Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

Five years after ruling against the wearing of headscarves by female football players, the sport’s world governing body FIFA has taken initial steps to lift the hijab ban. In March 2012, the International Football Association Board (FIFA’s rule-making arm), voted unanimously to allow the testing of specially designed head coverings for the next four months.

While this is cause for celebration, the ban should never have been imposed in the first place. Ostensibly, it was about safety, with FIFA concerned that pins used to hold the scarves in place posed a hazard to the players. Not everyone accepted that safety was the reason for the ban, with some suggesting that it was part of a rising global tide of anti-Muslim sentiment.

As I explained to a colleague at ABC Radio Australia, my initial reaction to the ban was to wonder exactly how my pin-free headscarf posed a safety threat to me or anyone else, whether on a football field or in a swimming pool. How was it possible, I wondered, that FIFA didn’t know about the existence of headscarves specifically for sport?

If the custodians of the world game were truly concerned about whether the headscarves posed a safety hazard, all FIFA had to do was put the words “sports” and “hijab” into a search engine, or ask one of the thousands of women who play sports with a headscarf week in, week out.

The impact of the ban was particularly vicious for Iran’s national women’s team, who were left crying on a football pitch in the Jordanian capital Amman after a Bahraini FIFA official would not let them play in an Olympic qualifier against their hosts. Their punishment for refusing to take off their scarves in order to play in the match was the penalty of a win being recorded for their opponents, Jordan, and the crushing of their hopes of qualifying for the London Olympic Games this year. Three members of the Jordanian team were also affected, having to leave the ground because they too did not want to take off their headscarves.

Iran is a very curious case when it comes to women and sport. While women playing football is allowed, women watching it at a stadium is not, as explored by Jafar Panahi’s film Offside. (Panahi is currently serving a six-year jail sentence for “creating propaganda against the Iranian republic” and has also been barred from filmmaking for the next twenty years.)

When its women’s team was penalised in that match against Jordan last year, an Iranian official said the headscarf ban effectively meant the end of female participation in the sport, in Iran.

I was born in Jakarta - the crowded, sprawling metropolis of the world’s largest Muslim majority country. It’s a place where obsession with football crosses gender lines, where fans have an almost psychotic football rivalry with neighbouring Malaysia, and where - unbelievably - the 90,000-seat Gelora Bung Karno sells out for a match featuring the national youth team. To ban women from attending football matches in Indonesia would be unfathomable.

The different rights afforded a woman in Indonesia and Iran show the disparity in how Muslim majority countries treat women and sports. In Indonesia and most Muslim majority countries, the headscarf is a personal choice. Iran is one of two Muslim majority countries which specifically legislate the clothing worn by women. The other is Saudi Arabia, where laws don’t permit women to either play or watch football, or indeed most sports).

On one hand, Iranian laws on women’s clothing and FIFA’s headscarf ban are both examples of how decisions made by men have had very real consequences for women.

But it was also men who lead the campaign to have the ban lifted, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Jordanian prince and FIFA vice president Ali bin Al Hussein argued that the ban amounted to prejudice, while English Premier League players voiced objections to the ban. They included Tottenham defender and captain of New Zealand’s national team Ryan Nelsen, who said the ban was the antithesis to encouraging the involvement of women in the game.

While it’s too late for Iran’s current national women’s team and the London 2012 Olympics, a final decision by the International Football Association Board on revoking the headscarf ban is expected in July.

With football, the most popular team sport on earth, and the numbers of players and fans particularly prevalent in Muslim majority countries in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia, lifting the ban would seem to be - as Nelsen describes - a no-brainer. Political science professor Curtis Ryan says lifting the ban will “allow women to choose for themselves, rather than have FIFA choose for them”.

If FIFA truly wants to promote the “world game”, it’s time for them to stop alienating the female, Muslim part of that world.

Source: Nasya Bahfen, The Conversation

Read the following paragraph and answer the questions given below:

It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is going on amongst us; but there are two opinions as to its nature and consequences. To some it appears to be a novel accident, which as such may still be checked; to others it seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history. Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago, when the territory was divided amongst a small number of families, who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of the inhabitants; the right of governing descended with the family inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only means by which man could act on man, and landed property was the sole source of power. Soon, however, the political power of the clergy was founded, and began to exert itself: the clergy opened its ranks to all classes, to the poor and the rich, the villein and the lord; equality penetrated into the Government through the Church, and the being who as a serf must have vegetated in perpetual bondage took his place as a priest in the midst of nobles, and not infrequently above the heads of kings.

The different relations of men became more complicated and more numerous as society gradually became more stable and more civilized. Thence the want of civil laws was felt; and the order of legal functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in their ermine and their mail. Whilst the kings were ruining themselves by their great enterprises, and the nobles exhausting their resources by private wars, the lower orders were enriching themselves by commerce. The influence of money began to be perceptible in State affairs. The transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the financier rose to a station of political influence in which he was at once flattered and despised. Gradually the spread of mental acquirements, and the increasing taste for literature and art, opened chances of success to talent; science became a means of government, intelligence led to social power, and the man of letters took a part in the affairs of the State. The value attached to the privileges of birth decreased in the exact proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In the eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth it might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270; and equality was thus introduced into the Government by the aristocracy itself.

In the course of these seven hundred years it sometimes happened that in order to resist the authority of the Crown, or to diminish the power of their rivals, the nobles granted a certain share of political rights to the people. Or, more frequently, the king permitted the lower orders to enjoy a degree of power, with the intention of repressing the aristocracy. In France the kings have always been the most active and the most constant of levellers. When they were strong and ambitious they spared no pains to raise the people to the level of the nobles; when they were temperate or weak they allowed the people to rise above themselves. Some assisted the democracy by their talents, others by their vices. Louis XI and Louis XIV reduced every rank beneath the throne to the same subjection; Louis XV descended, himself and all his Court, into the dust.

As soon as land was held on any other than a feudal tenure, and personal property began in its turn to confer influence and power, every improvement which was introduced in commerce or manufacture was a fresh element of the equality of conditions. Henceforward every new discovery, every new want which it engendered, and every new desire which craved satisfaction, was a step towards the universal level. The taste for luxury, the love of war, the sway of fashion, and the most superficial as well as the deepest passions of the human heart, co-operated to enrich the poor and to impoverish the rich.

From the time when the exercise of the intellect became the source of strength and of wealth, it is impossible not to consider every addition to science, every fresh truth, and every new idea as a germ of power placed within the reach of the people. Poetry, eloquence, and memory, the grace of wit, the glow of imagination, the depth of thought, and all the gifts which are bestowed by Providence with an equal hand, turned to the advantage of the democracy; and even when they were in the possession of its adversaries they still served its cause by throwing into relief the natural greatness of man; its conquests spread, therefore, with those of civilization and knowledge, and literature became an arsenal where the poorest and the weakest could always find weapons to their hand.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions

Dean Scott, the senior climate change reporter for Bloomberg, moderated a panel discussion this weekend at the 2016 conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. The topic at hand was the upcoming U.S. elections and what it means for climate change policy, particularly if Donald Trump wins the presidency.

You might think that his position on climate change is “typical” or just “more of the same” from the GOP. But, like so many other issues, Trump’s surreal candidacy is “quite a departure” for the Republican party. In his 24 years of reporting, Scott says he has “never witnessed an election cycle where a candidate fails to release any formal policy position papers.”

Instead, says Scott, Trump’s position on climate change must be interpreted through tweets and off-the-cuff statements, such as “I believe in clean air, immaculate air, but I don’t believe in climate change.” He says he will “cancel” the Paris Agreement, giving no consideration to the impact such an attempt will have on U.S. standing in the global community. But, of course, Trump has little (or no) understanding of the agreement. It cannot simply be “cancelled.”

In a sense, Paris treaty anticipates the likes of Donald Trump. Heather Zichal, former energy and climate advisor to President Obama and Senior Fellow for the Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council, says that a formal withdrawal from the treaty “isn’t an issue,” even with a Trump presidency. It involves a lengthy process and “would severely damage the U.S. in the global community. Not exactly “making America great again.” What Trump can do, however, is to delay, underfund U.S. commitments, and “cause mischief.” “I want to be clear,” Zichal says, ““I don’t think we’ve ever faced a bigger threat in terms of policy and climate action” Donald Trump plays “fast and loose” with the rules” and is “disconnected with reality.”

Donald Trump’s climate and energy policy is “hard to decipher,” says James Connaughton, CEO of Nautilus Data Technologies and former energy aide to President George W. Bush. Broadly speaking, Connaughton says, Trump proposes “ramping up” all sources of U.S. energy production. He claims he will put coal workers back to work.

CEOs of large utilities are well aware they are in a “moment of transition,” especially the coal industry. It is a “fantasy that coal is coming back,” Connaughton says, and a “false narrative.” We waste our time and betray the reality of the economic circumstances by “glamorizing” the coal worker for “what they’ve done for the country the past century,” says Connaughton. I believe that assessment is correct. Coal helped build America, for better and worse, but its dominant role in the economy is fading. It’s undoing isn’t so much liberal environmental activism as it is fracking natural gas and the rapidly declining cost of wind and solar power. The reality has changed for coal. Instead of making empty, uneducated claims of bringing coal jobs back to coal country, the discussion should be real solutions for coal communities.

So far Donald Trump hasn’t shown an understanding or concern for coal communities beyond uttering empty promises that he can’t keep.

By the beginning of President Obama’s second term, it was clear that seeking a legislative approach to climate policy was futile. Congress “refused to act,” says former Obama adviser Zichal. The administration tried working with Congress, but their recalcitrance pushed him to seek executive action. If Obama can use executive action to influence climate policy, then what’s to stop Trump from doing the same?

For a CEO of a coal or utility company, that’s a very cogent question. The better route is using the legislative process, but a dysfunctional Congress makes it impossible. “The Senate should do its job,” Connaughton says. The lack of clear policy signals from Congress frustrates coal and energy CEOs, who need a sign on how to invest and rebuild a fleet of ageing power plants.

The direction is clear if the path still a little opaque. The energy economy is in transition. Global warming really is a thing, Senator Inhofe’s snowball antics on the Senate floor notwithstanding. The impacts of a changing climate are already here, “detected and attributed”. We have pushed our climate beyond the norms of the Holocene; the only epoch humans have ever known. Until now. Welcome to the Anthropocene.

The question now is what we intend to do about it; “how far, how fast, how much much will it cost,” says Connaughton. We may not be aiming far enough, moving fast enough, and stuck in a false narrative about the cost, but it will be “hard to stop the pathway we are already on.”

The underlying fear is that Donald Trump might give it a go. There is much at stake.

Source : Thomas Schueneman, GlobalWarmingisReal.com

Read the following paragraph and answer the questions given below:

You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin Joly, I stopped a little in one of our walks, and stayed some time behind the company. We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly, called an ephemera, whose successive generations, we were told, were bred and expired within the day. I happened to see a living company of them on a leaf, who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know I understand all the inferior animal tongues. My too great application to the study of them is the best excuse I can give for the little progress I have made in your charming language. I listened through curiosity to the discourse of these little creatures; but as they, in their national vivacity, spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their conversation. I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard now and then, they were disputing warmly on the merit of two foreign musicians, one a cousin, the other a “moscheto”; in which dispute they spent their time, seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if they had been sure of living a month. Happy people! thought I; you are certainly under a wise, just, and mild government, since you have no public grievances to complain of, nor any subject of contention but the perfections and imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head from them to an old gray-headed one, who was single on another leaf, and talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I put it down in writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so much indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious company and heavenly harmony.

"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred and twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now, alas, no more! And I must soon follow them; for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avails all my toil and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of our race in general! for in politics what can laws do without morals? Our present race of ephemeræ will in a course of minutes become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! Alas! art is long, and life is short! My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name they say I shall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who no longer exists? And what will become of all history in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end and be buried in universal ruin?"

“To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible conversation of a few good lady ephemeræ, and now and then a kind smile and a tune from the ever amiable Brillante”.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions

Dean Scott, the senior climate change reporter for Bloomberg, moderated a panel discussion this weekend at the 2016 conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. The topic at hand was the upcoming U.S. elections and what it means for climate change policy, particularly if Donald Trump wins the presidency.

You might think that his position on climate change is “typical” or just “more of the same” from the GOP. But, like so many other issues, Trump’s surreal candidacy is “quite a departure” for the Republican party. In his 24 years of reporting, Scott says he has “never witnessed an election cycle where a candidate fails to release any formal policy position papers.”

Instead, says Scott, Trump’s position on climate change must be interpreted through tweets and off-the-cuff statements, such as “I believe in clean air, immaculate air, but I don’t believe in climate change.” He says he will “cancel” the Paris Agreement, giving no consideration to the impact such an attempt will have on U.S. standing in the global community. But, of course, Trump has little (or no) understanding of the agreement. It cannot simply be “cancelled.”

In a sense, Paris treaty anticipates the likes of Donald Trump. Heather Zichal, former energy and climate advisor to President Obama and Senior Fellow for the Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council, says that a formal withdrawal from the treaty “isn’t an issue,” even with a Trump presidency. It involves a lengthy process and “would severely damage the U.S. in the global community. Not exactly “making America great again.” What Trump can do, however, is to delay, underfund U.S. commitments, and “cause mischief.” “I want to be clear,” Zichal says, ““I don’t think we’ve ever faced a bigger threat in terms of policy and climate action” Donald Trump plays “fast and loose” with the rules” and is “disconnected with reality.”

Donald Trump’s climate and energy policy is “hard to decipher,” says James Connaughton, CEO of Nautilus Data Technologies and former energy aide to President George W. Bush. Broadly speaking, Connaughton says, Trump proposes “ramping up” all sources of U.S. energy production. He claims he will put coal workers back to work.

CEOs of large utilities are well aware they are in a “moment of transition,” especially the coal industry. It is a “fantasy that coal is coming back,” Connaughton says, and a “false narrative.” We waste our time and betray the reality of the economic circumstances by “glamorizing” the coal worker for “what they’ve done for the country the past century,” says Connaughton. I believe that assessment is correct. Coal helped build America, for better and worse, but its dominant role in the economy is fading. It’s undoing isn’t so much liberal environmental activism as it is fracking natural gas and the rapidly declining cost of wind and solar power. The reality has changed for coal. Instead of making empty, uneducated claims of bringing coal jobs back to coal country, the discussion should be real solutions for coal communities.

So far Donald Trump hasn’t shown an understanding or concern for coal communities beyond uttering empty promises that he can’t keep.

By the beginning of President Obama’s second term, it was clear that seeking a legislative approach to climate policy was futile. Congress “refused to act,” says former Obama adviser Zichal. The administration tried working with Congress, but their recalcitrance pushed him to seek executive action. If Obama can use executive action to influence climate policy, then what’s to stop Trump from doing the same?

For a CEO of a coal or utility company, that’s a very cogent question. The better route is using the legislative process, but a dysfunctional Congress makes it impossible. “The Senate should do its job,” Connaughton says. The lack of clear policy signals from Congress frustrates coal and energy CEOs, who need a sign on how to invest and rebuild a fleet of ageing power plants.

The direction is clear if the path still a little opaque. The energy economy is in transition. Global warming really is a thing, Senator Inhofe’s snowball antics on the Senate floor notwithstanding. The impacts of a changing climate are already here, “detected and attributed”. We have pushed our climate beyond the norms of the Holocene; the only epoch humans have ever known. Until now. Welcome to the Anthropocene.

The question now is what we intend to do about it; “how far, how fast, how much much will it cost,” says Connaughton. We may not be aiming far enough, moving fast enough, and stuck in a false narrative about the cost, but it will be “hard to stop the pathway we are already on.”

The underlying fear is that Donald Trump might give it a go. There is much at stake.

Source : Thomas Schueneman, GlobalWarmingisReal.com

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

Five years after ruling against the wearing of headscarves by female football players, the sport’s world governing body FIFA has taken initial steps to lift the hijab ban. In March 2012, the International Football Association Board (FIFA’s rule-making arm), voted unanimously to allow the testing of specially designed head coverings for the next four months.

While this is cause for celebration, the ban should never have been imposed in the first place. Ostensibly, it was about safety, with FIFA concerned that pins used to hold the scarves in place posed a hazard to the players. Not everyone accepted that safety was the reason for the ban, with some suggesting that it was part of a rising global tide of anti-Muslim sentiment.

As I explained to a colleague at ABC Radio Australia, my initial reaction to the ban was to wonder exactly how my pin-free headscarf posed a safety threat to me or anyone else, whether on a football field or in a swimming pool. How was it possible, I wondered, that FIFA didn’t know about the existence of headscarves specifically for sport?

If the custodians of the world game were truly concerned about whether the headscarves posed a safety hazard, all FIFA had to do was put the words “sports” and “hijab” into a search engine, or ask one of the thousands of women who play sports with a headscarf week in, week out.

The impact of the ban was particularly vicious for Iran’s national women’s team, who were left crying on a football pitch in the Jordanian capital Amman after a Bahraini FIFA official would not let them play in an Olympic qualifier against their hosts. Their punishment for refusing to take off their scarves in order to play in the match was the penalty of a win being recorded for their opponents, Jordan, and the crushing of their hopes of qualifying for the London Olympic Games this year. Three members of the Jordanian team were also affected, having to leave the ground because they too did not want to take off their headscarves.

Iran is a very curious case when it comes to women and sport. While women playing football is allowed, women watching it at a stadium is not, as explored by Jafar Panahi’s film Offside. (Panahi is currently serving a six-year jail sentence for “creating propaganda against the Iranian republic” and has also been barred from filmmaking for the next twenty years.)

When its women’s team was penalised in that match against Jordan last year, an Iranian official said the headscarf ban effectively meant the end of female participation in the sport, in Iran.

I was born in Jakarta - the crowded, sprawling metropolis of the world’s largest Muslim majority country. It’s a place where obsession with football crosses gender lines, where fans have an almost psychotic football rivalry with neighbouring Malaysia, and where - unbelievably - the 90,000-seat Gelora Bung Karno sells out for a match featuring the national youth team. To ban women from attending football matches in Indonesia would be unfathomable.

The different rights afforded a woman in Indonesia and Iran show the disparity in how Muslim majority countries treat women and sports. In Indonesia and most Muslim majority countries, the headscarf is a personal choice. Iran is one of two Muslim majority countries which specifically legislate the clothing worn by women. The other is Saudi Arabia, where laws don’t permit women to either play or watch football, or indeed most sports).

On one hand, Iranian laws on women’s clothing and FIFA’s headscarf ban are both examples of how decisions made by men have had very real consequences for women.

But it was also men who lead the campaign to have the ban lifted, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Jordanian prince and FIFA vice president Ali bin Al Hussein argued that the ban amounted to prejudice, while English Premier League players voiced objections to the ban. They included Tottenham defender and captain of New Zealand’s national team Ryan Nelsen, who said the ban was the antithesis to encouraging the involvement of women in the game.

While it’s too late for Iran’s current national women’s team and the London 2012 Olympics, a final decision by the International Football Association Board on revoking the headscarf ban is expected in July.

With football, the most popular team sport on earth, and the numbers of players and fans particularly prevalent in Muslim majority countries in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia, lifting the ban would seem to be - as Nelsen describes - a no-brainer. Political science professor Curtis Ryan says lifting the ban will “allow women to choose for themselves, rather than have FIFA choose for them”.

If FIFA truly wants to promote the “world game”, it’s time for them to stop alienating the female, Muslim part of that world.

Source: Nasya Bahfen, The Conversation

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions

Dean Scott, the senior climate change reporter for Bloomberg, moderated a panel discussion this weekend at the 2016 conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. The topic at hand was the upcoming U.S. elections and what it means for climate change policy, particularly if Donald Trump wins the presidency.

You might think that his position on climate change is “typical” or just “more of the same” from the GOP. But, like so many other issues, Trump’s surreal candidacy is “quite a departure” for the Republican party. In his 24 years of reporting, Scott says he has “never witnessed an election cycle where a candidate fails to release any formal policy position papers.”

Instead, says Scott, Trump’s position on climate change must be interpreted through tweets and off-the-cuff statements, such as “I believe in clean air, immaculate air, but I don’t believe in climate change.” He says he will “cancel” the Paris Agreement, giving no consideration to the impact such an attempt will have on U.S. standing in the global community. But, of course, Trump has little (or no) understanding of the agreement. It cannot simply be “cancelled.”

In a sense, Paris treaty anticipates the likes of Donald Trump. Heather Zichal, former energy and climate advisor to President Obama and Senior Fellow for the Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council, says that a formal withdrawal from the treaty “isn’t an issue,” even with a Trump presidency. It involves a lengthy process and “would severely damage the U.S. in the global community. Not exactly “making America great again.” What Trump can do, however, is to delay, underfund U.S. commitments, and “cause mischief.” “I want to be clear,” Zichal says, ““I don’t think we’ve ever faced a bigger threat in terms of policy and climate action” Donald Trump plays “fast and loose” with the rules” and is “disconnected with reality.”

Donald Trump’s climate and energy policy is “hard to decipher,” says James Connaughton, CEO of Nautilus Data Technologies and former energy aide to President George W. Bush. Broadly speaking, Connaughton says, Trump proposes “ramping up” all sources of U.S. energy production. He claims he will put coal workers back to work.

CEOs of large utilities are well aware they are in a “moment of transition,” especially the coal industry. It is a “fantasy that coal is coming back,” Connaughton says, and a “false narrative.” We waste our time and betray the reality of the economic circumstances by “glamorizing” the coal worker for “what they’ve done for the country the past century,” says Connaughton. I believe that assessment is correct. Coal helped build America, for better and worse, but its dominant role in the economy is fading. It’s undoing isn’t so much liberal environmental activism as it is fracking natural gas and the rapidly declining cost of wind and solar power. The reality has changed for coal. Instead of making empty, uneducated claims of bringing coal jobs back to coal country, the discussion should be real solutions for coal communities.

So far Donald Trump hasn’t shown an understanding or concern for coal communities beyond uttering empty promises that he can’t keep.

By the beginning of President Obama’s second term, it was clear that seeking a legislative approach to climate policy was futile. Congress “refused to act,” says former Obama adviser Zichal. The administration tried working with Congress, but their recalcitrance pushed him to seek executive action. If Obama can use executive action to influence climate policy, then what’s to stop Trump from doing the same?

For a CEO of a coal or utility company, that’s a very cogent question. The better route is using the legislative process, but a dysfunctional Congress makes it impossible. “The Senate should do its job,” Connaughton says. The lack of clear policy signals from Congress frustrates coal and energy CEOs, who need a sign on how to invest and rebuild a fleet of ageing power plants.

The direction is clear if the path still a little opaque. The energy economy is in transition. Global warming really is a thing, Senator Inhofe’s snowball antics on the Senate floor notwithstanding. The impacts of a changing climate are already here, “detected and attributed”. We have pushed our climate beyond the norms of the Holocene; the only epoch humans have ever known. Until now. Welcome to the Anthropocene.

The question now is what we intend to do about it; “how far, how fast, how much much will it cost,” says Connaughton. We may not be aiming far enough, moving fast enough, and stuck in a false narrative about the cost, but it will be “hard to stop the pathway we are already on.”

The underlying fear is that Donald Trump might give it a go. There is much at stake.

Source : Thomas Schueneman, GlobalWarmingisReal.com

Read the following paragraph and answer the questions given below:

You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin Joly, I stopped a little in one of our walks, and stayed some time behind the company. We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly, called an ephemera, whose successive generations, we were told, were bred and expired within the day. I happened to see a living company of them on a leaf, who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know I understand all the inferior animal tongues. My too great application to the study of them is the best excuse I can give for the little progress I have made in your charming language. I listened through curiosity to the discourse of these little creatures; but as they, in their national vivacity, spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their conversation. I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard now and then, they were disputing warmly on the merit of two foreign musicians, one a cousin, the other a “moscheto”; in which dispute they spent their time, seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if they had been sure of living a month. Happy people! thought I; you are certainly under a wise, just, and mild government, since you have no public grievances to complain of, nor any subject of contention but the perfections and imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head from them to an old gray-headed one, who was single on another leaf, and talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I put it down in writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so much indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious company and heavenly harmony.

"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred and twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now, alas, no more! And I must soon follow them; for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avails all my toil and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of our race in general! for in politics what can laws do without morals? Our present race of ephemeræ will in a course of minutes become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! Alas! art is long, and life is short! My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name they say I shall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who no longer exists? And what will become of all history in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end and be buried in universal ruin?"

“To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible conversation of a few good lady ephemeræ, and now and then a kind smile and a tune from the ever amiable Brillante”.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions

Dean Scott, the senior climate change reporter for Bloomberg, moderated a panel discussion this weekend at the 2016 conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. The topic at hand was the upcoming U.S. elections and what it means for climate change policy, particularly if Donald Trump wins the presidency.

You might think that his position on climate change is “typical” or just “more of the same” from the GOP. But, like so many other issues, Trump’s surreal candidacy is “quite a departure” for the Republican party. In his 24 years of reporting, Scott says he has “never witnessed an election cycle where a candidate fails to release any formal policy position papers.”

Instead, says Scott, Trump’s position on climate change must be interpreted through tweets and off-the-cuff statements, such as “I believe in clean air, immaculate air, but I don’t believe in climate change.” He says he will “cancel” the Paris Agreement, giving no consideration to the impact such an attempt will have on U.S. standing in the global community. But, of course, Trump has little (or no) understanding of the agreement. It cannot simply be “cancelled.”

In a sense, Paris treaty anticipates the likes of Donald Trump. Heather Zichal, former energy and climate advisor to President Obama and Senior Fellow for the Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council, says that a formal withdrawal from the treaty “isn’t an issue,” even with a Trump presidency. It involves a lengthy process and “would severely damage the U.S. in the global community. Not exactly “making America great again.” What Trump can do, however, is to delay, underfund U.S. commitments, and “cause mischief.” “I want to be clear,” Zichal says, ““I don’t think we’ve ever faced a bigger threat in terms of policy and climate action” Donald Trump plays “fast and loose” with the rules” and is “disconnected with reality.”

Donald Trump’s climate and energy policy is “hard to decipher,” says James Connaughton, CEO of Nautilus Data Technologies and former energy aide to President George W. Bush. Broadly speaking, Connaughton says, Trump proposes “ramping up” all sources of U.S. energy production. He claims he will put coal workers back to work.

CEOs of large utilities are well aware they are in a “moment of transition,” especially the coal industry. It is a “fantasy that coal is coming back,” Connaughton says, and a “false narrative.” We waste our time and betray the reality of the economic circumstances by “glamorizing” the coal worker for “what they’ve done for the country the past century,” says Connaughton. I believe that assessment is correct. Coal helped build America, for better and worse, but its dominant role in the economy is fading. It’s undoing isn’t so much liberal environmental activism as it is fracking natural gas and the rapidly declining cost of wind and solar power. The reality has changed for coal. Instead of making empty, uneducated claims of bringing coal jobs back to coal country, the discussion should be real solutions for coal communities.

So far Donald Trump hasn’t shown an understanding or concern for coal communities beyond uttering empty promises that he can’t keep.

By the beginning of President Obama’s second term, it was clear that seeking a legislative approach to climate policy was futile. Congress “refused to act,” says former Obama adviser Zichal. The administration tried working with Congress, but their recalcitrance pushed him to seek executive action. If Obama can use executive action to influence climate policy, then what’s to stop Trump from doing the same?

For a CEO of a coal or utility company, that’s a very cogent question. The better route is using the legislative process, but a dysfunctional Congress makes it impossible. “The Senate should do its job,” Connaughton says. The lack of clear policy signals from Congress frustrates coal and energy CEOs, who need a sign on how to invest and rebuild a fleet of ageing power plants.

The direction is clear if the path still a little opaque. The energy economy is in transition. Global warming really is a thing, Senator Inhofe’s snowball antics on the Senate floor notwithstanding. The impacts of a changing climate are already here, “detected and attributed”. We have pushed our climate beyond the norms of the Holocene; the only epoch humans have ever known. Until now. Welcome to the Anthropocene.

The question now is what we intend to do about it; “how far, how fast, how much much will it cost,” says Connaughton. We may not be aiming far enough, moving fast enough, and stuck in a false narrative about the cost, but it will be “hard to stop the pathway we are already on.”

The underlying fear is that Donald Trump might give it a go. There is much at stake.

Source : Thomas Schueneman, GlobalWarmingisReal.com

Read the following paragraph and answer the questions given below:

It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is going on amongst us; but there are two opinions as to its nature and consequences. To some it appears to be a novel accident, which as such may still be checked; to others it seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history. Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago, when the territory was divided amongst a small number of families, who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of the inhabitants; the right of governing descended with the family inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only means by which man could act on man, and landed property was the sole source of power. Soon, however, the political power of the clergy was founded, and began to exert itself: the clergy opened its ranks to all classes, to the poor and the rich, the villein and the lord; equality penetrated into the Government through the Church, and the being who as a serf must have vegetated in perpetual bondage took his place as a priest in the midst of nobles, and not infrequently above the heads of kings.

The different relations of men became more complicated and more numerous as society gradually became more stable and more civilized. Thence the want of civil laws was felt; and the order of legal functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in their ermine and their mail. Whilst the kings were ruining themselves by their great enterprises, and the nobles exhausting their resources by private wars, the lower orders were enriching themselves by commerce. The influence of money began to be perceptible in State affairs. The transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the financier rose to a station of political influence in which he was at once flattered and despised. Gradually the spread of mental acquirements, and the increasing taste for literature and art, opened chances of success to talent; science became a means of government, intelligence led to social power, and the man of letters took a part in the affairs of the State. The value attached to the privileges of birth decreased in the exact proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In the eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth it might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270; and equality was thus introduced into the Government by the aristocracy itself.

In the course of these seven hundred years it sometimes happened that in order to resist the authority of the Crown, or to diminish the power of their rivals, the nobles granted a certain share of political rights to the people. Or, more frequently, the king permitted the lower orders to enjoy a degree of power, with the intention of repressing the aristocracy. In France the kings have always been the most active and the most constant of levellers. When they were strong and ambitious they spared no pains to raise the people to the level of the nobles; when they were temperate or weak they allowed the people to rise above themselves. Some assisted the democracy by their talents, others by their vices. Louis XI and Louis XIV reduced every rank beneath the throne to the same subjection; Louis XV descended, himself and all his Court, into the dust.

As soon as land was held on any other than a feudal tenure, and personal property began in its turn to confer influence and power, every improvement which was introduced in commerce or manufacture was a fresh element of the equality of conditions. Henceforward every new discovery, every new want which it engendered, and every new desire which craved satisfaction, was a step towards the universal level. The taste for luxury, the love of war, the sway of fashion, and the most superficial as well as the deepest passions of the human heart, co-operated to enrich the poor and to impoverish the rich.

From the time when the exercise of the intellect became the source of strength and of wealth, it is impossible not to consider every addition to science, every fresh truth, and every new idea as a germ of power placed within the reach of the people. Poetry, eloquence, and memory, the grace of wit, the glow of imagination, the depth of thought, and all the gifts which are bestowed by Providence with an equal hand, turned to the advantage of the democracy; and even when they were in the possession of its adversaries they still served its cause by throwing into relief the natural greatness of man; its conquests spread, therefore, with those of civilization and knowledge, and literature became an arsenal where the poorest and the weakest could always find weapons to their hand.

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

Five years after ruling against the wearing of headscarves by female football players, the sport’s world governing body FIFA has taken initial steps to lift the hijab ban. In March 2012, the International Football Association Board (FIFA’s rule-making arm), voted unanimously to allow the testing of specially designed head coverings for the next four months.

While this is cause for celebration, the ban should never have been imposed in the first place. Ostensibly, it was about safety, with FIFA concerned that pins used to hold the scarves in place posed a hazard to the players. Not everyone accepted that safety was the reason for the ban, with some suggesting that it was part of a rising global tide of anti-Muslim sentiment.

As I explained to a colleague at ABC Radio Australia, my initial reaction to the ban was to wonder exactly how my pin-free headscarf posed a safety threat to me or anyone else, whether on a football field or in a swimming pool. How was it possible, I wondered, that FIFA didn’t know about the existence of headscarves specifically for sport?

If the custodians of the world game were truly concerned about whether the headscarves posed a safety hazard, all FIFA had to do was put the words “sports” and “hijab” into a search engine, or ask one of the thousands of women who play sports with a headscarf week in, week out.

The impact of the ban was particularly vicious for Iran’s national women’s team, who were left crying on a football pitch in the Jordanian capital Amman after a Bahraini FIFA official would not let them play in an Olympic qualifier against their hosts. Their punishment for refusing to take off their scarves in order to play in the match was the penalty of a win being recorded for their opponents, Jordan, and the crushing of their hopes of qualifying for the London Olympic Games this year. Three members of the Jordanian team were also affected, having to leave the ground because they too did not want to take off their headscarves.

Iran is a very curious case when it comes to women and sport. While women playing football is allowed, women watching it at a stadium is not, as explored by Jafar Panahi’s film Offside. (Panahi is currently serving a six-year jail sentence for “creating propaganda against the Iranian republic” and has also been barred from filmmaking for the next twenty years.)

When its women’s team was penalised in that match against Jordan last year, an Iranian official said the headscarf ban effectively meant the end of female participation in the sport, in Iran.

I was born in Jakarta - the crowded, sprawling metropolis of the world’s largest Muslim majority country. It’s a place where obsession with football crosses gender lines, where fans have an almost psychotic football rivalry with neighbouring Malaysia, and where - unbelievably - the 90,000-seat Gelora Bung Karno sells out for a match featuring the national youth team. To ban women from attending football matches in Indonesia would be unfathomable.

The different rights afforded a woman in Indonesia and Iran show the disparity in how Muslim majority countries treat women and sports. In Indonesia and most Muslim majority countries, the headscarf is a personal choice. Iran is one of two Muslim majority countries which specifically legislate the clothing worn by women. The other is Saudi Arabia, where laws don’t permit women to either play or watch football, or indeed most sports).

On one hand, Iranian laws on women’s clothing and FIFA’s headscarf ban are both examples of how decisions made by men have had very real consequences for women.

But it was also men who lead the campaign to have the ban lifted, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Jordanian prince and FIFA vice president Ali bin Al Hussein argued that the ban amounted to prejudice, while English Premier League players voiced objections to the ban. They included Tottenham defender and captain of New Zealand’s national team Ryan Nelsen, who said the ban was the antithesis to encouraging the involvement of women in the game.

While it’s too late for Iran’s current national women’s team and the London 2012 Olympics, a final decision by the International Football Association Board on revoking the headscarf ban is expected in July.

With football, the most popular team sport on earth, and the numbers of players and fans particularly prevalent in Muslim majority countries in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and Southeast Asia, lifting the ban would seem to be - as Nelsen describes - a no-brainer. Political science professor Curtis Ryan says lifting the ban will “allow women to choose for themselves, rather than have FIFA choose for them”.

If FIFA truly wants to promote the “world game”, it’s time for them to stop alienating the female, Muslim part of that world.

Source: Nasya Bahfen, The Conversation

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions

Dean Scott, the senior climate change reporter for Bloomberg, moderated a panel discussion this weekend at the 2016 conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. The topic at hand was the upcoming U.S. elections and what it means for climate change policy, particularly if Donald Trump wins the presidency.

You might think that his position on climate change is “typical” or just “more of the same” from the GOP. But, like so many other issues, Trump’s surreal candidacy is “quite a departure” for the Republican party. In his 24 years of reporting, Scott says he has “never witnessed an election cycle where a candidate fails to release any formal policy position papers.”

Instead, says Scott, Trump’s position on climate change must be interpreted through tweets and off-the-cuff statements, such as “I believe in clean air, immaculate air, but I don’t believe in climate change.” He says he will “cancel” the Paris Agreement, giving no consideration to the impact such an attempt will have on U.S. standing in the global community. But, of course, Trump has little (or no) understanding of the agreement. It cannot simply be “cancelled.”

In a sense, Paris treaty anticipates the likes of Donald Trump. Heather Zichal, former energy and climate advisor to President Obama and Senior Fellow for the Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council, says that a formal withdrawal from the treaty “isn’t an issue,” even with a Trump presidency. It involves a lengthy process and “would severely damage the U.S. in the global community. Not exactly “making America great again.” What Trump can do, however, is to delay, underfund U.S. commitments, and “cause mischief.” “I want to be clear,” Zichal says, ““I don’t think we’ve ever faced a bigger threat in terms of policy and climate action” Donald Trump plays “fast and loose” with the rules” and is “disconnected with reality.”

Donald Trump’s climate and energy policy is “hard to decipher,” says James Connaughton, CEO of Nautilus Data Technologies and former energy aide to President George W. Bush. Broadly speaking, Connaughton says, Trump proposes “ramping up” all sources of U.S. energy production. He claims he will put coal workers back to work.

CEOs of large utilities are well aware they are in a “moment of transition,” especially the coal industry. It is a “fantasy that coal is coming back,” Connaughton says, and a “false narrative.” We waste our time and betray the reality of the economic circumstances by “glamorizing” the coal worker for “what they’ve done for the country the past century,” says Connaughton. I believe that assessment is correct. Coal helped build America, for better and worse, but its dominant role in the economy is fading. It’s undoing isn’t so much liberal environmental activism as it is fracking natural gas and the rapidly declining cost of wind and solar power. The reality has changed for coal. Instead of making empty, uneducated claims of bringing coal jobs back to coal country, the discussion should be real solutions for coal communities.

So far Donald Trump hasn’t shown an understanding or concern for coal communities beyond uttering empty promises that he can’t keep.

By the beginning of President Obama’s second term, it was clear that seeking a legislative approach to climate policy was futile. Congress “refused to act,” says former Obama adviser Zichal. The administration tried working with Congress, but their recalcitrance pushed him to seek executive action. If Obama can use executive action to influence climate policy, then what’s to stop Trump from doing the same?

For a CEO of a coal or utility company, that’s a very cogent question. The better route is using the legislative process, but a dysfunctional Congress makes it impossible. “The Senate should do its job,” Connaughton says. The lack of clear policy signals from Congress frustrates coal and energy CEOs, who need a sign on how to invest and rebuild a fleet of ageing power plants.

The direction is clear if the path still a little opaque. The energy economy is in transition. Global warming really is a thing, Senator Inhofe’s snowball antics on the Senate floor notwithstanding. The impacts of a changing climate are already here, “detected and attributed”. We have pushed our climate beyond the norms of the Holocene; the only epoch humans have ever known. Until now. Welcome to the Anthropocene.

The question now is what we intend to do about it; “how far, how fast, how much much will it cost,” says Connaughton. We may not be aiming far enough, moving fast enough, and stuck in a false narrative about the cost, but it will be “hard to stop the pathway we are already on.”

The underlying fear is that Donald Trump might give it a go. There is much at stake.

Source : Thomas Schueneman, GlobalWarmingisReal.com

Read the following paragraph and answer the questions given below:

You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin Joly, I stopped a little in one of our walks, and stayed some time behind the company. We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly, called an ephemera, whose successive generations, we were told, were bred and expired within the day. I happened to see a living company of them on a leaf, who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know I understand all the inferior animal tongues. My too great application to the study of them is the best excuse I can give for the little progress I have made in your charming language. I listened through curiosity to the discourse of these little creatures; but as they, in their national vivacity, spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their conversation. I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard now and then, they were disputing warmly on the merit of two foreign musicians, one a cousin, the other a “moscheto”; in which dispute they spent their time, seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if they had been sure of living a month. Happy people! thought I; you are certainly under a wise, just, and mild government, since you have no public grievances to complain of, nor any subject of contention but the perfections and imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head from them to an old gray-headed one, who was single on another leaf, and talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I put it down in writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so much indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious company and heavenly harmony.

"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness, necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred and twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now, alas, no more! And I must soon follow them; for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above seven or eight minutes longer. What now avails all my toil and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of our race in general! for in politics what can laws do without morals? Our present race of ephemeræ will in a course of minutes become corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! Alas! art is long, and life is short! My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name they say I shall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who no longer exists? And what will become of all history in the eighteenth hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin Joly, shall come to its end and be buried in universal ruin?"

“To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible conversation of a few good lady ephemeræ, and now and then a kind smile and a tune from the ever amiable Brillante”.

Read the following paragraph and answer the questions given below:

It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is going on amongst us; but there are two opinions as to its nature and consequences. To some it appears to be a novel accident, which as such may still be checked; to others it seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history. Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago, when the territory was divided amongst a small number of families, who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of the inhabitants; the right of governing descended with the family inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only means by which man could act on man, and landed property was the sole source of power. Soon, however, the political power of the clergy was founded, and began to exert itself: the clergy opened its ranks to all classes, to the poor and the rich, the villein and the lord; equality penetrated into the Government through the Church, and the being who as a serf must have vegetated in perpetual bondage took his place as a priest in the midst of nobles, and not infrequently above the heads of kings.

The different relations of men became more complicated and more numerous as society gradually became more stable and more civilized. Thence the want of civil laws was felt; and the order of legal functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in their ermine and their mail. Whilst the kings were ruining themselves by their great enterprises, and the nobles exhausting their resources by private wars, the lower orders were enriching themselves by commerce. The influence of money began to be perceptible in State affairs. The transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the financier rose to a station of political influence in which he was at once flattered and despised. Gradually the spread of mental acquirements, and the increasing taste for literature and art, opened chances of success to talent; science became a means of government, intelligence led to social power, and the man of letters took a part in the affairs of the State. The value attached to the privileges of birth decreased in the exact proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In the eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth it might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270; and equality was thus introduced into the Government by the aristocracy itself.

In the course of these seven hundred years it sometimes happened that in order to resist the authority of the Crown, or to diminish the power of their rivals, the nobles granted a certain share of political rights to the people. Or, more frequently, the king permitted the lower orders to enjoy a degree of power, with the intention of repressing the aristocracy. In France the kings have always been the most active and the most constant of levellers. When they were strong and ambitious they spared no pains to raise the people to the level of the nobles; when they were temperate or weak they allowed the people to rise above themselves. Some assisted the democracy by their talents, others by their vices. Louis XI and Louis XIV reduced every rank beneath the throne to the same subjection; Louis XV descended, himself and all his Court, into the dust.

As soon as land was held on any other than a feudal tenure, and personal property began in its turn to confer influence and power, every improvement which was introduced in commerce or manufacture was a fresh element of the equality of conditions. Henceforward every new discovery, every new want which it engendered, and every new desire which craved satisfaction, was a step towards the universal level. The taste for luxury, the love of war, the sway of fashion, and the most superficial as well as the deepest passions of the human heart, co-operated to enrich the poor and to impoverish the rich.

From the time when the exercise of the intellect became the source of strength and of wealth, it is impossible not to consider every addition to science, every fresh truth, and every new idea as a germ of power placed within the reach of the people. Poetry, eloquence, and memory, the grace of wit, the glow of imagination, the depth of thought, and all the gifts which are bestowed by Providence with an equal hand, turned to the advantage of the democracy; and even when they were in the possession of its adversaries they still served its cause by throwing into relief the natural greatness of man; its conquests spread, therefore, with those of civilization and knowledge, and literature became an arsenal where the poorest and the weakest could always find weapons to their hand.