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2015考研英语阅读理解模拟试题
Over the pastcentury, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been condemned or madeillegal. But one insidious form continues to thrive: alphabetism. This, forthose as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination againstthose whose surnames begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet。
It has long been known that a taxi firm called AAAA cars has a bigadvantage over Zodiac cars when customers thumb through their phonedirectories. Less well known is the advantage that Adam Abbott has in life overZo Zysman. English names are fairly evenly spread between the halves of thealphabet. Yet a suspiciously large number of top people have surnames beginningwith letters between A and K。
Thus the American president and vicepresident have surnamesstarting with B and C respectively; and 26 of George Bush’spredecessors (including his father) had surnames in the first half of thealphabet against just 16 in the second half. Even more striking, six of theseven heads of government of the G7 rich countries are alphabeticallyadvantaged (Berlusconi, Blair, Bush, Chirac, Chrétien and Koizumi).The world’s three top central bankers (Greenspan, Duisenberg and Hayami) areall close to the top of the alphabet, even if one of them really uses Japanesecharacters. As are the world’s five richest men (Gates, Buffett, Allen, Ellison and Albrecht)。
Can this merely be coincidence? One theory, dreamt up in all thespare time enjoyed by the alphabetically disadvantaged, is that the rot sets inearly. At the start of the first year in infant school, teachers seat pupilsalphabetically from the front, to make it easier to remember their names. Soshortsighted Zysman junior gets stuck in the back row, and is rarely asked theimproving questions posed by those insensitive teachers. At the time thealphabetically disadvantaged may think they have had a lucky escape. Yet theresult may be worse qualifications, because they get less