Difficulty Level: Very Hard

#38

Vocabulary: Enactment, Burgeoning, Constituency, Reap, Multitudes, Consensus, Fluctuated,

Intensified, Ledger, Compounded, Straitjacket, Wary, Defection, Pluralities, Autonomy,
Aspiration, Exceptionalism, Proprietors, Communitarian, Entrepreneur, Inexorable,
Plummeting, Salience, Schism, Combustible, Fissure, Demarcation, Stratification, Entrenched,
Blighted
Abstract: If one goes back about 80 years then the Democratic Party would have been ardently
in support of segregation and the politics of the rural South, while Republicans would have been
cosmopolitan city dwellers. Clearly political allegiances change all the time, and for a variety of
reasons. This article addresses what political shifts might come from the new health care bill.

The Obama Coalition

By Thomas Edsall for The Atlantic

Over the last two years, there has been a massive increase in the number of people who have no
place to turn except to the government. Enactment of the Obama administrations health care
reform legislation demonstrates the growing power of this burgeoning constituencya
constituency which will reap a disproportionate share of the $1 trillion in new health care
spending over the next decade.
There are many ways to measure the expanding multitudes of those in need. From February
2008 to February 2010, the number of unemployed men and women doubled from 7.4 million to
14.9 million.
In addition to these almost 15 million unemployed, the number of people who say they want to
work, but who have given up trying, grew from 4.8 million to 6.2 million over the same period.
Added to these are the people working part time who cannot get regular jobs: this population
grew from 4.8 million to 8.9 million. Altogether, this makes a total of 30 million Americans out
of work or under-employed.
The numbers are bad enough, but there is a growing consensus among economists that the
unemployment problem is likely to become structuralno longer a temporary phenomenon.
One of the most striking indicators of the potentially enduring unemployment status of many of
those now out of work is the increase in the number of people who have been without jobs for
six months or more. These people have the hardest time making it back into the workforce, and
the growth of this population suggests that more and more people who lose a job face the danger
that unemployment will become permanent.
For most of the past decade, the number of people out of work for 27 weeks or more fluctuated
from a low of 649,000 in 2000 to a high of 1,936,000 in 2003. In February 2008, there were 1.3
people unemployed for at least half a year. In February 2009, the number shot up to 3 million,
and by February, 2010, it had multiplied to 6.1 million a 469 percent increase in two years.

The combination of persistent, prolonged unemployment, record deficits, the refusal of

Republicans to raise taxes, the underfunded Social Security Trust Fund, and a demographic
transition moving the nation closer to a non-white voting majority have, together, revived,
enlarged, and intensified the battle for limited government resourcespitting those seeking to
protect what they have against those seeking more.
The ranks of those who identify with either the haves or the have-nots are swollen, while the
number of those seeing themselves as in the middle, centrally positioned, has declined.
On the have-not side of the ledger, inflation-adjusted household income fell by 3.6 percent
between 2007 and 2008, from $52,163 to $50,303. The number of people with incomes lower
than 125 percent of the poverty line rose by just under 3 million, from 50.9 million (17.0 percent
of the population) to 53.8 million (17.9 percent of the population) during the same period.
Worsening poverty will inevitably become evident when data for 2009 is available. Over the past
tw-o years, the number of men and women working at least 35 hours a week in the U.S. fell
nearly 11 million, from 121.47 million in February 2007, to 110.84 million in February 2010. To
keep up with population growth, the economy would have had to add 4.9 million new jobs.
These developments are functioning to aggravate fear among the haves that the competition
for resources cannot be resolved by traditional means that is, by economic growth. And those
fears are compounded by official projections that the total federal debt will reach $15 trillion by
2020. The February 12 re-enactment of pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) legislation will, if enforced,
serve to sharpen the battle over taxes and spending. Net annual interest on the debt will more
than triple during the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, shooting
from $207 billion in 2010, to $723 billion in 2020, more than doubling as a share of GDP, from
1.4 percent to 3.2 percent.
The current economic straitjacket is forcing government constraint that is turning traditional
policy conflicts between the haves and have-nots into a zero-sum struggle, in which the
gains of one side are at the expense of the other. This exacerbated resource competition over
limited government dollars makes it extremely difficult to persuade doubters that the Obama
administrations health and energy agendas can be achieved with little or no pain.
In addition, the Senate is scheduled in April to determine how to prevent a devastating 21 percent
cut in Medicare payments to doctors, a cut which is required under current law. If no action is
taken, the number of doctors refusing to take Medicare patients is likely to explode, creating a
major political problem for members of Congress. Should Congress step in and prevent the cuts,
it will cost the government roughly $200 billion over the next ten years. Many center-right
Senatorsincluding some Democrats insist that legislation approving higher physician pay be
enacted under the rules of PAYGO. In that case, Congress will have to find areas to cut to make
up for the added spending. The zero-sum game will continue.
* * *
The elderly may be the most critical of health care reform and most wary of the Democratic

administration, but they are the leading edge of a broader defection. Public opinion polling on
health care and data on Obamas favorability ratings show that voters who feel they have the
most to lose from health care reform voters who fall into a reconfigured coalition of haves
are not primarily well-to-do voters. Instead, the most apprehensive are those in the middle- and
lower-middle class, a majority of them white.
Surveys by the Wall Street Journal/NBC, by Gallup, and by the Kaiser Foundation all point to a
concentration of dissatisfaction among whites, many without college degrees, with family
incomes in the $50,000 to $90,000 range. Gallup, on March 24, found that pluralities of those
with incomes between $25,000 and $59,999 and $60,000 to $89,999 thought passage of the
health care bill was a bad thing, 45-43 and 48-42 respectively, while pluralities of those both
below and above those income levels believed it was a good thing65-23 for those on the
bottom, and 49-46 for those making $90,000 or more. Some 73 percent of non-whites thought
passage was a good thing, while only 40 percent of whites did.
These same voters have been the driving force behind the steady growth over the past year in the
percentage of voters who think they will personally be worse off with the passage of health care
reform. In monthly surveys from February 2009 to March 2010, Kaiser found relatively little
change in the percentage who think they will be better off with health care reform. From
February to November, 2009, this figure stayed in the high 30s and low 40s. After that, it
dropped modestly to the mid-30s, and was at 35 percent in March. In contrast, the percentage
convinced they will be worse off has risen steadily over the 14 months, nearly tripling from 11
percent in February 2009 to 32 percent this March.
These dissenting voters, even though many are of modest means, see themselves as having
something to lose as access to health care is opened to 32 million currently uninsured Americans.
There is another constituencyself-employed men and women (often barely afloat)who
identify with the haves, their present economic status notwithstanding. What they have is not
so much current wealth, but a history of, or aspiration towards, status, authority, and autonomy.
They are not willing to relinquish their past beliefs or their goals for the future. They conceive of
themselves as self-reliant and as integral to what was once an undisputed notion of American
Exceptionalism. The number of the self-employed is expanding at a much faster pace than the
population as a wholeto some extent out of necessity, as firms impose major cutbacks, forcing
employees to go out on their own. The best measure of the rate of growth of this population,
which includes proprietors of small businesses hit by the recession, is the number of persons
who file non-employer tax returns, a figure tracked by the U.S. Census. If there is one group
that has strong anti-tax and anti-spending views, it is the nations self-employed small
businessmen and women. Few livelihoods reinforce individualism as much as having to work for
yourself, pay your own taxes (including Social Security), and calculate the cost and necessity of
health insuranceand too often, nowadays, see your ledger bleeding red ink. The
communitarian instinct is not strong among these entrepreneurs.
From 1997 to 2007, the number of such filers went from 15.4 million to 21.7 million, a 41
percent increase, two-and-a-half times the rate of population growth, 15.9 percent.

At the same time that the ranks of those identifying with the haves have expanded to
incorporate those of modest means, there are two other powerful forcesthe rise in the number
of non-white voters, and of unmarried men and womenboosting the ranks of the have-nots.
Constituencies strongly supportive of government intervention in the economy to provide a much
stronger safety net are expanding. In the 2008 election, three previously-marginalized groups
unmarried women, Latinos, and African Americansmade up 43 percent of the total electorate
and just over 62 percent of the voters who backed Obama.
Ruy Teixeira, an expert in political demography, has demonstrated that in the 20 years from 1988
to 2008, the share of votes cast in presidential elections by ethnic or racial minorities grew from
15 to 26 percent of the total.
Single women voted by better than two to one for Obama over McCain (70-29 percent). In a
post-election analysis, the polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosser concluded: Barack Obama
would have lost the womens vote and the 2008 election if it were not for the contribution of the
unmarried woman. All told, Obama split men 49-48 percent, but lost married women 47-50
percent. Unmarried women, however, delivered 70 percent of their vote to the Democratic
candidate, up from 62 percent in 2004.
While not as liberal as their female counterparts, single men are substantially further to the left
than either married men or women. In the March 31 Gallup survey, a 51-41 majority of married
people called passage of health care reform a bad thing, while a decisive, 60-26, majority of
the unmarried called it a good thing.
As each of these left-leaning constituencies grows, they transform the Democratic Party.
Greenberg Quinlan Rosner research surveys for the Democratic group Womens Voices,
Womens Votes found that while 16 percent of the entire population received some form of
public assistance, the percentage was much higher for the following constituencies: 28 percent
for unmarried women, 36 percent for African Americans, and 26 percent for Hispanics.
A July, 2008, Gallup survey asked respondents to categorize themselves as either haves or
have-nots. By nearly 2.5 to 1 (64-26), whites consider themselves haves. In contrast, slight
pluralities of both blacks and Hispanics see themselves as have-nots, (46-45 and 48-40,
respectively).
Data shedding further light on these findings can be found in a February 4, 2010 Gallup survey.
In this survey, Gallup posed the following question: Just off the top of your head, would you say
you have a positive or negative image of each of the following? Small business, free enterprise,
entrepreneurs, capitalism, big business, the federal government and socialism.
The first four of the seven items about which Gallup asked were viewed favorably by strong
margins; respondents were split on big business (item five); and critical of the federal
government (item six) by a slight, 51-46, margin. The survey demonstrated that just 36 percent

of Americans view socialism (item seven) positively, and 58 percent have a negative view
not a particularly surprising finding. Looking further at the cross-tabs, however, the survey gets
more interesting. By a solid 12 percentage points, 53-41, self-identified Democrats view
socialism favorably, as do an even larger share of self-identified liberals, 61-34. Among these
segments of the electorate, socialism is not rejected reflexively, according to Gallup. Decisive
majorities of Republicans and conservatives were found to hold negative views of socialism, by
respective margins of 79-17 and 75-20. Gallup reported that by better than two to one, white
respondents were critical of socialism, 64-31 negative-positive, while non-whites were favorable
by a 49-40 margin.
Differing ideological stances of whites and racial/ethnic minorities are reflected in poll data
measuring the decline in Obamas approval ratings. In November, 2009, Gallup found that the
Presidents favorability ratings among minorities had dropped a modest 7 points from the
beginning of 2009, from 80 percent positive down to 73 percent, but among whites the drop was
a much more severe 22 points, dropping from 61 to 39 percent.
The white-black ideological split has been a constant in American politics for decades. In the
series of election year polls conducted by the American National Election Survey (ANES, a
Stanford-University of Michigan polling collaboration), blacks have consistently sided with the
view that government in Washington should see to it that every person has a job and a good
standard of living by much higher margins than whitessometimes by more than 2 to 1.
Conversely, ANES reports that many more whites than blacks agree that government should
provide fewer services, even in areas such as health and education, in order to reduce spending.
These general findings suggest the possibility that the political strength of voters whose
convictions are perhaps best described as Social Democratic in the European sense is reaching a
significant level in the United States. With effective organization and mobilization, such voters
are positioned to set the agenda in the Democratic Party in the near future.
At the same time, the share of the electorate made up of the demographic group most strongly
committed to a political agenda relatively favorable to the material interests of the haves is
declining. The U.S. Census predicts that by 2050, non-Hispanic whites will no longer be in the
majority. Teixeira, in a report for the liberal Center for American Progress, predicts that by 2016
it is likely that the United States will no longer be a majority white Christian nation.
The potential or even incipient shift in the balance of power from haves to have-nots is not
purely demographic. The shift stems from a combination of economic developments, especially
the army of long-term unemployed and stagnant incomes at the bottom of the socioeconomic
ladder.
Just as the number of the unemployed with bleak prospects has been growing, so too has been
the number of those without health insurance. From 1987 to 2008, the percentage of people
without coverage grew from 12.9 to 15.4 percent; and, in hard figures, from 31.03 million to
46.34 million. This is a constituency desperately in need of help, and the only source of help for
many, if not most, is the government.

In 2009, a key constituency of the liberal coalition, organized labor, reached a critical turning
point. Overall, union representation of private sector workers continued to fall to an almost
insignificant 7.2 percent, or 7.43 million out of a total workforce of 108.07 million. Conversely,
union representation of public sector workers continued to grow, reaching, in 2009, 37.4 percent,
or 7.9 million out of 21.31 million employed by government entities at the state, federal, and
local level.
While these trends have been in evidence for decades, last year, for the first time, public sector
union members outnumbered those in the private sector. The consequences of this shift are
profound. A majority of the American labor movement is now directly dependent on tax dollars.
In terms of political orientation, these workers can now be described as tax consumers as well as
tax payers. For these workers, a tax increase may result in a slightly smaller paycheck but, more
importantly, the hike means more money is available to pay for raises and new benefits.
Union representation of public sector workers has, in turn, paid off. The Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported in December, 2009, that the average wage of state and local government
employees was $39.83 per hour, $26.24 in salary and $13.60 in benefits. Conversely, private
sector employees made an average of $12.34 an hour less, or a total of $27.49 ($19.45 in salary,
and $8.05 in benefits).
The strength of the public sector unions is reflected not only in their superior compensation
packages, but in the continued superior growth of those pay packages. From the four years
between December 2005 and December 2009, total pay (salary and benefits) of private sector
workers grew by 10.4 percent while government employees saw their pay rise by 14.1 percent. A
3.7 percent difference may not appear significant, but it translates to the fact that public sector
pay is growing 35.6 percent faster than private sector pay. Those who are skilled at computing
compound interest can figure out what this would mean over a work life of, say, 45 years.
Public support for labor unions has been plummeting. Pew found that from January, 2007 to
February, 2010, the favorability rating of organized labor fell from 58 to 42 percent. Gallup, in
turn, found in September 2009 that approval of labor unions had fallen to its lowest level, 48
percent, since the polling firm first asked the question in 1937.
What all these trendsthe growing strength of minorities and single women, the conversion of
organized labor from private to public sector employeesmean is that the fundamental
economic issue in post-Great Depression American politics, the issue that dominated politics
from the start of the Great Depression into the mid-1960s, has renewed salience. American
National Election Studies (ANES) polls have tried to capture this economic issue, asking
respondents: Some people feel that the government in Washington should see to it that every
person has a job and a good standard of living. Others think the government should just let each
person get ahead on his/ her own. Where would you place yourself?
The ANES evidence is that this issue is coming back full force. In 1972, the earliest survey
asking this question found Democrats siding with government by a statistically insignificant

single percentage point, 34-33, and Republicans on the side of letting each person get ahead on
his/her own by 31 points, 49-18, or a 32 point difference between Democrats and Republicans.
By 2004 (2008 data are not yet available), Democrats became decisively more supportive of the
governments obligation to insure a job and a good standard of living, by a margin of 42-25, or
17 points, while Republicans moved farther in the opposite direction, 61-12, or 48 points against.
In effect, the 32 point difference between Democrats and Republicans in 1972 grew to a
statistically striking 65 points by 2004.
* * *
While there is no doubt that the increase in the number of racial and ethnic minority voters works
to the advantage of the liberal coalition, white voters remain a wild card. In 2008, whites made
up 74 percent of the electorate, and McCain carried them 55-43. There are precedents for much
higher Republican margins: in 1972, Nixon carried 67 percent of the white vote, and in 1984
Reagan won 64 percent. Conversely, Bill Clinton only lost the white vote by one percentage
point to George H. W. Bush in 1992. The one clear conclusion to draw from these figures is that
if the GOP is unwilling to make major policy shifts, especially on immigration reform, a crucial
issue to many Hispanics, the party will have to drive its margins among white voters back up to
the Nixon-Reagan levels.
The 2008 election demonstrated that the country is moving into a period of post-racial politics
but that does not mean an end to racial, ethnic, or sex-based partisan schisms. In the past, a
combustible mix of prejudice, race, and gender identity drove a politics of sociocultural
polarization. The divisions of the future are increasingly likely to be driven by similar fissures,
as well as by stratification dependent upon socioeconomic status, ideology, and self-concept as
a have or have-not. These divisions will continue to splinter the United States along familiar
lines of race, ethnicity, and gender, but such divisions will result from the different ideological
inclinations of whites, non-whites, men, women, the married and the unmarried. The sources of
conflict may shift, but many of the traditional lines of demarcation will remain.
*

While both the have and have-not coalitions have been growing, with the middle waning, the
devastating effects of the Great Recession, the inexorable enlargement of the minority
electorate, and the legions of single voters now give greater momentum to the left and to the
Democratic Party.
The problem facing the Democratic Party and the Obama administration lies in maintaining the
fragile alliance between their constituents: those looking to the government for resources and
protection; millions of ideologically moderate working-class whites upon whom the party
continues to depend; and college-educated professionals, many with advanced degrees, who
represent the Democrats newfound strength among knowledge workers. These Democrats are
relatively well-off and socially liberal. They are not bread-and-butter voters, but ideological
voters, seeking a government that defends post-materialist rights and values, especially womens
rights, civil rights, and sexual freedom. Many are anti-war. These are the Democratic haves.

The party suffered throughout the past four decades from inevitable coalitional conflicts that
produced Republican victories with the votes of the Silent Majority (1972), Reagan Democrats
(1980 and 1984), Angry White Men (1994), and Security Moms (2002 and 2004).
Odds for 2010 favor continued, if smaller, Democratic Congressional majorities, but the
Democratic coalition still faces dangers. Blighted economic performance threatens to pit key
party constituencies against each other. Moderate whites are demonstrating growing anxiety over
record deficits. With unemployment seemingly entrenched, pressure from the have-not wing
of the party for additional spending on extended unemployment benefits, COBRA subsidies,
federal jobs programs, Social Security, quality affordable health care for every American, and
other government benefits, will only intensify.
As of this spring, Obama has momentum, and he is likely to get another boost with the passage
of financial reform, the prospects for which are steadily improving. The long-term viability of his
electoral majority will depend heavily, however, on his success or failure in negotiating his way
through the ravaged economy without debilitating numbers of voters defecting to the GOP.
Obama has taken major risks. He could go down in flames; he could blend into history in the
manner of Fillmore, Arthur, and Harding; or he could effectas promisedthe long-awaited
transformation of American politics.
Questions:
1) What are communitarian values? Can a society function if everybody has
communitarian values? Can a society function with no communitarian values?
2) The article repeatedly references the zero sum game of politics. What sort of
initiatives should be pursued to keep politics from being a zero sum game?
3) How important is the national debt? Do you think it is better to leave problems
unsolved and be debt free, or is it better to go into debt to mitigate a crisis?

Difficulty Level: Very Easy

#39

Abstract: The massive Hadron particle accelerator is finally starting to do its job. At the cost of
almost 2 billion euros a year just in power, this machine is propelling subatomic particles down a
rail at dizzying speeds until they collide in a controlled but intense explosion. It looks cool but is
it worth it?
Vocabulary: Proton, Collide, Accelerating, Circulating, Fundamental, Jibe, Quantum,
Parlance, Dogged, Particle

Hadron Collider Makes Breakthrough

for Cnn.com
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider managed to make two proton beams collide at high
energy Tuesday, marking a "new territory" in physics, according to CERN, the European
Organization for Nuclear Research.
The $10 billion research tool has been accelerating the beams since November in the LHC's 17mile tunnel on the border of Switzerland and France.
The beams have routinely been circulating at 3.5 TeV, or teraelectron volts, the highest energy
achieved at the LHC so far, according to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear
Research.
The first two attempts Tuesday failed, said Steve Myers, CERN's director for accelerators. He
said the beams were lost before they reached their full energy.
Experiments at the LHC may help answer fundamental questions such as why Albert Einstein's
theory of relativity -- which describes the world on a large scale -- doesn't jibe with quantum
mechanics, which deals with matter far too small to see.
The collider may help scientists discover new properties of nature. The as-yet theoretical Higgs
boson, also called "the God particle" in popular parlance, could emerge within two or three
years, Myers said in November.
Evidence of supersymmetry -- the idea that every particle has a "super partner" with similar
properties in a quantum dimension (according to some physics theories, there are hidden
dimensions in the universe) -- could crop up as early as 2010.
The collider has been dogged by problems. It made headlines late last year when a bird
apparently dropped a "bit of baguette" into the accelerator, making the machine shut down.
The incident was similar in effect to a standard power cut, said spokeswoman Katie Yurkewicz.
Had the machine been going, there would have been no damage, but beams would have been
stopped until the machine could be cooled back down to operating temperatures, she said.

The collider achieved its first full-circle beam in September 2008 amid much celebration. But
just nine days later, the operation was set back when one of the 25,000 joints that connect
magnets in the LHC came loose and the resulting current melted or burned some important
components of the machine, Myers said.
The faulty joint has a cross-section of a mere two-thirds of an inch by two-thirds of an inch.
Should Tuesday's experiment go as planned and scientists are able to establish 7 TeV collisions,
the plan is to run them continuously for 18 to 24 months with a short technical stop at the end of
2010, CERN said.
"It will be the beginning of a long period of running the accelerator with beams at this energy,"
Sutton said. "It's the period in which experiments will really start to collect data in this new
energy region, where the potential for discoveries may be made."
Sutton compared the experiments to Christopher Columbus sailing for the New World in 1492,
when he knew what he was looking for but didn't know what he might find.
"It's going into a new energy region," she said. "It's a new territory in particle physics, so we're
really just standing on the threshold of that, which is exciting for everybody here, of course."
Questions:
1) To put the power of this machine into perspective, running it uses up almost 15% of
the total energy output of the country of France. This machine can also be stopped for months by
something as minor as a pigeon dropping a slice of bread in the array. Given how fragile and
expensive this machine is, is the information we glean from it worth the cost?
2) Why would it be important to have the same physics governing the effects of both
huge and tiny events?
3) Should the European Union be forced to pay for this entire research facility when the
benefits in terms of knowledge are global? Do you think in general that research should be
funded better than it is?

Difficulty Level: Very hard

#40

Vocabulary: Humanities, Frills, Prune, Pernicious, Apposite, Impeccable, Lavish, Prudery,

Arcane, Crasser, Paradigmatic
Abstract: Every year when discourse comes up about education the focus is on the math and
sciences. Every year actual discourse about any number of issues is cheapened by the
atrophication of civic knowledge. This article moans a culture that focuses on the machinery of
productivity while neglecting the intellect behind it.

A Passion for Truth

By Martha C. Nussbaum for The New Republic

These are grim times for the academic humanities. Seen as useless frills, which nations can
prune away to focus on the things that really matterby which the speaker so often means
things that contribute to national economic growththe humanistic disciplines are being cut at
all levels, from elementary school to college and university. Even worse, they are being asked
(on pain of extinction) to refashion themselves as tools of profit, demonstrating the (economic)
impact of their inquiries. To begin thinking about why this focus on impact is a pernicious
business, we can do no better than to pause to honor one of the greatest classical scholars of the
past century, who illuminated the world through such unfashionable values as mastery, rigor, and
a passion for truth.
Sir Kenneth Dover, who died on March 9 just days short of his 90th birthday, was a scholar
unsurpassed in his mastery of ancient Greek language, culture, and thought. What Dover could
do without effort, most scholars could not do even with the most painstaking labor. When his
autobiography, Marginal Comment, first appeared in 1994, I was visiting Dover and his wife
Audrey at their home in St. Andrews. With a mischievous smile, he dashed into his studyto
emerge a short time later with an inscribed copy. On the flyleaf was a Greek elegiac couplet in
which Dover had managed (1) to use in an apposite and humorous way a Greek word whose
meaning we had discussed in a co-authored article, disputing its translation with John Finnis; (2)
to express pleasure at the collaboration; and (3) to compare the daring outspokenness of our
article to that of his own memoirall with not only impeccable meter and style, but also
graciousness, wit, and elegance. This in ten minutes, from a man who wrote that he spent twenty
hours preparing every hour-long undergraduate lecture he gaveso you can imagine how much
knowledge those lucky students had lavished upon them.
Dover did path-breaking work on Greek comedy, oratory, prose style, and popular thought, but
he is best known for his Greek Homosexuality (1978), which influenced all subsequent work on
this topic, not least that of Michel Foucault. Challenging the received wisdom that sexual desire
and choice vary little from one society to another, Dover showed that ancient Greek social norms
profoundly structured sexual experience and even desire, making the desire of an older man for a
younger one feel not unnatural, but profoundly normal and natural: even the gods themselves
were thought to enjoy such passions. To make his argument Dover needed not only the lack of
prudery and the passion for accuracy that were always such a huge part of his personality; he
also needed the mastery Ive mentioned, since he had to give convincing interpretations of

difficult texts from many genres, as well as works of visual art. A life devoted to mastery of such
arcane matters illuminated the world for us all.
In Britain today there is a new government program called the Research Excellence Framework
(REF). Under the REF, scholars in all fields will be rated, and fully twenty-five percent of each
persons rating will be assigned for the impact of their worknot including its impact on other
scholars or on people who like to think, but only including the crasser forms such impact
might take. (Paradigmatic examples are improved health outcomes or growth in business
revenue.) Impact must be immediate and short-term, and it must be brought about by the
scholars own efforts, not by the way in which another generation might find their world
enlivened by a book the scholar has produced. Britains assault on the love of truth for its own
sake is particularly explicit, but such pernicious trends can be found in every country.
Dover would do poorly in the REF: even his widely influential ideas were not marketed by
him, but were simply put out there to be picked up by others, a process that may take many
years. And yet they changed our understanding of human sexuality. While the world mourns a
towering figure (and while I mourn a man of the highest sort of daring, whom I am lucky to have
known as a friend), let us not mourn the passing of the type of scholarship he loved. Let us fight
for it, because it may still survive. If it does not, our nations and our individual spirits will be the
poorer. The pursuit of short-term profit is death to the life of the mind.
Questions:
1) Why do people regard the humanities as useless?
2) Why might these people be incorrect?
3) What would a world totally devoid of the humanities look like?

Difficulty Level: Easy

#41

Abstract: The interesting alchemy that goes into non organic foods is getting even crazier. Want
fish that look like Popeye?
Vocabulary: Transgenic, Suppress, Incorporate, Inhibiting, Prominent, Aquaculture,
Susceptible, Imperiled, Predation

Bulging Mutant Trout Created: More

Muscle, More Meat
For NationalGeographic.com

Scientists have created hundreds of mutant fish with "six-pack abs" and bulging "shoulders" by
beefing them up with new genes.
While the fish aren't going to win any beauty contests, the genetically engineered rainbow trout
could hold some appeal at market, because they each provide 15 to 20 percent more flesh than
standard tout, researchers say.
Developed with fish farming in mind, the genetically modified trout is the result of ten years of
experimentation by a team led by Terry Bradley of the University of Rhode Island's Department
of Fisheries, Animal, and Veterinary Sciences.
The team injected 20,000 rainbow trout eggs with different types of DNA from other species,
making them transgenic. The added DNA was intended to suppress a protein called myostatin,
and it apparently worked in about 300 of the eggs, turning them into the muscle-bound superfish.
The transgenic trout incorporate genes modeled on myostatin-inhibiting proteins found in
powerfully built Belgian blue cattle, a beef breed noted for its "double muscled" appearance.
In mammals, including humans, mysostatin is known to keep muscle growth in check
controlling myostatin is touted as a potential way to reverse muscle-wasting diseases in humans.
(The muscle-bound trout is the first real proof that mysostatin inhibition has a similar effect in
both fish and mammals.
Although fish lack abdominal muscles, the modified trout exhibited a "six pack" effect along the
sides of the their midsections and developed prominent humps on their backs, Bradley recently
reported.
"Our findings are quite stunning," Bradley said in a statement. "The results have significant
implications for commercial aquaculture."
If met with regulatory approval, the fish-gene modifications could mean cheaper trout for
consumers, as farmers would be able to grow larger fish without having to feed them more, he

said.
Though some trout with altered genes have been approved for release, trout with added DNA
from other species have yet to be approved for commercial use, according to zoologist Fredrik
Sundstrm of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
Other genetically modified trout in the works have been engineered for faster growth, disease
resistance, or frigid-water survival (via "antifreeze genes").
Sundstrm, who has investigated the potential risks of transgenic trout escaping into the wild,
said studies suggest the fish can not only breed in rivers but also pass on their lab-altered genes
to natural populations. (Read about threats to freshwater fish.)
"Under certain conditions the transgenic fish do better than the wild types, but under other con
"If they have a lot of food, transgenic fish can use that food to a greater extent, but if you have
predators nearby they also seem to be more susceptible to predation," Sundstrm said.
He doubts, however, whether this latest transgenic trout would find enough food in the wild to
support its body builder physiqueor that the bulky fish would be able to maneuver swiftly
enough to avoid being eaten.
But if the fish did survive in the wildfor instance, if juveniles are able to "grow too big for
birds to feed on them"they could overturn their ecosystems, Sundstrm said. For one thing, he
said, the six-pack trout's greater size could allow them to outcompete their unmodified cousins,
leaving them with little food and an imperiled future.
Questions:
1) How much extra money would you be willing to pay each year to buy food to avoid having to
eat GM trout? Would you want to have food that is GM labeled as such?
2) Why is it important that they do not out compete wild trout?
3) What do you think the FDA should do about GM animals? Why?

Difficulty Level: Very Easy

#42

Abstract: For the next month Topeka -the second largest city in Kansas -, will be renamed
Google in return for cheap broadband internet service.
Vocabulary: Burgeoning, Venture, Bizarre, Perplexed

City Goes to Great Lengths for Cheap Internet

for CNN.com
(CNN) -- At 79, Bill Bunten doesn't exactly understand the Internet boom. The Topeka, Kansas,
mayor has an e-mail account, he said, but his assistants take care of most of his online
communications and tend to search the Web for him.
But Bunten believes so firmly that younger residents of Kansas' capital city will benefit from
faster Internet connections that he wants Topeka -- which he describes as a place of many lakes
and the site of a burgeoning market for animal-food research -- to change its name for a month.
In a formal proclamation Monday, Bunten announced his city will be known as "Google" -Google, Kansas.
"It's just fun. We're having a good time of it," he said of the unofficial name change, which will
last through the end of March. "There's a lot of good things that are going on in our city."
The unusual move comes as several U.S. cities elbow for a spot in Google's new "Fiber for
Communities" program. The Web giant is going to install new Internet connections in
unannounced locations, giving those communities Internet speeds 100 times faster than those
elsewhere, with data transfer rates faster than 1 gigabit per second.
Cities have until March 26 to tell Google they're interested in the venture. Google says it will
pick one or more cities for the pilot project. "We'll offer service at a competitive price to at least
50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people," Google says in an online post.
The company has said U.S. Internet speeds are falling behind the global standard, and it wants to
fix things itself by installing new broadband cable.
Bunten hopes the proclamation, which he read at a special City Council meeting on Monday, will
catch Google's attention and make the Internet company decide to use Topeka as its guinea pig.
The document renames Topeka as "Google, Kansas -- the capital city of fiber optics."
Google declined to comment on whether it's taking the whole "Google, Kansas" thing seriously.
The mayor believes that faster Internet connections would inspire young people to stay in the
city and would encourage business development.
But Bunten laughed at the idea that he might make the name switch permanent if Google decides

to invest in his 123,400-person city's Internet network.

"Oh, heavens no, Topeka?" he said during a phone interview. "We are very proud of our city and
Topeka is an Indian word which means 'a good place to grow potatoes.' We're not going to
change that."
Do people grow potatoes in Topeka these days?
"I don't think we grow that many potatoes anymore," he said. "The crops we have out here are
wheat and corn and soybeans and alfalfa. And, did I say soybeans?"
This isn't the first time Topeka has switched its name to mark a cultural trend. In 1998, former
mayor Joan Wagnon temporarily changed the name of the city to "ToPikachu, Kansas," in
reference to the Pikachu anime character, from the show and game called "Pokemon," which was
popular at the time, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal.
Bunten, the current mayor, was quick to attribute that bizarre "ToPikachu" happening to another
local administration.
"I read in the paper this morning that they did a similar thing a number of years ago. Hold on,
maybe I can get this sorted out. Just a minute," he said, turning to an assistant for details.
"We did it for a day," he said, sounding perplexed. "I can't remember why."
On its face, changing the name of a city to "Google" may seem like a silly publicity stunt, but
Bunten says there is a serious side to the idea. Faster Internet connections might just be Topeka's
ticket to a hipper future.
He's the first to say outsiders probably view Topeka as "another Midwestern town with not a lot
going on," but he's been making efforts to change that. He trying to revitalize downtown with a
bar and music scene.
Google would add to all that, making the city more attractive to youngsters, he said.
"To have this high-speed where people can sit down and have lunch and still keep working is a
positive for young people," he said. "The young people are the ones that caught onto this and go
to the Internet and asked people in the city to sign on as supporting Google coming to Topeka."
Bunten also hopes super-fast Web connections will improve the city's image with outsiders.
He was quick to point out that, while Topeka is in northeastern Kansas and is geographically part
of the Great Plains, the city is green and has hills and even lakes. It's not flat like the Kansas
stereotype, he said.
"Kansas is what it is, but I was trying to explain to you down in Atlanta that Topeka is not on the
prairie. Our rainfall here runs about 32 inches a year. If you get out to Manhattan [Kansas],

where Kansas State University is, well, it gets flatter. The wheat fields go as far as you can see.
But here it's not. There's lots of trees and lots of water and we're going to develop this riverfront
into something very, very nice," he said.
Bunten was born in Topeka. He said he traveled with the military, visiting Japan, Korea, San
Diego and Los Angeles, California, Washington state. He saw many nice places. But they were
nothing compared to his home.
They couldn't match the community. That's why he chose to return to his Topeka after years
away.
He hopes Topeka's young people will explore the world like he did. But he wants them to come
back. And he hopes Google will be their magnet.
Questions:
1) What do you think of corporations sponsoring towns, buildings, cities, etc? Is it a good way to
advertise or somehow demeaning?
2) Would you change your name to that of a corporate sponsor in exchange for free stuff?
3) What do you think the United States should do to get broadband to far away areas?

Difficulty Level: Hard/Very Hard

#43

Abstract: The Duke Blue Devils mens NCAA basketball team is maybe the most hated club in
all of American sports. Unfortunately, this hatred can sometimes get political and personal. This
article explores how distasteful insults get when sporting is taken too far.
Vocabulary: Enlightening, Revelation, Perplexed, Imbued, Staunchest, Malevolent, Cascade,
Perusal, Superimposed, Assertion, Sentiment, Bigotry, Emanating, Alma Mater

Devilish
Duke hating and homophobia.
By Selwood Darby for The New Republic
Early one morning in November 2007, just as the college basketball season was getting under
way, a message from my mother popped up on my laptop insisting that I go to the Wikipedia
page for Kyle Singler, a 6'8" then-freshman phenom debuting at Duke, my alma mater. There
was "interesting information about him personally," she wrote--information that revealed "his
comfort with himself and his truthfulness." I came across nothing so enlightening after I
skimmed the page, so my mom took a look and discovered that the revelation she'd applauded-that Singler was "not only the first 'openly' gay player at Duke but also the first in D-1 History"-had disappeared. (Like many other accusations of homosexuality that have since appeared on
Singler's Wikipedia page, the one in question had only been up for a short time--twelve minutes
to be exact.) I gently offered my perplexed mother two this-is-how-the-world-works
explanations for what had just happened. The first was about the unreliability of Wikipedia. The
second was about Duke basketball and homophobia.
Duke is probably the most despised team in college basketball. And proud Duke haters--like my
colleague Jason Zengerle and Will Blythe, author of To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever:
A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the
Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry--have often imbued their dislike of the Blue Devils
with a political subtext. To many of its staunchest enemies, Duke is a malevolent Goliath--an
elitist, corporate, conservative force out to crush more virtuous, liberal Davids. In the UNC-Duke
rivalry, Blythe explains, "[i]ssues of identity--whether you see yourself as a populist or an elitist,
as a local or an outsider, as public-minded or individually striving--get played out." He also notes
that UNC's long-time coach Dean Smith, who retired in 1997, was a vocal Democrat while
Duke's coach Mike Krzyzewski is an active Republican. This has only added to the sense that
there is something fundamentally liberal about loathing the Blue Devils.
But there's one major problem with the neat morality play that left-leaning Duke haters have
constructed for themselves: the jarring and disproportionate level of homophobia that routinely
gets directed at the basketball players. There's the classic "This is Why Duke Sucks" YouTube
video that has received more than 1.6 million hits--and boasts lyrics about one Duke player being
a "bitch" and another having a "dude's face all on [his] balls." Or the more recent (and explicit)
video, "Greg Paulus--'I Kissed a Boy,'" which mocks Duke's senior guard for, among other
things, enjoying the taste of men's sweat. Or another video about Paulus ("Tea Bag: A Greg
Paulus Tribute"), posted by user TarHeel32Blue, which shows several clips of the guard near or
between the legs of other players.
Exhibit A, however, is the cascade of homophobia directed at superstar three-point shooter J.J.

Redick during his years in Durham. In 2004, N.C. State guard Scooter Sherrill said publicly that,
after Redick shot threes, he had "his hand up like he's gay or something." A quick perusal of
Redick's Wikipedia history reveals dozens of now-deleted comments like, "J.J. Redick is a
confirmed homo sexual" with whom it's rumored "coach K made sexual arrangements." A
notorious photo snapped during a game shows a Duke fan with a "JJ is Redickulous" sign
standing unsuspectingly next to a Maryland supporter who adds "-ly gay" with his own poster.
The New York Times wrote about the cheers of "Brokeback Mountain" often shouted at him
during games, and you can still find photos on Tarheeltimes.com that show Redick's face
superimposed on images from the movie.
Before continuing, I want to note that, while I went to Duke and still cheer for the team, I'm not a
super fan. I attended only four games in Cameron Indoor Stadium, and I didn't sleep in a cold,
muddy tent for weeks to see the big game against UNC. In addition, I'm well aware that
homophobia is all too common in the world of sports--and hardly the exclusive province of Duke
haters. And yet, while it's obviously hard to quantify the assertion that Duke is the object of
more homophobia than other teams, it's also hard to think of any other squad in college hoops
that has seen so many of its players singled out so prominently for gay bashing in recent years.
Why has this happened? The answer, I think, has something to do with race and class.
Disparagers of Duke typically frame their opposition to the school, and its basketball team, in
terms of anti-elitism: Duke, according to this view, is a private school plopped in the Carolina
Piedmont, where it caters to wealthy, mostly white elites who have zero regard for the local
community--in Will Blythe's words, "those obnoxious students and that out-of-state arrogance."
That's a defensible sentiment, as far as it goes, even a liberal one in many respects. But, in the
world of sports, being white as well as wealthy often translates into a perceived softness. (And
Duke's white players seem to attract the lion's share of the homophobia directed at the team.) For
many Duke bashers, expressing anti-gay sentiment seems to be just one more way of delivering
the message that Duke players are whiny, wimpy, pampered products of privilege.
To be clear, I am not alleging that the majority of anti-Duke types are homophobes. And, while I
will be rooting for the Blue Devils proudly today, I will be the first to concede that there are good
reasons to criticize them. But, if liberal Duke haters are going to continue insisting that their
contempt for my alma mater's team carries some kind of political virtue, they may want to at
least grapple with the fact that there is a nasty strain of bigotry emanating from their ranks.
Questions:
1) Do you agree with the authors point? Do we tend to align the big powerhouse with
conservative ideas and the scrappy underdog with liberal ones? Why might this be?
2) At what point does trash talking become hurtful? Should UNC do something to curtail the
rampant Duke hating that transpires on its campus?
3) Do you share the stereotype of obnoxious students with out-of-state arrogance when you
think of private universities? If so, do you want to go to a private university?

Difficulty Level: Easy/Medium

#44

Abstract: A new treatment that consists of pig cells wrapped in seaweed has great potential to
curb and regulate the negative effects of diabetes.
Vocabulary: Diabetes, Pancreas, Insulin, Secrete, Diffuse, Porcine

'Pig sushi' diabetes trial brings

xenotransplant hope
By Wendy Zuckerman for The New Scientist

Four more people with diabetes will soon be implanted with high doses of living pig cells coated
in seaweed, bringing the prospect of widespread animal-to-human transplants a step closer.
Several people in New Zealand and Russia with type 1 diabetes have already received the "pig
sushi", known as Diabecell, and now New Zealand company Living Cell Technologies (LCT)
has received approval from the country's health authorities to begin phase II human trials on the
implants.
Type 1 diabetes occurs when insulin-producing cells in the pancreas called islets are destroyed.
People with the disease must have daily insulin injections to normalise their blood glucose
levels.
But this causes blood glucose levels to yo-yo, which can lead to cardiovascular and nervous
system complications, shortening the lifespan of sufferers by a third, according to Bob Elliott,
LCT's medical director.
LCT's treatment uses islet cells taken from pigs to replace the cells missing from a person with
diabetes. The pig islets are surgically implanted into a patient's abdomen, from where they
secrete insulin throughout the body.
To avoid immune rejection, the pig cells are coated in alginate, a substance found in seaweed that
prevents immune-system cells from touching and so recognising and attacking the alien
islets. "So immunosuppressant drugs aren't needed after implantation," says Elliott. However, the
alginate allows nutrients and glucose to diffuse into the islets, and insulin to diffuse out, so the
cells can do their job.
In the earlier phase I trials, four people with type 1 diabetes who suffered from "hypoglycaemic
unawareness" in other words, they didn't notice when their blood sugar levels became
dangerously low were implanted with a few of the cells. "In one patient, the implants reduced
their daily insulin dose by 25 per cent, and hypoglycaemic unawareness disappeared," says
Elliott. The other three are being monitored, and Elliott says "results look very satisfying".
Research is further ahead in Russia, where LCT began trials of Diabecell in 2007. Five patients
have since been given higher doses and are successfully responding.

According to Elliott, there are not enough human islet cells available to treat the 20 to 30 million
people who suffer from diabetes type 1 worldwide, so porcine islets are the best alternative.
To minimise the risk of transmitting porcine diseases into humans, LCT uses cells from pigs of
Auckland Island in the Southern Ocean south of New Zealand. "They have lived in isolation for
200 years and are remarkably free of any form of organism that can infect humans," says Elliott.
LCT's trial is the most promising research in the area, says Peter Cowan from St Vincent's
University Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, who also researches pig islets for diabetes
treatment, but was not involved in this work. But, he says, the results "are quite preliminary, and
demonstration of longer-term function of the islet implants will be critical", he says.
LCT implanted similar capsules in a patient in 1996: although those pig cells are still alive, few
continue to produce insulin.
Questions:
1) Do you support implanting of tissues between animals? Why might these sort of technologies
be very slow to meet with approval?
2) Diabetes may well be the single biggest health problem confronting America today. What
tends to cause diabetes? Why might Americans be so susceptible to diabetes?
3) Given what you know about diabetes, would a pill or implant really solve the root problem?
What do you think is the best way to combat diabetes?