1 . Fred Smith was an undergraduate at Yale University in 1965. As part of the coursework, he wrote an economics paper_________ the process of transportation of goods in the United States. He_________that the shippers relied on transporting goods in_________packages across the United States by means of truck or passenger airplanes. Smith thought of a more efficient_________idea. He wrote a last minute_________ on how a company carrying small, important items_________could be a much better business. He, however, did not go into details about how to actually _________such a company. As a consequence, his paper was_________.But Smith did not give up on the idea and_________the company in 1971.

Within three years of the founding of the company, Federal Express (FedEx) was on the edge of__________. It was losing over $1 million a month,__________ the rising fuel costs. At its worst time, the company had just $5000 to its name. Smith made a final try to General Dynamics for more funding but the request wasn't__________.

Most ordinary people would have quit at this point and__________the company. Not Fred Smith. The founder of the company had to do a __________ move at last that he flew to Lasvegas,__________ to obtain some company funds to help him pull through.__________, on Monday, the company had a great relief because FedEx had $32, 000 in its bank__________, which was just enough to__________ the fuel for their planes and to continue operating a few days more.

Soon after, the company was able to raise__________amounts in funding. Today FedEx is a global __________industry with operations in more than 220 counties and territories and an annual income of US $45 billion.

Will a Robot Really Take Your Job?

It is one of the most widely quoted data of recent years. No report or conference presentation on the future of work is complete without it. It has been pointed to as evidence of a(n)     1     jobs disaster by think-tanks and government agencies. The finding that 47 percent of American jobs are at high risk of being     2     by the mid-2030s comes from a paper written by two Oxford academics, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne. It has since been     3     in more than 4,000 other academic articles. Such misunderstandings reflect the polarized (两极分化的) debate     4     the nature of automation and the future of jobs.

At one extreme are the negativists. They warn of mass technological     5     just around the corner. One advocate of this position, Martin Ford, has written two best-selling books on the dangers of unemployment caused by automation. He worries that middle-class jobs will disappear, economic     6     will cease, and the richest people in a country could “shut themselves away in gated communities, perhaps guarded by self-directed military robots and drones.” The     7     masses will live on a universal basic income.

At the positive end of the debate, classical economists argue that in the past, new technology has always ended up creating more jobs than it has destroyed. It was several decades before industrialization led to     8     higher wages for British workers in the early 1800s. While automation is likely to increase     9     in the short run by pushing some people into lower-paid jobs, it eventually increases the overall size of the economic pie.

Frey is often     10     to be in the first camp. His paper simply wanted to point out that 47 percent of the current jobs in America were more likely to be affected by automation. It got more attention than they would ever have expected. In part, this is because fear sells, particularly when it is stirred up by a misunderstanding.

10 . A Day with a Chinese Tea Farmer

The day begins early for Minzhe. It is only 5 o’clock in the morning, and he has already started working.

Minzhe owns a large tea plantation (种植园) in his hometown in Guilin, Guangxi. It covers an area of more than 350 square (平方) meters.The tea farmer walks through the plants slowly. He carefully presses a leaf between his thumb (拇指) and index finger (食指) and gently picks it.

A tea plant can only be picked once it is about three years old. At each picking, only young leaves can be picked. And the tea plants are usually of different heights. Therefore, tea farmers can rarely (罕有地) rely (依赖) on machines.Anyone can see that planting tea requires great patience and lots of hard work.

Minzhe knows the quality of tea depends not only on the tea plants. The picking and processing play an important part, too. As an experienced tea farmer, he knows which leaves are to be picked and when to pick these leaves.

April is usually the busiest month for Minzhe. It is the best time for harvesting (收获) top﹣quality green teas, Minzhe has to pick about 90 % of green tea.

Shortly after picking the leaves... Minzhe begins processing them. The leaves are dried, rolled (卷成球状) and then shaped. A heavy smell of the cut leaves fills the air in the workshop.

For Minzhe, a full day’s work produces about 50 pounds of leaves to be made into delicious tea. It brings great pride to him. A day in the life of Minz he involves (包含) lots of hard work. However, it is always worth it.