Questions 4-6

　　What is globalization? Most answers lead quickly to abstractions about trade, finance and the movement of people. Carlo Ratti, by contrast, has come up with something far more concrete. Working with data from AT&T, the U.S. telecommunications operator, Ratti and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed luminous and fluctuating maps that show how international phone calls and data traffic travel between New York and more than 200 countries. "It's like having a real-time view of globalization," says Ratti, who directs mapping research at MIT. Phone calls and data flows are good indicators of how the world is organizing itself.

　　The wall-size maps, on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art, are "as engaging as a good movie," says curator Paola Antonelli. (The maps, called "New York Time Exchange," are part of an exhibition entitled "Design and the Elastic Mind," which runs through May 12.) As flows of telecommunications data change, arcs of light, glowing dots and landmasses expand and shrink. (The maps aren't quite in real time: data are delayed for two hours for technical reasons.) The result is a vivid and emotional picture of a united world. The information may also yield insights into social patterns.

　　On one map, regions expand as the number of phone connections with New York increases. This reveals a global pecking order of sorts: when it is day in New York, callers in other time zones get up very early, or stay up very late, to talk to the Big Apple. But the reverse isn't true; the world accommodates New York, but New Yorkers don't accommodate the world. "It's as if these [time-zone] lines get distorted and bend inwards into the city of New York," says Kristian Kloeckl, project leader at MIT's SENSEable City Laboratory, which designed the maps.

　　The maps are not pure art, but part of ongoing research into how the world exchanges data. MIT researchers studied British Telecom data to gauge, among other things, the influence of New York with that of rival London (the BT data were not mapped). MIT's findings? New York has more telephone contact than London not just with Latin America, as was expected, but also with Asia. This shows up as more calls and more minutes connected, even for certain parts of the Middle East-including Riyadh-despite the greater time difference. Saskia Sassen, a globalization sociologist at New York's Columbia University who was privy to the BT data, refers to these mapped phone calls as "a geography of power." She notes that tallies of international phone calls is a good approximate measure of globalization. Unlike statistics that measure high-level economic activity such as foreign investment, telephony also captures global interactions among people in lower socioeconomic groups, such as poor immigrants, thus giving a more complete picture of overall activity.

　　MIT's approach to mapping live data may appeal to audiences beyond museum-goers. Maps of telecommunications would come in handy for the airline industry, which is always looking for ways to better understand the degree of "connectedness" between cities. At present, to gauge the potential profitability of a route, airlines rely essentially on passenger records from other flights. Knowing how much talking "connects" any two cities would be "incredibly helpful" to route planners who must estimate the number of likely passengers, says Jon Woolf, senior consultant at ASM, an airline-route consultancy in Manchester, UK.

The local detail provided in the maps is another potential treasure trove of information. The MIT charts break down AT&T phone traffic at 100 points, or "switches," throughout New York. (No information is provided that could link individuals to phone calls.) This breakdown allows for a high level of detail-down to the neighborhood-which would be useful to advertisers or political campaign operatives. A speechwriter whose candidate will be stumping in Flushing, Queens, might want to know that 10 percent of international calls placed from the neighborhood connect with Seoul, South Korea.

4. What is Carlo Ratti’s research? What does his research tell us about globalization?

5. Why does the author mention the airline industry in introducing maps of telecommunications?

6. 1According to the passage, what is the connection between globalization’s losers and the development of telecommunications infrastructure?

　Questions 7-10

　　What's behind Fox's unrivaled string of money-making movies? A relentless focus on costs

　　If there were an Oscar for most consistently profitable Hollywood studio, it probably would go to 20th Century Fox (NWS). Hollywood is a hit-driven business, and most studios bounce from box-office hit to dud with depressing regularity. But for the past seven years, Fox has scored with both blockbusters (Alvin and the Chipmunks) and indie hits (Juno) that have generated the kind of double-digit return on investment you might expect from a business making widgets, not films. Tom Pollock, a former Universal Pictures chairman who produces movies for Fox and other studios, says: "Fox is simply the best-run studio in town."

　　You were expecting anything less from Rupert Murdoch's guys? At Fox, the mantra is "to be creatively driven but fiscally astute," says James N. Gianopulos, who co-chairs the studio with Thomas Rothman of Fox Filmed Entertainment (NWS). Translation: to be almost pathologically obsessed with costs. Not that the co-chairs run from risk. They outbid most of Hollywood in 2004 for the script to the apocalyptic The Day After Tomorrow, but made it for $100 million, relatively cheap for a special-effects picture. It grossed more than half a billion dollars worldwide.

　　Double-digit profits are rare in Hollywood. Yet for the past six years, Fox has delivered 12% to 18% operating margins. Halfway through its fiscal year, it earned operating income of $765 million on nearly $3.6 billion in revenues-a 21.5% operating margin. And that doesn't include Horton Hears a Who!, which grossed a hefty $45 million on its Mar. 14 opening weekend and was made for just over $85 million, nearly half what an animated Pixar Animation Studios (PIXR) film costs.

　　"No one in Hollywood negotiates tougher than these guys," says producer John Davis, who made I, Robot and Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties for Fox. The hardballing starts with development, which Davis says typically costs Fox 10% to 15% less than usual because it holds the line on costly rewrites. On top of that, Fox rarely gives anyone but the biggies-Steven Spielberg, say-a piece of the profits. It also sets tough budgets and sticks with them. For his Lord of the Rings-esque Eragon, Davis had a $100 million budget, which forced him to cut some special effects and limit stars such as John Malkovich to cameos. It earned just $75 million domestically but did well globally.

　　Special effects often eat up an action film's budget. Not at Fox. The studio learned its lesson 10 years ago with Titanic, which cost Fox and Paramount Pictures (VIA) a then-unthinkable $200 million to make. After Titanic, Fox hired an in-house effects czar, whose main job is riding herd on special effects houses, often playing them against each other to get the best price. "They beat you over the head," says X-Men producer Avi Arad. "If it costs $30 million, they'll ask why it can't cost $20 million." To keep downtime to a minimum, Arad used several shops on Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

　　Fox's biggest hits are its smallest films. Peter Rice runs the studio's independent unit, Fox Searchlight Pictures (NWS), which is in the business of finding tiny films, like Little Miss Sunshine, that were made on a shoestring. Rice's limit: $15 million. His latest triumph: Juno. It cost $7.5 million to produce and pulled in $135 million-plus in the U.S. alone.

　　Which brings us to marketing, an expense that has been known to account for one-third of a film's overall budget. While executives say they pay full freight for ads on Fox's far-flung global properties, their stars pop up all over. Samuel L. Jackson, who starred in the flick Jumper, walked the carpet at the Super Bowl on the Fox Network. And wasn't that Jim Carrey, who provided Horton's voice, recently grinning insanely in the audience of Fox's megahit American Idol?

Fox has stumbled before. Its 2005 picture Kingdom of Heaven bombed in the U.S. and cost a very unFoxlike $130 million to make. But even then, Fox turned things around. It had loaded the film with international stars, including Orlando Bloom, so it made enough outside the U.S. to break even.

7. What is a "hit-driven business"? Explain briefly the sentence "most studios bounce from box-office hit to dud with depressing regularity." (para.1)

8. Explain Gianopulos' comment what "At fox, the mantra is 'to be creatively driven but fiscally astute'". (para.2)

9. What are the hardballing measures in Fox's control of its costs in making films?

10. Cite examples to illustrate the statement "Fox biggest hits are its smallest films." (Para.6)

SECTION 6: TRANSLATION TEST

　　Directions: Translate the following passage into English and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.

　　中国古代圣人孔子曾说过："劳心者治人，劳力者治于人。"这句话反映了中国传统文化中人的地位等级的划分，也直接影响了人们对职业的选择。现代意义上的"白领阶层"是让人羡慕的对象，而"蓝领阶层"即使工资较高，仍有被人看不起的压力。

　　在中国，还有另外一句流传甚广的话，叫做"无商不奸"，认为商人"唯利是图"，与君子重义轻利的追求背道而驰，所以在传统文化中经商是被人看不起的职业，但是，随着社会主义市场经济的发展，从商"下海"已经变成许多年轻人择业时的第一选择。现代年轻人选择职业时，已较少传统的观念，更具有现代意识。