Read the excerpt from “First Generation” of Dreaming in Cuban.He stops at the ocean’s edge, smiles almost shyly, as if he fears disturbing her, and stretches out a colossal hand. His blue eyes are like lasers in the night. The beams bounce off his fingernails, five hard blue shields. They scan the beach, illuminating shells and sleeping gulls, then focus on her. The porch turns blue, ultraviolet. Her hands, too, are blue. Celia squints through the light, which dulls her eyesight and blurs the palms on the shore.Which is an example of a hyperbole?
Read the excerpt from Leslie Marmon Silko’s story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds."They found him [Teofilo] under a big cottonwood tree. His Levi jacket and pants were faded light blue so that he had been easy to find. . . . He had been dead for a day or more, and the sheep had wandered and scattered up and down the arroyo. . . . . Ken came sliding down the low, crumbling bank about fifty yards down, and he was bringing the red blanket. . . . ."Send us rain clouds, Grandfather." They laid the bundle in the back of the pickup and covered it with a heavy tarp before they started back to the pueblo.They turned off the highway onto the sandy pueblo road. Not long after they passed the store and post office they saw Father Paul's car coming toward them. When he recognized their faces he slowed his car and waved for them to stop. The young priest rolled down the car window."Did you find old Teofilo?" he asked loudly.Leon stopped the truck. "Good morning, Father. We were just out to the sheep camp. Everything is O.K. now.""Thank God for that. Teofilo is a very old man. You really shouldn't allow him to stay at the sheep camp alone.""No, he won't do that any more now.""Well, I'm glad you understand. I hope I'll be seeing you at Mass this week—we missed you last Sunday. See if you can get old Teofilo to come with you." The priest smiled and waved at them as they drove away.What does this dialogue reveal about the priest’s standing within the community?
Which piece of dialogue from Leslie Marmon Silko’s story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds" best reveals that Father Paul sees compromise between the two faiths as the best option?
Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.When he started his business, he expected a 95 percent payment rate, based on the experience at his own office. But just as crime tends to be low on a street where a police car is parked, the 95 percent rate was artificially high: Feldman’s presence had deterred theft. Not only that, but those bagel eaters knew the provider and had feelings (presumably good ones) about him. A broad swath of psychological and economic research has shown that people will pay different amounts for the same item depending on who is providing it. . . .In the real world, Feldman learned to settle for less than 95 percent. He came to consider a company “honest” if its payment rate was above 90 percent. He considered a rate between 80 and 90 percent “annoying but tolerable.” The excerpt helps the authors arrive at their conclusion by
Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.He had also—quite without meaning to—designed a beautiful economic experiment. From the beginning, Feldman kept rigorous data on his business. So by measuring the money collected against the bagels taken, he found it possible to tell, down to the penny, just how honest his customers were. Did they steal from him? If so, what were the characteristics of a company that stole versus a company that did not? Under what circumstances did people tend to steal more, or less?Based on the excerpt, which of the following best explains why the authors included Feldman in their study?
Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.There is a tale, “The Ring of Gyges,” that Feldman sometimes tells his economist friends. It comes from Plato’s Republic. A student named Glaucon offered the story in response to a lesson by Socrates—who, like Adam Smith, argued that people are generally good even without enforcement. Glaucon, like Feldman’s economist friends, disagreed. He told of a shepherd named Gyges who stumbled upon a secret cavern with a corpse inside that wore a ring. When Gyges put on the ring, he found that it made him invisible. With no one able to monitor his behavior, Gyges proceeded to do woeful things—seduce the queen, murder the king, and so on. Glaucon’s story posed a moral question: could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed? Glaucon seemed to think the answer was no. But Paul Feldman sides with Socrates and Adam Smith—for he knows the answer, at least 87 percent of the time, is yes.Compared with Feldman’s argument, the tale of “The Ring of Gyges” is best described as a
Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.Driving around the parks that encircle Washington, he solicited customers with a simple pitch: early in the morning, he would deliver some bagels and a cash basket to company’s snack room; he would return before lunch to pick up the money and the leftovers. It was an honor-system commerce scheme, and it worked. Within a few years, Feldman was delivering 8,400 bagels a week to 140 companies and earning as much as he had ever made as a research analyst. He had thrown off the shackles of cubicle life and made himself happy.Based on the excerpt, which statement best strengthens Feldman’s claim that people are mostly honest?
Read the quote from Leslie Marmon Silko’s story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds.""Well, I'm glad you understand. I hope I'll be seeing you at Mass this week—we missed you last Sunday. See if you can get old Teofilo to come with you." The priest smiled and waved at them as they drove away.This quote is located early in the narrative. What does it reveal about Father Paul?
Read the excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.Driving around the parks that encircle Washington, he solicited customers with a simple pitch: early in the morning, he would deliver some bagels and a cash basket to company’s snack room; he would return before lunch to pick up the money and the leftovers. It was an honor-system commerce scheme, and it worked. Within a few years, Feldman was delivering 8,400 bagels a week to 140 companies and earning as much as he had ever made as a research analyst. He had thrown off the shackles of cubicle life and made himself happy.The authors prove Feldman’s success by describing
Read the quote from Leslie Marmon Silko’s story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds."The priest stared down at his scuffed brown loafers and the worn hem of his cassock. "For a Christian burial it was necessary."His voice was distant, and Leon thought that his blue eyes looked tired."It's O.K., Father, we just want him to have plenty of water."The priest sank down into the green chair and picked up a glossy missionary magazine. He turned the colored pages full of lepers and pagans without looking at them."You know I can't do that, Leon. There should have been the Last Rites and a funeral Mass at the very least."Based on this excerpt, what can be inferred about Father Paul’s feelings?
Which of the following statements support the claim in Freakonomics that “people are generally good even without enforcement”?
Which phrase best defines the term “figurative language”?
Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.So what do the bagel data have to say? In recent years, there have been two noteworthy trends in the overall payment rate. The first was a long, slow decline that began in 1992. By the summer of 2001, the overall rate had slipped to about 87 percent. But immediately after September 11 of that year the rate spiked a full 2 percent and hasn’t slipped much since. (If a 2 percent gain in payment doesn’t sound like much, think of it this way: the nonpayment rate fell from 13 to 11 percent, which amounts to a 15 percent decline in theft.) Because many of Feldman’s customers are affiliated with national security, there may have been a patriotic element to the 9/11 Effect. Or it may have represented a more general surge in empathy.The excerpt serves as which type of support for the authors’ argument?
Read the excerpt from Leslie Marmon Silko’s story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds."Before they wrapped the old man, Leon took a piece of string out of his pocket and tied a small gray feather in the old man's long white hair. Ken gave him the paint. Across the brown wrinkled forehead he drew a streak of white and along the high cheekbones he drew a strip of blue paint. He paused and watched Ken throw pinches of corn meal and pollen into the wind that fluttered the small gray feather. Then Leon painted with yellow under the old man's broad nose, and finally, when he had painted green across the chin, he smiled.The actions of Leon and Ken indicate that
Read the excerpt from Leslie Marmon Silko’s story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds."Leon stared at the new moccasins that Teofilo had made for the ceremonial dances in the summer. They were nearly hidden by the red blanket. It was getting colder, and the wind pushed gray dust down the narrow pueblo road. Which item acts as a symbol in this excerpt?
Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.In the beginning, Feldman left behind an open basket for the cash, but too often the money vanished. Then he tried a coffee can with a money slot in its plastic lid, which also proved too tempting. In the end, he resorted to making small plywood boxes with a slot cut into the top. The wooden box has worked well. Each year he drops off about seven thousand boxes and loses, on average, just one to theft. This is an intriguing statistic: the same people who routinely steal more than 10 percent of his bagels almost never stoop to stealing his money box—a tribute to the nuanced social calculus of theft. From Feldman’s perspective, an office worker who eats a bagel without paying is committing a crime; the office worker probably doesn’t think so. This distinction probably has less to do with the admittedly small amount of money involved (Feldman’s bagels cost one dollar each, cream cheese included) than with the context of the “crime.” The same office worker who fails to pay for his bagel might also help himself to a long slurp of soda while filling a glass in a self-serve restaurant, but he is very unlikely to leave the restaurant without paying.Which of the following best summarizes the main idea of this paragraph?
Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.He also believes that employees further up the corporate ladder cheat more than those down below. He got this idea after delivering for years to one company spread out over three floors—an executive floor on top and two lower floors with sales, service, and administrative employees (Feldman wondered if perhaps the executives cheated out of an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. What he didn’t consider is that perhaps cheating was how they got to be executives.)Which best describes the type of reasoning the excerpt uses?
Which excerpt from Leslie Marmon Silko’s story "The Man to Send Rain Clouds" contains an example of personification?
Read the excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.In the beginning, Feldman left behind an open basket for the cash, but too often the money vanished. Then he tried a coffee can with a money slot in its plastic lid, which also proved too tempting. In the end, he resorted to making small plywood boxes with a slot cut into the top. The wooden box has worked well. Each year he drops off about seven thousand boxes and loses, on average, just one to theft. This is an intriguing statistic: the same people who routinely steal more than 10 percent of his bagels almost never stoop to stealing his money box—a tribute to the nuanced social calculus of theft. From Feldman’s perspective, an office worker who eats a bagel without paying is committing a crime; the office worker probably doesn’t think so. This distinction probably has less to do with the admittedly small amount of money involved (Feldman’s bagels cost one dollar each, cream cheese included) than with the context of the “crime.” The same office worker who fails to pay for his bagel might also help himself to a long slurp of soda while filling a glass in a self-serve restaurant, but he is very unlikely to leave the restaurant without paying.Which of the following best summarizes the main idea of this paragraph?
Read the excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics.Feldman has also reached some of his own conclusions about honesty, based more on his experience than the data. He has come to believe that morale is a big factor—that an office is more honest when the employees like their boss and their work. He also believes that employees further up the corporate ladder cheat more than those down below. He got this idea after delivering for years to one company spread out over three floors—an executive floor on top and two lower floors with sales, service, and administrative employees. (Feldman wondered if perhaps the executives cheated out of an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. What he didn’t consider is that perhaps cheating was how they got to be executives.)Which idea from the excerpt best addresses the counterclaim that people are only honest when there is a financial incentive?
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