning divorce, "Some people really need to get divorced." He said cohabitation--whether by a family or friends--was simply a more environmentally friendly option. Additonally, the researchers noted that trends other than divorce are also changing family living structures, such as the end of multiple generations of a family sharing a home and people remaining single longer. "People's first reaction to this research is surprise, and then it seems simple." Liu said in a press release. "But a lot of things become simple after research is done. Our challenges were to connect the dots and quantify their relationships. People have been talking about how to protect the environment and fight against climate change, but divorce is a factor that people don't notice and it needs to be considered". He said... According to the passage, what's the attitude of Mr. Liu towards divorce? A) Critical . B) Indifferent. C) Objective. D) Negative.
C
Q: Americans love their cars. There are more than eight cars for every 10 Americans, but most of the time, they sit idle , parked in a driveway or on the street. Now, several companies on the U. S. West Coast are helping people rent their personal car to someone else when they don't need it. Eric Loebel is one of those people. For a small price, he wants to let his Oregon neighbors "borrow" his car. It's a dark blue, model year 2000 Volvo car. The sales and marketing consultant says he doesn't use it much. "My wife and I are huge bike commuters and almost don't need a car," he says. Loebel is one of the first car owners in Portland to list his wheels for rent through a so-called "peer-to-peer car sharing" service called Getaround. Com. "Cars are so expensive to own," he says "This can definitely offset some of the cost." The website lets car owners decide for themselves how much to charge borrowers to rent by the hour, day or week. Person-to-person rentals began in Germany a decade ago, and there are a handful of similar companies in Europe and Australia. The concept caught on quickly in California over the past year according to John Atcheson, vice president of Getaround, one of four carsharing startups in the San Francisco area. "We have had amazing cars leaping into our system," Atcheson says. "Not just 1995 pickup trucks but we have had late model Mercedes, Audis, any type of car you can imagine. We actually have a Tesla Roadster--a $150,000 sports car." Another service called JustShareIt plans to stand out by going beyond cars. Its founder says the company will offer person-to-person rentals of power boats, jet skis and snowmobeles( ) too. What's the main idea of the passage? A) There are too many cars in America. B) Most cars are rarely used in America. C) Commuting by bike is popular in America. D) Americans try renting their cars to strangers.
A: D
China news, Beijing, June 5 -- The Horizon Research Group conducted a survey about Chinese parents and their children in May last year and this year. Based on a random sampling method, the survey, done in May last year, investigated about 1,095 people living in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Xinjiang, Jinzhong, and Luzhou. All these people were aged between 18 and 60. The survey shows that 55.5% of the parents did not know who their children's best friends were. Fathers, in particular, knew even less about their children than mothers, as the survey shows only 33.8% of fathers knew who their children's best friends were while 50.8% of mothers did so, China Youth Daily reported. Parents with little education were less concerned with their children's life, or whom their children played with. The survey shows that among parents that graduated from primary schools or without any educational background, only 33.1% knew who their children's best friends were. Among parents that had received middle school education, the related proportion reached 45.5%. This year's survey was also based on random sampling. In May 2007, the Horizon Research Group investigated some 1,456 families in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Changsha, Xi'an, Chengdu and Harbin. The survey shows that children under the age of 12 play for less time with their playmates than their parents did when they were young. The survey also shows that most children at present spend only 21.9% of their time playing with their friends, while their parents spent 36.8% of their time with their playmates when they were young. Nowadays, most children spend more time with their grandparents or babysitters than with their parents. The passage can be found in _ . A) a magazine B) a newspaper C) a science journal D) a school book
B