Present day Benin was the site of Dahomey, a prominent West African kingdom that rose in the 15th century. The territory became a French Colony in 1872 and achieved independence on 1 August 1960, as the Republic of Benin. A succession of military governments ended in 1972 with the rise to power of Mathieu Kerekou and the establishment of a government based on Marxist-Leninist principles. A move to representative government began in 1989. Two years later, free elections ushered in former Prime Minister Nicephore Soglo as president, marking the first successful transfer of power in Africa from a dictatorship to a democracy. Kerekou was returned to power by elections held in 1996 and 2001, though some irregularities were alleged. Kerekou stepped down at the end of his second term in 2006 and was succeeded by Thomas Yayi Boni, a political outsider and independent. Yayi has begun a high profile fight against corruption and has strongly promoted accelerating Benin's economic growth.
|
The passage indicates that all of the following were true of Benin between 1989 and 2006 EXCEPT:
|
In their hunt for energy, fungi have become the earth`s predominant source of rot and decay. Whenever you observe mold forming on a piece of bread, or a pile of leaves decaying into compost, or a blown-down tree moldering into pulp on the ground, you are watching a fungus eating. Without fungus action the earth would be piled high with the dead plant life of past centuries. In fact, certain plants that contain resins toxic to fungi will last indefinitely; specimens of redwood trees, for instance, can still be found resting on the forest floor centuries after having been blown down.
|
The passage`s statement that "you are watching a fungus eating" is best described as
|
The establishment of the Third Reich influenced events in American history by starting a chain of events that culminated in war between Germany and the United States. The complete destruction of democracy in Germany, the persecution of the Jews, the war on religion, the cruelty and barbarism of the Nazis, and especially the plans of Germany and her allies, Italy and Japan, for world conquest caused great indignation in this country and brought on fear of another world war. While speaking out against Hitler`s atrocities, the American people generally favored isolationist policies and neutrality. The Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 prohibited trade with any belligerents or loans to them. In 1937 the President was empowered to declare an arms embargo in wars between nations at his discretion.
|
During the years 1933–1936, American foreign policy may best be described as a policy of
|
In the early 1960s, many historians and ethnographers who studied pre-Columbian Quechua civilizations (which we may identify here as encompassing the territories that formed the Inca state known as Tawantinsuyu, the "Land of the Four Quarters"), were of an almost mystical bent, relying on metaphor and symbol rather than on factual data to illuminate the nature of Quechua society. Unlike those of their contemporaries who based their conclusions on archaeological findings and on new interpretations of the quipu (the knotted cords used by the preliterate Quechua for account-keeping and historical recording), these magic-loving writers expressed themselves in a prose that was often more obscure than the mysteries they sought to elucidate.
A prime example of this "poetic" school of historical writing can be found in the Organization of American States` publication Américas (vol. 15, 1963), in which one writer describes the Quechua as "submerged, so to speak, in a cosmic magma that weighs heavily upon it. It possesses the rare quality of being, as it were, interjected into the midst of antagonistic forces, which in turn implies a whole body of social and aesthetic structures whose innermost meaning must be the administration of energy."
What sense are we to derive from this somewhat feverish piece of description? The writer is attempting to create a metaphor for the pressures-physical, economic, spiritual-that the Quechua people endured. That much we can comprehend. But the metaphor is flawed-the Quechua world is simultaneously weighed or pressed down by the magma in which it is submerged and interjected or inserted into some welter of antagonistic forces-a fact that the writer himself appears to acknowledge by qualifying his assertions with "so to speak" and "as it were." The difficulty with this approach is that it provides no measurable data that we can use to assess the degree of adversity the Quechua bore and its effect on them as a culture. True, life on the high Andean plateau was harsh: the Quechua faced extremes of temperature, cycles of flooding and drought, thin soil, an inhospitably steep terrain. But the very harshness of these living conditions inspired the Quechua to make advances in agricultural technique that allowed them to feed the millions of people who constituted the Inca Empire, advances that unfortunately are obscured or masked by this writer`s approach.
|
The author`s attitude toward the school of historical writing he discusses can best be described as one of
|
Unlike the carefully weighted and planned compositions of Dante, Goethe`s writings have always the sense of immediacy and enthusiasm. He was a constant experimenter with life, with ideas, and with forms of writing. For the same reason, his works seldom have the qualities of finish or formal beauty which distinguishes the masterpieces of Dante and Virgil. He came to love the beauties of classicism but these were never an essential part of his make-up. Instead, the urgency of the moment, the spirit of the thing, guided his pen. As a result, nearly all his works have serious flaws of structure, of inconsistencies, of excesses and redundancies and extraneities.
In the large sense, Goethe represents the fullest development of the romanticists. It has been argued that he should not be so designated because he so clearly matured and outgrew the kind of romanticism exhibited by Wordsworth, Shelly, and Keats. Shelly and Keats died young; Wordsworth lived narrowly and abandoned his early attitudes. In contrast, Goethe lived abundantly and developed his faith in the spirit, his understanding of nature and human nature, and his reliance on feelings as man`s essential motivating force. The result was an all-encompassing vision of reality and a philosophy of life broader and deeper than the partial visions and attitudes of other romanticists. Yet the spirit of youthfulness, the impatience with close reasoning or "logic-chopping," and the continued faith in nature remained his to the end, together with an occasional waywardness and impulsiveness and a disregard of artistic or logical propriety which savor strongly of romantic individualism. Since so many twentieth-century thoughts and attitudes are similarly based on the stimulus of the Romantic Movement, Goethe stands as particularly the poet of modern times as Dante stood for medieval times and as Shakespeare for the Renaissance.
|
A characteristic of romanticism NOT mentioned in this passage is its
|
Given the natural variability of the Earth`s climate, it is difficult to determine the extent of change that humans cause. In computer-based models, rising concentrations of greenhouse gases generally produce an increase in the average temperature of the Earth. Rising temperatures may, in turn, produce changes in weather, sea levels, and land use patterns, commonly referred to as "climate change." Assessments generally suggest that the Earth`s climate has warmed over the past century and that human activity affecting the atmosphere is likely an important driving factor. A National Research Council study dated May 2001 stated, "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth`s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and sub-surface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability."
|
As used in the passage's final sentence, the word "reflection" most nearly means
|
Lind`s reputation as an experimental nutritionist rests mainly on his classic experiment of 1747 in which he compared the potencies of a number of supposed anti-scorbutic remedies (cures for the vitamin-deficiency disease scurvy). Lind`s experiment had obvious commendable features. He selected six groups that were as similar as possible at the beginning of the experiment and maintained them throughout under the same general environmental and dietary conditions. The groups differed from each other only in respect of the type of treatment used. Five groups of ailing seamen failed to respond to their supposed cures; the sixth group, which received a dietary supplement of oranges and lemons, recovered from the disease.
At first sight this would appear to be an early example of the type of scientific procedure proposed by Descartes in 1637 for eliminating all but one of a number of possible relationships. In the ideal type of "critical" experiment, however, each "possibility" should be derived from existing data (or be a logical extrapolation of it) and the whole should be structured so that alternative possible explanations are excluded. Failure to satisfy these requirements reduces an experiment to a level of controlled empiricism. This was the weakness of Lind`s work; the six "possible" cures that he compared were presumably selected empirically from those currently favored by ships` surgeons; he gives no indication that his choice was governed by any other consideration. His experiment "succeeded" simply because one of the "remedies" contained vitamin C (the anti-scorbutic factor) whereas the other five did not.
It is interesting to speculate what effect a different choice of "remedies" would have had on the course of events. Had Lind used, in place of his oranges and lemons, a sixth remedy devoid of vitamin C-say the mineral waters favored by writers such as Linden, or Bishop Berkeley`s tar-water cure-then all six groups would have given a negative result. On the other hand, Lind could well have used six remedies all of which contained vitamin C. In 1745 John Wesley published his Primitive Physic, a popular manual of remedies, which by 1791 had reached its twenty-third edition. Suppose that Lind had selected six remedies from Wesley`s list of eleven anti-scorbutics. It is virtually certain that all six groups would have recovered, and the experiment would have done little more than confirm the observations of Wesley and others.
|
The author`s attitude towards Lind`s experiment can best be described as one of
|
A few rodent species demonstrate conditions that are neither complete hibernation nor aestivation. Instead of going into a long "sleep" during the most adverse season, they become torpid for a few hours each day. This kind of behavior is known in other animals-bats become torpid during daytime, and hummingbirds at night. The first time I appreciated this phenomenon was while working with fat mice (Steatomys) in Africa. These mice, incidentally, have a most appropriate name, for their bodies are so full of fat they resemble little furry balls. Fat storage as a method of survival has rebounded to some extent as far as the fat mice are concerned. They are regarded as a succulent delicacy by many African tribes who hunt them with great tenacity; when captured, the mice are skewered and fried in their own fat. A captive fat mouse was once kept without food or water for thirty-six days; at the end of that time it had lost a third of its weight but appeared quite healthy. During the dry season, some captives spent the day in such a deep state of torpor that they could be roughly handled without waking. The body temperature was a couple of degrees above room temperature and the respiration was most irregular, several short pants being followed by a pause of up to three minutes. Just before dusk the mice woke up of their own accord and respired normally. In this case the torpid state was not induced by shortage of food or abnormal temperatures. The forest dormouse of southern Asia and Europe also undergoes periods of torpidity during the day; this species has been recorded as having pauses of up to seventeen minutes between breaths.
|
It can be inferred from the passage that fat storage as a method of survival "has rebounded" for fat mice for which of the following reasons?
|
The people do not run the country; neither do its elected officials. The corporations run the country. Heads of corporations routinely and imperiously hand down decisions that profoundly affect millions of people. The people affected do not vote on the decisions, or for the corporate oligarchs. Yet we are supposed to believe that we live in a democracy.
|
Which of the following statements, if true, would support the author`s views?
|
In the long run a government will always encroach upon freedom to the extent to which it has the power to do so; this is almost a natural law of politics, since, whatever the intentions of the men who exercise political power, the sheer momentum of government leads to a constant pressure upon the liberties of the citizen. But in many countries society has responded by throwing up its own defenses in the shape of social classes or organized corporations which, enjoying economic power and popular support, have been able to set limits to the scope of action of the executive. Such, for example, in England was the origin of all our liberties-won from government by the stand first of the feudal nobility, then of churches and political parties, and latterly of trade unions, commercial organizations, and the societies for promoting various causes. Even in European lands that were arbitrarily ruled, the powers of the monarchy, though absolute in theory, were in their exercise checked in a similar fashion. Indeed the fascist dictatorships of the mid-twentieth century were the first truly tyrannical governments that Western Europe had known for centuries, and they became possible only because on coming to power they destroyed all forms of social organization which were in any way rivals to the state.
|
According to the passage, the natural relationship between government and individual liberty is one of
|