Last year, CCTV journalists approached pedestrians with their cameras, held a microphone to their mouth and asked a simple question, "Are you happy?" The question has caught many interviewees off guard. Even Mo Yan, who just won a Nobel Prize, responded by saying, "I don't know". While the question has become a buzz phrase and the Internet plays host to heated discussions, we ask: What exactly is happiness? And how do you measure it? In the 1776 US Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson set in writing the people's unalienable right to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness". 235 years on, Wen Jiabao told the nation, "Everything we do is aimed at letting people live more happily." At National People's Congress, officials agreed that increasing happiness would be a top target for the 12th five-year plan. US psychologist Ed Diener, author of Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth, describes happiness as " a combination of life satisfaction and having more positive than negative emotions", according to US broadcasting network PBS. This may sound straightforward enough, but it still doesn't explain what determines people's happiness. Many argue that happiness is _ and that there is no single source. It also means different things to different people. For some, happiness can be as simple as having enough cash. Researchers believe happiness can be separated into two types: daily experiences of hedonic well-being; and evaluative well-being, the way people think about their lives as a whole. The former refers to the quality of living, whereas the latter is about overall happiness, including life goals and achievements. Happiness can cross both dimensions. Li Jun, a psychologist and mental therapy practitioner at a Beijing clinic, says, "Happiness can mean both the most basic human satisfaction or the highest level of spiritual pursuit. It's a simple yet profound topic." Chen Shangyuan, 21, a junior English major at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said his idea of... The best title of the passage is _ . A) Are you happy? B) The Measurement of Happiness C) GDP and Happiness D) The Secret of Happiness
A
A new plan for getting children to and from school is being started by the education authorities in part of Eastern England. This could end the worries of many parents fearful for their children's safety on the roads. Until now the Country Council has only been prepared to provide bus services for children living more than three miles from their school, or sometimes less if special reasons existed. Now it has been decided that if a group of parents ask for help in organizing transport they will be prepared to go ahead, provided the arrangement will not lose money and that children taking part will be attending their nearest school. The new scheme is to be tried out this term for children living at Milton who attend Impington school. The children live just within the three-mile limit and the Council has said in the past it will not undertake to provide free transport to the school. But now they have agreed to organize a bus service from Milton to Impington and back, a plan which has the support of the school's headmaster. Between 50 and 60 parents have said they would like their children to take part. Final calculations have still to be carried out, but a council official has said the cost to parents should be less than PS6. 50 a term. They have been able to arrange the service at a low cost because there is already an agreement with the bus company for a bus to take children who live further away to Impington. The same bus would now just make an extra journey to pick up the Milton children. The official said they would get in touch with other groups of parents who in the past had asked if transport could be provided for their children, to see if they would like to take part in the new scheme. The children the Council ran buses for in the past were those _ . A) whose parents were worried about them B) who would have had to walk otherwise C) who could not walk D) who had to travel a long way
D
Q: Taylor Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. Swift's family ran a farm. "I had her sitting on a small horse when she was nine months old," said Swift's mother. "If my dream had gone well, she'd be in a horse show right now." The only obvious forerunner of Swift's musical talent was her grandmother, an opera singer. That talent showed itself early: when the family went to see a Disney musical film, Swift would come out of the theater singing all the songs correctly. At the age of 11, she sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a Philadelphia 76ers game. The experiences during her pre-teen years encouraged the creativity to go with Swift's talent. As a child, she attended the academically competitive Wyndcroft School in Pottstown, but then switched to public schools in Wyomissing. Although it was her hometown, she didn't know any of her classmates, and she was terrified. Swift began to understand the storytelling feature of country songs, and put her feelings into songs of her own. One of her future hits, "The Outside", was written when she was only 12. "I wrote that about the scariest feeling I've ever felt: going to school, looking at those faces, and not knowing who you're gonna talk to that day," she said. "In the music, I could never feel the kind of rejection that I felt in middle school." Swift's parents quickly realized that they had someone special on their hands. They sold their farm when she was 13 and moved the family to Hendersonville, Tennessee.[:Z+xx+k.Com] Swift had the ability, above all, to put feelings into words with accuracy far beyond her years. In "Our Song" she wrote, "Our song is the slamming screen door, going out late, tapping on your window." In the summer of 2006, "Tim McGraw" came out, and almost from the beginning the 16-year-old Taylor Swift was a star. Which of the following can best describe Swift's school days in Wyomissing? A) Difficult B) Helpful C) Competitive D) Satisfying
A: A
*Question*
When the Farnsworth family moved to their new farm in 1919, eleven-year-old Philo was surprised to find it wired for electricity. This unusual circumstance contributed to his fate -- to become an important inventor of the twentieth century. By thirteen, Farnsworth had become a self-taught electrical engineer. He was able to fix the farm's generator when none of the adults could. In 1922, he read an article about a new idea of John Baird, a Scottish scientist, who had been working with the cathode ray tube for the transmission of electronic pictures and wanted to attempt it himself. Farnsworth studied everything he could find on the subject. Although many older engineers with money backers were already developing television, Farnsworth made a bold decision -- he was going to perfect a working model of it before anybody else. In college, Farnsworth continued his research with cathode ray and vacuum tubes, but the death of his father, the only money maker in the family, forced him to give up this research and find a job. His first job was for George Everson, with whom Farnsworth discussed his dream of television. While acknowledging the achievements of those who came before, Farnsworth thought that he could get closer. Everson agreed to risk $6,000 for the research. Backers came in 1927 to see the first American television, one year after Baird's. They were astonished to see the image of a single white line resolve itself on the screen before them, and agreed that this new invention was worth putting money into. In 1930, Farnsworth won a patent for his all-electronic TV. By the time he died, he had earned over 300 American and foreign patents for electronic and mechanical devices. From the passage, we can learn that Farnsworth is _ . A) the first person who worked for the transmission of electronic pictures B) an inventor who improved on somebody else's idea C) an inventor who always came up with an original idea D) a person who earned over 300 American patents for electronic devices
**Answer**
B