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　　必修3 Unit 4 Astronomy：the science of the stars
　　第I卷
　　第二部分阅读理解
　　第一节阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A 、B 、C  和 D ）中，选出最佳选项，并在题卡上将该项涂黑。
　　A
　　Shlander is a man from space. He thinks the people and things on the earth are very strange. He is now writing a letter to his friend at home. Here is part of his letter. Read it and answer the questions.
　　Now I am in a strange world. It is very nice. There are many new things here. There are many earth monsters (怪物) here,  too. The earth monsters look very funny. They have just one head, two arms and two legs. They have thin black strings(细绳) on their heads. Some earth monsters have brown or yellow strings. The earth monsters have a hole in their faces. Every day, they put nice things and balls from the trees into the hole. They put water into the hole, too. The earth monsters do not walk very fast. They move from place to place in tin boxes.
　　At night, the earth monsters like to look at a square window box. This box has very small earth monsters in it.
　　1．Shlander thinks the people and things on the earth are very _________.
　　A. strange              B. nice
　　C. different            D. beautiful
　　2．Shlander thinks man on the earth is ___________.
　　A. a monkey            B. an earth monster
　　C. a tin box           D. a strange world
　　3．The earth monster doesn't have ___________. 
　　A. a head, arms and legs
　　B. brown or yellow strings on its head
　　C. a hole in its face
　　D. a wing on its body 
　　4．The square window box is __________.
　　A. a car or a bus
　　B. a very small earth monster
　　C. a TV set
　　D. a radio
　　B
　　The predictability of our death rates is something that has long puzzled social scientists. After all, there is no natural reason why 2,500 people should accidentally shoot themselves each year or why 7,000 should drown or 55,000 die in their cars. No one establishes a quota (定额) for each type of death. It just happens that they follow a consistent pattern year after year.
　　A few years ago a Canadian psychologist named Gerald Wilde became interested in this phenomenon. He noticed that mortality rates for violent and accidental deaths throughout the Western world have remained strangely static throughout the whole of the century, despite all the technological advances and increases in safety standards that have happened in that time. Wilde developed an interesting theory called “risk homeostasis”. According to this theory, people naturally live with a certain level of risk. When something is made safer, people will get around the measure in some way to get back to the original level of danger. If, for instance, they are required to wear seat belts, they will feel safer and thus will drive a little faster and a little more recklessly, thereby statistically canceling out the benefits that the seat belt offers. Other studies have shown that where a crossing is made safer, the accident rate invariably falls there but rises elsewhere along the same stretch of road as if map for the drop. It appears, then, that we have an inborn need for danger. In all events, it is becoming clearer and clearer to scientists that the factors influencing our lifespan