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Acesse GrátisQuestões de Inglês - Reading/Writing
Questão 16 2883412
Mackenzie Tarde 2019/1Read the text below and answer the question.
What is Philosophy for?
From a distance, philosophy seems weird, irrelevant, boring – and yet also just a little intriguing. But what are philosophers really for? The answer is helpfully already contained in the word ‘philosophy’ itself: in Ancient Greek, philo means love and sophia means wisdom. Philosophers are people who are devoted to wisdom. Being wise means attempting to live – and die – well. In the pursuit of wisdom, philosophers have developed a very specific skill set: they have over the centuries become experts in many of the things that make people not very wise. Five stand out:
1. We don’t ask big questions
There are lots of big questions around: What’s the meaning of life? What’s a job for? How should society be arranged? Most of us entertain them every now and then. But we despair of trying to answer them. They have the status almost of jokes. We call them pretentious, but they matter deeply, because only with sound answers to them, can we direct our energies meaningfully. Philosophers are people unafraid of asking big questions. They have over the centuries asked the very largest. They realise that these questions can always be broken down into more manageable chunks, and that the only really pretentious thing is to think one’s above raising naive-sounding inquiries.
2. We are vulnerable to errors of common sense
Public opinion, or what gets called ‘common sense’, is sensible and reasonable in countless areas. It’s what you hear about from friends and neighbours – the stuff you take in without even thinking about it. But common sense is often also full of daftness and error. Philosophy gets us to admit all aspects of common sense to reason. It wants us to think for ourselves. Is it really true what people say about love, money, children, travel, work? Philosophers are interested in asking whether an idea is logical, rather than assuming it must be right because it’s popular and long established.
3. We are mentally confused
We are not very good at knowing what goes on in our own minds. Someone we meet is very annoying, but we can’t pin down what the issue is, or we lose our temper but we can’t readily tell what we’re so cross about. We lack insights into our own satisfactions and dislikes. That’s why we need to examine our own minds. Philosophy is committed to self-knowledge and it’s central precept, articulated by the earliest, greatest philosopher Socrates, is just two words long: know yourself.
4. We have muddled ideas about what makes us happy
We’re not very good at making ourselves happy. We overrate the power of some things to improve our lives and underrate others. We make the wrong choices because, guided by advertising and false glamour, we keep on imagining that a particular kind of holiday or car or computer will make a bigger difference than it can. At the same time, we underestimate the contribution of other things, like going for a walk, which may have little prestige but which can contribute deeply to the character of existence. Philosophers seek to be wise by getting more precise about the activities and attitudes that really can help our lives to go better.
5. We panic and lose perspective
Philosophers are good at keeping a sense of what really matters and what doesn’t. On hearing the news that he’d lost all his possessions to a shipwreck, the Stoic philosopher Zeno simple said, ‘fortune commands me to be a less encumbered philosopher’. It’s responses like these that have made the very term ‘philosophical’ a byword for calm, long-term thinking and strength of mind. In short, for perspective.
The wisdom of philosophy is in modern times mostly delivered in the form of books. But, in the past, philosophers sat in market squares and discussed their ideas with shopkeepers or went into government offices and palaces to give advice. It wasn’t abnormal to have a philosopher on your payroll. Philosophy was thought of as a normal, basic activity, rather than as an esoteric, optional extra. Nowadays, it’s not so much that we overtly deny this thought, but we just don’t have the right institutions set up to promulgate wisdom coherently in the world. In the future, though, when the value of philosophy is a little clearer, we can expect to meet more philosophers in daily life. They won’t be locked up, living mainly in university departments, because the points at which our unwisdom bites and messes up our lives are multiple and urgently need attention right now.
Adapted from the website The Philosopher’s Mail. http://thephilosophersmail.com. Access: September, 2018.
Choose the correct alternative:
Questão 32 139979
UDESC Manhã 2016/2
The sign above means that:
Questão 18 325607
CESMAC Demais Cursos 2015/1Rising Temperatures Lead To A Higher
Proportion Of Girls Being Born Than Boys
Rising temperatures in Japan lead to a higher proportion of girls being born than boys, according to a study in Fertility and Sterility. The observation has led the researchers to suggest that climate change could alter the mix of men and women.
Certain species, particularly reptiles, engage in temperature dependent sex selection, in which the sex of offspring is determined by the warmth of the environment in which eggs are incubated. Humans rely on genes, but even for us there are slightly more women conceived in tropical regions than at the poles.
Dr. Misao Fukuda found evidence to support the possibility that human sex ratios may also be influenced by temperature, although in a more subtle way and through a different mechanism.
In 1968, 1.07 boys were born in Japan for every girl. By 2012, that was down to 1.05. A similar shift has been observed in other places, but there is debate about how widespread the trend is, as well as the causes.
Fukuda also looked at data on the ratio of male to female “spontaneous fetal deaths” -- miscarriages after the first twelve weeks of pregnancy over the same period. Here the trend was much steeper, beginning at 1.3 and reaching 2 by the end of the study period.
The fact that female fetuses are more likely to survive is well-known, and there is longstanding evidence that periods of stress affect male fetuses more severely.
Changes to sex ratios for humans are so small that, unlike for reptiles, there is no threat to our survival. Nevertheless, an increase in miscarriages for all fetuses may be one more effect of rapidly changing climates.
Adaptado de: http://www.iflscience.com/environment/fewer-boyschanging-climate Acessado em 18 de outubro de 2014.
It is well known that stress affects males’ fetuses
Questão 21 1886417
EN 2° Dia 2015Read this sign and answer the question.
By reading the sign, we CANNOT infer that
Questão 50 43650
UEMG 2011Brazilian Law Way Too Serious, Comics Say
By Luciani Gomes, Special to CNN
Comedy is being taken too seriously in Brazil, humorists there are saying, in response to a Brazilian law that forbids television and radio broadcasters from making fun of presidential, gubernatorial or congressional candidates in the three months before the election. Brazil’s elections are in October of 2010.
Afraid of huge fines that can reach up to almost R$ 160.000, producers and stars of comedy shows say they are having to rethink their election coverage and ignore the names of this year’s presidential candidates, or just be serious about it. This month, humorists will gather at Copacabana beach, in Rio de Janeiro, to protest the law.
According to the 1997 law, television and radio broadcasters, which operate on government concessions, cannot “use trickery, montages or other features of audio or video in any way to degrade or ridicule a candidate, party or coalition.” The law is not new, but humorists increasingly feel that it limits freedom of speech and that creation is restricted. One reason humorists believe the law will be enforced more stringently than before is that some of the country’s comedy shows have been dedicating a lot of time to politics.
The Supreme Electoral Court says that it is not enforcing the law any stricter than in the past. The law has always been applied in the same manner and the idea that this year it’s more is the perception of the humorists, the court said. The comedians say humor is necessary to generate debate and to get people involved in politics. If there’s no humor, people will get bored, they say.
A former minister of the Supreme Electoral Court, Fernando Neves, agreed with the need of a rule to make sure the election coverage will be fair to all candidates in all media. “I think it’s correct that the media cannot be used to favor or harm one or another candidate. They are there to inform,” he said.
“Casseta e Planeta”, a Rede Globo comedy show that’s been on air since 1992 and that has imitated and made fun of almost every politician since then, is more than ever avoiding references to any candidate. It was a decision made by the show. To avoid warnings or fines, comedy around election time is achieved with fake politician characters.
Helio de La Peña, one of the cast members of “Casseta e Planeta,” believes there’s two ways to look at the controversial rule. It helps democracy by not allowing one politician to be jeopardized, but at the same time it censors the humorists’ job.
In a statement, Rede Globo said the broadcast law is one of the initiatives in place that undermine freedom of expression and believes that it will end up being revoked by the electoral officials.
Rede Bandeirantes’ “CQC”, a comedy show that started in 2008 and became a huge success in Brazil by following politicians in Brasilia and asking them tough and tricky questions, continues to cover the election and mentions the candidates, but is being careful in what to say or joke about.
For now, the law and its ramifications are affecting how humorists go about their business and, as exemplified by the gathering on Sunday, it is proving something of a unifying factor for the creative spirits of comedy. “It’s the first time the humorists will gather for a cause,” de La Peña said.
Adapted from http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/08/19/brazil.election.comics/index.html? (20/08/2010)
The CORRECT active voice subject in parenthesis of the extract “…the law will be enforced more stringently than before…” is :
Questão 20 745302
UEFS Caderno 1 2017/2Read the text to answer question.
Early dinosaur relative walked like a croc
One of the earliest relatives of dinosaurs had some features we associate today with crocodiles and alligators, a study suggests.
Many palaeontologists have wondered what the earliest dinosaur relatives looked like, as the fossil record in this time period is sparse. Some assumed they walked on two legs, looking a bit like miniature dinosaurs. But the newly described creature walked on four legs like a croc, the journal Nature reports.
The 2-3m (7-10ft) carnivorous animal, unearthed in southern Tanzania, lived some 245 million years ago during the Triassic Period. It pre-dated the earliest dinosaurs. Prof Paul Barrett, one of the authors on the new paper, said: “This is a little animal that we call Teleocrater. It’s not very big...it probably would have weighed about the same as the average family dog.”
Teleocrater rhadinus appeared just after a large group of animals known as archosaurs split into one branch that led to dinosaurs, and another branch that led to today’s alligators and crocodiles. Its anatomy combines features present in the last common ancestor of these groups, such as a crocodilian-like ankle joint, with some features considered characteristic of dinosaurs.
The first fossils belonging to Teleocrater were discovered in 1933 in Tanzania. They were studied at London’s Natural History Museum in the 1950s. But these specimens were missing crucial bones, such as the ankle. Therefore, scientists at the time could not tell whether they were more closely related to crocs or to dinosaurs.
The new specimens were uncovered in the East African country in 2015, resolving some of those outstanding questions. They show that it is one of the earliest members of the archosaur family tree and that it walked like a crocodilian.
Teleocrater, along with other dinosaur relatives, lived across a wide range of different regions, from Russia to India to Brazil. The team’s next steps are to return to southern Tanzania to look for more remains and missing pieces of the Teleocrater skeleton.
(Paul Rincon. www.bbc.com, 12.04.2017. Adaptado.)
According to paragraphs 4 and 5, it is correct to say about the Teleocrater:
