Single Variable Calculus, Chapter 3, 3.7, Section 3.7, Problem 10

Suppose that a ball is thrown vertically upward with a velocity of $\displaystyle \frac{80\text{ft}}{s}$, then its height after $t$ seconds is $s = 80t - 16t^2$


a.) What is the maximum height reached by the ball?
b.) What is the velocity of the ball when it is 96 ft above the ground on its way up? On its way down?

a.) The maximum height can be determined where $\nu(t) = 0$


$
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
\nu(t) = s'(t) &= 80 \frac{d}{dt} (t) - 16 \frac{d}{dt} (t^2)\\
\\
s'(t) &= 80(1) - 16 (2t)\\
\\
s'(t) &= 80 - 32t

\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
$




when $\nu(t) =0$

$
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
0 &= 80 -32t\\
t &= 2.5 s
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
$




Substituting the value of $t$ to the equation of $s(t)$ we have...

$
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
s(2.5) &= 80 (2.5) - 16 (2.5)^2\\
\\
s(2.5) &= 100 \text{ft}
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
$




Therefore, the maximum height the ball can reach is 100 ft.


b.) when $s = 96$ft,


$
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}
96 = 80t - 16t^2\\
16t^2 - 80t + 96 = 0
\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
$



Using Quadratic Formula,
$t = 2$ and $t =3$

Assuming that $t = 2$ represents the time at which the ball is moving upward and $t=3$ is the time at which the ball is moving downward.

The velocity @$t =2s$,
$\displaystyle \nu(t) = 80-32(2) = 16 \frac{\text{ft}}{s}$

The velocity @$t = 3s$,
$\displaystyle \nu(t) = 80 -32 (3) = -16 \frac{\text{ft}}{s}$

Where does Santiago find the answer to the question “how do you turn a man into the wind?"

Santiago speaks with the desert, the wind, and the sun to find the answer of how to turn into the wind, but none of these elements knows. While conversing with the sun, though, the boy's own thoughts reveal that he knows more about the Language of the World than he originally thought. During this conversation, the boy realizes that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and the sun does not have much experience with it. In fact, he recognizes that the sun, the desert, and the wind are all on their own paths of learning and cannot provide him with the answer he needs. Therefore, the sun suggests that Santiago ask the hand that created the world in order to find out how to perform the miracle he desires. "The Hand" must mean the universe or God, so Santiago prays in his heart without words. It is as though he connects his heart with that of God's and discovers the following:

only the hand understood that it was a larger design that had moved the universe to the point at which six days of creation had evolved into a Master Work. The boy reached through to the Soul of the World and saw that it was a part of the Soul of God. And he saw that the Soul of God was his own soul. And that he, a boy, could perform miracles (152).

Based on the passage above, Santiago discovers that he is a part of the Soul of the World—God—and he has the power within to perform a miracle and change himself into the wind. This is an amazing discovery because the power to perform miracles is found within himself as he connects his soul with that of the Creator's. The process of finding the answer he needs is a complex one, but it suggests that once we all discover that connection with the Soul of the World, we too can perform miracles because we are all a part of God. As a result, Santiago finds the answer he seeks within himself.

What was Margaret Macomber's profession?

Margaret, or Margot, Macomber is a kept woman. She doesn't love her husband; indeed, she doesn't even respect him. But she enjoys the opulent lifestyle that comes with being married to a rich man. The Macombers have been married for eleven largely unhappy years. Five years before the story takes place, Margot had commanded up to $5,000 a time for endorsing beauty products. This would suggest that Margot had worked as a fashion model or perhaps an actress—certainly some kind of profession in which she could trade on her beauty. Indeed, Margot's extraordinary beauty is the only reason why Francis married her in the first place. She knows her husband regards her as a "trophy wife," and that, combined with his perceived weakness and cowardice, is what makes her treat him with such contempt.

What is a Deconstructionist reading of John Keats's poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn"?

Deconstructionist readings break down a text into its different parts and examine the questions or ambiguities posed by those different elements or parts. To carry out a deconstructionist reading, you should first locate a binary opposition, or where the text makes a distinction between two things. Then, analyze how something is described by comparison or by being different from something else in the text.
Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" offers a very nice binary opposition between the world of art and the real world. In the first stanza, he starts by describing the frozen world on the urn with a picture of a "still unravish'd bride of quietness." He goes on to describe the pure woman on the urn and her ability to "express/ A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme." Then, he asks about this scene: "What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?/What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? /What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?" In other words, he wonders what the reality of this scene is and who the people in the scene really are, but he does not answer his questions. 
In the second stanza, he praises the frozen world of the urn and its continual freshness. He writes, "Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave/ Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare." In the world of art, the youth remains forever young, and the trees always have leaves. As he writes in the third stanza, in the world of art, there is always "More happy love! more happy, happy love!" Love never fades in art, but, as he returns to the real world, he notes that passion is quite different than the way it is portrayed on the urn, as it "leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, /A burning forehead, and a parching tongue." In other words, while the youth on the urn are forever happy and in love, in real life, love often leads to spent passion and unhappiness.
In the fourth stanza, Keats presents a number of questions, such as, "Who are these coming to the sacrifice?" He wonders who the people in the vase are, and where the priest is leading them. The series of questions he poses have no answers, and so he creates a sense of discomfort and mystery that he leaves the reader to answer. In the last stanza, he refers to the scene as a "Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain." In other words, when he and his contemporaries are long gone, the world of the vase will remain, but he refers to this world as cold, without passion, and he leaves the reader to decide which member of the pair of binary opposites is better--art or the real world.
Sources:
Mishra, Prashant. “A Deconstructive Stylistic Reading of Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn.” The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies 17.2: 49-58. 
https://maggiefelisberto.wordpress.com/tag/deconstructive-criticism-of-ode-on-a-grecian-urn/

How do Noam Chomsky's ideas about innateness, universal grammar, and biolinguistics differ from Jerome Bruner's in his well-known interactionist theory?

The argument between Chomsky and Bruner’s approaches to language acquisition boils down to the concepts of nativism vs. social interaction.
According to Chomsky, human beings are born into this world with a system of abstract biological mechanisms in the brain that (a) greatly aid and (b) restrain our acquisition of language. These mechanisms are referred to as Universal Grammar (UG). Chomsky formulated this theory after noticing that:
Despite the wide range of ill-formed and incorrect language children encounter early in their lives, they all manage to acquire their languages without fail (barring any developmental issues) and can identify sentences that are ungrammatical.
Children can produce sentences they’ve never heard before and can also generate an endless number of sentences.
Because of its emphasis on internal mechanisms and biology, UG has come to be classified under the umbrella of nativism (meaning it is innate to our biology).
Jerome Bruner, on the other hand, disagreed with Chomsky, instead taking more of a sociocultural perspective on language acquisition. Bruner’s interactionist framework centers on the idea that language acquisition occurs from a dynamic interplay between a child’s social network (language acquisition support system or LASS) and biological mechanisms. In other words, Bruner recognized that language acquisition was a collaborative process, whereas Chomsky relied on the primacy of UG.
http://www2.vobs.at/Ludescher/Ludescher/LAcquisition/Nativist/nativist%20theory.htm

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/innateness-language/

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00852/full

What are some examples for how Mr. Hayashi has certain expectations from his wife?

Mr. Hayashi expects that his wife will be dutiful; this may be, in part, because it was their hastily arranged marriage that allowed Mrs. Hayashi to come to America.  When Mrs. Hayashi becomes deeply interested in writing haiku, her husband is at first indulgent.  Though it disrupts the household routine, he allows her this small freedom, playing solitaire instead of a card game with her, and accepting that when they entertain other couples, the evening usually splits into two groups--one focused on haiku involving Mrs. Hayashi and another that her husband entertains.
Over the course of a few months, Mr. Hayashi grows intolerant of how writing haiku has taken over her life.  He prematurely ends an evening of socializing with others even though it upsets and embarrasses everyone. He insists on having his way. The final straw comes when Mrs. Hayashi wins a prize for her haiku and she leaves the tomato harvest to have tea and conversation with the man who delivers the prize.  When Mrs. Hayashi refuses to immediately return to the field when her husband summons her, he destroys the prize and ejects the man who delivers it.  His expectation is that his wife will obey his orders without delay. 

Who is Tishy Grendon in Henry James's The Awkward Age?

Tishy Grendon is one of Nanda's friends, a married woman whom Mrs. Brookenham strongly disapproves of. She believes Tishy to be a bad influence on her daughter for encouraging behavior she believes to be vulgar (though to a modern reader it would seem relatively tame), like reading romance novels. Tishy is generally looked down upon by others in the Brookenhams' social circle as well, including the Duchess (otherwise known as Mr. Brookenham's cousin Jane), who criticizes Mrs. Brookenham, her close friend, for allowing her daughter to associate with Tishy at all. Later in the novel, the whole cast pays a visit to Tishy's estate, and the simmering tensions between them all come to a boil, leaving the group in shambles.

Faber tells Montag, “It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books.” What is it that Montag needs, and what is he searching for? When Montag returns to the firehouse for work, he is divided. What are the divisions within himself that he experiences?

Different readers might say slightly different things about what Montag is searching for. However, I think all of those things are likely focused on the general concept that Montag is searching for knowledge, meaning, and direction in life. When readers are first introduced to Montag, he is essentially the fireman that he is supposed to be. He loves to burn things, and he has zero qualms about burning books. Of course, this all starts to change. At one point, Montag is a part of a sequence in which he watches a woman die with her books instead of giving them up and living. The event is quite jarring for Montag. He realizes that there must be something powerful inside of books.

"You weren't there, you didn't see," he said. "There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing."

As Montag continues to talk through his thoughts and feelings, he realizes that there is a person behind every book. Somebody had to think them up and write those thoughts down.

"It's not just the woman that died," said Montag. "Last night I thought about all the kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before." He got out of bed. "It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I came along in two minutes and boom! It's all over."

The idea that books contain more than words on a page is groundbreaking to Montag. Books contain ideas. They have powerful ideas that were put there by real people. This is what Faber is referring to. Faber knows that Montag is not in search of pages with words that are bound together. Faber knows that Montag is searching for and hungering after the ideas, inspiration, and thoughts that books carry inside of them.

When did WWII happen?

The accepted date for the beginning of WWII is September 1, 1939, when Hitler's armies invaded Poland.  Britain and France threatened war if Germany did not leave the conquered territory; within a week, Britain and France declared war on Germany.  WWII would not officially end until September 2, 1945, when Japan surrendered to the Allied forces on board the U.S.S. Missouri.  
While this is the accepted date for the beginning of the war, there are other dates that should be considered signposts on the road to true "world war."  In September of 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria.  While the League of Nations and the United States denounced this act of aggression, Japan was not threatened with force.  In 1936, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia.  In 1938 and 1939 Hitler annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia, respectively.  In all of these invasions and annexations, the world community was desperate to avoid war, so it did not even threaten the use of force.   

When was Abe Lincoln elected president?

Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States in 1860. He was the first Republican to ever be elected to the office. Lincoln won due to a split in the Democratic Party between John C. Breckenridge and Stephen A. Douglas. This split enabled Lincoln to win with only a minority of the popular vote. In most of the lower South his name was not even on the ballot. As the nation did not have a clear election day like it does currently, the election took place in the fall of 1860. After Lincoln won the presidency, South Carolina led the parade of seceding states in December 1860. Lincoln would not assume the office of president officially until his inauguration in March 1861.
Lincoln also hated the name "Abe." Lincoln also hated that he was portrayed as a rail splitter in campaign material since he spent the better part of his adult life trying to separate himself from the manual labor he performed on his father's farm.

Where is Mr. Frisby?

On page 4 of the book, Mrs. Frisby, a field mouse, is described as a widow, as her husband, Mr. Frisby, died the summer before. Mrs. Frisby is now the head of the house, and she is able, through her diligence, to raise her four children alone. The family survives, though it is difficult for them in the coldest months of the winter, as the beans and black-eyed peas have been ravaged by birds and the asparagus roots are frozen. The family lives in an underground house in the garden of a farmer named Mr. Fitzgibbon, and they have lined their house with soft objects such as leaves, grass, and cotton so that it is warm and dry. The reader learns a bit about Mr. Frisby. For example, on page 15, Timothy, one of Mrs. Frisby's children, is described as thoughtful, a trait that he shares with his deceased father. 

In "An Astrologer's Day," what details and techniques does Narayan use to describe the astrologer?

The astrologer is an impressive character. As the narrator says, if he had stayed in his village

...he would have carried on the work of his forefathers--namely, tilling the land, living, marrying, and ripening in his cornfield and ancestral home.

But when he was forced to flee the village, he was able to develop a whole new personality and survive in a densely populated urban environment by using his intelligence. The story suggests that many people who live in primitive rural conditions could likewise develop all sorts of hidden talents if they had the opportunities. 
The astrologer lives by his wits. He knows how to put on a show to attract passers-by, and he knows what to tell them, even though he is well aware that he has no mystical knowledge. He has no education and is probably illiterate. But he has "street smarts," "moxie."

He had a working analysis of mankind's troubles: marriage, money, and the tangles of human ties. Long practice had sharpened his perception.

He only collects small coins for his consultations, no doubt because most of the people who stroll in the park for recreation have little extra spending money. It is apparent that he must sit for long hours in order to collect enough to keep himself and his family alive from day to day.

...his eyes sparkled with a sharp abnormal gleam which was really an outcome of a continual searching look for customers, but which his simple clients took to be a prophetic light and felt comforted.

Money is of great importance to him in his precarious profession. In addition to his superior intelligence, he is courageous and determined. When he is dealing with Guru Nayak and his life is in imminent danger, the astrologer still insists on haggling over money. He brings every single coin home to his wife so that she can buy food for the family. Evidently he is a devoted husband and father.
"An Astrologer's Day" is a study in the vicissitudes of life and of one type of adaptation. The astrologer would have been an ignorant peasant if he had remained in his village, but the big city forced him to adapt to entirely new conditions, and he managed to find a niche in which to survive, marry, and reproduce. He is a survivor. We can identify with him because we all have to learn to survive in this world by adapting to our environment.

What is the WPA?

The WPA was an acronym for the Works Progress Administration. It was a product of FDR's New Deal. The organization offered employment to the unemployed, who were prominently men with few specialized skills. They built and repaired roads, as well as public buildings. Members of the WPA also constructed bridges, such as those along Connecticut's Merritt Parkway.
The WPA also brought electrical lines to those in rural communities. Some of these residents had electricity in their homes for the first time because of this WPA project. The WPA also engaged in dozens of other projects. As wartime came, some WPA projects shifted to military ones.
The WPA is referred to twice in To Kill a Mockingbird. Scout notes that Mr. Cunningham could take a job with the WPA to help his family financially, but in doing so would be unable to take care of his land. Later, Scout describes Mr. Ewell as being "the only man [she] ever heard of who was fired from the WPA for laziness" (Chapter 27).

Precalculus, Chapter 1, 1.4, Section 1.4, Problem 38

Determine the standard form of the equation of a circle with center $(-3,1)$ and tangent to the $y$-axis.

Since the circle is tangent to the $y$-axis, it only touches the y-axis at one point and that is (0,1). Thus, the distance from the center to that point is the absolute value of the $x$-coordinate of the center which happens to be the radius of the circle and that $r=|-3|=3$. Therefore, by using the standard form of the equation of a circle, we obtain...


$
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}

\left[x - (-3) \right]^2 + (y-1)^2 =& 3^2
\\
(x + 3)^2 + (y-1)^2 =& 9

\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
$

What is the hidden truth in Macbeth in the paradox, "so foul and fair a day I have not seen"?

There are paradoxes aplenty in Macbeth and this is simply one of them. The day on which the play begins is both good and bad. Macbeth has vanquished the king's enemies on the field of battle and been generously rewarded by Duncan for his extraordinary feats of valor. In that sense it's a good day. The newly ennobled Thane of Cawdor is a man on the make, rising rapidly through the upper echelons of the Scottish court.
Yet as Macbeth and Banquo arrive to see the three witches, they are treated to a stormy scene—a howling gale and a blackened sky whipped up by the wizened crones' dark, demonic powers. This is what Macbeth means by "foul." Unbeknown to Macbeth, his very first words in the play eerily echo those of the witches in act 1, scene 1:

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

These words, like Macbeth's own, embody a paradox. Their similarity allows us to see straight away that Macbeth is inextricably linked with the forces of darkness and evil.

Macbeth says this to Banquo early in the play. On the surface the day is "fair" or good because Macbeth, Banquo and their armies have won a victory against their enemies, who are traitors to the king. It is "foul" because many lives have been lost on the battlefield, and more directly, because the witches have brought thunder and high winds with them to greet Macbeth and Banquo.
On a deeper level, this particular day will prove to be both fair and foul to Macbeth because it is the day on which the witches prophesy that he will become Thane of Cawdor and King of Scotland. He will become Thane of Cawdor, a piece of good or fair news for an ambitious and victorious soldier, but the prophecy that he will become king, will prove to be a tragic or foul one for Macbeth. Macbeth's offhand statement is full of meaning but Macbeth will not know until later the true import of his words on this fateful day.

College Algebra, Chapter 9, 9.3, Section 9.3, Problem 80

A circular disk of radius $R$ is cut out of paper, as shown in figure (a). Two disks of radius $\displaystyle \frac{1}{2} R$ are cut out of paper and placed on top of the first disk, as in figure (b), and then four disks of radius $\displaystyle \frac{1}{4} R$ are placed on these two disks, as in figure (c). Assuming that this process can be repeated indefinitely, find the total area of all the disks.

If the area of the disk in part (a) is $\pi R^2$ and the area of the disks in part (b) is $\displaystyle 2 \pi \left( \frac{R}{2} \right)^2$. Then their common ratio is $\displaystyle r = \left( \frac{2 \pi \left( \frac{R}{2} \right)^2 }{\pi R^2} \right) = \left( \frac{\displaystyle 2 \pi \left( \frac{R^2}{4} \right) }{\pi R^2} \right) = \frac{1}{2}$. Therefore, the total area
of the disks will be

$\displaystyle S = \frac{a}{1 - r} = \frac{\pi R^2}{\displaystyle 1 - \frac{1}{2}} = \frac{\pi R^2}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}} = 2 \pi R^2$

Compare and contrast the first Gulf War to the wars in the Balkans of the 1990s. How do they differ in their nature, and what role did the US play in each?

Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm (the former referring to the six month period of time during which the United States and its partners tried to negotiate with Iraq while preparing for the initiation of military actions intended to liberate Kuwait and the latter the actual military operations against Iraq) and Operations Deliberate Force and Noble Anvil (the respective code names for military operations during the two major Balkans conflicts of the 1990s involving Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo) differed greatly in a number of ways. The mission to liberate Kuwait following Iraq’s August 1990 invasion obviously occurred in the Middle East and involved a coalition of nations from both within and outside the region. There were clear lines separating combatants, as Iraq’s invasion involved the deliberate crossing of internationally-recognized borders (though Iraq’s main grievance involved an ongoing dispute regarding the demarcation of oil drilling rights between it and Kuwait). Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein felt emboldened to take this step through an act of diplomatic ambiguity on the part of the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
Once Operation Desert Shield transitioned to Operation Desert Storm—in effect, the military buildup in and around Saudi Arabia, the territory of which was used to stage the assault on Iraqi forces—the war was over very quickly. Because Saddam Hussein’s actions were a clear violation of international law, because of his record of brutality, and because President Bush had decided not to allow coalition forces to proceed all the way to Baghdad to remove Saddam from power, Operation Desert Storm enjoyed overwhelming international legitimacy. Six months of diplomatic efforts intended to convince Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait failed, and military action was deemed (by many but not all) as warranted.
When longtime dictator Josip Broz Tito died in 1980, it was assumed that the inherently fragile Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would eventually break apart. While it took longer than anticipated for Yugoslavia to disintegrate, it finally did. In 1991, the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic and the Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman both sought to carve out large pieces of the predominately Muslim region of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This began a four-year war in which the concept of genocide returned to Europe for the first time since World War II (such were the scale of atrocities committed in particular by the Bosnian Serb militias and Serbian Army against the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina).
This is a little subjective, but one can argue that in contrast to the Bush administration’s quick and decisive decision to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the United Nations’ conduct of diplomatic activities during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina were not only ineffective but also made the situation worse. U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and his special envoy for Yugoslavia, Japanese diplomat Yasushi Akashi, established rules of engagement guiding NATO military actions that were so restrictive in limiting NATO actions that Serbia and its Bosnian Serb allies were able to commit innumerable atrocities before the United States finally stopped the genocide.
The second Balkans War, which involved the region of Kosovo that Serbs view as the birthplace of their nation, was less protracted because the lessons of Bosnia-Herzegovina dictated that Serbian atrocities could not be allowed to occur with the kind of impunity that had been the case in the earlier conflict. The establishment of the Kosovo Liberation Army, comprised of ethnic Albanians determined to break away from Serbia, initiated an increased level of violence in the region that United Nations diplomacy again failed to restrain. While neither side in this conflict was without sin, Serbian military actions again crossed all lines of legality and morality with respect to human rights violations. Once US special envoy Richard Holbrooke announced the failure of diplomacy, NATO began airstrikes against Serbia that effectively ended the latter’s aggression (although problems remained in Kosovo and in Macedonia.
If one is going to compare Operation Desert Storm with Operations Deliberate Force and Noble Anvil, the similarities in terms of the effective use of American and allied air power in bringing about a relatively quick end to armed conflict are worth noting. If the comparison extends to the diplomatic efforts carried out by the United Nations, the contrast is clearer. The six-month period during which the United States and its partners consolidated military forces in the Persian Gulf Region while diplomats attempted to resolve the dispute without war stood in strong contrast to the more protracted periods of diplomatic activity during the two Balkans conflicts, especially during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Awful atrocities, especially those carried out by Serbian militias at what was supposed to be a United Nations-protected refugee camp for Bosnian civilians at Srebrenica, took place while the world watched.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/09/wikileaks-april-glaspie-and-saddam-hussein/

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/profile-bureaucrat-at-large-in-the-balkans-yasushi-akashi-almost-painfully-diplomatic-un-envoy-1373287.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/16/world/un-details-its-failure-to-stop-95-bosnia-massacre.html

What is the novel's setting (both time and place)?

The Boy Who Dared is set in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 40s. The historical setting of the book is very important, because the author, Susan Campbell Bartoletti, wants to give young adult readers an insight into what life was like for young people at that time, as well as tell an interesting story. The book is based on a real person, Helmut Hübener, who, like many boys in Nazi Germany, joined the Hitler Youth organization. Before the Nazis took over, membership was voluntary, but after Hitler came to power in 1933, it was compulsory for all boys to join.
Initially, Helmut is a very enthusiastic Nazi, someone who genuinely believes that Hitler is Germany's savior. But Helmut develops a conscience, and as time goes on, he finds it harder to reconcile what happens under the Nazis with his Mormon beliefs. He also becomes increasingly disturbed at the treatment of the Jews, their systematic persecution by the Nazis culminating in the Holocaust.

What is the difference between disaster and emergency?

Emergency and disaster management deals with the coordinated efforts of communities to organize and manage available resources in order to address urgent humanitarian needs.
In order to enable better emergency and disaster management and planning, it is important to first differentiate the terms disaster and emergency. While these two are often used interchangeably, there is a significant difference that makes for better response and recovery.
An emergency is an unforeseen incidence that can be responded to using available resources. They occur more regularly than disasters and are therefore more anticipated by a community. These may include medical crises, vehicular accidents, and neighborhood fires. As such, the availability of emergency medical services, fire departments, police departments, and other such public services ensure the proper response to such unfortunate events.
A disaster, however, is a critical event much wider in scope. It is the sudden occurrence of an unfavorable situation that causes serious disruption to the social routine. It endangers a larger social space, and while it occurs much less frequently than emergencies, the effects are graver, often causing multiple casualties and/or property damage. Such a greater impact can disrupt and incapacitate emergency responders, leading to the need for assistance outside of the locality. Resources may very well become choked.
While its effects are much greater than an emergency, a disaster is unlike a calamity in that it affects only a single community. As such, neighboring communities with ample resources and responders are able to offer support to usher the affected community towards its recovery. Disaster types include natural hazards (earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfire, disease outbreaks), accidents (nuclear power plant accidents, widescale equipment failure), and terrorism (cyber attacks, bombings, use of chemical weapons).

A disaster is a sudden event that causes great damage or loss to the affected community. The World Health Organization defines it as “a sudden ecological phenomenon of sufficient magnitude to require external assistance”.
An emergency, on the other hand, is a situation in which normal operations cannot continue and immediate action is required so as to prevent a disaster. It can cause immediate danger to people’s lives or might not be immediately life-threatening, and can extend to the wider environment. Examples include forest fires, oil spills, health emergencies such as cardiac arrests or road accidents and outbreaks of diseases such as cholera.
A disaster affects larger sections of the community than an emergency. An emergency can deteriorate into a disaster if urgent action is not taken, or if the intervention measures are overwhelmed. However, a disaster does not always have to be preceded by an emergency, for instance, a sudden unexpected asteroid strike.
Disasters can either be natural or man-made. Examples of natural disasters are earthquakes, storms, heat waves, landslides, and droughts. Specific examples are the 2004 typhoons in the Philippines, the Tsunami floods or the 2007 hurricanes Harvey and Irma in the US. Examples of man-made disasters are nuclear reactor accidents, collapsing buildings or explosions.
https://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/health/ephti/library/lecture_notes/health_extension_trainees/disasterpreventionpreparedness.pdf

What does it show about the community that Asher is required to play catch to improve his hand-eye coordination?

In Lois Lowry's The Giver, Asher is required to play catch in order to improve his hand-eye coordination because it is not up to standard. In this community, equality and conformity are essential values. A large part of children's education is focused on making them the same as everyone else. Every aspect of life is standardized in this community, including hand-eye coordination. Asher's weaknesses are not acceptable. For Asher to be a compliant member of this society, he must overcome this physical weakness.
One effect that this attitude has on the community is an inability to understand the difference between equality and sameness. These characters believe that everyone must be the same if everyone is going to be treated equally. A weakness like hand-eye coordination or imperfect grammar can be cared for through education. But permanent disabilities are not tolerated. These differences can not exist in the community if people are to be equal to one another. It is tragic that the citizens of this village cannot see the value of humans that do not fit their ideal.

What is the postmodern lyricism in this poem?

"Lyricism" typically invokes something imaginative, beautiful, and/or poignant. In "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," the lyricism lies in the multiplicity and fluidity of identity, a central tenet of postmodernism. In this poem, Ashbery embraces and celebrates the postmodern notion that the components of identity are highly flexible and mobile and thus easy to create and transform as we need. This variability and fluidity shines through in the poem's description of an artist positioning himself for a self-portrait:

As Parmigianino did it, the right handBigger than the head, thrust at the viewer And swerving easily away, as though to protect What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams, Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together In a movement supporting the face, which swims Toward and away like the hand Except that it is in repose.

The undulating gestures of the artist and the pleasant jumble of textures symbolize the nature of identity itself. The somewhat warped sense of scale in the final portrait is not unsettling but real and true. Just as the individual identity of the painter becomes skewed and changes from moment to moment, so too does the painting. It is simply the nature of being and nothing to shy away from. "The soul establishes itself."
Later in the poem, the speaker observes (or rather, questions):

How many people came and stayed a certain time,Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you Like light behind windblown fog and sand, Filtered and influenced by it, until no part Remains that is surely you.

Once again, while uncertainty swirls around one's identity, it is not something to fear. The constant waves of time, people, facts, colors, and all else wash over us, but not in a tumultuous fashion. They simply "became part" of us until they no longer "are," a phenomenon as natural as "light behind windblown fog and sand." The poet views the ceaseless shifting and changing of individual identity as natural, necessary, and indeed beautiful, as indicated by the gentle imagery of the poem.

What is Wiltwyck?

Wiltwyck is a reform school for boys in upstate New York attended by Sonny, the narrator. Since the age of six, Sonny has been involved in all kinds of trouble—petty theft, gang violence, and alcohol drinking, to name but three. His concerned parents think their son needs a change of scenery well away from the mean streets of Harlem, so they send him to live with his grandmother in South Carolina.
Unfortunately, the life of the street appears to have entered Sonny's soul to such an extent that he carries on with his criminal ways. This leads him to be sent to Wiltwyck, a facility specially designed to deal with boys like Sonny, boys both materially and emotionally deprived. The school's administrator is a man by the name of Mr. Papanek. He is a kindly, intelligent man who patiently tries to set Sonny on the right path in life, teaching him the value of education. Sonny, though deeply respectful of Papanek, continues getting into trouble, ending up in and out of Wiltwyck on a number of occasions.
Nevertheless, the example of Mr. Papanek is one that remains an inspiration to Sonny. One day he will eventually leave behind his previous troubles and embark upon a new path in life, one that will lead to a college education. 

Are there characters who don’t change?

In Toni Cade Bambara's short story "Raymond's Run," there are several dynamic characters, but I would argue there is at least one static character.
A static character is one whose character traits stay the same throughout the piece of literature. A dynamic character changes in some way; they may have an epiphany or a change of heart.
Squeaky is the main character of this story and is definitely a dynamic character. She begins the story very arrogant, focused, and with great disdain for her competitor and her friends. She finishes the story realizing that there are more important things in life than just her own success and that maybe she can help Raymond find something he can be successful at, too. She also ends the story with a smile of respect for her competitor, Gretchen. Gretchen changes, too, by returning the smile. In the beginning of the story, she is sizing Squeaky up and is not friendly or respectful. There isn't enough information to determine whether or not Gretchen's sidekicks, Rosie and Mary Louise, make any kind of change.
Raymond is what I would consider a static character. Although at the end of the story he does something that Squeaky had never seen him do before, it's an action and not a change in personality, thinking, or belief. He is the same person in the beginning of the story that he is at the end of the story. Although Squeaky says she has never seen Raymond run before, the story is really about Squeaky expanding her worldview from an entirely self-centered one to one that wants to help someone else—her brother. It is probably the first time she's seen Raymond run full speed, but probably not the first time she's seen him run. Consider this quote:

And it occurs to me, watching how smoothly he climbs hand over hand and remembering how he looked running with his arms down to his side and with the wind pulling his mouth back and his teeth showing and all, it occurred to me that Raymond would make a very fine runner. Doesn’t he always keep up with me on my trots? And he surely knows how to breathe in counts of seven cause he’s always doing it at the dinner table, which drives my brother George up the wall.

Here she mentions that Raymond keeps up with her on her trots, which would indicate that he jogs along with her.

What is a summary of the article "Gender Bias in North Carolina's Death Penalty"?

This article examines the gender disparity in capital punishment, as far fewer women than men are tried for capital crimes and executed for them. In the Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia, the court recognized gender and racial disparities in the use of capital punishments. The author notes that from 1973 to 2002, 1.2% of those executed were women, and women make up 1.4% of people on death row, though women account for 12% of homicides (pages 180 and 184).
The author provides different theories to explain why more men are executed than women, including the chivalry theory and the "evil woman theory" (which posit that in our paternalistic society, women are treated more leniently than men but that women who run afoul of gender norms are punished more severely). The author also cites statutory bias, that there are biases inherent in the law. She applies this bias to an understanding of the North Carolina death penalty laws and finds that "it becomes obvious that North Carolina’s statute tends to discriminate in favor of women" (page 185). The availability of mitigating factors and absence of aggravating factors (such factors as being involved in multiple murders or committing a murder in prison) also mean that women are less likely to be sentenced to death. 
The author examines the use of the death penalty in North Carolina where, as in many states, a jury must decide that mitigating factors do not outweigh aggravating factors to sentence someone to death. She profiles the four women on death row in North Carolina and compares them to men who have been executed or who are on death row in the state. She finds that the women have not been subject to discriminatory use of aggravating factors and that in fact men are punished more severely for lesser crimes. The author also finds that mitigating factors tend to work in favor of women rather than in favor of men. A woman is generally spared the death penalty unless she violates society's conceptions of women's roles in an egregious way. The author calls for a more gender-neutral application of the death penalty.
 
 

How would you compare and contrast the message about science and integrity in Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Dr. Jekyll and Victor Frankenstein have several things in common when it comes to how and why they used science. Let's consider just two of these commonalities and the messages we get from them.
First, both have selfish motivations for their scientific experiments. Dr. Jekyll is trapped by Victorian social conventions and seeks an alternative lifestyle where he can be free and explore his worst ambitions. Frankenstein wants to create a whole new race of man; this will of course (he imagines) lead to fame, but he also imagines that this race of man will adore him. The message behind the selfish use of science by both characters is actually similar: don't do it. Instead of being rewarded, each man actually causes his own downfall.
Second, both men carry out their experiments in secret. By any measure, this is not considered "good" scientific practice. Science should take place with plenty of input from other experts and with lots of practice so that one can learn from mistakes, brainstorm with peers, and try to improve. Because neither man includes others in his process, they both have very little insight into some of the pitfalls they may encounter in the future. As a result, it does not occur to them to try and prevent them. Later, they have no one to turn to when they need help. The message here is that science should not take place within a vacuum: it should be vetted at all stages.
In terms of integrity, each man displayed a shocking lack of integrity when using science both for selfish means and in secret. Both men only considered themselves when creating their scientific experiments, and this resulted in disaster not just for them, but also for many others.

Compare and contrast the messages about science and integrity in Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I find Dr. Jekyll's use of science to have at least a bit more integrity than Victor Frankenstein's.  Frankenstein dreams of being "blessed" by a race of men which he will have created and "hailed" as something of a hero by them.  He puts science to use in order to achieve personal glory and fame, and because he acts without integrity, behaving selfishly and unethically, he ruins many more lives than just his own.
Dr. Jekyll, on the other hand, doesn't exploit science in order to achieve fame.  In essence, he succumbs to Victorian societal pressure to conform to an incredibly repressive moral code.  His intention is to better himself by making it easier for him to always do the right thing, as defined by his society.  Despite the problems we might find with his rationale (if we take issue with his attempt to rid himself of a fundamental part of being human), his intentions, I would argue, are less self-serving than Frankenstein's.  Jekyll is actually attempting to change himself in order to better fit the (unreasonable) demands of his society, and so his use of science smacks more clearly of integrity than does Frankenstein's.  He shows that it is possible to put science to use in a more ethical way than Shelley's "hero."

Why did Lois Lowry write Gathering Blue?

Lois Lowry is a YA/children's author who is known for her work The Giver, which she originally did not intend to become a series. Gathering Blue and Messenger are in between the The Giver and her latest novel, Son, the fourth book in the series. The Giver is written from the point of view of Jonas, an eleven-year-old boy who lives in a futuristic utopian society that has eliminated fear, hatred, war, and prejudice. Lois Lowry wrote Gathering Blue, the second book following The Giver, several years later. In an interview conducted by The Atlantic, Lowry stated the following after she published her latest book, Son.

When I finished The Giver I said stupidly, publicly, that I wouldn't have any sequels. That was published in '93. In 2000 the second [Gathering Blue] was published. I had not intended it as even related to The Giver; I was creating another interesting world, to me, where things were different, and as I went along I realized I could answer some questions—in seven years, I had gotten so many questions about the ending. I put in, at the end of Gathering Blue, the reference to the boy Jonas.

Initially, Lowry had no intention to have any sequels written after her first book, The Giver.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/10/conversation-lois-lowry/322908/

Lois Lowry's YA dystopian novel, The Giver, introduces readers to a future world where life is controlled by Community leaders and every member of the Community does what s/he is told. Lowry published the novel in 1993 and it went on to win a Newbery Medal the next year.
Following the success of The Giver, Lowry wrote three more novels which loosely take place in the same era, Gathering Blue (released in 2000), Messenger (released in 2004), and Son (released in 2012). Together, the books are referred to as The Giver Quartet.
In an interview with Indie Bound, conducted shortly after Gathering Blue's release, Lowry explained both The Giver and Gathering Blue are about children who are no longer free to become themselves once a society presses upon them the importance of coloring within the lines. She speaks specifically about the comparison of herself, as a children's book author, facing censorship and challenges during her career.
An interview conducted by The Atlantic after the release of Son confirmed that Lowry never intended to write any sequels to The Giver. She explains,

When I finished The Giver I said stupidly, publicly, that I wouldn't have any sequels. That was published in '93. In 2000 the second [Gathering Blue] was published. I had not intended it as even related to The Giver; I was creating another interesting world, to me, where things were different, and as I went along I realized I could answer some questions—in seven years, I had gotten so many questions about the ending. I put in, at the end of Gathering Blue, the reference to the boy Jonas. He was not mentioned by name, but kids who had been wondering recognized him.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/10/conversation-lois-lowry/322908/

In the introduction to Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue audio book and in an interview with Scholastic (see below), the author hints at why she wrote the book. When she wrote The Giver, the companion book to Gathering Blue, she didn't plan on a sequel. Yet she became so immersed in thinking about a future society that she wanted to continue to explore the topic. She imagined a future world, after an apocalyptic event, where the society lost its use of technology and returned to a more primitive lifestyle. She imagined Kira in that setting.
Lowry's development of Kira as a character allowed her to do what she enjoys doing in all her books, namely exploring "what makes people tick." She made Kira an artist because artists, Lowry believes, are in a unique position to influence their societies for good. She wanted to give her character a challenge and a fascinating journey. To equip her to come out of it all successfully, she made Kira an artist. Through Kira and her other characters, she was able to examine how people grow and change.  
https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/lois-lowry-interview-transcript/

What is the moral of Finding Nemo?

The moral of Finding Nemo is that it is possible to overcome multiple sources of adversity when you have the right support system in place.
The case of Finding nemo, Marlin's support system is made up of Dory, who pushes him through the adversity of fear so that Marlin can search the ocean for son, never knowing what could be in store or for them.

The moral of this film is that our horizons broaden and we make new friends when we persevere in the face of adversity and overcome our fears in order to face the world head-on.
Nemo is an adventurous young fish whose overprotective father is a timid clownfish named Marlin. Marlin is overprotective of Nemo because Marlin lost both his wife and their other 399 eggs to a barracuda attack. However, despite Marlin's care, Nemo is caught by a scuba diver. When this happens, Marlin has to face his worst fears as he leaves the safety of home to try to chase down his son.
Friends Marlin makes include Dory, who has problems with memory loss, and Nigel, who helps Marlin and Dory evade a seagull flock.

If there are so many rivers in Pakistan then why is River Indus so important?

According to Dawn News, the major rivers of Pakistan originate from the Karakoram and Himalayan ranges. This system consists of five rivers that mostly go through the province of Punjab, thus giving it its name (“Panj” referring to five, and “aab” for water). These major rivers are Chenab, Ravi, Indus, Jhelum, and Sultej. Of the five, river Indus is the longest at 3180 kilometers. Dawn News refers to river Indus as “the lifeline of Pakistan and the country’s major water supply and support for agriculture.”
It is worth noting that the distribution of water resources in Pakistan is quite uneven, with provinces such as Balochistan having limited access to water supply, being outside of the Indus basin. The Punjab province, on the other hand, is found within the Indus basin, hence has a better supply of water.
River Indus is very important to Pakistanis because its water is actively used in big irrigation and power generation projects. In fact, the Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS) is one of the largest irrigation systems in the world. The system supports agriculture, which is the second largest industry in Pakistan after the services industry. Irrigated farmlands are thought to take up about 80 percent of the total area under cultivation. This shows the extent to which the people rely on the river for agricultural purposes. Also, the river supplies hydroelectricity to locals via the Mangla and Tarbela dams, with more dams slated for development. As such, the water resources on river Indus are under a lot of strain. It has also been suggested that water is inefficiently used in most parts of Pakistan, leading to water scarcity. For instance, most people still use flood irrigation, an inefficient form of irrigation where a lot of water is wasted via evaporation.
http://www.futuredirections.org.au/publication/the-indus-river-and-agriculture-in-pakistan/

https://www.dawn.com/news/884890

How did samurai warriors weaken Japan's imperial government?

Any time an armed and well-trained militia is allowed to develop a certain degree of independence from the central government, it will invariably grow in strength and eventually threaten that government. Such was the case with the Japanese samurai. These warriors served at the pleasure of a warlord, or shogun, and their loyalties to the shogun grew over time to exceed that directed toward the imperial regime. These fierce, dedicated warriors grew sufficiently in strength so as to pose a direct threat to the rule, if not the legitimacy, of the Emperor.
The samurai could hardly have been considered particularly noble; in a very real sense, they were little more than mercenaries who operated at the whim of wealthy landowners. Their responsibilities, however, did entail serving as an armed guard against outside forces, such as the Mongols, as well as combating armed criminal gangs. Their loose affiliations, however, made them susceptible to exploitation by anyone with money and an agenda. The bottom line, then, is that the samurai enforced edicts set forth by whoever was paying them irrespective of the ramifications for the imperial house. When their employers, say, a particular shogun, wanted to pressure the emperor, the samurai were the instrument of their policy. In this sense, the samurai most definitely weakened the imperial government. This situation would remain until the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which saw a strengthening of the emperor and concomitant weakening of the power of the shoguns.

What is the appointment between the two friends about in "After Twenty Years" by O. Henry?

The appointment between Bob and Jimmy to meet again in twenty years was just for the sake of reunion. It was similar to the thousands of class reunions, family reunions, and all the other reunions which are so common in America. People enjoy seeing each other again after the passage of time and hearing what has happened to those with whom they used to be close. Bob is going to leave New York the next day. He and Jimmy have been friends since early childhood. Both hate to think they are going to be parting forever, so they make a sentimental agreement to meet again at the same place, 'Big Joe' Brady's restaurant, in exactly twenty years. It may have been a mistake to make such an appointment; Bob and Jimmy didn't realize how much people can change in that length of time. If they had actually been able to sit down at a table and talk, they probably would have found out they had nothing in common. It would have been a disappointment with many awkward lapses in conversation. The men might have been glad to separate again, and they probably wouldn't have made another appointment to meet again in ten or twenty years. One thing Bob discovered was that 'Big Joe' Brady's, a seemingly permanent institution, had been torn down five years ago. 'Big Joe' himself was probably dead.
Bob tells the cop, whom he doesn't even recognize as his old friend Jimmy, how the appointment came to be made.

“Twenty years ago tonight,” said the man, “I dined here at ‘Big Joe’ Brady's with Jimmy Wells, my best chum, and the finest chap in the world. He and I were raised here in New York, just like two brothers, together. I was eighteen and Jimmy was twenty. The next morning I was to start for the West to make my fortune. You couldn't have dragged Jimmy out of New York; he thought it was the only place on earth. Well, we agreed that night that we would meet here again exactly twenty years from that date and time, no matter what our conditions might be or from what distance we might have to come. We figured that in twenty years each of us ought to have our destiny worked out and our fortunes made, whatever they were going to be.”

The reader can imagine what a place like 'Big Joe' Brady's was like twenty years ago — a spacious room full of noisy men drinking beer and all talking and laughing at once. The setting has changed with time. 'Big Joe' Brady's space is now a closed and darkened hardware store in a silent neighborhood. Bob has to stand inside the doorway because of the wind and rain. The contrast between the old and the present settings symbolizes the ravages of time. Everything changes. Bob was just eighteen and Jimmy only twenty when they made that appointment. They assumed that the restaurant and the neighborhood would still be the same, and they assumed that their friendship would still be the same. They were too young to know nothing ever stays the same.

How controllable is nuclear fusion?

The control of nuclear fusion in order to harness its energy is an extremely challenging task that we have been struggling to achieve ever since its theoretical conception by Houtermans in 1929. There are many, many problems in controlling the mechanisms for nuclear fusion, so I will briefly talk about some of the accomplishments that we have managed to achieve so far.
First tokamaks are currently the most promising method for controlling fusion. There have been several advances in recent decades:
1997 - The JET tokamak in the UK set the current world record for the most fusion power produced, 16 MW.
1998 - The JT-60 tokamak in Japan set the current world record for Q with Q=1.25. Q is called the gain factor and is the ratio of fusion power to the power needed to maintain the plasma in a stead state. Q=1 is referred to break even.
2013 - East tokamak sets the world record for plasma confinement in the high confinement mode, 30 seconds.
While these examples of controlling fusion have been with magnetic confinement techniques there are others that are used.
For example, Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) heat and compresses a target to the point of fusion. The most successful ICF devices almost always use lasers. In 2014 the NIF in California used an ICF device to extract more energy from controlled nuclear fusion than was absorbed by the fuel to trigger it. They are the only facility to achieve a 'fuel energy gain' via nuclear fusion.
ICF conditions are very similar to those created in a thermonuclear weapon. In fact the largest bombs in existence, hydrogen bombs, heat and compress materials with a fission primary explosion. Then this initiates a fusion reaction that releases a tremendous amount of energy. ICF may pave the way for a 'pure fusion weapon'. This is when no primary fission reaction is required and therefore no radioactive material is needed to build the weapon. This would then reduce fallout from radioactive damage after the blast.
As you can see the power to control nuclear fusion has already come far on a long road that will certainly be of importance in the future.
http://www.nature.com/news/laser-fusion-experiment-extracts-net-energy-from-fuel-1.14710?error=cookies_not_supported&code=57221b99-1d1d-4ea2-bca6-9d6eef3b8dab

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_nuclear_fusion

How much mortgage interest can be claimed on taxes in the following scenario: Donald and Daisy owned their house in Disrepair (that they lived in all of 2015) for which they paid $18,500 in acquisition mortgage interest (the loan balance all year was $370,000), plus they paid an additional $7,000 in interest on a home equity debt interest on a home equity interest debt with a balance of $140,000 during all of 2015. When the home equity debt was obtained, Donald and Daisy's personal residence was worth $500,000. They used all $140,000 of the loan proceeds to buy a pond for Donald's mother (who did not live with them, nor did Donald or Daisy live there).

Tax deductions vary by jurisdiction, but I'm assuming you mean the IRS federal income tax deduction for mortgage interest. The IRS has detailed guidelines on how to handle various living situations, but they can be quite complex and often confusing.The key here is that to be deductible, the interest must be paid on a loan collateralized by a qualified home; generally, this means one primary home and possibly one secondary home. Only homes you actually live in can be used as qualified homes, so the pond for Donald's mother wouldn't qualify.Donald and Daisy didn't mortgage the pond, though; they took out a home equity loan on their own residence, which is a qualified home. Therefore, the loan is collateralized by a qualified home, and is therefore tax deductible. There's another caveat, which is that home equity debt is only deductible up to $100,000 per household, so only the interest paid on $100,000 of that $140,000 is deductible. It's 5% interest, so that's $5,000 deductible and $2,000 not.There is also a $1 million per household cap on acquisition mortgages, but they're well under that limit.Thus, the deductible interest is $18,500 for the acquisition mortgage and $5,000 for the home equity mortgage, for a total of $23,500. The remaining $2,000 on the home equity mortgage is above the cap and therefore not deductible.

What role does religion play in John Steinbeck's The Pearl?

The community in which Kino and his family live is dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. The priest is extremely influential in the affairs of the town. Kino and Juana are firm believers in the involvement of God in their lives, yet their belief is also mixed with some superstition. Juana is sure that the discovery of the pearl is an answer to her prayer. This will mean an increase in their standard of living and can only be the result of divine intervention.
As events progress, however, Juana changes her mind and sees the pearl as a curse on their family. Only bad things, not good things, happen after the discovery. They are victims of attack and attempted robbery, leading to Kino commit murder to protect the pearl. They attempt to go to the city, but in a confrontation, their son is killed.
Kino now agrees with his wife that the pearl is cursed. Returning home, they throw the pearl back into the sea, hoping to appease God and be released from the evil effects it has brought. This belief in an inanimate object as the focus of a curse is reflective of their superstitious beliefs.
The belief that human beings are subject to the whims of an often vengeful god is reflective of the teachings of some primitive religions among the native peoples. This influences their understandings of the teaching of the church that is so central to their lives.

What was the flaw in Shepsel's strategy?

Misha is living what seems almost a carefree existence as a child thief working the streets of Warsaw. One day, he meets a Jewish girl called Janina. As the Nazis tighten their grip on Poland, life becomes harder and more dangerous for the country's substantial Jewish population. Eventually, all of Warsaw's Jewish families are herded into a ghetto, where they suffer chronic food shortages, disease, and massive over-crowding. It's a desperate situation for Janina's family, and desperate situations call for desperate measures. Janina's Uncle Shepsel comes up with what he thinks is a way to escape the ghetto: he's going to recant his Judaism and declare himself a Lutheran instead.
Unfortunately for Shepsel, his strategy for survival is doomed to failure. The Nazis don't regard Jews as forming a religion, but a race. As such, they believe that once a Jew, always a Jew. It's too late, then, for Shepsel to do anything to change either his identity or his fate.

Was Crake a hero or villain?

Whether Crake was heroic or villainous depends upon which Crake is the subject of discussion and examination. Just as there are two story lines in Atwood’s novel, there are also two Crakes: one is the godhead immortalized in Snowman’s invented mythology for the genetically-modified Crakers, while the other is an extremely gifted scientist.
Crake the godhead is an illusion woven by Snowman as he attempts to protect the Crakers and grapple with the realities of his postapocalyptic life. To the Crakers, Crake is a positive, life-giving force. One might argue how many of them could view Crake as a hero.
Crake the man, however, rivals Victor Frankenstein in his desire to manipulate humanity. Although professing a desire to end human suffering, Crake’s efforts to do so are morally and ethically objectionable. Take his BlyssPluss tablets, for example. The libido-enhancing pills owe their success to their human test subjects: impoverished sex industry workers. The pill also contains a contraceptive that causes sterility, as Crake wishes to control the world’s overpopulation, but his subjects are unaware of this ingredient.
His experimentation with human embryos, which ultimately results in the creation of the Crakers, is equally objectionable. Crake, a purist in all things scientific, tries to create a race of super beings that will be free from lust and other romantic inclinations, as well as any predisposition to the arts, religion, or philosophy. Because he believes science is superior to all else and possesses a superior intellect, Crake believes that it is his right to wield technology in any way he sees fit. In other words, he believes that he is a law unto himself. Crake’s megalomaniacal inclinations are devastating in their scope and ultimately, result in his death. One could certainly argue that Crake was villainous in the manner with which he used his genius and the ways in which this affected the world.
 
 

Impact of Paternal Influence

Baldwin's relationship with his father was complex and troubled. In both his essays and in his autobiographical novel Go Tell it on the Mountain,Baldwin describes a cold, distant man, who is severely religious and fanatically judgmental. All Baldwin, as a teenager, has to do is tell his father that his close friend at school is Jewish, and the father slaps him in the mouth. In the novel, the only person who stands up to the father is young Baldwin's aunt, with her insight into the father's moralizing and abusive behavior as a means of displaced aggression, of punishing his son for his own (the father's) misdeeds.
Yet James Baldwin was influenced by his father into becoming a preacher himself when he was young, and into having his own religious experiences. Later he rejected organized religion. The one moment he describes of actual direct communication with his father is when his father says to him, "You'd rather write than preach, wouldn't you?" For once, his father has acknowledged him as an independent person with a will of his own. It is virtually the only breakthrough occurring between them. But the knowledge of how his father's character was shaped by his having to deal with racial oppression, first in the old South and then in Harlem, leads James to an understanding of the racial dynamic existing through the US as a whole. James thus arrives at some measure of healing and empathy.
Baldwin's bonding with his mother contrasts with the harsh father. In Go Tell it on the Mountain, the moment in which his mother presses a small amount of money into his hand and says, "It's all I have," indicates the boundless sacrifices his mother makes and the understanding Baldwin has of the difficulties women of the period, especially African American women, were faced with.

What is the difference between globalization and cultural diffusion?

I would say that cultural diffusion is a result of globalization.
Cultural diffusion is defined as the spread of cultural beliefs and practices. For example, if a woman born and raised in the USA decides to learn African gumboot dancing as a hobby and starts living her life according to the principles of eastern philosophy, this would be the result of African and eastern cultures becoming "diffused" into the American way of life.
Globalization, on the other hand, is a more business-oriented term. It refers to the world of business becoming a "global village" in which national economies form global trade networks for greater efficiency and profitability.
As businesses spread their networks around the world, they take knowledge of their cultural practices with them and so globalization causes cultural diffusion.
https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-cultural-diffusion.html

https://www.ft.com/

Globalism refers to the integration of companies, resources, or markets from different areas of the world. With the innovations in communication and transportation that were realized in the last century, companies in one country can utilize other countries around the world in the execution of their operations. A company can have offices in the United States, manufacturing plants in Asia, customer service centers in Europe, and stores throughout the world. Globalism is a word used to define this economic synthesis.  
Diffusion is a very similar word but is used to define the cultural sharing that occurs when groups from different areas of the world are joined. Cultural diffusion commonly occurs as a result of globalism. An example of cultural diffusion is how rap music originated in the United States, but can now be found in all parts of the world. Rap music is now recorded in dozens of different languages in all parts of the world.

Time acts as the major structural organizational element in Mrs. Dalloway. Discuss with reference to the technique of flashback fits into this frame.

Time (and the passage of time) is one of the most important themes in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. More specifically, the novel is largely about middle-aged people thinking about their youth and measuring up their present life with their past dreams and ambitions. Indeed, on the very first page, Clarissa Dalloway is whisked back to her youth at Bourton, remembering her exuberant, younger self and her past relationship with Peter Walsh (3-4). Woolf repeatedly uses flashbacks throughout the book, most often to explore the past selves of Clarissa and Peter Walsh, but also to explore the lives of other characters. The concept of time in Mrs. Dalloway becomes very muddy indeed, with the past intruding constantly on present events, sometimes even taking over the present for long stretches, as when Clarissa reflects on her past relationship with Sally Seton (32-36). In that case, even though characters in the book are constantly worried about their inevitable mortality—Clarissa knows that she must die and cease to exist (9)—Woolf suggests through her use of flashbacks that the past does not merely stop existing, but rather is sustained somehow into the present via human memory. Therefore, if Mrs. Dalloway is a book about middle age and mortality, then it is also a book about how one can disrupt time and how the past never stops existing as long as we remember it.

What is Leslie and Owen's relationship like?

Owen is mean and surly toward Leslie; however, they love each other, and she covers for him and lets him be mean to her.
When A wakes up on Day 5995 as Leslie Wong, he's frustrated because it's better to be an only child. It's clear in the morning that Leslie and her brother, Owen, have some issues between them. He glares at her and then insists that she not judge him for smoking pot on the way to school.
At the end of the day, A can tell that Leslie's family thinks she'll still take up for Owen despite the issues between the siblings. They say that she always does it. She still pretends like she doesn't understand why the two boys fought.
Later, A is more assertive toward Owen than he thinks Leslie ever is. He's hoping that in the future, it will improve things in Leslie's life and Owen will be less mean to her; it's what he thinks Rhiannon would want him to do.

y = x^3/6 + 1/(2x) , 1

Area of the surface obtained by revolving the curve y=f(x) about x-axis between a leq x leq b is given by 
S_x=2pi int_a^b y sqrt(1+y'^2)dx
Let us therefore, first find y'.
y'=x^2/2-1/(2x^2)=(x^4-1)/(2x^2)
y'^2=(x^8-2x^4+1)/(4x^4)
We can now calculate the surface area.
S_x=2pi int_1^2 (x^3/6+1/(2x))sqrt(1+(x^8-2x^4+1)/(4x^4))dx=
 2pi int_1^2(x^3/6+1/(2x))sqrt((x^8+2x^4+1)/(4x^4))=
2pi int_1^2(x^3/6+1/(2x))sqrt(((x^4+1)/(2x^2))^2)dx=
2pi int_1^2(x^3/6+1/(2x))(x^4+1)/(2x^2)dx=
Multiplying the terms under integral yields
2pi int_1^2 (x^5/12+x/12+x/4+1/(4x^3))dx=
2pi int_1^2(x^5/12+x/3+1/(4x^3))dx=
2pi (x^6/72+x^2/6-1/(8x^2))|_1^2=
2pi(64/72+2/3-1/32-1/72-1/6+1/8)=2pi cdot 47/32=(47pi)/16
The area of surface generated by revolving the given curve about x-axis is (47pi)/16.    
Graphs of the curve and the surface can be seen in the images below.

Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, and explain how they contributed to the creation of a new US constitution in 1787.

The Articles of Confederation had strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, the weaknesses became such a concern that a new plan of government was written.
There were some strong points of the Articles of Confederation. The Land Ordinance of 1785 did a wonderful job of organizing our western lands and making them available for sale. The western lands were divided into townships, which were six miles long and six miles wide. They were divided into 36 sections. Each section had 640 acres, and the land was sold for $1.00 an acre. This was also a good way for the government to raise money. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 created a process for how a territory could become a state. When a territory reached 5,000 free men, an assembly could be elected to work with the governor. When there were 60,000 free citizens, the territory could ask to become a state. This process was also used for future territories to follow when they wanted to become a state.
The period of time after the Revolutionary War was a difficult time. The plan of government created by the Articles of Confederation got us through the early years of our independence. However, there were significant issues that existed with this plan of government that suggested the Articles of Confederation needed to be replaced.
There were problems with the Articles of Confederation. The federal government had financial issues. The federal government could not tax, which made it hard for the government to raise money. The federal government could not make people join the army. As a result, when Great Britain would not leave the forts in the west and when other countries began to interfere with our trade, we did not have the ability to do much about this from a military standpoint. The federal government had trouble keeping order at home. When Shays’ Rebellion occurred, the federal government did not act to stop the rebellion. There also was no federal court system. Thus, no place existed where the states could go to resolve disputes that they had with each other. Additionally, it was difficult to pass a law and to revise the Articles of Confederation. Nine of the thirteen states needed to vote for a law to pass. All thirteen states needed to agree to revise the Articles of Confederation.
These issues led people to believe the Articles of Confederation had to be replaced with a new plan of government. This new plan was called the Constitution of the United States.
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/10-reasons-why-americas-first-constitution-failed

https://www.history.com/topics/early-us/articles-of-confederation

Discuss the significance of the witches in the play Macbeth.

Witchcraft in Shakespearean England had an evil effect on the people and the king, too. They feared the power of the devil and all thing witchery.Between 1560 to 1603, thousands and thousands of people were flamed to death after being convicted as witches.
King James IV was greatly convinced that witches were real and they were conspiring to murder him. Shakespeare took this advantage of this suspension of disbelief and composed the psychological tragedy, Macbeth. Witchcraft in Macbeth is not just a reflection of a pre-given order of things, but, as Stallybrass puts is, "it is a particular working upon, and legitimation of the legendary or patriarchy". If in the world of man and naturality, kingship is meant to be God's rule over the world, father's rule over the family and the head's supremacy over the body, then witchcraft established the opposite of this: where Devil rules over the earth, and the women over the family and the body over the head.
The "three Weird Sisters" or the witches were introduced into the play at the very beginning, that is Act I Scene I, where they seemed to plan their meeting with Macbeth "When the hurly-burly's done, / When the battle's lost and won." Next, they were seen at Scene III of the same Act prophesying the "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" future to Macbeth and Banquo.That future which "cannot be ill, cannot be good" yet the seed of ambition in Macbeth's chest grew with the diseased passion which drove him to madness. This scene presents the witches with ambiguity.
The witches "should be women" but their appearance was so "withered" and "wild" that they "look not like th'inhabitants o'th' earth". In fact, Lady Macbeth, whom some critics believe to be the fourth witch, welcomes the evil spirit into her bosom, praying "Come you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here," and "Make thick my blood, / Stop th' access and passage to remorse, / And take my milk for gall,". It is that prayer which makes the evil ambition coil in her mind like a serpent ready to prey. The three witches shook the base of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's morality and conscience with just three uncertain predictions which their deeds would make true.
And then there was the Cauldron Scene where we saw the witches stiring a filthy broth with the most noxious and loathsome parts of various animals, the tooth, the scale, the sting, the maw, the gall, and the entrails. And lastly, a baboon's blood cools the whole. This entire process and ingredients confirmed us of the things that in mythology and superstition, in old philosophy are related with the darkest, cruelest elements of human nature. The witches are the embodiment of the death force, the natural representatives of the metaphysically female role of matter in the universe, "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned."
As the most 'fertile force' in the play, the witches inhabit archaic, richly ambiguous. They play the roles of prophets and devotees of the female cult.

The witches add a significant supernatural element to Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Macbeth. Because they are not human, their prophecies take on a magical and unknown quality; a human making such predictions would likely be scoffed at or ignored, but a supernatural being like a witch may have access to information inaccessible to humans. The prophecies may reflect a force greater than human endeavor or desire because the witches choose to interact with humans rather than need to.
As well, the witches add significant literary value to the play. As characters, they add interest and an unknown element that heightens the suspense of the play. As well, their presence adds to a sense of sinister foreshadowing; the audience soon learns that when the witches are present on stage, something important and frightening will soon happen.

In The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, what are the differences between the worlds of fantasy and reality? Give three differences and be specific.

In the world of reality, the children are sent to live in a big house in the English countryside to escape the bombing of London during World War II. When they enter the fantasy world of Narnia through the wardrobe, they find themselves in a world with another reality. Three differences are as follows:
One: In Narnia, it is always winter and always cold. In England, of course, they experience the four seasons.
Two: In Narnia, the animals can talk. For example, when Lucy meets the faun, Tumnus, he talks to her. A faun is a creature from Greek myth, half human, half goat, that one would not find in the real world to begin with. But in Narnia, even ordinary animals talk. For instance, the beaver who helps the children hide from the White Witch talks to them, as does his wife, Mrs. Beaver. Aslan, the lion, is another example of a talking animal.
Three: In Narnia, magic is possible. For example, the witch has cast an enchantment that keeps the world in winter for one hundred years. She also uses her wand to turn humans to stone.

Why wasn't Troy okay with Cory playing football in Fences?

Troy Maxson is a bitter man who resents the fact that racial prejudice prevented him from becoming a professional baseball player and does not want his son Cory to experience the same discrimination and disappointment. Although Cory is being recruited to play football in college, Troy's bitterness and negative personal experiences prevent him from exercising perspective and allowing Cory to pursue his dreams.
When Rose tells Troy that it is an honor that Cory is being recruited, Troy responds by saying that playing football will get him nowhere. Rose then argues that times have changed, but Troy refuses to acknowledge the reality of the present situation, which is that black athletes are given plenty of opportunities. Troy firmly believes that racial discrimination will prevent Cory from being successful and tells his son:

The white man ain't gonna let you get nowhere with that football no way. You go on and get your book-learning so you can work yourself up in that A&P or learn how to fix cars or build houses or something, get you a trade. That way you have something can't nobody take away from you. You go on and learn how to put your hands to some good use. (Wilson 51)

While it seems that Troy is genuinely concerned about Cory's future and believes that racial prejudice will negatively affect his opportunities in sports, Troy also does not want Cory to become more successful than him. Troy is a selfish man who fears that Cory's success will overshadow his own athletic accomplishments. Cory understands this side of his father's personality and realizes that Troy's jealously has something to do with why he does not allow him to play football.

Troy wasn't alright with his son, Cory, playing football because Troy associates sports with the racist trauma he experienced following his attempts to break into professional baseball in his youth.
Troy is convinced that Cory will experience the same kind of discrimination that he did and would rather Cory avoid building up his hopes of succeeding in a racist world altogether, rather than see his son have his hopes dashed.
It is clear that this is a projection of the fact that Troy wishes he had never tried and failed and that he thinks it would have been simpler and less painful if he had never tried at all. Still, Cory doesn't want to trust that he will have the same experience that his father did.

As usual, Troy remains embittered by his past. He believes that he was held back from pursuing a career in professional baseball by racial prejudice, and he doesn't want Cory's dreams of sporting success to be similarly thwarted. This may make it seem that Troy really cares about Cory's getting hurt. But as it's perfectly obvious that Troy and Cory don't get on very well, this isn't the case. Troy is rather jealous of Cory, and is worried, not so much that he'll be the victim of racism, but that he'll actually succeed where his father failed. Troy is so bitter, so emotionally immature, that he doesn't see why Cory should enjoy the kind of success that he believes was denied him. So he forbids his son from playing for the high school football team.

Troy does not want Cory to play football because Troy fears that Cory will be disappointed, as racism will interfere with Cory's ability to play. Troy says to Rose, his wife, "The white man ain't gonna let him get nowhere with that football." Troy's experience is that white people do not let black people get ahead, no matter how talented they are. When Troy was younger, he was a talented baseball player, but he couldn't play in the major leagues because of his race. Instead, he now works on a garbage truck. He feels that Cory should aim for something practical, such as working on a garbage truck. Essentially, Troy does not want Cory to experience the heartbreak and disappointment that he experienced as a young person, so he wants Cory to only try for opportunities that are easily available to him as a black man.

sum_(n=1)^oo n/4^n Use the Root Test to determine the convergence or divergence of the series.

To apply the Root test on a series sum a_n , we determine the limit as:
lim_(n-gtoo) root(n)(|a_n|)= L
or
lim_(n-gtoo) |a_n|^(1/n)= L
Then, we follow the conditions:
a) Llt1 then the series is absolutely convergent.
b) Lgt1 then the series is divergent.
c) L=1 or does not exist  then the test is inconclusive. The series may be divergent, conditionally convergent, or absolutely convergent.
In order to apply the Root Test in determining the convergence or divergence of the series sum_(n=1)^oo n/4^n , we let : a_n =n/4^n .
Applying the Root test, we set-up the limit as: 
lim_(n-gtoo) |n/4^n|^(1/n) =lim_(n-gtoo) (n/4^n)^(1/n)
Apply Law of  Exponents: (x*y)^n = x^n*y^n and (x^n)^m = x^(n*m) .
lim_(n-gtoo) (n/4^n)^(1/n)=lim_(n-gtoo) n^(1/n)/ (4^n)^(1/n)
                        =lim_(n-gtoo)n^(1/n)/ 4^(n*1/n)
                        =lim_(n-gtoo)n^(1/n)/ 4^(n/n)
                        =lim_(n-gtoo)n^(1/n)/ 4^1
                        =lim_(n-gtoo)n^(1/n)/ 4
Evaluate the limit.
lim_(n-gtoo) n^(1/n)/ 4 =1/4 lim_(n-gtoo) n^(1/n)         
                  =1/4 *1
                  =1/4 or 0.25
The limit value L =1/4 or 0.25 satisfies the condition: Llt1 since 1/4lt1 or 0.25lt1 .
Conclusion: The series sum_(n=1)^oo n/4^n is absolutely convergent.

From the poem "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou, please explain the stanza beginning with, "Now you understand / Just why my head's not bowed."

The final stanza in Maya Angelou's poem "Phenomenal Woman" wraps up the poem's assertions about the speaker's status as a woman who exudes power and attracts men without artifice.
When Angelou states, "Now you understand / Just why my head's not bowed," she is asserting that she is proud of herself, her body, and her qualities. She doesn't have to resort to drastic means to get attention, and does not "shout," "jump about," or "talk real loud" in order to attract attention to herself. She has such a sense of self-worth that she is able to recognize that it is a privilege for others to see her pass by them. In this way, she defies the stereotypes attached to femininity and rejects the opinions of women who meet the beauty standards of the time and men who may usually expect those standards in the ladies they pursue.
Rather, Angelou continues to assert the natural characteristics that contribute to her extraordinary nature—the sound that her heels make when she walks, the texture of her hair, the appearance of her hands, and so on. These are qualities which no one can replicate and which occur innately to her. The stanza closes with the repetition of:

'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

This is Angelou's battle cry of pride, confidence, and security in her identity. It contains both amazement at her status as a woman and delight in how spectacular she is. This is ultimately the message of the poem—a call for all women to embrace themselves exactly as they are, regardless of the observations and opinions of the outside world.

Calculus of a Single Variable, Chapter 3, 3.2, Section 3.2, Problem 40

The mean value theorem may be applied to the given function since all polynomial functions are continuous and differentiable on R, hence, the given function is continuous on [0,2] and differentiable on (0,2).
If the function is continuous and differentiable over the given interval, then, there exists a point c in (0,2), such that:
f(2) - f(0) = f'(c)(2 - 0)
You need to evaluate f(2) and f(0):
f(2) = 2^4 - 8*2 => f(2) = 16 - 16 = 0
f(0) = 0^4 - 8*0 = 0
You need to evaluate f'(c) = (c^4 - 8c)' => f'(c) = 4c^3 - 8
Replace the found values in equation f(2) - f(0) = f'(c)(2 - 0):
0 - 0 = 2(4c^3 - 8) => 4c^3 - 8 = 0 => 4c^3= 8 => c^3 = 8/4 => c^3 = 2 => c = root(3)(2)
Hence, evaluating if the mean value theorem is applicable, yields that it is. The value of c in (0,2) is c = root(3)(2).

As a police commissioner, what would you do to enhance your department's murder investigations?

Homicide investigations, as with all criminal investigations, have to be conducted with two thoughts constantly in mind. The first involves identification of the guilty party or parties. That, of course, is the purpose of most investigations: identification of the individual(s) responsible for the criminal act. There is a reason for the use of the word "most" in the above sentence, however. Investigating agencies may have great confidence in the identity of the guilty party, but still not feel comfortable making an arrest, which brings us to the second part of the equation: the requirement to amass a body of evidence sufficient to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of the suspect's guilt. And it is here where there may be room for improvement in how the police department in question conducts homicide investigations.
The Constitution of the United States guarantees American citizens certain rights, such as the right to not be subjected to unwarranted searches and seizures of property. Additionally, under the landmark Miranda v. State of Arizona case of 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that suspects do not have to answer questions posed to them by law enforcement officials, the Court having determined that compulsory interrogations violate the suspect's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. All of this is highly relevant to the question posed by the student. Homicide investigators, as with investigators focused on other types of criminal activity, such as armed robbery, cannot cavalierly carry out their investigation without regard to constitutionally protected rights. Also, investigations must be able to withstand the scrutiny of very skilled defense attorneys practiced at finding weaknesses in the prosecution's case, such as whether physical evidence was properly handled at the crime scene. Even a minor error in the handling of evidence can result in a successful motion by the attorney for the defendant in a trial to have that "tainted" evidence thrown out.
A police commissioner seeking to improve the way in which homicide investigations are conducted would, therefore, coordinate carefully with the prosecuting attorney's office to ensure that law enforcement officials, from patrol officers to detectives, are properly trained in the way to secure crime scenes and handle evidence so that there can be no question as to the constitutionality of the investigation. Police officers are not expected to be experts on the law, but the level of knowledge they require to perform their jobs can come awful close. It is the commissioner's responsibility to ensure that precinct commanders are adequately preparing their subordinates for the rigors of carrying out investigations, especially those involving murder.

Where does Hoot take place?

The story takes place in the fictitious town of Coconut Cove, Florida (though there's actually a resort by that name). To many people, Florida conjures up images of palm trees and golden sun-kissed beaches. But to Roy Eberhardt, it's anything but a paradise. The protagonist of Hoot is going through some major problems in his life. For one thing, he's the new kid at Trace Middle School and soon finds himself being constantly bullied by the thuggish Dana Matherson.
But in a funny way, Roy's experiences of bullying turn out to be a blessing in disguise. They set in train a series of unusual events that culminate in Roy discovering an endangered species of owl nesting on the proposed site of Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House on East Oriole Avenue. Roy's encounter with the owls makes him realize just how beautiful the natural environment of Florida really is and how important it is to protect it.

How does theoretical communism relate to Animal Farm?

Theoretical communism relates to Animal Farm in two ways. First, it appears in Old Major's vision of a farm run by the animals before they chase Mr. Jones off. He tells the animals that their troubles are caused by mankind exploiting them and taking the fruits of their labor while doing little or no hard work themselves. If the animals could get rid of man, they could enjoy the profits of their labors themselves and live freer and more prosperous lives. This parallels the writings of communism in the nineteenth century, before there had been a successful communist revolution, telling working class people that if they got rid of the bourgeoisie (what we would call the one percenters today), they could have freer and more prosperous lives.
Old Major also tells the animals never to compromise with mankind, which parallels the communists saying never to compromise with the bourgeoisie:

Never listen when they tell you that Man and the animals have a common interest, that the prosperity of the one is the prosperity of the others. It is all lies. Man serves the interests of no creature except himself.

Second, after the rebellion, when the animals expel Mr. Jones and his men, for a short time, they experience giddy happiness and they (with a few exceptions, like Molly) work hard together, each according to his ability, to bring in the harvest. This is similar to the early years after the Russian Revolution, before the communist project was corrupted into totalitarianism, when some of the people whole-heartedly worked to implement communist principles.

How does Tom feel toward Jordan Baker?

Jordan Baker despises Tom Buchanan and works relentlessly to get Daisy away from him, at least temporarily, by encouraging Daisy's affair with Gatsby. Tom, although unaware that Jordan is working against him behind his back, does not like Jordan but thinks he can use her. He understands that she epitomizes the unattached, independent modern woman, but he is both too complacent within his own machismo to perceive her as a threat and too self-absorbed in his own affair to pay much attention to what his wife and her friends are doing.
On the first occasion Nick is with the Buchanans and Jordan, she tries to interrupt Tom's pompous endorsement of a racist book, and he simply ignores her. Later it becomes clear that he has no idea Jordan knows about Myrtle and another fling he had years earlier. He vaguely thinks she needs restraining, saying "they oughtn't to let her run around the country this way," meaning travel to play in golf tournaments. It seems that Tom is happy to have Jordan staying in their home and keeping Daisy occupied because it will facilitate his carrying on with Myrtle.

At one point, when Tom is curious about where Gatsby would have met Daisy, he says,

By God, I may be old-fashioned in my ideas, but women run around too much these days to suit me.

Here, he must be talking about women of his own class, the upper class. Otherwise, he would be referring to women like Myrtle Wilson and all the others with whom he has had affairs that were made possible precisely because these lower-class women were happy to "run around," as he puts it, with him. The main person Daisy "runs around" with is Jordan Baker, her best friend, and so I imagine that he finds Jordan a little too progressive for his taste too: she is always going to parties and into town, playing in tournaments, and so forth. If he believes that Daisy has strayed from his "old-fashioned" values, then it stands to reason that he feels the same way about her friend.

Tom and Jordan interact directly with each other very rarely throughout the novel. Jordan and Daisy are good friends and have been since they were young. (The reader even meets them at the same time, when Nick walks into the Buchanans' living room to see them lounging in the heat.) But Tom and Jordan are connected through Daisy alone. Though Tom never directly states his opinion on Jordan, we can infer from their personalities that Tom at least respects Jordan, because they are in fact very similar.
Jordan, Tom, and Daisy all grew up wealthy and remain wealthy. Nick calls Tom and Daisy "careless people," people who use their money and influence to avoid responsibility and do whatever they like without consequence. Jordan lives her life in a similar way, though she is not responsible for something as gruesome as two deaths, like Tom and Daisy are (Myrtle Wilson's death after Daisy hits her with the car and Gatsby's death when George Wilson believes he killed his wife and shoots Gatsby in his pool). Toward the end of the novel, Nick describes Jordan:

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body.

Nick grows close to Jordan over the course of the novel, but his overwhelming sense of her is of someone who is cold, cynical, superficial, and prone to dishonesty. These are traits Fitzgerald largely assigns to wealthy people in the novel (namely Tom, Daisy, and Jordan), and these similarities make it likely that Tom thinks of Jordan Baker as at least a peer.

Intermediate Algebra, Chapter 2, 2.1, Section 2.1, Problem 62

Evaluate the equation $\displaystyle \frac{2x + 5}{5} = \frac{3x + 1}{2} + \frac{-x + 7}{2}$ and check your solution.


$
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}

\frac{2x + 5}{5} =& \frac{3x + 1}{2} + \frac{-x + 7}{2}
&& \text{Given equation}
\\
\\
10 \left( \frac{2x + 5}{5} \right) =& 10 \left( \frac{3x + 1}{2} + \frac{-x + 7}{2} \right)
&& \text{Multiply each side by the LCD, } 10
\\
\\
4x + 10 =& 15x + 5 + (-5x) + 35
&& \text{Distributive property}
\\
\\
4x + 10 =& 10x + 40
&& \text{Combine like terms}
\\
\\
4x - 10x =& 40 - 10
&& \text{Subtract $(10x+10)$ from each side}
\\
\\
-6x =& 30
&& \text{Combine like terms}
\\
\\
\frac{-6x}{-6} =& \frac{30}{-6}
&& \text{Divide both sides by $-6$}
\\
\\
x =& -5
&&

\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
$


Checking:


$
\begin{equation}
\begin{aligned}

\frac{2(-5) + 5}{5} =& \frac{3(-5) + 1}{2} + \frac{-(-5) + 7}{2}
&& \text{Let } x = -5
\\
\\
\frac{-10 + 5}{5} =& \frac{-15 + 1}{2} + \frac{5 + 7}{2}
&& \text{Multiply}
\\
\\
\frac{-5}{5} =& \frac{-14}{2} + \frac{12}{2}
&& \text{Add the numerators}
\\
\\
-1 =& -7 + 6
&& \text{Simplify}
\\
\\
-1 =& -1
&& \text{True}

\end{aligned}
\end{equation}
$

How could I compare 1984 with Gattaca?

Gattaca, as a dystopian story, has more in common with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World than it does with 1984. George Orwell's novel is a projection into the future about the kind of absolute dictatorships that existed in his own time in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. The population is under constant surveillance, there is no freedom of expression or thought, and the general condition of life is one of privation—food is poor and scanty, and the whole of London seems to have turned into a vast slum. By contrast, in Gattaca, as in Brave New World, we see a wealthy and technologically advanced society based on eugenics and genetic planning in which people's characteristics and abilities are designed from the point of conception. Unlike in 1984, there is apparently no restriction on free speech. But one could judge the society of Gattaca to lack just as much freedom because one's DNA (which is constantly checked through instant tests of blood, urine, hair, and body tissue) determines one's job and the entire trajectory of one's life. The only way Vincent (Ethan Hawke), who is genetically "defective" ("invalid" in the dystopia's parlance), can fulfill his dream of going on a space mission is through essentially "buying" the genetic identity of another man named Jerome (Jude Law). Vincent is thus, like Winston in 1984, a heretic and a rebel against the dystopia, but unlike Winston, he gets away with it. Even if Vincent's ruse were detected, there is no indication that he would suffer the kind of fate Winston does in being tortured and brainwashed. The world of Gattaca, though lacking freedom, does not appear to be based on the kind of physical cruelty we see in Orwell's story.

What are some questions that I could ask in an interview with someone [not white], regarding the Separate Amenities Act during apartheid?

The previously suggested questions are wonderful ideas that you may wish to include when interviewing someone who experienced the indignities of apartheid. If you have not experienced systemic oppression firsthand, one suggestion I will add is to focus on questions regarding how injustice affects a person's spirit, as well as how past injustices can impact one's future. Historical facts about apartheid can be obtained from a variety of sources, but if you are given the opportunity to discuss this chilling topic with someone who has lived through the indignity, targeting its personal effects with likely result in wisdom and insight that cannot be gained from textbooks. Here are some suggestions for possible questions:
Looking back on this period of time, what are your clearest memories regarding injustice brought about by the Separate Amenities Act?
How did the Separate Amenities Act affect your everyday life, your spirit, and your plans for the future?
How do you think your life might be different now if apartheid had never been present? How has the injustice of that time period affected your life since then?
Do you think the repeal of the Separate Amenities Act righted the wrongs that were made during those decades, or do you think there is still work to be done? How can we do better?
How do you think the past history of apartheid has affected the present social and political climate in South Africa?
What wisdom did you gain while undergoing the oppression created by the Separate Amenities Act? What advice do you have for those who are currently experiencing systemic injustice?

The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act, passed in South Africa in 1953, legalized segregation based on race in public spaces, vehicles, and services. The facilities for non-whites did not have to equal to those enjoyed by whites. The law was appealed in 1990. 
When interviewing someone who lived during this period of apartheid in South Africa, you might want to ask the person the following:
How did the act affect you? Was it different than the situation that came beforehand?
What were the most dangerous ways this act affected you (for example, hospitals and ambulances were reserved for whites)?
What were the facilities like that you could use? Were medical facilities, for example, inferior to those that whites used?
What were your interactions like with white people in public?
Did anyone ever break the laws among both white and non-white people? If so, were they discovered, and what were the consequences for doing so?
What do you think the long-term effects of this act were regarding education, etc.?
How do you think this act helped catalyze the movement to end apartheid?

Here are some questions that you could ask in such an interview.  Of course, the specific questions that you ask might vary depending on the person you are interviewing and, perhaps, your own particular interests.
What were things like before this law was passed?  Were things really any different?  (Since this law was passed in 1953, you may have a hard time finding people who remember the time before it, but this is a question that would be interesting if you could interview an older person.)
What kinds of public amenities do you remember that were separate for the different races?
Did they have separate facilities for blacks, coloreds, and Asians, or was it just white and non-white?
Do you remember if there were amenities that were white only, with no segregated facilities for other races?  (In other words, were there things like beaches where there was a white only beach but no beaches where non-whites could go?)
Were there any places where whites and non-whites mixed?
Did you ever get to go inside a white-only area or facility (perhaps as someone who was caring for a white child)?
If so, what were they like compared to the facilities for your race?
How did this law make you feel?  How did it feel to be kept separate from the white people?
What things in your life changed after this law was repealed and what things did not? 
Do you think that there was anything positive about the Separate Amenities Act?
Hopefully this gives you some ideas of what questions you could ask.  Perhaps these examples will help you to think of additional questions that are of interest to you.