The Vocabulary You Need for SAT Reading Passages

The Vocabulary You Need for SAT Reading Passages SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Sometimes the SAT Reading section will ask you about literary terms. But how often? And which terms do you need to be familiar with in order to get these questions right? This article will give you the low-down on what you need to know. Overview: Literary Terms on the Current SAT The current SAT Readingsection covers literary terms in a less direct way than the 2005-2015 version of the test did.It doesn’t ever ask you to identify a specific literary technique, but the passages are more challengingthan they have been in the past, and at times you'll need to rely on knowledge of literary terms to answer questions that aren't directly related. I'll give you a couple examples to demonstrate what I mean. Sample Question #1 Which choice best describes the developmental pattern of the passage? A. A careful analysis of a traditional practiceB. A detailed depiction of a meaningful encounterC. A definitive response to a series of questionsD. A cheerful recounting of an amusing anecdote While this question doesn’t contain direct references to literary terms, it requires some vocabulary knowledge related to writing technique.In order to understand choice D, you need to know what an anecdote is (it’s just a personal story).You also need to have a good sense of what the question means by a â€Å"developmental pattern† and have strong enough reading comprehension skills to identify which of the choices best represents the structure of the passage. Sample Question #2 According to the passage, Woolf chooses the setting of the bridge because it A. is conducive to a mood of fanciful reflectionB. provides a good view of the procession of the sons of educated menC. is within sight of historic episodes to which she alludesD. is symbolic of the legacy of past and present sons of educated men For this question, we have to understand answer choices that incorporate several literary terms including mood, allusion, and symbolism.This means background knowledge of literary terms is helpful if not completely necessary in order to feel comfortable with this question.However, the words are used in such a way that you can figure out what the answer choices mean without knowing super specific definitions of the terms if you pay close attention to context clues. Sample Question #3 This question comes closer than the other example to asking about literary terms directly. I'll go into more detail about how to interpret it and find the correct answer. The description of how Lady Carlotta â€Å"put the doctrine of non-interference into practice† (lines 14-15) mainly serves to A. foreshadow her capacity for deception.B. illustrate the subtle cruelty in her nature.C. provide a humorous insight into her character.D. explain a surprising change in her behavior. The answer choices in this question include references to foreshadowing and humor, two common literary terms. Here are the lines the question references: Only once had she put the doctrine of non-interference into practice, when one of its most eloquent exponents had been besieged for nearly three hours in a small and extremely uncomfortable may-tree by an angry boar-pig, while Lady Carlotta, on the other side of the fence, had proceeded with the water-colour sketch she was engaged on, and refused to interfere between the boar and his prisoner. Finding the Solution (Process of Elimination) Now I'll go through all the choices in detail to show you how and why three out of four of them can be eliminated based on what we know about the meanings of literary terms and the content of the passage. Choice A: foreshadow her capacity for deception Putting aside the foreshadowing aspect of this answer, how is Lady Carlotta being deceptive in the passage?It would be deceptive if she had offered to help the â€Å"prisoner† and then failed to follow through, but that’s not what happened.This answer can already be eliminated without looking further along in the passage to see if the incident represents foreshadowing. Choice B: illustrate the subtle cruelty in her nature There is no subtle cruelty being illustrated here. If anything, it's outright cruelty because she simply refuses to help the woman who is trapped by the boar.However, because the woman trapped by the boar is one of the â€Å"eloquent exponents† of the doctrine of noninterference, it wouldn’t be quite right to say this is cruelty.The woman becomes the victim of a policy that she advocates. This answer can be eliminated as well. (Side Note:If you didn't know what "subtle" meant, you might still be able to figure out this answer choice, but it would be tough. This choice demonstrates how vocabulary in the questions and passages on the new SAT is becoming more difficult in order to compensate for the elimination of sentence completion questions.) Choice C: provide a humorous insight into her character This answer makes the most sense.The events in the passage signify that Lady Carlotta has a sense of humor; she allows the woman who is trapped by the boar to be betrayed by her own belief in noninterference.I’m picturing Lady Carlotta doing her watercolor sketch while staring at the woman in the tree and being like â€Å"But you said I’m not supposed to interfere! There’s nothing I can do!† in a really fake-nice tone. Choice D: explain a surprising change in her behavior This incident does mark a change in her behavior because earlier in the passage she ignores her friends’ insistence on noninterference. It's not a â€Å"surprising change† though. It’s a logical reaction based on Lady Carlotta’s sense of humor (and sense of karma). Get rid of this answer! Choice C is the correct answer! The smuggest boar I've ever seen, and I've seen some smug boars in my time. That question is the closest you'll get to being asked outright about literary terms, but that doesn’t mean they’re irrelevant.You should still know the meanings of metaphor, irony, and humor.Even if these words aren’t answers to questions, it will be helpful for you to be aware of their definitions. Take, for example, this paragraph of a sample passage: To avoid...the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion; that he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces, and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds, and wild incantations, they may regenerate the paternal constitution, and renovate their father's life. This passage makes extensive use of a metaphor comparing the state to an ailing father figure to emphasize its point about the way people should approach changes in government.This could be confusing or downright incomprehensible if you’re not comfortable with the advanced use of similes and metaphors in writing.The SAT has compensated for the elimination ofsentence completion questions by adding in passages that incorporate more challenging vocabulary words and advanced literary techniques. List of Vocabulary Terms To summarize, here's a comprehensive list of the literary termsthat will be useful for you to know for reading questions on the SAT: Allusion Analogy Analysis Anecdote Foreshadowing Humor Irony Metaphor Mood Simile Symbolism Tone Conclusion On the current SAT, there are no questions that ask directly about the use of literary devices.However, knowledge of literary terms is still helpful in interpreting passages and answer choices that occasionally use these techniques in their descriptions of ideas and events. Knowledge of literary terms isn’t vital for doing well on the SAT, but it’s helpful to know some basic definitions so that you’ll feel more confident if you come across any questions that ask about them! What's Next? Want to find out what skills you'll need to ace the SAT Reading section? Check out our article on what's really tested. If you're worried about vocabulary, read these articles on the importance of vocabulary on the SATandthe best way to study SAT vocabulary words. If you're not sure whether you should take the SAT or the ACT, take a look at this article that outlines the differences between them. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? Check out our best-in-class online SAT prep program. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your SAT score by 160 points or more. Our program is entirely online, and it customizes what you study to your strengths and weaknesses. If you liked this Reading lesson, you'll love our program.Along with more detailed lessons, you'll get thousands ofpractice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next. Check out our 5-day free trial:

Major General Anthony Wayne in the American Revolution

Major General Anthony Wayne in the American Revolution Early Life: Born January 1, 1745, at the family home in Waynesborough, PA, Anthony Wayne was the son of Isaac Wayne and Elizabeth Iddings. At a young age, he was sent to nearby Philadelphia to be educated at a school run by his uncle, Gabriel Wayne. During the course of the schooling, the young Anthony proved unruly and interested in a military career. After his father interceded, he began to apply himself intellectually and later studied at the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania) ultimately studied to become a surveyor. In 1765, he was dispatched to Nova Scotia on behalf of a Pennsylvania land company which included Benjamin Franklin among its owners. Remaining in Canada for a year, he helped found the Township of Monckton before returning to Pennsylvania. Arriving home, he joined his father in operating a successful tannery which became the largest in Pennsylvania. Continuing to work as a surveyor on the side, Wayne became an increasingly prominent figure in the colony and married Mary Penrose at Christ Church in Philadelphia in 1766.   The couple would ultimately have two children, Margaretta (1770) and Isaac (1772). When Waynes father died in 1774, Wayne inherited the company. Actively involved in local politics, he encouraged revolutionary feelings among his neighbors and served in the Pennsylvania legislature in 1775. With the outbreak of the American Revolution, Wayne aided in the raising of regiments from Pennsylvania for service with the newly-formed Continental Army. Still retaining an interest in military matters, he successfully obtained a commission as the colonel of the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment in early 1776. The American Revolution Begins: Dispatched north to aid Brigadier General Benedict Arnold and the American campaign in Canada, Wayne took part in the American defeat to Sir Guy Carleton at the Battle of Trois-Rivià ¨res on June 8. In the fighting, he distinguished himself by directing a successful rearguard action and conducting a fighting withdrawal as the American forces fell back. Joining the retreat up (south) Lake Champlain, Wayne was given command of the area around Fort Ticonderoga later that year. Promoted to brigadier general on February 21, 1777, he later traveled south of join General George Washingtons army and to take command of the Pennsylvania Line (the colonys Continental troops). Still relatively inexperienced, Waynes promotion irritated some officers who had more extensive military backgrounds. In his new role, Wayne first saw action at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11 where American forces were beaten by General Sir William Howe. Holding a line along the Brandywine River at Chadds Ford, Waynes men resisted attacks by Hessian forces led by Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen. Ultimately pushed back when Howe flanked Washingtons army, Wayne conducted a fighting retreat from the field. Shortly after Brandywine, Waynes command was the victim of a surprise attack on the night of September 21 by British forces under Major General Charles Grey. Dubbed the Paoli Massacre, the engagement saw Waynes division caught unprepared and driven from the field. Recovering and reorganizing, Waynes command played a key role at the Battle of Germantown on October 4. During the opening phases of the battle, his men aided in exerting heavy pressure on the British center. With the battle going favorably, his men fell victim to a friendly fire incident that led them to retreat. Defeated again, the Americans withdrew into winter quarters at nearby Valley Forge. During the long winter, Wayne was dispatched to New Jersey on a mission to gather cattle and other foodstuffs for the army. This mission was largely successful and he returned in February 1778. Departing Valley Forge, the American army moved in pursuit of the British who were withdrawing to New York. At the resulting Battle of Monmouth, Wayne and his men entered the fight as part of Major General Charles Lees advance force. Badly handled by Lee and compelled to start retreating, Wayne assumed command of part of this formation and re-established a line. As the battle continued, he fought with distinction as the Americans stood up to the attacks of British regulars. Advancing behind the British, Washington assumed positions in New Jersey and the Hudson Valley. Leading the Light Infantry: As the 1779 campaigning season began, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton sought to lure Washington out of the mountains of New Jersey and New York and into a general engagement. To accomplish this, he dispatched around 8,000 men up the Hudson. As part of this movement, the British seized Stony Point on the western bank of the river as well as Verplancks Point on the opposite shore. Assessing the situation, Washington instructed Wayne to take command of the armys Corps of Light Infantry and recapture Stony Point. Developing a daring attack plan, Wayne moved forward on the night of July 16, 1779 (Map). In the resulting Battle of Stony Point, Wayne directed his men to rely on the bayonet as to prevent a musket discharge from alerting the British to the impending attack. Exploiting flaws in the British defenses, Wayne led his men forward and, despite sustaining a wound, succeeded in capturing the position from the British. For his exploits, Wayne was awarded a gold medal from Congress. Remaining outside of New York in 1780, he aided in foiling Major General Benedict Arnolds plans to turn over West Point to the British by shifting troops to the fort after his treason was uncovered. At the end of the year, Wayne was forced to deal with a mutiny in the Pennsylvania Line caused by pay issues. Going before Congress, he advocated for his troops and was able to resolve the situation though many men left the ranks. Mad Anthony: During the winter of 1781, Wayne is said to have earned his nickname Mad Anthony after an incident involving one of his spies known as Jemmy the Rover. Thrown in jail for disorderly conduct by local authorities, Jemmy sought aid from Wayne. Refusing, Wayne instructed that Jemmy be given 29 lashes for his behavior leading the spy to say that the general was mad. Having rebuilt his command, Wayne moved south to Virginia to join a force led by the Marquis de Lafayette. On July 6, Lafayette attempted an attack on Major General Lord Charles Cornwalliss rearguard at Green Spring. Leading the assault, Waynes command advanced into a British trap. Nearly overwhelmed, he held off the British with a daring bayonet charge until Lafayette could arrive to aid in extricating his men. Later in the campaign season, Washington moved south along with French troops under the Comte de Rochambeau. Uniting with Lafayette, this force besieged and captured Cornwallis army at the Battle of Yorktown. After this victory, Wayne was sent to Georgia to combat Native American forces which were threatening the frontier. Successful, he was awarded a large plantation by the Georgia legislature. Later Life: With the end of the war, Wayne was promoted to major general on October 10, 1783, before returning to civilian life. Living in Pennsylvania, he operated his plantation from afar and served in the state legislature from 1784-1785. A strong supporter of the new US Constitution, he was elected to Congress to represent Georgia in 1791. His time in the House of Representatives proved short-lived as he failed to meet the Georgia residency requirements and was forced to step down the following year. His entanglements in the South soon ended when his lenders foreclosed on the plantation. In 1792, with the Northwest Indian War ongoing, President Washington sought to end a string of defeats by appointing Wayne to take over operations in the region. Realizing that previous forces had lacked training and discipline, Wayne spent much of 1793, drilling and instructing his men. Titling his army the Legion of the United States, Waynes force included light and heavy infantry, as well as cavalry and artillery. Marching north from present-day Cincinnati in 1793, Wayne built a series of forts to protect his supply lines and the settlers in his rear. Advancing north, Wayne engaged and crushed a Native American army under Blue Jacket at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794. The victory at ultimately led to the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which ended the conflict and removed Native American claims to Ohio and the surrounding lands. In 1796, Wayne made a tour of the forts on the frontier before beginning the journey home. Suffering from gout, Wayne died on December 15, 1796, while at Fort Presque Isle (Erie, PA). Initially buried there, he body was disinterred in 1809 by his son and his bones returned to the family plot at St. Davids Episcopal Church in Wayne, PA.

Comparison between the classic lectures and the small group discussion Essay

Comparison between the classic lectures and the small group discussion for fifth -six th year students -college of medicine,Taif - Essay Example One of the recent developments found in the identification of different modes of teaching is the small group discussion technique. It has been put to practical use and has been providing some radical changes about the perspective that students had about teaching. However, there are certain dark areas about this method of teaching that are still needed to be put as questions to extract measurable answers. In order to identify whether this new approach will provide results in the long run, an analysis survey among the students is planned to take place. Based on the survey results, a decision could be brought out on whether this new method could eventually and completely replace the classic approach. This paper aims at determining those survey questions that are to be asked to the students of the Taif University. A general survey methodology which involves a comparison of two methods needs to identify pros and cons of each method and provide an accumulative result to the surveyor. Later , the surveyor could weigh the accumulated results of both the methods and can provide the results that either state which method is better or propose changes that could improve the aspects of the second coming method. Hence, it is critically important to determine the questions to be asked in the survey. The nature of the questions should be practical, argumentative and direct to the point. (Fowler 1995) Questions related with Classical Lecture method Classical Lecture Method has its advantages and disadvantages. Advantages Lecture method allows for a direct and logical interpretation of the facts and procedures. They provide an opportunity for the students to directly understand the concepts and techniques that are proven over the years. (Monroe 1915) Lecture method allows students to experience the concepts as and when they hear about it, through the speech of the lecturer. It allows them to easily grasp the concepts which they would have had a hard time to understand. Lecture me thod gives an equal opportunity for all of the students to get to know about the information that is explained. As far as this method goes, all students get equal information, provided if they all are attentive.(Hghert 1981) The ability of the lecturer plays a bigger part. Analysis, comparison and examples related to the lecture topic always enhance the studying interest of the listener. In addition, with the presence of a lecturer, there is always a guiding force for the students to look forward.(Lieberman 2004) Disadvantages The ability of the lecturer could act as a disadvantage too. If the lecturer does not have good oral communication skills, then he or she may falter in sending the right message to the listeners. Most often, there is no direct involvement of the listeners in any lecture, unless requested. This often creates a passive environment and many a times the lecturers’ fail to recognize whether the listeners are mentally involved in the session or not. (Donald 2 000) Because communication in these lectures is most often in one way mode, there is high percentage of difficulty that could arise in understanding tedious subjects, irrespective of the number of virtual presentations that the lecturers could provide. (Bassey 1968) Another problem that could arise is that all listeners cannot cope up with the pace of the lecturer and understand at the same speed. Some may be slow in understanding the concepts whereas

Critique of a Political Speech Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Critique of a Political Speech - Essay Example For the first appeal, or Ethos, it is usually utilized for the description of the speaker’s credibility or authority in the subject he is talking on. It presents the questions, what authority does the speaker to talk on the topic or â€Å"is the speaker knowledgeable enough?† Ethos also pertains to the charisma of the speaker, on whether he has captured or garnered the respect of his audience for them to listen to what he has to convey. In the speech of Obama, it is clear that the element or appeal of Ethos is present. Since it is Obama’s inaugural speech as the 44th President of the United States, he obviously has the authority, charisma, and trust of the audience. In his speech, he reminds the audience of his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States, offers his thanks and gratefulness for his victory and at the same time, and recognizes the enormous responsibility he is to undertake from his predecessors. Typical to many political speeches, ethos is established during the introduction where a speaker attempts to garner the trust and confidence of his audience. He posits in the initial paragraphs of his Inaugural speech, â€Å"Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.† What can be appreciated from Obama’s speech with regard to ethos would be that Obama presented his authority and charisma in a very humble manner. He did not appear to boast that he is now the latest President of the United States, but instead conveyed an aura of humility. He begins by saying, â€Å"My fellow citizens†, where he at tempts to present himself as another ordinary American citizen, and he again mentions, â€Å"I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.† Obama even sought to praise the achievements of then-President George W. Bush, which would have to a certain extent, healed wounded political scars in the recent elections. He stated, â€Å"I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.† For the second appeal, Logos, it is the employment of reason and logic to persuade the audience. Through the use of facts, statistics, and researches as evidence, the speaker convinces the audience of the truth and validity of his claim. As expected of a prominent lawyer, a former Senator, and the new President of the United States, Obama is well-informed, well-researched, and well-versed with political developments . In his speech, Obama presents the current problems of the United States. He states in paragraph 4, â€Å"That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our

Earned value management Essay Example for Free

Earned value management Essay What is meant by an integrative project management process and why is this so important? What are the pitfalls if such an approach is not taken? The main goal of the integrative project management process is to take a project and design it around the specific needs of a company. This process can sometimes force companies to change how they conduct business, who they advertise too and how they attract new customers. What makes the integrative project management so important to companies is success. When a company spends millions of dollars to implement a new strategy, they want to ensure things go smoothly, especially if they are changing the direction of their business. These projects can take a bit longer to complete because the project manager will have to take the time to get to know the company, and how the conduct business, but in the end a business is usually more successful if they use an integrative project management strategy. When companies don’t follow this stringy, and go with a generic project template it usually ends up wasting time, money and resources. The final project, even though it is complete won’t meet their needs and usually more money is spent on small adjustments to finalize the project. I see this at work all the time, now one ever looks at our computer system as a whole, and designs a plan around what we already have in place. This can become frustrating because we end up with three and four different networks, and none of them ever seem to work correctly. Why is the traditional project management approach less effective when project scope is not clearly understood? Provide examples to illustrate your points. Our text refers to the triple constraint of scope, schedule, and budget. It’s a triple constraint in the sense that variability on any one of the constraints affects the other two. Effective project management must maintain scope, schedule and budget in a relative equilibrium or balance. That is, scope change, either to expand or contract it, will by necessity affect schedule and budget. For example, if an organization wants to make more narrow the scope of a project that is underway, it should require fewer resources and/or less time to accomplish. On the other hand, if the organization wants to expand the scope, it will have a direct effect on resources and schedule in that it will require more resources to finish on schedule, or the schedule will have to slip to accommodate finite resources spread across more project tasks. If project scope is poorly or improperly defined at project initiation, the schedule and budget will also be less valid because of the triple constraint nature of scope, schedule, and budget. Later in the project management timeline when additional requirements may expand the scope, schedule and budget will be impacted. For example, when a former employer was planning a new downtown office building as a company headquarters, they expanded the scope of the project to include a retail shopping and restaurant area. This necessitated arrangements with the city government to expand an adjacent public parking structure and allow a below-street-level tunnel between the building and the parking structure. This scope change resulted in a six-month schedule slip and required additional resources. Wk1 summary (Monday) Typical first week; rather steep curve as the learning teams form, I get into a battle rhythm so I can meet my individual and team requirements, and I figure out what software/tools I need to get the work done. This is only my second online course, and I am reminded that one of the advantages of being a ground student in a particular cohort is that the learning teams stay more or less intact from one course to the next, and we can really hit the ground running. Online is a different dynamic. Reading load is okay so far; I have some familiarity with the material since I have been working in a project environment for some time now.

Puerto Rican Music in the United States Essay example -- Culture cultu

Puerto Rican Music in the United States Music has always been a pervasive symbol of identity. It is a mode of expression that crosses gender, ethnicity and age. One need not understand the lyrics to identify with a musical genre; identification can be found through rhythm, tone of music, as well as other techniques in the music, unrelated to words. For example, most operas are in Italian and obviously everyone that attends an opera, does not speak or understand Italian. However, the audience is moved by the emotion conveyed through tone, facial expressions, and beat of the music. I believe this is relevant to the situation of Puerto Rican forms of music, and its success when Puerto Rican musicians migrated to the United States. Original forms had to be adopted to become popular in the United States, often assuming a heavier dance beat, but when the songs and musicians did become popular, it was not because a majority of Americans understood the lyrics in Spanish. For Americans, it was because the music provided lively back ground entertainment. However, for the Puerto Ricans, it meant much more. The music symbolized their background and struggles, what it means to be Puerto Rican. In New York, Puerto Rican musical traditions evolved in accordance with societal change. This was necessary in a society, as Glasser describes â€Å"where Puerto Ricans lived among a constellation of constantly changing ethnic groups within a protean social environment†(Glasser, 7). In Puerto Rico there are diverse groups, with different traditions of politics, economics, and music. When Puerto Ricans migrate to the United States, they unite under an identity as â€Å"Puerto Ricans† but there is still diversity within. Furthermore, I believe it is the Ameri... ... difficult as Americans commercialized the entire profession and employment became near obsolete for those trained musicians. In the U.S. music serves as a representation of the identity of the Puerto Rican, just as it does for other cultures. Puerto Ricans became disillusioned at the prospect of remaining in Puerto Rico as Rafael Hernà ¡ndez sang- â€Å"Piensa remediar la situacià ³n/del hogar, que es toda una ilusià ³n.† (Glasser, 165) Music provides a socially acceptable way to express disgust and disillusionment with the status quo and communicate one's identity. Bibliography Glasser, Ruth, My Music is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians in New York and their Communities, 1917-1940. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). Oct. 29: Puerto Rican Music Between Rafael Hernandez and Rafael Cortijo. Guest Lecture by Prof. Lise Waxer, Music Dept., Trinity College

Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings Chapter 10~11

CHAPTER TEN Safety Clay Demodocus drifted silently down past the tail of the breath-holder, only the quiet hissing of his own breath in his ears. Breath-holders were called such because they hung there in the water for up to forty minutes, heads down like a singer, just holding their breath. Not swimming or singing or doing much of anything else. Just hanging there, sometimes three or four of them, tails spread out like the points of a compass. As if someone had just dropped a handful of sleeping whales and forgotten to pick them up. Except they weren't sleeping. Whales didn't really sleep, as far as they knew. Well, the theory was that they slept with only half of their brain at a time, while the other half took care of not drowning. For an air-breather, sleeping in the water and not drowning is a big problem. (Go ahead, try it. We'll wait.) Falling asleep would be so easy with the rebreather, Clay thought. It was very quiet, which was why Clay was using it. Instead of using a tank of air that was exhaled through a regulator into the water as bubbles, the rebreather sent the diver's exhalation back through a scrubber that took out the carbon dioxide, past some sensors and a tank that added some oxygen, then back to the diver to be rebreathed. No bubbles, which made the rebreather perfect for studying whales (and for sneaking up on enemy ships, which is why the navy had developed it in the first place). Humpbacks used bubble blowing as a means of communication, especially the males, who threatened one another with bubble displays. Consequently it was nearly impossible to get close to a whale with scuba gear, especially a static animal like a singer or a breath-holder. By blowing bubbles the diver was babbling away in whalespeak, without the slightest idea of what he was saying. In the past Clay had dropped on breath-holde rs with scuba gear, only to watch the animals swim off before he got within fifty feet of them. He imagined the whales saying, â€Å"Hey, it's the skinny, retarded kid talking nonsense again. Let's get out of here.† But this season they'd gotten the rebreather, and Clay was getting his first ever decent footage of a breath-holder. As he drifted by the tail, he checked his gauges, looked up to see Amy snorkeling at the surface, silhouetted in a sunbeam, a small tank strapped on her back ready to come to his rescue should something go wrong. The one big drawback to the rebreather (rather than a fairly simple hose on a tank as in a scuba setup) was that it was a very complex machine, and, should it break, there was a good chance it would kill the diver. (Clay's experience had taught him that the one thing you could depend on was that something would break.) Around him, except for the whale, was a field of clear blue; below, nothing but blue. Even with great visibility he couldn't see the bottom, some five hundred feet down. Just past the tail he was at a hundred feet. The navy had tested the rebreather to more than a thousand feet (and since he could theoretically stay down for sixteen hours if he needed to, decompression wasn't a problem), but Clay was still wary of going too deep. The rebreather wasn't set to mix gases for a deep dive, so there was still the danger of nitrogen narcosis – a sort of intoxication caused by pressurized nitrogen in the bloodstream. Clay had been narced a couple of times, once while under arctic ice filming beluga whales, and if he hadn't been tethered to the opening in the ice with a nylon line, he would have drowned. Just a few more feet and he'd be able to sex the breath-holder, something that they hadn't done more than a few times before, and then it was by crossbow and DNA. The question so far was, are breath-holders all male like singers, and if so, does the breath-holding behavior have something to do with the singing behavior? Clay and Quinn had first come together over the question of sexing singers, some seventeen years before, when DNA testing was so rare as to be nearly nonexistent. â€Å"Can you get under the tail?† Nate had asked. â€Å"Get photos of the genitals?† â€Å"Kinky,† Clay had said. â€Å"Sure, I'll give it a try.† Of course, except for a few occasions when he was able to hold his breath long enough to get under an animal, about a third of the time, Clay had failed at producing whale porn. Now, with this rebreather†¦ As he drifted below the tail, so close now that even the wide-angle lens could take in only a third of the flukes, Clay noticed some unusual markings on the tail. He looked up from the display just as the whale began to move, but it was too late. The whale twitched, and the massive tail came down on Clay's head, driving him some twenty feet deeper in an instant. The wash from the flukes tumbled him backward three times before he settled in a slow drift to the bottom, unconscious. As he watched the pseudo-Hawaiian try to kick down to the singing whale for the eighth time, Nathan Quinn thought, This is a rite of passage. Similar things were done to me when I was a grad student. Didn't Dr. Ryder send me out to get close-up blowhole pictures of a gray whale who had a hideous head cold? Wasn't I hit by a basketball-size gob of whale snot nearly every time the whale surfaced? And wasn't I, ultimately, grateful for the opportunity to get out in the field and do some real research? Of course I was. Therefore, I am being neither cruel nor unprofessional by sending this young man down again and again to perform a hand job on the singer. The radio chirped, signaling a call from the Always Confused. Nate keyed the mike button on the mobile phone/two-way radio they used to communicate between the two boats. â€Å"Go ahead, Clay.† â€Å"Nate, it's Clair. Clay went down about fifteen minutes ago, but Amy just dove after him with the rescue tank. I don't know what to do. They're too deep. I can't see them. The whale took off, and I can't see them.† â€Å"Where are you, Clair?† â€Å"Straight out, about two miles off the dump.† Nate grabbed the binoculars and scanned the island, found the dump, looked out from there. He could make out two or three boats in the area. Six or eight minutes away at full throttle. â€Å"Keep looking, Clair. Get ready to drop a hang tank if you have one set up, in case they need to decompress. I'll be there as soon as I get the kid out of the water.† â€Å"What's he doing in the water?† â€Å"Just a bad decision on my part. Keep me apprised, Clair. Try to follow Amy's bubbles if you can find them. You'll want to be as close to them as you can when they come up.† Nate started the engine just as Kona broke the surface, spitting out the snorkel and taking in a great gasp of air. Kona shook his head, signifying that he hadn't accomplished the mission. â€Å"Too deep, boss.† â€Å"Come, come, come. To the side.† Nate waved him to the boat. Quinn brought the boat broadside to Kona, then reached over with both hands. â€Å"Come on.† Kona took his hands, and Quinn jerked the surfer over the gunwale. Kona landed in a heap in the bottom of the boat. â€Å"Boss –  » â€Å"Hang on, Clay's in trouble.† â€Å"But, boss –  » Quinn buried the throttle, yanked the boat around, and cringed at the bunny-in-a-blender screech as the hydrophone cord wrapped around the prop, sheared the prop pin, and chopped itself into a whole package of expensive, waterproof licorice sticks. â€Å"Fuck!† Nate snatched off his baseball cap and whipped it onto the console. The hydrophone sank peacefully to the bottom, bopping the singer on the back as it went. Nate killed the engine and grabbed the radio. â€Å"Clair, are they up yet? I'm not going to be able to get there.† Amy felt as if someone were driving huge ice picks into her eardrums. She pinched her nostrils closed and blew to equalize the pressure, even as she kicked to go deeper, but she was moving too fast to get equalized. She was down fifty feet now. Clay was a hundred feet below her, the pressure would triple before she got there. She felt as if she were swimming through thick, blue honey. She'd seen the whale tail hit Clay and toss him back, but the good news was that she hadn't seen a cloud of bubbles come up. There was a chance that the regulator had stayed in Clay's mouth and he was still breathing. Of course, it could also mean that he was dead or that his neck had snapped and he was paralyzed. Whatever his condition, he certainly wasn't moving voluntarily, just sinking slowly, relentlessly toward the bottom. Amy fought the pressure, the resistance of the water, and did math problems as she kicked deeper. The rescue tank held only a thousand pounds of air, a third of the capacity of a normal tank. She guessed that she'd be at around a hundred and seventy-five to two hundred feet before she caught Clay. That would give her just enough air to get him to the surface without stopping to decompress. Even if Clay was unhurt, there was a good chance he was going to get decompression sickness, the bends, and if he lived through that, he'd spend three or four days in the hyperbaric decompression chamber in Honolulu. Ah, the big palooka is probably dead anyway, she thought, trying to cheer herself up. Although Clay Demodocus had lived a life spiced with adventures, he was not an adventurer. Like Nate, he did not seek danger, risk, or fulfillment by testing his mettle against nature. He sought calm weather, gentle seas, comfortable accommodations, kind and loyal people, and safety, and it was only for the work that he compromised any of those goals. The last to go, the least compromised, was safety. The loss of his father, a hard-helmet sponge diver, had taught him that. The old man was just touching bottom at eight hundred feet when a drunken deck hand dragged his ass across the engine start button, causing the prop to cut his father's air line. The pressure immediately drove Papa Demodocus's entire body into the bronze helmet, leaving only his weighted shoes showing, and it was in his great helmet that he was lowered into the grave. Little Clay (Cleandros in those days in Greece) was only five at the time, and that last vision of his father haunted him for years. He never did see a Marvin the Martian cartoon – that great goofy helmet body riding cartoon shoes – when he did not have to fight a tear and sniffle for Papa. As Clay drifted down into the briny blue, he saw a bright light and a dark shape waiting there on the other side. Out of the light came a short but familiar figure. The face was still dark, but Clay knew the voice, even after so many years. â€Å"Welcome, Earth Being,† said the vacuum-packed Greek. â€Å"Papa,† said Clay. Clair dragged the heavy tank out of the Always Confused's bait well and tried to attach the regulator in order to hang it off a line for Amy and Clay to breathe from so they could decompress before coming up. Clay had shown her how to do this a dozen times, but she had never paid attention. It was his job to put the technothingies together. She didn't need to know this stuff. It wasn't as if she was ever going to go diving without him. She'd let him drone on about safety this and life-threatening that while she applied her attention to putting on sunscreen or braiding her hair so it wouldn't tangle in the equipment. Now she was blinking back tears and cursing herself for not having listened. When she thought she finally might have the regulator screwed on correctly, she grabbed it and dragged the tank to the side of the boat. The regulator came off in her hands. â€Å"Goddamn it!† She snatched the radio and keyed the mike. â€Å"Nate, I need some help here.† â€Å"Go ahead, sistah,† came back. â€Å"He be in the briny blue, fixing the propeller.† â€Å"Kona, do you know how a regulator goes on a scuba tank?† â€Å"Yah mon, you got to keep the bowl above the water or your herb get wet and won't take the fire.† Clair took a deep breath and fought back a sob. â€Å"See if you can put Nate on.† Back on the Constantly Baffled, Nate was in the water with snorkel and fins fighting the weight of half a dozen wrenches and sockets he'd put in the pockets of his cargo shorts. He almost had the propeller off the boat. With luck he could install the shear pin and be up and running in a couple of minutes. It wasn't a complex procedure. It had just been made a lot trickier when Nate found that he couldn't reach the prop to work on it from inside the boat. Then, suddenly, his air supply was cut off. He kicked up, spit the snorkel out of his mouth, and found himself staring Kona right in the face. The fake Hawaiian hung over the back of the boat, his thumb covering the end of Nate's snorkel, his other hand holding the radio, which he'd let slip halfway underwater. â€Å"Call for you, boss.† Nate gasped and snatched the receiver out of Kona's hand – held it up out of the water. â€Å"What in the hell are you doing? That's not waterproof.† He tried to sling the water out of the cell phone and keyed the mike. â€Å"Clair! Can you hear me?† No sound, not even static. â€Å"But it's yellow,† said Kona, as if that explained everything. â€Å"I can see it's yellow. What did Clair say? Is Clay all right?† â€Å"She wanted to know how to put the regulator on the tank. You have to keep the bowl above the water, I tell her.† â€Å"It's not a bong, you idiot. It's a real scuba tank. Help me out.† Nate handed up his fins, then stepped on the trim planes on the stern and pulled himself into the boat. At the console he turned on the marine radio and started calling. â€Å"Clair, you listening? This is the Constantly Baffled calling the Always Confused. Clair, are you there?† â€Å"Constantly Baffled,† cut in a stern, official-sounding male voice, â€Å"this is the Department of Conservation and Resources Enforcement. Are you displaying your permit flag?† â€Å"Conservation, we have an emergency situation, a diver in trouble off our other boat. I'm dead in the water with a broken shear pin. The other boat is roughly two miles off the dump.† â€Å"Constantly Baffled, why are you not displaying your permit flag?† â€Å"Because I forgot to put the damn thing up. We have two divers in the water, both possibly in trouble, and the woman on board is unable to put together a hang tank.† Nate looked around. He could see the whale cops' boat about a thousand yards to the west toward Lanai. They were alongside another boat. Nate could see the familiar figure of the Count standing in the bow, looming there like doom in an Easter bonnet. Bastard! â€Å"Constantly Baffled, hold there, we are coming to you.† â€Å"Don't come to me. I'm not going anywhere. Go to the other boat. Repeat, they have an emergency situation and are not responding to marine radio.† The Conservation Enforcement boat lifted up in the water under the power of two 125-horse Honda outboards and beelined toward them. â€Å"Fuck!† Nate dropped the mike and started to shake, a shiver born not of temperature, as it was eighty degrees on the channel, but out of frustration and fear. What had happened to Clay to prompt Amy to go to his rescue? Maybe she had misjudged the situation and gone down needlessly. She didn't have much experience in the water, or at least he didn't think she had. But if things were okay, then why weren't they up†¦? â€Å"Kona, did Clair say whether she could see Amy and Clay? â€Å"No, boss, she just wanted to know about the regulator.† Kona sat down in the bottom of the boat and hung his head between his knees. â€Å"I'm sorry, boss. I thought if it was yellow, it could go in the water. I didn't know. It slipped.† Nate wanted to tell the kid it was all right, but he didn't like lying to people. â€Å"Clay put you on the research permit, right, Kona? You remember signing a paper with a lot of names on it?† â€Å"No, mon. That five-oh coming up now?† â€Å"Yeah, whale cops. And if Clay didn't put you on the permit, you're going to be going home with them.† CHAPTER ELEVEN The Mermaid and the Martian The depth gauge read two hundred feet by the time Amy finally snagged the top of Clay's rebreather and pulled herself down to where she was looking into his mask. If it weren't for a small trail of blood streaming from his scalp, making him look like he was leaking black motor oil into the blue, he might have been sleeping, and she smiled in spite of herself. The sea dog survives. Somehow – maybe through years of conditioning his reflexes to keep his mouth shut – Clay had bitten down on the mouthpiece of the rebreather. He was breathing steadily. She could hear the hiss of the apparatus. She wasn't sure that Clay's mouthpiece would stay in all the way to the surface, and, if it came out, the photographer would surely drown, even if she replaced it quickly. Unlike a normal scuba regulator, which was frightfully easy to purge, you couldn't let water get into a rebreather or it could foul the carbon-dioxide scrubbers and render the device useless. And she'd need both her hands for the swim up. One to hold on to Clay and one to vent air from his buoyancy-control vest, which would fill with air as they rose, causing them both to shoot to the surface and get the bends. (Amy wasn't wearing a BC vest or a wet suit; she wasn't supposed to have needed them.) After wasting a precious thirty seconds of air to consider the problem, she took off her bikini top and wrapped it around Clay's head to secure his mouthpiece. Then she hooked her hand into his buoyancy vest and started the slow kick to the surface. At a hundred and fifty feet she made the mistake of looking up. The surface might have been a mile away. Then she checked her watch and pulled up Clay's arm so she could see the dive computer on his wrist. Already the liquid-crystal readout was blinking, telling her that Clay needed two decompression stops on the way up. One at fifty feet and one at twenty, from ten to fifteen minutes each. With his rebreather he'd have plenty of air. Amy wasn't wearing a dive computer, but by ball-parking it from her pressure gauge, she figured she had between five and ten minutes of air left. She was about half an hour short. Well, this is going to be awkward, she thought. The whale cops wore light blue uniform shirts with shorts and aviator-style mirrored sunglasses that looked as if they'd been surgically set into their faces. They were both in their thirties and had spent some time in the gym, although one was heavier and had rolled up his short sleeves to let his grapefruit biceps breathe. The other was thin and wiry. They brought their boat alongside Nate's and threw over a bumper to keep the boats from rubbing together in the waves. â€Å"Howzit, bruddahs!† Kona said. â€Å"Not now,† Nate whispered. â€Å"I need to see your permit,† said the heavier cop. Nate had pulled a plastic envelope out from under the console as they approached. They went through this several times a year. He handed it over to the cop, who took out the document and unfolded it. â€Å"I'll need both of your IDs.† â€Å"Come on,† Nate said, handing over his driver's license. â€Å"You guys know me. Look, we've sheared a pin and there's a diver emergency on our other boat.† â€Å"You want us to call the Coast Guard?† â€Å"No, I want you to take us over there.† â€Å"That's not what we do, Dr. Quinn,† said the thin cop, looking up from the permit. â€Å"The Coast Guard is equipped for emergencies. We are not.† â€Å"Dis haole, lolo pela, him,† said Kona. (Meaning, he's just a dumb white guy.) â€Å"Don't talk that shit to me,† said the heavier cop. â€Å"You want to speak Hawaiian, I'll talk to you in Hawaiian, but don't talk that pidgin shit to me. Now, where's your ID?† â€Å"Back at my cabin.† â€Å"Dr. Quinn, your people need to have ID at all times on a research vessel, you know that.† â€Å"He's new.† â€Å"What's your name, kid?† â€Å"Pelekekona Keohokalole,† said Kona. The cop took off his sunglasses – for the first time ever, Nate thought. He looked at Kona. â€Å"You're not on the permit.† â€Å"Try Preston Applebaum,† said Kona. â€Å"Are you trying to fuck with me?† â€Å"He is,† said Nate. â€Å"Just take him in, and on the way take me to our other boat.† â€Å"I think we'll tow both of you in and deal with the permit issues when we get into harbor.† Suddenly, amid the static of the marine radio on in the background, Clair's voice: â€Å"Nate, are you there? I lost Amy's bubbles. I can't see her bubbles. I need help here! Nate! Anyone!† Nate looked at the whale cop, who looked at his partner, who looked away. Kona jumped up on the gunwale of the police boat and leaned into the wiry cop's face. â€Å"Can we do the territorial macho power trip after we get our divers out of the water, or do you have to kill two people to show us how big your fucking dicks are?† Clair ran around the boat searching for Amy's bubble trail, hoping she was just missing it, had lost it in the waves – hoping that it was still there. She looked at the hang tank sitting in the floor of the boat, still unattached to the regulator, then ran back to the radios, keying both the marine radio and the cell-phone radio and trying not to scream. â€Å"SOS here. Please, I'm a couple of miles off the dump, I have divers down, in trouble.† The harbormaster at Lahaina came back, said he'd send someone, and then a dive boat who was out at the lava cathedrals at Lanai said they had to get their divers out of the water but could be there in thirty minutes. Then Nathan Quinn came back. â€Å"Clair, this is Nate. I'm on the way. How long ago did the bubbles stop?† â€Å"Clair checked her watch. Four, five minutes ago.† â€Å"Can you see them?† â€Å"No, nothing. Amy went deep, Nate. I watched her go down until she disappeared.† â€Å"Do you have hang tanks in the water?† â€Å"No, I can't get the damn regulators on. Clay always did it.† â€Å"Just tie off the tanks and tie the regulators to the tanks and get them over the side. Amy and Clay can hook them up if they get to them.† â€Å"How deep? I have three tanks.† â€Å"Ninety, sixty, and thirty. Just get them in the water, Clair. We'll worry about exact depth when I get there. Just hang them so they can find them. Tie glow sticks on them if you have any. Should be there in five minutes. We can see you.† Clair started tying the plastic line around the necks of the heavy scuba tanks. Every few seconds she scanned the waves for signs of Amy's bubbles, but there weren't any. Nate had said â€Å"If they get to them.† She blinked away tears and concentrated on her knots. If? Well if Clay made it back – when he made it back – he could damn sure get himself a safer job. Her man wasn't going to drown hundreds of feet under the ocean, because from now on he was going to be taking pictures of weddings or bar mitzvahs or kids at JC Penney's or some goddamn thing on dry land. Across the channel, near the shore of Kahoolawe, the target island, Libby Quinn had been following the exchange between Clair and Nate over the marine radio. Without being asked, her partner, Margaret, said, â€Å"We don't have any diving equipment on board. That deep, there's not much we could do.† â€Å"Clay's immortal anyway,† said Libby, trying to sound more blas than she felt. â€Å"He'll come up yammering about what great footage he got.† â€Å"Call them, offer our help,† the older woman said. â€Å"If we deny our instincts as caretakers, we deny ourselves as women.† â€Å"Oh, fuck off, Margaret! I'm calling to offer our help because it's the right thing to do.† Meanwhile, on the ocean side of Kahoolawe, Cliff Hyland was sitting in the makeshift lab belowdecks in the cabin cruiser, headphones on, watching an oscilloscope readout, when one of his grad students came into the cabin and grabbed him by the shoulder. â€Å"Sounds like Nathan Quinn's group is in trouble,† said the girl, a sun-baked brunette wearing zinc-oxide war paint on her nose and cheeks and a hat the size of a garbage-can lid. Hyland pulled up the headphones. â€Å"What? Who? Fire? Sinking? What?† â€Å"They've lost two divers. That photographer guy Clay and that pale girl.† â€Å"Where are they?† â€Å"About two miles off the dump. They're not asking for help. I just thought you should know.† â€Å"That's a ways. Start reeling in the array. We can be there in a half hour maybe.† Just then Captain Tarwater came down the steps into the cabin. â€Å"Stay that order, grommet. Stay on mission. We have a survey to finish today – and a charge to record.† â€Å"Those guys are friends of mine,† Hyland said. â€Å"I've been monitoring the situation, Dr. Hyland. Our presence has not been requested, and, frankly, there is nothing this vessel could do to help. It sounds like they've lost some divers. It happens.† â€Å"This isn't war, Tarwater. We don't just lose people.† â€Å"Stay on mission. Any setback in Quinn's operation can only benefit this project.† â€Å"You asshole,† Hyland said. Back in the channel, the Count stood in the bow of the big Zodiac and watched as the Conservation and Resources Enforcement boat towed away the Constantly Baffled. He turned to his three researchers, who were trying to look busy in back of the boat. â€Å"Let that be a lesson to you all. The key to good science is making sure all the paperwork is in order. Now you can see why I'm such a stickler for you people having your IDs with you every morning.† â€Å"Yeah, in case some other researcher rats us out to the Conservation and Resources cops,† one woman said. â€Å"Science is a competitive sport, Ms. Wextler. If you're not willing to compete, you're welcome to take your undergrad degree and go baby-sit seasick tourists on a whale-watching boat. Nathan Quinn has attacked the credibility of this organization in the past. It's only fair play that I point out when he is not working within the rules of the sanctuary.† The ocean breeze carried the junior researchers' under-the-breath whispers of  «asshole » away from the ears of Gilbert Box, over the channel to wash against the cliffs of Molokai. Nate wrapped his arms around Clair and held her as she sobbed. As the downtime passed the first half hour, Nate felt a ball of fear, dread, and nausea forming in his own stomach. Only by trying to stay busy looking for signs of Clay and Amy was he able to keep from being ill. When Amy's downtime passed forty-five minutes, Clair started to sob. Clay might have been able to stay down that long with the re-breather, but with only the tiny rescue tank, there was no way Amy could still be breathing. Two divemasters from a nearby tour boat had already used up a full tank each searching. The problem was, in blue water it was a three-dimensional search. Rescue searches were usually done on the bottom, but not when it was six hundred feet down. With the currents in the channel†¦ well, the search was little more than a gesture anyway. Being a scientist, Nate liked true things, so after an hour he stopped telling Clair that everything was going to be all right. He didn't believe it, and grief was already descending on him like a flight of black arrows. In the past, when he had experienced loss or trauma or heartbreak, some survival mechanism had kicked in and allowed him to function for months before he'd actually begin feeling the pain, but this time it was immediate and deep and devastating. His best friend was dead. The woman that he – Well, he wasn't exactly sure what he'd felt about Amy, but even when he looked past the sexuality, the differences in their ages and positions, he liked her. He liked her a lot, and he'd become used to her presence after only a few weeks. One of the divers came up near the boat and spit out his regulator. â€Å"There's nowhere to look. It's just blue to fucking infinity.† â€Å"Yeah,† Nate said. â€Å"I know.† Clay saw blue-green breasts gently bobbing before his face and was convinced that he had, indeed, drowned. He felt himself being pulled upward and so closed his eyes and surrendered. â€Å"No, no, no, son,† said Papa. â€Å"You're not in heaven. The tits are not blue in heaven. You are still alive.† Papa's face was very much smashed against the glass of his helmet, wearing the sort of expression he might have had if he'd run full speed into a bulletproof window and someone had snapped a picture at maximum mash, yet Clay could see that his eyes were smiling. â€Å"My little Cleandros, you know it is not time for you to join me?† Clay nodded. â€Å"And when it comes time for you to join me, it should be because you are old and tired and ready to go, not because the sea is wanting to crush you.† Clay nodded again, then opened his eyes. This time there was a stabbing pain in his head, but he squinted through it to see Amy's face through her dive mask. She held his regulator in his mouth and was gripping the back of his head to make him look at her. When she was sure that he was conscious and knew where he was, she gave him the okay signal and waited until he returned it. Amy then let go of Clay's regulator, and they swam slowly upward, to surface four hundred yards from where they'd first submerged. Clay immediately looked around for the boat and found nothing where he expected it, the closest vessels being a group of boats too far away to be the Always Confused. He checked his dive computer. He'd been down for an hour and fifteen minutes. That couldn't be right. â€Å"That's them,† Amy said. She looked down into the water. â€Å"Oops. Let me get my top off of your face.† â€Å"Okay,† Clay mumbled into the rebreather. Kona was in tears, wailing like Bob Marley in a bear trap – inconsolable. â€Å"Clay gone. The Snowy Biscuit gone. And I was going to poke squid with her, too.† â€Å"You were not,† said Nate. But the artificial Hawaiian didn't hear. â€Å"There!† Kona shouted as he leaped onto the shoulders of the stocky whale cop to get a better view. â€Å"It's the white wahine! Praise to Jah! Thanks be to His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie. Go there, Sheriff. A saving be needed.† â€Å"Handcuff this kid,† said the cop.

Welcome Address for the Inaugural Function of the Sixth Brothers Congress of South Asia

On behalf of the Chennai Province which is celebrating the Platinum Jubilee of it existence as a province and on behalf of the Organizers, I consider it a unique privilege given to me to extend a warm welcome to all the participants of the Sixth Brothers Congress of South Asia. May this become an event to be recalled with much joy and nostalgia in the years to come! In a special way, I welcome Rev. Bro. Claudio Marangio, the first Lay Brother ever to become the Economer General and to be in the General Council of the Salesian Congregation. It is indeed a historical achievement in the life of the congregation! We read in the Constitutions, Art. Number 4 that â€Å"Our society is made up of clerics and lay men who complement each other as brothers in living out the same vocation! † This text has received a realistic meaning in the person of Bro. Claudio! This is also the fruit of GC 26! Certainly, it is a great honour to our Congregation and to the lay brothers in particular of our society! In him we see a young and enthusiastic religious who has good administrative skills to do the task that is entrusted to him. Welcome dear brother and feel at home. I am happy to welcome Rev. Fr. Maria Arokiam Kanaga, the Regional of South Asia! It is again a privilege given to the INM Province during the Platinum Jubilee year! I know that he belongs to the congregation and the region; but never forget that he is from the Province of Chennai! With legitimate pride, I welcome Fr. Maria Arokiam Kanaga for the Congress and wish him a happy stay with us! We have the Provincials of South Asian Region with us. It is an honour for us to have them all with us during this jubilee year to bless us with their presence. All of them have made a lot of sacrifices to be present for this important event in the life of the region. I welcome them on behalf of the organizers and the participants and look forward to their animation. I am delighted to welcome in a very special way you my dear brothers who have come from the four corners of the regions of South Asia. We have been looking forward to this event; we have been praying this happening; we have been intensely preparing for this Congress for more than a year, even before the GC 26! The preparations were so intense that some thought that and booked their tickets to attend the congress already last December!!! I am extremely happy to welcome you dear brothers to Chennai Province! Feel at home! It is your home! May you enjoy these days of sharing and may we together understand this unique vocation in the congregation and the church better! I welcome the Rectors of our formation houses, the vocation promoters, the resource persons and members of the salesian family present here for this Inaugural function! Let me conclude with this short message: Let this Congress become a spiritual event which would make us reflect personally on our specific vocation in the congregation. Thank you and feel at home!

RELATIONSHIP OF VALUE OF HOME PRICE OVER A PERIOD OF TIME COURSEWORK

RELATIONSHIP OF VALUE OF HOME PRICE OVER A PERIOD OF TIME COURSEWORK RELATIONSHIP OF VALUE OF HOME PRICE OVER A PERIOD OF TIME COURSEWORK: When one may be considering to, buy or purchase a home, he or, she may be concerned or interested in knowing whether home prices may be poised to fall or rise. We may see that no one may want to purchase or buy a home which later might plummet in value. This may lead one to insist on buying a house or a home before prices may go upward. It may not be easy to predict what might happen with real estate prices in a city, country or state over a period of time. Therefore, from this one may come to the conclusion that the vitality of an area and economic health may drive the prices and demand for homes in that area. Also, when there may be an increase in jobs, which may pay well, this may in the end increase the demand for housing thus; an increase in price. When one may be deciding on whether to buy a home or not, he or she may have to consider some of the following how long they might be in that particular area for instance a period of five to ten years or more. Another factor to consider may be whether the current home prices in one’s local area may offer good value. Also, other factors may include the state of the job market, the number of home listings that may be for sale in the area and the level of real estate prices as compared to rent. This may help one to know whether the current home prices may be relatively high compared to the rental cost and he or, she may be able to make a choice on whether to rent or purchase a home. In addition to this, buying a home may be a long-term financial commitment whereby, one may be required to take a 15-30 years mortgage so as they may finance the purchase depending on their income. Normal value may be defined as the price that may be changed by a firm in its home market value. Trade m ay not be considered ordinary over an extended period of time (Hoekman, Mattoo, and English, 200-203). Data collection may be relatively straight forward and may rely on secondary information. Data collection may be a critical step in problem solving whereby, without good data one may be in the end guessing solutions to problems. The gathering and collecting of data may help in some of the following ways data may help one to clarify a problem or to know what might be happening in a situation, it may help one to separate what they may think to what might actually happen, it may help one to understand how, what they might measure might relate to the problem they might want to solve or, come up with solutions and it may provide a baseline on how to measure improvement from a previous perspective to a new one. Data collection or gathering may be done in some of the following ways these may be questionnaires, through observation, interviews and reading from other primary sources. One may collect data after identifying a problem and may want to understand more about it and find or come up w ith solutions to it (Joiner associates, 4-7). To help in better understanding of the relationship of home price value over a period of time, the following data may have been collected over a ten year period from 2000 to 2010. In the year 2000 the price of purchasing or buying a home may have ranged between 30000 and 40000.Over the years, depending on some of the following factors economic influences, personal influences, neighborhood influences and government set policies, the prices may have risen, stayed stagnant or dropped. Scatter plots may be similar to line plots but, in a scatter plot one may not connect or join the points. One may be able to display the points without any interpolation or they may add a regression line that might show the relationship between two columns. One may produce a scatter plot with a regression line by may be using regression analysis. A scatter plot may be said to be a graph whereby, each of the plotted point may represent an observed pair of values for the independent and dependent variables. The value of the independent variable x, which in this case may be the years, may be plotted with respect to the horizontal axis. The value of the dependent variable y, which in this case may be the amount, may be plotted with respect to the vertical axis. The form of relationship that may be represented by the scatter plot may be curvilinear rather than linear. Based on the data that may be collected above, one may come up with a scatter plot as shown in the figure 1.1 below. The purpose or use of the least squares analysis that may be how the regression equation may be used may influence or have an impact on the manner in which the model may be constructed. The potential uses of the regression equation may include some of the following providing a good description of the behavior of the response variable, prediction of future responses and estimation, estimation of mean responses, extrapolation or, prediction of responses that may be outside the range of the data, estimation of parameters, control of the process by varying levels of input and developing realistic models of the process. Regression equations with fewer variables may have the appeal of simplicity. In addition to this, it may also have an economic advantage in terms of may be obtaining the necessary information to the use of the equations. Also, there may be a theoretical advantage of eliminating irrelevant variables and, even variables that may contain predictive information about the response variable. Least square regression results may reflect the correlation structure of the data that may be analyzed. The term linear may indicate that the regression equation may be a linear equation. A linear equation may describe how independent variables may combine to define the single dependent variable. When the regression equation may have two independent variables, it may define a plane. Linear regression may be a technique that may use data to produce an equation for a straight line (Gravetter and Wallnau, 570-573). Using the data that may be collected above, one may come up with the regression equation that y= a+bx, whereby y may be the dependant variable, b the slope of the gradient and x the independent variable. The analysis of variance methodology may be concerned with the investigation of factors that may contribute significant effects through suitable choice of experiments. It may be a technique through which variations associated with different factors or defined sources may be estimated or isolated. The procedure may involve the division of the total observed variation in the data into individual components attributable to various factors and, those because of random or, chance fluctuation and performing tests of significance to determine which factors may influence the experiment (Hardeo and Ageel, 1-3). The best way that may be used to truly represent ones set of data by using the regression equation, may be through the determination of the correlation coefficient as compared to other methods. The correlation coefficient may be represented by the letter r. It may measure the direction and strength of a linear relationship between two variables. The formulae of the correlation coefficient may be given as r= n∑xy-(∑x) (∑y) divide by √x (∑x2)-(∑x) 2√y (∑y2)-(∑y) 2. From this, after computing one may either get a positive 1 or a negative 1. The positive value may indicate a relationship between the y and x variables which may show that as the values of x increase so do the values of y. In the case whereby, one may get a negative value, it may indicate a relationship between x and y in the sense that when x may increase, y may decrease. In addition to this a value near to zero may mean that there might be a random, non-linear relationsh ip between the two variables. A perfect correlation of a  ± 1 may occur only when the data points may all lie exactly on a straight line. A correlation that may be greater than 0.8 may be said to be strong correlation whereas, a correlation that might be less than 0.5 may be said to be a weak correlation. Conclusion In conclusion I believe that when one might collect or gather data from different sources, he or, she might be able to get ways or solution of dealing with problems that may be at hand. The regression equation, the analysis of variance and the correlation coefficient may help one to determine the relationship of two variables.

U.S. Southwests Colorado River (Geography and More)

U.S. Southwest's Colorado River (Geography and More) The Colorado River (map) is a very large river located in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. The states it runs through include Colorado, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, Baja California and Sonora. It is approximately 1,450 miles (2,334 km) in length and it drains an area of about 246,000 square miles (637,000 sq km). The Colorado River is important historically and it is also a major source of water and electrical power for millions of people in the areas in which it drains. Source: La Poudre Pass Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, ColoradoSource Elevation: 10,175 feet (3,101 m)Mouth: Gulf of California, MexicoLength: 1,450 miles (2,334 km)River Basin Area: 246,000 square miles (637,000 sq km) Course of the Colorado River The headwaters of the Colorado River begin at La Poudre Pass Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The elevation of this lake is approximately 9,000 feet (2,750 m). This is a significant point in the geography of the United States because it is where the Continental Divide meets the Colorado River drainage basin. As the Colorado River begins to descend in elevation and flow to the west, it flows into Grand Lake in Colorado. After descending further, the river then enters several reservoirs and finally flows out to where it parallels U.S. Highway 40, joins several of its tributaries and then parallels U.S. Interstate 70 for a short time. Once the Colorado River meets the U.S. southwest, it begins to meet several more dams and reservoirs- the first of which is the Glen Canyon Dam which forms Lake Powell in Arizona. From there, the Colorado River begins to flow through massive canyons which it helped carve millions of years ago. Among these is the 217 mile (349 km) long Grand Canyon. After flowing through the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River meets the Virgin River (one of its tributaries) in Nevada and flows into Lake Mead after being blocked by the Hoover Dam at the Nevada/Arizona border. After flowing through the Hoover Dam, the Colorado River continues its course toward the Pacific through several more dams, including the Davis, Parker and Palo Verde Dams. It then flows into the Coachella and Imperial Valleys in California and finally into its delta in Mexico. It should be noted, however, that the Colorado River delta, while once rich marshland, is today mainly dry aside from exceptionally wet years due to the removal of water upstream for irrigation and city uses. Human History of the Colorado River Humans have inhabited the Colorado River basin for thousands of years. Early nomadic hunters and Native Americans have left artifacts throughout the area. For example, the Anasazi began living in Chaco Canyon at around 200 B.C.E. Native American civilizations grew to their peak from 600 to 900 C.E. but they began to decline after that, likely due to drought. The Colorado River was first noted in historic documents in 1539 when Francisco de Ulloa sailed upstream from the Gulf of California. Shortly thereafter, several attempts were made by various explorers to sail farther upstream. Throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a variety of maps showing the river were drawn but they all had different names and courses for it. The first map using the name Colorado appeared in 1743. Throughout the late 1800s and into the 1900s, several expeditions to explore and accurately map the Colorado River took place. In addition from 1836 to 1921, the Colorado River was called the Grand River from its source in Rocky Mountain National Park to its confluence with the Green River in Utah. In 1859 a U.S. Army topographic expedition led by John Macomb occurred, during which he precisely located the confluence of the Green and Grand Rivers and declared it the source of the Colorado River. In 1921, the Grand River was renamed the Colorado River and since then the river has included all of its present-day area. Dams of the Colorado River The modern history of the Colorado River consists mainly of managing its water for municipal uses and to prevent flooding. This came as a result of a flood in 1904. In that year, the rivers water broke through a diversion canal near Yuma, Arizona. This created the New and Alamo Rivers and eventually flooded the Salton Sink, forming the Coachella Valleys Salton Sea. In 1907 however, a dam was built to return the river to its natural course. Since 1907, several more dams have been constructed along the Colorado River and it has grown into a major source of water for irrigation and municipal uses. In 1922, the states in the Colorado River basin signed the Colorado River Compact which governed each states rights to the rivers water and set specific annual allotments of what could be taken. Shortly after the signing of the Colorado River Compact, the Hoover Dam was constructed to provide water for irrigation, manage flooding and generate electricity. Other large dams along the Colorado River include the Glen Canyon Dam as well as the Parker, Davis, Palo Verde and Imperial Dams. In addition to these large dams, some cities have aqueducts running to the Colorado River to further aid in maintaining their water supplies. These cities include Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego California. To learn more about the Colorado River, visit DesertUSA.com and the Lower Colorado River Authority.​

Why was it so hard for the ancient jews to be pure monotheists Essay

Why was it so hard for the ancient jews to be pure monotheists - Essay Example Abraham is the ancestor of Jews, Christians and Muslims; it is therefore these three religions are called as Abrahamic religions. All the three Abrahamic religions strongly believe(d) in the oneness of God. Actually, it is the basic teachings of the above mentioned religions to adopt monotheism i.e. worship one and the only God. Monotheism simply means belief in the unity of Almighty God, the Creator, the Sustainer, the Fashioner, the Omnipotent, the Lord of the Empyrean. The source of spiritual guidance and inspiration i.e. the divine scriptures reached to man through the prophets of God. And these Holy Scriptures including Torah, Bible and Quran clearly reveal that the Jews were instructed to worship only one God according to the sacred Covenant. â€Å"The essence of the Hebrew religion (i.e. Judaism)†, Alan (1993) states, â€Å"was that the Lord had made a covenant with the chosen people, the children of Israel.† And the first term of the covenant was worshipping of the one God (Yahweh). The Torah declares one God as the Creator of the world. In its words: â€Å"In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth†. (Genesis: 1:1). The Quran affirms the covenant between the Lord and the Israelites stating the significance of monotheism in these words: â€Å"O Children of Israel! Remember My favor wherewith I favored you, and fulfill your (part of the) covenant, I shall fulfill My (part of the) covenant, and fear Me (only ).† (Al-Quran, 2: 40). Here, fear strongly signifies submission and worshipping. Further, Quran states regarding monotheism among early Judaism in these words: â€Å"And (remember) when We made a covenant with the Children of Israel, (saying): Worship none save Allah (only), and be good to parents and to kindred and to orphans and the needy, and speak kindly to mankind; and establish worship and pay the poor-due. Then, after that, ye slid back, save a few of you, being averse.† (2: 83). It