Section A Directions: In this part there is a short passage
with five questions or incomplete statements. Read the passage carefully. Then
answer the questions or complete the statements in the fewest possible words (
not exceeding 10 words).
It is a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is
unbelievable. Every time the residents brush their teeth, millions of gallons of
water must be consumed. When a young man in Manhattan writes a letter to his
girl in Brooklyn, the love message gets blown to her through a pneumatic (充气的)
tube. The underground system of telephone cables, power lines, steam pipes, gas
pipes is reason enough to abandon the island to the gods and the beetles. Every
time a cut is made on the street, the noisy surgeons expose ganglia (神经中枢)that
are twisted beyond belief. By rights New York should have
destroyed itself long ago, from terror or fire or failure of some vital supply
lines in its circulatory system or from some deep complex short circuit. Long
ago the city should have experienced an insoluble traffic confusion at some
impassable bottle-neck. It should have died of hunger when food lines failed for
a few days. It should have been wiped out by widespread diseases starting in its
dirty blocks or carried in by ships’ rats. It should have been swallowed by the
sea that licks at it on every side. The workers in its innumerable cells should
have gone mad, from the fearful darkness of smoke-fog that drifted over every
few days from the Jersey, darkening all light at noon and leaving the high
offices suspended, men groping (摸索) and depressed, and the sense of world’s end.
It should have been touched in the head by the August heat and become crazy.
What does the passage mainly talk about
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