Read the excerpt from Infinite Jest . [Orin] stood there, he says, hefting a cold clod, playing with the Velcro on his puffy coat, watching as the Moms, bent way down to me, hand reaching, her lowering face with its presbyopic squint, suddenly stopped, froze, beginning to I.D. what it was I held out, countenancing evidence of oral contact with same. He remembers her face as past describing. What is the meaning of the excerpt?
Read the excerpt from Infinite Jest . ‘My application’s not bought,’ I am telling them, calling into the darkness of the red cave that opens out before closed eyes. ‘I am not just a boy who plays tennis. I have an intricate history. Experiences and feelings. I’m complex. ‘I read,’ I say. ‘I study and read. I bet I’ve read everything you’ve read. Don’t think I haven’t. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.” My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with due respect. What conclusion can readers draw about this character vs. society conflict?
Read this excerpt from Infinite Jest . I cannot make myself understood. ‘I am not just a jock,’ I say slowly. Distinctly. ‘My transcript for the last year might have been dickied a bit, maybe, but that was to get me over a rough spot. The grades prior to that are de moi .’ My eyes are closed; the room is silent. How does the narration affect the narrator’s credibility in this excerpt?
Read this excerpt from Infinite Jest . ‘I could, if you’d let me, talk and talk. Let’s talk about anything. I believe the influence of Kierkegaard on Camus is underestimated. I believe Dennis Gabor may very well have been the Antichrist. I believe Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror. I believe, with Hegel, that transcendence is absorption. I could interface you guys right under the table,’ I say. ‘I’m not just a creâtus, manufactured, conditioned, bred for a function.’ What assumption does the narrator make in this excerpt?
Read this excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics . The incentive scheme that rules sumo is intricate and extraordinarily powerful. Each wrestler maintains a ranking that affects every slice of life; how much money he makes, how large an entourage he carries, how much he gets to eat, sleep, and otherwise take advantage of his success. The sixty-six highest-ranked wrestlers in Japan, comprising the makuuchi and juryo divisions, make up the sumo elite. A wrestler near the top of this elite pyramid may earn millions and is treated like royalty. Any wrestler in the top forty earns at least $170,000 a year. The seventieth-ranked wrestler in Japan, meanwhile, earns only $15,000 a year. Life isn’t very sweet outside the elite. Low-ranked wrestlers must tend to their superiors, preparing their meals and cleaning their quarters and even soaping up their hardest-to-reach body parts. So ranking is everything. A wrestler’s ranking is based on his performance in the elite tournaments that are held six times a year. Each wrestler has fifteen bouts per tournament, one per day over fifteen consecutive days. If he finishes the tournament with a winning record (eight victories or better), his ranking will rise. If he has a losing record, his ranking falls. If it falls far enough, he is booted from the elite rank entirely. The eighth victory in any tournament is therefore critical, the difference between promotion and demotion; it is roughly four times as valuable in the rankings as the typical victory. Based on the excerpt, which of the following statements best summarizes the incentive system that ranks sumo wrestlers?
Read this excerpt from Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics . The incentive scheme that rules sumo is intricate and extraordinarily powerful. Each wrestler maintains a ranking that affects every slice of life; how much money he makes, how large an entourage he carries, how much he gets to eat, sleep, and otherwise take advantage of his success. The sixty-six highest-ranked wrestlers in Japan, comprising the makuuchi and juryo divisions, make up the sumo elite. A wrestler near the top of this elite pyramid may earn millions and is treated like royalty. Any wrestler in the top forty earns at least $170,000 a year. The seventieth-ranked wrestler in Japan, meanwhile, earns only $15,000 a year. Life isn’t very sweet outside the elite. Low-ranked wrestlers must tend to their superiors, preparing their meals and cleaning their quarters and even soaping up their hardest-to-reach body parts. So ranking is everything. A wrestler’s ranking is based on his performance in the elite tournaments that are held six times a year. Each wrestler has fifteen bouts per tournament, one per day over fifteen consecutive days. If he finishes the tournament with a winning record (eight victories or better), his ranking will rise. If he has a losing record, his ranking falls. If it falls far enough, he is booted from the elite rank entirely. The eighth victory in any tournament is therefore critical, the difference between promotion and demotion; it is roughly four times as valuable in the rankings as the typical victory. Based on the excerpt, which statement provides the best example of incentive for a sumo wrestler to cheat?
Read the excerpt from Freakonomics . It’s worth thinking about the incentive a wrestler might have to throw a match. Maybe he accepts a bribe (which would obviously not be recorded in the data). Or perhaps some other arrangement is made between the two wrestlers. Keep in mind that the pool of elite sumo wrestlers is extraordinarily tight-knit. Each of the sixty-six elite wrestlers fights fifteen of the others in a tournament every two months. Furthermore, each wrestler belongs to a stable that is typically managed by a former sumo champion, so even the rival stables have close ties. Which of the following claims is best supported by the evidence in this excerpt?
Read the excerpt from Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s Freakonomics . The incentive scheme that rules sumo is intricate and extraordinarily powerful. Each wrestler maintains a ranking that affects every slice of his life; how much money he makes, how large an entourage he carries, how much he gets to eat, sleep, and otherwise take advantage of his success. The sixty-six highest-ranked wrestlers in Japan, comprising the makuuchi and juryo divisions, make up the sumo elite. A wrestler near the top of this elite pyramid may earn millions and is treated like royalty. Any wrestler in the top forty earns at least $170,000 a year. The seventieth-ranked wrestler in Japan, meanwhile, earns only $15,000 a year. Life isn’t very sweet outside the elite. Low-ranked wrestlers must tend to their superiors, preparing their meals and cleaning their quarters, and even soaping up their hardest-to-reach body parts. So ranking is everything. Which sentence from the excerpt best supports the idea that the high-ranking sumo wrestlers enjoy many luxuries?
Read the excerpt from Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s Freakonomics . Let’s now consider the following statistic, which represents the hundreds of matches in which a 7–7 wrestler faced an 8–6 wrestler on a tournament’s final day: 7–7 WRESTLER’S PREDICTED WIN PERCENTAGE AGAINST 8–6 OPPONENT: 48 point 7 7–7 WRESTLER’S ACTUAL WIN PERCENTAGE AGAINST 8–6 OPPONENT: 79 point 6 So the 7–7 wrestler, based on past outcomes, was expected to win just less than half the time. This makes sense; their records in this tournament indicate that the 8–6 wrestler is slightly better. But in actuality, the wrestler on the bubble won almost eight out of ten matches against his 8–6 opponent. Wrestlers on the bubble also do astonishingly well against 9–5 opponents: 7–7 WRESTLER’S PREDICTED WIN PERCENTAGE AGAINST 9–5 OPPONENT: 47 point 2 7–7 WRESTLER’S ACTUAL WIN PERCENTAGE AGAINST 9–5 OPPONENT: 73 point 4 The authors use the statistics in this excerpt to
Read this excerpt from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close . In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place.... And when something really terrible happened—like a nuclear bomb, or at least a biological weapons attack—an extremely loud siren would go off, telling everyone to get to Central Park to put sandbags around the reservoir. What assumption does the narrator make in this excerpt?
Read this excerpt from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close . I wanted to tell her she shouldn’t be playing Scrabble yet. Or looking in the mirror. Or turning the stereo any louder than what you needed just to hear it. What assumption does the narrator make in this excerpt?
Review the graphs from "Majority of Americans Believe It Is Essential That the U.S. Remain a Global Leader in Space.” Open image in full-screen view Based on the graphs, what is the best prediction for what the passage will include?
Read the excerpt from part 1 of Zeitoun . All day Zeitoun and James saw people lined up at bus stops—those who planned to stay in the Superdome. Families, couples, elderly men and women carrying their belongings in backpacks, suitcases, garbage bags. Seeing them exposed like that, as the winds picked up and the sky darkened, worried Zeitoun. He and James passed the same groups, waiting patiently, on the way to their job sites and on their way back. What is happening in the excerpt?
Which sentence from an argumentative essay about genetically modified foods best states a claim?
Which is the best example of a thesis statement for an argumentative essay about zoos and animal welfare?
Which citation format is correct if a student is quoting a line on page 45 of a book titled Prison by Horace Gardener?
Read the excerpt from "The Environmental Ethic." It is fashionable in some quarters to wave aside the small and obscure, the bugs and weeds, forgetting that an obscure moth from Latin America saved Australia’s pastureland from overgrowth by cactus, that the rosy periwinkle provided the cure for Hodgkin’s disease and childhood lymphocytic leukemia, that the bark of the Pacific yew offers hope for victims of ovarian and breast cancer, that a chemical from the saliva of leeches dissolves blood clots during surgery, and so on down a roster already grown long and illustrious despite the limited research addressed to it. Which of the following claims is best supported by the evidence in this excerpt?
Read the following excerpt from E. O. Wilson’s “The Environmental Ethic.” Species are disappearing at an accelerating rate through human action, primarily habitat destruction but also pollution and the introduction of exotic species into residual natural environments. I have said that a fifth or more of the species of plants and animals could vanish or be doomed to early extinction by the year 2020 unless better efforts are made to save them. . . . As the last forests are felled [destroyed] in forest strongholds like the Philippines and Ecuador, the decline of species will accelerate even more. In the world as a whole, extinction rates are already hundreds or thousands of times higher than before the coming of man. They cannot be balanced by new evolution in any period of time that has meaning for the human race. Why should we care? What difference does it make if some species are extinguished, if even half of all the species on earth disappear? Let me count the ways. New sources of scientific information will be lost. Vast potential biological wealth will be destroyed. Still undeveloped medicines, crops, pharmaceuticals, timber, fibers, pulp, soil-restoring vegetation, petroleum substitutes, and other products and amenities will never come to light. Based on the excerpt, which statement best summarizes the author’s beliefs about the disappearing species?
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