| S | CIENCE |
What is the purpose of this scientific instrument?
- To measure temperature.
- To measure atmospheric pressure
- To measure salt content in liquid
- To measure snowfall totals
- I
- II
- I & II
- I & III
- IV
- None
- All
| L | E | S | S | O | N | 7 |
Crossing the
creepy line
| S | CRIPTURE |
“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord. You hem me in — behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”
~ Psalm 139:1–6
Prayer Points
| P | OSITIVE IDENTITY |
“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
~ Ephesians 2:10
Google CEO Eric Schmidt made the now infamous remark about Google’s practice of getting very close to the “creepy line” but not going over. With the decision to release an update to Google Goggles that will allow cell phone owners to identify human faces, Google has arguably crossed “the creepy line.”
What this would effectively permit is the identification of people on the street or in a public place by simply pointing your phone camera at them.
Now that is creepy.
The need to control one’s privacy is basic. We like to remain unknown in a crowd, or at least we deserve the privilege to reveal ourselves to whomever we please. If we commit a crime, perhaps that right is abrogated. We may be, even should be, identified and apprehended. But the notion than an innocent bystander be identified by perfect strangers, gratuitously, randomly, is creepy.
Human beings are created in the image of God and do not deserved to be mishandled by Mr. Schmidt. Only God deserves to peer into our souls, or metaphorically, to focus his cell phone on us and identify us. Joseph Conrad, in Lord Jim warns, “There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.”1 Zip! With the focus of an iPhone the mystery disappears.
Many people “are rightfully scared of it,” one journalist said. You think? “In particular, women say, ‘Oh, my God. Imagine this guy takes a picture of me, and then he knows my address just because somewhere on the web there is an association of my address with my photo.’ That’s a scary thought. So I think there is merit in finding a good route that makes the power of this technology available in a good way.”
In a good way. Use this technology in a good way. Interesting thought. We dare not STOP using the creepy thing — we have to find a laudable reason to use it. I am sure Eichmann appreciated that irony when he realized that the technology was there to murder six million Jews so he might as well do it. Surely, if the technology is there, we have to use it.
I like Google’s response — a typical post-modern response: “I think we are taking a sort of cautious route with this,” Google said. “It’s a sensitive area, and it’s kind of a subjective call on how you would do it.”
Another signature mark of the times: Each person decides for himself if he uses a certain thing.
No, not this time. I don’t want perverts to identify and to visit my grandchildren whenever they like! I don’t care if the technology is there or not. Get rid of it.
Now that is a novel idea — get rid of it. What ya say? Get rid of it? That is exactly what I am saying. Get rid of the technology. Not only do we want never to use it, we need to erase our footsteps and get rid of our ability to do the thing. There is no good, no possible good, in a perfect stranger being able to identify another private human being without his knowledge or consent.
Can we deal with that? Giving up bad technology? I doubt it.
It is coming, folks. Apparently Google got over its concerns and has decided to roll facial recognition out in a mobile context. Science and technology have their own logic and momentum. Because something is possible there’s an impulse to see it realized or implemented in the world. Perhaps there’s such identification at Google with “innovation” that it was “culturally” impossible for Google not to roll this out.
Creepy, I tell you, creepy.
Okay. I can and do turn off the television. I show discipline in what Internet sites I visit. I try to put boundaries on myself and help others do the same. But this is different. This is another person, perhaps a stranger, focusing his cell phone camera on me and revealing my private affairs. This stranger presumes to know me intimately without my consent. It is a form of abuse.
Don’t get me wrong, there are those whose cameras are welcome to focus on me. There is one power, one power who does know me. Always has, always will. Knows my next thought, predestined my next action. Someone who is in absolute control of everything — Almighty God. But He alone deserves this sort of power. He loves me, He cares for me, His Son died on the Cross at Calvary for me.
I do not fear His perusal, but my friend, if you swing your Motorola toward my grandchildren and I think you are identifying them, not merely taking a picture, I am going to smack you.
Not really. But I am going to think you and Google are creepy. Take that.
| M | ATH |
Probability
“Part of the American myth is that people who are handed the skin of a dead sheep at graduating time think that it will keep their minds alive forever.”3
Test-Taking Insight
Test Day Procedures
• Arrive at your assigned test center 30 minutes prior to the reporting time (8:00 a.m.) listed on your admission ticket. You will not be admitted to the test if you are late.
• Bring acceptable identification. You will not be admitted to the test without it. Homeschoolers should be very careful to have picture IDs and multiple IDs (driver’s license, social security card, passport).
• ACT staff will check your ID and admission ticket, admit you to your test room, direct you to a seat, and provide test materials. You normally cannot choose your seat, but if you can, try to sit away from gabby friends and away from the bathrooms (that might have overflow crowds during the break)
• You may use a permitted calculator on the mathematics test only. Some models and features are prohibited. You are responsible for knowing if your calculator is permitted and bringing it to the test center. Do not use your cell phone as a calculator and do not have a calculator that also has a thesaurus or dictionary.
• A short break is scheduled after the first two tests. You will not be allowed to use cell phones or any electronic devices during the break, and you may not bring food or drinks back to the test room. You should, however, walk around during the break. Do not merely sit. Eat your snack (ham sandwich or something substantial). If you take the ACT Plus Writing, you will have time before the writing test to relax and sharpen your pencils.
• Students taking the ACT (No Writing) with standard time are normally dismissed at about 12:15 p.m.; students taking the ACT Plus Writing are normally dismissed about 1:00 p.m.
• If you do not complete all your tests for any reason, tell a member of the testing staff whether or not you want your answer document scored before you leave the test center. If you do not, all tests attempted will be scored (adapted from the ACT site).
| V | OCABULARY |
The Brothers Karamazov4
Dostoyevsky’s last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, is both a crime drama and a pedantic debate over truth. In fact, no novel — since Plato’s Republic — so fervently addresses the issue. The worthless landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered. His sons — the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha — are all at some level involved. As one critic explains, “Bound up with this intense family drama is Dostoyevsky’s exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, the question of human freedom, the collective nature of guilt, the disastrous consequences of rationalism.”5
The novel is also richly comic: the Russian Orthodox Church, the legal system, and even the author’s most cherished causes and beliefs are presented with a note of irreverence, so that orthodoxy and radicalism, sanity and madness, love and hatred, right and wrong — all are no longer mutually exclusive. Rebecca West considered it “the allegory for the world’s maturity, but with children to the fore. The new translations do full justice to Dostoyevsky’s genius, especially in the use of the spoken word, ranging over every mode of human expression.”6
Suggested Vocabulary Words
| E | NGLISH |
Organization and Writing Strategy
What sentence(s) should be removed from the following paragraph?
Since the end of the civil war in the United States, whoever has occasion to name the three most distinguished representatives of our national greatness is apt to name Washington, Lincoln, and Grant. Not that General Rosecran shouldn’t be in the mix. He was a pretty good general. General Grant is now our national military hero. Of Washington it has often been said that he was “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” George Washington, of course, lived in Virginia anyway. When this eulogy was wholly just the nation had been engaged in no war on a grander scale than the war for independence. That war, in the numbers engaged, in the multitude and renown of its battles, in the territory over which its campaigns were extended, in its destruction of life and waste of property, in the magnitude of the interests at stake (but not in the vital importance of the issue), was far inferior to the Civil War. And you should think about World War II — now that was a great war. It happens quite naturally, as in so many other affairs in this world, that the comparative physical magnitude of the conflicts has much influence in moulding the popular estimate of the rank of the victorious commanders.7 — William Allen, Ulysses S. Grant
| S | CIENCE |
What is the purpose of this scientific instrument?
“Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary.”8
| W | RITING |
Top Ten Most Frequent Essay Problems
You should organize your sentences into groups of related ideas, or paragraphs. Each paragraph should have a main idea or topic sentence. Next, the body of the paragraph develops the main idea with supporting facts. Finally, a new paragraph begins when the scene or topic changes.
In the following essay on George Herbert’s poem “The Collar,”9 indent where each new paragraph begins.
The struggle is daily. There are choices we make, people we talk to, and sights that we see. This all is unavoidable, and goes on outside of us but mostly inside. This struggle forces us to choose between the hard way of the cross, or the easy broad path leading to destruction. For example, George Herbert (1593–1633), one of the 17th century poets, wrote a beautiful poem titled, “The Collar.” This poem is written in the first person about himself, and not only identifies the struggle between good and evil, but in it he also faces the struggle, and in the end, he wins. The poem begins with the words, “I struck the board, and cried, ‘No more! I will abroad.’ ” Here Herbert is fearfully running away from God and telling Him “no more,” and to leave him alone. He knows that he has been given free will, “My lines and life are free; free as the road, loose as the wind, as large as store.” But he is not sure he wants to use it, “Shall I still be in suit?” Next, he begins to struggle with what he has lost, “Have I no harvest but a thorn to let me blood, and not restore what I have lost with cordial fruit? Is the year only lost to me? Have I no bays to crown it? No flowers no garlands gay? All blasted? All wasted?” But telling himself that that cannot be all, “Not so, my heart; but there is fruit, and thou hast hands,” he begins to calm down, and see what he has really been given. Then the struggle changes, from being a struggle between running away or staying and becoming having to let go. “Leave thy cold dispute of what is fit and not; forsake thy cage, thy rope of sands, which petty thoughts have made.” Here Herbert writes beautiful examples of how we are often tied up in things that we think are important. But in reality if we shake them off, we find that they are of no use to us at all. He goes on to say, “Tie up thy fears,” which is another example of leaving behind something that we do not need and cannot enter the Kingdom with. The poem ends very simply in submission, “Me thoughts I heard one calling, ‘Child’; and I replied, ‘My Lord.’ ” At that point there is no struggle, he is at complete peace. Leaving behind the struggle to immerse oneself in complete submission is an idea at which some people would laugh. But not George Herbert. When he wrote this poem, he knew that it was a beautiful action. And so it has been captured onto paper, for all of us (Anna).
Identifying Topic Sentences
A topic sentence expresses the main idea or purpose of a paragraph. All the other sentences in the paragraph support that main idea. Underline the topic sentences in the follow essay.
“The Lost Tools of Learning”
That I, whose experience of teaching is extremely limited, should presume to discuss education is a matter, surely, that calls for no apology. It is a kind of behavior to which the present climate of opinion is wholly favorable. Bishops air their opinions about economics; biologists, about metaphysics; inorganic chemists, about theology; the most irrelevant people are appointed to highly technical ministries; and plain, blunt men write to the papers to say that Epstein and Picasso do not know how to draw. Up to a certain point, and provided that the criticisms are made with a reasonable modesty, these activities are commendable. Too much specialization is not a good thing. There is also one excellent reason why the veriest amateur may feel entitled to have an opinion about education. For if we are not all professional teachers, we have all, at some time or another, been taught. Even if we learnt nothing — perhaps in particular if we learnt nothing — our contribution to the discussion may have a potential value.
However, it is in the highest degree improbable that the reforms I propose will ever be carried into effect. Neither the parents, nor the training colleges, nor the examination boards, nor the boards of governors, nor the ministries of education, would countenance them for a moment. For they amount to this: that if we are to produce a society of educated people, fitted to preserve their intellectual freedom amid the complex pressures of our modern society, we must turn back the wheel of progress some four or five hundred years, to the point at which education began to lose sight of its true object. . . .
When we think about the remarkably early age at which the young men went up to university in, let us say, Tudor times, and thereafter were held fit to assume responsibility for the conduct of their own affairs, are we altogether comfortable about that artificial prolongation of intellectual childhood and adolescence into the years of physical maturity which is so marked in our own day? To postpone the acceptance of responsibility to a late date brings with it a number of psychological complications which, while they may interest the psychiatrist, are scarcely beneficial either to the individual or to society. The stock argument in favor of postponing the school-leaving age and prolonging the period of education generally is there is now so much more to learn than there was in the Middle Ages. This is partly true, but not wholly. The modern boy and girl are certainly taught more subjects — but does that always mean that they actually know more?10
| R | EADING |
Infer from the Text
Many years ago, before railroads were thought of, a company of Connecticut farmers, who had heard marvelous stories of the richness of the land in the West, sold their farms, packed up their goods, bade adieu to their friends, and with their families started for Ohio.
After weeks of travel over dusty roads, they came to a beautiful valley, watered by a winding river. The hills around were fair and sunny. There were groves of oaks, and maples, and lindens. The air was fragrant with honeysuckle and jasmine. There was plenty of game. The swift-footed deer browsed the tender grass upon the hills. Squirrels chattered in the trees and the ringdoves cooed in the depths of the forest. The place was so fertile and fair, so pleasant and peaceful, that the emigrants made it their home, and called it New Hope.
They built a mill upon the river. They laid out a wide, level street, and a public square, erected a school-house, and then a church. One of their number opened a store. Other settlers came, and, as the years passed by, the village rang with the shouts of children pouring from the school-house for a frolic upon the square. Glorious times they had beneath the oaks and maples.
One of the jolliest of the boys was Paul Parker, only son of Widow Parker, who lived in a little old house, shaded by a great maple, on the outskirts of the village. Her husband died when Paul was in his cradle. Paul’s grandfather was still living. The people called him “Old Pensioner Parker,” for he fought at Bunker Hill, and received a pension from government. He was hale and hearty, though more than eighty years of age.
The pension was the main support of the family. They kept a cow, a pig, turkeys, and chickens, and, by selling milk and eggs, which Paul carried to their customers, they brought the years round without running in debt. Paul’s pantaloons had a patch on each knee, but he laughed just as loud and whistled just as cheerily for all that.
In summer he went barefoot. He did not have to turn out at every mud-puddle, and he could plash into the mill-pond and give the frogs a crack over the head without stopping to take off stockings and shoes. Paul did not often have a dinner of roast beef, but he had an abundance of bean porridge, brown bread, and milk.11 (Charles Coffin, Winning His Way)
Why does the author have the farmers leaving Connecticut (a known geographical location) and moving to a place named New Hope (an unknown geographical location)?
What sort of person was Paul Parker?
Based upon the information provided in this passage, the setting is most likely: