<p>@desigirl23</p>
<p>I’d rather not give my personal input, but I wrote how it COULD have been an entertaining historical fact. ^^ I just edited my previous post</p>
<p>@jimmy It explicity stated that the reasoning behind her distance was because she was “determined” to not be confused with a landlady. I think using the word “determined” means that it was a conscious effort she made in order to distinguish herself from an implicitly inferior status as a landlady. It also said that her basic mannerisms like nodding were like those of a “superior tenant.” She judges those around her, tenants included, as inferior. She is snide in her attempts to differentiate herself from the inferior tenants.</p>
<p>She is only “aloof” only in the sense that she does not interfere with issues about rent. The exact quote:</p>
<p>“Tall Mrs. Alexander always kept in the background so far as the renting of rooms was concerned”</p>
<p>Outside of that, she is willing to interact with tenants, evidenced by the fact that she politely (in a snide way) nods to the author. Aloof is an accurate way to describe her attitude toward rent policies but is not a good word to characterize her as a person, as the question asked.</p>
<p>Aloof:</p>
<p>Conspicuously uninvolved and uninterested, typically through distaste.</p>
<p>@drac313</p>
<p>Well there you have it.</p>
<p>Snide:
Derogatory or mocking in an indirect way: “snide remarks”.</p>
<p>I don’t remember her making any mocking remarks. Superior=/=disparaging?</p>
<p>I guess we’ll just wait until the 16th</p>
<p>@Michael: “Implicitly inferior status as a landlady” <— that is an unjustified inference. She is definitely not being judgmental. You’re over-analyzing this.</p>
<p>hey guys! I hate being such a bugger, but I keep thinking about this question - the one about “simplification was impossible” versus “standardization was necessary”
I JUST remembered that the answer choice actually said “simplicity was impossible,” not “simplification was impossible”
in this case, the difference between those two is important. simplification was indeed possible, because it happened later, but at the time (early 1900s), simpliCITY was impossible.</p>
<p>here are the lines that the question referred to, exactly:</p>
<p>A red light indicated one thing here, another thing there. The first stop signs were yellow, even though many people thought they should be red. As one traffic engineer summed up early-twentieth-century traffic control, “there was a great wave of arrow lenses, purple lenses, lenses with crosses, etc., all giving special instructions to the motorist, who, as a rule, hadn’t the faintest idea of what these special indications meant.” </p>
<p>Only the beginning part of that selection is talking about a lack of standardization. the rest of it is talking about how things were the opposite of simple.</p>
<p>the question asked what those examples were used to show.</p>
<p>immediately following the lines that the question indicated was this sentence:</p>
<p>The systems we take for granted today required years of evolution, and were often steeped in controversy.</p>
<p>the examples were used to show that simplicity was impossible. they were not emphasizing anything about standardization.</p>
<p>umm im hearing a general agreement over the question about the sun and the alps… i thought it was to prevent human contact… cuz theres still sun in the alps. if he wanted to get away from light, he could’ve chosen anywehre. the alps are a pretty isolated location, i assumed he chose that location to get away from human contact… what do u think?</p>
<p>That passage definitely reads as a message to standardize. It was also definitely simplification, not simplicity.</p>
<p>Also, impossible is an extreme word. For ETS, nothing is impossible.</p>
<p>@baseball he was several hundred feet under the alps. And it talked about light/dark the sentence right before.</p>
<p>@drac+jimmy I know the definition haha. She isn’t uninterested/uninvolved except toward the rent policies. She is obvious willing to interact with the tenants except as a landlady since she politely nodded to the author. She isn’t aloof toward anybody</p>
<p>@evilla: That entire passage you posted is taking about a lack of standardization, what are you talking about? Since there were so many different arrow/lenses rather than a standardized set of indications, standardization was clearly necessary.</p>
<p>@baseball he kept in constant contact with people that were on the outside and told them what he ate and stuff… the answer can’t be to avoid human contact, it was to avoid light</p>
<p>@Michael</p>
<p>I think that if you would have to choose the best answer, supported with the most evidence, proud and aloof would be it. Just my two cents on it, though. I remember that the wife of the landlord wanted to act as though she were a tenant (just a superior one), not a landlady. </p>
<p>I’m not sure how you can support the word “snide” even if you have an argument for “judgemental”</p>
<p>has anyone found where the photography passage came from?</p>
<p>Looking for the photography passages as well…</p>
<p>@Arctk3: I looked into it a bit, but it almost seems as if they put it together through a dissection of a really long article… but then again, I didn’t look too much.</p>
<p>@jimmy</p>
<p>you said she was supercilious a little bit ago. World English Dictionary:</p>
<p>World English Dictionary</p>
<p>snide 1 (snaɪd)
— adj
- Also: snidey (of a remark, etc); supercilious</p>
<p>@Michael</p>
<p>I think I mixed up my words. How would you evidence that she was judgemental?</p>
<p>eh. impossible IS an extreme word, but the passage warrants it. it’s asking about the author’s point of view. plus, a bunch of CR answers have had fairly extreme words in their answers…like this: ill-conceived failures, disparaging, etc.
i know that these aren’t quite as extreme as “impossible,” but again, it’s talking about the author’s tone and what the author is saying, not what is true, necessarily. the author would describe simplicity as impossible, because he clearly has very strong opinions about the state of traffic. the passage does not discuss standardization nearly as much as it discusses a state of anti-simplicity.
oh well. i guess there’s really no proving to be done here. i’m still convinced of my answer, and you yours. so no problems</p>
<p>i definitely think that the landlady was proud and aloof. there was evidence for both adjectives, whereas “snide” didn’t really have any. she smiled politely, didn’t she? that’s not snide
and she is aloof because she chose to stay out of the business of renting rooms, leaving that up to her short, swinish husband</p>
<p>The same reasoning behind her being proud, which I think we both believe to be a valid description. Because she thinks she’s superior and others are inferior</p>
<p>Well I am convinced it wasn’t a landmark DECISION. If you read the passage below there was no decision made. Sure the speed limit was set at 4 but that is not what the following sentence is talking about; it refers to the man running with the red flag. There really was no decision made besides setting the speed limit at 4mph and that is irrelevant. That it is not a decision clearly nullifies that answer. I think we should end the debate on that.</p>
<p>When driving began, it was like a juggernaut, and we have rarely had time to pause and reflect upon the new kind of life that was being made. When the first electric car debuted in mid-nineteenth-century England, the speed limit was hastily set at 4 miles per hour–the speed at which a man carrying a red flag could run ahead of a car entering a town, an event that was still a quite rare occurrence. That man with the red flag racing the car was like a metaphor of traffic itself. It was probably also the last time the automobile existed at anything like human speed or scale. The car was soon to create a world of its own, a world in which humans, separated from everything outside the car but still somehow connected, would move at speeds beyond anything for which their evolutionary history had prepared them.</p>