SAT DAY THREE WRITING
THOUGHTS ABOUT YOUR WRITING:
Make a list of all the books you have read in your life.
1. USE BETTER EXAMPLES:
2. ONE/THEIR AGREEMENT:
One must forget his or her past and move on toward their future.
FOUR RELEVANT WRITING TIPS:
1. Your essay should be a full 2 pages. Studies have shown that longer essays receive higher scores. (Generally above 10) This does not mean you can just babble on about the cosmos.
2. Have a solid and direct thesis
3. Have a conclusion that brings your essay together
4. Include three relevant examples in the body of your essay that reinforce and prove your thesis statement
LET’S PRACTICE THE PROCESS A BIT:
TAKE TWO MINUTES TO COME UP WITH A THESIS AND THREE EXAMPLES TO PROVE YOUR POINT.
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.
Given the importance of human creativity, one would think it should have a high priority among our concerns. But if we look at the reality, we see a different picture. Basic scientific research is minimized in favor of immediate practical applications. The arts are increasingly seen as dispensable luxuries. Yet as competition heats up around the globe, exactly the opposite strategy is needed.
Adapted from Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi
Assignment
Is creativity needed more than ever in the world today?
Thesis:
Three Examples:
Page 263:
IDENTIFYING SENTENCE ERRORS:
Pay attention to number and agreement mistakes. These are very common in this section:
Look at the singular or plural noun and the phrase or word describing it:
The advertisement in the newspaper requested that only persons with high school diplomas should apply.
Most infants, even unusually quiet ones, will cry with greater frequency when they begin teething.
Mary’s rose gardens are considered by many to be the symbols of beauty in the neighborhood.
A typical college student has difficulty adjusting to academic standards higher than those of their high school.
Subject-verb agreement:
Do not be misled by a phrase that comes between the subject and the verb. The verb agrees with the subject, not with a noun or pronoun in the phrase.
The team captain, as well as his players, is anxious.
The book, including all the chapters in the first section, is boring.
The woman with all the dogs walks down my street.
The words each, each one, either, neither, everyone, everybody, anybody, anyone, nobody, somebody, someone, and no one are singular and require a singular verb.
Each of these hot dogs is juicy.
Everybody knows Mr. Jones.
Either is correct.
SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT QUIZ:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/cgi-shl/quiz.pl/sv_agr_quiz.htm#
IMPROVING SENTENCES:
Page 273
This section is not only interested in correctness. Remember, there will be other “correct” options for every question. The key is to find the best option. Does that sound relative? It is!
Sample Improving Sentences Questions
1. After Timmy dropped his filthy socks in the hamper, the offensive garment was washed by his long-suffering father.
1. the offensive garment was washed by his long-suffering father
2. his long-suffering father washed the offensive garment
3. the washing of the offensive garment took place by his long-suffering father
4. long-suffering, the offensive garment was washed by his father
5. he left the offensive garment for his long-suffering father who washed it
The main problem in this sentence is the use of the passive voice—was washed by. The passive construction makes the sentence more convoluted than it needs to be. B and E both fix the passive voice problem by replacing the passive verb with active verb forms. However, E is wordy and redundant, whereas B is clear and concise. The answer is B.
2. The unlimited shopping spree allowed Rachel to raid the department store and she could eat everything in the café.
1. and she could eat
2. as well as eating
3. so she could eat
4. and a meal
5. and to eat
This sentence has problems with parallelism. The first half of the sentence contains a verb in the infinitive form “to raid” so the other clause in the sentence (after the word and) should contain another infinitive. Answer E makes both halves of the sentence parallel by replacing the conditional verb form she could eat with the infinitive verb form to eat. The answer is E.
COMMON ISSUES IN THIS SECTION:
1. PASSIVE VOICE:
My homework was eaten by my dog.
The dog ate my homework.
I was put to sleep by my SAT instructor.
MY SAT instructor put me to sleep.
2. RUN-ON SENTENCES
Subject-verb….get out
3. DANGLING MODIFIERS:
Incorrect: After reading the original study, the article remains unconvincing.
Revised: After reading the original study, I find the article unconvincing.
Incorrect: Relieved of your responsibilities at your job, your home should be a place to relax.
Revised: Relieved of your responsibilities at your job, you should be able to relax at home.
Incorrect: The experiment was a failure, not having studied the lab manual carefully.
Revised: They failed the experiment, not having studied the lab manual carefully.
While studying law, Javier, a talented litigator from Pasadena, fought valiantly, against City Hall, a daunting and hopeless endeavor.
Revision, never one of my strong suits as a writer, and certainly the most dreadful part of my job at the paper, was, nonetheless, necessary, I would soon learn.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
SAT COURSE NOTES
The thing that worries me most about the SAT is…
Your amigdala and you.
I. CRITICAL READING SECTION:
Critical Reading Section
The critical reading section (formerly known as the verbal section) has been slightly altered. Analogies have been replaced by short reading passages. These reading passages measure the kind of reasoning formerly measured by analogies. The reading passages are taken from different fields, including natural sciences, humanities, social science, and literary fiction. This section measures a student's knowledge of genre, cause and effect, rhetorical devices, and comparative arguments.
"Incidentally, I despise everything which merely instructs me without increasing or immediately enlivening my activity." Goethe
Our own practice test:
Moscow Mayor Promises a Winter Without Snow
By SIMON SHUSTER / MOSCOW Simon Shuster / Moscow
Sat Oct 17, 9:15 am ET
Pigs still can't fly, but this winter, the mayor of Moscow promises to keep it from snowing. For just a few million dollars, the mayor's office will hire the Russian Air Force to spray a fine chemical mist over the clouds before they reach the capital, forcing them to dump their snow outside the city. Authorities say this will be a boon for Moscow, which is typically covered with a blanket of snow from November to March. Road crews won't need to constantly clear the streets, and traffic - and quality of life - will undoubtedly improve.
The idea came from Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who is no stranger to playing God. In 2002, he spearheaded a project to reverse the flow of the vast River Ob through Siberia to help irrigate the country's parched Central Asian neighbors. Although that idea hasn't exactly turned out as planned - scientists have said it's not feasible - this time, Luzhkov says, there's no way he can fail. (See TIME's photo-essay "Vladimir Putin: Action Figure.")
Controlling the weather in Moscow is nothing new, he says. Ahead of the two main holidays celebrated in the city each year - Victory Day in May and City Day in September - the often cash-strapped air force is paid to make sure that it doesn't, well, rain on the parades. With a city budget of $40 billion a year (larger than New York City's budget), Moscow can easily afford the $2-3 million price tag to keep the skies blue as spectators watch the tanks and rocket launchers roll along Red Square. Now there's a new challenge for the air force: Moscow's notorious blizzards.
"You know how every year on City Day and Victory Day we create the weather?" Luzhkov asked a group of farmers outside Moscow in September, according to Russian media reports. "Well, we should do the same with the snow! Then outside Moscow there will be more moisture, a bigger harvest, while for us it won't snow as much. It will make financial sense." (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory Day.)
The plan was unsurprisingly rubber-stamped this week by the Moscow City Council, which is dominated by Luzhkov's supporters. Then the city's Department of Housing and Public Works described how it would work. The air force will use cement powder, dry ice or silver iodide to spray the clouds from Nov. 15 to March 15 - and only to prevent "very big and serious snow" from falling on the city, said Andrei Tsybin, the head of the department. This could mean that a few flakes will manage to slip through the cracks. Tsybin estimated that the total cost of keeping the storms at bay would be $6 million this winter, roughly half the amount Moscow normally spends to clear the streets of snow.
So far the main objection to the plan has come from Moscow's suburbs, which will likely be inundated with snow if the plan goes forward. Alla Kachan, the Moscow region's ecology minister, said the proposal still needs to be assessed by environmental experts and discussed with the people living in the area before Luzhkov can enact it. "The citizens of the region have some concerns. We have received lots of messages," she told the RIA news agency. (Read TIME's 1991 article "The End of the U.S.S.R.")
With only a few weeks left before winter comes, environmentalists will have to work fast to keep Luzhkov from implementing his zaniest plan to date - and to stop the first snowflakes from wafting down to the city streets.
In paragraph 1, how is the mayor going to stop the snow?
In paragraph 2, the word “feasible” most nearly means
A. expensive
B. inexpensive
C. pleasant
D. probable
The author seems to think the mayor of Moscow is
a. a nut.
b. a visionary.
c. handsome.
d. used to the cold weather.
What is necessary to skim?
1. FOCUS!!!
Reading is panacea.
11 experiences
2. Physicality
--touch the text
...FROM THE LATIMES
Min Byoung-chul, a professor at Konkuk University, was recently having lunch with some Chinese students. This time, it was the teacher who was taking notes.
The students were citing differences between Chinese and South Korean culture. Why, they asked, do Koreans look at them strangely when they lift their rice bowls to eat, or smoke in front of the elderly?
And why do Korean teachers get insulted when they hand in their papers using one hand instead of two? And hasn't anyone told teachers that students from China would never bow like their Korean counterparts?
Japanese students voiced similar differences with Koreans. Why, for example, do South Koreans talk loudly on their cellphones in trains and buses, a practice that's a social taboo back home?
Min has made an avocation out of cataloging such differences. He's a cross-cultural interpreter whose terrain is the delicate, often undefined line where cultural mannerisms clash.
Over the years, the 59-year-old educator and his team of researchers have queried people at airports, coffeehouses and classrooms in the U.S. and Asia about cultural faux pas committed by visiting foreigners.
Min has written three guides that, country by country, highlight the differences between American culture and the social customs in South Korea, China and Japan. He is researching a new book that will examine the differences among Asian cultures.
The time has come for such a book, he says, because the improved political and economic climate throughout northeast Asia has translated into more regional tourism and business travel.
South Koreans need to be ready, Min says.
"South Korea is becoming more diverse with more interracial marriages," he said. "All cultures have their differences. And if Koreans can't grasp those differences, they're going to be in a lot of trouble."
In 1993, Min published "Ugly Koreans, Ugly Americans," examining customs that are often lost in translation across the Pacific Ocean. He co-wrote follow-ups, "Ugly Japanese, Ugly Americans" and "Ugly Chinese, Ugly Americans," which further detail clashes between East and West.
His research, which has included studying and teaching in the U.S. and offering English-language classes on South Korean TV and radio, led Min to conclude that the language barrier is but one hurdle between cultures.
"A 70-year-old Korean man once reached over to rub my inner thigh as we talked in my office," he said. "His gesture was meant to show, ‘I know you. I'm friendly. I've seen you on TV.'
"But I explained that as South Korea becomes more globalized, foreign visitors won't understand. I advised him to stop doing that."
The 2002 World Cup and the influx of English-language teachers here have brought more Westerners to South Korea, introducing additional opportunities for tension.
In South Korea, the hands-on culture condones body contact as an acceptable form of communication. Middle-aged women sometimes affectionately pick up and hug toddlers they encounter in public places.
Yet what Koreans will not customarily do, Min says, is apologize for slamming into someone or hold open a door for a person in a crowd. Rarely will they even acknowledge strangers in public.
Koreans, in turn, are baffled by the behavior of Americans and other Westerners. Why do many stick their hands in their pockets while talking, blast their car radios or refuse to stand when a boss approaches? they ask.
"The point of the books isn't to blame one side or the other," Min said, "but to help both sides view the other in a more open manner."
Min, a bespectacled Seoul native whose father was an elementary school principal, took an early interest in the rough-hewn intersection of language and culture.
Is Google Making Us Stupid? July/August 2008 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE
What the Internet is doing to our brains (excerpt from the article)
By Nicholas Carr
"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”
I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets’ reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)
I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”
As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”
The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.
If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture. In a recent essay, the playwright Richard Foreman eloquently described what’s at stake:
I’m haunted by that scene in 2001. What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer’s emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut—“I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid”—and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.
Your amigdala and you.
I. CRITICAL READING SECTION:
Critical Reading Section
The critical reading section (formerly known as the verbal section) has been slightly altered. Analogies have been replaced by short reading passages. These reading passages measure the kind of reasoning formerly measured by analogies. The reading passages are taken from different fields, including natural sciences, humanities, social science, and literary fiction. This section measures a student's knowledge of genre, cause and effect, rhetorical devices, and comparative arguments.
"Incidentally, I despise everything which merely instructs me without increasing or immediately enlivening my activity." Goethe
Our own practice test:
Moscow Mayor Promises a Winter Without Snow
By SIMON SHUSTER / MOSCOW Simon Shuster / Moscow
Sat Oct 17, 9:15 am ET
Pigs still can't fly, but this winter, the mayor of Moscow promises to keep it from snowing. For just a few million dollars, the mayor's office will hire the Russian Air Force to spray a fine chemical mist over the clouds before they reach the capital, forcing them to dump their snow outside the city. Authorities say this will be a boon for Moscow, which is typically covered with a blanket of snow from November to March. Road crews won't need to constantly clear the streets, and traffic - and quality of life - will undoubtedly improve.
The idea came from Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who is no stranger to playing God. In 2002, he spearheaded a project to reverse the flow of the vast River Ob through Siberia to help irrigate the country's parched Central Asian neighbors. Although that idea hasn't exactly turned out as planned - scientists have said it's not feasible - this time, Luzhkov says, there's no way he can fail. (See TIME's photo-essay "Vladimir Putin: Action Figure.")
Controlling the weather in Moscow is nothing new, he says. Ahead of the two main holidays celebrated in the city each year - Victory Day in May and City Day in September - the often cash-strapped air force is paid to make sure that it doesn't, well, rain on the parades. With a city budget of $40 billion a year (larger than New York City's budget), Moscow can easily afford the $2-3 million price tag to keep the skies blue as spectators watch the tanks and rocket launchers roll along Red Square. Now there's a new challenge for the air force: Moscow's notorious blizzards.
"You know how every year on City Day and Victory Day we create the weather?" Luzhkov asked a group of farmers outside Moscow in September, according to Russian media reports. "Well, we should do the same with the snow! Then outside Moscow there will be more moisture, a bigger harvest, while for us it won't snow as much. It will make financial sense." (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory Day.)
The plan was unsurprisingly rubber-stamped this week by the Moscow City Council, which is dominated by Luzhkov's supporters. Then the city's Department of Housing and Public Works described how it would work. The air force will use cement powder, dry ice or silver iodide to spray the clouds from Nov. 15 to March 15 - and only to prevent "very big and serious snow" from falling on the city, said Andrei Tsybin, the head of the department. This could mean that a few flakes will manage to slip through the cracks. Tsybin estimated that the total cost of keeping the storms at bay would be $6 million this winter, roughly half the amount Moscow normally spends to clear the streets of snow.
So far the main objection to the plan has come from Moscow's suburbs, which will likely be inundated with snow if the plan goes forward. Alla Kachan, the Moscow region's ecology minister, said the proposal still needs to be assessed by environmental experts and discussed with the people living in the area before Luzhkov can enact it. "The citizens of the region have some concerns. We have received lots of messages," she told the RIA news agency. (Read TIME's 1991 article "The End of the U.S.S.R.")
With only a few weeks left before winter comes, environmentalists will have to work fast to keep Luzhkov from implementing his zaniest plan to date - and to stop the first snowflakes from wafting down to the city streets.
In paragraph 1, how is the mayor going to stop the snow?
In paragraph 2, the word “feasible” most nearly means
A. expensive
B. inexpensive
C. pleasant
D. probable
The author seems to think the mayor of Moscow is
a. a nut.
b. a visionary.
c. handsome.
d. used to the cold weather.
What is necessary to skim?
1. FOCUS!!!
Reading is panacea.
11 experiences
2. Physicality
--touch the text
...FROM THE LATIMES
Min Byoung-chul, a professor at Konkuk University, was recently having lunch with some Chinese students. This time, it was the teacher who was taking notes.
The students were citing differences between Chinese and South Korean culture. Why, they asked, do Koreans look at them strangely when they lift their rice bowls to eat, or smoke in front of the elderly?
And why do Korean teachers get insulted when they hand in their papers using one hand instead of two? And hasn't anyone told teachers that students from China would never bow like their Korean counterparts?
Japanese students voiced similar differences with Koreans. Why, for example, do South Koreans talk loudly on their cellphones in trains and buses, a practice that's a social taboo back home?
Min has made an avocation out of cataloging such differences. He's a cross-cultural interpreter whose terrain is the delicate, often undefined line where cultural mannerisms clash.
Over the years, the 59-year-old educator and his team of researchers have queried people at airports, coffeehouses and classrooms in the U.S. and Asia about cultural faux pas committed by visiting foreigners.
Min has written three guides that, country by country, highlight the differences between American culture and the social customs in South Korea, China and Japan. He is researching a new book that will examine the differences among Asian cultures.
The time has come for such a book, he says, because the improved political and economic climate throughout northeast Asia has translated into more regional tourism and business travel.
South Koreans need to be ready, Min says.
"South Korea is becoming more diverse with more interracial marriages," he said. "All cultures have their differences. And if Koreans can't grasp those differences, they're going to be in a lot of trouble."
In 1993, Min published "Ugly Koreans, Ugly Americans," examining customs that are often lost in translation across the Pacific Ocean. He co-wrote follow-ups, "Ugly Japanese, Ugly Americans" and "Ugly Chinese, Ugly Americans," which further detail clashes between East and West.
His research, which has included studying and teaching in the U.S. and offering English-language classes on South Korean TV and radio, led Min to conclude that the language barrier is but one hurdle between cultures.
"A 70-year-old Korean man once reached over to rub my inner thigh as we talked in my office," he said. "His gesture was meant to show, ‘I know you. I'm friendly. I've seen you on TV.'
"But I explained that as South Korea becomes more globalized, foreign visitors won't understand. I advised him to stop doing that."
The 2002 World Cup and the influx of English-language teachers here have brought more Westerners to South Korea, introducing additional opportunities for tension.
In South Korea, the hands-on culture condones body contact as an acceptable form of communication. Middle-aged women sometimes affectionately pick up and hug toddlers they encounter in public places.
Yet what Koreans will not customarily do, Min says, is apologize for slamming into someone or hold open a door for a person in a crowd. Rarely will they even acknowledge strangers in public.
Koreans, in turn, are baffled by the behavior of Americans and other Westerners. Why do many stick their hands in their pockets while talking, blast their car radios or refuse to stand when a boss approaches? they ask.
"The point of the books isn't to blame one side or the other," Min said, "but to help both sides view the other in a more open manner."
Min, a bespectacled Seoul native whose father was an elementary school principal, took an early interest in the rough-hewn intersection of language and culture.
Is Google Making Us Stupid? July/August 2008 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE
What the Internet is doing to our brains (excerpt from the article)
By Nicholas Carr
"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”
I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets’ reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)
I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”
As we are drained of our “inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance,” Foreman concluded, we risk turning into “‘pancake people’—spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”
The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas. Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.
If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with “content,” we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture. In a recent essay, the playwright Richard Foreman eloquently described what’s at stake:
I’m haunted by that scene in 2001. What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer’s emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut—“I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid”—and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
GOOD LINKS TO DO SOME OUTSIDE READING
HERE ARE SOME READING SUGGESTIONS.
(Disclaimer: this is not intended as a comprehensive list. This is not intended as approval of whatever ideas are in these pieces. This is intended to make words go flying by your eyes and into your brains.)
DON'T ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS REGARDING MAIN IDEA OR TONE OR ANYTHING. JUST READ!!!
www.cnn.com
www.latimes.com
www.drudgereport.com
www.washingtonpost.com
www.washingtontimes.com
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
http://traveler.nationalgeographic.com/
http://www.travelandleisure.com/
www.cnnsi.com
www.espn.com
http://www.sciencemag.org/
http://discovermagazine.com/
(Disclaimer: this is not intended as a comprehensive list. This is not intended as approval of whatever ideas are in these pieces. This is intended to make words go flying by your eyes and into your brains.)
DON'T ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS REGARDING MAIN IDEA OR TONE OR ANYTHING. JUST READ!!!
www.cnn.com
www.latimes.com
www.drudgereport.com
www.washingtonpost.com
www.washingtontimes.com
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
http://traveler.nationalgeographic.com/
http://www.travelandleisure.com/
www.cnnsi.com
www.espn.com
http://www.sciencemag.org/
http://discovermagazine.com/
WRITING PRACTICE
Here are twelve essay prompts. Remember, the best way to improve your reading and writing is to read and write.
12 PRACTICE ESSAY PROMPTS:
Prompt 1
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. A person does not simply "receive" his or her identity. Identity is much more than the name or features one is born with. True identity is something people must create for themselves by making choices that are significant and that require a courageous commitment in the face of challenges. Identity means having ideas and values that one lives by. Adapted from Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action
Assignment:
Is identity something people are born with or given, or is it something people create for themselves? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 2
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. We value uniqueness and originality, but it seems that everywhere we turn, we are surrounded by ideas and things that are copies or even copies of copies. Writers, artists, and musicians seek new ideas for paintings, books, songs, and movies, but many sadly realize, "It's been done." The same is true for scientists, scholars, and businesspeople. Everyone wants to create something new, but at best we can hope only to repeat or imitate what has already been done.
Assignment:
Can people ever be truly original? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 3
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. All people who have achieved greatness in something knew what they excelled at. These people identified the skills that made them special: good judgment, or courage, or a special artistic or literary talent and focused on developing these skills. Yet most people achieve superiority in nothing because they fail to identify and develop their greatest attribute. Adapted from Baltasar Gracin y Morales, The Art of Worldly Wisdom Adapted from Stephen J. Carter, Integrity
Assignment:
Do people achieve greatness only by finding out what they are especially good at and developing that attribute above all else? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 4
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. Having many admirers is one way to become a celebrity, but it is not the way to become a hero. Heroes are self-made. Yet in our daily lives we see no difference between "celebrities" and "heroes." For this reason, we deprive ourselves of real role models. We should admire heroes, people who are famous because they are great, but not celebrities, people who simply seem great because they are famous. Adapted from Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
Assignment:
Should we admire heroes but not celebrities? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 5
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. It is better to try to be original than to merely imitate others. People should always try to say, write, think, or create something new. There is little value in merely repeating what has been done before. People who merely copy or use the ideas and inventions of others, no matter how successful they may be, have never achieved anything significant.
Assignment:
Is it always better to be original than to imitate or use the ideas of others? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 6
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. It is better to try to be original than to merely imitate others. People should always try to say, write, think, or create something new. There is little value in merely repeating what has been done before. People who merely copy or use the ideas and inventions of others, no matter how successful they may be, have never achieved anything significant.
Assignment: Is it always better to be original than to imitate or use the ideas of others? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 7 Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. Often we see people who persist in trying to achieve a particular goal, even when all the evidence indicates that they will be unlikely to achieve it. When they succeed, we consider them courageous for having overcome impossible obstacles. But when they fail, we think of them as headstrong, foolhardy, and bent on self-destruction. To many people, great effort is only worthwhile when it results in success. Adapted from Gilbert Brim, "Ambition"
Assignment:
Is the effort involved in pursuing any goal valuable, even if the goal is not reached? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 8
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. Newness has become our obsession. Novelty is more interesting to us than continuing with whatever is "tried and true." We discard the old so we can acquire the most recent model, the latest version, the newest and most improved formula. Often, we replace what is useful just because it is no longer new. Not only with material goods but also with cultural values, we prefer whatever is the latest trend.
Assignment:
Should people always prefer new things, ideas, or values to those of the past? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 9
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. Since we live in a global society, surely we should view ourselves as citizens of the whole world. But instead, people choose to identify and associate with smaller and more familiar groups. People think of themselves as belonging to families, nations, cultures, and generations or as belonging to smaller groups whose members share ideas, views, or common experiences. All of these kinds of groups may offer people a feeling of security but also prevent them from learning or experiencing anything new.
Assignment:
Is there any value for people to belong only to a group or groups with which they have something in common? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 10
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. The biggest difference between people who succeed at any difficult undertaking and those who do not is not ability but persistence. Many extremely talented people give up when obstacles arise. After all, who wants to face failure? It is often said about highly successful people that they are just ordinary individuals who kept on trying, who did not give up. Adapted from Tom Morris, True Success: A New Philosophy of Excellence
Assignment:
Is persistence more important than ability in determining a person's success? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 11
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. Whether it is a child pouting to get ice cream or a politician using emotionally charged language to influence potential supporters, all people use some form of acting to achieve whatever ends they seek. Public figures of all kinds would have short, unsuccessful careers without the aid of acting. Acting consciously assuming a role in order to achieve some purpose is a tool people use to protect their interests and gain advantages in every aspect of life. Adapted from Marlon Brando, Foreword to The Technique of Acting by Stella Adler
Assignment:
Is acting an essential part of everyday life? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 12
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. When people are very enthusiastic always willing and eager to meet new challenges or give undivided support to ideas or projects they are likely to be rewarded. They often work harder and enjoy their work more than do those who are more restrained. But there are limits to how enthusiastic people should be. People should always question and doubt, since too much enthusiasm can prevent people from considering better ideas, goals, or courses of action.
Assignment:
Can people have too much enthusiasm? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
12 PRACTICE ESSAY PROMPTS:
Prompt 1
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. A person does not simply "receive" his or her identity. Identity is much more than the name or features one is born with. True identity is something people must create for themselves by making choices that are significant and that require a courageous commitment in the face of challenges. Identity means having ideas and values that one lives by. Adapted from Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action
Assignment:
Is identity something people are born with or given, or is it something people create for themselves? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 2
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. We value uniqueness and originality, but it seems that everywhere we turn, we are surrounded by ideas and things that are copies or even copies of copies. Writers, artists, and musicians seek new ideas for paintings, books, songs, and movies, but many sadly realize, "It's been done." The same is true for scientists, scholars, and businesspeople. Everyone wants to create something new, but at best we can hope only to repeat or imitate what has already been done.
Assignment:
Can people ever be truly original? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 3
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. All people who have achieved greatness in something knew what they excelled at. These people identified the skills that made them special: good judgment, or courage, or a special artistic or literary talent and focused on developing these skills. Yet most people achieve superiority in nothing because they fail to identify and develop their greatest attribute. Adapted from Baltasar Gracin y Morales, The Art of Worldly Wisdom Adapted from Stephen J. Carter, Integrity
Assignment:
Do people achieve greatness only by finding out what they are especially good at and developing that attribute above all else? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 4
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. Having many admirers is one way to become a celebrity, but it is not the way to become a hero. Heroes are self-made. Yet in our daily lives we see no difference between "celebrities" and "heroes." For this reason, we deprive ourselves of real role models. We should admire heroes, people who are famous because they are great, but not celebrities, people who simply seem great because they are famous. Adapted from Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
Assignment:
Should we admire heroes but not celebrities? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 5
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. It is better to try to be original than to merely imitate others. People should always try to say, write, think, or create something new. There is little value in merely repeating what has been done before. People who merely copy or use the ideas and inventions of others, no matter how successful they may be, have never achieved anything significant.
Assignment:
Is it always better to be original than to imitate or use the ideas of others? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 6
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. It is better to try to be original than to merely imitate others. People should always try to say, write, think, or create something new. There is little value in merely repeating what has been done before. People who merely copy or use the ideas and inventions of others, no matter how successful they may be, have never achieved anything significant.
Assignment: Is it always better to be original than to imitate or use the ideas of others? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 7 Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. Often we see people who persist in trying to achieve a particular goal, even when all the evidence indicates that they will be unlikely to achieve it. When they succeed, we consider them courageous for having overcome impossible obstacles. But when they fail, we think of them as headstrong, foolhardy, and bent on self-destruction. To many people, great effort is only worthwhile when it results in success. Adapted from Gilbert Brim, "Ambition"
Assignment:
Is the effort involved in pursuing any goal valuable, even if the goal is not reached? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 8
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. Newness has become our obsession. Novelty is more interesting to us than continuing with whatever is "tried and true." We discard the old so we can acquire the most recent model, the latest version, the newest and most improved formula. Often, we replace what is useful just because it is no longer new. Not only with material goods but also with cultural values, we prefer whatever is the latest trend.
Assignment:
Should people always prefer new things, ideas, or values to those of the past? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 9
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. Since we live in a global society, surely we should view ourselves as citizens of the whole world. But instead, people choose to identify and associate with smaller and more familiar groups. People think of themselves as belonging to families, nations, cultures, and generations or as belonging to smaller groups whose members share ideas, views, or common experiences. All of these kinds of groups may offer people a feeling of security but also prevent them from learning or experiencing anything new.
Assignment:
Is there any value for people to belong only to a group or groups with which they have something in common? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 10
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. The biggest difference between people who succeed at any difficult undertaking and those who do not is not ability but persistence. Many extremely talented people give up when obstacles arise. After all, who wants to face failure? It is often said about highly successful people that they are just ordinary individuals who kept on trying, who did not give up. Adapted from Tom Morris, True Success: A New Philosophy of Excellence
Assignment:
Is persistence more important than ability in determining a person's success? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 11
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. Whether it is a child pouting to get ice cream or a politician using emotionally charged language to influence potential supporters, all people use some form of acting to achieve whatever ends they seek. Public figures of all kinds would have short, unsuccessful careers without the aid of acting. Acting consciously assuming a role in order to achieve some purpose is a tool people use to protect their interests and gain advantages in every aspect of life. Adapted from Marlon Brando, Foreword to The Technique of Acting by Stella Adler
Assignment:
Is acting an essential part of everyday life? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
Prompt 12
Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below. When people are very enthusiastic always willing and eager to meet new challenges or give undivided support to ideas or projects they are likely to be rewarded. They often work harder and enjoy their work more than do those who are more restrained. But there are limits to how enthusiastic people should be. People should always question and doubt, since too much enthusiasm can prevent people from considering better ideas, goals, or courses of action.
Assignment:
Can people have too much enthusiasm? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
PRACTICE READING FOR TONE
DESCRIBE THE TONE OF THIS ARTICLE.
Polish president killed in plane crash
(CNN) -- Polish President Lech Kaczynski was killed early Saturday along with his wife, several top military officials, and the head of the national bank when their plane crashed at a western Russian airport, officials said.
"There are no survivors," said Sergey Antufyev, the governor of Smolensk, where the plane was trying to land when it crashed.
A spokesman for Poland's Foreign Ministry, Piotr Paszkowski, said earlier that it was probable that everyone on board was killed.
Information varied on how many people were on board the plane. The Polish Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry said 89 people died in the crash. The Russian Investigation Committee said there were 132 people on the plane.
Parliament Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski took over as acting president and declared it "a time for national mourning."
The president, 60, had been traveling with the Polish delegation to Russia for the 70th anniversary of the massacre of Polish prisoners of war in the village of Katyn. Some 20,000 Polish officers were executed there during World War II.
The Polish military plane originated in Warsaw, the Polish Defense Ministry said. It was approaching the airport at Smolensk -- just a few miles east of Katyn -- and probably hit some trees at the end of the runway, Paszkowski said.
The Investigation Committee of the Russian prosecutor's office said the plane, a Tupolev-154, was trying to land in heavy fog.
Kaczynski's Law and Justice Party released a list of some of those it said were killed in the crash. They included Aleksander Szczyglo, the head of the National Security Office; Jerzy Szmajdzinski, the deputy parliament speaker; Andrzej Kremer, the deputy foreign minister; and Gen. Franciszek Gagor, the army chief of staff, according to the party.
"The entire top military brass, including the chief of defense and all the services, were on the plane," said Tomas Valasek, of the Center for European Reform. "If that is true, then you're looking at a situation, in effect, of the decapitation of the military services."
Pictures from the scene showed parts of the airplane charred and strewn through a wooded area. Some pieces, including one of the wheel wells, were upside down.
The crash happened around 10:50 a.m. (2:50 a.m. ET) on the outskirts of the town of Pechorsk, just outside of Smolensk, the Investigation Committee said.
"This is a time of great national tragedy," Komorowski told reporters. "At this time there are no political differences, left or right. This is a time of national mourning."
Kaczynski had been president since December 2005 after he defeated rival Donald Tusk in the second round of voting. Tusk is currently prime minister.
Crowds gathered at the presidential palace in Warsaw to lay flowers and light candles for the president, whose death raises questions for Poland's government.
"Everything has changed today," said Jan Mikruta, a reporter for TV Polsat.
Tusk and Polish Cabinet ministers were holding a special meeting Saturday morning to discuss the situation, said a spokeswoman for the Polish Parliament, who declined to be named because she was not authorized to speak publicly.
Elections must now be held within 60 days, said Dariusz Rosati, Poland's former foreign minister.
"There is going to be a huge gap in public life in Poland," said resident Magdalena Hendrysiak. "The most important people are dead."
At the same time, Hendrysiak said, the president's death may have a unifying effect.
"I think it will be one of those situations that no one will care about their political preferences," she told CNN. "I think we're going to end up as pretty united in the face of such a tragedy."
Valasek pointed out, however, that the Polish president is the head of state, not head of government -- meaning essential services will continue to run.
"The role of the Polish president is not quite ceremonial ... he has some very real powers, but at the end of the day, the day-to-day running of the government is in the hands of the prime minister and the (cabinet) ministers," Valasek said. "Continuity is assured in ways that would not necessarily be assured in the case of the death of the U.S. president."
Condolences poured in from around the world Saturday, including from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was campaigning in Scotland.
Brown praised the contributions Kaczynski had made to Polish independence.
"This is a horrible tragedy," said Philip Crowley, the U.S. assistant secretary for public affairs. "We extend to the people of Poland our deepest condolences."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he learned of Kaczynski's death with "great emotion and a deep sadness" and expressed his sympathy to the families of the president and other victims.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai also expressed his condolences, as did the chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
"I offer my deepest condolences to the Polish people and to the families of those killed in this tragic accident. Our hearts go out to you in this difficult time," said OSCE Chairman Kaunat Saudabayev, who is also the secretary of state and foreign minister of Kazakhstan.
Valasek said the crash is a tragic coincidence, since the Polish officials were on their way to commemorate the deaths of top Polish officials at Katyn 70 years ago.
"The very fact that he was on his way to (commemorate) the massacre suggested that Polish-Russian relations, which of course had been very poor over the past 20 years, were on the way towards improvement," Valasek said. "A shared tragedy of this sort could give a boost to further improvement in Polish-Russian relations, which ... were on the mend, and this tragedy might accelerate that trend."
Polish president killed in plane crash
(CNN) -- Polish President Lech Kaczynski was killed early Saturday along with his wife, several top military officials, and the head of the national bank when their plane crashed at a western Russian airport, officials said.
"There are no survivors," said Sergey Antufyev, the governor of Smolensk, where the plane was trying to land when it crashed.
A spokesman for Poland's Foreign Ministry, Piotr Paszkowski, said earlier that it was probable that everyone on board was killed.
Information varied on how many people were on board the plane. The Polish Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry said 89 people died in the crash. The Russian Investigation Committee said there were 132 people on the plane.
Parliament Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski took over as acting president and declared it "a time for national mourning."
The president, 60, had been traveling with the Polish delegation to Russia for the 70th anniversary of the massacre of Polish prisoners of war in the village of Katyn. Some 20,000 Polish officers were executed there during World War II.
The Polish military plane originated in Warsaw, the Polish Defense Ministry said. It was approaching the airport at Smolensk -- just a few miles east of Katyn -- and probably hit some trees at the end of the runway, Paszkowski said.
The Investigation Committee of the Russian prosecutor's office said the plane, a Tupolev-154, was trying to land in heavy fog.
Kaczynski's Law and Justice Party released a list of some of those it said were killed in the crash. They included Aleksander Szczyglo, the head of the National Security Office; Jerzy Szmajdzinski, the deputy parliament speaker; Andrzej Kremer, the deputy foreign minister; and Gen. Franciszek Gagor, the army chief of staff, according to the party.
"The entire top military brass, including the chief of defense and all the services, were on the plane," said Tomas Valasek, of the Center for European Reform. "If that is true, then you're looking at a situation, in effect, of the decapitation of the military services."
Pictures from the scene showed parts of the airplane charred and strewn through a wooded area. Some pieces, including one of the wheel wells, were upside down.
The crash happened around 10:50 a.m. (2:50 a.m. ET) on the outskirts of the town of Pechorsk, just outside of Smolensk, the Investigation Committee said.
"This is a time of great national tragedy," Komorowski told reporters. "At this time there are no political differences, left or right. This is a time of national mourning."
Kaczynski had been president since December 2005 after he defeated rival Donald Tusk in the second round of voting. Tusk is currently prime minister.
Crowds gathered at the presidential palace in Warsaw to lay flowers and light candles for the president, whose death raises questions for Poland's government.
"Everything has changed today," said Jan Mikruta, a reporter for TV Polsat.
Tusk and Polish Cabinet ministers were holding a special meeting Saturday morning to discuss the situation, said a spokeswoman for the Polish Parliament, who declined to be named because she was not authorized to speak publicly.
Elections must now be held within 60 days, said Dariusz Rosati, Poland's former foreign minister.
"There is going to be a huge gap in public life in Poland," said resident Magdalena Hendrysiak. "The most important people are dead."
At the same time, Hendrysiak said, the president's death may have a unifying effect.
"I think it will be one of those situations that no one will care about their political preferences," she told CNN. "I think we're going to end up as pretty united in the face of such a tragedy."
Valasek pointed out, however, that the Polish president is the head of state, not head of government -- meaning essential services will continue to run.
"The role of the Polish president is not quite ceremonial ... he has some very real powers, but at the end of the day, the day-to-day running of the government is in the hands of the prime minister and the (cabinet) ministers," Valasek said. "Continuity is assured in ways that would not necessarily be assured in the case of the death of the U.S. president."
Condolences poured in from around the world Saturday, including from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was campaigning in Scotland.
Brown praised the contributions Kaczynski had made to Polish independence.
"This is a horrible tragedy," said Philip Crowley, the U.S. assistant secretary for public affairs. "We extend to the people of Poland our deepest condolences."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he learned of Kaczynski's death with "great emotion and a deep sadness" and expressed his sympathy to the families of the president and other victims.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai also expressed his condolences, as did the chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
"I offer my deepest condolences to the Polish people and to the families of those killed in this tragic accident. Our hearts go out to you in this difficult time," said OSCE Chairman Kaunat Saudabayev, who is also the secretary of state and foreign minister of Kazakhstan.
Valasek said the crash is a tragic coincidence, since the Polish officials were on their way to commemorate the deaths of top Polish officials at Katyn 70 years ago.
"The very fact that he was on his way to (commemorate) the massacre suggested that Polish-Russian relations, which of course had been very poor over the past 20 years, were on the way towards improvement," Valasek said. "A shared tragedy of this sort could give a boost to further improvement in Polish-Russian relations, which ... were on the mend, and this tragedy might accelerate that trend."
MAIN IDEA PRACTICE
WHAT IS THE MAIN IDEA OF THE FOLLOWING READING?
Bedbugs and other pests: The ugly side of city lifeBy Catriona Davies for CNN
London, England (CNN) -- After a night in a San Francisco motel three years ago, Maciej Ceglowski awoke covered in bedbug bites.
The experience, which he says gave him around 20 large itchy bites and weeks of paranoia, had such a psychological impact on him that he was moved to start a Web site to warn others of the bugs lurking in hotels and apartment blocks across the United States and Canada.
Ceglowski, 34, a computer programmer who now lives in Romania, told CNN: "I realized that there was no effective treatment for bedbugs except avoidance. I thought I could help people by warning them about the dangers and where there are bedbug infestations."
He says his Web site, The Bedbug Registry, now receives between 10,000 and 15,000 visitors daily and up to 100 reports a day of infestations in hotels and apartment blocks, mainly in New York, San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver.
Ceglowski's battle against bedbugs is part of a wider problem facing urban areas: the rise of pests.
With more than half of the world's population now living in cities, it's a problem that's affecting city dwellers globally and which can pose significant health challenges.
"Fifteen years ago, bedbugs were thought to be history in most developed countries. But they have now bounced back across the world," Clive Boase, a pest management consultant, said.
Bedbug expert David Cain estimates that reports of infestations tripled in UK cities between 2003 and 2007.
The problem has become a global one as bedbugs cross international borders on people and their belongings.
Stephen Doggett, an entomologist at Westmead Hospital, Sydney, reported a 400 percent increase in the number of bedbug samples submitted between 2001 and 2004.
"The data presented here probably only represent the 'tip of the iceberg,'" he wrote in a paper published in the journal Environmental Health Australia.
Cain told CNN that he believes this increase was down to tourists coming to see the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
It's not just bedbugs that are causing headaches. Pests from foxes and mosquitoes to rats, pigeons and cockroaches are thriving in rapidly expanding metropolises.
See how urban populations have exploded
Increasing urbanization, along with global travel and climate change, are providing rich pickings for these pests.
"Modern city living conditions are pretty attractive to most pests," Boase told CNN. "We produce waste, heat our homes and flush waste into our drains and sewers."
Some pests, such as bedbugs, are an irritation. Others, like rats and mosquitoes, carry disease and pose a major public health risk.
There has been a 33 percent increase in calls to pest companies about rat problems in the last year alone in London, according to Peter Crowden, chairman of the UK's National Pest Technicians Association.
"Since we stopped feeding human food waste to animals, a tremendous amount has ended up in our sewers through waste disposal units," he said.
"I have seen whole chicken carcasses on people's compost heaps, and of course, that attracts rats," Crowden added.
Pigeons and foxes, too, are widespread and can cause public health concerns.
Crowden said: "Pigeons carry the same diseases as rats. Their droppings can also cause respiratory problems."
Foxes have increasingly moved into cities with the availability of food. Their fleas and ticks can be passed to domestic pets.
Crowden told CNN that most pest controllers he knew were reluctant to tackle them, fearing objections from animal rights campaigners. "I stopped dealing with foxes about 10 years ago," he said, "when I started getting death threats."
In areas where there is poor infrastructure, the health risks can be even greater, according to Boase, who advises public bodies, as well as food and waste companies.
"In developing countries, cities are growing very fast as people pour in from the country, and there is often very little urban planning," he said.
With urban populations forecast to swell over the next few decades, the problem doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon.
The proportion of the world's population living in cities will rise to 70 percent by 2050, according to the World Health Organization. By comparison, that figure was 40 percent in 1980.
Each particular urban pest and each particular city has its own individual causes and solutions, Boase said.
In tropical cities, for instance, the biggest -- and fastest growing -- pest is mosquitoes carrying dengue fever, a disease that can be fatal if it's not treated properly.
"Anything that carries so much as a cup of water can provide a habitat for these mosquitoes, and they cause millions of cases of dengue fever," he said.
But the problems across the globe have more similarities than differences, according to Boase.
"Public health and environmental health are seen as rather dirty subjects that people don't really want to think about," he said.
"But it is vital that city authorities pay more attention to public health and pest control, rather than leaving it to private companies who can only deal with each case on its own."
Bedbugs and other pests: The ugly side of city lifeBy Catriona Davies for CNN
London, England (CNN) -- After a night in a San Francisco motel three years ago, Maciej Ceglowski awoke covered in bedbug bites.
The experience, which he says gave him around 20 large itchy bites and weeks of paranoia, had such a psychological impact on him that he was moved to start a Web site to warn others of the bugs lurking in hotels and apartment blocks across the United States and Canada.
Ceglowski, 34, a computer programmer who now lives in Romania, told CNN: "I realized that there was no effective treatment for bedbugs except avoidance. I thought I could help people by warning them about the dangers and where there are bedbug infestations."
He says his Web site, The Bedbug Registry, now receives between 10,000 and 15,000 visitors daily and up to 100 reports a day of infestations in hotels and apartment blocks, mainly in New York, San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver.
Ceglowski's battle against bedbugs is part of a wider problem facing urban areas: the rise of pests.
With more than half of the world's population now living in cities, it's a problem that's affecting city dwellers globally and which can pose significant health challenges.
"Fifteen years ago, bedbugs were thought to be history in most developed countries. But they have now bounced back across the world," Clive Boase, a pest management consultant, said.
Bedbug expert David Cain estimates that reports of infestations tripled in UK cities between 2003 and 2007.
The problem has become a global one as bedbugs cross international borders on people and their belongings.
Stephen Doggett, an entomologist at Westmead Hospital, Sydney, reported a 400 percent increase in the number of bedbug samples submitted between 2001 and 2004.
"The data presented here probably only represent the 'tip of the iceberg,'" he wrote in a paper published in the journal Environmental Health Australia.
Cain told CNN that he believes this increase was down to tourists coming to see the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
It's not just bedbugs that are causing headaches. Pests from foxes and mosquitoes to rats, pigeons and cockroaches are thriving in rapidly expanding metropolises.
See how urban populations have exploded
Increasing urbanization, along with global travel and climate change, are providing rich pickings for these pests.
"Modern city living conditions are pretty attractive to most pests," Boase told CNN. "We produce waste, heat our homes and flush waste into our drains and sewers."
Some pests, such as bedbugs, are an irritation. Others, like rats and mosquitoes, carry disease and pose a major public health risk.
There has been a 33 percent increase in calls to pest companies about rat problems in the last year alone in London, according to Peter Crowden, chairman of the UK's National Pest Technicians Association.
"Since we stopped feeding human food waste to animals, a tremendous amount has ended up in our sewers through waste disposal units," he said.
"I have seen whole chicken carcasses on people's compost heaps, and of course, that attracts rats," Crowden added.
Pigeons and foxes, too, are widespread and can cause public health concerns.
Crowden said: "Pigeons carry the same diseases as rats. Their droppings can also cause respiratory problems."
Foxes have increasingly moved into cities with the availability of food. Their fleas and ticks can be passed to domestic pets.
Crowden told CNN that most pest controllers he knew were reluctant to tackle them, fearing objections from animal rights campaigners. "I stopped dealing with foxes about 10 years ago," he said, "when I started getting death threats."
In areas where there is poor infrastructure, the health risks can be even greater, according to Boase, who advises public bodies, as well as food and waste companies.
"In developing countries, cities are growing very fast as people pour in from the country, and there is often very little urban planning," he said.
With urban populations forecast to swell over the next few decades, the problem doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon.
The proportion of the world's population living in cities will rise to 70 percent by 2050, according to the World Health Organization. By comparison, that figure was 40 percent in 1980.
Each particular urban pest and each particular city has its own individual causes and solutions, Boase said.
In tropical cities, for instance, the biggest -- and fastest growing -- pest is mosquitoes carrying dengue fever, a disease that can be fatal if it's not treated properly.
"Anything that carries so much as a cup of water can provide a habitat for these mosquitoes, and they cause millions of cases of dengue fever," he said.
But the problems across the globe have more similarities than differences, according to Boase.
"Public health and environmental health are seen as rather dirty subjects that people don't really want to think about," he said.
"But it is vital that city authorities pay more attention to public health and pest control, rather than leaving it to private companies who can only deal with each case on its own."
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