When we made an effort to acquire Honeywell in October 2000, and I agreed to stay on through the transition(过渡期), some thought of me as the Long-in-the-Tooth Jack hanging on by his fingertips to his CEO job．

Those characterizations said less about me and a lot more about the stage our company went through．Truth is, down deep, I've never really changed much from the boy my mother raised in Salem, Massachusetts．

When I started on this journey in 1981 , standing before Wall Street analysts for the first time at New Yorkˈs Pierre Hotel, I said I wanted GE to become "the most competitive enterprise on earth". My objective was to put a small-company spirit in a big-company body, to build an organization out of an old-line industrial company that would be more high-spirited, more adaptable, and more flexible than companies that are one-fiftieth our size．I said then that I wanted to create a company "where people dare to try new things? where people know that only the limits of their creativity and drive, their own standards of personal excellence, will be the ceiling on how far and how fast they move."

8. I've put my mind, my heart, and my courage into that journey every day of the 40-plus years I've been lucky enough to be a part of GE．According to the first two paragraphs, the author ______．

A. had many ups and downs

B. had a poor image in public

C. became CEO of GE 41 years ago

D. suffered from some mental illnesses

9. As the author sees it, the many nicknames of him indicate ______．

A. the change of his character with the time

B. the various opinions of different journalists

C. his company's different stages of development

D. his popularity among his friends and relatives

10.According to the author, GE in 1981 ______．

A. should seek broader space for development

B. was the most competitive company in the world

C. differed from many old-line industrial companies

D. was a big company with a small-company's spirit

11.What does the underlined word "journey" in the last paragraph probably mean?

A. Taking GE to a new height．

B. Traveling from home to office．

C. Seeking a higher position in GE.

D. Growing from a baby into an adult．

Nowadays more and more people are talking about genetically modified foods (GM foods). GM foods develop from genetically modified organisms(有机体), which have had specific changes introduced into their DNA by genetic engineering techniques. These techniques are much more precise where an organism is exposed to chemicals to create a non-specific but stable change. For many people, the high-tech production raises all kinds of environmental, ethical(伦理的), health and safety problems. Particularly in countries with long farming traditions, the idea seems against nature.