situation in which they had to observe two circles on a screen.

    At first glance,price-comparison websites are an example of capitalism at its best.But it has caused fierce competition on price and eviscerated profits.Towers Watson,a consultancy,said that "unnecessary" price competition following the rise of comparison sites in Britain had cost insurers ￡1 billion a year.

    Consumers should celebrate that;the firms' losses are their gains.But there is a catch.Comparison sites introduce a new layer of costs,including their own advertising campaigns.In theory,competition in the market for comparison sites ought to keep those costs down.But David Ronayne of Warwick University argues that consumers often lose out from comparison sites.They earn a commission for each shopper who uses them for consumption such as buying insurance.That referral（委托）cost is included in the price the consumer ends up paying.If the increased costs outweigh the saving the comparison enables,consumers end up worse off.

    These worries are not just theoretical.In 2014,Britain's competition regulator found that many comparison sites were using their contracts with retailers（零售商）to ban them from offering lower prices elsewhere.That weakened rivals' incentive（对手的动机）to cut fees,because prices on their site could not fall.By keeping prices similar,the contracts also reduced the incentive for consumers to search on multiple sites,thus helping sites retain their users.

    Weaker incentives to lower commissions mean weaker incentives to lower costs,too.That might explain why comparison websites advertise so heavily,and sometimes offer free gifts to those who use them.In a recent paper,Ben Edelman of Harvard Business School and Julian Wright of the National University of Singapore argue that when a site knows that the prices merchants provide through it will always be the lowest available,it increases investment in attracting customers,safe in the knowledge that the merchants and at last consumers will bear the cost.

    Is there any way to ensure the market for price comparison is competitive?Asking consumers to check multiple websites defeats the point of using them.One solution is to have only one site,but regulate it as a public utility（功用）. Alternatively,the governments could run the site itself.But creating good search and comparison sites may be too hard for them.It is much better to acknowledge that consumers will always have to do some comparison themselves to "keep the system honest".

    Websites that compare the comparison sites can help,although it is easy to see how they could fall prey to the same problems.Any firm with captive users（被动用户）,be it a comparison site a search engine,or a social-media platform,can charge a high price for access to the eyes of its customers.For all their innovation,Internet middlemen are not unlike supermarkets.Shoppers would never imagine that a single store had the lowest price for all the items they need.

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。

    If the crust (外壳) of the earth were not pretty solid (坚固的), it would be shaking about and moving up and down frequently. However, there are places in the rocks of the earth's crust where it isn't strongly held together—where faults exist. Along the faults, one rock might push against another with great force. The energy is changed to vibration in the rocks, so they begin to shake and we have an earthquake!

    The most famous one in North America was the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Seven hundred people died and property (财产) damage amounted to about $425,000,000.The greatest destruction came from the fires that followed the quake.

    One of the most famous earthquakes in Europe took place in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755. The city was destroyed and at least thirty thousand people were killed. In 1908, in Calabria and Sicily, a quake killed about seventy­five thousand people. In 1915, in central Italy, hundreds of towns and villages were damaged and thirty thousand people were killed.

    Two great earthquakes that caused great damage in Asia took place in Tokyo, Japan, and in Gansu Province in China. The Tokyo quake of 1923 killed more than one hundred thousand people and destroyed the city and the city of Yokohama, too. The Chinese quake in 1920 covered more than three hundred square miles and killed about two hundred thousand people.

    Americans, especially the millennials（千禧一代）, are always glued（固着于）to their phones. A common day of the average university student in America starts off like this: an alarm clock wakes you up, which is quickly followed by checking social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Once in classes, you are again attracted by your buzzing phone and access to the Internet rather than pay attention to the lecturing professor. Then you have lunch with some friends, only to look up from your screen to realize that no one has said a word in five minutes and instead all are looking at their phones. Once the day ends, you can't help checking all forms of social media again before finally being able to shut your eyes only to repeat this vicious cycle the next day.

    Cyberbullying（网络霸凌）, a concept unknown before, is now in fashion. Many of the millennials are using the Internet to make jokes about others to points of extremes. The Internet gives cowards bravery; people feel like their actions and words have no bad results because they cannot see the ache it causes another.

    Millennials also think that whatever information shows up on their screens must be taken as truth, whether the material is reliable（可靠的）or not.

    Social media is not all bad, however. People are still able to use social media to connect with friends and family who live a great distance away. With a few clicks of a button, someone could make another person smile, or give words of hope and encouragement to a friend in need, or even help repair a broken relationship. Cyberspace is a vortex（漩涡）that is easy to get caught up in, but we must find a balance to keep both feet in reality while traveling across the online world.

    When most people think of the word, “brand”, they think of the Nike Swoosh, Ford “blue oval,” McDonalds Golden Arches, or the “State Farm is There” jingle. They know what they will get with a well branded product or service as promised. Think of Volvo, for instance, and your first thoughts are probably something like “well built, comfortable, Swedish” and, most of all, “safety”.

    So a brand is a lot more than a logo, icon, or slogan. Catchy as it may sound, it isn't the “brand” in the true sense—and it certainly isn't what makes the brand valuable. A company's brand is a promise. It's a description of the company's character. To some extent, it's a mission; it's how the company creates and delivers value. Also, it's the feeling the company conveys to its stakeholders. Successful brands meet various challenges and consistently deliver on their promises, which is how they create brand value. To illustrate it, here are some brand promises from three highly successful, world-wide brands: The NFL: “To be the premier sports and entertainment brand that brings people together, connecting them socially and emotionally like no other.” Coca-Cola: “To inspire moments of optimism and uplift.” Virgin Atlantic: “To be genuine, fun, contemporary, and different in everything we do at a reasonable price.”

    Interesting. In none of the above cases does the brand promise describe what these companies do or provide. The NFL's brand promise says nothing about football. Coca-Cola doesn't talk about providing the best soft drinks in the world. And Virgin Atlantic's promise goes a lot farther than seating passengers in its aircrafts.

    Of course, a promise is nowhere near enough. The promise along with look, personality, time, money, and hard work combined can eventually help to build and maintain great brands and acquire a special patina(光泽) of what I call “me” appeal, showing my personal appetite. Apple has that patina. All of this can lead to sub-brands, like iPhone and iPad which acquire the glory of the parent brand.

    Sometimes a brand is memorable because of little things. TD Bank has a special place in their branches for you to deposit all those coins you collect in jars. It is called the Penny Arcade that turns depositing your coins into a fun game in which you can even win prizes. Years ago, Dime Savings Bank in New York had a small dime(十分硬币) carrier. It was given to kids and then they'd fill up its 50 slots (投币口) with a dime in each one and bring it to exchange for a $5 bill.

    Since the age of three, Chelsie Hill had dreamed of becoming a dancer. That dream nearly ended one night in 2010. Hill was in a car accident that put her in hospital for 51 days and left her

    paralyzed (瘫痪). For most people, that would have destroyed any hope of a dancing career. For Hill, it was the beginning. Far from being a difficult, her wheelchair encouraged her to think a lot of her life and she wanted to prove that she was sill "normal".

    "Normal" for her meant dancing. With half of her body taken away, Hill had to move it with hands. It took a lot of learning and patience, but she still made it in her wheelchair with her non-disabled high school dance team.

    After graduation from high school in California, Hill wanted to expand (扩展) her dance network to include women like her. She met online the women who had suffered various back injuries but shared the same determination with her.

    Hoping to reach more people in a larger city and break down the false belief of wheelchair users, Hill moved to Los Angeles in 2014, formed a team of dancers with disabilities and named it the Rollettes. As she always believes, dancing on wheels can be just as good as foot-based dance.

    In disabled dance competitions, all dancers from her team gave great performances and they were having fun. And the audience's cheers, whistles and applause (掌声) suggested that the fun was spreading.

    Hill has achieved what many of us never will: her childhood dream. But the Rollettes has helped her find something else just as satisfying. Every year she holds a dance camp, the Rollettes Experience for wheelchair users of all ages to help them find their inner heroines (女英雄). In 2019. over 173 women from ten countries attended the Rolettes Experience. For most of these women, it was the first time they had felt they belonged .Edna Serrano told a reporter that being part of the Rollettes team challenged her to be more independent. “It even gives me the courage to take up driving." she said.

    I recently came in contact with celebrity magazines. My family isn't one to give money for pictures of skinny, drunk celebrities with paragraphs about their relationships and shopping cart times. Thus, I was excited to finally get a chance to read about other people's attractive yet troubled lives.

    Right away I noticed how each magazine seemed to be a copy of the other. They had headlines and pictures that were almost the same. Still, the pictures of perfectly constructed faces with cute designers outfits going on with their daily lives made me read on.

Wait, celebrities taking their dogs for walk? Spending an afternoon at a park? All of these things seemed so ordinary—things my own family and I do together often. I suddenly realized how unextraordinary the people in these magazines were. They are simply normal people who happen to have a cool job and much money. For some reason, pictures of them doing things like buying milk at the store appeal to millions of readers. Then, when these regular people mess up, their mistakes is painted onto hundreds of newspapers and internet sites.

    What if every time we made a mistake, it was made public? Have you ever failed a test? Imagine seeing pictures of you on the front of a newspaper with headlines like, "Regular Schooling Isn't Enough". You'd be embarrassed. Now, I'm not necessarily taking the celebrity's side. I'm more realizing the fact that these people we were crazy about are just ordinary human beings with many photographs following them around. Role models? I'd think not. Personally, I'd rather look up to people in any community who have accomplished a lot instead of an ordinary person walking his dog in Berverly Hills.