What identified challenges are essential for human service providers to understand when working with Asian American groups? What are some effective strategies to use when working with these populations and what are some available services to provide resources? For example, if poverty affects a large portion of Asian Americans, what resources can a human services agency provide?

Some of the challenges facing human service providers when working with Asian Americans could equally be encountered when working with any other non-white group of Americans. For example, in the United States, ethnicity is correlated strongly with socioeconomic status and health; it is statistically more likely that poverty and health inequality will afflict a non-white person than a white person. It has also been noted that non-white populations may be less inclined to accept any help that is offered to them, because of mistrust that these organizations are working in their best interests; and moreover, the areas in which ethnic minorities live are often economically deprived, resulting in a lesser provision of service, and sometimes services being of an inferior quality.
Obviously, it is important for human service providers to try and counter this mistrust from ethnic minorities by ensuring that the quality of service provided is equivalent to that received by white populations. Specific understanding and awareness of cultural factors (thinking about an individual's attitude to family, to receiving help, etc) is key to doing this. This means Asian Americans need to be considered not only as a non-white population, but in their own context. Some elements of this would include:
1. Asian Americans are not a homogeneous group. It is important for a service provider to be sensitive to this and to understand the specific origin of the family in question.
2. Stereotypes about Asian Americans are widespread in the US, such as that they are very intelligent and successful. This has meant that Asian American children struggling in school, for example, or Asian American families struggling economically are overlooked. There are fewer outreach programmes targeting Asian Americans specifically, because of the idea that this population will not need help.
3. Asian Americans have a variety of different beliefs and cultural values depending on their specific ethnicity. This might include their faith, their food preferences, but also their methods of communicating and understanding of what represents an appropriate family dynamic.
4. Asian American groups are often particularly resistant to discussing their circumstances outside of the family because of a fear of "losing face." They also often designate one person as the "spokesman" for the whole family, so it is important to encourage other members of the family to speak about their own experiences and concerns.
You can find more information in the article linked below.
https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/23216_Chapter_24.pdf

Based on the fact that death is both the cause and consequence of revenge, how does this apply to Hamlet and Laertes' quests for vengeance? Are they justified in their attempts to redeem their family, or are they blinded by their need for revenge?

Both Hamlet and Laertes are indeed powerfully driven by thoughts of revenge against the killers of their fathers. The death of their respective fathers would undeniably cause the two young men to experience emotional upheavals, especially since there seemed to be a good and respectful relationship between father and son in both cases. Moreover, the knowledge that the deaths of their fathers were unnatural and, in their eyes, unjustified would have created a sense of wrong done to them personally, a wrong that needed to be set right.
This is a basic human feeling, which underlies the principle of “an eye for an eye”, recorded as early as during the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom, in the form of the Code of Hammurabi. The death of a loved and respected significant someone is painful, at the least, but can be devastating. However, although Hamlet and Laertes share the same yearning for revenge, they have different perspectives and approaches.
Hamlet has a strong sense of conscience. He searches relentlessly for clear evidence of the murderer’s identity, even though his father’s ghost was the one who revealed it was his uncle, the incumbent king, who perpetrated the ghastly deed. This makes Hamlet procrastinate and put off his plans of revenge. Death is a grave matter, and to Hamlet, he has to be careful that he is doing the right thing.
In addition, the prince of Denmark has fine sensibilities, no doubt inculcated as part of his refined royal upbringing. He finds the drastic change in the state’s situation, his family circumstances and his personal life so disturbing that he contemplates, “To be or not to be…” Clearly, he is overwhelmed by depression, even paralysed to some extent.
Laertes on the other hand is absolutely vilified at the news of his father’s death, and the circumstances surrounding it, according to King Claudius’ words. He gives in too easily to his anger and becomes easy prey for Claudius to manipulate and exploit. He is too eager to embrace killing to appease his sense of loss. Hence, he naively becomes the scheming king’s instrument to get rid of this thorn that plagues Claudius' royal but corrupted throne.
To be fair, Laertes is also driven to revenge by the tragic loss of his sister, Ophelia, for whose madness and drowning he blames Hamlet. However, that is the weakness in Laertes’ case, on the question of justification. The impulsive young man is too much blinded by his fury to be willing to seek the truth. A mitigating factor is that Claudius is a very cunning and influential man, who even managed to manipulate Laertes’ father, Polonius. If the father can become Claudius’ puppet, what more the son. Nevertheless, justification for Laertes vengeful thoughts against Hamlet is much less than those of Hamlet against Claudius.
While Hamlet slew Polonius by accident, thinking it was the evil king, Claudius murdered Hamlet’s father in cold blood and with pre-meditation. The murder was motivated by greed and lust, greed for power and lust for his sister-in-law, Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. It was a corruption that seemed to even infect the whole state of Denmark. So, in Hamlet’s case, it was not just a straightforward issue of appeasing his anger, of easing his anguish, but also saving the kingdom, and his mother.
In conclusion, while the weight of death makes Hamlet pause and contemplate, even pushing him to the bounds of uncertainty. death is readily sought by Laertes, and that drives the play to its quick and tragic ending, the consequent deaths of the innocent as well as the guilty. And while it is understandable why Laertes is so obsessed with vengeance against Hamlet, it is far less justifiable than Hamlet’s antipathy towards his uncle, the evil and corrupting usurper of his father’s throne.

It could almost always be argued that someone is blinded by revenge when they endeavor to kill someone, even under the circumstances of (arguably) just cause. In Hamlet's case, he wants to kill Claudius because his father's ghost alleges that Claudius poisoned him. Hamlet's staged play depicting these events confirms this suspicion. Now, even if it is acknowledged that Hamlet is indeed justified in his attempt at avenging his father's death, perhaps the best argument for the fact he might be blinded by revenge is when, given the opportunity, he doesn't in fact kill Claudius, for fear that he will not go to hell. Hamlet states:

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:A villain kills my father; and for that,I, his sole son, do this same villain sendTo heaven. (3.3.1)

It can be said here that Hamlet is obsessed with revenge rather than justified, because he wants Claudius not only to die, but to suffer in hell (rather than heaven).
This of course leads to Hamlet's accidental murder of Polonius, which infuriates Laertes. Laertes is hell-bent on revenge, as evidenced in his following speech:

To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!I dare damnation. To this point I stand,That both the worlds I give to negligence,Let come what comes, only I'll be revengedMost thoroughly for my father.(4.5.148-154)

While both are probably justified for their revenge (as losing one's parent to an untimely death is as worse a fate as one can imagine), both are obsessed with revenge in their own way. Hamlet needs Claudius' death to be perfectly times, and Laertes is himself very hot-tempered and resolves to kill Hamlet as quickly as possible.

Who is Will Mayes?

Will Mayes is the protagonist of "Dry September." He's an African American man in a small Southern town who's rumored to have had some unspecified kind of involvement with an unmarried white woman by the name of Minnie Cooper. At that time and in that place, even the vaguest suggestion of sexual relations between the races was considered completely unacceptable, especially if it involved a black man and a white woman. In such a deeply prejudiced society, mix-raced couples were generally regarded as a threat to the purity of the white race. As it was considered such a serious transgression of the prevailing social norms, it was often punished with extreme violence. All across the South, black men could be lynched with impunity for so much as looking at a white woman the wrong way.
And that's what happens to Will Mayes in "Dry September." An enraged mob of white men kidnaps and murders Will purely on the basis of rumor and gossip. It's perfectly clear that Will's lynching has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with consolidating white supremacy. Will is murdered for nothing more than being African American.
The feeding frenzy of hatred is so strong that even normally decent, reasonable people get caught up in the hysteria surrounding the lynching. The ex-soldier, for instance, initially urges caution, but subsequently participates in Will's brutal murder. A man by the name of Hawkshaw also gets involved, despite initially intending to stop the lynching. But such terrible violence has an unstoppable dynamic all of its own, and soon there's nothing anyone can do to prevent Will Mayes from being brutally murdered for the "crime" of being black in a small Southern town.

How does the Fool function within King Lear?

Lear's Fool has many functions in the play. He serves as a sort of chorus. He provides some comedy. He is a companion to Lear and thereby enables Shakespeare to have the King express his thoughts and feelings in dialogue. Additionally, the Fool serves to represent all of Lear's other retainers. Goneril confronts her father in Act 1, Scene 4 with this accusation:
Not only, sir, this your all-licensed fool, But other of your insolent retinue Do hourly carp and quarrel; breaking forth In rank and not-to-be endured riots.
Shakespeare could not show Lear's one hundred knights misbehaving on the stage. It would have been awkward, as well as expensive, even to stage a scene with a dozen knights carousing. And anyway, Lear claims that his knights are perfect gentlemen. So Shakespeare probably preferred not to demonstrate either good behavior or rowdy behavior by Lear's "retinue." Instead he uses the Fool to represent that entire retinue. And the Fool, since he is apparently "all-licensed," can be as disrespectful to Goneril as he wants. Thus the Fool is demonstrating to the audience the kind of behavior of which Goneril accuses Lear's one hundred followers. The audience probably believes that the truth lies somewhere between Goneril's description of Lear's retinue and Lear's defense of them. It is hard to believe that one hundred vigorous young soldiers would behave with perfect propriety, especially when Lear himself, enjoying his second childhood, was setting them a bad example. No doubt they all consumed a lot of wine and ale with their meals, and there must have been a lot of loud laughter, joking, and bawdy conversations in which the Fool was a major participant and therefore a plausible representative of the entire retinue.

What are the different parts of the plot for Jack London's story "All Gold Canyon"?

A common way of analyzing plot structures is according to what is sometimes known as Freytag's Pyramid, a structure detailed in Die Technik des Dramas (1863, first translated into English as Freytag's Technique of the Drama: An Exposition of Dramatic Composition and Art in 1894) by German writer Gustav Freytag (1816 – 1895). According to this structure, one could analyze "All Gold Canyon" as follows:

Exposition: The first part of the story, including the description of the canyon, the arrival of the miner, and his leisurely panning for gold, cooking, and fishing would be part of the exposition. This creates a background to the main plot of the story. The reader learns of the protagonist and his character and many details about the setting.

Rising Action: The rising action is where the story picks up pace and develops a conflict, leading up to the climax. One could claim that this part starts when the miner becomes aware that he may have found a large amount of gold and his exploration becomes more intense, taking on an almost feverish quality or one could argue that it begins when he suspects that he has been followed.

Climax: The climax is the struggle between the miner and the assailant. This is the moment of peak suspense in the story.

Falling Action: The falling action comes immediately after the climax and ties up the loose ends. The miner realizes that his assailant was just a common thief, leaves the dead body, and binds up his own wounds.

Dénouement: The story wraps up with the miner leaving the canyon with his gold and the canyon returning to its initial tranquility.

Who are the characters in the book Hole in the Sky?

Readers are oriented to the flu-ravaged, post-apocalyptic world of Hole in the Sky through the eyes of the protagonist, Ceej Kane. Ceej is a teenage boy who lives with his uncle, known throughout the novel as Uncle, and his sister, Harryette.
These three, who live near the Grand Canyon, are among only 38 million survivors worldwide following an outbreak of a deadly flu virus. Small isolated communities have formed as survivors carve out a new way of life, where they are suspicious of outsiders, wary of traveling far from home, and desperate to avoid contracting the virus that continues to linger. However, Ceej is forced to confront his suspicions of outsiders, travel away from his familiar home, and risk infection when Uncle and Harryette go missing.
In his journey, his best friend, Tim, joins him as they encounter others who might help them find Harryette and Uncle. These other characters they meet embody the best and worst of this new, post-flu existence. They encounter the Kinka, a gang of crazed flu carriers who seek to infect others in order to grow their gang, showcasing the dangers of this new world. Tim and Ceej also meet Bella, a Hopi girl who tries to show them a new way of existing in this disease-ridden world.

Someone from the Netherlands found a new use for eyeglass lenses early in Galileo’s time. What was it?

Eyeglass lenses were used to form the first-ever telescopes. However, there is actually some controversy over who invented the first telescope and where and when they invented it.
The standard answer is that the inventor of the telescope was Hans Lipperhey. (See the link below.) Lipperhey, a lens maker, applied for a patent of the telescope to the States General in the Netherlands in 1608. Shortly afterward, another Dutchman, by the name of Jacob Metius, applied for a patent and claimed to be the true inventor of the telescope. Decades later, some evidence emerged that a Dutch lens maker named Sacharias Janssen may have actually invented the telescope first, in 1604. The claim was made by his son. To add to the controversy, Janssen's son also claimed that his father had constructed the telescope based on an Italian device dated to 1590. Metius and the Italians are usually marginalized in the discussion, which has sometimes been termed the "Lipperhey-Janssen debate."
We do know that Galileo was the first to productively use the telescope to challenge some of the prevailing perceptions of the movement of the heavenly bodies and to effectively disseminate his findings.
An impressive amount of historical research has been conducted on the origins of the telescope, the development of the device, the progress in the theoretical knowledge that accompanied that development, and the practical implications of that progress for astronomy in the seventeenth century. De Waard, Van Helden, and Zuidervaart are among the historians whose works one may want to consult if looking deeper into the matter.
http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/lipperhey.html

The first eyeglass lenses had been made in Italy in the 14th century, and several new types were developed in the 15th century. Dutch scientists developed lens that were superior for distance, and they combined them into a device that made far away things seem close. Inside a wooden tube, both convex and concave lens were used. The first such device was exhibited in 1608 in The Hague, in support of a patent application, but the patent was not then awarded. Galileo constructed his first telescope in June 1609, and by November of the same year, he had made two more, increasingly powerful ones. With them, he was able to observe the moon and planets, and he published about his observations in 1610.
http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/instruments/telescope.html

How does the narrator’s description of L’Abri, from Madame Valmonde’s point of view, develop the mood of the text?

Armand Aubigny's plantation, L'Abri, compels Madame Valmonde to "[shudder] at the first sight of it [...]." The narrator describes the property as a "sad looking place," which had not been inhabited by a woman or affected by the "gentle presence" of one for many years because Armand's mother had died and been buried abroad. The narrator says that the "roof came down steep and black like a cowl," like a hood, which makes me think of the Grim Reaper, a symbol of death, an impression only heightened by the description of the "solemn oaks" and the shadow they cast, "like a pall" over the property. A pall is a cloth laid over a coffin, another clear connection to death. These associations as well as their affect on Madame Valmonde contribute to the development of the dark mood, as though something menacing or tragic will occur in this place. It is foreboding, and this, of course, foreshadows the tragedy that awaits Desiree and her baby.

In French, "L'Abri" means "shelter." Yet it certainly doesn't appear to be a haven of peace and security whenever Madame Valmondé visits the plantation. She shudders at the very sight of it; there's a constant air of gloom and decay about the place, a place where there is no life, no happiness, no sense of joy.
Chopin's detailed description of L'Abri indicates just what kind of living environment Désirée inhabits. It also foreshows the great unhappiness that she will soon have to endure. Désirée has recently had a baby; this is a time of joy for both her and her husband, Armand. But L'Albi's dark, joyless, brooding ambience provides us with a hint that this happiness cannot last. The somber atmosphere of the place ominously foreshadows the shocking revelations to come, revelations that will turn the Aubignys' lives upside-down.

What is the significance of the lines beginning "You do me wrong"?

In act 4, scene 7, the rescued Lear is sleeping under the care of doctors when he is brought in and awakes to see Cordelia. In these lines, Lear shows that he thinks both he and Cordelia are dead. He believes has been taken out of his grave and hellfire to see her in heaven.
We know this because he says to Cordelia that she is a "soul in bliss," while he is

bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.

In other words, he is in hell.When Cordelia asks him if he recognizes her, he says he knows she is a spirit and asks, "Where did you die?"It is only gradually that he realizes they are both still alive.What is most important is that his words acknowledge her innocence and his own guilt. He conveys that he knows he was wrong to cast her out as an unfaithful child. His guilt, even though he is not really in hell, nevertheless tortures him as if he were on a wheel of fire. Likewise, his tears of regret over his treatment of her feel like molten lead on his cheeks: these images show he burns with anguish and remorse.

When Lear wakes up and finds himself in his daughter Cordelia's tender care, he uses one of Shakespeare's most brilliant metaphors:
You do me wrong to take me out o' the' grave.Thou are a soul in bliss; but I am boundUpon a wheel of fire, that mine own tearsDo scald like molten lead.
Lear is imagining he is in hell, and he is experiencing his hallucination so vividly that he can describe one of the devices the demons use to torture the damned.
The alliteration of "L" sounds is unusual, if not unprecedented, but most effective for enhancing the image conveyed.
mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.
The "L" sounds in "scald," "like," "molten," and "lead" make the words seem to ooze out slowly like drops of molten lead. "Like molten lead" is a simile, but it is enclosed within a metaphor. We visualize a man on a fiery wheel being roasted throughout eternity and being scalded drop by drop with his own tears.
A simile within a metaphor. Shakespeare does the opposite in Macbeth when he has Lady Macbeth tell her husband, "Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it": a metaphor within a simile, a real serpent hiding beneath an imaginary flower.
A parallel thought often quoted from the Oresteia of Aeschylus is
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
https://www.owleyes.org/text/king-lear/read/act-iv-scene-i

Explain why and how Social Security policies must change to meet the needs of older people today.

When Social Security was created during Roosevelt’s presidency, it was intended to serve as a social safety net for retirees. However, changes within our country have made it necessary that the way the system operates may need to change in order to be sustainable.
One of the biggest issues is the ratio of retirees who draw from Social Security versus the number of workers who pay into the fund. The generation known as the Baby Boomers is hitting retirement age; because of the sheer size of this group, the system is and will continue to experience a surge in the number of people who draw from the fund. At the same time, the working generations are not nearly as large, which means there will soon be too few people supporting the system so that retirees can continue to depend on it for financial support.
Another issue is that today’s life expectancy is much longer than it was in the past. While many still retire around age 65, the average life expectancy for a healthy individual is closer to 80. This means that people are using the Social Security fund much longer than they did when it was first established, as the life expectancy rate has increased dramatically over the past century.
The final issue is a purely financial one. Over the years with various economic downturns that affect the market, the bond rates that Social Security relies on to generate interest have yielded lower-than-desired returns. The Federal Reserve has lowered fixed interest rates, which is good for individuals and businesses but bad for fixed-income assets, which rely on making money from special issue bonds, which are seeing those same low interest rates. This could create a long term problem for the Social Security fund because it may not allow retirees’s income to keep up with inflation, making it difficult for them to continue living on a fixed income.
These are just some of the issues facing Social Security.

What chapter/verses of the book of Job are referenced in Shot in the Heart?

The Book of Job appears in the book once, just before the epilogue. It references chapter 17, lines 11 to 16, including the quotes "my days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thought of my heart" and "And where now is my hope? As for my hope, who shall see it?"
The words precede a dream that Mikal has that takes place at his brother, Gary Gilmore's, trial. In the dream, he takes the stand to tell the court how Gary was abused as a child. The court refuses to accept this as a reason for his crimes and instead decide that Gary's daughter has been contaminated by him and must die as well. Gary can stop her death by withdrawing his appeal to be executed, but he doesn't, because in Mikel's view—in the dream at least—he wants to "win his own end."
In this context, the words from The Book of Job seem to symbolize the writer's loss of innocence. Perhaps due to the problems in his family, he could only ever view life as a hard and dark experience. As it says in The Book of Job, "I have made my bed in the darkness."

How did Rolfe save Jamestown?

John Rolfe saved the Jamestown colony by experimenting with the growing of tobacco. Up until this time, the colonists had tried all kinds of trades and manufactures to make a profit, without much success. It was only after Rolfe started growing tobacco, which could then be exported to England, that the colonial economy began to improve.
Jamestown was primarily an economic venture, and as such, it was expected to turn a profit. It wasn't enough that the English should establish a colony in Virginia; they also had to make it pay. Thanks to Rolfe's innovations, it did just that. In a short period of time, the tobacco crop became a major source of wealth for the colony. By 1617, tobacco exports to England totaled somewhere in the region of £20,000: a phenomenal sum of money at that time. Within twelve years, that figure would be up to an astronomical £500,000, putting Jamestown's economy on a firm financial basis.

What were the power struggles in the Stanford Prison Experiment?

In the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, social psychologists organized a project intended to evaluate inequalities of power. The project head was a Stanford University psychology professor, Philip Zimbardo, and the rest of the participants were college students. The experiment was set up to imitate a prison, with Zimbardo himself as the "superintendent." Thus, one level of power imbalance, between professor and students, was embedded into the experiment's structure of superintendent and "guards" and "prisoners," the two categories the students occupied. The main struggle was between guards and prisoners. The experiment was aimed to reveal social dimensions of power imbalance.


The prison simulation lasted only a week, however, as many participants got overly involved. Some of those playing guards became so abusive that the "prisoners" refused to continue, or even melted down, and left the experiment after only two days. Other "prisoners" responded with extreme passivity, which apparently encouraged further abuse. The excesses have since often been called psychological torture. These poor results prompted the organizers to call a halt.


In addition to the power struggles during the experiment, examining the whole framework sheds a light on faculty power excesses. Zimbardo's research design and the methods he used are said to have exploited that power. The abusive guards reported later that he had encouraged the harsh behavior to skew the findings in the direction he had projected. More recently, student participants have also claimed they falsified their breakdowns.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/06/20/new-stanford-prison-experiment-revelations-question-findings

List 14 events that happened in the story "The Leap."

Note that these events are not in chronological order. The story is told by the narrator, looking back upon her life.
The first notable event is that the narrator's mother, Anna, has lost her sight. The narrator states this in the present tense. We learn (later in the story) that the narrator has moved home to care for her mother.
A second significant even is the narration itself. In other words, an important event in the story is the narrator telling the story of how she owes her existence to her mother ("three times").
The next events (recollected) are the lightning strike and the ensuing trapeze accident. Rather than reach out and save her husband, Anna saves herself and her unborn child. The baby did not survive. Anna saving her own life is an event itself.
The narrator recalls how the unborn child is "a less finished version of herself." Then she recalls the child's tombstone.
The narrator recalls how her mother met her (the narrator's) father while she was in the hospital, following the trapeze accident. This man and Anna eventually married and gave birth to the narrator. Anna shared stories of her travels with him, and he taught her to read.
The next significant event is the fire (again, recalled). The narrator is upstairs in the burning house and her mother (Anna) uses her acrobatic skills to save her. This is the literal "leap" referred to by the title.
According to the narrator, the most significant events are the trapeze accident, her mother meeting her father in the hospital, and the leap that saved her during the house fire. I would add that the narrator's move home (to care for her mother) is a metaphorical leap itself. Since her mother made so many leaps to save her, she returned the favor. These are four extremely significant events. So, pick and choose which events you would like to add up to fourteen. I've listed about ten events above. Note that the narrator recalling a memory (or the memory itself) can be considered to be an event.

In Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall,” what is the position of the narrator regarding the wall at the edge of his property? The neighbor?

The narrator thinks it is a completely unnecessary tradition to get together with his neighbor every spring and mend the stone wall that divides their two properties. As the narrator notes, neither of them has livestock that can wander over to the other person's property and do damage. The narrator has apple orchards, and the neighbor grows pine trees:


He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.


The narrator asks why the neighbor states that "good fences make good neighbors." The narrator also implies he would be just as happy without a wall, saying "Something there is that doesn't love a wall."

In contrast to the narrator, the neighbor believes doggedly in repairing the wall. He learned from his father that "good fences make good neighbors," and he has no interest in questioning why this is so. He clings stubbornly to the tradition simply because it is a tradition that has been passed down to him from his forebears.

“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost describes the annual spring ritual in which the speaker and his neighbor work together to rebuild any portions of the fence separating their properties that were damaged during the winter months.
When the speaker mentions to his neighbor that they don’t need the wall at a certain point, the neighbor replied, “Good fences make good neighbors.” This shows that the neighbor believes it’s important to have a physical boundary that separates him from the outside world.
The speaker, on the other hand, remarks that he thinks it’s important to consider what one is “walling in or walling out.” This shows that the speaker perhaps thinks the wall is unnecessary since neither man owns livestock that could graze across the property line. He thinks the neighbor’s attachment to the wall represents a psychological barrier rather than the actual need for physical separation.

Water and oxygen can move across the membrane of the alveoli in the lungs. How would their paths through the alveoli cell membrane differ? Also, in the motor neuron, substances have to move across the membrane to ensure the correct functioning of the nervous system. How is the movement of Na+/K+ (charged ions) different from the movement of neurotransmitters (large protein molecules) across the cell membrane?

In the lungs, both oxygen and water are transported passively across membranes. In the case of oxygen, the concentration of oxygen in the air is greater than the concentration of oxygen in the deoxygenated bloodstream, so oxygen will move from the air into the bloodstream via passive diffusion. Once in the bloodstream, oxygen can bind to hemoglobin in red blood cells, thereby keeping the concentration of oxygen in the blood low and promoting further diffusion from the inhaled air. In the course of metabolizing oxygen in your body, your cells produce carbon dioxide and water. During breathing, the water (and carbon dioxide) move from a high-concentration region (the bloodstream) into a low-concentration region (the alveolus) and are exhaled.
In neurons, ions are moved across the cell membrane through the opening channels. Some channels are voltage gated and open when the membrane reaches a depolarized state (voltage gated Na channel), whereas others are ligand gated and open with the binding of neurotransmitter (GABA-R). Neurotransmitters are released from neurons via vesicle mediated exocytosis. This involves fusion of prepackaged membrane-bound vesicles with the plasma membrane and release of neurotransmitters into the post-synapse.

What was soft Reconstruction?

Although the term "soft" Reconstruction isn't usually used, historians do make a difference between the process used by both President Lincoln (and later President Johnson) and that used by Congress.
Simply put, both Presidents Lincoln and Johnson favored more lenient Reconstruction policies than did Congress. At the time, the Radical Republicans in Congress favored what many saw as a harsher approach.
In 1863, Lincoln offered the "10 percent plan," which would reinstate a Southern state into the Union after 10% of the state took a loyalty oath. Congress countered with the Wade-Davis bill which, if President Lincoln had signed, would have made readmission into the Union far more difficult.
After President Lincoln's death, President Johnson returned all of the property belonging to Southerners who pledged loyalty to the Union. He also allowed Confederate officials to apply for presidential pardons. By 1866, President Johnson had granted about 7,000 pardons to Confederate officials and the like.
Meanwhile, as mentioned above, Congress favored a harsher approach. It passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which divided the seceded Confederate states (except Tennessee) into 5 military districts. For more about Reconstruction, please refer to the links below.
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3103

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/the-battle-over-reconstruction/

https://www.ushistory.org/us/35a.asp

What were Benjamin Harrison's major accomplishments?

Benjamin Harrison had a reputation for personal and professional integrity that remained intact even after efforts were made by the opposition party to sully his reputation.
He attempted to secure the enforcement of African American voting rights, though he was largely unsuccessful in this endeavor. He presided over a healthy economy and enacted the McKinley Tariff Act, which added additional protections for domestic industries and significantly increased federal revenues. This led to an increase in domestic spending, topping one-billion dollars for the first time in US history.
Benjamin Harrison also enacted the Sherman Antitrust Act, which was used to break up monopolies and prevent emerging monopolies from forming. It was also used by some politicians to combat union organizing and punish strikes and boycotts. Harrison also established national forest reserves and strengthened the US Navy.

What is the conclusion of Pride and Prejudice?

After all the various twists and turns, the numerous setbacks and misunderstandings, the conclusion to the story is generally a happy one. Jane and Elizabeth fulfill society's expectations by getting married to eligible men in possession of a good fortune. For a while, this seemed impossible. Darcy was always too full of pride, regarding Elizabeth as his social inferior. For her part, Lizzie was unable to overcome her prejudice toward Darcy, who appeared to be a such a cold, aloof figure. Thankfully, they've both managed to overcome the barriers between them, and now they're set for a life of wedded bliss.
It's a similarly happy outcome for Jane. She weds Mr. Bingley despite Darcy's earlier efforts to derail their relationship. Once the little misunderstanding between Lizzie and Darcy was cleared up, the route was left open once more for Jane to pursue the man of her dreams. All in all, this is the best possible outcome for Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, as two of their daughters have been married off to rich, eligible men, and that's what they wanted all along.
The only real fly in the ointment is the Lydia situation. Although she too has been married off, it soon becomes painfully obvious that her feelings for Mr. Wickham are not fully reciprocated. To make matters worse, her marriage to Wickham entails constantly moving from place to place, leaving behind a trail of angry creditors in their wake.

You will conduct an ethnomethodological “breaching experiment,” described in class. This experiment will require you to violate a social norm and record what happens in response to the violation. You will collect data, describe your experiment and discuss findings. FIRST STEP: Data Collection:You will select a norm that interests you (but NOT a norm whose violation would require a criminal act). This should be a norm that is part of normal routine.a. Go out and observe normative behavior. Meaning: Observe, and nothing else. Observe how this norm operates in everyday life. Pay attention to the details to understand how the norm functions and is regulated in everyday behavior. Record what the norm is and how it regulates behavior in the setting you observed.b. Violate the norm. Record how you chose to violate the norm. DO NO HARM.c. Observe the response (sanction) to your violation in the social setting. Describe the reaction of people around you. What were the sanctions for violating this norm? SECOND STEP: Analysis:Analyze what happened when you violated the normative order of this social setting. Try to use some of the sociological concepts we’ve learned so far. Discuss these topics:1. What is a social norm (in your own words)?2. What function does this norm fulfill?3. Why did people respond the way they did when the norm was violated?4. Were there sanctions for the violation? What kind? THIRD STEP: Discussion:Think about how this norm regulates social behavior. Answer the following questions:1. Did you experience any difficulty in purposely violating the norm? Why? 2. Would race, class, gender, or any other social status have affected how people react? Why?3. If you violated the norm continuously, what would be the consequences?

Breaching experiments are one of the most popular types of studies in undergraduate sociology classes. The practice involves going to a place and doing something that clashes with programmed social norms. The norms are generally things that don’t have to be taught, or if they are, they are accepted as something that is the natural or right way to do something.
When I did this assignment, I used the social norm of eating with utensils at an Italian restaurant.
I observed that, in general, people in the West eat different types of food with various implements. Some foods, like bread, are socially acceptable to eat with the hands, and it’s treated as strange to eat with a utensil. Others, like soup, require a spoon, and drinking from a bowl of soup is regarded as rude. Spaghetti is usually eaten with one or more utensils, like a fork or a fork and spoon, and to keep it clean and socially acceptable, it’s generally twirled around the fork.
So, to breach the social norm, I decided that eating without using my hands would be the most effective way to see reactions. This means that I would go to a spaghetti restaurant, and I would eat all the food like a dog eating out of a bowl. For my own sake, I chose a restaurant that I didn’t frequent often, so keep that in mind.
When I did my experiment, I ordered my food as usual, and the server didn’t think anything of it. When my food was brought, they asked me if I needed anything else, and I said, “No, this should be good.” Before they could walk away, I shoved my face into the plate and started eating.
I looked up and saw the server staring blankly at me. The reaction I got most often from people was general bewilderment. Most people didn’t say anything, ignoring me entirely, and just kept going about their day. The server didn’t come back after that until I was nearly finished with all my food. No one came to ask how I was doing.
Overall, I think situations like that make people uncomfortable, but they don’t offend; instead, they are seen as strange and weird, and people choose not to discuss them to avoid awkward interactions.

Who is Jackson Pollock?

Picture a painter in the act of creative passion: dissatisfied with the usual approach to painting, he throws a canvas on the floor, dances across it in a trance, a stick smeared with paint in his hand, and flinging the stick to drip down bright strings of color. Gradually the canvas below becomes an ocean of symbols, a vehicle to a previously untold story…or a mess.
Such was the unique and controversial “drip technique” of artist Jackson Pollock, a leader in the abstract expressionist movement in the New York arts scene in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Born in Wyoming in 1912, raised in California and Arizona, Pollock was driven, restless, and approached painting like a contact sport. Encounters with Native American cultures of the West and influences from contemporary artists like Pablo Picasso and David Alfaro Siqueiros shaped Pollock’s evolution as an artist. As he created works like Number 18, some viewers and critics responded enthusiastically to his otherworldly, rhythmic designs while others thought he was playing a prank.
Throughout his brief career, Pollock battled with alcoholism, critics, sudden popularity, and dissatisfaction with his work. Therapy sessions, his marriage to artist Lee Krasner, and support from benefactor Peggy Guggenheim sustained Pollock at the height of his success.
But Pollock’s struggle with alcohol continued, resulting in reckless behavior and an affair with artist Ruth Kligman. In August 1956, Pollock went for a drive with Kligman and friend Edith Metzger while drunk and crashed his car. The accident resulted in Pollock’s and Metzger’s deaths with Kligman as the survivor.
Jackson Pollock’s bold artistic style earned him a place in art history. The 1989 biography Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Naifeh and Smith and the 2000 film Pollock starring Ed Harris in the title role brings the artist’s technique to life.

The American art critic Harold Rosenberg 1609 - 1978, coined the term action painting in his essay 'American Action Painters (ArtNews 1952) . Jackson Pollock was a forerunner in this legacy. Pollock struggled between representation and not representation in the beginning and his struggles derived a newer form - actions and rushes of color, textures, material as symbol, layers of paint and an intimacy with 'process' made his visions sublime to the viewer. Action as process constituted Pollock performing over and above the canvas in every way imaginable. Body, and paint were primary mediums - dripping, splashing or throwing paint came naturally.
Action Painting made Pollock an iconic figure in the group of Abstract Expressionists. Pollock married the painter Lee Krasner and Peggy Guggenheim of the Guggenheim museum was an integral support system - avenue to his practice.

Jackson Pollock (1912-56) is an American artist best known for his contributions to Abstract Expressionism, an art movement that arose in New York in the 1940s. The emergence of Abstract Expressionism is attributed, in part, to the shift of the Western art world from Paris to New York amidst the European devastation of World War II. As opposed to earlier modern art, the Movement is most broadly defined by work that exhibits abstract subject matter and evokes strong emotions in the viewer.
Gestural abstraction, the type of Abstract Expressionism for which Pollock is known, relies on the energetic and expressive application of paint to a surface. The artist used a wide variety of tools to create his work including many sizes of brush and palette knives; his particular technique is usually called "drip and splash" because he often dripped or threw paint onto a canvas from a distance. In contrast, other Abstract Expressionist artists were called chromatic abstractionists because they focused on the emotional resonance of color specifically.
In an influential article in 1952, the art critic Harold Rosenberg was the first to coin the term "action painting" to describe the philosophy and techniques of Pollock (and other gestural abstractionists):

What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. The painter no longer approached his easel with an image in mind; he went up to it with material in his hand to do something to that other piece of material in front of him. The image would be the result of this encounter. ("The American Action Painters," 1952)

Jackson Pollock was married to Lee Krasner, an influential Abstract Expressionist in her own right. Too often eclipsed in a male-dominated art world by the strong personality and bold paintings of her husband, Krasner's work was "discovered" and championed in the 1970s by feminist art historians.

Jackson Pollock is an American artist recognized as one of the leaders of the Abstract Expressionism movement. This artistic trend arose in the 1950s, at the end of the Second World War, strongly influenced by European surrealism. It is characterized by the need for artists to express themselves through color, gestures, and matter.
Jackson Pollock introduces a new way of painting in the history of art called "action painting". The artist places his canvas on the ground and moves around his work. Gesture and movement are two key elements in Pollock's art. Thus was born the technique of "dripping", where the artist throws and pours paint on the canvas using a stick or directly with the paint bucket.

" On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. " (Jackson Pollock)

With Jackson Pollock, the painter takes part of his painting and becomes an extension of it. His most famous paintings are exhibited at Moma and Gungenheim museum in New York, such as Autumn Rhythm, Number 30.
Further readings :
https://www.moma.org/artists/4675
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/jackson-pollock

Jackson Pollock was an American artist best known for his “drip and pour” paintings of the 1940s and 1950s. Born Paul Jackson Pollock in 1912 in Cody, Wyoming, he grew up in Arizona and California and began studying painting at the Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles. At the age of 18 he moved to New York City to study at the Art Students League with Thomas Hart Benton. Pollock’s early work reflected the influence of Pablo Picasso and Surrealismas well as Native American Art, but by the mid-1940s he began experimenting with “automatic creation,” an approach that involved dripping and swirling quick-drying paint onto a canvas.

Jackson Pollock became the leading innovator of Abstract Expressionism, an art movement characterized by an emotional approach to content and execution that is essentially “expressionist.” Abstract Expressionism was the result of various influences, particularly Surrealism, Synthetic Cubism, and De Stijl.

Because Pollock dripped, poured, and flung his paint, many felt that he had no control. In truth, he exercised control and selection by the rhymical, dancing movement of his body. His large painted surfaces moved in overall patterns of continuous energy. The act of painting itself became a major part of the content of Pollock’s paintings. A similar approach by many of his colleagues led to the term “action painting.”

In 1945 Pollock married American painter Lee Krasner, and the couple moved to Springs on Long Island, New York. Jackson Pollock was killed in an automobile accident in 1956 not far from his home.

Though Pollock started out as a comparatively conventional artist, he became world renowned in the 1950s as the leading painter of the abstract expressionist movement.
He was the innovator of what became known as the "drip and splash" technique. It involved Pollock lying the canvas on the floor, standing over it with his brush, and dripping paint all over it. He would also use knives and sticks to brush or smear the paint, and add depth to his work. The idea was for him to create a work free from the confines of human consciousness.
As he stated:

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

At the height of his fame, Pollock was recognized as arguably the most popular commercial and critical artist in the world. Most importantly, he was seen as the first American artist to bring European modernism into the American mainstream.
Some of Jackson Pollock's most famous works include The Deep, Number 5, Mural On Indian Red Ground, Autumn Rhythm, and Blue Poles.

Music plays an important role in defining the mood of the film. Write two or more sentences describing the music and how it affects the mood of the film.

Elmer Bernstein's score for To Kill a Mockingbird is considered one of the greatest movie scores of all time. The main theme, with its longing melody, evokes childlike innocence through its seemingly simple piano, while the lilting flute has a youthful and dreamlike quality. When the strings come in on the main theme, that childlike aspect seems to mature and blossom, with a touch of bittersweet wistfulness, much as the children in the movie learned and grew from life's sometimes harsh lessons. There is also a mysterious quality to the main theme that weaves in and out through its measured and thoughtful tones. A number of critics have also applauded the decision to only score certain parts of the film; the unscored trial scene stands out in contrast.

What are the achievements of Caliph Umar?

Umar's greatest achievement was undoubtedly the expansion of the Islamic empire. Under his leadership, Islam spread to new territories in what is now the Middle East, and it's a testament to his leadership that these territories remain part of the Islamic world to this day.
This was partly because Umar ordered his invading armies not to force conversion on non-Muslims. He understood that Islam was much more likely to take root if people actively chose to embrace the faith without being coerced. This strategy paid off handsomely, with vast swathes of what had previously been pagan lands converting to Islam.
Once he'd conquered new territories, Umar immediately set about establishing institutions of law and government. This greatly contributed to the stability of the rapidly-developing Islamic world and ensured that everyone, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, was given the full protection of the law. Umar also revolutionized the system of land ownership by setting up a Land Revenue Department that ordered the survey and assessment of the new lands that he had conquered. This ensured that the growing additions to the Islamic empire could be managed and maintained more effectively.

What is the United Kingdom's connection to the British Empire and the Commonwealth? In which order were the countries of the UK conquered in the nineteenth century?

There are a number of separate but related concepts here that involve the British Isles.
The United Kingdom is the official name of the government that controls England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. These four separate nations came together between the 1500s and the 1700s; Ireland was previously part of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1922, but today it is a sovereign nation. The United Kingdom can be thought of as somewhat similar to the United States: they are a national government binding together different geographic entities, although there are many differences between the two governments' structures.
The United Kingdom also ruled over the larger British Empire, which expanded quickly from the British Isles themselves to include much of North America, India, Australia, regions throughout Africa, and many different islands all over the globe. The British Empire was the largest empire in human history and, at its largest point in 1900, controlled the destiny of one out of every four humans living on the globe.
The Commonwealth is an organization meant to bring together the various nations of the former British Empire who have been granted independence, allowing them to work together for peaceful purposes like trade, cultural exchange, and good relations. Fifty-three nations belong to the Commonwealth (the United States is not one, since we fought the British for independence). Many feature the British sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II, on their money as a testament to their shared history.
The countries of the United Kingdom were not conquered in the nineteenth century, although Ireland was formally introduced to the UK in 1801, having been effectively conquered by the English many years prior. However, in the nineteenth century the UK did conquer many countries, such as India and South Africa, and these became part of the British Empire.

What are some grievances that led to the American Revolution?

Perhaps the biggest grievance was that the American colonists were subject to taxation, yet were denied political representation in British Parliament. Americans didn't think it was fair that taxes could be imposed upon them without their vote; taxes were a necessary evil, but if they were going to be levied, then those subjected to them should at least have a say in how they were devised and how they were to be applied.
Another grievance was the permanent stationing of British troops on American soil. The British insisted that this was necessary to protect the colonies from foreign invasion and from attacks by Native American tribes. But many Americans were suspicious; for them, standing armies were potential instruments of tyranny. Like many people back in the mother country, they thought that armies should only be raised as and when they were needed, to fight specific conflicts. They should not, however, be a permanent feature, because it would then be far too easy for the government of the day to use such standing armies for the repression of their political opponents, with disastrous consequences for liberty.
This was an especially acute concern for the American colonists, because as we saw earlier, they had no political representation at Westminster and therefore could not exercise any control or scrutiny over the British government's deployment of troops.

What is "The Haw Lantern" about?

Seamus Heaney uses the image of the haw to present ideas about light, in a physical sense, and about enlightenment. The speaker ruminates on the ways that guilt or innocence might be judged, as they (the speaker) wish to be cleared of the unstated charge leveled against them.
The haw is a viburnum, a plant that produces red berries similar to those of the holly; most viburnums are deciduous, while the holly is evergreen. The speaker contrasts the small amount of illumination that the haw’s berry can provide to the bold glow that a lantern would offer. Although this berry is not a lantern, it stands out against its darker surroundings and thus slightly illuminates the way of a person walking through the woods. The metaphorical aspect of providing light is compared to the lantern that Diogenes held; this ancient Greek became known for his constant quest to find an honest man. The speaker imagines Diogenes behind the bush, scrutinizing them, and wishes that the test that is applied would clear them. Whether the speaker is actually guilty of something or just feels guilty remains unstated; their uneasiness is implied by their flinching when the lantern shines on them.
http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=g240

Discuss how prejudice and discrimination is used as an oppressive force in To Kill a Mockingbird?

Oppression is defined as cruel or unjust treatment, control, or restriction of freedom. In To Kill a Mockingbird, the racial prejudice in Maycomb oppresses Tom Robinson and his family most obviously, but other examples of prejudice leading to oppression are apparent as well.
Tom Robinson, a black man, is accused of assaulting Mayella Ewell, a white woman. Atticus defends Tom in court and is able to show that because of Tom's disabled arm, he could not possibly have produced Mayella's injuries. It should have been an open and shut case, but the jury—all white men—returned a verdict of guilty. This injustice perpetrated on Tom Robinson and his family was bred solely by racial prejudice. Tom attempts to escape from prison rather than wait for his appeal to come to trial or risk being lynched by the men of Maycomb. He does not believe he will receive justice, and he doesn't: he is shot down by prison guards.
Other black residents of Maycomb suffer from injustice and restricted freedoms because of their race. The comments made by the women at Aunt Alexandra's mission society tea party reveal that black people who work as hired help in the white people's homes are treated as second-class citizens. Mrs. Merriweather doesn't allow her household employee, Sophy, to express her outrage at the way the Tom was treated. She says, "Sulky . . . dissatisfied . . . I tell you if my Sophy'd kept it up another day I'd have let her go." This is an example of oppression coming from prejudice.
Atticus is notably different in the way he treats Calpurnia. He values her, trusts her, and respects her the way he would any person.
Another type of prejudice is the way that Jem, Scout, and Dill treat Boo Radley. Because he is reclusive and different from others in town, they treat him in ways that Atticus warns them against. He doesn't want them to let their prejudice against Boo for his strange ways to cause them to treat him with cruelty. One of the important things Scout learns in the book is to treat everyone fairly, even if he or she is different in some way. Atticus goes to great lengths to teach his children about empathy and to show them that prejudice and its resulting oppression are unacceptable.

Note that prejudice can be imposed on any individual or member of a certain group. Prejudice and discrimination involves unjust actions or prejudgment toward others. Oppression can come in the form of legislation, societal and personal beliefs, and any form of maltreatment and injustice toward an individual or group of individuals. Here are some examples in the text:
Race: To Kill a Mockingbird features racial prejudice in the circumstances of Tom Robinson's trial. Tom is wrongfully accused of attacking a white woman, and he is prejudged because he is an African American man. He is sentenced to life in prison and is killed for attempting to escape prison.
Gender: Gender roles are imposed on Scout, who experiences societal pressure to be a "lady," regardless of her own wishes.
Class: Aunt Alexandra believes the Finch family is superior to others in the lower class; the Ewell family is prejudged due to their lower-class status and lack of education. They are regarded as "trash" within Maycomb society.
Rejection of norms: Boo Radley is considered strange, as he never leaves his house. He becomes a town myth after spending one night in jail, and the town deems him a delinquent.

What is the point of view of the book Holes by Louis Sachar?

Sachar mainly uses a third-person point of view in writing Holes. This means that the narrator of the story isn't part of the action and can tell us everything that's going on, including what's happening inside the heads of characters. Sachar only really gives us an insight into what's happening inside Stanley's head, as he's the protagonist, making this third-person limited narration.
Sometimes the third-person point of view is omniscient, meaning that it comes across as a kind of God's-eye perspective, looking down on the characters from above, exploring all their thoughts, and moving rapidly back and forth between different time periods. At other times, a more restricted third-person point of view is in operation, one that doesn't give us the full picture and which therefore allows us to use our imagination to fill in the gaps. We see this in relation to Zero, whose deepest thoughts are never given to us by the narrator.

What was the significance of Portia's song in act 3 scene 2 of The Merchant of Venice?

The song is designed to help Bassanio make the right choice in the casket test.
There are three caskets involved in the test, but only one will lead to Portia. Portia desperately wants Bassanio to choose the correct casket, but she can't come right out and tell him which one to pick. So she does the next best thing and gives him some none-too-subtle clues in the song. The last word of every line in the song rhymes with "lead," which is the metal from which the prize casket has been made. The other two, made of gold and silver, were designed by Portia's father to throw fortune-hunters off the scent.
It's not entirely clear that Bassanio picks up the hint, but in any case, he does choose the lead casket, which for Portia is ultimately all that matters.

How does the king feel when Gulliver escapes from Brobdingnag?

It is not explicitly stated what the king feels after Gulliver inadvertently escapes from Brobdingnag; however, we can safely assume a few things. It is clear in the text that Gulliver worries after his nurse's fortune with his departure, assuming the queen will be greatly displeased with her. As Gulliver had become something of a prized possession and display piece for the royalty of Brobdingnag, his departure would be very frustrating for them. He had been given a special box in which to live and was carried from region to region to show off to the people of the nation.
Based on Gulliver's distress at the dissatisfaction of the queen, coupled with his high place in society and the king's apparent dislike for Gulliver's account of England and human culture, it is safe to assume the king would be angry and disappointed at Gulliver's escape.

How does the degradation of technoscience most significantly affect class dynamics?

Your question refers to the Octavia Butler novel Parable of the Sower. You might get some insight into the themes of the novel by reading and understanding the eponymous chapter of the Bible's Book of Matthew (Matthew 13:1–9 and 13:18–23).
The term "technoscience" refers to the convergence of science and technology. That is, it puts science into context, gives it meaning, and gives it social frames of reference. In Octavia Butler's novels, her characters frequently possess some special ability or tool—a technological artifact or body of scientific knowledge—around which the plot revolves. In Parable of the Sower, this tool is hyperempathy, or the ability to feel everyone else's pain as it really is.
Class dynamics are the ways people of different social status interact. In the social science literature, including Marxist theory, class is a function of material conditions and history. In Parable of the Sower, class is also a function of race.
When technoscience breaks down, we would expect class conflicts to both accelerate and sharpen. That is, people would tend to judge people quicker based on their perceived class, and the consequences of this judgment would tend to be more severe. That's because technoscience, when it's working well, blunts class distinctions by giving people of different classes the same tools with the same powers. It's a leveling effect. When that's taken away, class distinctions re-emerge, and because people don't have the mediating influences of technoscience any longer, those distinctions are more important, and people are more sensitive to them.
An example of this in Parable of the Sower is the outlawing of interracial relationships. One consequence that flows from this is the murder of Lauren's family, from which the rest of the plot flows. So, in a sense, the entire novel is about class dynamics after the breakdown of technoscience.

According to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who first introduced literary analysis and analyzed tragedy in his Poetics 2,400 years ago, must a tragic hero possess a tragic, often fatal flaw or mistake (hamartia) that leads to the hero’s downfall (either state or family or both)?

The term hamartia derives from the Greek verb hamartánein, which means to miss a mark (as when an arrow does not hit an intended target) or to stray from a path (as when one gets lost in the woods). The particular sense of hamartia relevant to tragic plot is that once an improperly aimed arrow has been released from a bow, it cannot be taken back. Rather than being a moral failing, the Greek term is actually neutral, emphasizing a mistake that cannot be undone and thus culminates in a disaster. Thus in a tragic plot, according to Aristotle, the audience feels fear and pity at the spectacle of a noble character headed on a course that will inevitably lead to that person's destruction.
For Aristotle, the trajectory of a tragic plot must be one of downfall, in which a great and noble person is brought to great misery or suffering. At the point in the plot where one encounters hamartia, the character's downfall becomes unavoidable because a certain decision, such as Oedipus's quest for the truth or Creon's condemnation of Antigone, cannot be reversed or taken back. At times, the root of hamartia may be a curse on a family or a situation in which all possible actions lead to disastrous consequences.
For Aristotle, without this narrative trajectory, a work cannot be considered a tragedy. In comedy, for example, Aristotle would argue that the characters can be despicable and make mistakes, but those mistakes are ones that evoke laughter rather than pity, and often the consequences of the characters' actions are not inevitable downfall. Epic also does not require the presence of a specific plot involving hamartia. Thus, for Aristotle, the notion of hamartia is a defining characteristic of a specific genre of drama rather than a requirement for all forms of verse and drama.

Compare Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 with Shelley's "Ozymandias."

What an interesting question! These poems certainly both share a common theme and preoccupation: that of immortality and how far it can be ensured through art. However, they approach this theme from different angles, and ultimately draw different conclusions.
Both poems share the same form—they are sonnets, comprising fourteen lines, although they are not quite the same type of sonnet. Sonnet 18 is in Shakespeare's own peculiar form, now called a Shakespearean sonnet, whereas "Ozymandias" blends the Shakespearean sonnet form with the Petrarchan, the rhyme scheme shifting between the two as the sonnet progresses.
In Sonnet 18, the poet emphasizes the fact that his beloved, unlike the ephemeral "summer" and the "buds of May," will never "decline" from his height of fairness. On the contrary, he will enjoy an unfaded, "eternal summer," for one simple reason: the "eternal lines" set down by the poet will ensure that the beloved is remembered. For as long as this piece of art endures, it will "give life" to the beloved and keep his memory alive. There is a strange irony in the fact that, by reading this sonnet still today, we prove Shakespeare's thesis true; but, at the same time, we do not know the beloved's name. We remember him and his beauty, but not who he was.
In "Ozymandias," we certainly do know who the immortalized being is. We know his name and that he was "King of Kings." Through the art he had commissioned, we remember the "visage" of this person and also something of his personality. However, Shelley takes a different attitude to Shakespeare. Perhaps because Ozymandias has created this statue himself, rather than it being art born of love, there is a suggestion that it does not do what he wanted it to—we remember Ozymandias, perhaps, but not in the way he intended. His "works" no longer exist—his pride in them is unfounded. This statue, "sunken" and half-destroyed, is all that remains of Ozymandias; so, he is immortal but not in perhaps the way he would have wished.

Shakespeare's sonnet XVIII and Shelley's "Ozymandias" may well be the two most famous sonnets in the English language. The first muses on whether to compare the poet's beloved to a summer's day, something which is by definition ephemeral. The comparison, for this reason, favors the beloved, whose "eternal summer shall not fade." At this point, the reader might object that of course it will, though people last longer than summer's days, they are not eternal. The final couplet provides the solution: so long as anyone reads poetry, Shakespeare's sonnet will survive, giving life to the beloved. This is a favorite theme of Shakespeare's to which he returns often in the sonnets. Sonnet LV, "Not marble nor the gilded monuments" is one which addresses the idea of immortality in terms more similar to those of "Ozymandias."
Shelley's poem is set in the desert, a setting as far as possible from the blooming profusion and variety of a summer's day in England. Instead of "the darling buds of May," we have sand and stone. The King who had the statue erected in his honor, however, made the same boast as Shakespeare, though it has not been realized. Since the King is based on the historical Ramasses II (many of whose works actually survive), it may have taken 2000 years for the statue to fall, but this is not material to the message of the poem. Shelley called poets "the unacknowledged legislators of the world" and would happily have acknowledged Shakespeare's claim on immortality even as he disparaged that of temporal rulers. Both agree that poetry, not tyranny, is the way to cheat death.

This an interesting question, as the poems would seem to have more points of contrast than of comparison. Nevertheless, some commonalities are as follows:
Both poems are sonnets, and both focus on one particular figure who is of interest to the narrator. Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day," shines a spotlight on the speaker's beloved. In Shelley's "Ozymandias," the sonnet focuses on the ancient tyrant Ozymandias, who has left behind nothing but a broken statue of himself.
Both sonnets are concerned with the passage of time and the transformation time brings. Sonnet 18 is defiant about time, arguing that the beloved's "eternal summer" (youth and beauty) will never fade because it is being immortalized in verse.
"Ozymandias" focuses on how the passage of time has changed how we understand the tyrant Ozymandias. Nothing is left of his kingdom but sand. Nothing is left of him but a broken statue These facts transform the meaning of the lines carved on his statue. They are supposed to convey to the mighty that they should "despair" as they view Ozymandias's unmatchable power and wealth: instead, they actually convey to the mighty that they should despair because they will end up in ruin like the once-great tyrant.

According to Paley in Natural Theology, what is it about a watch that seems to cry out for an explanation in terms of an intelligent designer? (Note all of the sophisticated objections that Paley anticipates and responds to.) In what respect is a living creature like a watch? Is this analogy strong enough to support the conclusion that the existence of God is the best explanation for the existence of a living creature? Why or why not?

Paley’s teleological argument for the existence of God uses a famous watch and watchmaker analogy in an attempt to prove the universe was created through intelligent design.
According to Paley’s argument, an observer of a watch would easily conclude that a watchmaker was responsible for creating the watch due to its function and complexity. To explain this, Paley refutes various objections one might raise to dispute his argument. One of these is the idea that it is impossible to know the watchmaker’s identity and therefore impossible to prove his existence. Paley says this is a logical fallacy, because not being able to correctly identify the watchmaker does not mean he does not exist. Another objection Paley refutes is the idea that the seemingly useless parts of the watch indicate a degree of randomness that an intelligent designer would not include. Paley says that just because some of the parts appear to be useless does not mean they are, but rather that we lack the ability to understand them.
In chapter 17 of Paley’s work Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, which includes the watchmaker analogy, he compares the watch to living creatures. Paley says that all animals have an inherent relationship to inanimate nature. Paley details how each element contained within an animal, such as the fluid in its ear, must be in perfect proportion in order for the animal to live. The watch similarly must have its parts precisely chosen and organized in order to function properly.
To answer the third question, I will propose an explanation for both sides:
To argue that Paley’s analogy is enough to explain the existence of God, you could discuss the ways in which he refutes counter-arguments that could be used to disprove his argument. You might explain how the laws by which nature operates cannot be random, because Paley mentions the necessity of a lawgiver if laws exist. You could cite how the various parts of an animal must come together in perfect harmony, just like a watch, in order for the animal to survive.
To argue instead that the analogy is insufficient in proving intelligent design, you could look at the logical fallacies Paley uses to refute the objections to his argument. Among them, Paley uses an ad hominem fallacy when he argues that anyone who cannot see the design inherent in a watch is inferior. To refute the objection that natural laws govern the existence of the watch, Paley employs an equivocation fallacy that equates prescriptive laws with descriptive laws. Paley’s need to use such fallacies in his argument could indicate that his argument is not sound and therefore not adequate in proving the existence of God.

What do you notice about the Temple of Aphaia? How is it different from the Temple of Hera? What is the effect of not having the double colonnade in the interior?

The temple of Aphaia is a 5th century Doric temple dedicated to the local goddess of the island of Aegina, on which the temple is located. The temple of Aphaia stood on the site of an earlier (6th century) Doric temple. The temple of Hera in Olympia (in the Peloponnese) was constructed a bit earlier (in 590 BC); however, only the foundations remain owing to an earthquake in the 4th century. Both are Doric temples, with fairly simple column capitals and (the hallmark of the Doric order) a theme of triglyphs and metopes in the entablature. The Doric order as a rule demonstrates sophisticated optical corrections, specifically adjusting for the fact that triglyphs (panels with lines interrupting the sculptural metopes) are situated directly above the columns, but also in the corners of the temple. The ancient architects had to finesse these specifications to make the temple appear robust and symmetrical.
Both the Temple of Aphaia and the Temple of Hera are hexastyle (with six columns in the front), but the temple of Aphaia is six by 12 columns, and the (larger) temple of Hera is six by 16. Both have two columns in the pronaos (the area in front of the cella)—an architectural feature termed distyle in antis.
The Temple of Aphaia's pedimental sculpture included the battle of Hercules against the Trojan king Laomedon, along with Athena and Telamon on the western pediment. The eastern pediment showed the Telamon's son, Ajax, in a Trojan War scene. Telamon and Ajax were descents of the nymph, Aegina, after whom the island is named. The Temple of Hera (originally made of wood, then later replaced with stone materials) was originally dedicated to both Zeus and Hera, but then exclusively to Hera after the construction of another temple to Zeus nearby. Little sculpture was recovered from the Temple of Hera, except for a famous head of the goddess, as well as a sculpture of Hermes with the infant Dionysus, attributed to the sculptor Praxiteles.
Unlike most temples (of all tree major Classical orders), which feature a single story of columns from the floor to the ceiling, the Temple of Aphaia has an interior second story of columns in the interior. That is, the interior cella had two stories of columns. Because this temple is located on top of a hill on the island, the two stories of columns in the interior would have exaggerated the feeling of height, comparable to walking into any high-ceilinged room such as a cathedral. Generally speaking, the temple of Hera is renowned for its exceptional antiquity and statue of Hermes and Dionysus, and the Temple of Aphaia for its location and well-preserved sculptural program.

Is "The Killers" modernist literature?

"The Killers" is a modernist text because of its strong ambiguity. Modernist works often emphasize the lack of definitive answers in life, rejecting absolute truths or the idea that we can ever know the full picture. In "The Killers," the hit-men never know what Ole Anderson did to warrant being killed, nor do they ever discover why he does not fight to survive. This ambiguity forces the reader to rely more on the limited information provided by the sparse prose and direct dialogue.
A more traditional work might have explored the Swede's past more. Therefore, the readers never get a clean, easy answer to the questions posed by the story or by the titular killers themselves—unlike later movie adaptations, which chose to expand upon this unstated backstory.

How does the author choose to tell his story and how does that inform you about the act of remembering war ?

With The Things They Carried, the chronology and the way the story is told are extremely important. Tim O'Brien has not put the short stories in a linear order, but they're not random either. It may seem that way at first, jumping from one character to the other, from past to the present to even further past, but it's a carefully considered system. It allows the reader to grasp the essentials first and gradually move on to other tales, some of which require a deeper understanding of the situation and the mindset the men are in.
It also represents how disjointed and treacherous memory can be when dealing with traumatic events. Several times, the author notes how in the present he wakes up in the middle of the night, remembering snippets and pieces of events that may or may not have been real. What he is dealing with is not just his own memory playing tricks on itself, although that happens as well. O'Brien dedicates a lot of thought to how some things simply can't be remembered correctly, how memories take on a life of their own the second they've happened and grow from there until they're almost unrecognizable. He draws attention to a soldier's need to sometimes add details to make the story more interesting, or to hide things that are too painful to speak about honestly.
One of the more profound ideas is that if you know the source material—in this case, the Vietnam War —well enough, you can conjure up a "truthful" story that never happened. That is to say, you can write a fictional story with fictional characters, but if you get all the details and the setting right, it may as well have happened to someone. It probably did. That could very well be the case of a lot of stories in The Things They Carried. Does it make the stories any less true?
There is a particular scene in the book where one of the men, Curt Lemon, steps on a mine and is killed. Most of the others are close enough to witness it from some angle, but memory immediately becomes false. It's natural for humans to think that events make sense, that they happen in a certain, logical way. It's why we embellish stories, but why we also don't go overboard with it. If O'Brien has added some poetic devices into his stories, the reader wouldn't know, because it's not like anything supernatural happens. Therein lays the problem with Curt Lemon's death. The author can't take his own memory seriously, because it seems a little "overdone" for him. The way the light shines like a beacon, the way he thinks he sees the expression change on Curt's face—it's hard for him to believe it, so he can't imagine the readers could. Yet, he says, that's how it was.
The Things They Carried is full of stories, some of which sound plausible and others outright fantastic. Since the author himself talks so much about false memories and how no war story could be honestly believed, he turns himself into an unreliable narrator, which is intentional. It implies that war should be read about as it is remembered —with suspicion, with a good deal of doubt, with interest and compassion rather than stone cold criticism.

Can you please explain the poem "The Heart of the tree" by henry cuyler bunner along with the poetic devices used in it?

In "The Heart of the Tree," the narrator praises men who plant trees. In the first stanza, he praises tree planters for helping nature thrive and for making the world a more beautiful place. Planting a tree also accords with heaven's harmony.
In stanza two, the narrator praises tree planters for their unselfish acts that will benefit future generations. A tree planter is contributing to the common good and to the future.
In stanza three, a tree planter is described as a good citizen. He is a patriot who contributes to the growth and well-being of the nation.
Literary devices include alliteration, rhyme, and repetition. Alliteration is placing words that begin with the same letter in close proximity. Bunner uses alliteration throughout the poem in pairings such as "hushed" and "happy," "fade" and "flush," and "hollow," "His," and "hand." The poem also uses a regular rhyme scheme that starts with an ABAB pattern in each stanza and then turns to rhyming couplets. Finally, Bunner employs repetition at the start of each stanza by repeatedly asking the question, "What does he plant who plants a tree?" All of this adds a pleasing sense of cadence and regularity to this poem, making it easy to digest.

What does Montag expect to happen after he reads from the books?

Not unreasonably, Montag expects that reading will bring him intellectual nourishment and fulfillment. But he's to be greatly disappointed. Even after rereading the pages several times, the words beneath his eyes still don't make any sense. Montag lives in a society in which people are actively discouraged from having intelligent thoughts or engaging in deep thinking. Instead, they're expected to lead lives of mindless consumerism and instant gratification. To the totalitarian regime in this dystopian nightmare, any kind of independent thinking is dangerous, hence the necessity of burning books.
At this point in the story, Montag starts to develop into a rebel against the regime he'd previously served with such loyalty and enthusiasm. And what greater act of rebellion can there be in this society than reading a book? But Montag's capacity for intellectual growth is as stunted as everyone else's in this society. He knows that books are important and that they are vital to his personal awakening as an opponent of the regime. But at this stage, he realizes that there's still a long way to go before he can really feel in the depths of his being any kind of fulfillment through reading books.

Many pathogenic bacteria species are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Explain how such adaptations can develop through the process of natural selection. (Hint: Relate this example to the conditions that are necessary for natural selection to occur.)

When a doctor suspects that their patient has a bacterial infection, they can do one of two things. The first is order diagnostic tests—blood, wound, or stool cultures, gram stains, and urinalyses are most common—to check for bacteria and, if present, their type. They then prescribe a course of antibiotic therapy best suited to destroy the specific infection the patient has. Antibiotics should be targeted in this way to decrease systemic effects as much as possible.

Alternatively, the doctor may choose to skip the testing process, which is often expensive and time-consuming, and use an empiric therapy: their best guess based on their medical judgment. Uncomplicated UTIs, for example, usually have readily identifiable symptomatology, and in the absence of co-occurring health problems, a doctor may skip a urinalysis and prescribe a broad-spectrum antibiotic. This is common for ear infections, bacterial infections of the integumentary system like Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pyogenes, and conjunctivitis assumed to be pinkeye.

Sometimes, broad-spectrum antibiotics are ordered for a suspected bacterial infection while diagnostic tests are processed. This is usually the case for acutely-ill patients whose infections are unstable and who will receive more targeted therapies once the type of bacteria is determined. Another occasion for prescribing broad-spectrum antibiotics is prophylactically: patients with some cardiac abnormalities and those with recent joint replacements are often prescribed broad-spectrums before dental procedures, so that oral bacteria do not invade the bloodstream. It should be mentioned that the American Dental Association believes far fewer patients require prophylactic antibiotics than the patients's physicians think they need. The ADA has been working with physicians to find evidence-based solutions for their differences in opinion.

Antibiotic resistance occurs when some portion of bacteria survive antibiotic therapy and proliferate. Reasons for a strain’s resistance are as diverse as the individuals carrying it, but two main contributors stand out. One is the over-prescription or misuse of antibiotics, particularly for conditions that aren’t bacterial, such as the flu, conditions that would be self-limiting without antibiotics, and conditions that would be better treated with highly-targeted antibiotic therapies. When antibiotics are used frequently in a population, the bacteria the population comes into contact with will learn to adapt to the treatments.

This ties into the other main contributor to antibiotic resistance: compliance. There is a reason doctors and pharmacists insist that an entire course of antibiotics is finished, even if symptoms improve before the antibiotics run out. They want to make sure all of the bacteria have been killed. It makes sense that the weakest would die earliest and easiest. If treatment ends prematurely, the strongest bacteria survive and proliferate, and the infection itself becomes stronger and more resistant to further treatment. If the infection is then transferred to another person, the new host receives only the fittest, most damaging bacteria. Their body will not be able to build an immune response against the weak bacteria before dealing with the strong, and they will be less able to fight their infection.

In a way, on the humans’s end, you could argue that this is artificial selection. It is pharmaceutical meddling that selectively breeds antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Antibiotics used in livestock processing and agriculture—human technologies—contribute to the problem. On the other hand, the bacteria themselves are experiencing natural selection. Some members of their population are weaker than others: their cell membranes are more easily pierced and their proteins and DNA strands are more readily torn apart. While the weak die, the strong adapt and, over time, evolve. When they reproduce, they favor the fittest. Eventually, the new generation's average member becomes as deadly as the old generations's strongest.

What are some interesting facts about George H. W. Bush?

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) served as the 41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993. He is best known for his leadership of an international coalition during the Persian Gulf War (1990–1991).
Born into a prominent and well-connected family, Bush was educated in private schools. Later, he attended Yale University. While at Yale, he was a member of the secretive Skull and Bones society.
He served as a combat pilot during World War II, and he was decorated for bravery. Later, he refused a position in his father's company and moved to Texas to work in the oil business.
By the 1960s, he had started a political career as a Republican. After serving in the US House of Representatives, he became ambassador to the United Nations and head of the CIA. He ran for the presidency in 1980 and became Ronald Reagan's vice president (1981–1989).
After Reagan's two terms, Bush became president. He ably led the US during the end of the Cold War. In addition, he fought a successful war against Iraq, which had occupied Kuwait.
On the domestic front, he oversaw the passage of the Clean Air Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. When he was nominated in 1988, he had said: "Read my lips: No new taxes." When a tax increase was later passed, it was a blow to his prestige. The economy struggled during his term.
He lost the 1992 presidential race to Bill Clinton. After leaving the White House, he stayed out of the public eye—apart from helping with disaster relief. His son later served two terms as president (2001–2009).

What are the themes of the story "Miss Esther's Guest"?

Many of Sarah Jewett's stories focus upon country life in New England at a certain point in time: they attempt to offer a sympathetic and intimate view into the lives of people from this region. This one is no exception, but it also touches more specifically upon several other themes particular to its protagonist.
Miss Esther Porley has lived a fairly sheltered life. Although she is well known in the town, and much-liked, she is also clearly removed from other people due to being a single woman living on her own, and approaching old age. Although Miss Esther, at sixty four, thinks of age as still being in the future for her, old age and the loneliness of old age are a major theme in this story.
The slow changes occasioned by old age are symbolized at the beginning of the story through the descriptions of Miss Porley's belongings: the "tender spot in the silk" of her old shawl, the "wave in the looking glass" which makes it difficult for her to straighten her bonnet, and the crack in her "well-darned silk glove." Esther is able to conceal all these various flaws well enough to her own satisfaction—she is content that she can appear in public without any of these flaws being obvious and embarrassing. In this way, the flaws represent her own concealed loneliness, growing as it is with the increases of age. The people who meet her do, of course, notice—when Esther asks Mrs. Wayton if there is anything she can do, Mrs. Wayton does not want Esther to feel that she is indeed a "poor tool," isolated, old and useless, so she gives her something to do. People respond to Esther's age and loneliness, however she seeks to conceal them.
Old age and loneliness are represented, too, in the person of Mr. Rill, whose eyes have given out and who lives alone getting ever "stiffer and clumsier." Like Esther, he struggles to support himself on his own, and has no wish to be a burden to anyone—when it becomes clear that Esther was expecting a woman, he immediately volunteers to go elsewhere so as not to be an inconvenience.
At the end of the story, however, the two old, lonely people have found comfort in each other, a representation of another theme in the story: the importance of reaching out beyond our comfort zone. Mr. Rill is not comfortable being a possible inconvenience upon Esther. Esther is afraid to have a man in her house and is initially "enraged" with the Committee for sending Mr. Rill to her. Both of these older people are very wedded to their own ways of doing things. However, when circumstances force them together, they discover that change is possible. Rather than resisting change, they allow themselves to be open to it, and find that this is the key to defeating their mutual loneliness.

What literary device is this quote? "Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."

This sentence in The Great Gatsby comes at the end of chapter 3. Nick Carraway, the narrator, says this about himself. The primary literary device in this quote is irony. Nick has already informed the reader of numerous instances when he did not speak or act with complete candor. By telling the reader that he "suspects" he is honest, and having already established this is probably not the case, Nick compels the reader to examine his entire narrative for untruths. In addition, by isolating honesty from the other virtues, Nick encourages us to think he does not possess any of them, either.
Another literary device used is hyperbole, or extreme exaggeration. Nick compares himself to others as one of the "few" honest people he knows. Almost certainly, he knows more than a few. Nick is exaggerating to place himself into a narrow stratum. This exaggeration strengthens the irony, as his statement is not likely to be true.
In the first few pages of chapter 1, Nick made the point of sharing a few aspects of his personality and the problems it has caused him. He is the type of person that others find sympathetic. He constantly finds himself listening to other people's problems. He says that "curious"—meaning peculiar—people and "the abnormal mind" always figure out that he is a good listener. The dishonesty that Nick mentions at that point is not lying but faking various attitudes so that these people will leave him alone:

Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity . . .

Nick has come East in part because people in his hometown were starting to believe he was engaged to a young woman. Daisy raises this claim in chapter 1:

We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.

To them, Nick dismisses this as "libel"; to the reader, he states that he "had no intention of being rumored into marriage." Nowhere does he say what he told the young woman when he left; this method of removing himself from this "libel" can be considered dishonest.
At the end of chapter 3, just before he writes of himself as honest, he has been driving with Jordan Baker from New York City, where they were partying with Tom and his mistress. Nick is definitely interested in Jordan, but he admits to himself that pursuing an involvement with her would be unethical. He intends to behave as the honest person he wishes he had been all along:

. . . there was a vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free.

What mood is created in the first nine paragraphs of "The Monkey's Paw"?

Mood is defined as the way an author intends the reader to feel while reading the text. To determine the mood of a text, one must examine the author's diction and tone to determine the emotional atmosphere surrounding the events contained within.
In the first nine paragraphs of W. W. Jacobs's "The Monkey's Paw," the White family are together inside their home as they await the arrival of a guest. Significant examples of word choice in this part of the story include the following: "cold," "perils," "fatal," "grimly," "violence," "beastly," and "guilty." Each of these words has a negative connotation. Therefore, it can reasonably be inferred that the mood of this passage is somewhat negative.
However, the majority of the words used are for describing the game of chess Mr. White and his son are playing by the fireside while Mrs. White knits "placidly" nearby, just before the guest arrives. This contrast between the negative diction and the mundane scene calls into question whether the mood is truly negative.
On the one hand, one could argue that the slightly discontented mood of Mr. White foreshadows the story's mysterious events. On the other hand, one could assert that the mood of the story in these paragraphs is ambivalent at best, suggesting that Jacobs might want the reader to be slightly unaware of the dark turn the story will soon take.

If you have written the story The Wednesday Wars, what changes might you have made?

This question is open to individual reader opinion, so a key component of this answer is your defense of your answer. I also believe that at the core of this question is the idea that the changes being requested are somewhat major changes to the story. I don't believe that the spirit of the question is asking about changes to the story that are along the lines of simple name changes.
I will admit that I have thought about a specific change to the story that I've always been curious about why Schmidt didn't implement. If I had to implement a change to this novel, I would seriously consider changing the setting. I don't feel the need to change the location of the setting, but I do think that changing the time period is worth serious consideration. I would set the story in modern times versus the Vietnam era. I don't think that placing the story in modern times would have changed that much of the story's themes either. The conflicts in the Middle East have committed plenty of soldiers from the United States, so I think that Mrs. Baker's husband could still be a soldier. That source of internal conflict for her could still be present if the story was set in the present day. Holling's sister could still be just as angst-filled as ever too.
My reason for changing the story to modern times has nothing to do with character or plot. I would change the story to modern times for reader purposes. I think a modern setting would make Holling, his family, and the Bakers' war situation more relatable to present-day readers. Schmidt's setting is great. It is unique, and that makes it stand out against the plethora of other young adult novels that exist today, but standing out isn't necessarily a good thing. It's possible that setting the book in modern times would have made the book that much better because it resonated with more readers, and that is why I would change the setting and little to nothing else.

Explain the legal and ethical obligations of community service organizations and their staff in relation to identifying competing or conflicting interest.

A customer service organization and its employees have a duty to identify and avoid potential conflicts of interest in their work and employment. These organizations, such as habitat for humanity, are non-profit, charitable organizations that are designed to serve and give back to their communities. These definitions imply that a community service organization has an obligation and duty to do what is in the best interest of the community it serves.
Legally speaking, as a non-profit, there are stringent requirements that the company must adhere to when spending money, taking donations, and making hires. Because the funding typically comes from federal funding, charitable donations, and similar sources, they cannot use these funds for anything that would be perceived as a conflict of interest. Legally, there would be ramifications for actions like giving away funds to questionable individuals or businesses because they have connections to them or taking kickbacks from other people or organizations. The fact that a large portion of their funding is federal in nature means these organizations could be held legally responsible for these actions in a federal court of law.
Ethically speaking, these organizations have a commitment to their community and have made a pact to serve and care for their community. These ethical obligations stem from their intent to do the best job possible to help the community. It would not serve that community to be giving the funding to employees for their private projects or sending it to another outside community or organization.

There are many potential ethical conflicts that can arise with these organizations, but it is the duty of a community service organization to use their resources strictly to serve the community, not for personal interests or for exterior gain.
if they use these funds inappropriately, there are potential legal ramifications, but even if the organization does something that is not necessarily illegal but is unethical, they are still hindering their ability to serve the community effectively.

What is Rawls's basic argument?

Rawls’s basic argument is a distributive idea of justice. In his 1971 work, A Theory of Justice, Rawls identifies justice with a distributive paradigm that gives society the appearance of a distribution of obligations and benefits, advantages and disadvantages, roles and tasks. The idea of justice as a virtue of the institutions is related to a distributive function whose main rule is the maximin rule. “Maximin” is the contraction of maximum minimorum: inequalities are permitted when they maximize, or at least generally contribute to improving, the prospects of the least privileged in society (minimorum).
Let us take Rawls’s example of promising. It is contained in the same work, in the chapter “Promising and the Principle of Fairness.” Where does the binding nature of promising lie? How does the special claim of the promisee originate? Rawls identifies it through a contractual pattern. At a first level, if I say that I must perform an action because I promised to, we do not need further explanation; however, doubt seems to arise at a second level, the philosophical one. At this second stage, the understanding of promising demands an answer to the following question: where does the so called "normative power" of a promise—the power, that is, of the promisor to compel himself—stem from? Rawls’s argument is based upon the definition of a principle of fairness (p.342).

A person is under an obligation to do his part as specified by the rules of an institution whenever he has voluntarily accepted the benefits of the scheme or has taken advantage of the opportunities it offers to advance his interest, provided that this institution is just or fair.

There is a social practice of promising that creates social benefits. If you take part in this social practice, you are obliged (if the practice of promising defined by the rules is fair and just) by the principle of fairness to fulfill your promises. Rawls states that the principle of fidelity (which compels us to keep the promise) is the application of the principle of fairness to the social practice of promising. The so defined moral context is what generates the normative power of promising.
The core of Rawls’s argument is thus a conventional view of promises, where a cooperative policy, based on the hypothetical, ideal agreement that would be acknowledged by men if they were to state it by means of a contract, is necessary to create that assurance in men, without which society would not progress at all.
According to some critics, Rawls’s theory brings about an unavoidable formalism in justice, for the best outcome justice can lead to is a society in which reciprocal disinterest is the prevailing attitude. The acknowledgement of an authentic cohesion where anyone may feel (rather than be) in debt with each other is consequently ruled out.
Nonetheless, Rawls has the merit of having unveiled some of the most complex and disputable mechanisms of contemporary society, including the objectionable conditions of those least privileged.
FURTHER READING:
- Rawls, J.: A Theory of Justice, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1971.
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Rawls

List the ceremonies or cultural practices that Everyman relies upon, then do the same for Doctor Faustus. Write a paragraph comparing the play’s use of it to an earlier cultural practice.

Both Everyman and Doctor Faustus are versions of the type of morality play common in medieval England. Everyman is a straightforward example of the form. All of its characters serve as allegories for specific virtues and vices, with the eponymous Everyman representing the individual human soul caught in the battle of good and evil.
Doctor Faustus is not exactly a morality play, as Faustus himself is far more individualized as a protagonist than Everyman is, but it does play on the conventions and archetypes present in medieval morality plays. Mephistophilis represents vice and evil, tempting the human soul to damnation much like the traditional Vice character in morality plays, but even he is not a mere allegorical stand-in: he shows signs of pity for Faustus, early on betraying his misery at being a fallen angel and warning Faustus against falling prey to sin. This is a far cry from the more simplistic figures in Everyman.