In Neil Gaiman's "How to Talk to Girls at Parties," what do you think Vic sees at the end of the story that upsets him so much?

At the end of the story, Vic hurries Enn home. Vic is visibly nervous and agitated about what he's just seen.

Although the author is ambiguous about the reason for Vic's angst, the text provides some hints:

We ran then, me and Vic, away from the party and the tourists and the twilight, ran as if a lightning storm was on our heels. . . I held on to a wall, and Vic threw up, hard and long, into the gutter. (Because of what he's seen, Vic is upset enough to throw up).

He wiped his mouth.

"She wasn't a--" He stopped. (The girl Vic was with, Stella, wasn't human).

He shook his head.

Then he said, "You know. . . I think there's a thing. When you've gone as far as you dare. And if you go any further, you wouldn't be you anymore? You'd be the person who'd done that? The places you just can't go. . . I think that happened to me tonight." (Does Vic metaphorically or literally mean that he's gone as far as he dares?)

Although this portion of the text is frustrating (perhaps because it's so ambiguous), it's also humorous. On one level, human girls can be so alien in temperament and emotional make-up to boys that they invite curiosity and amusement from their male counterparts. On another level, Gaiman explores how an interplanetary being could actually be so unusual to a human boy that, upon disrobing, she would devastate him. From the text, we can extrapolate that the experience of trying to bed an alien girl was extremely traumatizing for Vic. He was so traumatized by what he saw that he wasn't prepared to go any further. In fact, Stella's emphatic "I am not finished. There is yet more of me" further repels Vic.

So, it appears from the story that Neil Gaiman is posing a distinctly amusing question: if a male teenager thinks that girls are strange, what will he do when he meets a real, interplanetary female alien?

In Farewell to Manzanar, how had Papa become assimilated into American life? How was Mama's experience different?

Papa assimilated into American life through his zealous embrace of its promise of happiness, while Mama's experience was more steady and willing to accept the hardships and suffering that comes with being in America.

One way Papa assimilated into American life was through a full embrace of its possibilities.  Papa turned his back on Japan and embraced everything there was to America.  He assimilated into American life by being hopeful of finding happiness in America.  While he was not a citizen of America and of Japanese descent at a very bad time, his assimilation was rooted in the true belief of American promises.  As a result of his experience with internment and suspicion, Papa's assimilation into American life consists of intense highs and painful lows. 

Mama's assimilation takes a different path.  Mama cannot afford to experience such peaks and valleys.  Rather, the love of her family is her path towards American assimilation.  America's promise and possibilities are in the form of her family's happiness and success.  Where Papa's assimilation is tied to American ideals,  Mama's is linked to the daily reality of protecting and tending to her family.  Evidence of this is when Mama takes on jobs that might be beneath her because she knows that her family must survive. She is the steadying force in the internment camps, more than Papa could ever hope to be.  Even when her husband abuses her, she reconciles because of family's importance.  Mama assimilates into American life because a maternal protection of family.

What was the relationship between Bud and Bugs?

Bud and Bugs are friends. They are also travel partners for a short time.  

Bud explains that he and Bugs met when they were both staying at the Home together. Bud tells his readers a great little story that explains why people call Bugs "Bugs." It's because a cockroach once got stuck in his ear.

After Bud enacts his vengeance against Todd Amos and escapes from the Amos household, he decides to go out "on the lam." In chapter 8, Bud is reunited with Bugs. The two agree to team up and head out west together by illegally riding on the trains. On their way to the train yard, the two boys spend some time in a Hooverville shantytown and meet Deza Malone. Bud gets his first kiss, and then the two boys prepare to catch the train. As the train is leaving, Bugs manages to get himself on it, but Bud is unable to catch the moving train. Bud is then forced to consider the option of walking to Grand Rapids.

What is the frequency of the light emitted by atomic Hydrogen according to Balmer's formula with n = 2 and m = 6? Is 7.31*10^14 Hz, the correct...

Balmer's formula gives the wavelength of light emitted by the hydrogen atom. If the wavelength is represented by L, the formula gives L = K*m^2/(m^2 - n^2) where m and n are integers and K is a constant. The constant K = 3645.6*10^-7 for n = 2.

If n = 2 and m = 6, the wavelength L = 4.1013*10^-7 m.

The frequency (f) and wavelength (L) of a wave are related f*L = c, where c is the speed of light or 299792458 m/s. by for K.

This gives the frequency of the wave with wavelength 4.1013*10^-7, f = 299792458/(4.1013*10^-7) = 7.31*10^14 Hz.

You have arrived at the correct value of the frequency of light for the given values of m and n.

What does "My Son, The Fanatic" by Hanif Kureishi mean as a story?

One of the meanings within Kurieshi's "My Son, the Fanatic" is its indictment of fanaticism.

Even though published in 1994, Kurieshi's story speaks to a reality with which the world is struggling today. The issue of so-called "radicalized" youth concerns many people in our world today.  "My Son, the Fanatic" insists that when we encounter that which is different, we must try to understand it.  While our reactions might embrace courses of action that eliminate dialogue, the story reminds us that such knee-jerk reactions should be avoided.

Parvez's problem is that he cannot communicate with his son.  Ali's desire to maintain a passionate embrace of Islam is something that Parvez could have echoed. Instead of being offended and dwelling on his own hurt, Parvez could have shown greater acceptance towards his son. For example, Parvez could have accompanied Ali to the mosque or spoken with leaders of the religious community to whom Ali has declared allegiance.  Dialogue and understanding is replaced with misunderstanding and a lack of trust.  Kurieshi's story equates fanaticism with silencing discussion. When Ali refuses to hear Bettina or his father, it is just as much a form of fanaticism as when Parvez beats his son.  The story's powerful meaning is emphasized in its ending, where no one wins in a world of fanaticism.

The story is very relevant to our world today.  Its meaning reminds us how fanatical displays of violence will not solve any of our problems.  Such paths lead to more disdain, resentment, and future fanatical displays. The story insists that communication is the only way to understand something different and embrace it as a part of our world. Youth like Ali are lost because they do not feel they are being heard.  This reality is addressed in Kurieshi's story and what we experience today.  Looking at Parvez's example and figuring out how to do things better is the ultimate meaning of the story.  It is a message that is more relevant today than ever before.

In Lord of the Flies, what is the paradox of the boys' attitude toward the beast?

In literature, a paradox is when two contradictory concepts or beliefs are juxtaposed to reveal a significant, underlying truth. In the novel Lord of the Flies, there is a paradox attached to the boys' attitude toward the beast. The beast does not exist, but the boys fear it nonetheless. Their attitude towards the fictional beast reveals their actual fear of the unknown. They try to rationalize their fears by discussing the identity and existence of the beast. While Ralph, Jack, and Piggy maintain that there is no such thing as the beast, the boys remain fearful. The underlying truth in this paradox is that the boys fear what they do not understand. Their fear of the beast represents their fear of the unknown, which is a significant trait shared by all humans. We as humans tend to fear the unknown, and Golding illuminates this common fear in the boys’ attitude towards the beast throughout the novel.

Why does the speaker say that the stars have "Hearts of fire" in "Stars" by Sara Teasdale?

Sara Teasdale's poem "Stars" describes the speaker's experience of walking up onto a hill one night to examine the blanket of stars dotting the sky above her. This poem--like the vast majority of Teasdale's work--is pretty straightforward and does not contain any complex narrative approach. Rather, she chooses to have the speaker simply describe the scene before her with figurative language. 

The poem opens with the speaker standing on the "dark hill" surrounded by a forest of pines. She then turns her head to look up at the "heaven full of stars" and begins to describe their colors, suggesting that they are "Myriads with beating / Hearts of fire." Teasdale is personifying the stars in this line, giving them the anatomical quality of a human being (a heart) and creating an emotional implication of brightness, passion, and desire (in stating that the hearts are "of fire"). This image alludes to the eternal and expansive quality of the natural world in the face of human "smallness" and mortality. 

What are the major differences between blood circulatory system and road transport system?

The blood vessels in the body are similar to roads in that they are both used to transport things that humans need.

Blood vessels support nutrients, and roadways like farm to market roads support the transport of foods. Vehicles on the road can be likened to blood cells. White blood cells would be like police cars and red blood cells would be like trucks or cars. Platelets would be like emergency response vehicles.

Blood vessels all intersect, however. There are no dead ends in a living organism, no pun intended. Roadways oftentimes have dead ends, and there are entire systems of roads that are not connected to each other.

Roads are usually two way, but blood vessels are not. All blood vessels are in a single direction, and all blood flows in one way.

Whereas cars and trucks provide their own speed, blood cells are all pumped by the heart, and move as one.

What is the theme of the essay “Of Marriage and Single Life" by Sir Francis Bacon?

In this essay, Bacon debates the advantages and disadvantages of being married (which in those days, generally meant also having children) and of remaining single. Bacon writes that unmarried or childless men tend to provide the greatest benefit for public life, as they bestow their kindness on the public instead of on their families. However, married men who are fathers are far more careful when thinking about the future, as they know their progeny will have to deal with it. Bacon writes, "Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants; but not always best subjects." Unmarried men can devote themselves with greater freedom to others, but they don't make the best subjects because they can run away and don't have to subject themselves to other people's rule for the sake of their families. Unmarried men are also, Bacon thinks, more likely to be cruel hearted, as they have not learned tenderness from their families. While Bacon debates the merits of marriage, he says at the end of his essay that bad men often have kind wives, which argues for the benefits of marriage for men. 

In A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck, what story does Grandma tell regarding the phantom brakeman?

Grandma claims that the ghost of the brakeman still haunts the scene of his death years after his demise. According to Grandma, the brakeman died in 1871 when a train full of firefighters collided with a freight train. The brakeman died a gruesome death as a result of the collision.

Grandma claims that, on hazy nights, "somebody'll see the brakeman down there between the rails, swinging an old-time railroad lantern. Or they'll spot a dim yellow light deep in the timber, like he's a wandering soul, still trying to head off the oncoming train." By all indications, the phantom brakeman makes his appearance when people least expect him to. As for Grandma, she tells Joey and Mary Alice that she can't confirm the existence of the phantom brakeman, but she knows that some superstitious people actually avoid the railroad at night, for fear of running into the brakeman's ghost.

Do Thomas Aquinas's five proofs for the existence of God work together or independently?

Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God are used as a classic example of a philosophical argument.

The Five Proofs are as follows:

1. Argument from Motion


2. Argument from Efficient Causes


3. Argument from Possibility and Necessity


4. Argument from Gradation of Being


5. Argument from Design

These five proofs largely work independently, although to some extent there are crossovers and connections between the arguments.

Another useful resource is the first reference link, which contains an analysis of each proof that may be helpful to you in better understanding each one's logical progression.

St. Thomas Aquinas is renowned for his philosophical works and arguments. Working to understand his "Five Proofs for the Existence of God" will help you progress in your comprehension of philosophical proofs and arguments.

What were the short-term and long-term results of the War of 1812?

The War of 1812, while no property changed hands, was very important for America.  It created a new sense of nationalism in the country--America had faced the world's main superpower and managed not to be defeated.  There was an increase in American symbols such as the bald eagle, and America gained a new patriotic song, "The Star-Spangled Banner," though it would not be the national anthem until 1931.  Conversely, the War of 1812 saw the demise of the Federalist Party; this party, mainly made of Northeasterners, wanted that region of the country to secede over the war's unpopularity.  When news of this agenda leaked, those who supported the "Hartford Convention" were branded as un-American and could not be elected.  The Democratic-Republicans were now the main party in America, and under James Monroe, the president who followed Madison, the nation enjoyed the Era of Good Feelings.  Also, during this era Henry Clay, one of the War Hawks of 1812, instituted the American System of a national bank, internal improvements, and heavy tariffs on foreign products.  

Internationally, the War of 1812 led to the British abandoning their forts in the Old Northwest Territory and more Americans moving into the region postwar.  Native tribes in the area, especially the Shawnee, lost their main benefactor in Britain and had to take whatever treaty the United States was willing to give them.  The territory rapidly became populous states within a generation of the war's end.  The British stopped seizing American sailors at sea and trade increased with the new nation.  This led to an increase in American commerce immediately after the war.  Also, after the disastrous Canadian campaign at the onset of the war, Americans quit clamoring to occupy Canada and focused on moving West instead of North.  The national government also increased the size of the army and navy, which had suffered huge budget cuts under Jefferson and Madison--the War of 1812 made the federal government believe that a strong military was essential to American survival.  

Long-term, America gained a new generation of statesmen after this war.  Andrew Jackson made his name at the Battle of New Orleans and would become an international figure.  His campaign nickname of "Old Hickory" also dates from this period as he was said to sleep on the ground alongside his enlisted men.  Not to be outdone, the Whig Party in 1840 brought out William Henry Harrison, hero of the War of 1812's battle of Tippecanoe, in which Tecumseh was defeated.  Harrison had common-man appeal because he was said to have been born in a log cabin, but he was really the governor and most wealthy farmer in Ohio.  Harrison's presidency is nothing of note, as it only lasted one month and led to his Vice-President Tyler completing the term, but it's hard to imagine him becoming famous if not for the War of 1812.

How do food-borne illnesses affect the public’s perception of the risks of food contamination?

The actual chances of negative health impacts from food contamination and food-borne illnesses and the public perceptions thereof are two related issues. Often, the two are only distantly related to one another, as public perception is influenced by what is trending in media, sometimes leading to inaccurate risk perception.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention track food-borne illnesses. Over the past few decades, the most common sources of food-borne illnesses have been fresh fruits and vegetables, but contaminated poultry was actually responsible for a slightly higher percentage of deaths. Another government website which lists recent recalls shows frozen vegetables and some prepackaged salads and salad ingredients have topped recent recall lists.

Consumers tend to worry more about chemical contaminants and pesticide residues than the more common microbiological forms of contamination, possibly due to the extensive media coverage of such issues as contaminated milk in China. 

Several studies reported by the FDA suggest that experience of a food-borne illness or awareness of vulnerability (especially in consumers over 60) increases the degree to which people research the topic and follow recommended safety procedures. Awareness of food-borne illnesses tends to be highest among the well-educated and those who have personal experience of food-borne illnesses. Also, efforts by government agencies to educate the public about proper food handling have increased the number of people aware of food-borne illnesses and how to prevent them.

Between North Korea, China, and Japan, which country would first take action against South Korea, and which would South Korea take action against?

The most likely outcome in the situation that you mention is that none of these countries will take any sort of military action against any of the others.  While it is true that South Korea and these countries all have conflicts of one sort or another, they are not the sorts of conflicts that generally lead to war.  The one exception that makes it hard to be certain about this statement is North Korea.  The North Koreans are something of a “loose cannon” and have already taken military action against South Korea on various occasions.  Even so, it seems unlikely that they will resort to full-scale military attacks on their neighbor.

There is a great deal of difference between countries “not liking” one another and them being willing to go to war.  To state the obvious, wars are bad for a country’s people and for its economy.  In the modern world, wars can be utterly devastating, particularly when they involve countries (like China and North Korea) that have nuclear weapons.  In addition, it is unlikely that any of these countries would actually gain anything worth getting if they went to war.  The US would not allow North Korea or China to conquer South Korea.  China would not allow South Korea to conquer North Korea.  There is no way that South Korea could take and hold any significant part of China.  In short, any war between any of these countries and South Korea would damage both countries without doing them much, if any, good.  Therefore, it is very unlikely that any of these countries and South Korea will end up in a war, regardless of whether they “like” one another.

The wild card here is the North Koreans.  They tend to act in ways that seem irrational and overly aggressive.  There is a chance that Kim Jong Un might decide that he needs to launch a major attack against South Korea.  It would not be logical for him to do so (from our perspective), but he might anyway.  North Korea has taken many provocative actions against South Korea over the years, including artillery attacks on South Korean territory and naval attacks on South Korean vessels.  However, it seems likely that even the North Koreans know that they can only go so far before they provoking a serious war that would harm their country.

Many countries have grievances against one another.   This does not, however, typically mean that they go to war.  I would be surprised if any of these countries took serious military action against South Korea and I would be shocked if South Korea voluntarily went to war with any of them.

What roles have international institutions played in helping developing countries curb various challenges? How have some challenges not been...

International institutions are non-governmental institutions created in developed countries to provide various kinds of aid and development assistance to developing countries. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are funded by their country of origin's government, but are not overseen or regulated by those governments. Clear examples of these international institutions are the International Monetary Fund, the International Red Cross, and the World Health Organization.

Some of the roles played by NGOs (or international institutions) and some of the challenges faced by developing countries that NGOs address are described in the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which include "combating HIV/AIDS," eliminating "extreme poverty and hunger," empowering women and promoting gender equality, and achieving "universal primary education" (UN Millennium Project). NGOs work in developing countries on challenges such as poverty, economic inequality, trade barriers, sustainable industry, education, human rights, health and disease, child mortality, agriculture, and economic growth.

The history of NGOs, such as the IMF and World Bank, shows NGOs, while interested in improving challenges in developing countries, are also interested in profits. Many NGOs have received a lot of criticism on their philosophies, plans, and actions, and this criticism has led to attempts to improve the focus and methods of NGOs. A significant point of criticism has been that NGO development projects give rise to new challenges that are detrimental to the growth of health, economies, human rights, and sustainable ecological development. Ecological degradation is one of the newly arising challenges caused by NGOs. The history of the Mobil oil pipeline (now Exxon Mobil) in Nigeria is a good illustration of how development projects funded by NGOs—in this case the World Bank—can result in serious new challenges.

NGO-funded development of cash crops, such as cotton, which are intended to increase a developing country's national income by exporting the crop to developed nations, illustrates how some challenges addressed by NGOs have not been resolved, while simultaneously giving rise to new challenges. Cash crop emphasis was a strategy to address the hunger associated with extreme poverty. Planting cash crops did increase national income and reduce poverty, but emphasizing cash crops monopolized limited agricultural lands. The cumulative result of the cash crop strategy is to trap the poorest people in continued hunger because the cash crop of the small, poor farmer displaces the sustenance food crops that would otherwise feed the farmers, their families, and their neighbors. In this way, the challenge of hunger was left unresolved while raising the new challenge of land degradation.

Which character in The Great Gatsby could you argue kills the main three characters?

It is not really a single character who kills Myrtle, George, and the title character, Jay Gatsby. It is instead a certain trait: carelessness. If you have to blame a person or two for causing these deaths, you could argue that Tom and Daisy Buchanan embody carelessness. However, they are not the only characters who express it.

Earlier in the novel, Tom treats Myrtle abominably during his visit to the city, even resorting to physical abuse. However, Myrtle also treats her husband, George, abominably. She inflicts Tom's cruelty and indifference toward her onto George -- a man so inept yet vulnerable that one cannot help but to pity him.  

Nick Carraway, the novel's narrator, sees Tom again after Gatsby's death, "walking ahead...along Fifth Avenue in his alert, aggressive way, his hands out a little from his body as if to fight off interference..." (178). This description of Tom's physical presence reinforces the novel's characterization of him as a man who not only believes he can control everything in his environment, but that he has a right to do so. 

During their brief encounter, Nick quietly assesses Tom and Daisy as follows:

I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made.... (179).

The final sentence ends with an ellipses to indicate both Carraway's uncertainty and bewilderment over this thought. Tom, to the very end, takes no responsibility for either Gatsby's or Myrtle's deaths. We never know whether or not his wife confesses to him that she was the one behind the wheel of the car that cut Myrtle in half but, it is possible, in the fictional contexts of their lives, to imagine that she would have. Daisy sent neither a message nor a flower to express her condolences for Gatsby's death, behaving as though he had never reappeared in her life and, therefore, did not matter.

"My child is yet a stranger in the world, she hath not seen the change of fourteen years" What language technique did Shakespeare use here?

In these lines, Capulet tells Paris that as Juliet is only 13 years old ("she has not yet seen the change of 14 years" means 'she is not yet 14 years old'), she is too young and naive to be married. 

The language technique used here is a metaphor, as Capulet calls Juliet "a stranger" to the world. In this way, he compares Juliet's naivety and lack of knowledge about the world to the lack of knowledge we have about a stranger. Over time, a stranger becomes familiar to us, just as over time, one becomes familiar with the world, and naivety is replaced by experience and knowledge. 

Capulet's words are also rather visual and give us a real sense of the passage of time. Juliet has not "seen the change" of many years, and these words give us the sense of passing seasons, or the passage of time. This imagery is reinforced in the following line, where Capulet asks Paris to allow Juliet "two more summers" before she is married. 

Give an analysis of the short story "Sweat," by Zora Neale Hurston.

1. The story is about the struggle between good and evil, God and Satan, as represented by Delia and Sykes. Delia’s church membership, Syke’s use of the serpent to scare Delia, and Delia’s belief that “Sometime or ruther, Sykes, like everybody else, is gointer reap his sowing" suggest that the story is a symbolic working out of this conflict in the context of a rural, Southern black community.


2. The story can also be read as a commentary on gender and power. Sykes’ power is based on his vanity: women have value determined by his sexual attraction to them. Delia’s “skinniness” is the excuse Sykes would use to run Delia out of her own home: he says to Bertha at one point, “Sho' you kin have dat lil' ole house soon's Ah kin git dat 'oman outa dere. Everything b'longs tuh me an' you sho' kin have it. Ah sho' 'bominates uh skinny 'oman. Lawdy, you sho' is got one portly shape on you! You kin git anything you wants. Dis is mah town an' you sho' kin have it." Delia’s power, on the other hand, comes from her hard work (the “sweat” of the title): this is how she is able to have the house, and support Sykes.  


3. 
   Another aspect of the story is race. Sykes’ distaste for Delia’s washing is due in part to it coming from the whites; Delia, for her part, looks to the whites as a kind of moral authority; at one point she says “Ah'm goin' tuh de white folks bout you, mah young man, de very nex' time you lay yo' han's on me,” a threat that seems to have an impact. There is a sense in which Delia’s work ethic aligns her with the values of white society, in opposition to the posturing of Sykes, but it is not clear that Delia’s working for the whites, while an “honest living,” can be considered a “good thing.”

The story problematizes both Sykes and Delia; Sykes is “bad,” no doubt, but Delia for her part does conquer her fear of snakes (and of Sykes) long enough to watch him die of snakebite. It is true that at the end she is liberated from him, but her own symbolic association with “goodness” and religious faith is called into question.

What is an analysis of the poetic devices used in "London" by William Blake?

The first two lines of "London" feature repetition, a literary device Blake uses several times in this poem. The word "charter’d," meaning "mapped," is repeated, showing that the city is mapped out in a way that is characteristic of urban life. This type of restriction is in contrast to the freedom of the countryside. In the next two lines, the word "mark" is repeated three times as a means of emphasizing the way in which the polluted city marks its inhabitants. In the following stanza, the word "cry" is repeated (and "cry" also appears in the third stanza), as is the word "every." The repetition of the word "cry" emphasizes the suffering of both adults and children in London. The repetition of the word "every" is a form of anaphora, which is the repetition of a word at the beginning of phrases that follow each other, and it serves to emphasize how this suffering characterizes everyone the poet sees in the city. Many phrases in this stanza also start with "in," another example of an anaphora. 

In the third stanza, the words "Church" and "Palace" are synecdoches--the substitution of part of something for its whole. For example, "Church" stands for religion, while "Palace" stands for the monarchy. Both of these institutions are oblivious to the cries of the people around them.

In the last stanza, the phrase "Marriage hearse" is a kind of oxymoron, or a joining of contrasts. The idea behind this phrase is that the infant is born to a mother who is a prostitute and curses her newborn child. The child's birth is both a marriage, or the result of a sexual union, and a death sentence, as the woman has a plague. Therefore, even birth brings with it the taint of death in "London." 

What is a metaphor in the first paragraph of Atwood's "All Bread"?

One metaphor found in the first stanza of Margaret Atwood's poem "All Bread" is the following, which opens the poem:

All bread is made of wood,
Cow dung, packed brown moss,
The bodies of dead animals, the teeth
And backbones, what is left
After the ravens.

The poem in its entirety describes the process of making bread in four stanzas. The first describes the wheat growing in the dirt; the second focuses on the process of baking bread; the third imagines someone eating the bread after a long day of physical labor. The poem concludes by claiming that eating bread is eating the earth, and bread is meant to be shared. Overall, the bread could be interpreted as a metaphor for love and family because it is described as mundane and ritualized, yet it is crucially important that it is shared. By this interpretation, the dirt in the first paragraph could be a metaphor for how love is created and sustained by the earth, like the various substances in the dirt like cow dung, moss, and rotting animal remains all work to grow wheat.

During the trial, what are at least five things that Heck Tate testifies happened in the case against Tom Robinson?

In Chapter 17, Sheriff Tate takes the witness stand to testify in the Tom Robinson trial. Mr. Gilmer questions Tate as to what happened on the night of November 21st. Sheriff Tate testifies that Bob Ewell called him and said that Mayella was assaulted and raped by a black man. Tate goes on to say that when he arrived, he found Mayella lying on the floor with bruises covering her face. Mayella then told Tate that Tom Robinson beat and raped her, and Sheriff Tate drove to Tom's house to arrest him. When Atticus cross-examines Tate, he asks why the Sheriff did not call a doctor. Tate testifies that there was no need to call a doctor even though she was "mighty banged up." A doctor would have determined that Mayella Ewell was not raped after examining her, which would have proved that the Ewells were lying. When Atticus asks Tate to describe Mayella's injuries, he mentions that she had bruises on her arms as well as a swollen black eye. Atticus then asks Sheriff Tate which eye was bruised, and he says it was her left eye. Tate then retracts his statement after realizing that it was Mayella's right eye that was bruised. Tate also comments that Mayella had more bruises to the right side of her body and testifies that she had finger marks around her entire throat.

In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, does Ralph ever show interest in the welfare of the group? If yes, in which part of the novel?

Yes. Towards the end of Chapter 7, the majority of the boys are on an expedition to hunt pigs and find the beast. The boys continue to climb the mountain after missing an opportunity to kill a pig, and the sun begins to go down. Ralph notices that it is getting late and thinks about Piggy and the littluns on the other side of the island. Ralph imagines how scared Piggy and the littluns are and suggests that the group turn back while the sun is still out. Jack mocks Ralph for worrying about Piggy, but Ralph insists that someone head back through the forest to let Piggy know they will be back after dark. Fortunately, Simon volunteers to travel alone through the forest to bring the news to Piggy. Jack then tries to take the lead and insists the boys continue climbing the mountain. Ralph again thinks about the welfare of the boys by considering that there will not be enough light to traverse the rough terrain up the mountain. Ralph doesn't want any of the boys to hurt themselves climbing the dangerous path up the mountain at night. In both instances, Ralph shows interest in the welfare of the group of boys.

What is a good theme to write an essay about in Keeping Corner?

A good theme from Keeping Corner to write an essay about would be the theme of Indian tradition.  In fact, even the title comes from a particular Indian tradition that widows in India must keep themselves confined for an entire year (with their heads shaved) in order to express their grief over their husbands.  This is one of the most important Indian traditions relevant to the plot in that it is exactly what happens to the main character of Leela.  Another tradition you could write about is marrying at an early age.  In fact, Leela is married at the age of nine which is very typical for a privileged child in a Brahman family.  Yet another tradition you could discuss is what happens after a widow "keeps corner."  The widow is bound to be childless and unmarried for the rest of her life.  Because of this particular tradition, it is education and work for civil rights that finally appeals the most to Leela.

What are the benefits of studying contemporary arts for students?

It really depends on what students and what you consider benefits. The benefits for elementary school students and for students in MFA programs in the arts would be quite different.

For younger students, visiting studios of artists or museums of contemporary art or having artists visit the classroom helps them understand that art isn't something that just exists in a vacuum but something created by real people. It may give them a sense of the possibility of their creating art as a genuine vocation rather than just as an assignment.

For more advanced students who are studying the arts, visiting galleries and studios helps them understand current trends and make informed choices about their own work and how it is situated in their discipline.

Another issue is that all students are voters or potential voters whose decisions will influence government funding for the arts. Increased knowledge of the works of living artists and the processes of making arts will help students become more informed voters. 

Quote incidents from the "The Canterville Ghost" which highlight the satire on the American ways of living.

The story pokes fun at American pragmatism and republican (anti-aristocratic) sentiments, but in doing so also satirizes the British for being stuck in the past and ruled by traditions such as fear of a ghost, which functions as a stand-in for all the fears that hold the English back and need to be buried and laid to rest. 

As for the Americans, the story first satirizes the can-do attitude of the new arrivals to Canterville Hall and their practical ways of solving problems. For example, when the Canterville ghost leaves bloodstains on the library floor, the Otis family responds by scrubbing them out with Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover. The "proper" response would be fear, but the Otises will have none of that:

"'This is all nonsense,'" cried Washington Otis, 'Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent will clean it up in no time!'"

Wilde also satirizes the American's lack of respect for English tradition. Rather than be fearful of the ghost that has haunted Canterville Hall for centuries, the Otises fight back. When the ghost tries to scare them by rattling his chains, Mr. Otis says:

"'I really must insist on your oiling those chains, and have brought you for that purpose a small bottle of Tammany Rising Sun Lubricator.'"

Finally, Mr. Otis is skeptical of Virginia inheriting the costly heirloom jewels of Canterville Hall, saying:

"All such vain gauds and toys ... would  be completely out of place to those who have been brought up on the severe, and I believe immortal principles, of Republican simplicity."

What are six uses of hyperbole describing Jim Smiley in Twain's "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"?

Twain's characterization of Jim Smiley through the tall tales Simon Wheeler tells is driven by hyperbole to deepen the story's humor. Here are six uses:

1.  Wheeler regales the narrator with Smiley's propensity to bet on anything at any time: he was "always betting on any thing that turned up."  The use of "always" is hyperbolic.

2.  Wheeler describes that in training his frog, "he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that frog to jump."  The use of "never done nothing but" is hyperbolic--Smiley would have to do more than that to simply stay alive.  

3.  When the frog is being weighted down in advance of the contest with the stranger, he "filled him full of quail shot filled him pretty near up to his chin." Since this action would prove fatal to a frog (assuming it would even be possible), this description is pure hyperbole.

4.  Smiley's frog was described, exaggeratedly, as 100% accurate in catching flies: "he'd nail a fly every time as far as he could see him."  

5.  Simon Wheeler gives the frog superlative qualities that could only accurately be ascribed to human behavior, such as "you never see a frog so modest and straightforward" as a kind of hyperbole.

6.  Smiley's mare, according to Simon Wheeler, "always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption."  The use of the word "always" implies a chronic condition.  This is clear exaggeration for comic effect. 

Should marketers use sex to sell products?

I would argue that marketers should use whatever they think will help them to sell their products, as long as they are not doing something that would break the law, like directly lying about what their product can do.  I have three main reasons for thinking this.

First, it would be exceedingly difficult to write any law or any policy that banned the use of “sex” in selling goods or services.  Imagine, for example, an advertisement with a beautiful woman (or a handsome man) who is fully clothed and holding up a tube of toothpaste.  Does the fact that the person in the ad is desirable make this an example of using sex to sell?  Now imagine an ad that shows men and women wearing bathing suits and playing in the water on a beach in Hawaii.  Is this ad using sex to sell Hawaiian vacations or is it simply giving an honest depiction of what a tourist might do when on vacation in the islands?  How are we to prohibit the use of sex in selling goods and services when it is so difficult to specify what constitutes using sex to sell?

Second, when we say that marketers should not use sex to sell, we are implying that sex (and/or the desire for sex) is a bad thing.  Not all people share this attitude.  For example, many people might think that the desire for status (the desire to make people think that you are important) is more shameful than the desire for sex.  Others might feel that the desire to be rich is more shameful than the desire for sex.  By singling out sex as an improper tool for use in ads, we stigmatize sex and label it as an undesirable and improper thing.

Finally, marketers would not use sex to sell if it were not effective.  What this means is that consumers like such ads.  If we ban such ads, we are essentially saying that we need to save people from themselves.  We are saying that the people do not really know what is good for them and must be protected by the government.

Marketers should be able to use whatever means they want to sell their products.  As long as they are not lying about the product, they should be able to make whatever ads will appeal to people.  We should not try to make rules about advertising that A) are impossible to write, B) single out one human desire as improper, and C) go against what people manifestly want.

What would happen to the life of a cell if there was no Golgi apparatus?

The golgi apparatus contains vesicles and folded membranes and is involved in cellular transport. It is a packaging organelle. The golgi apparatus packages proteins into vesicles inside of the cell before sending them to their destinations. The golgi apparatus processes proteins for secretions that contain enzymes that attach sugar monomers to proteins. If the golgi apparatus is not present the packaging and transport of materials would cease to happen. So, various substances such as sugar monomers would not be able to be transformed into proper forms for further use. The secretory activities of the cell would also cease to occur. Also, if there is no golgi apparatus, the plasma membrane would be affected because it needs to be able to grow larger for cell division.

In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio says, ''If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.'' How does...

Mercutio makes this remark when he is trying to convince Romeo to give up Rosaline, who does not return Romeo's love. Romeo has complained that love is painful and pricks like a thorn. In response, Mercutio says in the quote in the question that if love treats you badly, treat it badly. If love pricks you, prick it back, and then you'll defeat it. 

The language in this quote is an insight into Mercutio's character because he uses violent words to describe love, showing that he is quickly moved to anger and violence. Later, Mercutio wants Romeo to have a duel with Tybalt, Juliet's cousin, who has challenged Romeo to a duel. Mercutio rushes into fighting with Tybalt first and dies as a result, and Romeo kills Tybalt in revenge. Mercutio is quick to anger, as this quote shows, and his anger results in worsening the feud between the Capulets and Montagues.

What type of figurative speech is the following sentence from Chapter 8? "Old Mrs. Radley died that winter, but her death caused hardly a ripple."

The sentence in question simply uses a figurative meaning of the word "ripple." The sentence does use figurative language, but it does not use any specific literary device.

Old Mrs. Radley died that winter, but her death caused hardly a ripple—the neighborhood seldom saw her, except when she watered her cannas.

When Scout reports that Mrs. Radley's passing barely causes a "ripple" in the town, she is implying that when the lady died, the town of Maycomb was like a shallow body of water whose surface was just barely disturbed by the news of the lady's death.

If you refer to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first listed figurative use of the noun "ripple" is "the mildly unsettling effects of some event." This is the meaning that Scout, the narrator, intends when she describes Mrs. Radley's death as just barely causing a "ripple" among her neighbors. So, in this sentence from Chapter 8, there is no specific type of figurative speech in use aside from the figurative meaning of the word "ripple."

You might ask, "Wait, isn't this a simile or a metaphor, since Scout is comparing the town to a body of water and Mrs. Radley's death to something that strikes the surface of the water and barely causes a ripple?" No. If the text had actually stated something like "Mrs. Radley's death was like a pebble that hardly rippled the waters of Maycomb," or "Mrs. Radley's death was a pebble that hardly rippled the waters of Maycomb," then we could identify a simile or a metaphor, respectively. But the narrator simply uses the figurative meaning of "ripple," with no simile or metaphor, so we readers are left to imagine for ourselves any implied comparisons. That is the effect that figurative language in general has: it uses words in a way that departs from their literal meanings.

What is the theme of freedom and loss of innocence in Lord of the Flies?

The book is about a group of boys who end up stranded on a deserted island in the middle of a war when their plane crashes.  They have no adults, since the only adults die in the plane crash and no one knows where they are.  The theme of freedom and loss of innocence is explored by the boys’ reaction to their situation. 

The boys have to set up a little society on their island.  They begin by electing a leader.  They choose Ralph because he found a conch shell and blew it, bringing them all together.  This symbolic leadership is all they have.  

They obeyed the summons of the conch, partly because Ralph blew it, and he was big enough to be a link with the adult world of authority; and partly because they enjoyed the entertainment of the assemblies. But otherwise they seldom bothered with the biguns and their passionately emotional and corporate life was their own. (Ch. 4) 

Ralph has trouble keeping everyone in line. He can’t get things accomplished.  He wants to get a signal fire going and tended.  He wants to get shelters built.  He wants to keep the boys together and organized.  Unfortunately, it is sort of like herding cats.  The older ones are uncooperative and the younger ones are ditzy. 

The other complication in the boys’ efforts to enjoy their freedom, and directly related to their loss of innocence, is the contrasting personalities of Jack and Ralph.  Ralph wants order and democracy.  Jack wants adventure and control.  Ralph tries to placate him by assigning him the leader of the hunters, but this is the beginning of the end for the boys. 

The descent into anarchy and loss of innocence the boys experience is a direct result of their inability to compromise.  Jack and Ralph cannot agree, and Ralph has no leadership skills to speak of.  The hunts for the pig become more and more violent.  The boys begin celebrating with pig dances.

Then Maurice pretended to be the pig and ran squealing into the center, and the hunters, circling still, pretended to beat him. As they danced, they sang.

“Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Bash her in.”

Ralph watched them, envious and resentful. (Ch. 4) 

Especially as war paint gets involved, the pig hunts become symbolic of the lifestyle the boys are turning to.  It is less about democracy and maintaining order, and more about the fun of the hunt, the taste of the meat, and the pull of the savagery.  The first time the dance gets out of hand, the boys kill Simon imagining he is the Beastie.

After the death of Simon, the schism is complete and Ralph knows he has lost.  Any connection to the civilized world, and the innocent nature of the boys' past, is gone.  By the time Piggy is killed, it is not much of a shock to the reader.

In reference to the quote below, what are two separate incidents when the members of the Greaser gang stick up for each other in Hinton's The...

There are several scenes throughout the novel The Outsiders where the members of the Greaser gang stick up for one another. In the opening scene of the novel, Ponyboy is walking alone down the street when he gets jumped by a gang of Socs. The Socs throw Ponyboy on his back and begin punching him in the face. One of the Socs then takes out a knife and holds it against Pony's throat. Ponyboy panics and begins to scream at the top his lungs. Out of nowhere, Ponyboy hears people shouting, and the Socs let him go as they runaway. Darry is the first to arrive, and the rest of the Greaser gang shows up. The Greasers stick up for Ponyboy by coming to his aid and preventing the Socs from continuing to beat him up.

Another scene which portrays how the Greasers stick up for one another takes place in Chapter 6 when Ponyboy, Johnny, and Dally return to the abandoned church to find out that it is on fire. When Ponyboy enters the church, Johnny follows him into the burning building and helps save the children that are trapped inside. After saving the last child, Johnny selflessly pushes Ponyboy out of the window and saves his life. Dally then prevents Ponyboy from going back into the flames by knocking him out and enters the burning building to save Johnny. Both Johnny and Dally's actions demonstrate how the Greasers stick up for one another. Johnny saved Pony's life by shoving him out of the window, and Dally saved Johnny's life by rescuing him from the fire.

Why does Aunt Alexandra object to Scout's going to Calpurnia's house in To Kill a Mockingbird?

Aunt Alexandra objects to Scout's going to the home of Calpurnia because it is not in accordance with proper behavior.

One night after supper as Atticus reads his newspaper, Scout asks him about a topic which Calpurnia suggested she ask her father. Then, after relating the occasion of her question, the Sunday visit to the First Purchase African M.E. Church that she and Jem made because Atticus was in Montgomery, Atticus seems amused, but Aunt Alexandra puts down the embroidery that she has been working on and stares.

"You all were coming back from Calpurnia's church that Sunday?"
“Yessum, and she promised me I could come out to her house some afternoon. Atticus. I’ll go next Sunday if it’s all right, can I? Cal said she’d come get me if you were off in the car.”
"You may not."

Alexandra forbids her because, unlike her brother, Alexandra holds with traditional behavior. (White people did not go into the homes of the African-Americans or associate with them on a personal level in the segregated South.)
Aunt Alexandra perceives such behavior as improper and unbecoming of a young lady, whose father holds a fairly high social position in Maycomb. After this conversation, she tells her brother,

"You've got to do something with her [Scout]....You've let things go too long, Atticus."

Aunt Alexandra even suggests that Calpurnia be let go because they do not need her any longer since she is living there.

What solutions do you see for the vast migration to the cities of the least industrialized nations?

First of all, it is not at all clear that there needs to be a solution to urbanization in the least developed countries (LDCs). As we can see in the links below, many experts believe urbanization is a good thing for LDCs. Urbanization brings many people together in one place, allowing them to be more economically productive than possible if they were dispersed out in the country, engaged in subsistence farming. Even in rich countries like the United States, cities are by far the most productive economic areas. Therefore, it is not clear we should try to prevent urbanization in LDCs.

If, however, we assume that we should try to prevent urbanization, then the solution would be to develop more in rural areas. People move to the cities because they want better lives. They do not see opportunities for advancement and wealth in the countryside. Therefore, they go to cities where they hope to find jobs. People also hope their children will be able to attend schools and gain the chance for better lives. 

If these are pull factors attracting migrants to cities, then the solution is to create similar pull factors in places other than cities. Governments would have to create good schools in rural areas. They would also have to build infrastructure in those areas so businesses could develop there. They might have to do things like give tax breaks to people who invest in such areas. By doing these things, the government might be able to create enough economic opportunities to keep people from migrating in large numbers to cities. 

In Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman, what does Ana assume about Kim when she sees her burying her seeds? How does Ana feel about digging up Kim’s...

In Chapter 2, Ana sees a girl with dark hair digging into the ground behind an old refrigerator in the lot on Gibb Street. Ana used to be a secretary for the Police Department and immediately becomes suspicious. She thinks that the girl is burying drugs, money, or a gun. Ana mentions that she thought about calling the police but decided to investigate herself. When Ana walks behind the refrigerator and begins to dig in the same location, she ends up digging up the bean seeds that Kim planted. Ana is shocked and upset at herself for digging up Kim's beans. Ana mentions that she felt like she read the girl's secret diary and had ripped out a page without meaning to. She then replants the beans and fills the soil back over them.

What factors play a role or influence children's behavior problems from strict parenting and how can they be reduced (or how does that affect them...

Research has shown that strict parenting actually results in worsening children's behavior rather than improving it. Children who are subjected to strict parenting do not learn how to regulate their own behavior, as their parents attempt to do it for them, and so children often overreact or react with anger if they have been subjected to this type of parenting. In addition, children often become depressed and anxious in these types of environments because they interpret their parents' messages to mean that they (the children) are bad. In addition, children subjected to strict parenting tend to lack self-esteem because they haven't been able to take control of their own behaviors, and these types of children can also turn to lying. These behaviors can continue into adolescence and adulthood. To reduce these types of factors, children need to be treated with empathy. While parents should not be overly permissive and allow children to do whatever they want, parents need to set firm limits in an empathic way that acknowledges children's feelings and that gives them some latitude to regulate their own emotions. 

Reference:

Cohen, Patricia, and Judith S. Brook. “The Reciprocal Influence of Punishment and Child Behavior Disorder.” In Coercion and Punishment in Long-Term Perspectives, edited by Joan McCord. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

How does Eckels react when he confronts the dinosaur?

In Ray Bradbury's story "A Sound of Thunder," when Eckels encounters the dinosaur, the normally garrulous man reacts with stunned surprise and fear.

He had been excited to hunt the great beast, having taken down large animals before as an excellent huntsman, but the sheer size of the Tyrannosaurus Rex makes Eckels fairly quake with fear. Even though he'd paid a steep price for the mission to kill this dinosaur--$10,000--upon actually seeing it, Eckels quickly decides to give up and run away:

"Why, why," Eckels twitched his mouth. "It could reach up and grab the moon." ... 

"It can't be killed," Eckels pronounced this verdict quietly, as if there could be no argument. He had weighed the evidence and this was his considered opinion. The rifle in his hands seemed a cap gun. "We were fools to come. This is impossible."

Eckels's reaction adds to the tension of the story, illustrating the incredible power and terror of the dinosaur. This is a man who has hunted and killed wild boar, elephants, buffalo, and even tigers. But the T. Rex is too much. It scares Eckels. He goes back into the time machine and just lies there, shivering, while the other men take down the T. Rex.

His foolish reaction also foreshadows the foolish error he's about to make. In his haste to hide himself in the time machine, Eckels steps off the path, changing history forever.

How did Mr. Otis humiliate the Canterville ghost?

Mr. Otis completely humiliates Sir Simon by not being afraid of the ghost at all.  

Sir Simon takes pride in the fact that he has been scaring owners of the Canterville house for years and years.  He believes that it will be equally easy to do against the Otis family.  Sir Simon's first attempt to do this occurs in section two of the story.  It's late at night, and the entire Otis family is asleep.  Sir Simon begins ghosting the halls and making noises with the chains that he is dragging with him.  Mr. Otis is more annoyed than anything else at having been roused from sleep.  Mr. Otis then goes and opens his door, and he is immediately confronted with the ghost of Sir Simon.  The image is quite terrifying to look at actually.  

Right in front of him he saw, in the wan moonlight, an old man of terrible aspect. His eyes were as red burning coals; long grey hair fell over his shoulders in matted coils; his garments, which were of antique cut, were soiled and ragged, and from his wrists and ankles hung heavy manacles and rusty gyves.

Personally, I'd be scared.  That's what Sir Simon expects too; however, Mr. Otis isn't frightened in the slightest.  Instead, Mr. Otis calmly asks Sir Simon to stop making so much noise.  He then hands the ghost some oil in order to quiet his chains.  At that, Mr. Otis closes the door and returns to bed. 

Sir Simon is annoyed and angered at Mr. Otis's actions, and Sir Simon is equally humiliated.  He had formulated a plot that he believed would surely work, and nothing of the sort happened.  

For a moment the Canterville ghost stood quite motionless in natural indignation; then, dashing the bottle violently upon the polished floor, he fled down the corridor, uttering hollow groans, and emitting a ghastly green light.

What style of poem is "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" by Edna St. Vincent Millay?

Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed and Where and Why" is a sonnet. A sonnet is a poem with fourteen lines; there are usually ten syllables in each line, and the poem is written in iambic pentameter.

Iambic pentameter refers to how a line of poetry is constructed. In a poem, each line consists of stressed and unstressed syllables: this is the meter of a poem. A foot is made up of either two of three syllables. If the foot has two syllables that proceed in an unstressed/stressed pattern, we call this an iamb. So, a line written in iambic pentameter will have five sets of unstressed and stressed syllables. Let's take a look at the first four lines of the sonnet in question:

What(unstressed) lips (stressed)/ my (unstressed) lips (stressed)/ have (unstressed) kissed (stressed),/ and (unstressed) where (stressed),/ and (unstressed) why (stressed),/

I have/ forgot/ten, and /what arms /have lain/

Under/ my head/ till morn/ing; but/ the rain/

Is full/ of ghosts/ tonight,/ that tap/ and sigh/

So, you can see there are five metrical feet in each line. Each line also proceeds in an unstressed/stressed pattern, which makes this a poem written in iambic pentameter.

Also, it looks like the poem in question is an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. The Italian sonnet is usually divided into an octave (with eight lines having a rhyme scheme of abbaabba) and a sestet (with six lines having a variable rhyme scheme of either cdecde, cdedce, cdcdcd, or another—the pattern is flexible).

Hope this helps!

What social and political attitudes or traditions does Jane Austen wish to change in Emma?

Jane Austen's politics are highly contested (was she high Tory or secret radical sympathizer: see Marilyn Butler on Austen as Tory and the new book by Helena Kelly: Jane Austen: The Secret Radical for Austen as subversive.) While her politics may be ambiguous, we can locate places in the social order that Austen critiques in Emma. 

Austen's text builds sympathy for the plight of poorer gentry women. While Miss Bates is seen through Emma's eyes as ridiculous, we as readers are also shown a woman trying to survive in reduced circumstances who has been rendered ridiculous by a society that looks down on older, poorer, unmarried women (incidentally, Austen herself a single woman, would have been about Miss Bates's age at the time she wrote Emma.) In having Mr. Knightley scold Emma, and in having Emma herself recognize and repent of her cruelty in making a rude comment to Miss Bates at Box Hill, Austen critiques the casual verbal savagery that can make life a misery for women on the social periphery. Her novel at least suggests changes in attitudes and practices.

In making Jane Fairfax a sympathetic character, which she is even as we see her refracted through Emma's eyes, Austen again critiques a society that doesn't take care of poor gentry woman of intelligence, beauty, talent, and grace. Jane's fate is to become a governess, a career which entails social humiliation and which Jane equates to a form of slavery. Jane is "saved" from governessing through marriage to frivolous Frank Churchill, but implicit in the novel is the lack of choice for a talented woman like Jane.

Finally, Austen critiques snobbery. Emma's snobbery in trying to prevent Harriet Smith from marrying the farmer Robert Martin could have had dire consequences for Harriet, an illegitimate child with little money, no connections, and few prospects. Luckily, it all works out for Harriet, but the reader can easily see, if Emma cannot, how snobbery could have ruined Harriet's prospects.

How does Waythorn portray himself in terms of his temperament and personality in Edith Wharton's short story "The Other Two"?

In Edith Wharton's short story "The Other Two," the protagonist Waythorn describes himself as having a rather stormy temperament, which means he is easily upset. Early in the story, he also refers to his sensibilities as "unstable" and later, after he begins feeling upset by the presence of Alice's ex-husbands, calls his sensibilities "womanly."

The word sensibilities refers to the ways in which our emotions respond to the things that go on around us; people with heightened sensibilities feel hurt very easily (Random House Dictionary). We particularly learn about Waythorn's stormy temperament and heightened sensibilities when he compares himself to his new bride, saying that her calmness and happy disposition were such a stark contrast to his own emotions that he found her attitude attractive:

His own life had been a gray one, from temperament rather than circumstance, and he had been drawn to [Alice] by the unperturbed gayety which kept her fresh and elastic.

Waythorn is also a very trusting and self-sacrificial man. We see his trusting nature when he agrees to let Alice's first husband, Haskett, visit their ill daughter at Waythorn's home. We see his self-sacrificial nature when he agrees to assist her second ex-husband, Varick, with a business matter. The problem is, the more he exposes himself to her ex-husbands, the more he sees that they aren't at all the men she had described them to be, which makes him begin to question her trustworthiness. The more he has these worries, the more he regrets having what he calls the "womanish sensibility which made him suffer so acutely from the grotesque chances of life."

In The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, how does Kiowa feel about Lavender's death?

In the story, Kiowa feels ambivalent about Lavender's death; he feels guilty that he can't seem to muster up any anger or sadness regarding his colleague's death.

The one thing he does feel is relief that he's still alive. This feeling of relief leaves him feeling even more guilty for what he considers his "unchristian" response to Lavender's death. In fact, at the time of Lavender's death, Kiowa admits that he had been surprised that Lavender had died so quickly. To his recollection, Lavender had just dropped dead, without drama and certainly without any indication that he had experienced pain.

Kiowa envies Lieutenant Cross for being able to grieve for Lavender's death. All Kiowa feels is relief that he's still alive. He admits that, rather than feeling sad, he's more aware of the pleasure of living than ever before.

Want-Got GapConsumers often experience what’s called a want-got gap, which describes the discrepancy between their actual situation and their...

The want-got gap is simply the difference between what you have right now, and what you'd like to have. It's important to understand that in this sense "what you'd like to have" is limited by your perception and imagination. In some sense human beings have vast, perhaps unlimited desires (I'd like to fly through the air and visit Mars on the weekends), but in the sense intended by the want-got gap, our desires are actually quite limited, and only entail the things we actually desire to have right now and think we have a good chance of obtaining.

Much marketing is based on trying to increase the perceived want-got gap in order to motivate consumers to buy. By increasing the want-got gap between your product and the alternatives, you can increase the price at which your product will sell.

Let's consider three types of products, which should give us a good range of possibilities: Water, clothing, and cars.

Water is absolutely a need. Humans need a certain amount of water to survive, and having more than that isn't very useful to us (at least for drinking; we also use water for many other things). It is also generally fairly cheap with modern infrastructure, and in most places is of sufficient quality that people are quite satisfied with it. The want-got gap for water is quite small.

Companies such as Nestle have successfully expanded it a little bit, by pushing bottled water as somehow superior to tap water and therefore worthy of its much higher price. But even then, it's rare to find anyone who is willing to pay more than a few dollars for a bottle of water. Likewise, it would be irrational to spend a long time trying to decide what kind of water to buy, because water is pretty much water and we're dealing with small amounts of money.

Now consider clothing. Clothing is sometimes a need---many climates require clothing to keep warm, and at least in most human societies, nudity is strongly frowned upon. But clothing is really mostly a want; people don't stop at getting the bare minimum of clothing for their climate and culture, but instead purchase clothes they like or clothes that project a certain image. This creates a space for a want-got gap.

And indeed, some clothing manufacturers, such as Armani, are able to command large prices by expanding the want-got gap very wide; when consumers are convinced that their lives would be dramatically improved by this article of clothing, they are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for it even though it very likely cost only a few dollars to produce. It's also worth spending some time searching for the right clothes, because you will wear them many times or to important occasions and you may be spending noticeable sums of money.

Now we come to cars. Cars aren't really a need; people have lived without them for millennia. They could be a want, and in many cases they do significantly increase welfare. But they are probably best conceived as an opportunity: Cars allow you to do things you couldn't otherwise do. This is also consistent with the fact that cars are durable, depreciating physical capital---making them a bit like factories or robots, which are most definitely opportunities.

The want-got gap for cars is usually not very large proportionally, but cars are so expensive that in absolute terms it can be quite significant. Suppose that consumers would be willing to pay 5% more to get a better car. It's common for a car to cost over $20,000; so even a 5% increase in price is on the order of $1,000. It's well worth spending a long time researching cars before you buy them, as the differences in price and quality will have a large effect on your life.

Car companies such as Ford are also constantly adding new features, many of which most people would never even think of; this is also an effort to exploit the want-got gap. By introducing side airbags or adaptive cruise control, car companies can effectively create a desire that consumers never would have had before; maybe on some level they'd have liked to do that, but they didn't even know it was an option, so it never occurred to them to seek it out. These new features that are present on new cars but not old ones allow Ford to maintain a large want-got gap and thereby achieve higher profits.

Explain the quote "There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face." How does it relate to Lady Macbeth in Macbeth?

The quote you reference is originally spoken by King Duncan in Act 1, Scene 4 of Shakespeare's Macbeth. In context, the quote references how the former Thane of Cawdor fooled Duncan and betrayed him. Basically, in this quote Duncan is acknowledging how difficult it is to know what's going on in someone else's mind based on their outward appearance. In other words, it's easy for someone to hide his or her real feelings in order to betray someone.

This quote could certainly apply to Lady Macbeth on multiple occasions, as she proves adept at hiding her true feelings for most of the play (until, of course, she's goes crazy and dies). The most obvious example of this is Act 2, Scene 3, at which point King Duncan's murder is discovered. At this point, we know Lady Macbeth had a role to play in the murder. That said, you wouldn't guess it from the way she pretends to be surprised, and then emotionally/physically weakened by the grisly "revelation." Indeed, Lady Macbeth carefully hides her guilty conscience by pretending she is too "weaK" to deal with the news of Duncan's murder. As such, at this point in the play Lady Macbeth's outward appearance certainly masks her "mind's construction."

How were black women's rights affected by the actions of the white community during the 1960s in The Help by Kathryn Stockett?

In The Help, the white community reacts to the growing Civil Rights movement by continuing to exercise segregation and even trying to strengthen the segregation laws already in effect in Jackson, Mississippi. For example, Hilly Holbrook tries to maintain the hierarchy in which whites have more power by starting a campaign for whites to build outdoor bathrooms for their African-American maids. She claims that this campaign is to ensure white people's health, as African-Americans carry germs that are harmful to whites. Of course, this campaign is motivated more by Hilly's desire for power than by science, as African-American domestics cook white people's food and tend to their babies (work that Hilly does nothing to stop).

In addition, Hilly spreads rumors about maids, such as Minny, who speak back to her. Finally, Skeeter's mother, Mrs. Phelan, fires her long-time maid, Constantine, when Constantine's daughter insists on eating with the white women in her house. While the Civil Rights movement promises to bring eventual change to Jackson, the white community, as a whole, intends on maintaining its power, and the rights of the African-American community are curtailed as a result. They have little freedom to decide who they want to work for, and they are restricted in what they can say in front of their white employers if they hope to keep their jobs. 

What great deeds did King Arthur achieve in his life, and what was his greatest legacy?

King Arthur is a semi-historical figure who, if he did exist, has been built up through folklore and literature into a foundational narrative of British identity. In some legends, he is a military leader, credited with defending the British Isles from Saxon invaders from Europe. In others, he is a king, his royalty bestowed upon him when he pulled a sword out of a stone. During the late fifth century, he fought in many battles and was rumored to be invincible. A number of poems describe his prowess as a warrior, though much of the Arthur mythology draws on earlier Gaelic, Anglo, and even Latin myth.

Perhaps Arthur's greatest achievement and legacy is that he was able to defend Britain from so many invading forces! Not only the Saxons, but also magical creatures from the Welsh underworld and the sea. Who knows- without Arthur, maybe today Britain would be populated by wyverns and hellhounds?

What is the narrative point of view of "Games at Twilight" by Anita Desai? How does this point of view influence your understanding of the main...

The narrative point of view for this story is always third person; however, the third person narrative voice does shift from a third person omniscient narration to a third person limited narration.  

The story begins in the omniscient point of view, and then the story shifts to the limited point of view a little bit after the game of hide-and-seek begins.  At that moment, the reader is taken into the limited perspective of Ravi. We only know what he knows and sees what he sees.  The shift allows readers to more closely experience Ravi's fears of Raghu and deep desires about winning the game and becoming a champion for a bit.  The narrative shift also lets readers really feel the crushing disappointment that Ravi experiences at the end of the story. 

How do changes in the culture and setting in the "voodoo Macbeth" adaptation affect the story?

The story of Macbeth as portrayed in the "Voodoo Macbeth" adaptation from 1936 was essentially unchanged. The setting of this famous adaptation was Haiti after the revolution that freed that nation from France, and this adaptation (which was directed by Orson Welles and produced as part of a New Deal initiative) was significant because the actors were all black. The actors were dressed in period costumes instead of Scottish garb appropriate for the original, but what was perhaps the most important change was that, instead of witches, Macbeth was advised by Voudou priestesses, whose prophecies were accompanied by drumming and other accoutrements of Haitian culture—or Haitian culture as the play's producers imagined it. The central themes of ambition, supernatural forces, and fate and free will remained intact—if reimagined—in a new setting.

With what literary movement is the book Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang associated?

Red Scarf Girl is a form of literary memoir. The author, Ji-Li Jiang, is writing about her own experiences during the Cultural Revolution, which took place in China in the mid 1960s to mid 1970s. The story begins as the Cultural Revolution is starting in China, and the author narrates her experiences dealing with the events of the Cultural Revolution as they affect her. For example, the author is impressed with the dancers of the Liberation Army that come to her school, but she realizes over time that she cannot take part in the Liberation Army because of her relatively upper-class background. The book is a literary memoir because it follows the narrative of a story and contains the types of themes and literary devices that a fictional book does. The book could also be considered a form of historical memoir, as it discusses events in history and discusses how those events affected the author.

What does Miss Emily want the arsenic for in "A Rose for Emily"?

Miss Emily purchases the arsenic to kill Homer Barron, a Yankee working man who has come to town to work on the paving of sidewalks in the town.  He is not someone whom Miss Emily's father would have approved of, finding such a person beneath her.  But Homer seems to court Emily, and they go riding together on Sundays.  Emily intends to marry him, and she buys a monogrammed toilet set and some men's clothing for him.  The people of the town think that she will be able to persuade him, although he is said not to be a marrying kind of man. He is seen going into Miss Emily's house at the kitchen door at twilight one evening and is never seen again. A short time later a bad smell begins to emanate from Miss Emily's house, and after a consultation with town officials, four men go to the house and sprinkle  lime about to get rid of whatever the smell is. At the end of the story, after Miss Emily dies and the townspeople go into the house, they find Homer, or what is left of Homer, dead in Miss Emily's bed, having clearly died a very long time ago, with the toilet set intact but tarnished and he in the nightshirt she had purchased for him. His position is such that he would be embracing someone lying next to him, and the people found a gray hair, clearly one of Miss Emily's, on the pillow next to him. 

What is never made clear, really, is whether Miss Emily kills Homer because he does not want to marry her and thus she can hang onto him forever like this, or she kills him because he does not want to marry her and this is her revenge as a spurned woman.  There are other possibilities as well.  Her complete denial of her father's death suggests that she cannot bear to be left at all, and so perhaps she loves Homer but kills him simply to preserve him.  There is also the possibility that Miss Emily, having been raised without a mother and apparently completely sheltered by her father, finds her wedding night so shocking that she decides to kill this man who has turned into what she perceives to be a beast.  The fact that Miss Emily seems to have slept all these years in the embrace of a dead man certainly establishes that her motives are not sane. 

What are some examples of Aside in Romeo and Juliet?

An Aside is when a character in a play speaks to the audience though there are other characters on stage.  The other characters do not hear the aside.  It reveals the character's private thoughts.  The asides in Romeo and Juliet are often particularly tense and emotional.

Here are some examples.

• In Act 1, Scene 5, Juliet has just fallen in love with Romeo at her father's party.  As he and the others are leaving, she tries to find out who he is by asking her nurse.  When the nurse tells her that he is "a Montague,/The only son of your great enemy," Juliet comments to herself,  "My only love sprung from my only hate./Too early seen unknown, and known too late./Prodigious birth of love it is to me/That I must love a loathed enemy."  Unlike most asides, this one is overheard by the alert Nurse, who asks, "What's this? What's this?"  Juliet replies, "A rhyme I learned even now of one I danced withal."  It is poignant that Juliet has to lie to cover up her aside.  It also shows how little privacy she gets in her home. 


• All of Romeo's lines in the beginning of Act 2 Scene 2 are asides, until we reach line 48, when he starts intentionally speaking loudly enough for Juliet to hear him.  So the speech that begins, "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?" is all one long aside.  Even when Romeo says, "O speak again, bright angel," he is actually talking to himself, expressing his own hopes, not speaking for Juliet to hear.  Asides are usually short comments, and this speech is an exception.  


• In the same scene, after the two have spoken and Juliet goes back inside, Romeo has another aside: "O blessed, blessed night.  I am afeared/Being in night, all this is but a dream,/Too flattering sweet to be substantial." (line 138 - 140)


• In Act 3, Scene 1, Mercutio has just been killed by Tybalt.  When Benvolio brings Romeo the news, Romeo comments, "This black day's fate on more days doth depend:/This but begins the woe others must end."  This could be played as a comment to Benvolio or as an aside.


• In Act 3 Scene 2, Juliet is waiting impatiently for news and the Nurse bursts in saying incoherently, "He's dead, he's dead!"  Juliet, thinking that she is saying Romeo is dead, remarks, "Can heaven be so envious?"  This is overheard by the Nurse, but it may be an aside, spoken not really to the Nurse but to herself.  She has a similar line a little later: "O break, my heart. ..." (line 57)


• Juliet has an aside in Act 3, Scene 5, line 66 - 68: "Who is't that calls?  It is my lady mother ..."


• In Act 4, Scene 5, when Paris comes to the Capulets' house expecting to marry Juliet, only to find her apparently dead, he says, "Have I thought long to see this morning's face,/And doth it give me such a sight as this?" (lines 43 - 44)

What are some statements and remarks of Crooks and Curley's wife that relate to personal alienation in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men?

Both Crooks and Curley's wife have been marginalized as they possess single identities that differ from all the other people on the ranch.

Within the setting of the 1930's, Crooks finds himself subjected to the racial bias of this era. Even though he is probably better educated than many of the other ranch hands, he is made to live in the barn with the mules and horses, and is subjected to verbal abuse and being called pejorative racial names. In Chapter 2, for instance, the old swamper named Candy tells George and Lennie that the boss has been angered by their late arrival and has yelled at the stable buck:

"He sure was burned....Come right in when we was eatin' breakfast and says, 'Where the hell's them new men?' An' he give the stable buck hell, too."

"Give the stable buck hell?" [George] asked.

"Sure. Ya see the stable buck's a nigger."

"Nigger, huh?"

Yeah....The boss gives him hell when he's mad."

In Chapter 4, Lennie enters the barn while the other men and George have gone to town. There he wanders around and finds Crooks in the harness room. Crooks lives in this barn because he is not allowed in the bunkhouse and has a bed made from a long box filled with straw. Seeing Lennie, Crooks tries to prevent him from entering, but the child-like man does not understand why Crooks is unfriendly. Crooks provides Lennie the reason by saying that Lennie should not enter his room since he is not wanted in the bunkhouse. When Lennie asks why Crooks is kept out, Crooks tells him,

"'Cause I'm black. They play cards in there, but I can't play because I'm black. They say I stink. Well, I tell you, you all of you stink to me."

Further, Crooks complains of his alienation: "If I say something, why it's just a nigger sayin' it."
As he talks with Lennie, Crooks also reveals his loneliness:

"A guy needs somebody--to be near him....A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody....I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick...."

"Maybe if he sees somethin', he don't know whether it's right or not. He can't turn to some other guy and ast him if he sees it, too. He can't tell. He got nothing to measure by."

Later, when Crooks tries to get Curley's wife to leave after she appears in the barn, he tells her she has no right to come into his room. And, he adds that he will tell the boss to not let her come into the barn. These remarks anger Curley's wife and she retorts venomously,

"Listen, Nigger....You know what I can do to you if you open your trap?....I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny."

Knowing that this could happen to him, Crooks, must become submissive. So, he replies, "Yes, ma'am."

• Curley's wife

In Chapter 5, Curley's wife enters the barn and finds Lennie in a stall covering his dead puppy. When she kneels in the hay next to him, Lennie objects, "George says I ain't to have nothing to do with you--talk to you or nothing." Curley's wife tells Lennie that the men are all at a horseshoe tournament, suggesting that no one will know if he talks to her.

"Why can't I talk to you? I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely....You can talk to people, but I can't talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad. How'd you like not to talk to anybody?"

When Lennie insists that he cannot talk to her, Curley's wife becomes angry.

"Wha's the matter with me?....Ain't I got a right to talk to nobody? Whatta they think I am, anyways?....I tell you, I ain't used to livin' like this."

She goes on to tell Lennie that she lived in Salinas, implying that she was around people before marrying Curley and suffers now from loneliness. 

Clearly, the alienation of Crooks and Curley's wife both has caused them to become resentful of others and greatly dissatisfied in their lives.

What does the concept of “leadership” mean to Caesar and how did he lose his role as leader?

Caesar feels that no one should question his decisions, and he loses his role as leader when he is assassinated by a group of senators.

Julius Caesar believed that since he was the ruler of Rome, he was in charge.  No one should question his decisions.  His leadership style as presented by Shakespeare could best be described as arrogant.  This is why the senators became nervous.  They used as evidence the fact that Caesar marched an army on Rome, which was illegal, and fought a civil war with Pompey, which was not uncommon but definitely unpopular.  He was considered too dangerous to leave in power by some of the senators who formed a conspiracy against him.

The incident in the senate building on the day Caesar is assassinated perfectly demonstrates Caesar’s leadership style.  Caesar has banished Publius Cimber, and he refuses to change his mind.  He seems confused and frustrated with the senators for even suggesting it, responding with arrogant determination.

CASSIUS

Pardon, Caesar; Caesar, pardon:
As low as to thy foot doth Cassius fall,
To beg enfranchisement for Publius Cimber.

CAESAR

I could be well moved, if I were as you:
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament. (Act 3, Scene 1) 

The plea to get Publius Cimber pardoned is actually just a ruse to get close to Caesar.  The senators gather around them, begging him to reconsider.  They then each stab him, ending with Brutus.  This is how Caesar loses his position as leader.  

If Caesar had not been so determined to get and keep power, and so insistent on maintaining complete control, he might not have met such an untimely end.  Even for ancient Rome, Caesar’s assassination was particularly violent and showy.

What is the hydrogen spectrum?

The hydrogen spectrum is a series of spectral lines with specific wavelengths emitted by atomic hydrogen as a result of electron transitions between two energy levels in the atom.

The Bohr’s model of the hydrogen atom explains the spectrum of hydrogen. Bohr’s explanation is that when an electron from one orbit transitions into another orbit of lower energy, it emits energy equal to the difference between the energy of the two orbits in the form of small packets of light known as photons. Each transition of an electron gives off a line in the spectrum.

The emission spectrum of hydrogen is best explained by describing what happens when electric current passes through hydrogen gas in a glass tube at a low pressure. It gives off a blue light which splits into four narrow bands of bright light of specific wavelengths and colours when passed through a prism.

What are the themes and characteristics of Modernism?

It's hard to establish exactly when Modernism began, but most scholars argue that the Modernist period began in the late 19th century and reached the end of its height by World War II. Some of Modernism's most famous authors include Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

In many ways, Modernism was a response to the influx of the revolutionary ideas of thinkers such as Darwin, Freud, and Nietzsche. Altogether, these individuals presented ideas that deconstructed important traditional foundations of society, such as religion, ethics, sexuality, and even the identity of the individual. Additionally, the technological advancements and chaos of World War I caused the widespread doubt that humanity was actually progressing; indeed, after the unprecedented violence of the war, many people began to believe that human society was descending into turmoil and meaninglessness. 

The Modernist movement began in the capitals of Europe, and it was concerned with exploring themes of alienation and dislocation in society, and with the struggle to find meaning and identity in a rapidly changing world. Artistic techniques of the period include Impressionism, Cubism, stream of consciousness narrative and more, and, through these techniques, artists sought to explore the fragmentary, suddenly messy nature of modern life. In general, much of Modernism grapples with the sense that, with the loss of traditional values, some vital aspect of human society was also lost. As such, much of the art and literature produced during this period incorporates the sensation of wandering and searching for some kind of value. It's hardly surprising, therefore, that Stein referred to some of the most prominent Modernists as "the lost generation."

How could Jeanette's mother's knowledge of and attitude toward the natural world be characterized in The Glass Castle?

In The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls writes about her childhood spent moving around frequently, during which she spent a large part of her time homeless. Her parents had strange ideas about the world and the space they occupied within it, sometimes not even realizing or admitting to themselves that they were homeless or that such a lifestyle was detrimental to their children's lives. In fact, according to Jeanette's mother, the world is just full of rules and boundaries that are meant to be broken. Her ideals could be considered "noncomformist." As an artist, she sees the beauty in everything, even the most gnarled trees, and spends most of her time painting and drawing instead of making money to spend on food for her children.

Rose Mary Walls is a free spirit who is transfixed by the beauty and wildness of nature. Her parents met while cliff-diving into clear blue waters, and Jeanette recalls a time when she was a child and they were driving through the desert. Her mother became obsessed with a Joshua tree and insisted on painting it, saying the tree needed the wind to survive. This is similar to her nature as well. She wanted to lead a bohemian, nomadic lifestyle, and valued the self-sufficiency that could be found in nature; it was something she strived to cultivate in others. For her, the chaotic aspect of nature is something to aspire to and find comfort in because it breeds resiliency. 

What is the relationship between Charlie, Dr. Strauss, and Dr. Nemur in the play "Flowers for Algernon"?

Dr. Strauss and Dr. Nemur developed a way to improve the cognitive abilities of animals. They had successfully tried their experiment on a rat named Algernon and wanted to test the same on a human subject.

Charlie was intellectually challenged and attended Miss. Kinnian’s class at the adult school. He enrolled himself with the aim of improving his reading and writing abilities.

Dr. Strauss learned about Charlie through Miss. Kinnian. He recommended him as a test subject to Dr. Nemur. However, Dr. Nemur was reluctant to accept Charlie as the subject for their experiment. Dr. Strauss convinced him, and Charlie had the operation to improve his cognitive abilities. After the surgery, Charlie’s intelligence improved. However, the development was not permanent, and Charlie regressed to his original condition.

Can you help me scan "The West Wind" by John Masefield?

Although the poem does seem to have an inconsistent number of syllables in each line, the scansion of its rhythms and meter are actually fairly consistent if you emphasize the appropriate words. Sometimes with a poem like this, you have to read it aloud to find the appropriate emphasis, as it does not just fall in line with the number of syllables. The emphasis in terms of scansion is on the words that create the image or meaning in each line. Modern poetry often does not conform precisely to these meters in the same way poetry from earlier centuries does.

If one considers Masefield may be paying homage to Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ode to the West Wind," which is written in iambic pentameter, then we can see Masefield's poem may be scanned as if it is also in iambic pentameter.

In this way, we san see a reading of the first line of Masefield's poem should emphasize the words "warm," "west," "full," and "cries." This gives the poem an iambic meter and feeling and is appropriate to its structure.

I read that interference happens for "monochromatic light" so does interference occur with white light even though it consists of many wavelengths?

Sure it does!

The reason we say it happens with monochromatic light is the formulas work well with monochromatic light. The interference bands are dependent on the wavelength of light passing through the slits. If you have a range of wavelengths passing through the slits, you will have a range of interference patterns, and the formulas you use would have a third variable.

Rainbows are similar to white light interference patterns. In a rainbow, white light passes through droplets of water acting as prisms, splitting the light into it's component colors. When white light passes through a slit, the interference patterns are all shifted slightly depending on the individual wavelength considered to be passing through.

Lets say you have a slit some distance from a wall, and lights are passing through it. Say you shine a red light through, and on the far wall you get a space 1 cm wide between the bands. Then, you swap the red bulb in your light with a green one, and repeat the experiment. Now, the bands are a different distance apart, say 1.07 cm. What do you think would happen if you shone both at the same time? You would see the two wavelengths produce their two spectral patterns. White light is just a wide range of visible lights, so this theory would extend there.

How can the title of the story "The Canterville Ghost" be justified?

I believe that the question is asking why this story is called "The Canterville Ghost" instead of having some other title. I understand the question, and it is a good question because the title of the story could absolutely be focused on the Otis family. The title could have been something like "The Otis Haunting."

"The Canterville Ghost" as a title makes the most sense to me because Sir Simon's ghost is the most interesting character in the story. The Otis family is hilarious, but ultimately the Otises are flat characters. They are the same throughout the story, and that is also true of Virginia Otis. Having the title focus on the Canterville ghost helps focus the reader's attention on that character. Sir Simon is by far the most interesting and dynamic character in the story because readers get to see a wide range of his emotions. We see him exuberant and overconfident in his abilities to scare off new homeowners. We see him angry at the Otis family and even scared of the Otis family. By the end of the story, most readers will even sympathize with Sir Simon's situation. The title, "The Canterville Ghost," is an effective title because it is a short, to-the-point title that correctly focuses reader attention on the most important character.

What were some immediate effects and long term effects of the Protestant Reformation?

The immediate effect of the Protestant Reformation is that it led to a schism that culminated in the creation of several new denominations within western Christianity. The teachings of Martin Luther and others were reflected in the establishment of new churches throughout Western Europe in locations like Germany and Switzerland. This meant that the Catholic Church lost a great deal of political power, especially in the collection of principalities and city-states known as the Holy Roman Empire, and of course in England, where Henry VIII formally separated the kingdom from the Church in 1534.

Some of the long-term effects of the Reformation included the outbreak of religious wars in the Holy Roman Empire and France that spanned much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These included the Thirty Years' War, which devastated the region. But the Reformation, because Protestants emphasized the primacy of Scriptural authority, also fostered literacy in Western Europe. Above all, it led to the flowering of dozens of Protestant sects that changed modern Christianity forever. 

Solve cos^2(x)=sin(x)

First we must get everything in the same terms. Here I'll choose sin(X) because it is the easiest. So we need to use a trig identity to substitute for `cos^2(X).`

`Cos^2(X)=sin(X)`

`1-sin^2(X)=sin(X)`

Then we can treat this like a quadratic equation. So we will move all the terms to one side and have our equation equal to 0.

`1-sin^2(X)-sin(X)=0`

Now we can rearrange the equation so that it is in standard quadratic equation form. But instead of having the equation in terms of X, we have an equation in terms of sin(X).

`-sin^2(X)-sin(X)+1=0`

`-1(sin(X))^2-1(sin(X))+1=0`

Next, just as we could solve for x in a quadratic equation, we can solve for sin(X) in this equation using the quadratic formula.  

`sin(X)=(+1+-sqrt((-1)^2-4(-1)(1)))/(2(-1))`

`sin(X)=(1+-sqrt(5))/-2`

`sin(X)~~-1.618 or 0.618`

As usual with the quadratic formula, we have two possible values.  We will then need to find the degree measure X by finding the arcsine of the values we found above.  But because sine values must fall between -1 and 1, we can throw out -1.618 as a possible value. Thus we only need to use the value 0.618 as our sine value.

`sin(X)~~0.618`

`X~~sin^-1(0.618)`

`X~~38.17^o`  

 Note that this is not the only degree measure that will give this sign value. There is also a degree measure in Quadrant II that will have the same sine value. We can find that value like so:

`X~~180-38.17=141.83^o`

There are also infinitely many other degree measures that will have this sign value. Every time you move around the unit circle and come upon these degree measures in Quadrants I and II, the sine value will be the same. So all possible values of X are:

`X~~38.17+-360n and X~~141.83+-360n`

In 1984, how does the Party control the minds of its citizens?

In 1984, the Party controls the minds of its citizens in two ways. The first of these is through propaganda: it controls of the flow and content of information and erases any aspects which portray it in an unfavourable light. We see this in Part One, Chapter Four, for instance, when Winston erases a "pledge" made by the Party stating that the chocolate ration would not be reduced. In its place, he writes that the ration will have to be reduced "sometime in April" in preparation for a forthcoming reduction from "thirty grammes to twenty."

Additionally, the Party uses violence to control the minds of its citizens. This job is carried out by the Thought Police who imprison thought criminals (people who criticise the Party) in the Ministry of Truth. From Winston's experience in Part Three, we see that the Party uses torture and Room 101 to make people believe what it tells them and, ultimately, to "love Big Brother."