Exam 4: Critical Analysis & Reasoning Skills

Passage Rhetorical questions with an end purpose can be propositioned with the intention of challenging curricular stratagem, particularly in the name of educational progress.  "Should we teach literature in our college classrooms?" or "Do we have an ethical obligation to teach humanities to the next generation of scholars?" are the sorts of enquiries that can set precedence in academic circles, providing fodder for discussion on implementing the best instructional tactics in the imminent restructuring of scholastic environments.  One particular issue in academia that is currently under deliberation is the justification for literary study in the classroom.So why study literature?  First, research has shown that studying the likes of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Dickens can generate feelings of human connectedness, an essential component for fulfilled living, social stimulation, and a long and healthy existence.  Immersive or "deep" reading of a literary piece serves as a meditation on, an excavation of, and a careful examination of the ubiquitous sociocultural ideas connecting the worlds in which both the author and reader reside.  One study on connectedness also found that emotionally compaginated individuals live longer than those who do not exhibit similar closeness with other humans.  Taken together, it can be surmised that "deep readers" may have a superior ability to understand and empathize socially by viewing the world through the differing perspectives of others, enhancing the potential for human connectivity.Second, it may be beneficial to recall our literary past in its truest form, the written word, over the superfluity of technological representations of ancient texts.  For instance, Shakespeare's body of work has been reduced to two-minute self-produced video clips found on the Internet, a valuable teaching tool for younger students with ever-shortening attention spans but one that lamentably excludes the essential beauty of the original prose.  The writings hold the intended "environmental literary print" up to the light, allowing readers to gain a valuable snapshot of history that cannot be substituted.  As our society continues to advance technologically, we can nevertheless find existential value in remembering our past.Third, if we could measure the unbridled joy felt upon discovering a forgotten text lying on the shelf, we might shift our focus from an extrinsic value of literature to an intrinsic one; that is, the written text is prized due to its ability to incite felicitousness, laughter, woefulness, and a myriad of emotions that make us inherently human.  As George Eliot writes in the canonical The Mill on the Floss, "We can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive.  There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them."  This exemplifies the human condition that strives toward fulfillment at our core psyche, a sentiment perhaps best expressed in the written language itself.Lastly, there is much to be gained from pedagogical models of studying literature:  women's studies teaches the value of gender equality, cultural studies intrinsically teaches less ethnocentrism and more tolerance, and the reader-response theory teaches that each individual response has value based on unique and subjective human experiences, to name a few.In certain higher education communities, there has been a grassroots movement gaining some traction in favor of removing humanities requirements from the core teaching curriculum, yet the lifelong consequences of doing so may not be quantifiable.  The humanities professors who protest silently, hoping that their colleagues will see the merit in studying literature as requisite, must remain reticent no more.  Without literary study to instill in us the value of the human experience, we may willingly sacrifice more than just coursework:  we may be on the verge of surrendering our human spirit. -Which of the following statements, if true, would most directly challenge the author's claims regarding the literary past?

Passage Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her) own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self." -The main point of Paragraph 3 is best described by which of the following?

Passage Evil can most accurately be defined as the direct antithesis of good.  However, when a human situation does not lend itself to clear designations of ultimate good and ultimate evil, or of right and wrong, then the best that one can hope for is to be able to make an informed decision about which course of action is "more right" and which is "more wrong."Consider the hypothetical case of Dr. Jones, who, in discovering the antidote to a poison (Poison H) has so far concocted only a single vial.  Now suppose that six citizens have drunk from a well whose water has been contaminated with Poison H, but Citizen A has consumed an inordinate volume of the contaminated water.  Accordingly, the doctor has only enough of the antidote to save either Citizen A or the five other citizens.It may seem clear that a doctor could not justifiably allocate the entirety of an antidote to preserving one citizen's life at the expense of losing five others.  However, suppose that Citizen A is the only patient currently present in the doctor's clinic, as the remaining patients are being transferred to Dr. Jones' facility by their respective physicians.  Citizen A is, in fact, Dr. Jones' longtime patient.  The doctor must therefore decide between two exigencies:  to save his own patient's life or to await the arrival of the five remaining citizens.Would Dr. Jones be acting unethically in sacrificing Citizen A given the prospect of administering the antidote to the remaining citizens in time?  This dilemma asks the judicious individual to take into account additional factors that might encumber his or her ability to save the citizens who have not yet arrived.  One should consider, for instance, how long each patient can survive without the antidote.  Unfortunately, no one has a crystal ball to predict future events.  A decision must be made in conjunction with the information available at the time.With this in mind, one may argue that the determination of good versus evil in making a decision lies in the doctor's motivations as he considers the consequences of his impending actions.  Imagine Dr. Jones' nurse exclaiming, "But the doctor cannot make an objective comparison between the lives of other citizens and his own patient!"  Yet, perhaps the doctor would be selfishly inclined to save Citizen A, as Citizen A is the only one whose death would be considered a grievous personal loss.But are such selfish human instincts then to be labeled as evil?  The same propensities labeled as selfish underlie characteristics classified as decent human virtues, such as compassion, empathy, and loyalty.  There are particular circumstances in which the doctor would indeed be remiss to the point of what could be argued as evil-as in cases where he opts to dismiss or distrust his individual conscience.  Consider the case in which he doubts his ability to arrive at a judicious conclusion and abdicates his responsibility for making this grave decision to the nurse.  Or consider the case in which he concludes that it is indeed more valiant to save the five citizens, yet fails to act on his decision out of personal anguish at losing Citizen A or to put an end to the ordeal.In such circumstances, the decision between right and wrong, or the moral dilemma, escalates into what is more accurately a personal determination of good and evil.  In this way, the relative construct of right and wrong, as determined by one's best attempts at logic and sense, must be subordinated to a moral imperative that may be said to be absolute:  namely, that one must abide by an internal commitment to what one has reasoned to be the right decision and follow a corresponding course of action in the allotted time. -Which of the following conclusions would be most in accordance with the ideas expressed in the passage?

Passage Rhetorical questions with an end purpose can be propositioned with the intention of challenging curricular stratagem, particularly in the name of educational progress.  "Should we teach literature in our college classrooms?" or "Do we have an ethical obligation to teach humanities to the next generation of scholars?" are the sorts of enquiries that can set precedence in academic circles, providing fodder for discussion on implementing the best instructional tactics in the imminent restructuring of scholastic environments.  One particular issue in academia that is currently under deliberation is the justification for literary study in the classroom.So why study literature?  First, research has shown that studying the likes of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Dickens can generate feelings of human connectedness, an essential component for fulfilled living, social stimulation, and a long and healthy existence.  Immersive or "deep" reading of a literary piece serves as a meditation on, an excavation of, and a careful examination of the ubiquitous sociocultural ideas connecting the worlds in which both the author and reader reside.  One study on connectedness also found that emotionally compaginated individuals live longer than those who do not exhibit similar closeness with other humans.  Taken together, it can be surmised that "deep readers" may have a superior ability to understand and empathize socially by viewing the world through the differing perspectives of others, enhancing the potential for human connectivity.Second, it may be beneficial to recall our literary past in its truest form, the written word, over the superfluity of technological representations of ancient texts.  For instance, Shakespeare's body of work has been reduced to two-minute self-produced video clips found on the Internet, a valuable teaching tool for younger students with ever-shortening attention spans but one that lamentably excludes the essential beauty of the original prose.  The writings hold the intended "environmental literary print" up to the light, allowing readers to gain a valuable snapshot of history that cannot be substituted.  As our society continues to advance technologically, we can nevertheless find existential value in remembering our past.Third, if we could measure the unbridled joy felt upon discovering a forgotten text lying on the shelf, we might shift our focus from an extrinsic value of literature to an intrinsic one; that is, the written text is prized due to its ability to incite felicitousness, laughter, woefulness, and a myriad of emotions that make us inherently human.  As George Eliot writes in the canonical The Mill on the Floss, "We can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive.  There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them."  This exemplifies the human condition that strives toward fulfillment at our core psyche, a sentiment perhaps best expressed in the written language itself.Lastly, there is much to be gained from pedagogical models of studying literature:  women's studies teaches the value of gender equality, cultural studies intrinsically teaches less ethnocentrism and more tolerance, and the reader-response theory teaches that each individual response has value based on unique and subjective human experiences, to name a few.In certain higher education communities, there has been a grassroots movement gaining some traction in favor of removing humanities requirements from the core teaching curriculum, yet the lifelong consequences of doing so may not be quantifiable.  The humanities professors who protest silently, hoping that their colleagues will see the merit in studying literature as requisite, must remain reticent no more.  Without literary study to instill in us the value of the human experience, we may willingly sacrifice more than just coursework:  we may be on the verge of surrendering our human spirit. -Which of the following statements can be considered the central thesis of the passage?

Passage At the forefront of the modernist poetry movement were T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and others, such as Ezra Pound, whose injunction, "Make it new!" characterized their artistic approach.  Hindered by the same internal conflict plaguing many intellectuals within the cultural upheavals of the time, these poets felt, on one level, that old linguistic certainties had evaporated and new forms must be embraced.  Yet many of them, particularly the later modernist poets, maintained a sentimental attachment to all that had been lost from the cultural certitude of earlier eras, their despondency reflected in much of their work.  At the periphery of the movement were E. E. Cummings and Robert Frost, who were named among modernist poets largely for the chronological classification of their poetry and not necessarily for their style or means of artistic production.A self-titled "poet" and "painter," Cummings was beyond his time in his efforts to innovate.  He would become well known for his erratic applications of punctuation and syntax, and, later, for his visual configurations of words.  Much of Cummings' writing also used idiosyncratic similes and metaphors.  This style, which later evolved to include symbolism and allegory, caused even some of the most progressive modernists to dismiss his work as eccentric, self-indulgent, and lacking depth.  However, as a quintessential dissenter, Cummings remained unaffected by the reactions of his contemporaries and focused more on creating a graphic effect with words.To Cummings, the artist was not one who discerns or describes, but one who feels.  He often contrasted the "doing" of others-scientists in particular-to the "being" of the artist.  Compared to what he defined as the "nonartist," Cummings held that the artist must be original, self-reliant, and free to live according to his or her own truth.  For Cummings, this meant disentanglement from any shackles of societal standards, ranging from the man-made notions of reality and reason to traditional literary conventions.Contrarily, Frost believed that a true poet could-and should-achieve poetic excellence without resorting to what he described as the "new ways of being new."  Consequently, his poetry was composed of ordinary sounds that derived from conventional language.  Although many contemporary critics dismissed his work as overly simplistic, or "too near the level of talk," Frost remained unperturbed by such views, holding that poetry sprang from the natural intonations of a person's voice and should remain true to traditional forms.Frost claimed that "a poem begins with delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down."  This conception of a poem led Frost to elucidate that, behind the scenes, the poet must always approach writing intimately and organically, allowing the words to originate seamlessly from "a lump in the throat, a homesickness, a loneliness."  Provoking both poet and reader to recollect an oft-distant truth lingering in some obscure region of the brain, this practice culminates in wisdom that may be profound or just a momentary reprieve from the world.Uncompromising and not always popular, Frost and Cummings nevertheless mingled with the literary elite and developed long-term acquaintances with Ezra Pound, who especially championed Frost's literary career.  Each shared with other modernist poets an opposition to the scientific rationalism and commercialist vulgarity that had infiltrated Western culture after the Industrial Revolution.  Yet both poets also continued to exhibit a commitment to the role of nonconformist and favored aspects of the Romantic poetry movement-namely, the significance of the individual's experience and the rejection of societal scrutiny-over the tormenting self-doubt that had beset their peers.  Thus, even in an age defined by its pure and absolute originality, Frost and Cummings occupied unique positions within the modernist poetry movement. -The passage indicates that its author would NOT agree with which of the following statements?

Passage Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her) own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self." -Based on the passage, Johnston's description of the Lacanian ego as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences" is best conveyed by which of the following assertions?

Passage Ironically, one of the most influential works of anthropology ever written was destined to have a more enduring impact outside this field.  An instantaneous bestseller when it appeared in 1890, Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion was considered controversial for its treatment of many religions as fertility cults centered on a cycle of death and rebirth.  While the book's overwhelming popularity assured its place in posterity, the changing face of science and the further emergence of anthropology as a discipline meant it would be as reviled as it was revered.  At worst it was dismissed as a relic, an egregious example of "armchair" anthropology and an encyclopedic monstrosity; at best it was exalted as a dazzling display of erudition packaged in poetic prose and enjoyed as a rare example of adventure tale, travelogue, and detective story all rolled into one.First published in two volumes, by 1915 Frazer's vast compendium of myth and ritual had filled twelve.  The work emphasized the striking similarities in myths across cultures and time periods-a comparativist or universalist view that Frazer did not invent but employed lavishly, piling example upon example.  The Golden Bough proved an intellectual and stylistic phenomenon with an ever-expanding influence on the cultural milieu.  Those pulled into the Frazerian vortex included pioneering psychologists Freud and Jung as well as many of the most creative writers of the early 20th century, such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Joseph Conrad.  It is perhaps no coincidence that the first one-volume abridgement of The Golden Bough was published in 1922-the same year in which Eliot's unorthodox poem The Waste Land and Joyce's experimental novel Ulysses appeared in print.The year 1922 also saw the publication of Bronislaw Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown's The Andaman Islanders-groundbreaking anthropological works that departed radically in method and style from Frazer's grand exercise in mythography and ethnography.  In an approach termed "functionalist," Malinowski, who had described himself as "enslaved" by Frazer's text as a youngster, began incorporating fieldwork into the discipline and examining how mythic practices contributed to the overall stability of a society.  Later, Claude Lévi-Strauss synthesized Frazer's comparative method with the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson to create structural anthropology, which analyzed myths by organizing their basic elements into binary oppositions.Edmund Leach was a student of Malinowski's who, in turn, synthesized his teacher's methods with those of Lévi-Strauss.  Twice removed from Frazer's orbit, Leach gazed back upon The Golden Bough as a target rather than a benchmark.  While acknowledging Frazer's status as "a colossus in the history of English scholarship," Leach nevertheless attacked him as a plagiarist, distortionist, and popularizer.  In a particularly scathing critique entitled "Golden Bough or Gilded Twig?" Leach condemned Frazer's "artistic license," claiming that he routinely embellished sources and twisted information to support already formulated theories.  Moreover, Frazer relied shamelessly on secondhand material culled from missionaries and imperial officials rather than on his own interactions with native peoples.  Furthermore, many of his comparisons of myths were based solely on superficial resemblances between a few of their elements.  Another allegation was what some critics have called Frazer's "misapplication of Darwin's theory of biological evolution to human history and psychology" in positing that cultures progress through predictable stages from a belief in magic to a belief in religion, and, finally, in science.Such criticism notwithstanding, the popularity of The Golden Bough remains undiminished and its impact on the culture of the early 20th century is indisputable. -According to passage information, which of the following works would most reasonably be described as Frazerian?

Passage Of the myriad problems facing translators, perhaps the most significant lies in the tension between what a text conveys and the words used to convey it.  Strict fidelity to the specific words of a text often fails to capture the full sense of its meaning.  Beyond this loss of meaning can also arise a loss of artistry and structural features which often cannot be replicated.For instance, a fully evocative rendering of the 119th Psalm seems unattainable.  Comprising twenty-two strophes of eight lines each, the one hundred and seventy-six verses do appear somewhat poetic in translation.  But in the original Hebrew the Psalm is an acrostic: the verses of the first strophe all begin with the letter Aleph, those of the second with Beth, and so on, with Tav, the last letter of the alphabet, commencing the final eight verses.  The reader of a translation would, understandably, be ignorant of this fact.  While this does not affect the essential meaning of the verses, it does affect their character-something is lost from the original in its non-native presentation.  Although there have been occasional attempts to mimic this structure in other languages, they have all been unsuccessful.  The tortured and unnatural wording that results proves the wisdom of most translators in prioritizing readability.  Nevertheless, the Psalmist wrote with a particular purpose that is left untransmitted.  The sacrifice of the acrostic, however necessary, is regrettable.Another concern is what might be called translational multiplicity.  Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges famously remarked: "The Quixote, due to my congenital practice of Spanish, is a uniform monument, with no other variations… the Odyssey, thanks to my opportune ignorance of Greek, is an international bookstore of works in prose and verse."  To speak of "the" Odyssey, or more generally, "the" text of any work, runs headlong into the reality that for translated works, "the text" is not a unitary entity but a collection of candidates.  Thus, a perennial difficulty of translation is conveyed through Borges' idiosyncratic presentation.  Or is it?  For Borges' remarks are elsewhere listed as: "Since Spanish is my native language, the Quixote is to me an unchanging monument, with no possible variations….  But the Odyssey, thanks to my opportune ignorance of Greek, is a library of works in prose and verse."  That we might ask which of these translations more closely represents his actual words is a fact that Borges would likely have found amusing.Considerations of this sort are magnified when one approaches the writings not only of individual authors, but of past civilizations.  Despite being one of the world's foremost sinologists, the late D. C. Lau was convinced that none of us truly understand classical Chinese.  The sentiment was no mere expression of modesty; fellow scholar Roger Ames described Lau as "[h]aving assimilated the classical corpus through a lifetime of careful study and reflection."  Rather, Lau was keenly aware of the difficult truth that the fluidity of language and culture over time can shroud the works of the ancients in obscurities that may be inscrutable to even their most passionately curious descendants.Modern works may also be altered, however, and sometimes through more subtle types of translation.  The book known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in England was changed to refer instead to the "Sorcerer's Stone" in the United States, reportedly due to a belief that the original title would be unpalatable to an American audience.  While that depressing assumption may indeed have been correct, the change removes a titular connection to a pre-existing myth.  The generic fantasy idea with which it is replaced thus fails to embody the full character of the original work. -In affirming Simeon's life as a stylite, Gibbon points out in Paragraph 5 that "the patient Hermit expired, without descending from his column."  Gibbon's statement suggests that:

Passage The Aran Islands, a trio of carboniferous limestone slabs, likely more than 350 million years old, are situated at the mouth of Galway Bay off the western coast of Ireland, on what in ages past must have seemed the very periphery of the civilized world.  For those who have dared to test the habitability of these rocky fragments, one certainty has always awaited: challenge.  Indeed, the presumed prototype of the Aran economy has been one of bare subsistence, a veritable experiment in self-sufficiency, demanding resourcefulness, endurance, and, above all, austerity.Of the three isles, Inishmore, the largest and westernmost, whose length forms a 9-mile breakwater against the Atlantic, has perhaps also been the most economically diverse and certainly the most historically colorful.  The island hosted the first monastic communities of Ireland and withstood the blunt force of Viking raiders and, centuries later, Cromwellian soldiers.  Following these invasions, the population-and the economy along with it-managed to flourish despite a landscape whose barrenness offered an almost equal shortage of arable land and surface water.  In addition, Inishmore's prolonged growing season, the result of year-round moderate temperatures, afforded an exquisite irony: the flora and fauna it supported, a curious admixture of that which could be found in alpine, Mediterranean, and arctic climes, were wonders for the naturalist to behold but worthless to inhabitants seeking to sustain themselves on the land's bounty.  Nevertheless, the island has long been able to defy its hardscrabble character and has demonstrated a talent for economic self-reinvention, all the while retaining its image as pristine, primitive, and inhospitable.By the early 19th century, the denizens of Inishmore had learned to effectively counterbalance the meagerness of their island's natural resources by swiftly focusing on new and evermore efficient ways to exploit them.  For example, the abundance of seaweed off its shores supplied a remedy for the scarcity of soil.  Once most of the boulders were cleared away, the sand could be layered with the seaweed, which, as it rotted, transformed the granular matter into fertile earth in which common crops such as barley, rye, oats, and potatoes have since been cultivated.  More land also meant more livestock could be raised, and the grass-fed calves of the island are still prized by mainlanders.  Seaweed could also be harvested by the ton and burnt in kilns to produce kelp, the sale of which on the mainland continues to be a thriving, if seasonal, industry, often more reliable than fishing.This is not, however, to say that life on the Aran isles was ever easy; in fact, the lifestyle of the inhabitants demanded a delicate equilibrium, and in the face of economic marginality most households resorted to occupational plurality-to include any combination of fishing, agriculture, kelp-making, boat-making, fowling, textiles, and manual labor.  Yet, despite this ever-shifting quest for resources, life on Inishmore even in the 1800s was a far cry from that depicted in Robert J. Flaherty's self-styled documentary film of 1934, Man of Aran, which dramatized the islanders' daily existence as a never-ending and desperate struggle against the elements, particularly the constant apocalyptic threat of the sea.Eighty years later, this image of Aran life endures, perpetuating a myth that has arguably become a commodity as real as the Man of Aran sweater sold on Inishmore but typically knit elsewhere in Ireland-a symbol of the island's dual character, of its commercial nature that so patently contradicts its celebrated identity as isolated and self-sufficient.  Still, the persistence of this image of remoteness, exposure, and inexorable hardship, however fabricated or embellished, has helped the island reinvent its economy as one heavily reliant on the outside-particularly on a tourist industry that brings in as many as 2,000 visitors a day by ferry-rather than self-sufficient. -Based on the passage, the author implies that the inhabitants of Inishmore believed that the sea:

Passage Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her) own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self." -The author mentions Nietzsche's quote, "Have you ever said Yes to a single joy?...then you have said Yes too to all woe" (Paragraph 4), in order to:

Passage Although the primary canon in the history of political thought largely ignores the views of Immanuel Kant, he nevertheless was as important a political thinker as Rousseau, Locke, or even Aristotle.  Working in the context of the Prussian Enlightenment, Kant championed the idea that the only innate right of human beings is freedom.  Fittingly, the centerpiece of his political theory is that freedom can be the only basis for a just political state.A political theory that advances freedom as its core tenet may appear inherently problematic.  The very existence of a political state would seem to require limitations on the freedoms of those within it.  However, this presents no serious problem for Kant's theory.  The Kantian notion of political freedom-which stands in stark contrast to the notion of transcendental freedom widely associated with Kant's nonpolitical writings-is restricted to the external relations between human persons.  In its political sense, freedom refers to the innate right of every person to independence from being constrained by another's choice.  In other words, every person has the innate right to make choices freely but only so long as these choices do not interfere with those of others.  Laws that do not allow for political freedom are forbidden in Kant's view because within a just civil condition, the promulgation of a law requires that an entire people agree to be subjected to it.There are more substantive problems facing Kant's political theory.  Most notable among these concerns is Kant's promotion of welfare legislation.  As he says, "The government is authorized to constrain the wealthy to provide the means of sustenance to those who are unable to provide for even their most necessary and basic needs."  Given Kant's notion of political freedom, to enact such legislation would be catastrophic.  Welfare legislation violates Kant's own criterion regarding laws promulgated within a just civil condition: Governmental interference of this kind is a prime example of legislation on which an entire people will be divided.This was an egregious error on Kant's part.  At the same time, proponents of a Kantian conception of the state need neither embrace this result nor dismiss the possibility of consistently incorporating welfare legislation into their preferred brand of political theory.  Although Kant did not explicitly advocate it himself, a Kantian may hold that public provision of welfare is necessary for the state to fulfill its primary function-namely, protecting the liberties of its citizens.  For instance, if failing to adopt welfare legislation would threaten the continued existence, security, or stability of the state, then Kantians may justify such legislation on the grounds that it serves an instrumentally necessary role in upholding the fundamental aims and principles of Kantianism itself.  It is interesting to note that followers of Kant will likely have independent reasons to accept something along these lines.  Kant himself held that rational entities-such as persons, corporations, and states-have a duty of self-preservation, and thus are obligated to take measures to ensure their continued existence, security, and stability.There are still other issues surrounding a Kantian theory of the state.  These will need to be dealt with separately, but they should not go overlooked.  Breaking down the barriers that leave Kant outside the primary canon of political theory is a laudable task, which will take much effort to accomplish. -Which of the following assertions is supported by strong evidence in the passage?

Passage First of all, the notion that more than one author was responsible for the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey may fail to account adequately for the artistic unity and linguistic cohesion that mark these two works.  The idea of dual authorship instead privileges the inconsistencies between the texts stressed by late 19^th- and early 20^th-century scholars who suggested that the two epics are not, in fact, the work of a single poetic genius.  The promulgation of this theory served to undermine an earlier fundamentalist faith in a consensus from antiquity: one and only one poet called Homer authored both poems.Second of all, even if more than one author existed under the guise of Homer, there is no denying that these epics represent the culmination of a long tradition of oral poetry-specifically, oral verse concerning the Trojan War.  The existence of this oral tradition has sometimes been used to speculate that the texts we have of the Iliad and the Odyssey were merely strung together from shorter poems about warrior-heroes sung by itinerant bards to regale the aristocratic courts of ancient Greece.  In this context, the name "Homer" has been explained as a generic designation signifying either a group of ancient singer-poets or an imaginary author to whom a collective body of oral poetry was attributed.That epic poems of more than 12,000 lines could have been recited from memory has been well documented.  Research undertaken at the beginning of the 20^th century identified singers in the Balkans who could perform monumental epic poems from memory.  These performers seemed to have memorized discrete episodes or sections of poetry, arranging these as they recited.  Since then, it has been almost universally recognized that any theory about Homeric authorship must accommodate the oral tradition.Today many scholars find it unlikely that the same individual composed both Homeric epics.  Compellingly, even the ancient consensus that there was just one author cannot be traced further back than about 520 BCE when the two poems-which had been committed to writing in their recognizable form sometime after the introduction of the alphabet to Greece in the 8^th century BCE-were recited by bards at the festival of Athena.  Prior to this, there had already been some controversy regarding the authorship of the poems.  In particular, an alternative tradition claimed that the Odyssey had been written by the poet Melesigenes, who then appropriated the name Homer.Likewise, leading Homericists now conjecture more specifically that one poet wrote the Iliad and that the Odyssey was composed sometime later by a second.  This theory rests on two basic premises:  (1) Each poem has its own well-defined and unified design that discredits the possibility it is merely a pastiche of shorter poems passed down orally and finally stabilized in written form; and (2) differences between the poems seem to point to separate authors.  Scholars cite not only linguistic inconsistencies, including differences in vocabulary, but also discrepancies in background, underlying beliefs, ethics, and even geographical orientation.  Intriguingly, researchers have also found evidence in the Odyssey of imitation of passages from the Iliad.A few skeptics, however, continue to insist that the stylistic similarities between the two epics ascribed to Homer are too striking to support a theory of multiple authorship.  Far from clinging to idealistic notions of artistry or outdated modes of manuscript study, these single-author theorists have combined information technology and analysis of linguistic style to produce a legitimate body of evidence they can marshal against the prevailing trend. West, Martin. "The Homeric Question Today," in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol 155. No. 4, December 2011. -Based on the information in the passage, it would be most reasonable to conclude that after the discovery of Russell's Paradox:

Passage The fledgling public television industry faced an uncertain future in the late 1960s.  Near the end of his presidency, Democrat Lyndon Johnson allocated $20 million to create the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  In 1969, however, his newly elected Republican successor Richard Nixon hoped to reduce government spending and was considering a cut of 50% or more to that appropriation.  Before a final decision was made, public broadcasting representatives were invited to appear before Congress to make their case for the full funding.  One of their leaders, future Public Broadcasting Service president Hartford N. Gunn, Jr., asked TV personality Fred Rogers to join him in testifying as a key advocate for public television.As the creator and host of the show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Rogers embodied moral values, a deep sense of purpose, and concern for the welfare of children, all of which would later make him one of the most beloved figures in television history.  At the time of the congressional hearing, however, Rogers' show had aired nationally for only a year.  Although highly regarded by his current audience, Rogers did not yet possess the level of recognition he would eventually obtain.  His televised appearance before the Sub-Committee on Communications would be many Americans' first time seeing him.  In addition, despite having studied early childhood development under such prominent psychologists as Benjamin Spock and Margaret McFarland, Rogers was not widely known as an expert in that field.  In short, Rogers was an unusual figure to be chosen to testify before Congress.  Rogers' biographer Maxwell King describes Gunn's decision to depend so heavily on Rogers' testimony as "a pretty big gamble."Chairing the sub-committee hearing was Democratic senator John Pastore of Rhode Island, portrayed by King as "a blunt, no-nonsense social conservative who shared the Republican interest in keeping federal spending in line."  Pastore had also been critical of the television industry for what he saw as its promotion of immorality.  Although those criticisms had been leveled primarily at commercial programs, Pastore's views certainly couldn't have helped the case that Rogers needed to make.  The unproven nature of public television as a recent enterprise added an additional hurdle to securing the funding.Nevertheless, despite the odds stacked against him, Fred Rogers greatly impressed Pastore and the rest of the sub-committee.  Rather than giving the type of formal testimony that might have been expected at such a hearing, Rogers simply spoke earnestly about what, in his view, made public television so important.  He shared Pastore's worries about television's content, and was especially concerned about television geared toward children.  Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which addressed children directly and acknowledged their unique perspective, was based on Rogers' vision of public programming as a positive social force.  As he explained, taking children's problems seriously and showing them that their lives can be understood and managed makes a profound difference in the type of people they become and the society they help to create.The highlight of the testimony came when Rogers recited the lyrics to one of the songs from his show, which had been inspired by a child's question about how to deal with anger.  The song acknowledges the frustrations and fears of childhood while affirming each child's ability to control his or her feelings and behavior.  Rogers' simple but encouraging words clearly moved the sub-committee members, including Senator Pastore, who responded: "Looks like you just earned the twenty million dollars."  Hartford Gunn's gamble had paid off.  In an interesting twist of affairs, Pastore himself testified the following year at the White House Conference on Children-an event chaired by none other than Fred Rogers. -Which of the following claims would most weaken the author's argument about the sub-committee hearing?

Passage Because frequent consumption of unhealthy foods is strongly linked with cardiometabolic diseases, one way for governments to combat those afflictions may be to modify the eating habits of the general public.  Applying economic incentives or disincentives to various types of foods could potentially alter people's diets, leading to more positive health outcomes.Utilizing national data from 2012 regarding food consumption, health, and economic status, Peñalvo et al. concluded that such price adjustments would help to prevent deaths related to cardiometabolic diseases.  According to their analysis, increasing the prices of unhealthy foods such as processed meats and sugary sodas by 10%, while reducing the prices of healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables by 10%, would prevent an estimated 3.4% of yearly deaths in the U.S.  Changing prices by 30% would have an even stronger effect, preventing an estimated 9.2% of yearly deaths.  This data comports with that found in other countries: "These results are in line with previous modeling studies in South Africa and India, where a 20% SSB [sugar-sweetened beverage] tax was estimated to reduce diabetes prevalence by 4% over 20 years."  The effects of price adjustments would be most pronounced on persons of lower socioeconomic status, as the researchers "found an overall 18.2% higher price-responsiveness for low versus high SES groups."This differential effect based on socioeconomic status contributes to concerns about such interventions, however.  In Harvard Public Health Review, Kates and Hayward ask: "Well-intentioned though they may be, at what point do these taxes overstep government influence on an individual's right to autonomy in decision-making?  On whom does the increased financial burden of this taxation fall?"  They note that taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, for instance, "are likely to have a greater impact on low-income individuals…because individuals in those settings are more likely to be beholden to cost when making decisions about food."However, "well-intentioned though they may be," the worries that Kates and Hayward express are to some extent misguided.  In particular, the idea that taxing unhealthy foods would burden those least able to afford it misses the point.  Although the increased taxes would affect anyone who continued to purchase the items despite the higher prices, the goal of raising prices on unhealthy foods is precisely to dissuade people from buying them.  As Kates and Hayward themselves remark, "those in low-income environments may also be the largest consumers of obesogenic foods and therefore most likely to benefit from such a lifestyle change indirectly posed by SSB taxes."  As the goal of the taxes is to promote those lifestyle changes, the financial burden objection is a non-starter.Given this recognition, the question regarding autonomy constitutes a more substantial issue.  Nevertheless, that concern also rests on a dubious assumption, as people's autonomy is not necessarily respected in the current situation either.  The fact that those of lower socioeconomic status are more likely to have poorer diets suggests that such persons' food choices are the result of financial constraint, not fully autonomous, rational deliberation.  Hence, by making healthy foods more affordable relative to unhealthy ones, government intervention might actually facilitate autonomous choices rather than hindering them.On the other hand, suppose that the disproportionate consumption of unhealthy foods-and associated higher incidence of disease-among certain groups is not the result of financial hardship but rather the result of those persons' perceived self-interest.  If so, that would suggest that members of these groups are being encouraged to persist in harmful dietary habits for the sake of corporate profits.  In that case, violating autonomy for the sake of health may be permissible anyway, as that practice would be morally preferable to the present system of corporate exploitation. -Based on passage information, the author would most likely NOT agree with which of the following assertions?

Passage Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her) own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self." -The Republican convention of 1880 required 36 separate rounds of voting over the course of three days before the delegates were finally able to agree on a presidential candidate.  This information provides the most support for the passage claim that:

Passage Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's instantly identifiable painting Der Schrei der Natur or, more simply, The Scream, destabilizes the very concept of a work of art as discrete and unique.  Boasting two versions in pastel and two in oil as well as a lithograph-all generated between 1893 and 1910-Munch's masterpiece arguably constitutes not a single but a multiplicitous work.  Moreover, Munch originally conceived of the painting not as a freestanding piece but as part of a more ambitious project called the Frieze of Life.  The Frieze included 22 panels portraying life circumstances and moods, such as illness, love, and death; the panel depicting despair was the precursor for The Scream.In a poem based on an 1892 diary entry, Munch relates the genesis of what would become his most celebrated work.  He was walking across a bridge with two friends in the vicinity of Ekeberg Hill, overlooking Oslo, when "…the sun was setting-suddenly the sky turned blood-red-I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence-there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city--my friends walked on and I stood there trembling with anxiety-and I sensed an infinite Scream passing through nature."The artistic consequence of Munch's terrifying epiphany is a black-shrouded figure, ill-defined and ghostlike, whose sickly pale face stares out at the viewer against the menacing background of a bloodshot sky.  Mouth wide open, eyes bulging, hands clasped to its ears in a pose more horrified than horrifying, the figure appears to tremble on a bridge over turbulent waters.The Scream aptly captured both the self-indulgence and despair characterizing the turn of the twentieth century at the same time that it heralded the existential angst of the mid-century.  Influenced by luminaries such as the impressionist painter Monet and the more deeply expressive Van Gogh, Munch's free-form style, vivid colors, and striking juxtapositions mark this work as avant-garde.Nevertheless, as art curator Martha Tedeschi asserts, The Scream is one of only a handful of paintings in the history of art able to "communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every viewer"; its primitive character transmits a raw emotionality and subjectivity.  Unsurprisingly, then, the painting has over-spilt the bounds of traditional art to become an icon of popular culture.  In the 1970s, Andy Warhol mass-produced the image on silk, the serial replications reflecting the painting's own multiplicity.  Wildly appropriated and often misused, the image-through which Munch purported to be doing nothing less than studying his own soul-has appeared on everything from keychains to dormitory posters and is in danger of becoming kitsch.Interestingly enough, two different versions of The Scream have been the targets of unusual thefts; however, in both instances the paintings were recovered.  First, a version was stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo during the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer.  In an almost comical heist, two men employed a ladder to easily access a second-story window and abscond with the painting, taking the time to leave a postcard that read, "Thanks for the poor security."  Then, in 2004, robbers entered Oslo's Munch Museum in broad daylight, intimidated museum guards with firearms, and used a wire cutter to extract another version of The Scream from the wall along with Munch's Madonna painting.Munch was a remarkably prolific painter; when he died in 1944, he left a legacy of over a thousand paintings, several thousand drawings, and more than 15,000 prints.  Ironically, however, it is the "single" provocative image of The Scream that, as both masterpiece and pop icon, has eclipsed all this artist's other works. -In the context of the passage, the word kitsch can most accurately be defined as:

Passage No one would argue that much good has ever come out of the crucible of war, and certainly not from the kinds of atrocities that characterized the Second World War.  However, the horror of the Dutch famine that occurred toward the end of the war, what in the Netherlands is commonly called the Hongerwinter, has provided epidemiologists a unique opportunity to research the long-term health effects of nutritional deficiency in utero on a specific cohort of individuals.Because it was so widespread-affecting as many as 4.5 million people in the German-occupied Netherlands-but limited in duration and swiftly followed by a return to prosperity, the Dutch famine constituted a highly aberrant situation of deprivation in a modern, developed nation.  The devastation began in September 1944 when Allied Airborne Forces failed to seize control of the bridge that crosses the Rhine River at Arnhem.  To impede German ground troops and assist the Allies, the Dutch government then ordered a railway strike, prompting the Germans to retaliate with an embargo that cut off food and fuel supplies to the central and western provinces of the Netherlands, including the country's largest urban centers.  Even after the embargo ended, railways remained dismantled and the Germans continued to requisition goods, stalling supplies.  This already dire situation was exacerbated by war-ravaged agricultural regions and an unusually harsh winter that froze the canals.  As the fighting dragged on, food rations dwindled.  Faced with escalating scarcity, urban dwellers desperately scoured the countryside seeking anything edible for which they could trade their valuables.  Many were reduced to eating tulip bulbs and grass.  The death toll from starvation alone reached 20,000.The famine was among the best documented in modern history, and the Dutch Hunger Winter Study has been the first study to examine the long-term consequences of intrauterine starvation.  The study compared 422 individuals exposed to adverse intrauterine conditions with 463 siblings who were the products of pregnancies that either came to term before the famine began or occurred afterward.  The initial results, published in 1976, revealed that, among other health consequences, individuals exposed to deprivation during early gestation had much higher than normal rates of obesity as adults.  Research by scientists from both the Netherlands and the US, together with new information from the field of epigenetics (the study of changes in gene expression barring alteration of the genetic code), now suggests that nutritional restriction during early gestation effectively inactivates specific genes.Additional studies have shown that genetic expression can be altered through the addition of a methyl group, an organic compound consisting of one carbon and three hydrogen atoms, to a DNA molecule.  This methylation can modify gene expression without altering the DNA sequence.  In other words, it changes an individual's phenotype, or the observable genetic expression, but does not change the genome.  With this discovery, scientists now theorize that in individuals whose mothers suffered near-starvation during the early stages of pregnancy, DNA methylation silenced specific genes that normally help boost the rate at which the body consumes cellular energy.  The inactivation of these genes lowers metabolism, causing an increased tendency toward adult obesity.Other factors such as diet, environment, and even stress have been shown to alter methylation patterns on genes.  Furthermore, it has now been documented that the offspring of the Hunger Winter babies frequently exhibit the same health problems as their parents, including not only obesity, but also diabetes and cardiovascular disease.  Thus, with the advancement of genomics, this unfortunate period of starvation in the Netherlands offers strong evidence that DNA methylation is heritable-invaluable knowledge that can be used to understand a multitude of disease processes. -The Hunger Winter babies and their siblings had offspring who are now well into adulthood.  Based on the passage, being able to also study these offspring long-term was most useful to the epidemiologists because it allowed them to:

Passage There may be reasons to reject the idea of lengthening the school day.  None of them, however, are good reasons.  Rather, the supposed demerits of such a proposal fall easily in the face of its numerous advantages.The first of these advantages lies in reducing the need for childcare.  It is a curious fact of American life that the adult's work schedule and the child's school schedule are misaligned.  Children rise with the sun to head to classes, only to be sent home again hours before parents return from their jobs.  In a society where, more often than not, both parents work, this discordance creates the need for an expensive arrangement to fill the gap in families' routines.  For instance, studies show that in 2016, childcare costs accounted for 9.5 to 17.5 percent of median family income, depending on the state.  Today, 40 percent of families nationwide spend over 15 percent of their income on childcare.  Transportation to and from care sites only adds to that expense.An extended school day also allows for greater diversity and depth in curricula.  Schools across the country have increasingly cut instruction in arts, music, and physical education (as well as recess) in order to meet objectives in reading and math.  While this unfortunate state of affairs can be partially blamed on overzealous attention to standardized tests, it points to the larger deleterious trend of narrowing students' instruction.  With a longer school day such eliminated subjects can be restored, enriching students with a more well-rounded education.To this proposal, however, critics may object that the added time would impose strain on educators.  Can we truly ask schoolteachers-already among the most overworked individuals in society-to endure even more hours in the classroom?  The answer is that a lengthened school day need not distress teachers nor add to their already cumbersome workload.  By providing for additional areas of study in the arts and humanities, the extension would give schools cause to hire new, perhaps specialized, faculty to offer these courses.  Moreover, the time could also be allocated to sports, academic clubs, and other extracurricular activities.However, this point speaks to another objection, namely, the cost of adjusting the school day.  Whether through paying current teachers more or hiring new ones, implementing such a proposal would entail a significant financial expenditure.  There are at least two responses to this line of thinking.  First is that this increase in the cost of schooling would be offset and likely surpassed by the aforementioned savings in childcare.  Thus, while it is true that schools would require greater funding (potentially necessitating higher property taxes), parents would ultimately pay the same or less overall, with greater educational opportunities for their children and fewer transportational burdens.  Second is that schools should be better funded regardless.  Recently, some schools-especially those in rural areas-have even reduced school weeks to only four days as a cost-saving measure.  It is beyond dispute that schools across the board both need and deserve a radically increased investment from citizens.  Lengthening the school day is simply one manifestation of how such funding should be utilized.With this one change, states can coordinate the lives of parents and children, expand curricular offerings, and reduce the need for costly childcare.  These worthy and desirable aims provide a clear justification for extending the school day. -According to the passage author, lengthening the school day is justified in part because the greater financial expenditure necessitated by such a change would be offset by an equal or greater savings in childcare costs.  What would be the most reasonable objection to that justification?

Passage In 1482, a thirty-year-old Leonardo da Vinci left his art studio in Florence and traveled to Milan to seek employment at the court of Duke Ludovico Sforza.  A drafted letter of application to the duke detailed Leonardo's many useful skills, the majority of which concerned military developments such as "methods for destroying any fortress" and making "unassailable armored chariots."  Peacetime talents such as "guiding water from one place to another" or producing "sculpture in marble, bronze and clay" were mentioned only at the end of the letter.  Nevertheless, one of the most intriguing items is the entry stating, "I have designed extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be easily carried": in other words, portable bridges.Modern scholars question whether most of the devices mentioned in Leonardo's letter could really have been constructed.  For instance, Krull describes the fact that Leonardo never sent the letter as "a good thing, as it was mostly bluff."  Isaacson, though a bit more charitable, similarly declares that Leonardo's "boasts were aspirational."  Regarding the bridge, however, there is no doubt that the design is workable.According to at least one account, Leonardo really did make such a bridge for Sforza.  More significantly, examples of the bridge have been built and used in contemporary times.  A sketch in one of Leonardo's notebooks illustrates the bridge's construction, which includes different sets of wooden beams cut to specific lengths.  Requiring no nails, ropes, or other fasteners, nor any tools, the bridge can be assembled by a mere handful of people, and even some children could potentially build a small version or model.When the bridge is constructed correctly, each component helps to hold all the other components in place.  The original sketch calls for the beams to be notched so that the pieces of the bridge lock together.  However, in some cases this feature can be omitted, provided the wood is sufficiently rough.  This version of the bridge then stands and bears weight due to friction, gravity, and the physical integrity of the pieces.  In this way, the structure depends entirely on the interplay of physical forces upon its parts.The design is modular and repeatable, meaning that a longer bridge can be made by simply adding another section, with the supports interlocked accordingly.  Given enough materials, time, and manpower, such a bridge could in principle be made to quite a great length.  However, in longer bridges the notches would in fact be needed, because some of the beams would be at steeper angles.Despite the relative ease of constructing the bridge, there is one challenge: building it requires access to both sides of the region to be crossed, as well as the area in between.  Such a consideration might seem obvious in building any bridge, but it can still prove problematic.  If a bridge is meant to help cross a body of water, not all members of the group attempting to cross will receive its benefit, as some would have to stand in the water during the bridge's construction.  Of course, this assumes that it is safe to enter the water in the first place.  Crossing a chasm or a deep pit would pose even greater difficulties, as the bridge's prospective builders would, like the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, lack a place to stand.  Leonardo may have confronted that problem as well and considered how to make a bridge that was not only portable and freestanding, but constructible in sequence from one end to the other.  Although no evidence exists of such a design in the known pages of his notebooks, many pages have been lost to history and might one day be rediscovered. -The author most likely discusses the "challenge" in building Leonardo's bridge in order to:

Passage Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her) own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self." -The author's argument about the "Doubting Thomas" story would be most challenged if which of the following statements were true?