Questões de Inglês

BELT UP, YOUNG MAN!

 

Florida’s attempt to ban young men from “sagging” – wearing jeans so low they show their underpants – has many precedents. In 2008, on the campaign trail, Barack Obama told MTV that “brothers should pull up their pants”. A year before, the mayor of Delcambre, Louisiana, said that any man who allowed his jeans to slide down his buttocks, would have to pay a $500 fine and spend six months in jail. The sight of exposed boxer shorts has caused consternation this side of the Atlantic too: last year, 18-year-old Ellis Drummond was threatened with an Asbo (Anti-Social Behavior Order) for wearing trousers so low that they were showing his underpants.

Adapted from: Speak Up – 289 (2011)

Assinale a alternativa mais adequada para a ideia principal do texto.

What's the Big Idea?

Nearly any man can stand adversity, said Lincoln, but "if you want to test a man's character, give him power." America's 16th president certainly knew a lot about that. Consider Lincoln's frustrations with the egomaniacal commander George B. McClellan, who was just one in a long succession of incompetent generals Lincoln ended up firing.

Numerous bankers, politicians, athletes and celebrities have proven Lincoln true, time and again. And yet, that does not necessarily make all of these people bad, per se, argues Nitin Nohria in his interview with Big Think.

Nohria, the dean of Harvard Business School, is not looking to create excuses for mistakes or immoral actions. Instead, Nohria is trying to get us to think beyond the "knee-jerk reaction" of simply labeling a person good or evil, as if a character flaw is the only thing that motivates us to do bad things, or that the only kind of person capable of moral failure is simply a "bad seed."

Nohria argues that overconfidence in our own moral capacity is what really gets us into trouble. In other words, since we are so often convinced that we will "never be led astray," when we actually face a complex moral choice we lack the critical skills necessary to do the right thing. What's the significance?

As dean of Harvard Business School, the idea of teaching these skills is of great importance for Nohria. In fact, Nohria has promoted an MBA oath that pledges socially responsible leadership. Like the Hippocratic Oath in medicine, the MBA oath is a "professional credo for MBA graduates." The oath has been embraced globally and has been signed by over 5,000 students.

If we are to expect the next generation of business leaders--not to mention the future leaders in all fields--to truly honor such a commitment, students must be given the tools to properly evaluate the situations that challenge their moral judgment. Then, in Lincoln's words, the better angels of our nature might prevail.

Nitin Nohria: Whenever we see examples of ethical or moral failure, our knee-jerk reaction is to say that was a bad person. We like to sort the world into good people who had stable and enduringly strong, positive characters, and bad people who had weak or frail characters. And this belief that somehow our behavior or our conduct is largely shaped by who we are and our true selves is, I think, one of the great  assumptions that we need to challenge if we have to get a better handle on what leads people to go astray.

Lincoln was once asked, what is a measure of a person’s character? And he says, you know, “My experience is that most people think that the true measure of a person’s character is how they respond to adversity. “I have found,” Lincoln said, “that the real test of a person’s character is to give them power. And I have been surprised how often I have been disappointed by people’s character when they have been given power.”

The overconfidence that people have in their own moral capacity is one of the things that we have to be very careful about. Most people think I am good; I have the proper moral compass. I will never be led astray. That form of moral over confidence, I think, is sometimes what gets people into trouble when they find themselves in situations where the pressures are so great that they are led astray. Thinking hard about what it is about situations that are more likely to tempt us and what it is that are about situations that are more likely to give us moral courage is, in my view, one of the most important things that we need to understand.

This is in no way intended to excuse or provide or or not hold people accountable when they commit a mistake. I just think that we always end up focusing on the character of the person as if there was a bad seed that they always were rather than recognizing that people change.… that they find themselves in circumstances where they can be frail and where their own sense of moral confidence can fail them. So I am much more inclined, and this is one of the things we are trying to teach at Harvard Business School is through cases to allow people to see that there are circumstances in which, if you have very, very high powered incentives that are tied to particular measures, you may be tempted at the margin to gain to achieve those measures.

http://bigthink.com/ideas

 

Choose the alternative which contains the reason why, according to Nitin Nohria, we have to be very careful about:

PSYCHOLOGY OF MONEY

Want Happiness? Don’t Buy More Stuff — Go on Vacation When it comes to spending money on things or experiences, the research is clear: doing brings more happiness than owning. 

 

By Gary Belsky & Tom Gilovich | July 21, 2011

 

  Given that it’s vacation season for many folks, we thought it a good time to devote this Mind Over Money post to a brief discussion of what personal finance is ultimately all about. Some people, of course, really enjoy counting their money, deriving great satisfaction simply from watching their bottom line grow, often quite removed from any thought of what they might do with their riches. But for most of us, money is just a token for what we can do with it — pay the mortgage or rent, send kids to college, buy a TV or travel to Italy. And for nearly all of us, money is finite; there isn’t enough to do all we want, so we must be selective. That raises a crucial question: if we want to maximize the happiness or satisfaction we get from our money, how should we spend it? 

  There’s been a lot of recent research on this subject, much of it conducted at Tom’s home institution, Cornell University. And the answer is clear. If you’re conflicted about whether to spend money on a material good (say, a computer) or personal experience (say, a vacation), the research says you’ll get much more satisfaction — and for longer — if you choose the experience. Most of us, it turns out, get more bang from the experiential buck. Indeed, when people are asked to recall their most significant material and experiential purchases over the previous five years, they report that the experience brought more joy, was a source of more enduring satisfaction and was more clearly “money well spent¨. 

  This might seem counter-intuitive. After all, when faced with a trade-off between doing and buying, many people opt for the material good because “it will still be there” long after the experience would have been enjoyed. In one sense that’s correct: The material good lasts while the experience is fleeting. But psychologically it’s the reverse. We quickly adapt to the material good, but the experience endures in the memories we cherish, the stories we tell and the very sense of who we are. 

(http://moneyland.time.com Acesso em 25/08/2011. Adaptado.)

No  primeiro  parágrafo  do  texto,  o  pronome demonstrativo this empregado em — this Mind Over Money post — refere-se a

PSYCHOLOGY OF MONEY

Want Happiness? Don’t Buy More Stuff — Go on Vacation When it comes to spending money on things or experiences, the research is clear: doing brings more happiness than owning. 

 

By Gary Belsky & Tom Gilovich | July 21, 2011

 

  Given that it’s vacation season for many folks, we thought it a good time to devote this Mind Over Money post to a brief discussion of what personal finance is ultimately all about. Some people, of course, really enjoy counting their money, deriving great satisfaction simply from watching their bottom line grow, often quite removed from any thought of what they might do with their riches. But for most of us, money is just a token for what we can do with it — pay the mortgage or rent, send kids to college, buy a TV or travel to Italy. And for nearly all of us, money is finite; there isn’t enough to do all we want, so we must be selective. That raises a crucial question: if we want to maximize the happiness or satisfaction we get from our money, how should we spend it? 

  There’s been a lot of recent research on this subject, much of it conducted at Tom’s home institution, Cornell University. And the answer is clear. If you’re conflicted about whether to spend money on a material good (say, a computer) or personal experience (say, a vacation), the research says you’ll get much more satisfaction — and for longer — if you choose the experience. Most of us, it turns out, get more bang from the experiential buck. Indeed, when people are asked to recall their most significant material and experiential purchases over the previous five years, they report that the experience brought more joy, was a source of more enduring satisfaction and was more clearly “money well spent¨. 

  This might seem counter-intuitive. After all, when faced with a trade-off between doing and buying, many people opt for the material good because “it will still be there” long after the experience would have been enjoyed. In one sense that’s correct: The material good lasts while the experience is fleeting. But psychologically it’s the reverse. We quickly adapt to the material good, but the experience endures in the memories we cherish, the stories we tell and the very sense of who we are. 

(http://moneyland.time.com Acesso em 25/08/2011. Adaptado.)

De acordo com as informações do primeiro parágrafo, com dinheiro se pode pagar

Fight the Violence!

Oct 14, 2011 6:53 PM EDT

 

What if gang violence in America could be reduced just by talking? Professor and activist David Kennedy talks with Ben Crair about his new book, Don’t Shoot, criticism of his plan, and the economics of gangs. 

 

  In 1995, David M. Kennedy went to Boston on behalf of* Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to study violent crime. Like many American cities at that time, Boston was suffering a wave of homicides. After linking up with a special Boston Police Department task force, Kennedy and his team recognized that most of the killing was the work of a small handful of identifiable gang members. Rather than locking them all up, they tried something new: They met with the gang members and community leaders, offered them assistance in getting off the streets, and warned them that, if any single gang member committed another murder*, they would crack down* on the entire group. Crime dropped almost overnight, and Kennedy’s “Operation Ceasefire,” as it has come to be known, has been implemented in more than 70 cities, addressing issues from gun violence to drug markets to juvenile robberies. Now, Kennedy recounts his experiences in a new book, Don’t Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America. 

(Newsweek, 14.10.2011. Adaptado)

*on behalf of:em nome de

*murder: assassinato

*crack down: usar de repressão com punição severa

Assinale a alternativa que apresenta a forma correta da voz ativa para o trecho em destaque na seguinte passagem do texto: Kennedy’s Operation Ceasefire, as it has come to be known, has been implemented in more than 70 cities.

Brazilian judge orders construction of Amazon dam to stop 

Tom Phillips, Thursday 29 September 2011 

 

A Brazilian judge has ordered construction to be suspended on a controversial hydroelectric dam in the Amazon. In his ruling, Judge Carlos Castro Martins said that all working on the Belo Monte dam that interfered with the natural course of the Xingu river should be halted because of the risk that fish stocks would be damaged. The £7bn dam would reputedly be the third largest in the world, after China's Three Gorges and the Itaipu project on the Brazil-Paraguay border. 

The injunction is the latest development in a decades-long battle against the Belo Monte dam, plans for which were conceived in the mid-1970's but subsequently shelved after protests. Brazil's government argues that the dam is essential to the energy needs of the country's booming economy. A full environmental licence for the construction was issued in June, with federal authorities promising a series of initiatives to lessen the social and environmental impact of the dam. 

On Tuesday, activists from the anti-dam Xingu Para Sempre movement claimed the project had brought unprecedented chaos to the riverside town of Altamira, with thousands of impoverished migrants having arrived by boat or road in search of work. "Nothing good is coming to the region and all of our darkest prophecies are coming true," Antonia Melo, one of the movement's leaders, said. 

Earlier this week, politicians from Altamira's townhall filed papers with the regional public prosecutor, asking for work on the dam to be interrupted. "The former president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, publicly promised … that the project would bring major benefits to Altamira and 10 other towns around this mega-project," the document said. "But what we have so far seen are painful frustrations such as increased poverty, insecurity and social chaos." On Wednesday the judge issued his ruling to suspend building work. 

While there has long been widespread opposition to the dam from environmentalists, social activists and even Hollywood figures such as the director James Cameron, Altamira's political leaders have been broadly supportive of Belo Monte in the past, arguing it could bring development to the region. 

Norte Energia, the consortium behind Belo Monte's construction, is expected to appeal against the decision. 

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/ sep/29/brazilian-judge-monte-bello-dam Adaptado. 

No trecho do segundo parágrafo do texto – which were conceived in the mid-1970's but subsequently shelved after protests. – a palavra which refere-se a