ELF – Engelsk läsförståelse (HPVAR2015P3)

Butterflies

Butterflies may be pretty but they seem inconsequential ornaments when compared with majestic eagles or pragmatically functional worms or bees. Every century, butterflies have become extinct in Britain. Why should we care if we lose a few more? For a start, butterflies are an excellent indicator species: if butterflies are suffering, then so too are less well monitored insects that pollinate flowers, help matter decompose and protect other species by preying on pests. Plants, birds, rodents and big, greedy mammals – such as human beings – depend on them. Butterflies’ decline probably indicates a rapid decline in invertebrates in general.

What is the main point here?

Vacuum

A ball spinning in a vacuum should never slow down, since no outside forces are acting on it. At least that is what Isaac Newton would have said. But what if the vacuum itself creates a type of friction that puts the brakes on spinning objects? The effect, which might soon be detectable, could act on interstellar dust grains. In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle says we can never be sure that an apparent vacuum is truly empty. Instead, space is fizzing with photons that are constantly popping into and out of existence before they can be measured directly

What is said about the concept of “vacuum”?

What is implied about reading in relation to the human brain? 

What are we told about the brain’s “letterbox” area for reading?

Which of the following statements is most in keeping with the “neuronal recycling hypothesis”?

What is said concerning the relationship between the ability to read and its neurological origins?

What is the reviewer’s overall impression of Stanislas Dehaene and his book?

Election Time

It has started – the Monty Pythonesque exchange of electoral promises. Everyone agrees that there is an impressively great public-sector deficit and that it will have to be reined in quickly. That means either steep tax raises or deep spending cuts, or, most likely, both. But in modern politics it simply does not do to tell the voters what is going to happen. Instead, the parties pussyfoot around the subject, telling us how they will protect vital services, avoid inflation, attack poverty and tax us fairly – all at the same time. Some public spending is, if you believe them, utterly sacrosanct, notably that on education and the National Health Service.

What is suggested about politicians?

Blogging

Neuroscientist Alice Flaherty at Harvard studies conditions such as hypergraphia (an uncontrollable urge to write) and writer’s block, and also looks to disease models to explain the drive behind this mode of communication. For example, people with mania often talk too much. “We believe something in the brain’s limbic system is boosting their desire to communicate,” she says. Located mainly in the midbrain, the limbic system controls our drives, whether they are related to food, sex, appetite, or problem solving. “You know that drives are involved in blogging because a lot of people do it compulsively,” Flaherty notes. Also, blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art.

What are we told in this text?

The 1960s

If, like me, you were not yet born in the 1960s, it can take a bit of effort to comprehend the 60s-ness in some of the cultural endeavours of that decade. It is strange to think, for example, that a famous writer like Gabriel García Márquez wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude with ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ on his turntable, or that Doris Lessing was once considered as way out as Captain Beefheart. This is partly because different kinds of artists get invested with different kinds of cultural authority. But later developments play a part as well. A lot of 60s stuff that is now thought of as ‘postmodern’ has acquired a rather sleek and technocratic aura, much as the acid-tripping Steve Jobs eventually brought us the iMac.

What is said about the 1960s?