Reading Compreh...

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Saki, The Schartz-Metterklume Method. Originally published in 1911.[/passage-header]Lady Carlotta stepped out on to the platform of the small wayside station and took a 83290turn or two up and down its uninteresting length, to kill time till the train should be pleased to proceed on its way. Then, in the roadway beyond, she saw a horse struggling with a more than ample load, and a carter of the sort that seems to bear a sullen hatred against the animal that helps him to earn a living. Lady Carlotta promptly betook her to the roadway, and put rather a different complexion on the struggle. 74396Certain of her acquaintances were wont to give her plentiful admonition as to the undesirability of interfering on behalf of a distressed animal, such interference being none of her business.82306Only once had she put the doctrine of non-interference into practice, when one of its most eloquent exponents had been besieged for nearly three hours in a small and extremely uncomfortable maytree by an angry boar-pig, while Lady Carlotta, on the other side of the fence, had proceeded with the water-colour sketch she was engaged on, and refused to interfere between the boar and his prisoner. 38315It is to be feared that she lost the friendship of the ultimately rescued lady.24597

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Taras Grescoe, Straphanger:
Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile. 2012 by Taras Grescoe.[/passage-header]Though there are 600 million cars on the planet, and counting, there are also seven billion people, which means that for the vast majority of us getting around involves taking buses, ferryboats, commuter trains, streetcars, and subways.37478 In other words, traveling to work, school, or the market means being a straphanger: somebody who, by choice or necessity, relies on public transport, rather than a privately owned automobile. 38548

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Elizabeth Cady Stanton's address to the 1869 Woman Suffrage Convention in Washington, DC.[/passage-header]   I urge the sixteenth amendment, because "manhood suffrage," or a man's government, is civil, religious, and social disorganization. 84802The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike, discord, disorder, disease, and death68517. See what a record of blood and cruelty the pages of history reveal! Through what slavery, slaughter, and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy creeds, the soul of humanity have struggled for the centuries, while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead alike to love and hope!
   87655The male element has held 52444high carnival thus far; it has fairly run riot from the beginning, overpowering the feminine element everywhere, crushing out all the diviner qualities in human nature, until we know but little of true manhood and womanhood, of the latter comparatively nothing, for it has scarce been recognized as a power until within the last century83966. 30665Society is but the reflection of the man himself, untempered by woman's thought; the hard iron 72553rule we feel alike in the church, the state, and the home43964. 15530No one need wonder at the disorganization, at the fragmentary condition of everything, when we remember that man, who represents but half a complete being, with but half an idea on every subject, has undertaken the absolute control of all sublunary matters69243.
   People object to the demands of those whom they choose to call 85227the strong-minded because they say "the right of suffrage will make the women masculine." That is just the difficulty in which we are involved today. Though disfranchised, we have few women in the 77578best sense; we have simply so many reflections, varieties, and dilutions of the masculine gender. The strong, natural characteristics of womanhood are repressed and ignored in dependence, for so long as man feeds woman she will try to please the giver and adapt herself to his condition. To keep a foothold in society, a woman must be as near like man as possible, reflect his ideas, opinions, virtues, motives, prejudices, and vices. She must respect his statutes, though they strip her of every inalienable right, and conflict with that higher law written by the finger of God on her own soul...

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Saki, The Schartz-Metterklume Method. Originally published in 1911.[/passage-header]Lady Carlotta stepped out on to the platform of the small wayside station and took a 83290turn or two up and down its uninteresting length, to kill time till the train should be pleased to proceed on its way. Then, in the roadway beyond, she saw a horse struggling with a more than ample load, and a carter of the sort that seems to bear a sullen hatred against the animal that helps him to earn a living. Lady Carlotta promptly betook her to the roadway, and put rather a different complexion on the struggle. 74396Certain of her acquaintances were wont to give her plentiful admonition as to the undesirability of interfering on behalf of a distressed animal, such interference being none of her business.82306Only once had she put the doctrine of non-interference into practice, when one of its most eloquent exponents had been besieged for nearly three hours in a small and extremely uncomfortable maytree by an angry boar-pig, while Lady Carlotta, on the other side of the fence, had proceeded with the water-colour sketch she was engaged on, and refused to interfere between the boar and his prisoner. 38315It is to be feared that she lost the friendship of the ultimately rescued lady.24597

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Iain King, "Can Economics Be Ethical?" 2013 by Prospect Publishing.[/passage-header]   Recent debates about the economy have rediscovered the question, "is that right?", where "right" means more than just profits or efficiency. 

        In general, democracies organize and carry out their elections in one of two ways. In first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections, voters choose individual candidates for office, and the candidate with the most votes wins. Elections in this kind of system are also called winner-take-all. In a democracy with proportional representation (PR), parties, not individuals, win seats in a legislature according to the percent of votes they receive in an election. Parties then form coalitions with each other to gain control of the government. Which system a country uses tends to greatly affect its politics; each has its merits and disadvantages.

      These two types of election tend to foster very different styles of political debate. First-past-the-post elections tend to lead to more moderate political discussions at the national level. In elections for the presidency of the United States, for example, candidates need support from every part of the country. They cannot alienate large groups by expressing extreme views, so they must be moderate in order to have broad appeal. This moderation has its downsides, however. For one, uncommon opinions tend to be left out of the public discussion. This can result in an elected government that may not fully represent citizens views. Extreme parties are also reduced to the role of spoilers in national elections: unable to win, but able to hurt larger parties with similar, but more moderate, viewpoints. During the US election for president in 1992, a far-right candidate, Ross Perot, drew votes from the sitting president, the center-right George H.W. Bush. This may have allowed the center-left candidate, Bill Clinton, to win the presidency. 

        Proportional representation, for better or worse, allows more extreme viewpoints to be represented at the national level. This can be a good thing, allowing minority groups and small, single-issue parties to have a voice in government. However, these small parties can cause problems when they join the ruling coalitions. They can force the government to focus on niche agendas by threatening to leave the coalition if ignored. In some cases, radical parties that actively oppose or threaten democracy, like fascist or communist parties, can gain seats in PR elections. This occurred most famously in Germany's Weimar Republic in the 1930s, when democratic elections gave the Nazi Party the opportunity to take power.         Each electoral system also results in different levels of voter participation. First-past-the-post systems generally result in lower overall voter participation. This could be because the rules of FPTP elections discourage voters who support candidates or parties who are not likely to win.

Because votes for a losing candidate count for nothing in an FPTP election, votes for opposition parties are effectively wasted. In elections for US Senate seats and the US presidency, for instance, many states are consistently won by candidates from one party. Opposition voters in these states have little reason to show up at the polls. However, some political scientists argue that because voters vote for specific candidates in FPTP elections, those elected officials are more personally accountable to the citizens that voted for them. This sense of accountability could lead to more citizen engagement between elections.

         Proportional representation, on the whole, encourages higher levels of participation. Because voters will be represented even if they are in the minority, there are far fewer wasted votes in PR elections. Perhaps, for this reason, voter turnout is much higher, on average, in countries that use a PR system. On the other hand, voters in PR elections generally vote for parties rather than individuals. Because the parties appoint legislators to their seats, politicians may feel more accountable to their parties than to voters. This can lead officials to focus on within-party politics rather than the wishes of the people.

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Elizabeth Cady Stanton's address to the 1869 Woman Suffrage Convention in Washington, DC.[/passage-header]   I urge the sixteenth amendment, because "manhood suffrage," or a man's government, is civil, religious, and social disorganization. 84802The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike, discord, disorder, disease, and death68517. See what a record of blood and cruelty the pages of history reveal! Through what slavery, slaughter, and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy creeds, the soul of humanity have struggled for the centuries, while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead alike to love and hope!
   87655The male element has held 52444high carnival thus far; it has fairly run riot from the beginning, overpowering the feminine element everywhere, crushing out all the diviner qualities in human nature, until we know but little of true manhood and womanhood, of the latter comparatively nothing, for it has scarce been recognized as a power until within the last century83966. 30665Society is but the reflection of the man himself, untempered by woman's thought; the hard iron 72553rule we feel alike in the church, the state, and the home43964. 15530No one need wonder at the disorganization, at the fragmentary condition of everything, when we remember that man, who represents but half a complete being, with but half an idea on every subject, has undertaken the absolute control of all sublunary matters69243.
   People object to the demands of those whom they choose to call 85227the strong-minded because they say "the right of suffrage will make the women masculine." That is just the difficulty in which we are involved today. Though disfranchised, we have few women in the 77578best sense; we have simply so many reflections, varieties, and dilutions of the masculine gender. The strong, natural characteristics of womanhood are repressed and ignored in dependence, for so long as man feeds woman she will try to please the giver and adapt herself to his condition. To keep a foothold in society, a woman must be as near like man as possible, reflect his ideas, opinions, virtues, motives, prejudices, and vices. She must respect his statutes, though they strip her of every inalienable right, and conflict with that higher law written by the finger of God on her own soul...

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Elizabeth Cady Stanton's address to the 1869 Woman Suffrage Convention in Washington, DC.[/passage-header]   I urge the sixteenth amendment, because "manhood suffrage," or a man's government, is civil, religious, and social disorganization. 84802The male element is a destructive force, stern, selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest, acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike, discord, disorder, disease, and death68517. See what a record of blood and cruelty the pages of history reveal! Through what slavery, slaughter, and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy creeds, the soul of humanity have struggled for the centuries, while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead alike to love and hope!
   87655The male element has held 52444high carnival thus far; it has fairly run riot from the beginning, overpowering the feminine element everywhere, crushing out all the diviner qualities in human nature, until we know but little of true manhood and womanhood, of the latter comparatively nothing, for it has scarce been recognized as a power until within the last century83966. 30665Society is but the reflection of the man himself, untempered by woman's thought; the hard iron 72553rule we feel alike in the church, the state, and the home43964. 15530No one need wonder at the disorganization, at the fragmentary condition of everything, when we remember that man, who represents but half a complete being, with but half an idea on every subject, has undertaken the absolute control of all sublunary matters69243.
   People object to the demands of those whom they choose to call 85227the strong-minded because they say "the right of suffrage will make the women masculine." That is just the difficulty in which we are involved today. Though disfranchised, we have few women in the 77578best sense; we have simply so many reflections, varieties, and dilutions of the masculine gender. The strong, natural characteristics of womanhood are repressed and ignored in dependence, for so long as man feeds woman she will try to please the giver and adapt herself to his condition. To keep a foothold in society, a woman must be as near like man as possible, reflect his ideas, opinions, virtues, motives, prejudices, and vices. She must respect his statutes, though they strip her of every inalienable right, and conflict with that higher law written by the finger of God on her own soul...

[passage-header]This passage is adapted from Geoffrey Giller, "Long a Mystery, How 500-Meter-High Undersea Waves Form Is Revealed." 2014 by Scientific American.[/passage-header]   73738Some of the largest ocean waves in the world are nearly impossible to see13037. Unlike other large waves, these rollers called internal waves, do not ride the ocean surface. Instead, 61205they move underwater, undetectable without the use of satellite imagery or sophisticated monitoring equipment66855. Despite their hidden nature, internal waves are fundamental parts of ocean water dynamics, transferring heat to the ocean depths and bringing up cold water from below And they can reach staggering heights - some as tall as skyscrapers.
   Because these waves are involved in ocean mixing and thus the transfer of heat, understanding them is crucial to global climate modeling, says Tom Peacock, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Most models fail to take internal waves into account. "51464If we want to have more and more accurate climate models, we have to be able to 96398capture processes such as this85920," Peacock says. Peacock and his colleagues tried to do just that. Their study published in November in Geophysical Research Letters focused on internal waves generated in the Luzon Strait, which separates Taiwan and the Philippines. 36782Internal waves in this region, thought to be some of the largest in the world, can reach about 500 meters high43292. "That's the same height as the Freedom Tower that's just been built in New York," Peacock says.
   16528Although scientists knew of this phenomenon in the South China Sea and beyond, they didn't know exactly how internal waves formed94538. To find out, Peacock and a team of researchers from M.I.T. and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution worked with France's National Center for Scientific Research using a giant facility there called the Coriolis Platform. The rotating platform, about 15 meters (49.2 feet) in diameter, turns at variable speeds and can simulate Earth's rotation. It also has walls, which means scientists can fill it with water and create accurate, large-scale simulations of various oceanographic scenarios.
   Peacock and his team built a carbon-fiber resin scale model of the Luzon Strait, including the islands and surrounding ocean floor topography. Then they filled the platform with water of varying salinity to replicate the different densities found at the strait, with denser, saltier water below and lighter, less briny water above. Small particles were added to the solution and illuminated with lights from below in order to track how the liquid moved. Finally, they re-created tides using two large plungers to see how the internal waves themselves formed.
   The Luzon Strait's underwater topography, with a distinct double-ridge shape, turns out to be responsible for generating the underwater waves. 69817As the tide rises and falls and water moves through the strait, colder, denser water is pushed up over the ridges into warmer, less dense layers above it28633.
   This action results in bumps of colder water trailed by warmer water that generate an internal wave. 12531As these waves move toward land, they become steeper - much the same way waves at the beach become taller before they hit the shore - until they break on a continental shelf19132.
   The researchers were also able to 92527devise a mathematical model that describes the movement and formation of these waves. 61484Whereas the model is specific to the Luzon Strait, it can still help researchers understand how internal waves are generated in other places around the world22111. 

[passage-header]The King's Flight[/passage-header]   After weeks of [1] convert planning and indecisive delays, on June 20, 1791, the royal family was ready. In the middle of the night, King Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette, their children, and a few other close relations huddled into a small carriage and fled the city of Paris.