Article: Coffee has a history dating back to at least the 9th century and has been a catalyst for social interaction across cultures and eras. Originally discovered in Ethiopia, coffee beans were brought into the Middle East by Arab traders, spreading to Egypt, Yemen, Persia, Turkey, and North Africa by the 15th century. Muslim merchants eventually brought the beans to the thriving port city of Venice, where they sold them to wealthy Italian buyers. Soon, the Dutch began importing and growing coffee in places like Java and Ceylon (largely through slave labor), and the British East India Trading Company was popularizing the beverage in England. Coffee spread across Europe and even reached America. Where there has been coffee, there has been the coffeehouse. From the 15th century Middle Eastern establishments where men gathered to listen to music, play chess, and hear recitations from works of literature, to Paris' Cafe le Procope where luminaries of the French Enlightenment such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot came to enjoy a hot cup of joe, coffeehouses have traditionally served as centers of social interaction, places where people can come to relax, chat, and exchange ideas. The modern coffee shop is modeled on the espresso and pastry-centered Italian coffeehouses that arose with the establishment of Italian-American immigrant communities in major US cities such as New York City's Little Italy and Greenwich Village, Boston's North End, and San Francisco's North Beach. New York coffee shops were often frequented by the Beats in the 1950's. It wasn't long before Seattle and other parts of the Pacific Northwest were developing coffee shops as part of a thriving counterculture scene. The Seattle-based Starbucks took this model and brought it into mainstream culture. Although coffeehouses today continue to serve their traditional purpose as lively social hubs in many communities, they have noticeably adapted to the times. Rediscovering their purpose as centers of information exchange and communication, many coffee... Question: We can infer from the passage _ . Yes or no, is the answer "Starbucks has some effect on the development of coffee culture"?
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Article: Last month the first baby-boomers turned 60. The enormous generation born between 1946 and 1964 is heading towards retirement. The coming "demographic cliff" will see vast numbers of skilled workers disappear from the labor force. The workforce is ageing across the rich world. Within the EU the number of workers aged between 50 and 64 will increase by 25% over the next two decades, while those aged 20 -29 will decrease by 20%. Given that most societies have a tendency to retirement at around 65, companies have a problem of knowledge management, of making sure that the boomers do not leave before they have handed over their expertise along with the office keys and their e-mail address. If you look hard enough, you can find companies that have begun to adapt the workplace to older workers. The tools they use to achieve are flexible working, telecommuting, and so forth. Some companies spend "a lot of time" on the ergonomics its factories, making jobs there less tiring. Likewise, for more than a decade, prefix = st1 /Toyota, has been unusually keen to employ older workers. IBM uses its alumni network to recruit retired people for particular projects. But such examples are unusual. A survey in America last month by Ernst & Young found that "although America foresees a significant workforce shortage as boomers retire, it is not dealing with the issue . " Why are firms not working harder to keep old employees? Mostly they are not hanging on to older workers the only way to cope with a falling supply of labor. The participation of developing countries in the world economy has increased the overall supply--whatever the local effect of demographics in the rich countries. Question: What's the best tide of the passage? Yes or no, is the answer "The first baby-boomers are retiring"?
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Article: My mother is taking a tour of the new house via Skype. I leaned the laptop so she can see where she's going,pleased that our Internet connection in Zimbabwe is holding. "This is the living room," I say. Then I tell mydaughter,s;Show Grandma the bed for the mummy and the daddy. " From a continent away, Grandma gave herapproval. Mum had a dollhouse,too. My grandmother,a single mother, did not have enough money to buy my mother areal dollhouse. So Mum made do,laboring over her square cookie tin for years. She stuck patterns on the bright walls : tin cans of jam and bags of flour to make sure the dolls' store was overflowing. My mother passed her love of life in miniature( ) on to me very early. At age 5,1 made chests of drawers for my dollhouse bedroom from matchboxes glued together. Unlike my mother,l was given some ready-made doll furniture and accessories. My mother encouraged me,always responding to my calI,"Come to see what I've made Lrur IIly clollhuuse ! " I spent hours writing a book with the unoriginal but certainly accurate title " How To Make Dolls' House Furniture". The book was lost in a household move. But the satisfying feeling of filling up blank pages with my own ideas stayed with me,pushing me into a career centered on words. My daughter turned 3 recently, and last month I put a strong empty cardboard box,about the size of a tea tray ,in Cassia's bedroom. I searched the shops for dollhouse furniture. But an afternoon's searching yielded only a pink plastic toilet and sink. It doesn't matter,l told myself. I showed Cassia how to make plates for her table from coloured buttons. Fascinated, she collected black stones. What my mother gave me was much more than a fascination with tiny things :It was the ability to view things from a new perspective , to put oneself in another person's shoes , and to solve problems with whatever is at hand. Question: What did the writer learn from her mother? Yes or no, is the answer "To solve problems from a different view."?
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Article: Some time ago I discovered that one of my chairs had a broken leg. I didn't think there would be any difficulty in getting it mended, as there are a lot of antique shops near my home. So I left home one morning carrying the chair with me. I went into the first shop expecting a friendly reception. I was quite wrong. The man wouldn't even look at my chair. The second shop, though slightly more polite, was just the same, and the third and the fourth...So I decided that my approach must be wrong. I entered the fifth shop with a plan in my mind. I placed the chair on the floor and said to the shopkeeper, "Would you like to buy a chair?" He looked it over carefully and said, "Yes. How much do you want for it, sir?" "Twenty pounds,"I said, "OK,"he said. "I'll give you twenty pounds." "It's got a slightly broken leg,"I said. "Yes, I saw that, it's nothing." Everything was going according to plan and I was getting excited. "What will you do with it?" I asked. "Oh, it will be easy to sell once the repair is done." "I'11 buy it." I said. "What do you mean?" "You've just sold it to me." he said. "Yes, I know but I've changed my mind. I am sorry. I'll give you twenty-seven pounds for it.""You must be crazy. "he said. Then, suddenly the penny dropped. "I know what you want. You want me to repair your chair." "You're right."I said. "And what would you have done if I had walked in and said, 'Would you mend this chair for me?'" "I wouldn't have agreed to do it," he said. "We don't do repairs, not enough money in it and too much trouble. But I'll mend this for you, shall we say for a fiver?" He was a very nice man and was greatly amused by the whole thing. Question: From the text, we can learn that the writer was _ . Yes or no, is the answer "smart"?
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