A man hated his wife’s cat and decided to throw it away.
One day, he drove it over one mile from his home and left it in a park. But when he got home, he saw that his wife was playing with the cat.
The next day he drove the cat about three miles away. He put the cat out of the car and went home. Driving back his driveway（私人车道）, the cat was there already.
The man keep taking the cat further and further away and the cat would always get home before him. At last he decided to drive more than ten miles away. He turned right, then left, past a bridge, then right again and another right until he thought he was far enough from home and left the cat there.
Hours later the man was still driving home. He was lost! He called home and asked his wife, “Jen, is the cat there?”
“Yes,” his wife answered, “why do you ask?”
The man answered, “Put it on the phone. I’m lost and need directions.”
【小题1】The first time the man drove out, he _____.
A. sold the cat
B. took the cat home
C. left the cat in the park
【小题2】Which of the following is TRUE?
A. The man liked his wife’s cat and often played with it.
B. Every time the man threw the cat away, it came home earlier than the man.
C. The last time the man threw the cat away, it lost its way and didn’t come back.
【小题3】 Why did the man call home?
A. Because he was lost.
B. Because he missed his wife very much.
C. Because he wanted to know if the cat was at home.
【小题4】How far away did the man take the cat the last time?
A. Over 1 mile.            B. About 3 miles.          C. More than 10 miles.

To err is human. To blame（责备） the other guy is even more human.
Common sense is not all that common.
Why tell the truth when you can come up with a good excuse?
These three popular misquotes（戏谑的引语）are meant to be jokes, and yet they tell us a lot about human nature. To err, or to make mistakes, is indeed a part of being human, but it seems that most people don’t want to accept the responsibility for the problem. Perhaps it is the natural thing to do. The original quote about human nature went like this: “To err is human, to forgive, divine（神圣的）.” This saying mirrors an ideal: People should be forgiving of others’ mistakes. Instead, we tend to do the opposite – find someone else to pass the blame on to. However, taking responsibility for something that went wrong is a mark of great maturity（成熟）.
Common sense is what we call clear thought. Having common sense means having a good general plan that will make things work well, and it also means staying with the plan. Common sense tells you that you take an umbrella out into a rainstorm, but you leave the umbrella home when you hear a weather forecast for sunshine. Common sense does not seem to be common for large companies, because there are so many things going on that one person cannot be in charge of everything. People say that in a large company, “the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.”
And what is wrong with a society that thinks that making up a good excuse is like creating a work of art? One of the common problems with making excuses is that people, especially young people, get the idea that it’s okay not to be totally honest all the time. There is a corollary（直接推论）to that: if a good excuse is “good” even if it isn’t honest, then where is the place of the truth?
【小题1】Which of the following is NOT based on common sense?

Taking away a city’s rubbish is a big job. Every day trucks come into a city to collect it. Most rubbish is made up of things we can’t eat or use. If we kept these things we would soon have a mountain of rubbish.
In some cities the rubbish is collected and taken outside of the city to a dump(垃圾站). Often the city dump is placed where the ground is low or there is a big hole. The kitchen rubbish is broken into small pieces and sent into the sewage system. The sewagesystem takes away the used water from toilets, bathtubs(澡盆) and other places.
To keep mice and flies away, some earth is used to cover the newly dumped rubbish. Later, grass may be planted on the rubbish-filled land. Finally, a house or a school may be built there, and then you’d never know that this had once been an old rubbish dump.
In other cities the rubbish is burnt in special places. The fire burns everything but the metal. Sometimes the metal can be used again in factories where things are made of metal. The food parts of rubbish are put in special piles where they slowly change into something called humus(腐殖土), which looks like black earth. It is rich with kinds of things that feed plants and help make them grow.
【小题1】You can most probably read the passage in _______.

To err is human. To blame（责备） the other guy is even more human.

Common sense is not all that common.

Why tell the truth when you can come up with a good excuse?

These three popular misquotes（戏谑的引语）are meant to be jokes, and yet they tell us a lot about human nature. To err, or to make mistakes, is indeed a part of being human, but it seems that most people don’t want to accept the responsibility for the problem. Perhaps it is the natural thing to do. The original quote about human nature went like this: “To err is human, to forgive, divine（神圣的）.” This saying mirrors an ideal: People should be forgiving of others’ mistakes. Instead, we tend to do the opposite – find someone else to pass the blame on to. However, taking responsibility for something that went wrong is a mark of great maturity（成熟）.

Common sense is what we call clear thought. Having common sense means having a good general plan that will make things work well, and it also means staying with the plan. Common sense tells you that you take an umbrella out into a rainstorm, but you leave the umbrella home when you hear a weather forecast for sunshine. Common sense does not seem to be common for large companies, because there are so many things going on that one person cannot be in charge of everything. People say that in a large company, “the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing.”

And what is wrong with a society that thinks that making up a good excuse is like creating a work of art? One of the common problems with making excuses is that people, especially young people, get the idea that it’s okay not to be totally honest all the time. There is a corollary（直接推论）to that: if a good excuse is “good” even if it isn’t honest, then where is the place of the truth?

1.Which of the following is NOT based on common sense?

2.What can we infer from the last paragraph according to the writer?

3.What would be the best title for this passage?