Hypothesis: The Human Genome Project is mentioned in the project in relation to cloning.


Premise: We like to think of ourselves as unique but we are in fact 99.9 per cent genetically identical. DNA, which comprises the chemical code, governs the construction and function of every cell in our body. The Human Genome Project mapped the sequence for human DNA and provided a blueprint of the DNA shared by every person. But what of the 0.1 per cent that is not common to all mankind and was left out of the Human Genome Project blueprint? It is responsible for all individual idiosyncrasies and the differences between racial and ethnic groups. If it were not for this minute percentage there would be no individual differences. We would be clones. Individual differences could be greatly increased if we were to think the unthinkable and allow genetic engineering of the human DNA. This would involve inserting genes from one cell into another and changing that cells DNA and its characteristics. In theory it would be possible to take the DNA from an entirely different species and insert it into human cells. Such radical modifications could certainly make us much more unique.

Hypothesis: It can be inferred from the passage that the author does not approve of the genetic engineering of human DNA.


Hypothesis: In the context of the passage idiosyncrasies means unconventional behaviour.


Premise: We suffer a suspension of judgement when we hand over a card to purchase something and spend funds that we intended to use for something essential or unintentionally create an unauthorized overdraft. These spur-of-the-moment lapses are more likely to occur when we pay for something electronically or with credit than with hard cash. This is because of a widely held perception that electronic money and credit are somehow not as real or valuable as notes and coins. Retailers play on this emotional weakness with offers of in- store cards and buy now play later deals. But, nowhere is our Achilles heel exploited more than on the internet where it is impossible to pay with ready money and perhaps the sites that have perfected this form of exploitation are those that offer gambling. The sites regulated by the Gaming Commission have safeguards but the unregulated sites set out to encourage people to stake more to recover their losses and do not provide facilities to allow the gambler to set limits on how much they will fritter.

Hypothesis: Sites unregulated by the Gaming Commission are unlicensed.


Hypothesis: We suffer a suspension of judgement when we hand over a card to purchase something.


Hypothesis: Electronic money and credit have a lower psychological value than cash in your hand.


Premise: Weather forecast sometimes has a better history record than economists. They make a great contribution to the revenue. For example, a recent weather forecast said there would be a storm in a resort resulting thousand dollars books decrease that day while actually the resort enjoyed a sunny day. Weather forecast would bring marketing mix alteration to various super market or retail shops when they review the forecast

Hypothesis: Economists forecasts are prone to some biggest errors.


Hypothesis: Travellers or people having holidays pay little attention to the weather.


Hypothesis: It would be very beneficial for super markets and retailers to be informed of the weather forecast.


Premise: Weighty problem. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that obesity has reached epidemic proportions worldwide, with three times as many overweight adults as there were 20 years ago. Almost one-quarter of the adult population of the UK are now classed as obese, and they are over-represented in their use of NHS services. The most widely used tool to assess obesity is body mass index (BMI), which divides 2 weight in kilograms by height in metres squared to give the units kg/m . A BMI of 25 or above is defined as overweight or pre-obese, and a BMI of 30 or more is defined as obese. People with a BMI of 40 or above are morbidly obese; they are at severe risk of developing co-morbidities like cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, which reduce life expectancy and increase hospital stay. Patients weighing more than 20 stone are described as bariatric the word originated from the Greek word baros meaning heavy and iatrics meaning medical treatment. The large size of bariatric patients often leads to poor mobility, with implications for manual handling, equipment, beds, chairs and space. Most bariatric patients will have a BMI in excess of 40, though not all bariatric people will be morbidly obese nor will every person with a BMI over 30 be obese. For example, a six-foot-five rugby player weighing 21 stone (BMI = 35) with a muscular build and a good weight distribution might be athletic. In these larger people the waist-to-hip ratio can serve as a more reliable indicator of a weight problem. A ratio of 1.0 or more is consistent with an excess of fat around the waist and the need to lose weight. From a health perspective, maximum safe waist measurements are reported as 40 inches (102 cm) for men and 35 inches (89 cm) for women irrespective of fat distribution.

Hypothesis: A patient with a waist-to-hip ratio of 1.1 is obese.


Hypothesis: A patient with a waist measurement over 40 inches is obese.


Hypothesis: A patient with a BMI of between 25.0 and 29.9 is pre-obese.


Hypothesis: At least one-quarter of obese adults use NHS services.


Premise: Well-regulated, ethical practices should always be an area of primary concern for any business. In an environment where multinational conglomerates predominate, owners of small businesses may feel anonymous enough to become flexible about their code of ethics. However, the increasingly inescapable attention of the media allows an unprecedented number of individuals to access news and information with greater speed than ever before unethical practices can become a matter of public knowledge overnight, with devastating consequences. Codes of ethical practice should apply not only to clients, but to employees, who are just as able to draw inappropriate behaviour on the part of their employers to the public's attention. In today's society, businesses of any size must be able to demonstrate transparency and accountability in their dealings with employees, clients, and the public alike.

Hypothesis: Employees of a company should be subject to ethical codes of practice.


Hypothesis: Unethical practices are only a problem if the public becomes aware of them.


Hypothesis: More people than ever before have access to information about companies' ethical practices.


Premise: Westley Business School Preparation Courses for Students 80% of the students who take our courses are mature students who have not done any formal study for several years. Many of the courses at the Westley Business School require a good knowledge of various skills. If you feel you need some extra preparation before your course, look below and see if any of our preparation courses suit your needs. All courses take place in August, and for enrolled students all the courses listed below are free. Course 1 STATISTICS A grounding in statistics is a must for any prospective business student. This is a one week course (Mon Fri) consisting of one lecture every night. The tutor will ensure that by the end of the course, you will have had a thorough introduction to all the statistical skills that you will need to start your course at Westley Business School. Each lecture runs from 6pm to 9pm. Course 2 ESSAY WRITING This is a self-study pack containing guidance, practice and tests. At the end of the course (it should take about 10 hours of self-study) you will receive a 1 hour tutorial with the essay writing tutor who will go over your work with you. Course 3 BASIC MATHS This is a one-off lecture of 3 hours aimed at reviewing all the basic maths that you will vaguely remember from school! This course is run on a first come, first served basis and there are only 20 places (every Monday in August from 5.45pm 8.45pm) so dont be late. Course 4 COMPUTING This 2 week course (Mon Fri 6.30pm 8.30pm) will give students all the basic computer skills that they will need for their courses at Westley Business School. There are two courses running concurrently with only 10 PLACES in each so book early! NB UNLESS OTHERWISE STATED, YOU MUST BOOK IN ADVANCE FOR THESE COURSES AT THE MAIN WESTLEY BUSINESS SCHOOL RECEPTION

Hypothesis: Students registered at Westley Business College dont have to pay for the preparation course.


Hypothesis: Most students at Westley Business School are older than the average college student.


Hypothesis: All taught courses are held in the Westley Business School main building.


Premise: Westley Central Surgery Information Opening Hours Monday to Friday 8.30 am 6.00 pm Saturday 9.00 am 10.00 am (emergencies only) Surgeries Ten-minute appointments are given, although longer periods can be allocated on request. Morning surgery is between 8.30 am and 11.00 am, and afternoon surgery between 3.00 pm and 5.30 pm. These times may change during holiday periods and for staff training. We will always see you the same day for an urgent problem, although we cannot guarantee that this will be with the doctor of your choice. An urgent appointment is intended for matters that cannot wait until the next available routine appointment. Giving our staff an outline of the nature of the problem may help them organize the most appropriate response. We will often ask the doctor to ring you back to help decide the most appropriate way to deal with your problem. If you are unable to attend an appointment, please let us know so that we can offer the appointment to someone else. Results of Tests If you are asked to phone for results, please ring between 11.30 and 12.30. Please allow at least three working days for the results to be available. X-ray results take two weeks to arrive back at the surgery. Prescriptions Please allow at least two full days notice of your prescription requirements. With every prescription issued a printed sheet is given showing details of all your medicines. Please retain this. When you require a further prescription, please use this sheet as a tick list to request the medicines you require or obtain a request slip from reception. You can come in to order your prescription or post or fax your request. If you would like us to post your prescription to you, please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope. We do not accept telephone requests for repeat prescriptions as this can result in errors. Home Visits If you require a doctor to visit you at home, please ring the surgery before 10.00 am if possible. The doctors usually visit patients between 12.00 pm and 3.00 pm. New Patients To register with the Practice, please attend reception with your medical card if you have it, as well as the details of your previous doctor. You will be encouraged to attend a New Patients Health Check with one of our practice nurses. Emergency calls To speak to the doctor urgently you can ring the main surgery telephone number or ring the emergency mobile phone. For the mobile, please allow 25 seconds for connection. If the mobile phone is in use, or the doctor is in an area of poor reception, your call will be transferred to an answer phone. The emergency doctor will be alerted and will call you back. Practice Area Unfortunately we can only accept registration from patients who live within our practice area. If you move outside this area, you will be asked to register with another doctor. If you are in any doubt as to whether you are in our area, please speak to the reception staff. Charges There is a charge for some medical services that fall outside those provided by the NHS. These services include private sick notes, passport forms, holiday cancellation forms, insurance reports and employment medicals. Some travel vaccinations are also charged for and we charge for issuing a private prescription.

Hypothesis: Ten minutes is the maximum available length for an appointment.


Hypothesis: You cannot order a repeat prescription over the phone.


Hypothesis: If you have had an x-ray, call the surgery no earlier than one week following the date of the x-ray for the result.


Hypothesis: One of the practices four doctors will conduct a New Patients Health Check with any new patients to the practice.


Premise: Whale Strandings When the last stranded whale of a group eventually dies, the story does not end there. A team of researchers begins to investigate, collecting skin samples for instance, recording anything that could help them answer the crucial question: why? Theories abound, some more convincing than others. In recent years, navy sonar has been accused of causing certain whales to strand. It is known that noise pollution from offshore industry, shipping and sonar can impair underwater communication, but can it really drive whales onto our beaches? In 1998, researchers at the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, a Greek non-profit scientific group, linked whale strandings with low- frequency sonar tests being carried out by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). They recorded the stranding of 12 Cuviers beaked whales over 38.2 kilometres of coastline. NATO later admitted it had been testing new sonar technology in the same area at the time as the strandings had occurred. Mass whale strandings involve four or more animals. Typically they all wash ashore together, but in mass atypical strandings (such as the one in Greece), the whales dont strand as a group; they are scattered over a larger area. For humans, hearing a sudden loud noise might prove frightening, but it does not induce mass fatality. For whales, on the other hand, there is a theory on how sonar can kill. The noise can surprise the animal, causing it to swim too quickly to the surface. The result is decompression sickness, a hazard human divers know all too well. If a diver ascends too quickly from a high-pressure underwater environment to a lower-pressure one, gases dissolved in blood and tissue expand and form bubbles. The bubbles block the flow of blood to vital organs, and can ultimately lead to death. Plausible as this seems, it is still a theory and based on our more comprehensive knowledge of land-based animals. For this reason, some scientists are wary. Whale expert Karen Evans is one such scientist. Another is Rosemary Gales, a leading expert on whale strandings. She says sonar technology cannot always be blamed for mass strandings. Its a case-by-case situation. Whales have been stranding for a very long time pre-sonar. And when 80% of all Australian whale strandings occur around Tasmania, Gales and her team must continue in the search for answers. When animals beach next to each other at the same time, the most common cause has nothing to do with humans at all. Theyre highly social creatures, says Gales. When they mass strand its complete panic and chaos. If one of the group strands and sounds the alarm, others will try to swim to its aid, and become stuck themselves. Activities such as sonar testing can hint at when a stranding may occur, but if conservationists are to reduce the number of strandings, or improve rescue operations, they need information on where strandings are likely to occur as well. With this in mind, Ralph James, physicist at the University of Western Australia in Perth, thinks he may have discovered why whales turn up only on some beaches. In 1986 he went to Augusta, Western Australia, where more than 100 false killer whales had beached. I found out from chatting to the locals that whales had been stranding there for decades. So I asked myself, what is it about this beach? From this question that James pondered over 20 years ago, grew the universitys Whale Stranding Analysis Project. Data has since revealed that all mass strandings around Australia occur on gently sloping sandy beaches, some with inclines of less than 0.5%. For whale species that depend on an echolocation system to navigate, this kind of beach spells disaster. Usually, as they swim, they make clicking noises, and the resulting sound waves are reflected in an echo and travel back to them. However, these just fade out on shallow beaches, so the whale doesnt hear an echo and it crashes onto the shore. But that is not all. Physics, it appears, can help with the when as well as the where. The ocean is full of bubbles. Larger ones rise quickly to the surface and disappear, whilst smaller ones called microbubbles can last for days. It is these that absorb whale clicks! Rough weather generates more bubbles than usual, James adds. So, during and after a storm, echolocating whales are essentially swimming blind. Last year was a bad one for strandings in Australia. Can we predict if this or any other year will be any better? Some scientists believe we can. They have found trends which could be used to forecast bad years for strandings in the future. In 2005, a survey by Klaus Vanselow and Klaus Ricklefs of sperm whale strandings in the North Sea even found a correlation between these and the sunspot cycle, and suggested that changes in the Earths magnetic field might be involved. But others are sceptical. Their study was interesting ... but the analyses they used were flawed on a number of levels, says Evans. In the same year, she co-authored a study on Australian strandings that uncovered a completely different trend. We analysed data from 1920 to 2002 ... and observed a clear periodicity in the number of whales stranded each year that coincides with a major climatic cycle. To put it more simply, she says, in the years when strong westerly and southerly winds bring cool water rich in nutrients closer to the Australia coast, there is an increase in the number of fish. The whales follow. So what causes mass strandings? Its probably many different components, says James. And he is probably right. But the point is we now know what many of those components are.

Hypothesis: There is now agreement amongst scientists that changes in the Earths magnetic fields contribute to whale strandings.


Hypothesis: The whales stranded in Greece were found at different points along the coast.


Hypothesis: The aim of the research by the Pelagos Institute in 1998 was to prove that navy sonar was responsible for whale strandings.


Hypothesis: Rosemary Gales has questioned the research techniques used by the Greek scientists.


Hypothesis: According to Gales, whales are likely to try to help another whale in trouble.


Premise: What are you laughing at? We like to think that laughing is the height of human sophistication. Our big brains let us see the humour in a strategically positioned pun, an unexpected plot twist or a clever piece of wordplay. But while joking and wit are uniquely human inventions, laughter certainly is not. Other creatures, including chimpanzees, gorillas, and even rats, chuckle. Obviously, they dont crack up at Homer Simpson or titter at the bosss dreadful jokes, but the fact that they laugh in the first place suggests that sniggers and chortles have been around for a lot longer than we have. It points the way to the origins of laughter, suggesting a much more practical purpose than you might think. There is no doubt that laughing typically involves groups of people. Laughter evolved as a signal to others it almost disappears when we are alone, says Robert Provine, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland. Provine found that most laughter comes as a polite reaction to everyday remarks such as see you later, rather than anything particularly funny. And the way we laugh depends on the company were keeping. Men tend to laugh longer and harder when they are with other men, perhaps as a way of bonding. Women tend to laugh more and at a higher pitch when men are present, possibly indicating flirtation or even submission. To find the origins of laughter, Provine believes we need to look at the play. He points out that the masters of laughing are children, and nowhere is their talent more obvious than in the boisterous antics, and the original context plays, he says. Well-known primate watchers, including Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, have long argued that chimps laugh while at play. The sound they produce is known as a panting laugh. It seems obvious when you watch their behaviour they even have the same ticklish spots as we do. But remove the context, and the parallel between human laughter and a chimps characteristic pant laugh is not so clear. When Provine played a tape of the pant laughs to 119 of his students, for example, only two guessed correctly what it was. These findings underline how chimp and human laughter vary. When we laugh the sound is usually produced by chopping up a single exhalation into a series of shorter with one sound produced on each inward and outward breath. The question is: does this pant laughter have the same source as our own laughter? New research lends weight to the idea that it does. The findings come from Elke Zimmerman, head of the Institute for Zoology in Germany, who compared the sounds made by babies and chimpanzees in response to tickling during the first year of their life. Using sound spectrographs to reveal the pitch and intensity of vocalizations, she discovered that chimp and human baby laughter follow broadly the same pattern. Zimmerman believes the closeness of baby laughter to chimp laughter supports the idea that laughter was around long before humans arrived on the scene. What started simply as a modification of breathing associated with enjoyable and playful interactions has acquired a symbolic meaning as an indicator of pleasure. Pinpointing when laughter developed is another matter. Humans and chimps share a common ancestor that lived perhaps 8 million years ago, but animals might have been laughing long before that. More distantly related primates, including gorillas, laugh, and anecdotal evidence suggests that other social mammals may do too. Scientists are currently testing such stories with a comparative analysis of just how common, laughter is, among animals. So far, though, the most compelling evidence for laughter beyond primates comes from research done by Jaak Panksepp from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, into the ultrasonic chirps produced by rats during play and in response to tickling. All this still doesnt answer the question of why we laugh at all. One idea is that if laughter and tickling originated as a way of sealing the relationship between mother and child. Another is that the reflex response to tickling is protective, alerting us to the presence of crawling creatures that might harm us or compelling us to defend the parts of our bodies that are most vulnerable in hand-to-hand combat. But the idea that has gained most popular in recent years is that laughter in response to tickling is a way for two individuals to signal and test their trust in one another. This hypothesis starts from the observation that although a little tickle can be enjoyable if it goes on too long it can be torture. By engaging in a bout of tickling, we put ourselves at the mercy of another individual, and laughing is a signal that our laughter is what makes it a reliable signal of trust according to Tom Flamson, a laughter researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles. Even in rats, laughter, tickle, play, and trust are linked. Rats chirp a lot when they play, says Flamson. These chirps can be aroused by tickling. And they get bonded to us as a result, which certainly seems like a show of trust. Well never know which animal laughed the first laugh, or why. But we can be sure it wasnt in response to a prehistoric joke. The funny thing is that while the origins of laughter are probably quite serious, we owe human laughter and our language-based humour to the same unique skill. While other animals pant, we alone can control our breath well enough to produce the sound of laughter. Without that control, there would also be no speech and no jokes to endure.

Hypothesis: Primates lack sufficient breath control to be able to produce laughs the way humans do.


Hypothesis: Chimpanzees produce laughter in a wider range of situations than rats do


Hypothesis: Both men and women laugh more when they are with members of the same sex.


Premise: What determines whether a product will succeed or fail? In 1990, six out of ten new products lasted for less than three months in the marketplace. In 2007, two out of ten succeeded. These products are all promoted and great emphasis is placed on brand and logo. Still, most fail and manufacturers must go a bit further if they are to improve the prospects of their products success. Your iPod (you almost certainly have one) does not have a logo on it but it is instantly recognizable from its shape and feel. What about your mobile phone? There is a good chance it is a Nokia, and when it rings you immediately recognize the tone, which is a part of the Nokia brand. An incredible 60 per cent of people recognize it.

Hypothesis: Given that the worlds population is around 8 billion people, the passage suggests that approaching 5 billion people will recognize the Nokia ring tone.


Hypothesis: The authors strategy is to look at success stories.


Hypothesis: The passage is making the point that product success depends on more than a catchy brand name and a memorable logo.


Premise: What do we mean by being talented or gifted? The most obvious way is to look at the work someone does and if they are capable of significant success, label them as talented. The purely quantitative route percentage definition looks not at individuals, but at simple percentages, such as the top five per cent of the population, and labels them by definition as gifted. This definition has fallen from favour, eclipsed by the advent of IQ tests, favoured by luminaries such as Professor Hans Eysenck, where a series of written or verbal tests of general intelligence leads to a score of intelligence. The IQ test has been eclipsed in turn. Most people studying intelligence and creativity in the new millennium now prefer a broader definition, using a multifaceted approach where talents in many areas are recognised rather than purely concentrating on academic achievement. If we are therefore assuming that talented, creative or gifted individuals may need to be assessed across a range of abilities, does this mean intelligence can run in families as a genetic or inherited tendency? Mental dysfunction such as schizophrenia can, so is an efficient mental capacity passed on from parent to child? Animal experiments throw some light on this question, and on the whole area of whether it is genetics, the environment or a combination of the two that allows for intelligence and creative ability. Different strains of rats show great differences in intelligence or rat reasoning. If these are brought up in normal conditions and then through a maze to reach a food goal, the bright strain make far fewer wrong turns that the dull ones. But if the environment is made dull and boring the number of errors becomes equal. Return the rats to an exciting maze and the discrepancy returns as before but is much smaller. In other words, a dull rat in a stimulating environment will almost do as well as a bright rat who is bored in a normal one. This principle applies to humans too someone may be born with innate intelligence, but their environment probably has the final say over whether they become creative or even a genius. Evidence now exists that most young children, if given enough opportunities and encouragement, are able to achieve significant and sustainable levels of academic or sporting prowess. Bright or creative children are often physically very active at the same time, and so may receive more parental attention as a result almost by default in order to ensure their safety. They may also talk earlier, and this, in turn, breeds parental interest. This can sometimes cause problems with other siblings who may feel jealous even though they themselves may be bright. Their creative talents may be undervalued and so never come to fruition. Two themes seem to run through famously creative families as a result. The first is that the parents were able to identify the talents of each child, and nurture and encourage these accordingly but in an even-handed manner. Individual differences were encouraged, and friendly sibling rivalry was not seen as a particular problem. If the father is, say, a famous actor, there is no undue pressure for his children to follow him onto the boards, but instead their chosen interests are encouraged. There need not even by any obvious talent in such a family since there always needs to be someone who sets the family career in motion, as in the case of the Sheen acting dynasty. Martin Sheen was the seventh of ten children born to a Spanish immigrant father and an Irish mother. Despite intense parental disapproval he turned his back on entrance exams to university and borrowed cash from a local priest to start a fledgling acting career. His acting successes in films such as Badlands and Apocalypse Now made him one of the most highly-regarded actors of the 1970s. Three sons Emilio Estevez, Ramon Estevez and Charlie Sheen have followed him into the profession as a consequence of being inspired by his motivation and enthusiasm. A stream seems to run through creative families. Such children are not necessarily smothered with love by their parents. They feel loved and wanted, and are secure in their home, but are often more surrounded by an atmosphere of work and where following a calling appears to be important. They may see from their parents that it takes time and dedication to be master of a craft, and so are in less of a hurry to achieve for themselves once they start to work. The generation of creativity is complex: it is a mixture of genetics, the environment, parental teaching and luck that determines how successful or talented family members are. This last point luck is often not mentioned where talent is concerned but plays an undoubted part. Mozart, considered by many to be the finest composer of all time, was lucky to be living in an age that encouraged the writing of music. He was brought up surrounded by it, his father was a musician who encouraged him to the point of giving up his job to promote his child genius, and he learnt musical composition with frightening speed the speed of a genius. Mozart himself simply wanted to create the finest music ever written but did not necessarily view himself as a genius he could write sublime music at will, and so often preferred to lead a hedonistic lifestyle that he found more exciting than writing music to order. Albert Einstein and Bill Gates are two more examples of people whose talents have blossomed by virtue of the times they were living in. Einstein was a solitary, somewhat slow child who had affection at home but whose phenomenal intelligence emerged without any obvious parental input. This may have been partly due to the fact that at the start of the 20th Century a lot of the Newtonian laws of physics were being questioned, leaving a fertile ground for ideas such as his to be developed. Bill Gates may have had the creative vision to develop Microsoft, but without the new computer age dawning at the same time he may never have achieved the position on the world stage he now occupies.

Hypothesis: The importance of luck in the genius equation tends to be ignored.


Hypothesis: Einstein and Gates would have achieved success in any era.


Hypothesis: Intelligence tests have now been proved to be unreliable.


Hypothesis: The brother or sister of a gifted older child may fail to fulfil their own potential.


Hypothesis: Mozart was acutely aware of his own remarkable talent.


Premise: What is Meaning The end, product of education, yours and mine and everybodys, is the total pattern of reactions and possible reactions we have inside ourselves. If you did not have within you at this moment the pattern of reactions that we call the ability to read. you would see here only meaningless black marks on paper. Because of the trained patterns of response, you are (or are not) stirred to patriotism by martial music, your feelings of reverence are aroused by symbols of your religion, you listen more respectfully to the health advice of someone who has MD after his name than to that of someone who hasnt. What I call here a pattern of reactions, then, is the sum total of the ways we act in response to events, to words, and to symbols. Our reaction patterns or our semantic habits, are the internal and most important residue of whatever years of education or miseducation we may have received from our parents conduct toward us in childhood as well as their teachings, from the formal education we may have had, from all the lectures we have listened to, from the radio programs and the movies and television shows we have experienced, from all the books and newspapers and comic strips we have read, from the conversations we have had with friends and associates, and from all our experiences. If, as the result of all these influences that make us what we are, our semantic habits are reasonably similar to those of most people around us, we are regarded as normal, or perhaps dull. If our semantic habits are noticeably different from those of others, we are regarded as individualistic or original. or, if the differences are disapproved of or viewed with alarm, as crazy. Semantics is sometimes defined in dictionaries as the science of the meaning of words which would not be a bad definition if people didnt assume that the search for the meanings of words begins and ends with looking them up in a dictionary. If one stops to think for a moment, it is clear that to define a word, as a dictionary does, is simply to explain the word with more words. To be thorough about defining, we should next have to define the words used in the definition, then define the words used in defining the words used in the definition and so on. Defining words with more words, in short, gets us at once into what mathematicians call an infinite regress. Alternatively, it can get us into the kind of run-around we sometimes encounter when we look up impertinence and find it defined as impudence, so we look up impudence and find it defined as impertinence. Yetand here we come to another common reaction patternpeople often act as if words can be explained fully with more words. To a person who asked for a definition of jazz, Louis Armstrong is said to have replied, Man. when you got to ask what it is, youll never get to know, proving himself to be an intuitive semanticist as well as a great trumpet player. Semantics, then, does not deal with the meaning of words as that expression is commonly understood. P. W. Bridgman, the Nobel Prize winner and physicist, once wrote, The true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not by what he says about it. He made an enormous contribution to science by showing that the meaning of a scientific term lies in the operations, the things done, that establish its validity, rather than in verbal definitions. Here is a simple, everyday kind of example of operational definition. If you say, This table measures six feet in length, you could prove it by taking a foot rule, performing the operation of laying it end to end while counting, One... two... three... four... But if you sayand revolutionists have started uprisings with just this statement Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains! what operations could you perform to demonstrate its accuracy or inaccuracy? But let us carry this suggestion of operationalism outside the physical sciences where Bridgman applied it, and observe what operations people perform as the result of both the language they use and the language other people use in communicating to them. Here is a personnel manager studying an application blank. He comes to the words Education: Harvard University, and drops the application blank in the wastebasket (thats the operation) because, as he would say if you asked him, I dont like Harvard men. This is an instance of meaning at workbut it is not a meaning that can be found in dictionaries. If I seem to be taking a long time to explain what semantics is about, it is because I am trying, in the course of explanation, to introduce the reader to a certain way of looking at human behavior. I say human responses because, so far as we know, human beings are the only creatures that have, over and above that biological equipment which we have in common with other creatures, the additional capacity for manufacturing symbols and systems of symbols. When we react to a flag, we are not reacting simply to a piece of cloth, but to the meaning with which it has been symbolically endowed. When we react to a word, we are not reacting to a set of sounds, but to the meaning with which that set of sounds has been symbolically endowed. A basic idea in general semantics, therefore, is that the meaning of words (or other symbols) is not in the words, but in our own semantic reactions. If I were to tell a shockingly obscene story in Arabic or Hindustani or Swahili before an audience that understood only English, no one would blush or be angry; the story would be neither shocking nor obscene-induced, it would not even be a story. Likewise, the value of a dollar bill is not in the bill, but in our social agreement to accept it as a symbol of value. If that agreement were to break down through the collapse of our government, the dollar bill would become only a scrap of paper. We do not understand a dollar bill by staring at it long and hard. We understand it by observing how people act with respect to it. We understand it by understanding the social mechanisms and the loyalties that keep it meaningful. Semantics is therefore a social study, basic to all other social studies.

Hypothesis: Some statements are incapable of being proved or disproved.


Hypothesis: Flags and words are eliciting responses of the same reason.


Hypothesis: A story can be entertaining without being understood.


Hypothesis: Meaning that is personal to individuals is less worthy to study than shared meanings.


Premise: What is a novel? A novel is a marketable commodity, of the class collectively termed luxuries, as not contributing directly to the support of life or the maintenance of health. The novel, therefore, is an intellectual artistic luxury in that it can be of no use to a man when he is at work, but may conduce to peace of mind and delectation during his hours of idleness. Probably, no one denies that the first object of the novel is to amuse and interest the reader. But it is often said that the novel should instruct as well as afford amusement, and the novel-with-a-purpose is the realisation of this idea. The purpose-novel, then, proposes to serve two masters, besides procuring a reasonable amount of bread and butter for its writer and publisher, it proposes to escape from my definition of the novel in general and make itself an intellectual moral lesson instead of an intellectual artistic luxury. It constitutes a violation of the unwritten contract tacitly existing between writer and reader. A man buys what purports to be a work of fiction, a romance, a novel, a story of adventure, pays his money, takes his book home, prepares to enjoy it at his ease, and discovers that he has paid a dollar for somebodys views on socialism, religion, or the divorce laws.

Hypothesis: According to the author, a writer should write a novel with the sole purpose of amusement


Hypothesis: The writer of the passage regards a novel which has a strong view on socialism as their biggest hate.


Premise: What is it like to run a large supermarket? Jill Insley finds out You cant beat really good service. Ive been shopping in the Thamesmead branch of supermarket chain Morrisons, in south-east London, and Ive experienced at first hand, the stores latest maxim for improving the shopping experience help, offer, thank. This involves identifying customers who might need help, greeting them, asking what they need, providing it, thanking them and leaving them in peace. If they dont look like they want help, theyll be left alone. But if theyre standing looking lost and perplexed, a member of staff will approach them. Staff are expected to be friendly to everyone. My checkout assistant has certainly said something to amuse the woman in front of me, shes smiling as she leaves. Adrian Perriss, manager of the branch, has discussed the approach with each of his 387 staff. He says its about recognising that someone needs help, not being a nuisance to them. When hes in another store, hes irritated by someone saying, Can I help you? when hes only just walked in to have a quick look at the products. How anyone can be friendly and enthusiastic when they start work at dawn beats me. The store opens at 7 am, Monday to Saturday, meaning that some staff, including Perriss, have to be here at 6 am to make sure its clean, safe and stocked up for the morning rush. Sometimes he walks in at 6 am and thinks theyre never going to be ready on time but they always are. Theres so much going on overnight 20 people working on unloading three enormous trailers full of groceries. Perriss has worked in supermarkets since 1982, when he became a trolley boy on a weekly salary of 76. It was less money than my previous job, but I loved it. It was different and diverse. I was doing trolleys, portering, bread, cakes, dairy and general maintenance. After a period in the produce department, looking after the fruit and vegetables, he was made produce manager, then assistant store manager, before reaching the top job in 1998. This involved intensive training and assessment through the companys future store manager programme, learning how to analyse and prioritise sales. wastage, recruitment and many other issues. Perriss first stop as store manager was at a store which was closed soon afterwards though he was not to blame. Despite the disappointing start, his career went from strength to strength and he was put in charge of launching new stores and heading up a concept store, where the then new ideas of preparing and cooking pizzas in store, and having a proper florist, and fruit and vegetable markets were Mailed. All Morrisons managers from the whole country spent three days there to see the new concept. That was hard work, he says, long days, seven days a week, for about a year. Although he oversees a store with a large turnover, there is a strongly practical aspect to Perrisss job. As we walk around, he chats to all the staff while checking the layout of their counters and the quality of the produce. He examines the baking potato shelf and rejects three, one that has split virtually in half and two that are beginning to go green. He then pulls out a lemon that looks fine to me. When I ask why, he picks up a second lemon and says: Close your eyes and just feel and tell me which you would keep. I do and realise that while one is firm and hard, the other is going a bit squashy. Despite eagle-eyed Perriss pulling out fruit and veg that most of us would buy without a second thought, the wastage each week is tiny: produce worth 4,200 is marked down for a quick sale, and only 400-worth is scrapped. This, he explains, is down to Morrisons method of ordering, still done manually rather than by computer. Department heads know exactly how much theyve sold that day and how much theyre likely to sell the next, based on sales records and allowing for influences such as the weather. Perriss is in charge of 1,000 man-hours a week across the store. To help him, he has a key team of four, who each have direct responsibility for different departments. He is keen to hear what staff think. He recently held a talent day, inviting employees interested in moving to a new job within the store to come and talk to him about why they thought they should be promoted, and discuss how to go about it. We had twenty-three people come through the door, people wanting to talk about progression, he says. What do they need to do to become a supervisor? Twenty-three people will be better members of staff as a result of that talk. His favourite department is fish, which has a 4 m-long counter run by Debbie and Angela, who are busy having a discussion about how to cook a particular fish with a customer. But it is one of just 20 or so departments around the store and Perriss admits the pressure of making sure he knows whats happening on them all can be intense. You have to do so much and there could be something wrong with every single one, every day, he says. Youve got to minimise those things and shrink them into perspective. Youve got to love the job. And Perriss certainly does.

Hypothesis: Perriss was surprised how many staff asked about promotion on the talent day.


Hypothesis: Perriss encourages staff to offer help to all customers.


Hypothesis: Perriss is sometimes worried that customers will arrive before the store is ready for them.


Hypothesis: When Perriss first became a store manager, he knew the store was going to close.


Hypothesis: On average, produce worth 4,200 is thrown away every week.


Premise: What is it that draws us to these creatures? This inhuman place makes human monsters, wrote Stephen King in his novel The Shining. Many academics agree that monsters lurk in the deepest recesses, they prowl through our ancestral minds appearing in the half-light, under the bed or at the bottom of the sea. They dont really exist, but they play a huge role in our mindscapes, in our dreams, stories, nightmares, myths and so on, says Matthias Classen, assistant professor of literature and media at Aarhus University in Denmark, who studies monsters in literature. Monsters say something about human psychology, not the world. One Norse legend talks of the Kraken, a deep sea creature that was the curse of fishermen. If sailors found a place with many fish, most likely it was the monster that was driving them to the surface. If it saw the ship it would pluck the hapless sailors from the boat and drag them to a watery grave. This terrifying legend occupied the mind and pen of the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson too. In his short 1830 poem The Kraken he wrote: Below the thunders of the upper deep, / Far far beneath in the abysmal sea, / His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep / The Kraken sleepeth. The deeper we travel into the ocean, the deeper we delve into our own psyche. And when we can go no further there lurks the Kraken. Most likely the Kraken is based on a real creature the giant squid. The huge mollusc takes pride of place as the personification of the terrors of the deep sea. Sailors would have encountered it at the surface, dying, and probably thrashing about. It would have made a weird sight, about the most alien thing you can imagine, says Edith Widder, CEO at the Ocean Research and Conservation Association. It has eight lashing arms and two slashing tentacles growing straight out of its head and its got serrated suckers that can latch on to the slimiest of prey and its got a parrot beak that can rip flesh. Its got an eye the size of your head, its got a jet propulsion system and three hearts that pump blue blood. The giant squid continued to dominate stories of sea monsters with the famous 1870 novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne. Vernes submarine fantasy is a classic story of puny man against a gigantic squid. The monster needed no embellishment this creature was scary enough, and Verne incorporated as much fact as possible into the story, says Emily Alder from Edinburgh Napier University. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and another contemporaneous book, Victor Hugos Toilers of the Sea, both tried to represent the giant squid as they might have been actual zoological animals, much more taking the squid as a biological creature than a mythical creature. It was a given that the squid was vicious and would readily attack humans given the chance. That myth wasnt busted until 2012, when Edith Widder and her colleagues were the first people to successfully film giant squid under water and see first-hand the true character of the monster of the deep. They realised previous attempts to film squid had failed because the bright lights and noisy thrusters on submersibles had frightened them away. By quietening down the engines and using bioluminescence to attract it, they managed to see this most extraordinary animal in its natural habitat. It serenely glided into view, its body rippled with metallic colours of bronze and silver. Its huge, intelligent eye watched the submarine warily as it delicately picked at the bait with its beak. It was balletic and mesmeric. It could not have been further from the gnashing, human-destroying creature of myth and literature. In reality this is a gentle giant that is easily scared and pecks at its food. Another giant squid lies peacefully in the Natural History Museum in London, in the Spirit Room, where it is preserved in a huge glass case. In 2004 it was caught in a fishing net off the Falkland Islands and died at the surface. The crew immediately froze its body and it was sent to be preserved in the museum by the Curator of Molluscs, Jon Ablett. It is called Archie, an affectionate short version of its Latin name Architeuthis dux. It is the longest preserved specimen of a giant squid in the world. It really has brought science to life for many people, says Ablett. Sometimes I feel a bit overshadowed by Archie, most of my work is on slugs and snails but unfortunately most people dont want to talk about that! And so today we can watch Archies graceful relative on film and stare Archie herself (she is a female) eye-to-eye in a museum. But have we finally slain the monster of the deep? Now we know there is nothing to be afraid of, can the Kraken finally be laid to rest? Probably not says Classen. We humans are afraid of the strangest things. They dont need to be realistic. Theres no indication that enlightenment and scientific progress has banished the monsters from the shadows of our imaginations. We will continue to be afraid of very strange things, including probably sea monsters. Indeed we are. The Kraken made a fearsome appearance in the blockbuster series Pirates of the Caribbean. It forced Captain Jack Sparrow to face his demons in a terrifying face-to-face encounter. Pirates needed the monstrous Kraken, nothing else would do. Or, as the German film director Werner Herzog put it, What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.

Hypothesis: Werner Herzog suggests that Kraken is essential to the ocean.


Hypothesis: According to Classen, people can be scared both by imaginary and real monsters.


Hypothesis: Giant squid was caught alive in 2004 and brought to the museum.


Hypothesis: Previous attempts on filming the squid had failed due to the fact that the creature was scared.


Hypothesis: Jon Ablett admits that he likes Archie.


Hypothesis: Matthias Classen is unsure about the possibility of monsters existence.


Hypothesis: Kraken is probably based on an imaginary animal.


Premise: What is patriotism? Is it love of ones birthplace, the place of childhoods recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in child- like naivety, we would watch the fleeting clouds and wonder why we too could not run so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one an eye should be, piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or the place where wewould sit at mothers knee, enraptured by wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a happy, joyous, and playful childhood? If that were patriotism, few American men of today could be called upon to be patriotic, since the place of play has been turned into a factory, mill, and mine, while deafening sounds of machinery have replaced the music of the birds. Nor can we still hear the tales of great deeds, for the stories our mothers tell today are but those of sorrow, tears and grief. What, then, is patriotism? Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels, said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman.

Hypothesis: The author believes patriotism as being the love for the spot where one grew up and had many happy memories.


Hypothesis: Few Americans of today are patriotic


Premise: What qualities and attributes make a political leader successful? A recent poll asked voters what they looked for in the ideal political leader; a good economic strategy perhaps, a willingness to admit the past mistakes of ones party or the ability to be likeable as a person. The popular answer seems to be credibility; voters want someone they can trust. How does this translate into a political strategy? To begin with, the poll suggests confusion surrounds the very basics of politics; what do the parties stand for anymore? The past few years has seen such a convergence in political ideals that the once clear blue conservative and red labour lines are now somewhat purple. To be credible, to be a successful political leader, you mustnt be afraid of hanging the banners and stating your policy. By this, and not doing a political 180 after the election, is the key to number 10.

Hypothesis: Conservative and Labour parties have become more distinct.


Hypothesis: conservative and Labour parties have become similar


Hypothesis: Conservative and Labour party are currently merging


Hypothesis: Conservative and Labour MPs have become geographically closer.


Premise: What the Managers Really Do? When students graduate and first enter the workforce, the most common choice is to find an entry-level position. This can be a job such as an unpaid internship, an assistant, a secretary, or a junior partner position. Traditionally, we start with simpler jobs and work our way up. Young professionals start out with a plan to become senior partners, associates, or even managers of a workplace. However, these promotions can be few and far between, leaving many young professionals unfamiliar with management experience. An important step is understanding the role and responsibilities of a person in a managing position. Managers are organisational members who are responsible for the work performance of other organisational members. Managers have formal authority to use organisational resources and to make decisions. Managers at different levels of the organisation engage in different amounts of time on the four managerial functions of planning, organising, leading, and controlling. However, as many professionals already know, managing styles can be very different depending on where you work. Some managing styles are strictly hierarchical. Other managing styles can be more casual and relaxed, where the manager may act more like a team member rather than a strict boss. Many researchers have created a more scientific approach in studying these different approaches to managing. In the 1960s, researcher Henry Mintzberg created a seminal organisational model using three categories. These categories represent three major functional approaches, which are designated as interpersonal, informational and decisional. Introduced Category 1: INTERPERSONAL ROLES. Interpersonal roles require managers to direct and supervise employees and the organisation. The figurehead is typically a top of middle manager. This manager may communicate future organisational goals or ethical guidelines to employees at company meetings. They also attend ribbon-cutting ceremonies, host receptions, presentations and other activities associated with the figurehead role. A leader acts as an example for other employees to follow, gives commands and directions to subordinates, makes decisions, and mobilises employee support. They are also responsible for the selection and training of employees. Managers must be leaders at all levels of the organisation; often lower-level managers look to top management for this leadership example. In the role of liaison, a manager must coordinate the work of others in different work units, establish alliances between others, and work to share resources. This role is particularly critical for middle managers, who must often compete with other managers for important resources, yet must maintain successful working relationships with them for long time periods. Introduced Category 2: INFORMATIONAL ROLES. Informational roles are those in which managers obtain and transmit information. These roles have changed dramatically as technology has improved. The monitor evaluates the performance of others and takes corrective action to improve that performance. Monitors also watch for changes in the environment and within the company that may affect individual and organisational performance. Monitoring occurs at all levels of management. The role of disseminator requires that managers inform employees of changes that affect them and the organisation. They also communicate the companys vision and purpose. Introduced Category 3: DECISIONAL ROLES. Decisional roles require managers to plan strategy and utilise resources. There are four specific roles that are decisional. The entrepreneur role requires the manager to assign resources to develop innovative goods and services, or to expand a business. The disturbance handler corrects unanticipated problems facing the organisation from the internal or external environment. The third decisional role, that of resource allocator, involves determining which work units will get which resources. Top managers are likely to make large, overall budget decisions, while middle managers may make more specific allocations. Finally, the negotiator works with others, such as suppliers, distributors, or labor unions, to reach agreements regarding products and services. Although Mintzbergs initial research in 1960s helped categorise manager approaches, Mintzberg was still concerned about research involving other roles in the workplace. Minstzberg considered expanding his research to other roles, such as the role of disseminator, figurehead, liaison and spokesperson. Each role would have different special characteristics, and a new categorisation system would have to be made for each role to understand it properly. While Mintzbergs initial research was helpful in starting the conversation, there has since been criticism of his methods from other researchers. Some criticisms of the work were that even though there were multiple categories, the role of manager is still more complex. There are still many manager roles that are not as traditional and are not captured in Mintzbergs original three categories. In addition, sometimes, Mintzbergs research was not always effective. The research, when applied to real-life situations, did not always improve the management process in real-life practice. These two criticisms against Mintzbergs research method raised some questions about whether or not the research was useful to how we understand managers in todays world. However, even if the criticisms against Mintzbergs work are true, it does not mean that the original research from the 1960s is completely useless. Those researchers did not say Mintzbergs research is invalid. His research has two positive functions to the further research. The first positive function is Mintzberg provided a useful functional approach to analyse management. And he used this approach to provide a clear concept of the role of manager to the researcher. When researching human behavior, it is important to be concise about the subject of the research. Mintzbergs research has helped other researchers clearly define what a manager is, because in real-life situations, the manager is not always the same position title. Mintzbergs definitions added clarity and precision to future research on the topic. The second positive function is Mintzbergs research could be regarded as a good beginning to give a new insight to further research on this field in the future. Scientific research is always a gradual process. Just because Mintzbergs initial research had certain flaws, does not mean it is useless to other researchers. Researchers who are interested in studying the workplace in a systematic way have older research to look back on. A researcher doesnt have to start from the very beginning older research like Mintzbergs have shown what methods work well and what methods are not as appropriate for workplace dynamics. As more young professionals enter the job market, this research will continue to study and change the way we think about the modern workplace.

Hypothesis: Young professionals can easily know management experience in the workplace.


Hypothesis: Mintzbergs theory is valuable for future studies.


Hypothesis: All managers do the same work.


Hypothesis: Mintzbergs theory broke well-established notions about managing styles.


Hypothesis: Mintzberg got a large amount of research funds for his contribution.


Premise: What to do in a fire? Fire drills are a big part of being safe in school: They prepare you for what you need to do in case of a fire. But what if there was a fire where you live? Would you know what to do? Talking about fires can be scary because no one likes to think about people getting hurt or their things getting burned. But you can feel less worried if you are prepared. Its a good idea for families to talk about what they would do to escape a fire. Different families will have different strategies. Some kids live in one-story houses and other kids live in tall buildings. Youll want to talk about escape plans and escape routes, so lets start there. Know Your Way Out An escape plan can help every member of a family get out of a burning house. The idea is to get outside quickly and safely. Smoke from a fire can make it hard to see where things are, so its important to learn and remember the different ways out of your home. How many exits are there? How do you get to them from your room? Its a good idea to have your family draw a map of the escape plan. Its possible one way out could be blocked by fire or smoke, so youll want to know where other ones are. And if you live in an apartment building, youll want to know the best way to the stairwell or other emergency exits. Safety Steps If youre in a room with the door closed when the fire breaks out, you need to take a few extra steps: Check to see if theres heat or smoke coming in the cracks around the door. (Youre checking to see if theres fire on the other side. ) If you see smoke coming under the door dont open the door! If you dont see smoke touch the door. If the door is hot or very warm dont open the door! If you dont see smoke and the door is not hot then use your fingers to lightly touch the doorknob. If the doorknob is hot or very warm dont open the door! If the doorknob feels cool, and you cant see any smoke around the door, you can open the door very carefully and slowly. When you open the door, if you feel a burst of heat or smoke pours into the room, quickly shut the door and make sure it is really closed. If theres no smoke or heat when you open the door, go toward your escape route exit.

Hypothesis: If you open the door and everything seems fine, go straight to the exit.


Hypothesis: Hot door means you shouldnt open it to escape.


Hypothesis: If youre stuck in a room, and see smoke coming into your room, you should open the door and ran to the exit.


Hypothesis: You should mark different ways out of your home on the map.


Hypothesis: It is important to have a strategy before escaping the fire.


Premise: What you need to know about Culture Shock Most people who move to a foreign country or culture may experience a period of time when they feel very homesick and have a lot of stress and difficulty functioning in the new culture. This feeling is often called culture shock and it is important to understand and learn how to cope with culture shock if you are to adapt successfully to your new homes culture. First of all, its important to know that culture shock is normal. Everyone in a new situation will go through some form of culture shock, and the extent of which they do is determined by factors such as the difference between cultures, the degree to which someone is anxious to adapt to a new culture and the familiarity that person has to the new culture. If you go, for example, to a culture that is far different from your own, youre likely to experience culture shock more sharply than those who move to a new culture knowing the language and the behavioural norms of the new culture. There are four general stages of cultural adjustment, and it is important that you are aware of these stages and can recognise which stage you are in and when so that you will understand why you feel the way you do and that any difficulties you are experience are temporary, a process you are going through rather than a constant situation. The first stage is usually referred to as the excitement stage or the honeymoon stage. Upon arriving in a new environment, youll be interested in the new culture, everything will seem exciting, everyone will seem friendly and helpful and youll be overwhelmed with impressions. During this stage you are merely soaking up the new landscape, taking in these impressions passively, and at this stage you have little meaningful experience of the culture. But it isnt long before the honeymoon stage dissolves into the second stage sometimes called the withdrawal stage. The excitement you felt before changes to frustration as you find it difficult to cope with the problems that arise. It seems that everything is difficult, the language is hard to learn, people are unusual and unpredictable, friends are hard to make, and simple things like shopping and going to the bank are challenges. It is at this stage that you are likely to feel anxious and homesick, and you will probably find yourself complaining about the new culture or country. This is the stage which is referred to as culture shock. Culture shock is only temporary, and at some point, if you are one of those who manage to stick it out, youll transition into the third stage of cultural adjustment, the recovery stage. At this point, youll have a routine, and youll feel more confident functioning in the new culture. Youll start to feel less isolated as you start to understand and accept the way things are done and the way people behave in your new environment. Customs and traditions are clearer and easier to understand. At this stage, youll deal with new challenges with humour rather than anxiety. The last stage is the home or stability stage this is the point when people start to feel at home in the new culture. At this stage, youll function well in the new culture, adopt certain features and behaviours from your new home, and prefer certain aspects of the new culture to your own culture. There is, in a sense, a fifth stage to this process. If you decide to return home after a long period in a new culture, you may experience what is called reverse culture shock. This means that you may find aspects of your own culture foreign because you are so used to the new culture that you have spent so long adjusting to. Reverse culture shock is usually pretty mild you may notice things about your home culture that you had never noticed before, and some of the ways people do things may seem odd. Reverse culture shock rarely lasts for very long.

Hypothesis: Some people will find the process of adapting to a new country easier than others.


Hypothesis: By the third stage, people do not experience any more problems with the new culture.


Hypothesis: In the fourth stage, people speak new language fluently.


Hypothesis: People can ease culture shock by learning about the language and customs before they go to the new culture.


Hypothesis: In the first stage, people will have a very positive impression of the new culture.


Hypothesis: Many people will leave the new culture while they are in the second stage.


Hypothesis: Reverse culture shock is as difficult to deal with as culture shock.


Hypothesis: Knowing about these four stages will help people adjust to a new culture more quickly.


Hypothesis: Culture shock is another name for cultural adjustment.


Hypothesis: The first stage is usually the shortest.


Premise: What's so funny? John McCrone reviews recent research on humor The joke comes over the headphones: 'Which side of a dog has the most hair? The left. ' No, not funny. Try again. 'Which side of a dog has the most hair? The outside. ' Hah! The punchline is silly yet fitting, tempting a smile, even a laugh. Laughter has always struck people as deeply mysterious, perhaps pointless. The writer Arthur Koestler dubbed it the luxury reflex: 'unique in that it serves no apparent biological purpose. ' Theories about humour have an ancient pedigree. Plato expressed the idea that humor is simply a delighted feeling of superiority over others. Kant and Freud felt that joke-telling relies on building up a psychic tension which is safely punctured by the ludicrousness of the punchline. But most modern humor theorists have settled on some version of Aristotle's belief that jokes are based on a reaction to or resolution of incongruity, when the punchline is either a nonsense or, though appearing silly, has a clever second meaning. Graeme Ritchie, a computational linguist in Edinburgh, studies the linguistic structure of jokes in order to understand not only humor but language understanding and reasoning in machines. He says that while there is no single format for jokes, many revolve around a sudden and surprising conceptual shift. A comedian will present a situation followed by an unexpected interpretation that is also apt. So even if a punchline sounds silly, the listener can see there is a clever semantic fit and that sudden mental 'Aha! ' is the buzz that makes us laugh. Viewed from this angle, humor is just a form of creative insight, a sudden leap to a new perspective. However, there is another type of laughter, the laughter of social appeasement and it is important to understand this too. Play is a crucial part of development in most young mammals. Rats produce ultrasonic squeaks to prevent their scuffles turning nasty. Chimpanzees have a 'play-face' a gaping expression accompanied by a panting 'ah ah' noise. In humans, these signals have mutated into smiles and laughs. Researchers believe social situations, rather than cognitive events such as jokes, trigger these instinctual markers of play or appeasement. People laugh on fairground rides or when tickled to flag a play situation, whether they feel amused or not. Both social and cognitive types of laughter tap into the same expressive machinery in our brains, the emotion and motor circuits that produce smiles and excited vocalisations. However, if cognitive laughter is the product of more general thought processes, it should result from more expansive brain activity. Psychologist Vinod Goel investigated humour using the new technique of 'single event' functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). An MRI scanner uses magnetic fields and radio waves to track the changes in oxygenated blood that accompany mental activity. Until recently, MRI scanners needed several minutes of activity and so could not be used to track rapid thought processes such as comprehending a joke. New developments now allow half-second 'snapshots' of all sorts of reasoning and problem-solving activities. Although Goel felt being inside a brain scanner was hardly the ideal place for appreciating a joke, he found evidence that understanding a joke involves a widespread mental shift. His scans showed that at the beginning of a joke the listener's prefrontal cortex lit up, particularly the right prefrontal believed to be critical for problem solving. But there was also activity in the temporal lobes at the side of the head (consistent with attempts to rouse stored knowledge) and in many other brain areas. Then when the punchline arrived, a new area sprang to life the orbital prefrontal cortex. This patch of brain tucked behind the orbits of the eyes is associated with evaluating information. Making a rapid emotional assessment of the events of the moment is an extremely demanding job for the brain, animal or human. Energy and arousal levels may need to be retuned in the blink of an eye. These abrupt changes will produce either positive or negative feelings. The orbital cortex, the region that becomes active in Goel's experiment, seems the best candidate for the site that feeds such feelings into higher-level thought processes, with its close connections to the brain's sub-cortical arousal apparatus and centres of metabolic control. All warm-blooded animals make constant tiny adjustments in arousal in response to external events, but humans, who have developed a much more complicated internal life as a result of language, respond emotionally not only to their surroundings, but to their own thoughts. Whenever a sought-for answer snaps into place, there is a shudder of pleased recognition. Creative discovery being pleasurable, humans have learned to find ways of milking this natural response. The fact that jokes tap into our general evaluative machinery explains why the line between funny and disgusting, or funny and frightening, can be so fine. Whether a joke gives pleasure or pain depends on a person's outlook. Humor may be a luxury, but the mechanism behind it is no evolutionary accident. As Peter Derks, a psychologist at William and Mary College in Virginia, says: 'I like to think of humour as the distorted mirror of the mind. It's creative, perceptual, analytical and lingual. If we can figure out how the mind processes humor, then we'll have a pretty good handle on how it works in general. '

Hypothesis: Current thinking on humour has largely ignored Aristotle's view on the subject.


Hypothesis: Graeme Ritchie's work links jokes to artificial intelligence.


Hypothesis: Plato believed humour to be a sign of above-average intelligence.


Hypothesis: Kant believed that a successful joke involves the controlled release of nervous energy.


Hypothesis: Arthur Koestler considered laughter biologically important in several ways.


Hypothesis: Most comedians use personal situations as a source of humour.


Hypothesis: Chimpanzees make particular noises when they are playing.


Premise: What's the purpose of gaining knowledge? 'I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any subject. ' That was the founder's motto for Cornell University, and it seems an apt characterization of the different university, also in the USA, where I currently teach philosophy. A student can prepare for a career in resort management, engineering, interior design, accounting, music, law enforcement, you name it. But what would the founders of these two institutions have thought of a course called Arson for Profit ? I kid you not: we have it on the books. Any undergraduates who have met the academic requirements can sign up for the course in our program in 'fire science'. Naturally, the course is intended for prospective arson investigators, who can learn all the tricks of the trade for detecting whether a fire was deliberately set, discovering who did it, and establishing a chain of evidence for effective prosecution in a court of law. But wouldn't this also be the perfect course for prospective arsonists to sign up for? My point is not to criticize academic programs in fire science: they are highly welcome as part of the increasing professionalization of this and many other occupations. However, it's not unknown for a firefighter to torch a building. This example suggests how dishonest and illegal behavior, with the help of higher education, can creep into every aspect of public and business life. I realized this anew when I was invited to speak before a class in marketing, which is another of our degree programs. The regular instructor is a colleague who appreciates the kind of ethical perspective I can bring as a philosopher. There are endless ways I could have approached this assignment, but I took my cue from the title of the course: 'Principles of Marketing'. It made me think to ask the students, 'Is marketing principled? ' After all, a subject matter can have principles in the sense of being codified, having rules, as with football or chess, without being principled in the sense of being ethical. Many of the students immediately assumed that the answer to my question about marketing principles was obvious: no. Just look at the ways in which everything under the sun has been marketed; obviously it need not be done in a principled (=ethical) fashion. Is that obvious? I made the suggestion, which may sound downright crazy in light of the evidence, that perhaps marketing is by definition principled. My inspiration for this judgement is the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who argued that any body of knowledge consists of an end (or purpose) and a means. Let us apply both the terms 'means' and 'end' to marketing. The students have signed up for a course in order to learn how to market effectively. But to what end? There seem to be two main attitudes toward that question. One is that the answer is obvious: the purpose of marketing is to sell things and to make money. The other attitude is that the purpose of marketing is irrelevant: Each person comes to the program and course with his or her own plans, and these need not even concern the acquisition of marketing expertise as such. My proposal, which I believe would also be Kant's, is that neither of these attitudes captures the significance of the end to the means for marketing. A field of knowledge or a professional endeavor is defined by both the means and the end; hence both deserve scrutiny. Students need to study both how to achieve X, and also what X is. It is at this point that 'Arson for Profit' becomes supremely relevant. That course is presumably all about means: how to detect and prosecute criminal activity. It is therefore assumed that the end is good in an ethical sense. When I ask fire science students to articulate the end, or purpose, of their field, they eventually generalize to something like, 'The safety and welfare of society, ' which seems right. As we have seen, someone could use the very same knowledge of means to achieve a much less noble end, such as personal profit via destructive, dangerous, reckless activity. But we would not call that firefighting. We have a separate word for it: arson. Similarly, if you employed the 'principles of marketing' in an unprincipled way, you would not be doing marketing. We have another term for it: fraud. Kant gives the example of a doctor and a poisoner, who use the identical knowledge to achieve their divergent ends. We would say that one is practicing medicine, the other, murder.

Hypothesis: The 'Arson for Profit' course would be useful for people intending to set fire to buildings.


Hypothesis: It is difficult to attract students onto courses that do not focus on a career.


Hypothesis: Fire science courses are too academic to help people to be good at the job of firefighting.


Hypothesis: The writer's fire science students provided a detailed definition of the purpose of their studies.


Premise: Whats in Blood? Blood is the most specialised fluid within living animals, playing an absolutely critical role. It symbolises life (new blood), health (get your blood running), personality (good or bad blood), and family (your bloodline). This red fluid itself is something which most people would rather not see, yet it contains such a complex soup of proteins, sugars, ions, hormones, gases, and basic cellular components that it is certainly worth considering in some detail. By volume, half of blood is the liquid part, called plasma. The rest comprises specialised components, the main one being red blood cells (technically known as erythrocytes). These transport oxygen molecules throughout the body, and also give blood its colour (from the hemoglobin protein within, which turns red when combined with oxygen). Red blood cells, as with all cells in the human body, have a limited operating life. They are produced within the marrow of bones, principally the larger ones, and live for about four months before they fall inactive, to be then reabsorbed by the spleen and liver, with waste products absorbed into the urine. This contrasts with the other main cells of human blood: the white blood cells, technically known as leukocytes. Similarly produced in the bone marrow, they are active only for three or four days, yet they are essential in defending the body against infections. White blood cells come in many different types, each designed to deal with a different sort of invader bacteria, virus, fungus, or parasite. When one of these enters the body, the white blood cells quickly determine its nature, then, after mustering sufficient numbers of a specific type (the period in which you are sick), they launch themselves into the fight, enveloping each individual invasive cell, and breaking it down (leading to recovery). That leaves the last main component of blood: platelets. Their technical name is thrombocytes, and they are much smaller than red and white blood cells. Also circulating freely, they are responsible for clotting the blood, and this is necessary to heal both external and internal injuries. Again, they are produced in the bone marrow, and have the interesting ability to change shape. There are several diseases related to the breakdown in the regulation of their numbers. If too low, excessive bleeding can occur, yet if too high, internal clotting may result, causing potentially catastrophic blockages in parts of the body and medical ailments we know as strokes, heart attacks, and embolisms. Bloods complexity presents particular difficulties in the advent of emergency transfusions. These are avoided whenever possible in order to lower the risk of reactions due to blood incompatibility. Unexpected antigens can trigger antibodies to attack blood components, with potentially lethal results. Thus, if transfusions are to take place, a thorough knowledge and classification of blood is essential, yet with 30 recognised blood-group systems, containing hundreds of antigens, this presents quite a challenge. The ABO system is the most important. On top of this is the Rhesus factor, which is not as simple as positive or negative (as most people think), but comprises scores of antigens. These can, however, be clustered together into groups which cause similar responses, creating some order. Of course, the simplest system to avoid adverse transfusion reactions is for patients to receive their own blood for example, in a series of blood donations in anticipation of an operation scheduled some months in advance. The second best system is to undertake cross-matching, which involves simply mixing samples of the patients blood with the donors, then checking microscopically for clumping a key sign of incompatibility. Both of these systems are obviously impractical in an emergency situation, which is why meticulous testing, documentation, and labeling of blood are necessary. In a true emergency, a blood bank is needed, with an array of various types of blood on hand. Hence, blood donations must be a regular occurrence among a significant segment of the population. In the developed world, unpaid volunteers provide most of the blood for the community, whereas in less developed nations, families or friends are mostly involved. In the era of HIV and other insidious blood-borne diseases, potential donors are carefully screened and tested, and a period of about two months is recommended before successive whole blood donations. Given the vital role which blood plays, it is strange to think that for almost 2000 years bloodletting was a widespread medical practice. It was based on the belief that blood carried humours, whose imbalances resulted in medical illnesses. Bleeding a patient was supposed to remove an undesirable excess of one of these. Furthermore, the fact that blood circulated around the body was unknown. It was instead assumed to be quickly created, and equally quickly exhausted of its value, after which it could stagnant unhealthily in the bodily extremities. Although the logic was there, it goes without saying that very few patients responded positively to such treatment.

Hypothesis: Bleeding people was a painful process.


Hypothesis: In poorer countries, family members often donate blood.


Hypothesis: Blood cross-matching can be done without special equipment.


Premise: Whats the purpose of gaining knowledge? I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any subject That was the founders motto for Cornell University, and it seems an apt characterization of the different university, also in the USA, where I currently teach philosophy. A student can prepare for a career in resort management, engineering, interior design, accounting, music, law enforcement, you name it. But what would the founders of these two institutions have thought of a course called Arson for Profit? I kid you not: we have it on the books. Any undergraduates who have met the academic requirements can sign up for the course in our program in fire science. Naturally, the course is intended for prospective arson investigators, who can learn all the tricks of the trade for detecting whether a fire was deliberately set, discovering who did it, and establishing a chain of evidence for effective prosecution in a court of law. But wouldnt this also be the perfect course for prospective arsonists to sign up for? My point is not to criticize academic programs in fire science: they are highly welcome as part of the increasing professionalization of this and many other occupations. However, its not unknown for a firefighter to torch a building. This example suggests how dishonest and illegal behavior, with the help of higher education, can creep into every aspect of public and business life. I realized this anew when I was invited to speak before a class in marketing, which is another of our degree programs. The regular instructor is a colleague who appreciates the kind of ethical perspective I can bring as a philosopher. There are endless ways I could have approached this assignment, but I took my cue from the title of the course: Principles of Marketing. It made me think to ask the students, Is marketing principled? After all, a subject matter can have principles in the sense of being codified, having rules, as with football or chess, without being principled in the sense of being ethical. Many of the students immediately assumed that the answer to my question about marketing principles was obvious: no. Just look at the ways in which everything under the sun has been marketed; obviously it need not be done in a principled (=ethical) fashion. Is that obvious? I made the suggestion, which may sound downright crazy in light of the evidence, that perhaps marketing is by definition principled. My inspiration for this judgement is the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who argued that any body of knowledge consists of an end (or purpose) and a means. Let us apply both the terms means and end to marketing. The students have signed up for a course in order to learn how to market effectively. But to what end? There seem to be two main attitudes toward that question. One is that the answer is obvious: the purpose of marketing is to sell things and to make money. The other attitude is that the purpose of marketing is irrelevant: Each person comes to the program and course with his or her own plans, and these need not even concern the acquisition of marketing expertise as such. My proposal, which I believe would also be Kants, is that neither of these attitudes captures the significance of the end to the means for marketing. A field of knowledge or a professional endeavor is defined by both the means and the end; hence both deserve scrutiny. Students need to study both how to achieve X, and also what X is. It is at this point that Arson for Profit becomes supremely relevant. That course is presumably all about means: how to detect and prosecute criminal activity. It is therefore assumed that the end is good in an ethical sense. When I ask fire science students to articulate the end, or purpose, of their field, they eventually generalize to something like, The safety and welfare of society, which seems right. As we have seen, someone could use the very same knowledge of means to achieve a much less noble end, such as personal profit via destructive, dangerous, reckless activity. But we would not call that firefighting. We have a separate word for it: arson. Similarly, if you employed the principles of marketing in an unprincipled way, you would not be doing marketing. We have another term for it: fraud. Kant gives the example of a doctor and a poisoner, who use the identical knowledge to achieve their divergent ends. We would say that one is practicing medicine, the other, murder.

Hypothesis: The writers fire science students provided a detailed definition of the purpose of their studies.


Hypothesis: Fire science are too academic to help people to be good at the job of firefighting.


Hypothesis: The Arson for Profit course would be useful for people intending to set fire to buildings.


Hypothesis: It is difficult to attract students onto courses that do no focus on a career.


Premise: When Christianity was first established by law, a corrupt form of Latin had become the common language of all the western parts of Europe. The service of the Church accordingly, and the translation of the Bible which was read in churches, were both in that corrupted Latin which was the common language of the country. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin gradually ceased to be the language of any part of Europe. However, although Latin was no longer understood anywhere by the great body of the people, Church services still continued to be performed in that language. Two different languages were thus established in Europe: a language of the priests and a language of the people.

Hypothesis: Latin continued to be used in church services because of the continuing influence of Rome.


Hypothesis: Priests spoke a different language from the common people.


Hypothesis: After the fall of the Roman Empire, people who had previously spoken Latin returned to their original languages.


Hypothesis: Prior to the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin had been established by law as the language of the Church in Western Europe.


Premise: When any company moves from a sales to a marketing approach, it is not just a case of re-titling the Sales Director as Marketing Director and doubling the advertising budget. It requires a complete reorientation in thinking and a revolution in how a company organises and practises its business activities. whereas selling focuses on the needs of the seller, marketing focuses on the needs of the buyer. Whereas selling is preoccupied with the seller s need to convert his or her product into cash, marketing is preoccupied with the idea of identifying and hence satisfying the needs of the customer. However, subscribing to a philosophy of marketing, even though an important first step, is not the same as putting that philosophy into practice.

Hypothesis: Advertising budgets are normally doubled when a company moves over to a marketing approach.


Premise: When any company moves from a sales to a marketing approach, it is not just a case of re-titling the Sales Director as Marketing Director and doubling the advertising budget. It requires a complete reorientation in thinking and a revolution in how a company organizes and practices its business activities. Whereas selling focuses on the needs of the seller, marketing focuses on the needs of the buyer. Whereas selling is preoccupied with the sellers need to convert his or her product into cash, marketing is preoccupied with the idea of identifying and hence satisfying the needs of the customer. However, subscribing to a philosophy of marketing, even though an important first step, is not the same as putting that philosophy into practice.


Premise: When conversations flow We spend a large part of our daily life talking with other people and, consequently, we are very accustomed to the art of conversing. But why do we feel comfortable in conversations that have flow, but get nervous and distressed when a conversation is interrupted by unexpected silences? To answer this question we will first look at some of the effects of conversational flow. Then we will explain how flow can serve different social needs. The positive consequences of conversational flow show some similarities with the effects of processing fluency. Research has shown that processing fluency the ease with which people process information influences peoples judgments across a broad range of social dimensions. For instance, people feel that when something is easily processed, it is more true or accurate. Moreover, they have more confidence in their judgments regarding information that came to them fluently, and they like things that are easy to process more than things that are difficult to process. Research indicates that a speaker is judged to be more knowledgeable when they answer questions instantly; responding with disfluent speech markers such as uh or urn or simply remaining silent for a moment too long can destroy that positive image. One of the social needs addressed by conversational flow is the human need for synchrony to be in sync or in harmony with one another. Many studies have shown how people attempt to synchronize with their partners, by coordinating their behavior. This interpersonal coordination underlies a wide array of human activities, ranging from more complicated ones like ballroom dancing to simply walking or talking with friends. In conversations, interpersonal coordination is found when people adjust the duration of their utterances and their speech rate to one another so that they can enable turn-taking to occur, without talking over each other or experiencing awkward silences. Since people are very well-trained in having conversations, they are often able to take turns within milliseconds, resulting in a conversational flow of smoothly meshed behaviors. A lack of flow is characterized by interruptions, simultaneous speech or mutual silences. Avoiding these features is important for defining and maintaining interpersonal relationships. The need to belong has been identified as one of the most basic of human motivations and plays a role in many human behaviors. That conversational flow is related to belonging may be most easily illustrated by the consequences of flow disruptions. What happens when the positive experience of flow is disrupted by, for instance, a brief silence? We all know that silences can be pretty awkward, and research shows that even short disruptions in conversational flow can lead to a sharp rise in distress levels. In movies, silences are often used to signal non-compliance or confrontation (Piazza, 2006). Some researchers even argue that silencing someone is one of the most serious forms of exclusion. Group membership is of elementary importance to our wellbeing and because humans are very sensitive to signals of exclusion, a silence is generally taken as a sign of rejection. In this way, a lack of flow in a conversation may signal that our relationship is not as solid as we thought it was. Another aspect of synchrony is that people often try to validate their opinions to those of others. That is, people like to see others as having similar ideas or worldviews as they have themselves, because this informs people that they are correct and their worldviews are justified. One way in which people can justify their worldviews is by assuming that, as long as their conversations run smoothly, their interaction partners probably agree with them. This idea was tested by researchers using video observations. Participants imagined being one out of three people in a video clip who had either a fluent conversation or a conversation in which flow was disrupted by a brief silence. Except for the silence, the videos were identical. After watching the video, participants were asked to what extent the people in the video agreed with each other. Participants who watched the fluent conversation rated agreement to be higher than participants watching the conversation that was disrupted by a silence, even though participants were not consciously aware of the disruption. It appears that the subjective feeling of being out of sync informs people of possible disagreements, regardless of the content of the conversation. Because people are generally so well- trained in having smooth conversations, any disruption of this flow indicates that something is wrong, either interpersonally or within the group as a whole. Consequently, people who do not talk very easily may be incorrectly understood as being less agreeable than those who have no difficulty keeping up a conversation. On a societal level, one could even imagine that a lack of conversational flow may hamper the integration of immigrants who have not completely mastered the language of their new country yet. In a similar sense, the ever- increasing number of online conversations may be disrupted by misinterpretations and anxiety that are produced by insuperable delays in the Internet connection. Keeping in mind the effects of conversational flow for feelings of belonging and validation may help one to be prepared to avoid such misunderstandings in future conversations.

Hypothesis: People assess information according to how readily they can understand it.


Hypothesis: Delays in online chat fail to have the same negative effect as disruptions that occur in natural conversation.


Hypothesis: People who talk less often have clearer ideas than those who talk a lot.


Hypothesis: Video observations have often been used to assess conversational flow.


Hypothesis: A quick response to a question is thought to show a lack of knowledge.


Hypothesis: Conversation occupies much of our time.