Read the following text. Answer the questions on the text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     Whole life is permanent insurance protection that protects you for your whole life, from the day you purchase the policy until you die, as long as you pay the premiums (保险费).
     Whole life can be a solid foundation. Upon this foundation you can build a long-term financial plan, because it guarantees lifetime protection for your family or business.
     Whole life insurance provides basic insurance protection, plus Mortgage protection, Estate preservation, Retirement funding, Charitable giving, Business needs...
     A life insurance agent will help you determine an amount of insurance needed to protect your family or business in the event of your death.
     Generally after the first year, the policy begins to increase cash value. The amount of cash value in your policy usually increases every year. This money can be used to help purchase home, fund a child's education, add to retirement income, or for any other purpose. You may also choose to leave it in the policy and allow it to grow.
     A whole life policy can earn dividends. Dividends are determined by the company's board of directors each year and are not guaranteed. When a dividend is payable, you may choose to take it in cash, use it to buy more insurance or to pay or reduce your premiums.
     When you die, the company will pay your beneficiaries the death benefit, usually the face amount of the policy plus any dividend. This money is generally received by the beneficiaries free from income tax.

Read the following text. Answer the questions on the text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     “We are not about to enter the Information Age, but instead are rather well into it.” Present predictions are that by 1990, about thirty million jobs in the United States, or about thirty percent of the job market, will be computer-related. In 1980, only twenty-one percent of all American high schools owned one or two computers for student use. In the fall of 1985, a new study showed that half of United States secondary schools have fifteen or more computers for student use. And now educational experts, administrators, and even the general public are demanding that all students become "computer-literate". By the year 2000 knowledge of computers will be necessary in over eighty percent of all occupations. Soon those people not educated in computer use will be compared to those who are “print-illiterate” today.
     What is “computer literacy”? The term itself seems to imply some degree of "knowing" about computers, but knowing what? The present opinion seems to be that this should include a general knowledge, of what computers are, plus a little of their history and something of how they operate.
     Therefore, it is important that educators everywhere take a careful look not only at what is being done, but also at what should be done in the field of education. Today most adults are able to use a motor car without the slightest knowledge of how the internal combustion engine works. We effectively use all types of electrical equipment without being able to tell their histories or to explain how they work.
     Business people for years have made good use of typewriters and adding machines, yet few have ever known how to repair them. Why, then, attempt to teach computers by teaching how or why they work?
     Rather, we first must fix our mind on teaching the effective use of computer as the tool is.
“Knowing how to use a computer is what's going to be important. We don't talk about 'automobile literacy'. We just get in our cars and drive them.”

Read the following text. Answer the questions on the text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     You do not usually get something for nothing. Now, a new study reveals that the evolution of an improved learning ability could come at a particularly high price: an earlier death. 

     Past experiments have demonstrated that it is relatively easy through selective breeding to make rats, honey bees and—that great favourite of researchers—fruit flies a lot better at learning. Animals that are better learners should be competitive and, thus, over time, come to dominate a population by natural selection. But improved learning ability does not get selected amongst these animals in the wild. No one really understands why.
     Tadeusz Kawecki and his colleagues at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland have measured the effects of improved learning on the lives of fruit flies. The flies were given two different fruits as egg-laying sites. One of these was laced with a bitter additive that could be detected only on contact. The flies were then given the same fruit but without an additive. Flies that avoided the fruit which had been bitter were deemed to have learned from their experience. Their children were reared and the experiment was run again.
     After repeating the experiment for 30 generations, the children of the learned flies were compared with normal flies. The researchers report in a forthcoming edition of Evolution that although learning ability could be bred into a population of fruit flies, it shortened their lives by 15%. When the researchers compared their learned flies to colonies selectively bred to live long lives, they found even greater differences. Whereas learned flies had reduced their life spans, the long-lived flies learned less well than even average flies.
     The authors suggest that evolving an improved learning ability may require a greater investment in the nervous system which takes resources away from processes that delay ageing. However, Dr. Kawecki thinks the effect could also be a byproduct of greater brain activity increasing the production of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), which can increase oxidation in the body and damage health.
     No one knows whether the phenomenon holds true for other animals. So, biologists, at least, still have a lot to learn. 

Read the following text. Answer the questions on the text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     Elizabeth Freeman was born about 1742 to African American parents who were slaves. At the age of six months she was acquired, along with her sister, by John Ashley, a wealthy Massachusetts slave-holders. She became known as “Mumbet” or “Mum Bett”.
     For nearly 30 years Mumbet served the Ashley family. One day, Ashley's wife tried to strike Mumbet's sister with a spade. Mumbet protected her sister and took the blow instead. Furious, she left the house and refused to come back. When the Ashleys tried to make her return, Mumbet consulted a lawyer, Theodore Sedgewick. With his help, Mumbet sued for her freedom.
     While serving the Ashleys, Mumbet had listened to many discussions of the new Massachusetts constitution. If the constitution said that all people were free and equal, then she thought it should apply to her. Eventually, Mumbet won her freedom—the first slave in Massachusetts to do so under the new constitution.
     Strangely enough, after the trial, the Ashleys asked Mumbet to come back and work for them as a paid employee. She declined and instead went to work for Sedgewick. Mumbet died in 1829, but her legacy lived on in her many descendants. One of her great-grandchildren was W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the NAACP, and an important writer and spokesperson for African American civil rights.
     Mumbet's tombstone still stands in the Massachusetts cemetery where she was buried. It reads, in part: “She was born a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years. She could neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she had no superior or equal.”

Read the following text. Answer the questions on the text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     One important thing during the pre-Christmas rush at our house was the arrival of my daughter' s kindergarten report card. She got high praise for her reading, vocabulary and overall enthusiasm. On the other hand, we learnt that she has work to do on her numbers and facility with the computer, though the detailed handwritten report her teachers prepared is absent of any words that might be interpreted as negative in describing her efforts. A number system indicates how she' s measuring up in each area without any mention of passing or failing.
     All of which seems to make my daughter' s school neither fish nor fowl when it comes to the debate over the merits of giving formal grades to kids. At one level, the advantages and disadvantages are obvious. A grade system provides a straightforward standard by which to measure how your child is progressing at school--and how he or she is getting on compared to other children. But as writer Sue Ferguson notes, "Grades can deceive. " The aim should be "to measure learning, not simply what a student can recall on a test. " The two aren' t the same--and if you doubt that as an adult, ask yourself whether you could sit down without any preparation and still pass those high-school-level examinations.
     If you're old enough, you've lived through this debate before. At one time, it was considered unfair to put children in direct competition with one another if it could be avoided. The intention behind that may have been good, but it ignored the fact that competition, and the will to come out on top, are essential components of the human condition.
     This time around, educators working with a no-grades approach are emphasizing different reasons. The thing is, that approach is much more commonplace in the adult workplace than is the traditional pass-fail system we place on our children. Many workplaces conduct regular employee evaluations. There are usually fairly strict limits to what an employer can tell an employee in those evaluations and even then, negative evaluations can be challenged by the employee. No matter where you sit in the debate over the grade system, then, the real question is this: if it's so good for kids, why isn't that also true for adults?

Read the following text. Answer the questions on the text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     One important thing during the pre-Christmas rush at our house was the arrival of my daughter's kindergarten report card. She got high praise for her reading. vocabulary and overall enthusiasm. On the other hand, we learnt that she has work to do on her numbers and facility with the computer, though the detailed handwritten report her teachers prepared is absent of any words that might he interpreted as negative in describing her efforts. A number system indicates how she's measuring up in each area without any mention of passing or failing.
     All of which seems to make my daughter's school neither fish nor fowl when it comes the debate over the merits of giving formal grades to kids. At one level, the advantages and disadvantages are obvious. A grade system provides straightforward standard by which to measure how your child is progressing at school—and bow he or she is getting on compared to other children.
     But as writer Sue Ferguson notes, "Grades can deceive." The aim should be "to measure learning, not simply what a student can recall on a test. "The two aren't the same—and if you doubt that as an adult, ask yourself whether you could sit down without any preparation and still pass those high school-level examinations.
     If you're old enough, you've lived through this debate before. At one time, it was considered unfair to put children in direct competition with one another if it could be avoided. The intention behind that may have been good, but it ignored the fact that competition, and the will to come out on top, are essential components the human condition.
     This time around, educators working with a no-grades approach are emphasizing different reasons. The thing is, that approach is much more commonplace in the adult workplace than is the traditional pass-fail system we place on our children. Many workplaces conduct regular employee evaluations. There are usually fairly strict limits to what an employer can tell an employee in those evaluations—and even then, negative evaluations can be challenged by the employee. No matter where you sit in the debate over the grade system, then, the real question is this: if it's so good for kids, why isn't that also true for adults?

     "Family" is of course an elastic word. And in different countries it has different meanings. Butwhen British people say that their society is based on family life, they are thinking of "family" in itsnarrow, peculiarly European sense of mother, father and children living together in their own houseas an economic and social unit.

     According to this paragraph, what does the author mean by "Family is of course an elastic word"?（）

     Maggie was very glad that James was not a frequent visitor to the house. So far as the children were concerned, they had a mystery about him that stirred their imagination. He stirred Maggie’s anger, however, So that she often said to her husband, “It’s mercy that brother of yours doesn’t come oftener.”

     The underlined word "mercy" in the text most probably means （） . 

     Insurance is the sharing of risks. Nearly everyone is exposed to risk of some sort. The house owner, for example, knows that his property can be damaged by fire; the ship-owner knows that his ships may be lost at sea; the breadwinner knows that he may die at an early age and leave his family poorer. On the other hand, not every house is damaged by fire nor every ship is lost at sea. If these persons each put a small sum into a pool, there will be enough to meet the needs of the few who do suffer losses. In other words, the losses of the few are met from the contributions of the many. This is the basis of insurance. Those who pay the contribution are known as insured and those who administer the pool of contributions as insurers.

     By “the pool of contributions” the writer means （） . 

     Don Lucas grew up in poverty. His father died when Don was eight. His mother, with three small children and limited education, was on welfare and had no job prospects. She packed the three kids into an old car and set out from Indiana to California where she had obtained a job as a supermarket checker. Don enrolled in a high school in a tough part of town. He describes his town as the spot where drive-by shootings were invented. Few of his classmates ever went to college, and Don did not think about college until his senior year. He had been working from 4 to 9 pm daily at a gas station helping his family to make ends meet.

     In this paragraph, "tough part of town" refers to a(n) （） place. 

Read the following text. Answer the questions on the text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     Passwords are everywhere in computer security. All too often, they are also ineffective. A good password has to be both easy to remember and hard to guess, but in practice people seem to pay attention to the former. Names of wives, husbands and children are popular. “123456” or “12345” are also common choices.
     That predictability lets security researchers (and hackers) create dictionaries which list common passwords, useful to those seeking to break in. But although researchers know that passwords are insecure, working out just how insecure has been difficult. Many studies have only small samples to work on.
     However, with the co-operation of Yahoo!, Joseph Bonneau of Cambridge University obtained the biggest sample to date — 70 million passwords that came with useful data about their owners.
     Mr Bonneau found some interesting variations. Older users had better passwords than young ones. People whose preferred language was Korean or German chose the most secure passwords；those who spoke Indonesian the least. Passwords designed to hide sensitive information such as credit-card numbers were only slightly more secure than those protecting less important things, like access to games. “Nag screens” that told users they had chosen a weak password made virtually no difference. And users whose accounts had been hacked in the past did not make more secure choices than those who had never been hacked.
     But it is the broader analysis of the sample that is of most interest to security researchers. For, despite their differences, the 70 million users were still predictable enough that a generic password dictionary was effective against both the entire sample and any slice of it. Mr Bonneau is blunt：“An attacker who can manage ten guesses per account will compromise around 1% of accounts.” And that is a worthwhile outcome for a hacker.
     One obvious solution would be for sites to limit the number of guesses that can be made before access is blocked. Yet whereas the biggest sites, such as Google and Microsoft, do take such measures, many do not. The reasons of their not doing so are various. So it’s time for users to consider the alternatives to traditional passwords. 

Read the following text. Answer the questions on the text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     Whole life is permanent insurance protection that protects you for your whole life, from the day you purchase the policy until you die, as long as you pay the premiums (保险费).
     Whole life can be a solid foundation. Upon this foundation you can build a long-term financial plan, because it guarantees lifetime protection for your family or business.
     Whole life insurance provides basic insurance protection, plus Mortgage protection, Estate preservation, Retirement funding, Charitable giving, Business needs...
     A life insurance agent will help you determine an amount of insurance needed to protect your family or business in the event of your death.
     Generally after the first year, the policy begins to increase cash value. The amount of cash value in your policy usually increases every year. This money can be used to help purchase home, fund a child's education, add to retirement income, or for any other purpose. You may also choose to leave it in the policy and allow it to grow.
     A whole life policy can earn dividends. Dividends are determined by the company's board of directors each year and are not guaranteed. When a dividend is payable, you may choose to take it in cash, use it to buy more insurance or to pay or reduce your premiums.
     When you die, the company will pay your beneficiaries the death benefit, usually the face amount of the policy plus any dividend. This money is generally received by the beneficiaries free from income tax.

Read the following text. Answer the questions on the text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     Whole life is permanent insurance protection that protects you for your whole life, from the day you purchase the policy until you die, as long as you pay the premiums (保险费).
     Whole life can be a solid foundation. Upon this foundation you can build a long-term financial plan, because it guarantees lifetime protection for your family or business.
     Whole life insurance provides basic insurance protection, plus Mortgage protection, Estate preservation, Retirement funding, Charitable giving, Business needs...
     A life insurance agent will help you determine an amount of insurance needed to protect your family or business in the event of your death.
     Generally after the first year, the policy begins to increase cash value. The amount of cash value in your policy usually increases every year. This money can be used to help purchase home, fund a child's education, add to retirement income, or for any other purpose. You may also choose to leave it in the policy and allow it to grow.
     A whole life policy can earn dividends. Dividends are determined by the company's board of directors each year and are not guaranteed. When a dividend is payable, you may choose to take it in cash, use it to buy more insurance or to pay or reduce your premiums.
     When you die, the company will pay your beneficiaries the death benefit, usually the face amount of the policy plus any dividend. This money is generally received by the beneficiaries free from income tax.

Read the texts from an article in which five people talked about energy and making use of it. For questions 1 to 5, match the name of each speaker to one of the statements (A to G) given below.Note: there are two extra statements. 

     Jackson:
     Viewed from a scientist's standpoint, all of the energy contained in fuel either now or in the future becomes heat. Some of the heat is used directly or produces useful work. The rest is lost or rejected. That is to say, it is radiated into the atmosphere from the engines, motors, furnaces, power lines, television sets, boilers and all the other energy-consuming machinery that makes our wheels go around.
     Browning:
     It is necessary to improve the efficiency with which we use energy in order to do more work. But improvement cannot come overnight, and there are limits beyond which not even science can help. According to the Center for Strategic and International studies, about three quarters of the energy we use to move things, including ourselves, accomplishes no useful work.
     Jeffrey:
     In terms of efficiency, buses, trains, and other forms of public transportation may be using energy more efficiently than private automobiles. Unless private automobiles can operate at near capacity, their overall efficiency is poor. For example, an urban bus carrying 36 passengers may achieve an efficiency of around 120 passenger-miles per gallon of gasoline. But buses are not always fully loaded, and sometimes they carry no passengers at all.
     Vandenberg:
     It is true that buses can sometimes run without passengers. City trains seem to be very efficient, but they suffer the same shortcomings as buses and cost more. Except for rush hours, commuter trains seldom run at full capacity. This wastes even more energy and is more than the management can afford. As a result, commuter trains are truly practical only in places where there are a lot of people.
     Nathan:
     For some people, mass transportation may serve their needs. For others, a combination of mass transportation and private transportation may be preferable. Better design and wise use of both mass transportation systems and private vehicles will play an important part in helping us make fuller use of energy for transportation. 

Read the texts from a magazine article in which five people talked about fitness tips for men. For questions 1-5, match the name of each person to one of the statements (A-G) given below. Note: there are two extra statements.

     Laurie:
     It is encouraging to see that, whether out of sympathy for animals or a concern for their own health or both, people are starting to realize that it does not pay to eat too far up on the food chain. Meat need not be what is for dinner. Factory farming is barbaric and cruel. Every person who reduces the use of animals in his life is performing a lifesaving act.
     Jeff:
     I am ready to be a vegetarian, but in our country, farmers, food producers, restaurants and supermarkets are not prepared to support me. We all know that it is much easier and less expensive to get a hamburger at McDonald's or Chinese takeout or a roast chicken from the supermarket than it is to take the time to shop for, assemble and cook a tasty, nutritious and fulfilling vegetarian meal.
     Rod:
     I've heard another term for vegetarians: beady-eyed vegetarians. They' 11 eat things with beady eyes (fish, chicken) but not with big, sad eyes (cows, lambs). A friend of mine explained it by saying he would eat only things he thought he could kill himself. He figures he can kill a fish but not a cow. That seems like a more honest and consistent rationale than some of the others I've heard.
     Jerry:
     As a moral vegetarian, I have found that there is great misunderstanding about vegetarian principles in our society. While some vegetarians keep off animals as a matter of health, we moral vegetarians don't want other animals to live for us, nor do we want other animals to die for us, as they do for food, clothing and wasteful scientific research. All animals live for their own sake, not for mine.
     Ellen: 

     Why do some people think that animals and human beings are the same? In my opinion, a human life is worth a lot more than an animal's. I think that we must stop thinking of meat eaters as killers. Vegetarians also kill vegetable life. Is there any difference? Eat vegetables and meat; both help you to be healthy and allow you to have all the nutrients your bodies need.  

Read the texts from a magazine in which five people talked about advertisements aimed at children. For question 1-5, match the name of each person to one of the statements(A-G) given below. Note: There are two extra statements.

     Anne:
     I really don' t think that it's moral to target children with advertisements, as they are not yet able to distinguish advertising from actual programming in the way adults can. This means that advertising aimed at children is misleading and unfair. It is also clearly effective, as otherwise advertisers would not spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year targeting children who are not yet able to resist their sales pitch.
     John:
     Advertising aimed at children brings negative social consequences, as much of it is for food and drinks that are unhealthy. Encouraging naive children to consume so much fatty, sugary and salty food is morally wrong because it creates overweight, unhealthy youngsters, with bad eating habits that will be with them for life. Society may pay a high price in terms of the extra medical care such children will eventually require.
     Lily:
     I think banning advertisements is a severe restriction upon freedom of speech. Companies should be able to tell the public about any legal products, or innovation will be restricted and new companies will find it hard to market their products successfully in the face of established rivals. Children also have a human right to receive information from a wide range of sources and make up their own minds about it.
     Ross:
     Children naturally like foods that are rich in fats and sugar. They give them the energy they need to play energetically and grow healthily It is true that eating only such foods is bad for people, but this is a problem of bad parenting rather than the fault of advertising. If advertising to children were banned, then governments would not be able to use this means of promoting healthy eating. Julia:
Children are not naive innocents but clever consumers who can distinguish at a very young age between advertisements and programs, and understand that advertisements can be misleading. This essential learning process is, In fact, developed through exposure to advertisements. It is also assisted by responsible parenting that does not just leave children alone in front of the television, but spends some time watching with them and discussing what is seen. 

Read the following article in which five people talk about AIDS. For Question 1-5, match the name of each person to one of the statements (A-G) given below. Note: There are two extra statements.
     Greg Logan:
     These were the trials for the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea. Until this dive, I had been ahead. But now, something else was more significant than winning. I might have endangered other divers' lives if I have spilled blood in the pool. For what I knew—that few others knew—was that I was HIV-positive. AIDS forced me to stop diving; I had to quit diving professionally after the Olympics.
     Margaret Chan:
     It is reported that almost three million people in developing countries are now receiving drugs for HIV. This is an increase of almost one million people from two thousand and six. Still, the hope was to reach three million by two thousand and five. But antiviral therapy, or ART, alone will not solve the problem. For every two persons we manage to provide them with ART, another five persons get infected. So again, we cannot underestimate the power of prevention.
     Paula Green:
     The disease robs the body of its natural defenses against infections. Almost seventy-five percent of people receiving HIV drugs are in Africa. The drugs help patients live longer without developing AIDS. An estimated nine million seven hundred thousand people in low and middle income countries were in need of HIV treatment last year. However, by the end of the year, just over thirty percent of them were getting it.
     Raymond Chow:
     Price reductions can be a main method to let more people with HIV, including more pregnant women, receive the drugs. Also, delivery systems should be redesigned to better serve individual countries and smaller health centers. And treatments should be simpler than in the past.
     William Wang:
     Huge barriers still remain in dealing with the AIDS epidemic. Getting patients to stay on their therapy is difficult. There are still large numbers of people who .do not get tested for HIV. And there are many others who get tested too late and die within months. What's more, there is not enough joint treatment of HIV and the related infections that most often kill AIDS patients. And still another problem is the shortage of health care workers in the developing world. 

Read the texts from a magazine in which five women wrote to respond to an article on mother-daughter relatioinship. For question 1-5, match the name of each person to one of the statements(A-G) given below. Note: There are two extra statements.

     ​Lucy: 

     As the mother of two girls，I was moved to tears by your article，because it echoed so many of my own feelings. I don’t think I should feel ashamed or that I am failing my child in any way because I feel like this. I think it’s really normal and I love the way you have put into words what so many mums feel at this stage in their lives.
     Anna:
     My husband and I both read this article and we think it is moving, thoughtful, and the ending is wonderful. People cannot deny that jealousy is a natural emotion between children and parents. It is wonderful to see someone emotionally mature enough to be so aware of their own feelings. And celebrate them. You have written what I am sure most mothers feel, but are too scared to admit.
     Beth:  
     There is some form of jealousy between mother and daughter. I remember suspecting that my mother was jealous of me but kept it under wraps. I understood that my mother was not happy with my father and the good relationship between myself and him. The strange thing is years later. My own daughter and her father have a good relationship with each other and I can feel jealousy creeping in...
     Clare:
     When I realized my daughter had become a young woman, I was not jealous. At first I felt sad that I had lost my little girl, then I accepted this and rejoiced in her loveliness. I feel protective towards her because it is too natural for young girls to meet men. Offer your child advice on things like wearing fancy clothes which men do see as charming，and hope that she enjoys her life.
     Ruth: 
     I think that a mature person judges herself based on her own qualities. A loving mother does not compare herself to her children and advertise her unhealthy thoughts to the world in a newspaper. I am surrounded all day at work by hot, smart young undergraduates, many of whom are hotter and smarter than I was at their age. When they succeed socially and academically, I feel happy for them. 

Read the texts from a magazine article in which five people talk about tipping in a restaurant. For questions 1-5, match the name of each person to one of the statements (A- G) given below. Note: there are two extra statements. 

     Richard:
     I've always viewed tipping as a way of saying "thank you" to the one who serves me. I believe what is bad is when no tip is left at all. The better the service, the higher the tip. Unless the service is literally perfect, I never tip more than 10% of the bill. Much like the harder teachers in school, I never give an easy “A.”My assessment is honest.
     Daniel:
     A tip is a "thank you," but in truth, a tip is payment for service. 20% is a standard tip. Servers deserve it for their hard work. Restaurants will never pay more for labor unless they are forced to do so by new laws. Tips make up about 97% of a server's total income. Those tips are needed for survival. So, before servers are paid a living wage, tip 20%.
     Kate:
     Why should I pay the difference between what the restaurant is willing to pay the employee and what an acceptable wage is? I do pay 20%, but I hate it. A friend of mine left Europe for New York City, found a job in a restaurant there and ended up making $5,500 a month. Enough above minimum wage? How about miners, construction workers, resident doctors, etc? Do they get tipped?
     Patricia:
     18 -20% for good service is today's standard. The restaurant and its employees arc too polite to tell you this or to put it on their menus, but that is their expectation and you need to understand that. I believe it is good manners to respect this. To do otherwise is to be openly rude. If you disagree, you arc wise to cat elsewhere, as you are hurting a hardworking professional.
     Michael:
     Tipping has gotten out of control. I always had thought it was 15%, and now suddenly servers have made it 20%. I tip 15%, and that's it. If the service is really superior, then I work higher from there. Interesting to be told ,“If you can't afford to tip 20%, then you should cat at home.” If all those people stayed away, the restaurant would not even be in business.

Read the texts from a magazine article in which five people talked about the future of reading. For questions 1-5, match the name of each person (1-5) to one of the statements (A-G) given below. Note: there are two extra statements.
     Paul:
     I think books will be more affordable. They are pretty expensive. Publishers are so silly be-cause they focus on "We're not going to be selling so many hardcover books at $26." But you're going to sell infinitely more electronically, so what are you complaining about? I view it as a greater opportunity. My e-reader is great because I travel, and I don't want to carry a billion things with me.
     David:
     I don't own an e-reader, and I've never read a page on an e-reader. I do everything I can to avoid more screen time. Not to play down the value of a physical book, when it comes to somebody investing in one, it's something you want to keep. You have to give readers a choice, between a richer experience with physical books, and a more lifeless experience through an electronic reader.
     James:
     The new immigrants don't shoot the old inhabitants when they come in. One technology tends to supplement rather than substitute. How you read is not as important as: Will you read? Will you read something that's a book-the sustained train of thought of one person speaking to another? Search techniques are embedded in e-books that invite people to dip into something rather than follow a full train of thought.
     Alex:
     We've maintained in the last few years there will be fewer bookstores. We have the best business model in the world. Books are still a majority of what we sell in stores, but they are becoming less and less. About 50 percent of physical books are sold in non-bookstore outlets, like drugstores and club stores. There are people with agendas in this industry, but the physical book is going nowhere.
     William:
     E-readers take out the paper middleman and give me what I want from books: the words. My e-reader has allowed me to read more than ever. When I travel I can take five books with me all without cutting down a single tree or using any extra jet fuel. Books made of paper can be beautiful, but they are never as beautiful as the words in the best of them.