One must analyze all factors of both sides before entering a war. These mainly include morale; ________; terrain; commanders and _______.

On a weekday night this January, thousands of flag-waving youths packed Olaya Street, Riyadh's main shopping strip, to cheer a memorable Saudi victory in the GCC Cup football final. One car, rock music blaring from its stereo, squealed to a stop, blocking an intersection. The passengers leapt out, clambered on to the roof and danced wildly in front of the honking crowd. Having paralyzed the traffic across half the city, they sped off before the police could catch them.

Such public occasion was once unthinkable in the rigid conformist kingdom, but now young people there and in other Gulf states are increasingly willing to challenge authority. That does not make them rebels, respect for elders, for religious duty and for maintaining family bonds remain pre-eminent values, and premarital sex is generally out of the question. Yet demography is beginning to put pressure on ultra-conservative norms.

After all, 60% of the Gulf's native population is under the age of 25. With many more of its citizens in school than in the workforce, the region faces at least a generation of rocketing demand for employment. In every single GCC country the native workforce will double by 2020. In Saudi Arabia it will grow from 3.3m now to over 8m. The task of managing this surge would be daunting enough for any society, but is particularly forbidding in this region, for several reasons.

The first is that the Gulf suffers from a lopsided labor structure. This goes back to the 1970s, when ballooning oil incomes allowed governments to import millions of foreign workers and to dispense cozy jobs to the locals. The result is a two-tier workforce, with outsiders working mostly in the private sector and natives monopolizing the state bureaucracy. Private firms are as productive as any. But within the government, claims one study, workers are worth only a quarter of what they get paid.

Similarly, in the education sector, 30 years spent keeping pace with soaring student numbers has taken a heavy toll on standards. The Saudi school system, for instance, today has to cope with 5m students, eight times more than in 1970. And many Gulf countries adapted their curricula from Egyptian models that are now thoroughly discredited. They continue to favor rote learning of "facts" intended to instill patriotism or religious values.

Even worse, the system as a whole discourages intellectual curiosity. It channels students into acquiring prestige degrees rather than gaining marketable skills. Of the 120,000 graduates that Saudi universities produced between 1995 and 1999, only 10,000 had studied technical subjects such as architecture or engineering. They accounted for only 2% of the total number of Saudis entering the job market.

The wild behavior. depicted in the first paragraph is intended to

A．to advocate traditional values in Saudi.

B．to introduce the change of Saudi youths.

C．to criticize their nonconformist image.

D．to praise Saudi youth tactical retreat.

Artificial Intelligence

I'm sure that Hans Moravec is at least as sane as I am, but he certainly brought to mind the classic mad scientist as we sat in his fifth-floor office at Carnegie-Mellon University on a dark and stormy night. It was nearly midnight, and he mixed for each of us a bowl of chocolate milk and Cheerios, with slices of banana piled on top.

Then, with banana-slicing knife in hand, Moravec, the senior research scientist at Carnegie Mellon's Mobile Robot Laboratory, outlined for me how he could create a robotic immortality for Everyman, a deathless universe in which life would go on forever. By creating computer copies of our minds and transferring, or downloading, this program into robotic bodies, Moravec explained, humans could survive for centuries.

"You are in an operating room. A robot brain surgeon is in attendance ... Your skull but not your brain is anesthetized (麻醉). You are fully conscious. The surgeon opens your braincase and peers inside." This is how Moravec described the process in a paper he wrote called "Robots That Rove". The robotic surgeon's attention is directed at a small clump of about one hundred neurons somewhere near the surface. Using high-resolution 3-D nuclear-magnetic-resonance holography, phased-array radio encephalography, and ultrasonic radar, the surgeon determines the three-dimensional structure and chemical makeup of that neural clump. It writes a program that models the behavior. of the clump and starts it running on a small portion of the computer sitting next to you.

That computer sitting next to you in the operating room would in effect be your new brain. As each area of your brain was analyzed and simulated, the accuracy of the simulation would be tested as you pressed a button to shift between the area of the brain just copied and the simulation. When you couldn't tell the difference between the original and the copy, the surgeon would transfer the simulation of your brain into the new, computerized one and repeat the process on the next area of your biological brain.

"Though you have not lost consciousness or even your train of thought, your mind--some would say soul--has been removed from the brain and transferred to a machine," Moravec said, "In a final step your old body is disconnected. The computer is installed in a shiny new one, in the style, color, and material of your choice."

As we sat around Moravec's office I asked what would become of the original human body after the downloading. "You just don't bother waking it up again if the copying went successfully." he said. "It's so messy. Humans have got so many problems that you might just want to leave it retired. You don't take your Junker car out if you've got a new one."

Moravec's idea is the ultimate in life insurance. Once one copy of the brain's contents has been made, it will be easy to make multiple backup copies, and these could be stashed in hiding places around the world, allowing you to embark on any sort of adventure without having to worry about aging or death. As decades pass into centuries you could travel the globe and then the solar system and beyond--always keeping an eye out for the latest in robotic bodies into which you could transfer your computer mind.

If living forever weren't enough, you could live forever several times over by activating some of your backup copies and sending different versions of yourself out to see the world. "You could have parallel experiences and merge the memories later," Moravec explained.

In the weeks and months that followed my stay at Carnegie-Mellon, I was intrigued by how many researchers seemed to believe downloading would come to pass. The only point of disagreement was when--certainly a big consideration to those of us still knocking around in mortal bodies. Although some of the researchers I spoke with at Carnegie-Mellon,

A．Y

B．N

C．NG

10. The Passover Story Passover, or Pesach in Hebrew, is one of the Jewish religion’s most sacred and widely observed holidays. Passover commemorates the story of the Israelites’(以色列人的) departure from ancient Egypt, which appears in the Hebrew Bible’s books of Exodus（出埃及记）, Numbers（民数记） and Deuteronomy（申命记）, among other texts. Jews observe the weeklong festival with a number of important rituals, including a traditional Passover meals known as a seder, the removal of leavened（加酵母的）products from their home, the substitution of matzo（犹太逾越节薄饼）for bread and the retelling of the exodus tale. According to the Hebrew Bible, Jewish settlement in ancient Egypt first occurs when Joseph, a son of the patriarch Jacob and founder of one of the 12 tribes of Israel, moves his family there during a severe famine in their homeland of Canaan. For many years the Israelites live in harmony in the province of Goshen, but as their population grows the Egyptians begin to see them as a threat. After the death of Joseph and his brothers, the story goes, a particularly hostile pharaoh（法老）orders their enslavement and the systematic drowning of their firstborn sons in the Nile. One of these doomed infants is rescued by the pharaoh’s daughter, given the name Moses (meaning “one who is pulled out”) and adopted into the Egyptian royal family. When he reaches adulthood, Moses becomes aware of his true identity and the Egyptians’ brutal treatment of his fellow Hebrews. He kills an Egyptian slave master and escapes to the Sinai Peninsula, where he lives as a humble shepherd for 40 years. One day, however, Moses receives a command from God to return to Egypt and free his kin from bondage, according to the Hebrew Bible. Along with his brother Aaron, Moses approaches the reigning pharaoh (who is unnamed in the biblical version of the story) several times, explaining that the Hebrew God has requested a three-day leave for his people so that they may celebrate a feast in the wilderness. When the pharaoh refuses, God unleashes 10 plagues on the Egyptians, including turning the Nile River red with blood, diseased livestock, boils, hailstorms and three days of darkness, culminating in the slaying of every firstborn son by an avenging angel. The Israelites, however, mark the doorframes of their homes with lamb’s blood so that the angel of death will recognize and “pass over” each Jewish household. Terrified of further punishment, the Egyptians convince their ruler to release the Israelites, and Moses quickly leads them out of Egypt. The pharaoh changes his mind, however, and sends his soldiers to retrieve the former slaves. As the Egyptian army approaches the fleeing Jews at the edge of the Red Sea, a miracle occurs: God causes the sea to part, allowing Moses and his followers to cross safely, then closes the passage and drowns the Egyptians. According to the Hebrew Bible, the Jews—now numbering in the hundreds of thousands—then trek through the Sinai desert for 40 tumultuous years before finally reaching their ancestral home in Canaan, later known as the Land of Israel. 20. Which one of the following is NOT one of Passover traditions?

A、A seder.

B、Marking the doorframes of homes with lamb’s blood.

C、The retelling of the exodus tale.

D、Having the matzo.

By ______ , both Moravec and Professor Newell try to play God.

Which of the following can NOT be learned from the first paragraph?

A．It is a memorable experience being with Seamus Heaney.

B．Most poets are complex creatures with double personalities.

C．Images of both an emperor and a farmer can be seen in Seamus Heaney.

D．Seamus Heaney is an old man with optimistic spirit about life.