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Scientists have long known that Mars has two faces. The northern half of the planet is low and smooth. The southern half, in contrast, is high and deeply pitted. What scientists now know for sure is the cause of the planet's mysterious split. In the June 26 issue of Nature, two different studies provide additional evidence for a theory first put forth in 1984 by scientists Steven Squyres and Don E. Wilhelms. More than two decades ago, Squyres and Wilhelms argued that a single, powerful impact had created Mars's split surface. Now Francis Nimmo of the University of California, Santa Cruz has come forward to support that claim. The lead author of a study published in Nature, Nimmo says that "something big smacked into Mars and stripped half the crust off the planet," an event which would account for the southern hemisphere's more jagged look. Adding more support to this theory are Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna and his colleagues working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This research team has uncovered a gigantic scar, covering almost 40% of the planet's surface. According to Andrews-Hanna, only a powerful impact could have produced such a jagged and deep cut. (Source of Information: Ashely Yeager. "Impact May Have Scarred Mars." Science News. July 19, 2008, p.10) |
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Purpose and Bias
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a. The author's goal is mainly informative, and the passage reveals no bias in favor of the theory described. |
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b. The author's goal is primarily persuasive, and the passage is biased in favor of the theory described. |
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c. The author's goal is primarily persuasive, and the passage is biased against the theory described. |
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Suspicion of Wall Street, the collective name for the financial district in lower Manhattan where banks and stock brokerages are located, has a long history. Already in the 1830s, as the buying and selling of railroad bonds seemed to promise quick profits, Americans were wondering if the Wall Street men who were selling the bonds weren't cheating their clients. As it turned out, railroad tracks didn't always end up being laid where they were expected. When this happened, the railroad bonds that had once seemed a good investment often ended up being sold at a loss. Frequently, those very same bonds were bought and resold by members of Wall Street, who could afford to wait until the railroads were up and running as planned. By mid-century, the poet Walt Whitman described the typical Wall Street inhabitant in unflattering ways: "Dress strictly respectable; hat well down on forehead; face thin, dry, close-shaven; mouth with a grip like a vice; eye sharp and quick; brows bent; forehead scowling; step jerky and bustling." When the stock market collapsed in 1857, the Louisville Courier published an editorial, which pretty much summed up the country's attitude toward Wall Street morality: "Their code of laws is that of the gambler, the sharper, the impostor, the cheat and the swindler." But like those on "The Street" today, those in the nineteenth-century were unfazed by such harsh criticism. Thanks to their work on Wall Street, they were piling up huge fortunes. They could afford to ignore the insults coming their way. (Source of information and quotations: Steve Fraser. Every Man a Speculator. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005, p.58) |
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Purpose and Bias
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a. The author's purpose is mainly informative, and the passage reveals no bias for or against those who do business on Wall Street. |
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b. The author's purpose is primarily persuasive, and the passage reveals a bias in favor of those who do business on Wall Street. |
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c. The author's purpose is primarily persuasive, and the passage reveals a bias against those who do business on Wall Street. |
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In 1939, the guillotine, the device used to punish convicted criminals by cutting their heads off, was retired as an instrument of public execution. Because the guillotine was used to take lives, it was not generally viewed as an instrument that benefitted humanity. Yet, in fact, at the time of its creation, the guillotine was supposed to have a humanitarian purpose: It would provide every criminal with the gift of a quick and painless death. The man who gave the guillotine its name, Joseph Ignace Guillotin, certainly saw the device as beneficial. In 1789 Guillotin persuaded the French government to pass a law requiring all public executions to be carried out by machine. The goal of the law was to eliminate problems caused by executioners not fully equipped for the job. There were, for instance, some whose hands shook too much to produce a clean slice through the neck and some whose arms lacked enough strength to bring an ax down full force. The machine itself was the work of Dr. Antoine Louis, a French surgeon, and Tobias Schmidt, a German harpsichord maker. Dr. Louis knew what portion of the neck would most quickly succumb to the blow of the ax. Mr. Schmidt knew how to make the ax sharp enough to cut through flesh with one blow. In 1792, the newly-created guillotine got its first victim, a robber named Nicolas Jacques Pelletier. The execution was pronounced a success, and the guillotine was praised for granting a speedy and seemingly painless death. (Source of information: Charles Panati. Browsers Book of Endings. New York: Penguin Books, 1989, p.152) |
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Purpose and Bias
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a. The author's purpose is mainly informative, and the passage reveals no evidence in favor of or against the invention of the guillotine. |
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b. The author's purpose is primarily persuasive, and the passage reveals a bias, which favors the invention of the guillotine as a positive achievement. |
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c. The author's purpose is primarily persuasive, and the passage reveals a bias against the invention of the guillotine, which is viewed as cruel and inhumane. |
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Ten years ago, multitasking was all the rage as those lucky enough to be armed with lap tops and cell phones bragged about completing three or four tasks at once. Science, however, has given us second, maybe even third thoughts about the advantages of multitasking. The evidence increasingly suggests that we work more efficiently when we do one thing at a time, rather than several. That's because multitasking apparently overtaxes the brain. As we try to, for instance, drive a car, send off a text message, maintain a conversation, and check out a new photo we've just received, the brain is forced to process different kinds of verbal and visual information, all the while maintaining the body's physical coordination. Juggling these different tasks pushes the brain to its limits, and the research suggests that the brain becomes overwhelmed by its efforts to keep up. While we manage to get all the tasks done, we don't do any of them particularly well. In a study at the University of California at Los Angeles, for instance, researchers found that multitaskers finished the filing job they were assigned just as quickly as those who were focused solely on one single task. The multitaskers, however, didn't remember much about the files or where they had put them. Those who had been doing nothing but filing, in contrast, remembered what it was they had been putting away and even more importantly where they had filed the material. (Source of information: Walter Kirn, "The Autumn of the Multitaskers," Atlantic. November, 2007, pp.66-74) |
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Purpose and Bias
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a. The author's purpose is mainly informative, and the passage reveals no bias either for or against multitasking. |
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b. The author's purpose is primarily persuasive, and the passage reveals a bias in favor of multitasking. |
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c. The author's purpose is primarily persuasive, and the passage reveals a bias against multitasking. |
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In 2004, the Department of Education issued a report on reading among the young. The report pointed out that reading for fun was in a steep decline among 17-year-olds, down nearly a third from 1984. Clearly things have not gotten better. In 2008, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) linked the decline in nationwide reading-test scores to the decline in reading as a hobby. Predictably, both reports have stirred up anxiety about the fate of reading in the next generation. Yet neither report takes into account that what seems to be declining is the reading of books, not reading itself. Kids today are reading. However, they are reading on the Internet. For example, they are visiting web sites like quizilla.com and fanfiction.net, where they read and review stories that go on for as many as forty web pages. On these sites, kids can also revise and post new versions of existing novels. The revised versions are then read and commented upon by their peers. The popularity of online reading should calm the fears of people like Dana Gioia, the chairman of the NEA, who worries that young people today are "losing the sustained, focused, linear attention developed by reading." Young people today are still focused and attentive. What's different is that they are looking at web pages rather than book pages. (Source of information: "Digital Age Debate: RU Really LIterate if U Never Crack a Book?" New York Times. July 27, 2008, pp.16-17) |
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Purpose and Bias
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a. The author's purpose is mainly informative, and the passage reveals no bias in favor of reading on the Internet. |
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b. The author's purpose is primarily persuasive, and the passage reveals a bias in favor of Internet reading. |
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c. The author's purpose is primarily persuasive, and the passage reveals a bias against Internet reading. |
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