<p>I think i put Walden was really about human nature (or something like that) for the answer. Not sure if I’m right – because you had to INFER and I’m terrible at that! But I think it was right.</p>
<p>So… what’s the consensus on the first Walden question (appropriately scientific vs. fundamentally human), the Baker quote (hypothetical proposal vs. alternate solution), and the art detour question (guide through life vs. escape from daily life)?</p>
<p>Yes, Walden was human-central</p>
<p>Here’s one of the nuclear passages:
On a cool spring morning a quarter century ago, a place in Pennsylvania called Three Mile Island exploded into the headlines and stopped the US nuclear power industry in its tracks. What had been billed as the clean, cheap, limitless energy source for a shining future was suddenly too hot to handle.
In the years since, we’ve searched for alternatives, pouring billions of dollars into windmills, solar panels, and biofuels. We’ve designed fantastically efficient lightbulbs, air conditioners, and refrigerators. We’ve built enough gas-fired generators to bankrupt California. But mainly, each year we hack 400 million more tons of coal out of Earth’s crust than we did a quarter century before, light it on fire, and shoot the proceeds into the atmosphere.
The consequences aren’t pretty. Burning coal and other fossil fuels is driving climate change, which is blamed for everything from western forest fires and Florida hurricanes to melting polar ice sheets and flooded Himalayan hamlets. On top of that, coal-burning electric power plants have fouled the air with enough heavy metals and other noxious pollutants to cause 15,000 premature deaths annually in the US alone, according to a Harvard School of Public Health study. Believe it or not, a coal-fired plant releases 100 times more radioactive material than an equivalent nuclear reactor - right into the air, too, not into some carefully guarded storage site. (And, by the way, more than 5,200 Chinese coal miners perished in accidents last year.)
Burning hydrocarbons is a luxury that a planet with 6 billion energy-hungry souls can’t afford. There’s only one sane, practical alternative: nuclear power.
We now know that the risks of splitting atoms pale beside the dreadful toll exacted by fossil fuels. Radiation containment, waste disposal, and nuclear weapons proliferation are manageable problems in a way that global warming is not. Unlike the usual green alternatives - water, wind, solar, and biomass - nuclear energy is here, now, in industrial quantities. Sure, nuke plants are expensive to build - upward of $2 billion apiece - but they start to look cheap when you factor in the true cost to people and the planet of burning fossil fuels. And nuclear is our best hope for cleanly and efficiently generating hydrogen, which would end our other ugly hydrocarbon addiction - dependence on gasoline and diesel for transport.</p>
<p>The consensus is fundamentally human-centered, alternate solution and escape from daily life.</p>
<p>That’s what I put (relatively insignificant).</p>
<p>I went back and forth between “shaping” and “measuring.” In the end, I switched it to “measuring” at the very last sec.</p>
<p>@Subsidize: Thanks. Would you or anyone else care to explain the rationale behind those answers, especially the Walden one? Because I remember reading a really convincing argument in favor of “scientifically appropriate”, but I don’t want to dig through 50 pages to find it. I’m really glad that the vehement vs. caustic debate is finally resolved though :D</p>
<p>did anyone remember putting overjoyed or without regret as an answer?
I think this question was for the Ella Baker passsage</p>
<p>@PerfScoreProject but I thought you said you didn’t perseverate?</p>
<p>@iLiveOnCC wait…so vehement or caustic?</p>
<p>@clandarkfire, do you mind posting the answer choices for taunt question and answer choices for arts place in life. I forgot what I put and it seems you have the book so it would help me greatly</p>
<p>I went back and forth between “execution” and “handling” – and can’t remember which I chose right now. I think “execution” though.</p>
<p>I thought Fleece was eccentric, for sure.</p>
<p>So I’m guessing that the vehement vs. caustic debate isn’t really settled then…</p>
<p>@clandestine How’d you manage that…</p>
<p>Ithe vehement/caustic wont be settled until QAS comes out. </p>
<p>My answers:</p>
<p>handling
without regret
eccentric</p>
<p>agree with cortona on everything, as well as vehement/caustic can’t be settled now…</p>
<p>gah i’m still not satisfied with “fundamentally human-centered” as the answer to Walden #1. i put “appropriately scientific”, which I thought was definitely wrong right after the test, but when I thought about it more it was the only that really made sense…</p>
<p>in the passage, the sentence RIGHT BEFORE the mention of Thoreau’s Walden says that the problem with people is that they are fundamentally self-centered. and then it says that the “thriving youthful question” or something from Walden has been forgotten. if the answer was human-centered, then Walden wouldn’t have been forgotten, right? and besides human-centered and scientific, none of the other answers made sense</p>
<p>atm, Walden was an example of a nature writing that was human-centered. People who wrote nature writings in the future have forgot that there is a central human aspect to observing nature too. The last line was a reference to authors, not readers.</p>