The importance of the Bill of Rights in twentieth-century United States law and politics has led some historians to search for the "original meaning" of its most controversial clauses. This approach. known as "originalism." presumes that each right codified in the Bill of Rights had au independent history that can be studied in isolation from the histories of other rights, and its proponents ask how formulations of the Bill of Rights in 1791 reflected developments in specific areas of legal thinking at that time. Legal and constitutional historians, for example, have found originalism especially useful in the study of provisions of the Bill of Rights that were innovative by eighteenth-century standards, such as the Fourth Amendment's broadly termed protection against "unreasonable searches and seizures." Recent calls in the legal and political arena for a return to a "jurisprudence of original intention." however, have made it a matter of much more than purely scholarly interest when originalists insist that a clause's true meaning was fixed at the moment of its adoption, or maintain that only those rights explicitly mentioned in the United States Constitution deserve constitutional recognition and protection. These two claims seemingly lend support to the notion that an interpreter must apply fixed definitions of a fixed number of rights to contemporary issues, for the claims imply that the central problem of rights in the Revolutionary era was to precisely identity, enumerate, and define those rights that Americans felt were crucial to protecting their liberty.
Both claims, however, are questionable from the perspective of a strictly historical inquiry, however sensible they may seem from the vantage point of contemporary jurisprudence. Even though originalists are correct in claiming that the search for original meaning is inherently historical, historians would not normally seek.
A. It can be inferred from the passage that a jurisprudence of original intention is based on which of the following assumptions about the Bill of Rights?
B. Its framers and ratifiers sought to protect individual rights in as many situations as possible by describing each right in broad terms.
C. Its framers and ratifiers originally intended the rights enumerated in the various individual clauses to be interpreted in relation to one another.
D. Each clause has a meaning that can be determined by studying its history and can be applied to contemporary issues.
E. Each right reflects the diversity of views that its framers held about individual rights.
F. A study of interpretations of the Bill of Rights suggests that the Bill can legitimately be read in more than one way.
Scientists have long debated the exact timing of the lunar cataclysm, a period approximately 4 billion years ago when Earth and the Moon were pummeled with asteroids. A clue to this puzzle may come from spherules, millimeter-sized droplets of molten rock formed after an asteroid collides explosively with a planet. Upon impact, the asteroid vaporizes both itself and the target rock. producing a vapor plume that condenses into spherules. These form a layer preserved in rock, whose age can be estimated using radiometric dating. Scientists know of fourteen of these spherule layers scattered across Earth, but none dates to the theorized lunar cataclysm time period. Four layers, however, are from between
3.47 and 3.24 billion years ago. indicating perhaps a slow decline in collisions.
Which of the following might plausibly account for the findings in the highlighted sentence?
A. Spherule layers older than 3.47 billion years exist, but they have not been discovered yet.
B. Spherule layers older than 3.47 billion years once existed, but they have since been destroyed.
C. Fewer asteroids collided with Earth than with the Moon during the lunar cataclysm.
There is a long-standing historical presumption that social custom during the early years of the United States forbade women from public speaking. In fact, though, the standard mode of education of the 1790s and early 1800s. which emphasized oral recitation and performance, taught girls that educated and well-spoken women had an important role to play in American society. By depicting skilled speech as a necessary talent for women in a civilized society, elocutionary education encouraged a certain degree of female ambition and even political involvement. Transmitted via standard, inexpensive schoolbooks. this message reached virtually all who read schoolbooks or attended schools. This environment did not last long, however: even by the 1S10s. attitudes about women's education had changed considerably.
The author would probably agree with which of the following statements about the "historical presumption"?
A. It failed to account for the fact that certain abilities in young women were deemed desirable in the 1790s and 1800s.
B. It had largely died out by the 1810s.
C. It had an important influence on the content of textbooks used during the 1790s and the 1800s.
Which of the following most logically completes the explanation provided?
A. birds that start out sitting on power lines cannot dive to the ground as quickly as birds that have been circling in the air before their dive
B. sage grouse are less likely to come out in the open when they sense something moving in the air than when they do not
C. sage grouse, when disturbed, do not move very swiftly on the ground
D. the birds that prey on sage grouse can spot sage grouse that are out in the open from a considerable distance
E. individual sage grouse do all their foraging in relatively small areas
Writing for the New York Times in 1971. Saul Braun claimed that - todays superhero is about as much like his predecessors as today's child is like his parents." In an unprecedented article on the state of American comics, "Shazam Here Comes Captain Relevant. Braun wove a story of an industry whose former glory producing jingoistic fantasies of superhuman power in the 1930s and 1940s had given way to a canny interest in revealing the power structures against which ordinary people and heroes alike struggled following World War II Quoting a description of a course on Comparative Comics" at Brown University, he wrote, 'New heroes are different--they ponder moral questions, have emotional differences, and are just as neurotic as real people. Captain America openly sympathizes with campus radicals.. Lois Lane apes John Howard Griffin and turns herself black to study racism, and everybody battles to save the environment."" Five years earlier. Esquire had presaged Braun s claims about comic books: generational appeal, dedicating a spread to the popularity of superhero comics among university students in their special 'College Issue." As one student explained. "My favorite is the Hulk. I identify with him, he's the outcast against the institution.'1 Only months after the NW York Times article saw print. Rolling Stone published a six-page expose on the inner workings of Marvel Comics, while Ms. Magazine emblazoned Wonder Woman on the cover of its premier issue--declaring s Wonder Woman for President'' no less--and devoted an article to the origins of the latter- day feminist superhero.
Where little more than a decade before comics had signaled the moral and aesthetic degradation of American culture, by 1971 they had come of age as America's "native art::: taught on Ivy League campuses, studied by European scholars and filmmakers, and translated and sold around the world, they were now taken up as a new generation's critique of American society. The concatenation of these sentiments among such diverse publications revealed that the growing popularity and public interest in comics (and comic- book superheroes) spanned a wide demographic spectrum, appealing to middle-class urbamtes, college-age men. members of the counterculture, and feminists alike. At the heart of this newfound admiration for comics lay a glaring yet largely unremarked contradiction: the cultural regeneration of the comic-book medium was made possible by the revamping of a key American fantasy figure, the superhero, even as that figure was being lauded for its realism"" and social relevance."" As the title of Braun's article suggests, in the early 1970s, "relevance" became a popular buzzword denoting a shift in comic-book content from oblique narrative metaphors for social problems toward direct representations of racism and sexism, urban blight, and political corruption.
Which of the following best characterizes the relationship between the first and second paragraphs?
A. The first paragraph presents an account of a phenomenon: the second questions the validity of that account.
B. The first paragraph introduces a problem; the second discusses a possible solution to that problem.
C. The first paragraph characterizes a phenomenon; the second offers two alternative explanations of that phenomenon.
D. The first paragraph establishes a framework: the second relates a specific case to that framework
E. The first paragraph describes a trend: the second analyzes that trend.
There is a rather________ reason for astronomers sudden interest in comets: most other bodies in the solar system have been explored already.
A. pedantic
B. prosaic
C. controversial
D. untenable
E. mysterious
Mathematicians have sometimes acknowledged that_________is a requirement for creativity: for example. Poincare described explicitly a time when he experienced an insight after an incubation period, a period during which the unconscious mind was at work.
A. intelligence
B. preparation
C. motivation assistance
D. collaboration
Recent research has questioned the long-standing view of pearly mussels as exclusively suspension feeders (animals that strain suspended particles from water) that subsist on phytoplankton (mostly algae). Early studies of mussel feeding were based on analyses of gut contents, a method that has three weaknesses. First, material in mucus-bound gut contents is difficult to identify and quantify. Second, material found in the gut may pass undigested out of the mussel, not contributing to its nutrition. Finally, examination of gut contents offers limited insight into the mechanisms and behaviors by which mussels acquire food. Modem studies suggest that pearly mussels feed on more than just algae and may use other means than suspension feeding. Pedal feeding (sweeping up edible material with a muscular structure called the foot) has been observed in juvenile pearly mussels.
Besides the phytoplankton pearly mussels capture from the water column, their guts also contain small animals, protozoans, and detritus (nonliving particulate organic material). Recent studies show that mussels can capture and assimilate bacteria as well, a potentially important source of food in many fresh waters. Another potential source of food for mussels is dissolved organic matter. Early studies showing that pearly mussels could take up simple organic compounds were largely discounted because such labile (unstable) compounds are rarely abundant in nature. Nevertheless, recent work on other bivalves suggests that dissolved organic matter may be a significant source of nutrition.
Of this complex mix of materials that pearly mussels acquire, what is actually required and assimilated? Stable-isotope analyses of mussels taken from nature and of captive-reared mussels are beginning to offer some insight into this question. Nichols and Garling showed that pearly mussels in a small river were omnivorous, subsisting mainly on particles less than 2S micrometers in diameter, including algae, detritus, and bacteria. Bacterially derived carbon was apparently the primary source of soft-tissue carbon. However, bacteria alone cannot support mussel growth, because they lack the necessary long-chain fatty acids and sterols and are deficient in some amino acids. Bacteria may supplement other food resources, provide growth factors, or be the primary food In habitats such as headwater streams, where phytoplankton is scarce. Juvenile mussels have been most successfully reared m the laboratory on diets containing algae high in polyunsaturated fatty acids. Thus, it appears that the pearly mussel diet in nature may consist of algae, bacteria, detritus, and small animals and that at least some algae and bacteria may be required as a source of essential biochemicals.
Which of the following can be inferred about the "recent research?
A. Little of it has been conducted on mussels in their natural habitats.
B. Some of it has produced findings that overturn earlier assumptions about pearly mussels' competition for food.
C. Some of it has been conducted by methods other than analysis of gut contents.
D. It has revealed little about the mechanisms and behavior by which pearly mussels acquire food.
E. It has invalidated researchers' questions about what pearly mussels eat.
Souk years ago someone in the police force had discovered a way of manipulating crime statislics; the
methods used, though simple, were not immediately transparent, and without actually being__________were
nevertheless utterly misleading.
A. hypocritical
B. slipshod
C. careless
D. mendacious
E. deceitful
F. opportunistic
Sensationalism--the purveyance of emotionally charged content. focused mainly on violent crime, to a broad public--has often been decried, but the full history of the phenomenon has yet to be written. Scholars have tended to dismiss sensationalism as unworthy of serious study, based on two pervasive though somewhat incompatible assumptions: first, that sensationalism is essentially a commercial product, built on the exploitation of modern mass media, and second, that it appeals almost entirely to a simple, basic emotion and thus has tittle history apart from the changing technological means of spreading it. An exploration of sensationalism's early history, however, challenges both assumptions and suggests that they have tended to obscure the complexity and historicity of the genre.
According to the passage, scholars have not given sensationalism serious consideration because they believe sensationalism
A. possesses largely emotional rather than rational content
B. is produced with an eye to making money
C. lacks historical complexity
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