June 2009 SAT Critical Reading

[lockdown22]

<p>For clarification, what was the exact answer to the greek writer question?</p>

[Masterus2010]

<p>hey can anyone clarify what the passages were talking about and maybe the questions too? I’ve seem to forgotten haha.</p>

[Bee123]

<p>maybe someone can try to find the NASA passage? I can’t seem to find it and it would really help to settle some confusions.</p>

[Rtgrove123]

<p>omg they were comparing it to fossils not a dragon</p>

[Esplin]

<p>yeah someone pleaseeeeeeee find the NASA passage!</p>

<p>THXS</p>

[haavain]

<p>They compared the rocket to the /bones/ of a mythic dragon. Something that once was great and now…isn’t.</p>

[wholegraiin]

<p>it said mythic “biotech” dragon</p>

<p>dont know if that helps, i got obscelscence</p>

[BeautifulNerd219]

<p>I put obsolescence if I do recall (I thought I had tourist attraction, but then, I remember I put obsolescence of NASA).</p>

[Esplin]

<p>i raelly think the question was asking in the context of one-two sentences, not the whole passage.</p>

[Rtgrove123]

<p>Esplin-</p>

<p>Ya, obviously the referenced lines should dictate your answer; however, the entire passage can help clarify the answer. The reference line said something about rockets being like the large decaying fossils of a large, biotech dragon that tourists see. Just off that statement domineering, attraction to newcomeers, and obsolete all are plausible answers (I still think even that reference alone makes obsolete the best answer). However, then you need to look at the whole passage and see what purpose that line reference had on author’s thesis. Obviously, the statement was to further illustrate NASA was declining.</p>

[tbonus]

<p>found the drug one!! university w/ dr. dong.</p>

<p>its not exactly verbatim because the drug company’s name and money amounts are in there too. but everything else is very much the same</p>

<p>[No</a> space, no choice, no jobs, no logo - Google Book Search](<a href=“No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs - Naomi Klein - Google Books”>No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs - Naomi Klein - Google Books)
pg 98</p>

<p>

On some university campuses, protests critical of a corporate sponsor have been effectively blocked. In August 1996, Tennis Canada hosted the DuMaurier Tennis Open Tournament, sponsored by Imperial Tobacco, at York University. Concerned that neither a university nor a sporting event should be seen to be endorsing tobacco products, an anti-smoking group, the Grim Reaper Society, asked York for permission to pass out pamphlets to students and tournament goers near the university stadium. Susan Mann, the president of York University, refused the request, saying the school did not “normally” allow “interest groups” on campus “unless for University purposes.” Activists handed out cards and leaflets to motorists at a traffic light just outside the entrance to York and, on the last day of the tournament, they staged a clever culture-jam: the leaflets they handed out were shaped like fans. Clearly amused, many of the tournament goers brought their fans inside the tennis stadium, cooling themselves off with anti-tobacco slogans. After a few hours, police officers hired by the tournament approached the peaceful, off-site protest and, citing traffic problems, ticketed two of the activists and seized all the remaining fans.</p>

<p>These are extreme examples of how corporate sponsorship deals re-engineer some of the fundamental values of public universities, including financial transparency and the right to open debate and peaceful protest on campus. But the subtle effects are equally disturbing. **Many professors speak of the slow encroachment of the mall mentality, arguing that the more campuses act and look like malls, the more students behave like consumers. They tell stories of students filling out their course-evaluation forms with all the smug self-righteousness of a tourist responding to a customer-satisfaction form at a large hotel chain. “Most of all I dislike the attitude of calm consumer expertise that pervades the responses. I’m disturbed by the serene belief that my function —and more important, Freud’s, or Shakespeare’s, or Blake’s —is to divert, entertain, and interest,” **writes University of Virginia professor Mark Edmundson in Harper’s magazine. A professor at Toronto’s York University, where there is a full-fledged mall on campus, tells me that his students slip into class slurping grande lattes, chat in the back and slip out. They’re cruising, shopping, disengaged.</p>

<p>Branding U</p>

<p>While brands slowly transform the experience of campus life for undergraduates, another kind of takeover is under way at the institutional research level. All over the world, university campuses are offering their research facilities, and priceless academic credibility, for the brands to use as they please. And in North America today, corporate research partnerships at universities are used for everything: designing new Nike skates, developing more efficient oil extraction techniques for Shell, assessing the Asian market’s stability for Disney, testing the consumer demand for higher bandwidth for Bell or measuring the relative merits of a brand-name drug compared with a generic one, to name just a few examples.</p>

<p>Dr. Betty Dong, a medical researcher at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF), had the misfortune of taking on that last assignment -testing a brand-name drug with brand-name money. Dong was the director of a study sponsored by the British pharmaceutical company Boots (now called Knoll) and UCSF. The fate of that partnership does much to illuminate precisely how the mandate of universities as sites for public-interest research is often squarely at odds with the interests of branded fact-finding missions.</p>

<p>Dr. Dong’s study compared the effectiveness of Boots’ thyroid drug, Synthroid, with a generic competitor. The company hoped that the research would prove that its much higher priced drug was better or at least substantially different from the generic one — a claim that, if legitimized by a study from a respected university, would increase Synthroid sales. Instead, Dr. Dong found that the opposite was true. The two drugs were bio-equivalent, a fact that represented a potential saving of $365 million a year for the eight million Americans who were taking the name-brand drug, and a potential loss to Boots of $600 million (the revenue from Synthroid). After the results were reviewed by her peers, Dr. Dong’s findings were slated to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on January 25, 1995. **At the last minute, however, Boots successfully halted publication of the article, pointing to a clause in the partnership contract that gave the company veto rights over the publication of findings. The university, fearing a costly lawsuit, sided with the drug company and the article was yanked. **After the whole ordeal was exposed in The Wall Street Journal, Boots backed off and the paper was finally published in April 1997, two years behind schedule. “The victim is obvious: the university,” wrote Dorothy S. Zinberg, a faculty member at Harvard’s Centre for Science and International Affairs. “Each infringement on its unwritten contract with society to avoid secrecy whenever possible and maintain its independence from government or corporate pressure weakens its integrity.”

</p>

[tbonus]

<p>does anyone remember the sentence for tactile and like touch… or other words</p>

[coolkid92]

<p>I’ve never posted anything on College Confidential before, occasionally I’ll login to surf the various threads, but honestly, some of you people really need to chill out. It does no good to freak out about correct and/or incorrect answers to questions as it is too late to do anything about them!</p>

[RedCatharsis]

<p>

Ya I mean I considered attraction to tourists. However, the question was asking why the author compared a ship to a decaying dino fossil and in the vary sentence that it was asking about the “starting phrase” was something like “Nasa is losing its luster”

I’m quite sure it asked why he compared the space shuttle with that specific analogy, nothing more.</p>

<p>The overall passage might as well be talking about the decay, or decline, of prestige for that specific space station, but that doesn’t change, at all, the fact that the ACTUAL analogy made CLEAR that tourists were interested in the shuttle the same way that one would be interested in a dragon’s fossils. We’re not interested in museums and fossils because they’re obsolescent, but instead, because of their mythic-out-of-the-world-property. Even if the entire passage is about obsolescence, in the very least, that obsolescence contributes to the interest of tourists which is definitely ALSO mentioned in the passage.</p>

<p>The specific analogy there clearly points out that the shuttle is interesting to tourists, in the same way that “the fossils of a mythic biotech dragon” would be.</p>

<p>Also, another thing I’d like to point out, is that I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT THE PASSAGE IS ACTUALLY ABOUT OBSOLESCENCE. I believe, instead, that the passage was about how differently we now use the space station–IE, it is not a tourist attraction, and instead of space flights, we have McDonald runs, etc. There is very clearly still interest and attraction in the space station, just not the same way as before. Once, the focus was on space itself, now the focus is on the fossil-station itself (instead of a means to an end, it becomes a means in and of itself).</p>

[Rtgrove123]

<p>RedC-</p>

<p>I am almost certain the word decaying was used in the sentence, and I’d b amazed if the answer was not obsolescence. However, I have been amazed before and, with out a doubt, will be amazed again.</p>

[bryanbaseball17]

<p>so still nobody knows the choices to the one with touch besides interpret and envision? please answer.</p>

[dinosauria]

<p>“can somebody please answer me and tell me what the other choices for credulous were…?”</p>

<p>i slightly remember anachronistic being with that one, and maybe imperious and derisive?</p>

[bnads]

<p>did anyone have a passage about the 20-questions game and the 2 ways of playing it relating to physicists?</p>

[RedCatharsis]

<p>

I am almost certain the word decaying was used in the sentence, and I’d b amazed if the answer was not obsolescence. However, I have been amazed before and, with out a doubt, will be amazed again.

</p>

<p>Yes, the decaying, like somebody pointed out, was analogous to the dismantling of the space shuttle. Which is what was attracting newcomers. Jesus, can nobody find this passage?</p>

<p>I think follow this train of thought: The specific analogy was to further illustrate that tourists were interested in the station (they opened things like McDonalds, they saw the old shuttle like fossils to visit in a museum). This can indirectly add to obsolescence, which is one overall theme of the passage, but the specific analogy there refers to a “mythic” “biotech” “dragon.” The only reason why would use this phrasing is to demonstrate how newcomers were surprised/curious about it.</p>

<p>Making the assumption that decaying fossils means “obsolete” seems counter intuitive, since the tourists/newcomers are still ATTRACTED to it.</p>

[bryanbaseball17]

<p>holy crap can somebody please tell me what ALL of the choices were to SC with touch as the answer…</p>