Questões de Inglês

Text

[1]   Apart from being about murder,  

suicide, torture, fear and madness, horror  

stories are also concerned with ghosts,  

vampires, succubi, incubi, poltergeists,  

[5] demonic pacts, diabolic possession and  

exorcism, witchcraft, spiritualism, voodoo,  

lycanthropy and the macabre, plus such  

occult or quasi occult practices as  

telekinesis and hylomancy. Some horror  

[10] stories are serio-comic or comic-

grotesque, but none the less alarming or 

frightening for that. 

  From late in the 18th c. until the  

present day – in short, for some two  

[15] hundred years – the horror story (which is  

perhaps a mode rather than an identifiable  

genre) in its many and various forms has  

been a diachronic feature of British and  

American literature and is of considerable  

[20] importance in literary history, especially in  

the evolution of the short story. It is also  

important because of its connections with  

the Gothic novel and with a multitude of  

fiction associated with tales of mystery,  

[25] suspense, terror and the supernatural,  

with the ghost story and the thriller and  

with numerous stories in the 19th and  

20th c. in which crime is a central theme. 

  The horror story is part of a long  

[30] process by which people have tried to  

come to terms with and find adequate  

descriptions and symbols for deeply  

rooted, primitive and powerful forces,  

energies and fears which are related to  

[35] death, afterlife, punishment, darkness,  

evil, violence and destruction. 

  Writers have long been aware of the  

magnetic attraction of the horrific and  

have seen how to exploit or appeal to  

[40] particular inclinations and appetites. It  

was the poets and artists of the late  

medieval period who figured out and  

expressed some of the innermost fears  

and some of the ultimate horrors (real and  

[45] imaginary) of human consciousness. Fear  

created horrors enough and the  

eschatological order was never far from  

people‟s minds. Poets dwelt on and  

amplified the ubi sunt motif and artists  

[50] depicted the spectre of death in paint,  

through sculpture and by means of  

woodcut. The most potent and frightening  

image of all was that of hell: the abode of  

eternal loss, pain and damnation. There  

[55] were numerous "visions" of hell in  

literature. 

  Gradually, imperceptibly, during the  

16th c. hell was "moved‟ from its  

traditional site in the center of the earth.  

[60] It came to be located in the mind; it was a  

part of a state of consciousness. This was  

the beginning of the growth of the idea of  

a subjective, inner hell, a psychological  

hell; a personal and individual source of  

[65] horror and terror, such as the chaos of a  

disturbed and tormented mind, the  

pandaemonium of psychopathic  

conditions, rather than the abode of lux  

atra and everlasting pain with its definite  

[70] location in a measurable cosmological  

system. 

  The horror stories of the late 16th  

and early 17th c. (like the ghost stories)  

are provided for us by the playwrights.  

[75] The Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedians  

were deeply interested in evil, crime,  

murder, suicide and violence. They were  

also very interested in states of extreme  

suffering: pain, fear and madness. They  

[80] found new modes, new metaphors and  

images, for presenting the horrific and in  

doing so they created simulacra of hell.  

One might cite perhaps a thousand or  

more instances from plays in the period c.  

[85] 1580 to c. 1642 in which hell is an all-

purpose, variable and diachronic image of 

horror whether as a place of punishment 

or as a state of mind and spirit. Horrific  

action on stage was commonplace in the  

[90] tragedy and revenge tragedy of the  

period. The satiety which Macbeth claimed  

to have experienced when he said: “I have  

supp‟d full of horrors;/ Direness, familiar  

to my slaughterous thoughts, /Cannot  

[95] once start me…” was representative of it. 

  During the 18th c. (as during the  

19th ), in orthodox doctrine taught by  

various „churches‟ and sects, hell remained  

a place of eternal fire and punishment and  

[100] the abode of the Devil. For the most part  

writers of the Romantic period and  

thereafter did not re-create it as a  

visitable place. However, artists were  

drawn to “illustrate” earlier conceptions of  

[105] hell. William Blake did 102 engravings for  

Dante‟s Inferno. John Martin illustrated  

Paradise Lost and Gustave Doré applied  

himself to Dante and Milton. The actual  

hells of the 18th and 19th c. were the  

[110] gaols, the madhouses, the slums and  

bedlams and those lanes and alleys where  

vice, squalor, depravity and unspeakable  

misery created a social and moral chaos:  

terrestrial counterparts to the horrors of  

[115] Dante‟s Circles.  

  Gothic influence traveled to America  

and affected writers such as Edgar Allan  

Poe, whose tales are short, intense,  

sensational and have the power to inspire 

[120] horror and terror. He depicts extremes of  

fear and insanity and, through the  

operations of evil, gives us glimpses of  

hell. 

  Poe‟s long-term influence was  

[125] immeasurable (and in the case of some  

writers not altogether for their good), and  

one can detect it persisting through the  

19th c.; in, for example the French  

symbolistes (Baudelaire published  

[130] translations of his tales in 1856 and  

1857), in such British writers as Rossetti,  

Swinburne, Dowson and R. L. Stevenson,  

and in such Americans as Ambrose Bierce,  

Hart Crane and H.P. Lovecraft. 

[135]   Towards the end of the 19th c. a  

number of British and American writers  

were experimenting with different modes  

of horror story, and this was at a time  

when there had been a steadily growing  

[140] interest in the occult, in supernatural  

agencies, in psychic phenomena, in  

psychotherapy, in extreme psychological  

states and also in spiritualism.  

  The enormous increase in science  

[145] fiction since the 1950s has diversified  

horror fiction even more than might at  

first be supposed. New maps of hell have  

been drawn and are being drawn; new  

dimensions of the horrific exposed and  

[150] explored; new simulacra and exempla 

created. Fear, pain, suffering, guilt and  

madness (what has already been touched  

on in miscellaneous „hells‟) remain  

powerful and emotive elements in horror  

[155] stories. In a chaotic world, which many  

see to be on a disaster course, through  

the cracks, „the faults in reality‟, we and  

our writers catch other vertiginous

glimpses of „chaos and old night‟,  

[160] fissiparating images of death and  

destruction. 

From: CUDDON, J. A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin, 1999.

As to the French “symbolistes”, the text says that they were 

Text

[1]   Apart from being about murder,  

suicide, torture, fear and madness, horror  

stories are also concerned with ghosts,  

vampires, succubi, incubi, poltergeists,  

[5] demonic pacts, diabolic possession and  

exorcism, witchcraft, spiritualism, voodoo,  

lycanthropy and the macabre, plus such  

occult or quasi occult practices as  

telekinesis and hylomancy. Some horror  

[10] stories are serio-comic or comic-

grotesque, but none the less alarming or 

frightening for that. 

  From late in the 18th c. until the  

present day – in short, for some two  

[15] hundred years – the horror story (which is  

perhaps a mode rather than an identifiable  

genre) in its many and various forms has  

been a diachronic feature of British and  

American literature and is of considerable  

[20] importance in literary history, especially in  

the evolution of the short story. It is also  

important because of its connections with  

the Gothic novel and with a multitude of  

fiction associated with tales of mystery,  

[25] suspense, terror and the supernatural,  

with the ghost story and the thriller and  

with numerous stories in the 19th and  

20th c. in which crime is a central theme. 

  The horror story is part of a long  

[30] process by which people have tried to  

come to terms with and find adequate  

descriptions and symbols for deeply  

rooted, primitive and powerful forces,  

energies and fears which are related to  

[35] death, afterlife, punishment, darkness,  

evil, violence and destruction. 

  Writers have long been aware of the  

magnetic attraction of the horrific and  

have seen how to exploit or appeal to  

[40] particular inclinations and appetites. It  

was the poets and artists of the late  

medieval period who figured out and  

expressed some of the innermost fears  

and some of the ultimate horrors (real and  

[45] imaginary) of human consciousness. Fear  

created horrors enough and the  

eschatological order was never far from  

people‟s minds. Poets dwelt on and  

amplified the ubi sunt motif and artists  

[50] depicted the spectre of death in paint,  

through sculpture and by means of  

woodcut. The most potent and frightening  

image of all was that of hell: the abode of  

eternal loss, pain and damnation. There  

[55] were numerous "visions" of hell in  

literature. 

  Gradually, imperceptibly, during the  

16th c. hell was "moved‟ from its  

traditional site in the center of the earth.  

[60] It came to be located in the mind; it was a  

part of a state of consciousness. This was  

the beginning of the growth of the idea of  

a subjective, inner hell, a psychological  

hell; a personal and individual source of  

[65] horror and terror, such as the chaos of a  

disturbed and tormented mind, the  

pandaemonium of psychopathic  

conditions, rather than the abode of lux  

atra and everlasting pain with its definite  

[70] location in a measurable cosmological  

system. 

  The horror stories of the late 16th  

and early 17th c. (like the ghost stories)  

are provided for us by the playwrights.  

[75] The Elizabethan and Jacobean tragedians  

were deeply interested in evil, crime,  

murder, suicide and violence. They were  

also very interested in states of extreme  

suffering: pain, fear and madness. They  

[80] found new modes, new metaphors and  

images, for presenting the horrific and in  

doing so they created simulacra of hell.  

One might cite perhaps a thousand or  

more instances from plays in the period c.  

[85] 1580 to c. 1642 in which hell is an all-

purpose, variable and diachronic image of 

horror whether as a place of punishment 

or as a state of mind and spirit. Horrific  

action on stage was commonplace in the  

[90] tragedy and revenge tragedy of the  

period. The satiety which Macbeth claimed  

to have experienced when he said: “I have  

supp‟d full of horrors;/ Direness, familiar  

to my slaughterous thoughts, /Cannot  

[95] once start me…” was representative of it. 

  During the 18th c. (as during the  

19th ), in orthodox doctrine taught by  

various „churches‟ and sects, hell remained  

a place of eternal fire and punishment and  

[100] the abode of the Devil. For the most part  

writers of the Romantic period and  

thereafter did not re-create it as a  

visitable place. However, artists were  

drawn to “illustrate” earlier conceptions of  

[105] hell. William Blake did 102 engravings for  

Dante‟s Inferno. John Martin illustrated  

Paradise Lost and Gustave Doré applied  

himself to Dante and Milton. The actual  

hells of the 18th and 19th c. were the  

[110] gaols, the madhouses, the slums and  

bedlams and those lanes and alleys where  

vice, squalor, depravity and unspeakable  

misery created a social and moral chaos:  

terrestrial counterparts to the horrors of  

[115] Dante‟s Circles.  

  Gothic influence traveled to America  

and affected writers such as Edgar Allan  

Poe, whose tales are short, intense,  

sensational and have the power to inspire 

[120] horror and terror. He depicts extremes of  

fear and insanity and, through the  

operations of evil, gives us glimpses of  

hell. 

  Poe‟s long-term influence was  

[125] immeasurable (and in the case of some  

writers not altogether for their good), and  

one can detect it persisting through the  

19th c.; in, for example the French  

symbolistes (Baudelaire published  

[130] translations of his tales in 1856 and  

1857), in such British writers as Rossetti,  

Swinburne, Dowson and R. L. Stevenson,  

and in such Americans as Ambrose Bierce,  

Hart Crane and H.P. Lovecraft. 

[135]   Towards the end of the 19th c. a  

number of British and American writers  

were experimenting with different modes  

of horror story, and this was at a time  

when there had been a steadily growing  

[140] interest in the occult, in supernatural  

agencies, in psychic phenomena, in  

psychotherapy, in extreme psychological  

states and also in spiritualism.  

  The enormous increase in science  

[145] fiction since the 1950s has diversified  

horror fiction even more than might at  

first be supposed. New maps of hell have  

been drawn and are being drawn; new  

dimensions of the horrific exposed and  

[150] explored; new simulacra and exempla 

created. Fear, pain, suffering, guilt and  

madness (what has already been touched  

on in miscellaneous „hells‟) remain  

powerful and emotive elements in horror  

[155] stories. In a chaotic world, which many  

see to be on a disaster course, through  

the cracks, „the faults in reality‟, we and  

our writers catch other vertiginous

glimpses of „chaos and old night‟,  

[160] fissiparating images of death and  

destruction. 

From: CUDDON, J. A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin, 1999.

Many of the innermost fears and ultimate horrors of our awareness were revealed by 

TEXT  

[1]   Humans make errors. We make errors of  

fact and errors of judgment. We have blind  

spots in our field of vision and gaps in our  

stream of attention. Sometimes we can’t  

[5] even answer the simplest questions. Where  

was I last week at this time? How long have  

I had this pain in my knee? How much  

money do I typically spend in a day? These  

weaknesses put us at a disadvantage. We  

[10] make decisions with partial information. We  

are forced to steer by guesswork. We go  

with our gut.  

  That is, some of us do. Others use data.  

A timer running on Robin Barooah’s  

[15] computer tells him that he has been living  

in the United States for 8 years, 2 months  

and 10 days. At various times in his life,  

Barooah — a 38-year-old self-employed  

software designer from England who now  

[20] lives in Oakland, Calif. — has also made  

careful records of his work, his sleep and  

his diet.  

  "People have such very poor sense of  

time," Barooah says, and without good time  

[25] calibration, it is much harder to see the  

consequences of your actions. If you want  

to replace the vagaries of intuition with  

something more reliable, you first need to  

gather data. Once you know the facts, you  

[30] can live by them.  

  A fetish for numbers is the defining trait  

of the modern manager. Corporate  

executives facing down hostile shareholders  

load their pockets full of numbers. So do  

[35] politicians on the hustings, doctors  

counseling patients and fans abusing their  

local sports franchise on talk radio. 

  We tolerate the pathologies of  

quantification — a dry, abstract, mechanical  

[40] type of knowledge — because the results  

are so powerful. Numbering things allows  

tests, comparisons, experiments. Numbers  

make problems less resonant emotionally  

but more tractable intellectually. In science,  

[45] in business and in the more reasonable  

sectors of government, numbers have won  

fair and square.  

  Almost imperceptibly, numbers are now  

infiltrating the last redoubts of the  

[50] personal. Sleep, exercise, sex, food, mood,  

location, alertness, productivity, even  

spiritual well-being are being tracked and  

measured, shared and displayed. On  

MedHelp, one of the largest Internet forums  

[55] for health information, more than 30,000  

new personal tracking projects are started  

by users every month. 

  We use numbers when we want to tune  

up a car, analyze a chemical reaction,  

[60] predict the outcome of an election. We use  

numbers to optimize an assembly line. Why  

not use numbers on ourselves?  

  For many self-trackers, the goal is  

unknown. Although they may take up  

[65] tracking with a specific question in mind,  

they continue because they believe their  

numbers hold secrets that they can’t afford  

to ignore, including answers to questions  

they have not yet thought to ask.  

[70]   Until a few years ago it would have been  

pointless to seek self-knowledge through  

numbers.  

  Then four things changed. First,  

electronic sensors got smaller and better.  

[75] Second, people started carrying powerful  

computing devices, typically disguised as  

mobile phones. Third, social media made it  

seem normal to share everything. And  

fourth, we began to get an inkling of the  

[80] rise of a global superintelligence known as  

the cloud.  

  Millions of us track ourselves all the  

time. We step on a scale and record our  

weight. We balance a checkbook. We count  

[85] calories. But when the familiar pen-and

paper methods of self-analysis are 

enhanced by sensors that monitor our  

behavior automatically, the process of self

tracking becomes both more alluring and

[90] more meaningful. Automated sensors do  

more than give us facts; they also remind  

us that our ordinary behavior contains  

obscure quantitative signals that can be  

used to inform our behavior, once we learn  

[95] to read them.  

  At the center of this personal laboratory  

is the mobile phone. During the years that  

personal-data systems were making their  

rapid technical progress, many people  

[100] started entering small reports about their  

lives into a phone. Sharing became the  

term for the quick post to a social network:  

a status update to Facebook, a reading list  

on Goodreads, a location on Dopplr, Web  

[105] tags to Delicious, songs to Last.fm, your  

breakfast menu on Twitter. "People got  

used to sharing," says David Lammers

Meis, who leads the design work on the

fitness-tracking products at Garmin. "The  

[110] more they want to share, the more they  

want to have something to share." Personal  

data are ideally suited to a social life of  

sharing. You might not always have  

something to say, but you always have a  

[115] number to report.  

From: The New York Times. www.nytimes.com. April 26, 2010.

According to Barooah, if a person wants to see the results of his/her acts, he/she must

TEXT  

[1]   Humans make errors. We make errors of  

fact and errors of judgment. We have blind  

spots in our field of vision and gaps in our  

stream of attention. Sometimes we can’t  

[5] even answer the simplest questions. Where  

was I last week at this time? How long have  

I had this pain in my knee? How much  

money do I typically spend in a day? These  

weaknesses put us at a disadvantage. We  

[10] make decisions with partial information. We  

are forced to steer by guesswork. We go  

with our gut.  

  That is, some of us do. Others use data.  

A timer running on Robin Barooah’s  

[15] computer tells him that he has been living  

in the United States for 8 years, 2 months  

and 10 days. At various times in his life,  

Barooah — a 38-year-old self-employed  

software designer from England who now  

[20] lives in Oakland, Calif. — has also made  

careful records of his work, his sleep and  

his diet.  

  "People have such very poor sense of  

time," Barooah says, and without good time  

[25] calibration, it is much harder to see the  

consequences of your actions. If you want  

to replace the vagaries of intuition with  

something more reliable, you first need to  

gather data. Once you know the facts, you  

[30] can live by them.  

  A fetish for numbers is the defining trait  

of the modern manager. Corporate  

executives facing down hostile shareholders  

load their pockets full of numbers. So do  

[35] politicians on the hustings, doctors  

counseling patients and fans abusing their  

local sports franchise on talk radio. 

  We tolerate the pathologies of  

quantification — a dry, abstract, mechanical  

[40] type of knowledge — because the results  

are so powerful. Numbering things allows  

tests, comparisons, experiments. Numbers  

make problems less resonant emotionally  

but more tractable intellectually. In science,  

[45] in business and in the more reasonable  

sectors of government, numbers have won  

fair and square.  

  Almost imperceptibly, numbers are now  

infiltrating the last redoubts of the  

[50] personal. Sleep, exercise, sex, food, mood,  

location, alertness, productivity, even  

spiritual well-being are being tracked and  

measured, shared and displayed. On  

MedHelp, one of the largest Internet forums  

[55] for health information, more than 30,000  

new personal tracking projects are started  

by users every month. 

  We use numbers when we want to tune  

up a car, analyze a chemical reaction,  

[60] predict the outcome of an election. We use  

numbers to optimize an assembly line. Why  

not use numbers on ourselves?  

  For many self-trackers, the goal is  

unknown. Although they may take up  

[65] tracking with a specific question in mind,  

they continue because they believe their  

numbers hold secrets that they can’t afford  

to ignore, including answers to questions  

they have not yet thought to ask.  

[70]   Until a few years ago it would have been  

pointless to seek self-knowledge through  

numbers.  

  Then four things changed. First,  

electronic sensors got smaller and better.  

[75] Second, people started carrying powerful  

computing devices, typically disguised as  

mobile phones. Third, social media made it  

seem normal to share everything. And  

fourth, we began to get an inkling of the  

[80] rise of a global superintelligence known as  

the cloud.  

  Millions of us track ourselves all the  

time. We step on a scale and record our  

weight. We balance a checkbook. We count  

[85] calories. But when the familiar pen-and

paper methods of self-analysis are 

enhanced by sensors that monitor our  

behavior automatically, the process of self

tracking becomes both more alluring and

[90] more meaningful. Automated sensors do  

more than give us facts; they also remind  

us that our ordinary behavior contains  

obscure quantitative signals that can be  

used to inform our behavior, once we learn  

[95] to read them.  

  At the center of this personal laboratory  

is the mobile phone. During the years that  

personal-data systems were making their  

rapid technical progress, many people  

[100] started entering small reports about their  

lives into a phone. Sharing became the  

term for the quick post to a social network:  

a status update to Facebook, a reading list  

on Goodreads, a location on Dopplr, Web  

[105] tags to Delicious, songs to Last.fm, your  

breakfast menu on Twitter. "People got  

used to sharing," says David Lammers

Meis, who leads the design work on the

fitness-tracking products at Garmin. "The  

[110] more they want to share, the more they  

want to have something to share." Personal  

data are ideally suited to a social life of  

sharing. You might not always have  

something to say, but you always have a  

[115] number to report.  

From: The New York Times. www.nytimes.com. April 26, 2010.

Among the personal aspects that have been object of tracking nowadays the text mentions

  In August of 2000, a Japanese scientist named Toshiyuki Nakagaki announced that he had trained an amoebalike organism called slime mold to find the shortest route through a maze. Nakagaki had placed the mold in a small maze comprising four possible routes and planted pieces of food at two of the exits. Despite its being an incredibly primitive organism (a close relative of ordinary fungi) with no centralized brain whatsoever, the slime mold managed to plot the most efficient route to the food, stretching its body through the maze so that it connected directly to the two food sources. Without any apparent cognitive resources, the slime mold had “solved” the maze puzzle. 

  For such a simple organism, the slime mold has an impressive intellectual pedigree. Nakagaki’s announcement was only the latest in a long chain of investigations into the subtleties of slime mold behavior. For scientists trying to understand systems that use relatively simple components to build higher-level intelligence, the slime mold may someday be seen as the equivalent of the finches and tortoises that Darwin observed on the Galapagos Islands. 

  How did such a lowly organism come to play such an important scientific role? That story begins in the late sixties in New York City, with a scientist named Evelyn Fox Keller. A Harvard Ph.D. in physics, Keller had written her dissertation on molecular biology, and she had spent some time exploring the nascent field of “non-equilibrium thermodynamics”, which in later years would come to be associated with complexity theory. By 1968, she was working as an associate at Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan, thinking about the application of mathematics to biological problems. Mathematics had played such a tremendous role in expanding our understanding of physics, Keller thought – so perhaps it might also be useful for understanding living systems.

  In the spring of 1968, Keller met a visiting scholar named Lee Segel, an applied mathematician who shared her interests. It was Segel who first introduced her to the bizarre conduct of the slime mold, and together they began a series of investigations that would help transform not just our understanding of biological development but also the disparate worlds of brain science, software design, and urban studies. 

(…) 

Johson, Steven. Emergence. Peguin Books Ltd. 2001, pp. 11-12. 

De acordo com o texto, Evelyn Fox Keller

I. tornou-se PhD em Física pela Universidade de Harvard e foi a pioneira nos estudos sobre teoria de sistemas complexos.

II. acreditava na importância da Matemática não apenas para o estudo da Física, mas também da Biologia.

III. Influenciou as pesquisas do matemático Lee Segel, levando-o a se interessar pelo comportamento dos slime molds.

Está(ão) correta(s)