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With its common interest in lawbreaking but its immense range of subject-matter and widely-varying methods of treatment, the crime novel could make a legitimate claim to be regarded as a separate branch of literature, or, at least, as a distinct, even though a slightly disreputable, offshoot of the traditional novel.The detective story is probably the most respectable (at any rate in the narrow sense of the word) of the crime species. Its creation is often the relaxation of university scholars, literary economists, scientists or even poets. Disastrous deaths may occur more frequently and mysteriously than might be expected in polite society, but the world in which they happen, the village, seaside resort, college or studio, is familiar to us, if not from our own experience, at least in the newspaper or the lives of friends. The characters, though normally realized superficially, are as recognizably human and consistent as our less intimate acquaintances. A story set in a more remote African jungle or Australian bush, ancient China or gas-lit London, appeals to our interest in geography or history, and most detective story writers are conscientious in providing a reasonably true background. The elaborate, carefully-assembled plot, despised by the modern intellectual critics and creators of "significant" novels, has found refuge in the murder mystery, with its sprinkling of clues, its spicing with apparent impossibilities, all with appropriate solutions and explanations at the end. With the guilt of escapism from real life nagging gently, we secretly take delight in the unmasking of evil by a vaguely super-human detective, who sees through and dispels the cloud of suspicion which has hovered so unjustly over the innocent.Though its villain also receives his rightful deserts, the thriller presents a less comfortable and credible world. The sequence of fist fights, revolver duels, car crashes and escapes from gas-filled cellars exhausts the reader far more than the hero, who, suffering from at least two broken ribs, one black eye, uncountable bruises and a hangover, can still chase and overpower an armed villain with the physique of a wrestler, He moves dangerously through a world of ruthless gangs, brutality, a vicious lust for power and money and, in contrast to the detective tale, with a near-omniscient arch-criminal whose defeat seems almost accidental. Perhaps we miss in the thriller the security of being safely led by our imperturbable investigator past a score of red herrings and blind avenues to a final gathering of suspects when an unchallengeable elucidation of all that has bewildered us is given and justice and goodness prevail. All that we vainly hope for from life is granted vicariously. The characters of the detective stories are, generally speaking, ______.

A. more profound than those of the traditional novels
B. as real as life itself
C. not like human beings at all
D. not very profound but not unlikely

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The writing of a historical synthesis involves integrating the materials available to the historian into a comprehensible whole. The problem in writing a historical synthesis is how to find a pattern in, or impose a pattern upon, the detailed information that has already been used to explain the causes for a historical event.A synthesis seeks common elements in which to interpret the contingent parts of a historical event. The initial step, therefore, in writing a historical synthesis, is to put the event to be synthesized in a proper historical perspective, so that the common elements or strands making up the event can be determined. This can be accomplished by analyzing the historical event as part of a general trend or continuum in history. The common elements that are familiar to the event will become the ideological framework in which the historian seeks to synthesize. This is not to say that any factor will not have a greater relative value in the historian"s handling of the interrelated when viewed in a broad historical perspective.The historian, in synthesizing, must determine the extent to which the existing hypotheses have similar trends. A general trend line, once established, will enable these similar trends to be correlated and paralleled within the conceptual framework of a common base. A synthesis further seeks to determine, from existing hypotheses, why an outcome took the direction it did; thus, it necessitates reconstructing the spirit of the times in order to assimilate the political, social, psychological, etc., factors within a common base.As such, the synthesis becomes the logical construct in interpreting the common ground between an original explanation of an outcome (thesis) and the reinterpretation of the outcome along different lines (antithesis). Therefore, the synthesis necessitates the integration of the materials available into a comprehensible whole which will in turn provide a new historical perspective for the event being synthesized. Which of the following statements would the author consider false

A. One factor in a historical synthesis will not have a greater value than other factors
B. It is possible to analyze common unifying points in hypotheses
C. Historical events should be studied as part of a continuum in history
D. A synthesis seeks to determine why an outcome took the direction it did

A child who has once been pleased with a tale likes, as a rule, to have it retold in identically the same words, but this should not lead parents to treat printed fairy stories as sacred texts. It is always much better to tell a story than read it out of a book, and, if a parent can produce what, in the actual circumstances of the time and the individual child, is an improvement on the printed text, so much the better.A charge made against fairy tales is that they harm the child by frightening him or arousing his sadistic impulse. To prove the latter, one would have to show in a controlled experiment that children who have read fairy stories were more often guilty of cruelty than those who had not. Aggressive, destructive, sadistic impulses every child has and, on the whole, their symbolic verbal discharge seem to be rather a safety valve than an incitement to overt action. As to fears, there are, I think, well-authenticated cases of children being dangerously terrified by some fairy story. Often, however, this arises from the child having heard the story once. Familiarity with the story by repetition turns the pain of fear into the pleasure of a fear faced and mastered.There are also people who object to fairy stories on the grounds that they are not objectively true, that giants, witches, two-headed dragons, magic carpets, etc., do not exist; and that, instead of indulging his fantasies in fairy tales, the child should be taught how to adapt to reality by studying history and mechanics. I find such people, I must confess, so unsympathetic and peculiar that I do not know how to argue with them. If their case were sound, the world should be full of madmen attempting to fly from New York to Philadelphia on a broomstick or covering a telephone with kisses in the belief that it was their enchanted girl-friend.No fairy story ever claimed to be a description of the external world and no sane child has ever believed that it was. The author"s mention of broomsticks and telephones is meant to emphasize that ______.

A. old fairy stories keep updating themselves to cater for modern needs
B. fairy stories have claimed many lives of victims
C. fairy stories have thrown our world into chaos
D. fairy stories are after all fairy stories

We are entering a period in which rapid population growth, the presence of deadly weapons, and dwindling resources will bring international tensions to dangerous levels for an extended period. Indeed, 1 seems no reason for these levels of danger to subside unless population equilibrium is 2 and some rough measure of fairness reached in the distribution of wealth among nations. 3 of adequate magnitude imply a willingness to redistribute income internationally on a more generous 4 than the advanced nations have evidenced within their own domains. The required increases in 5 in the backward regions would necessitate gigantic applications of energy merely to extract the 6 resources.It is uncertain whether the requisite energy-producing technology exists, and more serious, 7 that its application would bring us to the threshold of an irreversible change in climate 8 a consequence of the enormous addition of manmade heat to the atmosphere. It is this 9 problem that poses the most demanding and difficult of the challenges. The existing 10 of industrial growth, with no allowance for increased industrialization to repair global poverty, hold 11 the risk of entering the danger zone of climatic change in as 12 as three or four generations. If the trajectory is in fact pursued, industrial growth will 13 have to come to an immediate halt, for another generation or two along that 14 would literally consume human, perhaps all life. The terrifying outcome can be postponed only to the extent that the wastage of heat can be reduced, 15 that technologies that do not add to the atmospheric heat burden—for example, the use of solar energy—can be utilized. (1996)

A. outgrowth
B. outcrop
C. output
D. outcome

When you call the police, the police dispatcher has to locate the car nearest you that is free to respond. This means the dispatcher has to keep track of the status and location of every police car—not an easy task for a large department.Another problem, which arises when cars are assigned to regular patrols, is that the patrols may be too regular. If criminals find out that police cars will pass a particular location at regular intervals, they simply plan their crimes for times when no patrol is expected. Therefore, patrol cars should pass by any particular location at random times; the fact that a car just passed should be no guarantee that another one is not just around the corner. Yet simply ordering the officers to patrol at random would lead to chaos.A computer dispatching system can solve both these problems. The computer has no trouble keeping track of the status and location of each car. With this information, it can determine instantly which car should respond to an incoming call. And with the aid of a pseudorandom number generator, the computer can assign routine patrols so that criminals can"t predict just when a police car will pass through a particular area.(Before computers, police sometimes used roulette wheels and similar devices to make random assignments.)Computers also can relieve police officers from constantly having to report their status. The police car would contain a special automatic radio transmitter and receiver. The officer would set a dial on this unit indicating the current status of the car—patrolling, directing traffic, chasing a speeder, answering a call, out to lunch, and so on. When necessary, the computer at headquarters could poll the car for its status. The voice radio channels would not be clogged with cars constantly reporting what they were doing. A computer in the car automatically could determine the location of the car, perhaps using the LORAN method. The location of the car also would be sent automatically to the headquarters computer. The computer dispatching system is particularly good at ______.

A. assigning cars to regular patrols
B. responding to the incoming calls
C. ordering officers to report their location
D. making routine patrols unpredictable

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