what was her frist song

just name evey sift song?

“There’s No Such Thing as Sound Science” by By Christie Aschwanden was a lead science writer for FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight, Science, Dec. 6, 2017 Science is being turned against itself. For decades, its twin ideals of transparency and rigor have been weaponized by those who disagree with results produced by the scientific method. Under the Trump administration, that fight has ramped up again. In a move ostensibly meant to reduce conflicts of interest, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has removed a number of scientists from advisory panels and replaced some of them with representatives from industries that the agency regulates. Like many in the Trump administration, Pruitt has also cast doubt on the reliability of climate science. For instance, in an interview with CNBC, Pruitt said that “measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do.” Similarly, Trump’s pick to head NASA, an agency that oversees a large portion the nation’s climate research, has insisted that research into human influence on climate lacks certainty, and he falsely claimed that “global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago.” Kathleen Hartnett White, Trump’s nominee to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a Senate hearing last month that she thinks we “need to have more precise explanations of the human role and the natural role” in climate change. The same entreaties crop up again and again: We need to root out conflicts. We need more precise evidence. What makes these arguments so powerful is that they sound quite similar to the points raised by proponents of a very different call for change that’s coming from within science. This other movement strives to produce more robust, reproducible findings. Despite having dissimilar goals, the two forces espouse principles that look surprisingly alike: Science needs to be transparent. Results and methods should be openly shared so that outside researchers can independently reproduce and validate them. The methods used to collect and analyze data should be rigorous and clear, and conclusions must be supported by evidence. These are the arguments underlying an “open science” reform movement that was created, in part, as a response to a “reproducibility crisis” that has struck some fields of science.1 But they’re also used as talking points by politicians who are working to make it more difficult for the EPA and other federal agencies to use science in their regulatory decision-making, under the guise of basing policy on “sound science.” Science’s virtues are being wielded against it. What distinguishes the two calls for transparency is intent: Whereas the “open science” movement aims to make science more reliable, reproducible and robust, proponents of “sound science” have historically worked to amplify uncertainty, create doubt and undermine scientific discoveries that threaten their interests. “Our criticisms are founded in a confidence in science,” said Steven Goodman, co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford and a proponent of open science. “That’s a fundamental difference — we’re critiquing science to make it better. Others are critiquing it to devalue the approach itself.” Calls to base public policy on “sound science” seem unassailable if you don’t know the term’s history. The phrase was adopted by the tobacco industry in the 1990s to counteract mounting evidence linking secondhand smoke to cancer. A 1992 Environmental Protection Agency report identified secondhand smoke as a human carcinogen, and Philip Morris responded by launching an initiative to promote what it called “sound science.” In an internal memo, Philip Morris vice president of corporate affairs Ellen Merlo wrote that the program was designed to “discredit the EPA report,” “prevent states and cities, as well as businesses from passing smoking bans” and “proactively” pass legislation to help their cause. The sound science tactic exploits a fundamental feature of the scientific process: Science does not produce absolute certainty. Contrary to how it’s sometimes represented to the public, science is not a magic wand that turns everything it touches to truth. Instead, it’s a process of uncertainty reduction, much like a game of 20 Questions. Any given study can rarely answer more than one question at a time, and each study usually raises a bunch of new questions in the process of answering old ones. “Science is a process rather than an answer,” said psychologist Alison Ledgerwood of the University of California, Davis. Every answer is provisional and subject to change in the face of new evidence. It’s not entirely correct to say that “this study proves this fact,” Ledgerwood said. “We should be talking instead about how science increases or decreases our confidence in something.” The tobacco industry’s brilliant tactic was to turn this baked-in uncertainty against the scientific enterprise itself. While insisting that they merely wanted to ensure that public policy was based on sound science, tobacco companies defined the term in a way that ensured that no science could ever be sound enough. The only sound science was certain science, which is an impossible standard to achieve. “Doubt is our product,” wrote one employee of the Brown & Williamson tobacco company in a 1969 internal memo. The note went on to say that doubt “is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’” and “establishing a controversy.” These strategies for undermining inconvenient science were so effective that they’ve served as a sort of playbook for industry interests ever since, said Stanford University science historian Robert Proctor. The sound science push is no longer just Philip Morris sowing doubt about the links between cigarettes and cancer. It’s also a 1998 action plan by the American Petroleum Institute, Chevron and Exxon Mobil to “install uncertainty” about the link between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. It’s industry-funded groups’ late-1990s effort to question the science the EPA was using to set fine-particle-pollution air-quality standards that the industry didn’t want. And then there was the more recent effort by Dow Chemical to insist on more scientific certainty before banning a pesticide that the EPA’s scientists had deemed risky to children. Now comes a move by the Trump administration’s EPA to repeal a 2015 rule on wetlands protection by disregarding particular studies. (To name just a few examples.) Doubt merchants aren’t pushing for knowledge, they’re practicing what Proctor has dubbed “agnogenesis” — the intentional manufacture of ignorance. This ignorance isn’t simply the absence of knowing something; it’s a lack of comprehension deliberately created by agents who don’t want you to know, Proctor said.2 In the hands of doubt-makers, transparency becomes a rhetorical move. “It’s really difficult as a scientist or policy maker to make a stand against transparency and openness, because well, who would be against it?” said Karen Levy, researcher on information science at Cornell University. But at the same time, “you can couch everything in the language of transparency and it becomes a powerful weapon.” For instance, when the EPA was preparing to set new limits on particulate pollution in the 1990s, industry groups pushed back against the research and demanded access to primary data (including records that researchers had promised participants would remain confidential) and a reanalysis of the evidence. Their calls succeeded and a new analysis was performed. The reanalysis essentially confirmed the original conclusions, but the process of conducting it delayed the implementation of regulations and cost researchers time and money. Delay is a time-tested strategy. “Gridlock is the greatest friend a global warming skeptic has,” said Marc Morano, a prominent critic of global warming research and the executive director of ClimateDepot.com, in the documentary “Merchants of Doubt” (based on the book by the same name). Morano’s site is a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, which has received funding from the oil and gas industry. “We’re the negative force. We’re just trying to stop stuff.” Some of these ploys are getting a fresh boost from Congress. The Data Quality Act (also known as the Information Quality Act) was reportedly written by an industry lobbyist and quietly passed as part of an appropriations bill in 2000. The rule mandates that federal agencies ensure the “quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information” that they disseminate, though it does little to define what these terms mean. The law also provides a mechanism for citizens and groups to challenge information that they deem inaccurate, including science that they disagree with. “It was passed in this very quiet way with no explicit debate about it — that should tell you a lot about the real goals,” Levy said. But what’s most telling about the Data Quality Act is how it’s been used, Levy said. A 2004 Washington Post analysis found that in the 20 months following its implementation, the act was repeatedly used by industry groups to push back against proposed regulations and bog down the decision-making process. Instead of deploying transparency as a fundamental principle that applies to all science, these interests have used transparency as a weapon to attack very particular findings that they would like to eradicate. Now Congress is considering another way to legislate how science is used. The Honest Act, a bill sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas,3 is another example of what Levy calls a “Trojan horse” law that uses the language of transparency as a cover to achieve other political goals. Smith’s legislation would severely limit the kind of evidence the EPA could use for decision-making. Only studies whose raw data and computer codes were publicly available would be allowed for consideration. That might sound perfectly reasonable, and in many cases it is, Goodman said. But sometimes there are good reasons why researchers can’t conform to these rules, like when the data contains confidential or sensitive medical information.4 Critics, which include more than a dozen scientific organizations, argue that, in practice, the rules would prevent many studies from being considered in EPA reviews.5 It might seem like an easy task to sort good science from bad, but in reality it’s not so simple. “There’s a misplaced idea that we can definitively distinguish the good from the not-good science, but it’s all a matter of degree,” said Brian Nosek, executive director of the Center for Open Science. “There is no perfect study.” Requiring regulators to wait until they have (nonexistent) perfect evidence is essentially “a way of saying, ‘We don’t want to use evidence for our decision-making,’” Nosek said. Most scientific controversies aren’t about science at all, and once the sides are drawn, more data is unlikely to bring opponents into agreement. Michael Carolan, who researches the sociology of technology and scientific knowledge at Colorado State University, wrote in a 2008 paper about why objective knowledge is not enough to resolve environmental controversies. “While these controversies may appear on the surface to rest on disputed questions of fact, beneath often reside differing positions of value; values that can give shape to differing understandings of what ‘the facts’ are.” What’s needed in these cases isn’t more or better science, but mechanisms to bring those hidden values to the forefront of the discussion so that they can be debated transparently. “As long as we continue down this unabashedly naive road about what science is, and what it is capable of doing, we will continue to fail to reach any sort of meaningful consensus on these matters,” Carolan writes. The dispute over tobacco was never about the science of cigarettes’ link to cancer. It was about whether companies have the right to sell dangerous products and, if so, what obligations they have to the consumers who purchased them. Similarly, the debate over climate change isn’t about whether our planet is heating, but about how much responsibility each country and person bears for stopping it. While researching her book “Merchants of Doubt,” science historian Naomi Oreskes found that some of the same people who were defending the tobacco industry as scientific experts were also receiving industry money to deny the role of human activity in global warming. What these issues had in common, she realized, was that they all involved the need for government action. “None of this is about the science. All of this is a political debate about the role of government,” she said in the documentary. These controversies are really about values, not scientific facts, and acknowledging that would allow us to have more truthful and productive debates. What would that look like in practice? Instead of cherry-picking evidence to support a particular view (and insisting that the science points to a desired action), the various sides could lay out the values they are using to assess the evidence. For instance, in Europe, many decisions are guided by the precautionary principle — a system that values caution in the face of uncertainty and says that when the risks are unclear, it should be up to industries to show that their products and processes are not harmful, rather than requiring the government to prove that they are harmful before they can be regulated. By contrast, U.S. agencies tend to wait for strong evidence of harm before issuing regulations. Both approaches have critics, but the difference between them comes down to priorities: Is it better to exercise caution at the risk of burdening companies and perhaps the economy, or is it more important to avoid potential economic downsides even if it means that sometimes a harmful product or industrial process goes unregulated? In other words, under what circumstances do we agree to act on a risk? How certain do we need to be that the risk is real, and how many people would need to be at risk, and how costly is it to reduce that risk? Those are moral questions, not scientific ones, and openly discussing and identifying these kinds of judgment calls would lead to a more honest debate. Science matters, and we need to do it as rigorously as possible. But science can’t tell us how risky is too risky to allow products like cigarettes or potentially harmful pesticides to be sold — those are value judgements that only humans can make.

Cell organelles name snd function for kids grade 6 just the main organelles

Name: Marco Ramirez - “I Am Not Batman” TW: language It’s the middle of the night. And the sky is glowing like mad radioactive red. And if you squint, you could maybe see the moon through a thick layer of cigarette smoke and airplane exhaust that covers the entire city like mosquito net that won’t let the angels in. And if you look up high enough you could see me-standing on the edge of a eighty seven story building. And up there-a place for gargoyles and broken clock towers that have stayed still and dead for maybe like a hundred years-up there is me. And I’m freakin Batman. And I gots Bat-mobiles and Bat-a-rangs and freakin Bat-caves like for real, and all it takes is a broom closet or a back room or a fire escape and Danny’s hand-me-down jeans are gone. And my navy blue polo shirt? – The one that looks kinda good on me but has a hole on it near the butt from when it got snagged on the chain linked fence behind Arturo’s but it isn’t even a big deal cause I tuck that part in and its like all good? –that blue polo shirt? – It’s gone too. And I get like, like transformational. And nobody pulls out a belt and whips Batman for talking back –-Or for not talking back –And nobody calls Batman simple –- Or stupid –- Or skinny –- And nobody fires Batman’s brother from the Eastern Taxi Company ‘cause they was making cutbacks, neither, ‘cause they got nothing but respect, and not like afraid-respect. Just like respect-respect. ‘Cause nobody’s afraid of you. Cause Batman doesn’t mean nobody harm. Ever. Cause all Batman really wants to do is save people and maybe pay Abuela’s bills one day and die happy and maybe get like mad famous. For real.…And kill the Joker. Tonight, like most nights, I’m all alone. And I’m watching…And I’m waiting… Like a eagle. Or like a –no, yea, like a eagle. And my cape is flappin’ in the wind (‘cause it’s freakin’ long), and my pointy ears are on, and that mask that covers like half my face is on too, and I got like bulletproof stuff all in my chest so no one could hurt me and nobody – nobody – is gonna come between Batman, And Justice. From where I am I could hear everything. Somewhere in the city there’s a old lady picking Styrofoam leftovers up outta a trash can and she’s putting a piece of sesame chicken someone spit out into her own mouth. And somewhere there’s a doctor with a whack haircut in a black lab coat trying to find a cure for the diseases that are gonna make us all extinct for real one day. And somewhere there’s a man, a man in a janitor’s uniform, stumbling home drunk and dizzy after spending half his paycheck on forty-ounce bottles of twist-off beer and the other half on a four hour visit to some lady’s house on a street where the lights have all been shot out by people who’d rather do what they do, in this city, in the dark. And half a block away from JanitorMan there’s a group of good-for-nothings who don’t know no better waiting to beat JanitorMan with rusted bicycle chains and imitation Lousiville Sluggers, and if they don’t find a cent on him – which they won’t – they’ll just pound at him till the muscles in their arms start burning, till there’s no more teeth to crack out. But they don’t count on me. They don’t count on no dark night (with a stomach full of grocery store brand macaroni-and-cheese and cut up Vienna sausages), Cause they’d rather believe I don’t exist, And from eighty-seven stories up I could hear one of the good-for-nothings say “Gimmethecash” real fast (like that) just “Gimmethefuckingcash” and I see JAnitorMan mumble something in drunk language and turn pale and from eighty-seven stories up I could hear his stomach trying to hurl its way out of his Dickies. So I swoop down like and fast and I’m like darkness. I’m like SWOOSH –- And I throw a Bat-a-rang at the one naked lightbulb –- And they’re all like “whoa-motherfucker-who-just-turned-out-the-lights?” –“What’s that over there?” –-“What?” –- “Gimme whatchou got old man” –- “Did anybody hear that?!” –- “No, really” –- “There ain’t. No. Bat.” – But then –- One out of three good-for-nothings gets it to the head! And number Two swings blindly into the dark cape before him but before his fist hits anything I grab a trash can lid and –-- Right into the gut, and number One comes back with a jump-kick but I know judo-karate too so I’m like –-- Twice –-- but before I can do any more damage suddenly we all hear a CLIC – CLIC –And suddenly everything gets quiet And the one good-for-nothing left standing grips a handgun and aims straight up, like he’s holding Jesus hostage, like he’s threatening maybe to blow a hole in the moon. And the good-for-nothing who got it to the head who tried to jump-kick me and the other good-for-nothing who got it in the gut is both scrambling back away from the dark figure before him. And the drunk man the JanitorMan is huddled in a corner, praying to Saint Anthony ‘cause that’s the only one he could remember. And there’s me, Eyes glowing white, cape blowing softly in the wind. Bulletporoof chest heaving. My heart beating right through it in a Morse code for “fuck with me, just once, come on, just try.” And the one good-for-nothing left standing, the one with the handgun, he laughs he lowers his arm, and he points it at me and gives the moon a break, and he aims it right between my pointy ears, like goalposts and he’s special teams. And JanitorMan is still calling Saint Anthony but he ain’t pickin’ up, And for a second it seems like…maybe I’m gonna lose. Naw. SHOO – SHOO! FUACATA! --“Don’t kill me man!” –“SNAP! – Wrist CRACK – Neck – SLASH! – Skin – meets – acid – “AHH!!” –And he’s on the floor. And I’m standing over him. And I got the gun in MY hands now. And I hate guns, I hate holding ‘em cause I’m Batman, and –Batman don’t like guns ‘cause his parents got iced by guns a long time ago – but for just a second, my eyes glow white, and I hold this thing, for I could speak to the good-for-nothing in a language he maybe understands…CLIC – CLIC…And the good-for-nothings become good-for-disappearing into whatever toxic-waste-chemical-sludge-shit-hole they crawled out of. And it’s just me and JanitorMan. And I pick him up. And I wipe sweat and cheap perfume off his forehead. And he begs me not to hurt him and I grab him tight by his JanitorMan shirt collar and I pull him to my face, and he’s taller than me, but the cape helps so he listens when I look him straight in the eyes and I say two words to him: “Go home.” And he does, checking behind his shoulder every ten feet. And I SWOOSH from building to building on his way there, ‘cause I know where he lives. And I watch his hands where he lives. And I watch his hands tremble as he pulls out his keychain and opens the door to his building. And I’m back in bed before he even walks in through the front door. And I hear him turn on the faucet and pour himself a glass of warm tap water And he puts the glass back in the sink. And I hear his footsteps, And they get slower as they get to my room. And he creaks my door open like mad slow. And he takes a step in, which he never does. And he’s staring off into nowhere, his face the color of sidewalks in summer, and I act like I’m just waking up, and I say, “What’s up, Pop?” And JanitorMan says nothing to me. But I see, in the dark, I see his arms go limp and his head turns back, like towards me, and he lifts it for I could see his face, For I could see his eyes, And his cheeks is dripping but not with sweat. And he just stands there, breathing, like he remembers my eyes glowing white. Like he remembers my bulletproof chest. Like he remembers he’s my pop. And for a long time I don’t say nothing. And he turns around, hand on the doorknob, and he ain’t looking up my way but I hear him mumble two words to me. “I’m sorry.” And I lean over and open my window just a crack.… If you look up high enough you could see me. And from where I am? I could hear everything.

Time-Telling Quiz: Half Past the Hour Name: ______________________ Date: ______________ What does "half past" specifically mean on an analog clock? A) 15 minutes have passed B) 30 minutes have passed C) 45 minutes have passed D) The hour has just begun When the minute hand points to 6, what position represents "half past"? A) The start of the hour B) Exactly halfway through the hour C) The end of the hour D) A quarter of the way through the hour If the hour hand is between 4 and 5, and the minute hand is on 6, what time is it? A) 4:15 B) 4:45 C) 4:30 D) 5:00 Which statement best describes how the hour hand moves? A) It moves quickly between numbers B) It moves slowly between numbers C) It stays in one place all the time D) It moves only at the top of each hour How many minutes are in a complete circle on a clock? A) 12 minutes B) 24 minutes C) 60 minutes D) 30 minutes When reading an analog clock for "half past", which hand should you look at first? A) The hour hand B) The second hand C) The minute hand D) The decorative hand What is the most important position of the minute hand when identifying "half past"? A) Pointing to 3 B) Pointing to 12 C) Pointing to 6 D) Pointing to 9 If a clock shows half past 7, how would this be written numerically? A) 7:15 B) 7:45 C) 7:30 D) 8:00 Which of the following is TRUE about clock hands? A) The shorter hand always shows minutes B) The longer hand always shows hours C) The longer hand shows minutes, the shorter hand shows hours D) Both hands move at exactly the same speed What is the primary challenge when learning to read "half past" times? A) Remembering the minute hand must be on 6 B) Counting all the numbers on the clock C) Understanding what an hour is D) Knowing the difference between AM and PM Answer Key: B B C B C C C C C A

She went by the name of Belisa Crepusculario, not because she had been baptized with that name or given it by her mother, but because she herself had searched until she found the poetry of "beauty" and "twilight" and cloaked herself in it. She made her living selling words. She journeyed through the country from the high cold mountains to the burning coasts, stopping at fairs and in markets where she set up four poles covered by a canvas awning under which she took refuge from the sun and rain to minister to her customers. She did not have to peddle her merchandise because from having wandered far and near, everyone knew who she was. Some people waited for her from one year to the next, and when she appeared in the village with her bundle beneath her arm, they would form a line in front of her stall. Her prices were fair. For five centavos she delivered verses from memory, for seven she improved the quality of dreams, for nine she wrote love letters, for twelve she invented insults for irreconcilable enemies. She also sold stories, not fantasies but long, true stories she recited at one telling, never skipping a word. This is how she carried news from one town to another. People paid her to add a line or two: our son was born, so-and-so died, our children got married, the crops burned in the field. Wherever she went a small crowd gathered around to listen as she began to speak, and that was how they learned about each others' doings, about distant relatives, about what was going on in the civil war. To anyone who paid her fifty centavos in trade, she gave the gift of a secret word to drive away melancholy. It was not the same word for everyone, naturally, because that would have been collective dece it. Each person received his or her own word, with the assurance that no one else would use it that way in this universe or the Beyond. Belisa Crepusculario had been born into a family so poor they did not even have names to give their children. She came into the world and grew up in an inhospitable land where some years the rains became avalanches of water that bore everything away before them and others when not a drop fell from the sky and the sun swelled to fill the horizon and the world became a desert. Until she was twelve, Belisa had no occupation or virtue other than having withstood hunger and the exhaustion of centuries. During one interminable drought, it fell to her to bury four younger brothers and sisters, when she realized that her turn was next, she decided to set out across the 2 plains in the direction of the sea, in hopes that she might trick death along the way. The land was eroded, split with deep cracks, strewn with rocks, fossils of trees and thorny bushes, and skeletons of animals bleached by the sun. From time to time she ran into families who, like her, were heading south, following the mirage of water. Some had begun the march carrying their belongings on their back or in small carts, but they could barely move their own bones, and after a while they had to abandon their possessions. They dragged themselves along painfully, their skin turned to lizard hide and their eyes burned by the reverberating glare. Belisa greeted them with a wave as she passed, but she did not stop, because she had no strength to waste in acts of compassion. Many people fell by the wayside, but she was so stubborn that she survived to cross through that hell and at long last reach the first trickles of water, fine, almost invisible threads that fed spindly vegetation and farther down widened into small streams and marshes. Belisa Crepusculario saved her life and in the process accidentally discovered writing. In a village near the coast, the wind blew a page of newspaper at her feet. She picked up the brittle yellow paper and stood a long while looking at it, unable to determine its purpose, until curiosity overcame her shyness. She walked over to a man who was washing his horse in the muddy pool where she had quenched her thirst. "What is this?" she asked. "The sports page of the newspaper," the man replied, concealing his surprise at her ignorance. The answer astounded the girl, but she did not want to seem rude, so she merely inquired about the significance of the fly tracks scattered across the page. "Those are words, child. Here it says that Fulgencio Barba knocked out El Negro Tiznao in the third round." That was the day Belisa Crepusculario found out that words make their way in the world without a master, and that anyone with a little cleverness can appropriate them and do business with them. She made a quick assessment of her situation and concluded that aside from becoming a prostitute or working as a servant in the kitchens of the rich there were few occupations she was qualified for. It seemed to her that selling words would be an honorable alternative. From that moment on, she worked at that profession, and was never tempted by any other. At the beginning, she offered her merchandise unaware that words could be written outside of newspapers. When she learned otherwise, she calculated the infinite possibilities of her trade and with her savings paid a priest twenty pesos to teach her to read and write, with her three 3 remaining coins she bought a dictionary. She poured over it from A to Z and then threw it into the sea, because it was not her intention to defraud her customers with packaged words. One August morning several years later, Belisa Crepusculario was sitting in her tent in the middle of a plaza, surrounded by the uproar of market day, selling legal arguments to an old man who had been trying for sixteen years to get his pension. Suddenly she heard yelling and thudding hoofbeats. She looked up from her writing and saw, first, a cloud of dust, and then a band of horsemen come galloping into the plaza. They were the Colonel's men, sent under orders of El Mulato, a giant known throughout the land for the speed of his knife and his loyalty to his chief. Both the Colonel and El Mulato had spent their lives fighting in the civil war, and their names were ineradicably linked to devastation and calamity. The rebels swept into town like a stampeding herd, wrapped in noise, bathed in sweat, and leaving a hurricane of fear in their trail. Chickens took wing, dogs ran for their lives, women and children scurried out of sight, until the only living soul left in the market was Belisa Crepusculario. She had never seen El Mulato and was surprised to see him walking toward her. "I'm looking for you," he shouted, pointing his coiled whip at her, even before the words were out, two men rushed her -- knocking over her canopy and shattering her inkwell -- bound her hand and foot, and threw her like a sea bag across the rump of El Mulato's mount. Then they thundered off toward the hills. Hours later, just as Belisa Crepusculario was near death, her heart ground to sand by the pounding of the horse, they stopped, and four strong hands set her down. She tried to stand on her feet and hold her head high, but her strength failed her and she slumped to the ground, sinking into a confused dream. She awakened several hours later to the murmur of night in the camp, but before she had time to sort out the sounds, she opened her eyes and found herself staring into the impatient glare of El Mulato, kneeling beside her. "Well, woman, at last you've come to," he said. To speed her to her senses, he tipped his canteen and offered her a sip of liquor laced with gunpowder. She demanded to know the reason for such rough treatment, and El Mulato explained that the Colonel needed her services. He allowed her to splash water on her face, and then led her to the far end of the camp where the most feared man in all the land was lazing in a hammock strung between two trees. She could not see his face, because he lay in the deceptive shadow of the leaves and the indelible shadow of all his years as a bandit, but she imagined from the way his 4 gigantic aide addressed him with such humility that he must have a very menacing expression. She was surprised by the Colonel's voice, as soft and well-modulated as a professor's. "Are you the woman who sells words?" he asked. "At your service," she stammered, peering into the dark and trying to see him better. The Colonel stood up, and turned straight toward her. She saw dark skin and the eyes of a ferocious puma, and she knew immediately that she was standing before the loneliest man in the world. "I want to be President," he announced. The Colonel was weary of riding across that godforsaken land, waging useless wars and suffering defeats that no subterfuge could transform into victories. For years he had been sleeping in the open air, bitten by mosquitoes, eating iguanas and snake soup, but those minor inconveniences were not why he wanted to change his destiny. What truly troubled him was the terror he saw in people's eyes. He longed to ride into a town beneath a triumphal arch with bright flags and flowers everywhere, he wanted to be cheered, and be given newly laid eggs and freshly baked bread. Men fled at the sight of him, children trembled, and women miscarried from fright, he had had enough, and so he had decided to become President. El Mulato had suggested that they ride to the capital, gallop up to the Palace, and take over the government, the way they had taken so many other things without anyone's permission. The Colonel, however, did not want to be just another tyrant, there had been enough of those before him and, besides, if he did that, he would never win people's hearts. It was his aspiration to win the popular vote in the December elections. "To do that, I have to talk like a candidate. Can you sell me the words for a speech?" the Colonel asked Belisa Crepusculario. She had accepted many assignments, but none like this. She did not dare refuse, fearing that El Mulato would shoot her between the eyes, or worse still, that the Colonel would burst into tears. There was more to it than that, however, she felt the urge to help him because she felt a throbbing warmth beneath her skin, a powerful desire to touch that man, to fondle him, to clasp him in her arms. All night and a good part of the following day, Belisa Crepusculario searched her repertory for words adequate for a presidential speech, closely watched by El Mulato, who could not take his eyes from her firm wanderer's legs and virginal breasts. She discarded harsh, cold words, words 5 that were too flowery, words worn from abuse, words that offered improbable promises, untruthful and confusing words, until all she had left were words sure to touch the minds of men and women's intuition. Calling upon the knowledge she had purchased from the priest for twenty pesos, she wrote the speech on a sheet of paper and then signaled El Mulato to untie the rope that bound her ankles to a tree. He led her once more to the Colonel, and again she felt the throbbing anxiety that had seized her when she first saw him. She handed him the paper and waited while he looked at it, holding it gingerly between thumbs and fingertips. "What the shit does this say," he asked finally. "Don't you know how to read?" "War's what I know," he replied. She read the speech aloud. She read it three times, so her client could engrave it on his memory. When she finished, she saw the emotion in the faces of the soldiers who had gathered round to listen, and saw that the Colonel's eyes glittered with enthusiasm, convinced that with those words the presidential chair would be his. "If after they've heard it three times, the boys are still standing there with their mouths hanging open, it must mean the thing's damn good, Colonel" was El Mulato's approval. "All right, woman. How much do I owe you?" the leader asked. "One peso, Colonel." "That's not much," he said, opening the pouch he wore at his belt, heavy with proceeds from the last foray. "The peso entitles you to a bonus. I'm going to give you two secret words," said Belisa Crepusculario. "What for?" She explained that for every fifty centavos a client paid, she gave him the gift of a word for his exclusive use. The Colonel shrugged. He had no interest at all in her offer, but he did not want to be impolite to someone who had served him so well. She walked slowly to the leather stool where he was sitting, and bent down to give him her gift. The man smelled the scent of a mountain cat issuing from the woman, a fiery heat radiating from her hips, he heard the terrible whisper of her hair, and a breath of sweetmint murmured into his ear the two secret words that were his alone. "They are yours, Colonel," she said as she stepped back. "You may use them as much as you 6 please." El Mulato accompanied Belisa to the roadside, his eyes as entreating as a stray dog's, but when he reached out to touch her, he was stopped by an avalanche of words he had never heard before; believing them to be an irrevocable curse, the flame of his desire was extinguished. During the months of September, October, and November the Colonel delivered his speech so many times that had it not been crafted from glowing and durable words it would have turned to ash as he spoke. He travelled up and down and across the country, riding into cities with a triumphal air, stopping in even the most forgotten villages where only the dump heap betrayed a human presence, to convince his fellow citizens to vote for him. While he spoke from a platform erected in the middle of the plaza, El Mulato and his men handed out sweets and painted his name on all the walls in gold frost. No one paid the least attention to those advertising ploys; they were dazzled by the clarity of the Colonel's proposals and the poetic lucidity of his arguments, infected by his powerful wish to right the wrongs of history, happy for the first time in their lives. When the Candidate had finished his speech, his soldiers would fire their pistols into the air and set off firecrackers, and when finally they rode off, they left behind a wake of hope that lingered for days on the air, like the splendid memory of a comet's tail. Soon the Colonel was the favorite. No one had ever witnessed such a phenomenon: a man who surfaced from the civil war, covered with scars and speaking like a professor, a man whose fame spread to every corner of the land and captured the nation's heart. The press focused their attention on him. Newspapermen came from far away to interview him and repeat his phrases, and the number of his followers and enemies continued to grow. "We're doing great, Colonel," said El Mulato, after twelve successful weeks of campaigning. But the Candidate did not hear. He was repeating his secret words, as he did more and more obsessively. He said them when he was mellow with nostalgia; he murmured them in his sleep; he carried them with him on horseback; he thought them before delivering his famous speech; and he caught himself savoring them in his leisure time. And every time he thought of those two words, he thought of Belisa Crepusculario, and his senses were inflamed with the memory of her feral scent, her fiery heat, the whisper of her hair, and her sweetmint breath in his ear, until he began to go around like a sleepwalker, and his men realized that he might die before he ever sat in the presidential chair. "What's got hold of you, Colonel," El Mulato asked so often that finally one day his chief broke 7 down and told him the source of his befuddlement: those two words that were buried like two daggers in his gut. "Tell me what they are and maybe they'll lose their magic," his faithful aide suggested. "I can't tell them, they're for me alone," the Colonel replied. Saddened by watching his chief decline like a man with a death sentence on his head, El Mulato slung his rifle over his shoulder and set out to find Belisa Crepusculario. He followed her trail through all that vast country, until he found her in a village in the far south, sitting under her tent reciting her rosary of news. He planted himself, spraddle-legged, before her, weapon in hand. "You! You're coming with me," he ordered. She had been waiting. She picked up her inkwell, folded the canvas of her small stall, arranged her shawl around her shoulders, and without a word took her place behind El Mulato's saddle. They did not exchange so much as a word in all the trip; El Mulato's desire for her had turned into rage, and only his fear of her tongue prevented his cutting her to shreds with his whip. Nor was he inclined to tell her that the Colonel was in a fog, and that a spell whispered into his ear had done what years of battle had not been able to do. Three days later they arrived at the encampment, and immediately, in view of all the troops, El Mulato led his prisoner before the Candidate. "I brought this witch here so you can give her back her words, Colonel," El Mulato said, pointing the barrel of his rifle at the woman's head. "And then she can give you back your manhood." The Colonel and Belisa Crepusculario stared at each other, measuring one another from a distance. The men knew then that their leader would never undo the witchcraft of those accursed words, because the whole world could see the voracious-puma eyes soften as the woman walked to him and took his hand in hers. Copyright © 1989 by Isabel Allende From The Stories of Eva Luna, Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden

1. What does the name Mlungisi mean? A. The Helper B. The Fixer C. The Brave One D. The Giver → B 2. What kind of person is Mlungisi? A. Rebellious and lazy B. Always fixing problems and helping others C. A mysterious, quiet boy D. A selfish older cousin → B 3. What does the name Velile mean? A. One Who Builds B. The Beloved One C. He Who Popped Out of Nowhere D. He Who Carries Others → C 4. How does Velile behave according to Trevor? A. He is very responsible and hardworking B. He often vanishes and suddenly reappears C. He is a caring father figure D. He is always around to help the family → B 5. Patricia’s name means: A. She Who Gives Back B. She Who Demands More C. The Fighter D. The Lost One → A 6. What did Patricia do as a child in Soweto? A. She went to school and stayed away from others B. She took care of abandoned children and fed them C. She ran away from home frequently D. She helped her father manage a shop → B 7. Where did Patricia find the money to buy food for the children? A. From her allowance B. From selling her toys C. From collecting bottles from shebeens D. From stealing it → C 8. What is a shebeen in this context? A. A school for orphans B. A place for young kids to play C. An informal bar where men would drink D. A shelter for street children → C 9. How old was Patricia when she started helping other children? A. 4 or 5 B. 6 or 7 C. 10 or 11 D. Teenager → B 10. Why did Trevor’s mother choose the name “Trevor”? A. It was the name of her favorite Bible character B. It was her father’s name C. It had no meaning, and she wanted him to be free D. It was a popular name in her family → C 11. What does it mean that Trevor's name had “no precedent” in South Africa? A. It was illegal to use B. It had no cultural or family history C. It came from ancient African myths D. It was a translation of a Zulu name → B 12. What is the deeper reason behind Patricia giving Trevor a name with no meaning? A. She didn’t like traditional names B. She didn’t know what the name meant C. She wanted him to escape fate and create his own identity D. She thought names were unimportant → C 13. According to Trevor, what kind of effect do traditional Xhosa names usually have? A. They are just for decoration B. They are often meaningless C. They tend to become self-fulfilling D. They reflect colonial history → C 14. What literary device is mainly used in the idea of names becoming destiny? A. Hyperbole B. Irony C. Symbolism D. Pun → C 15. Trevor’s mother wanted him to be: A. Bound to cultural tradition B. Free to be anyone he wanted C. A preacher D. Another fixer like Mlungisi → B ★ True or False Questions (判断题)（共10题） 16. Trevor’s cousin Mlungisi was known for always creating trouble. → False 17. Velile’s name and personality are both connected to sudden appearances and disappearances. → True 18. Patricia started caring for others when she was already an adult. → False 19. Shebeens were places where children gathered to play and eat. → False 20. Patricia used money she earned at a job to feed other children. → False （她用换瓶子的钱） 21. Trevor’s name has no Biblical or cultural background. → True 22. Patricia believed that names could shape a person’s life. → True 23. Trevor’s mother gave him a name with no meaning because she didn’t care about names. → False 24. Xhosa names often carry strong cultural or symbolic meanings. → True 25. Trevor’s mother gave him a name with no meaning so that he could be free from expectations. → True

Comprehension questions multiple choice for 5th grade English as a second language learners in hong kong on this text " My name is Humpty Dumpty this was my favorite spot high up on the wall I know it's an odd place for an egg to be but I loved being so close to the birds then one day I fell I'm sort of famous for that part folks called it the great fall which sounds a little grand it was just an accident but it changed my life fortunately all the king's men managed to put me back together well most of me there were some parts that couldn't be healed with bandages and glue after that day I became afraid of heights I was so scared that it kept me from enjoying some of my favorite things I walked past the wall every day I would think about climbing that ladder again I really missed the birds and being high above the city but I could never do it again because I knew that accidents can happen I eventually settled for watching the birds from the ground it wasn't the same but it was better than nothing then one day an idea flew by making planes was harder than I thought it was easy to get cuts and scratches but day after day I kept trying and trying until I got it just right my plane was perfect and it flew like nothing could stop it I hadn't felt that happy in a long time it wasn't the same as being up in the sky with the birds but it was close enough unfortunately accidents happen they always do I almost walked away again but then I thought about all the times I'd spent working on my plane and all the other things I'd missed I decided I was going to climb that wall but higher I got the more nervous I felt I didn't want to admit it I was terrified I didn't look up I didn't look down I just kept climbing one step at a time until I was no longer afraid maybe now you won't think of me as that egg who was famous for falling hopefully you'll remember me as the egg who got back up and learned how to fly life begins when you get back up"

Comprehension questions multiple choice for 4th grade English as a second language learners in hong kong on this text " My name is Humpty Dumpty this was my favorite spot high up on the wall I know it's an odd place for an egg to be but I loved being so close to the birds then one day I fell I'm sort of famous for that part folks called it the great fall which sounds a little grand it was just an accident but it changed my life fortunately all the king's men managed to put me back together well most of me there were some parts that couldn't be healed with bandages and glue after that day I became afraid of heights I was so scared that it kept me from enjoying some of my favorite things I walked past the wall every day I would think about climbing that ladder again I really missed the birds and being high above the city but I could never do it again because I knew that accidents can happen I eventually settled for watching the birds from the ground it wasn't the same but it was better than nothing then one day an idea flew by making planes was harder than I thought it was easy to get cuts and scratches but day after day I kept trying and trying until I got it just right my plane was perfect and it flew like nothing could stop it I hadn't felt that happy in a long time it wasn't the same as being up in the sky with the birds but it was close enough unfortunately accidents happen they always do I almost walked away again but then I thought about all the times I'd spent working on my plane and all the other things I'd missed I decided I was going to climb that wall but higher I got the more nervous I felt I didn't want to admit it I was terrified I didn't look up I didn't look down I just kept climbing one step at a time until I was no longer afraid maybe now you won't think of me as that egg who was famous for falling hopefully you'll remember me as the egg who got back up and learned how to fly life begins when you get back up"

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