54. According to the Paragraph 4, it can be inferred that___________ .

　　A) the death penalty is the most controversial issue in the United States today

　　B) the second type of murderers should be sentenced to death

　　C) the veto of the bill reestablishing the death penalty is of little importance

　　D) the value of the death penalty as a deterrent to crime is not to be debated

　　55. The passage attempts to establish a relationship between__________ .

　　A) the murder rate and the imposition of the death penalty

　　B) the effects of execution and the effects of isolation

　　C) the importance of equal rights and that of the death penalty

　　D) executions and murders

　　56. The author’s attitude towards “death penalty” is .

　　A) opposing

　　B) supporting

　　C) neutral

　　D) sarcastic

　　Passage Two

　　Questions 57 to 61 are based on the following passage.

　　One positive consequence of our current national crisis may be at least a temporary shadow in Hollywood’s culture of violence. Fearful of offending audiences in the wake of the terrorist attack, some moviemakers have postponed the release of film with terrorist themes. Television writers are delaying scripts with warlike and terrorist scenarios (劇本提綱).It is probably good thinking. My local video store tells me nobody is checking out “disaster” movies. Says the manager, “Currently, people want comedy. They want an escape from stories about violence and terrorism.” Similarly, in the music business, there’s a run on patriotic and inspirational tapes and CDs.

　　According to The New York Times, the self scrutiny among these czars (特權人物) of mass-entertainment taste is unprecedented in scale, sweeping aside hundreds of millions of dollars in projects that no longer seem appropriate. A reasonable concern is that this might be a short term phenomenon. Once life returns to something more normal, will Hollywood return to its bad old ways? The Times offers a glimmer of hope. The industry’s titans (巨頭),it suggests, are struggling with much more difficulties, long range questions of what the public will want once the initial shock from the terrorist attacks wears off. Many in the industry admit they do not know where the boundaries of taste and consumer tolerance now lie.