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  3. The economist George Akerlof found himself faced with a simple task: mailing a box of clothes from India, where he was living, t

The economist George Akerlof found himself faced with a simple task: mailing a box of clothes from India, where he was living, t

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问题    The economist George Akerlof found himself faced with a simple task: mailing a box of clothes from India, where he was living, to America. The clothes belong to his friend and colleague Joseph Stieglitz, Akerlof was eager to send the box off. But he delayed dealing with it, week after week. This went on for more than eight months and it was only shortly before Akerlof himself returned to America that he managed to mail this box: another friend happened to be sending some things back to the U.S., and Akerlof was able to add the box to the shipment. Given the vagaries of intercontinental mail, it is possible that Akerlof made it back to the United States before Stieglitz’ s shirt.
   Even Nobel-winning economists procrastinate! Akerlof saw this familiar experience as mysterious. He actually intended to send the box to his friend, yet, as he wrote in a paper called "procrastination and obedience", "each morning for over eight months I woke up and decided that the next morning would be the day to send the Stieglitz box.", but act never arrived. He realized that procrastination might be more than just a bad habit, and it might be something important about the limits of human rational thinking and that it could teach useful lessons about phenomena as substance abuse and savings habits.
   Since his essay about procrastination was published, it became a buzz word among the academia, like philosophers, psychologists and economists: academies and college students may be especially prone to putting things off. But the study of this subject isn’t just a case of eggheads rationalizing their slacking. From another angle, this issue illustrates the fluidity of human identity and the complicated relationship human beings have to time. A central figure in this subject argues that dragging our heels is as fundamental as the shape of time and could well be called basic human impulse, but the anxiety about dragging seems to have emerged in early modern era, as early as eighteenth century.
   Procrastination is also a surprisingly costly one. Each year, Americans waste hundreds of millions of dollars because they don’t file their taxes on time. 70% of patients suffering from glaucoma risk of blindness because they don’t use their eye-drops regularly. Procrastination also inflicts major costs on businesses and governments. The recent crisis of the euro was aggravated by the German government’s hesitation. And the decline of the American auto industry, exemplified by the bankruptcy of G.M., was due in part to executives’ inclination for delaying tough decisions.
What is the meaning of the word "procrastinate"?
选项 A、anticipate
B、delay
C、identify
D、rationalize
答案B
解析 根据题干关键词定位到文章第二段首句Even Nobel-winning economists procrastinate。本题中，even一词承接上文阿克洛夫拖延邮寄衣服的事情。第二段进一步描述阿克洛夫的心理状态，因此可推断出procrastinate的含义，即“拖延”，因此B项“耽搁，推迟”符合题意。A项“预期”、C项“确认，辨别”和D项“使……合理化”均不符合词义，故选B。
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