UNICAMP 2000 Inglês - Questões

Leia o trecho seguinte, do livro The Love You Make, An Insider’s Story of The Beatles, de P. Brown e S. Gaines (trecho em que são mencionados John Lennon, sua mãe Julia, sua tia Mimi e seu pai Fred e responda à questão.

(...) But by that summer it had become clear that John wasn’t interested in his education, or in art, or in his future at all. John’s only interest was the American craze called “rock and roll”, a derivative form of black rhythm and blues with a prominent drum beat. (...)

John wanted a guitar more than he had wanted anything before in his life. Surprisingly, it wasn’t Julia who broke down and bought it for him, it was Mimi who marched him to a music shop in Whitechapel and bought him his first guitar for £17. A small, Spanish model with cheap wire strings, he played it continuously until his fingers bled. Julia taught him some banjo chords she had learned from Fred, and he started with those. He sat on the bed all day, and when Mimi tried to shoo him into the sunlight, he’d go out to the support and lean up against the brick wall practicing his guitar for so long that Mimi thought he’d rub part of the brick away with his behind. She watched him waste hour after hour, day after day with the damned thing and regretted having bought it for him. “The guitar’s all very well, John,” she warned him, “but you’ll never make a living out of it.”

The Love You Make, An Insider’s Story of The Beatles, de P. Brown e S. Gaines.

Qual a previsão feita por Mimi a respeito do futuro de John Lennon?

Para responder à questão, leia a pergunta feita por leitor à revista Popular Science (outubro de 1999), bem como a resposta dada a ele pela revista.

Why are we taller in the morning than we are at night?

ngogna@hotmail.com

WE ARE in fact taller in the morning, but only slightly. It’s because the horizontal position most of us sleep in relieves gravity’s pressure on our spines, so the soft cartilage between our 26 vertebral bones expands. Throughout the day, as we move in an upright position, these doughnut-shaped discs of cartilage compress under the weight of gravity. So we’re a bit taller in the morning than we are at night.

”Vertebral discs are composed of a fairly high percentage of water”, says Jerome McAndrews of the American Chiropratic Association. ”When you lie down you take the weight bearing off, and the discs expand. When your weight’s on them, they squeeze."

Such differences are more pronounced in young people. As we age we shrink less throughout the day because there’s less resilience or flexibility in our tissues.

Popular Science, 1999.

Qual a explicação dada pela revista para a afirmação “(...)we are a bit taller in the morning than we are at night”?

Para responder à questão, leia a pergunta feita por leitor à revista Popular Science (outubro de 1999), bem como a resposta dada a ele pela revista.

Why are we taller in the morning than we are at night?

ngogna@hotmail.com

WE ARE in fact taller in the morning, but only slightly. It’s because the horizontal position most of us sleep in relieves gravity’s pressure on our spines, so the soft cartilage between our 26 vertebral bones expands. Throughout the day, as we move in an upright position, these doughnut-shaped discs of cartilage compress under the weight of gravity. So we’re a bit taller in the morning than we are at night.

”Vertebral discs are composed of a fairly high percentage of water”, says Jerome McAndrews of the American Chiropratic Association. ”When you lie down you take the weight bearing off, and the discs expand. When your weight’s on them, they squeeze."

Such differences are more pronounced in young people. As we age we shrink less throughout the day because there’s less resilience or flexibility in our tissues.

Popular Science, 1999.

O fenômeno em questão se manifesta igualmente em toda a população? Por quê?

Leia, abaixo, a resenha do livro Last Climb e responda à questão.

Last Climb

The Legendary Everest Expeditions of George Mallory

It was astounding News. On May 1, 1999, the body of George Mallory was found on a rocky ledge 2000 feet below the summit of Mt. Everest, where he had perished in June 1924. His body was remarkably well-preserved, and was identified by name tags on his clothing and a letter from his wife he had tocked into his pocket. But the big question is: Was he on the way up? Or down? Had he and his partner Andrew Irvine been the first humans to reach the summit?

From renowned Everest mountaineer David Breashears, filmaker of the IMAX Everest, and author of Everest: Mountain Without Mercy, comes Last Climb. It tells the remarkable story of these early pioneers, who attempted the climb 30 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were hailed as the first to scale the top.

Last Climb, Audrey Salkeld e David Breashears 1999.

Qual a dúvida levantada a respeito dos aventureiros que já escalaram o Monte Everest? Como se justifica essa dúvida?

Leia, abaixo, o início do capítulo sobre pesadelos, do livro Dreams and Nightmares, de J. A. Hadfield e responda à questão.

N I G H T M A R E S

PEOPLE may ignore their dreams, they cannot ignore their nightmares. For nightmares can be most distressing, casting their shadows throughout the following day. Hamlet shrank from taking his life because he would have ‘perchance to dream’. Nightmares are a common cause of sleeplessness, for many people, like the war-shocked soldier or civilian, dare not sleep because of the horrifying dreams that await them. One does not lightly submit oneself to the experience of getting blown up or buried night after night. The night terrors of children are of this type, for not only are they terrifying in themselves, but their effects persist, filling the day with apprehension and foreboding. The child who is frightened by a dog during the day may have a nightmare of the monster, and may continue to be frightened all the next day. (...) How to define nightmares as distinct from ordinary dreams is a little difficult: the very origin of the term is obscure.

The distinctive feature of a nightmare in the more restricted sense of the term is that of a monster, whether animal or subhuman, which visits us during sleep and produces a sense of dread. Sometimes it is a witch, sometimes a vampire, which is conceived as a reanimated dead person who returns to suck the blood of living people during their sleep; or it may be a night hag, an incubus, or a mare. The word nightmare originally referred to these monstrous creatures themselves and then came to be used of the dream in which these monsters appeared. (...)

Dreams and Nightmares, de J. A. Hadfield 1954.

Qual a explicação oferecida pelo autor do texto para o fato de que nós, principalmente as crianças, não conseguimos esquecer facilmente nossos pesadelos?