Questões de Concursos Vocabulário Vocabulary

Hypatia (born c. 355 CE—died March 415, Alexandria) was a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who lived in a very turbulent era in Alexandria’s history. She is the earliest female mathematician of whose life and work reasonably detailed knowledge exists. Hypatia was the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, himself a mathematician and astronomer and the last attested member of the Alexandrian Museum. Hypatia continued his program, which was essentially a determined effort to preserve the Greek mathematical and astronomical heritage in (1) extremely difficult times. She is credited with commentaries on geometry, number theory, as well as an (2) astronomical table. These works, the only ones she is listed as having written, have been lost, although there have been attempts to (3) reconstruct aspects of them. She was, in her time, the world’s leading mathematician and astronomer, the only woman for (4) whom such claim can be made.

She was also a popular teacher and lecturer on philosophical topics of a less-specialist nature, attracting many loyal students and large audiences. Her philosophy was Neoplatonist and was thus seen as “pagan” at a time of bitter religious conflict between Christians (both orthodox and “heretical”), Jews, and pagans. Her philosophy also led her to embrace a life of dedicated virginity. The climate of tolerance lapsed, and shortly afterward Hypatia became the victim of a particularly brutal murder at the hands of a gang of Christian zealots.

The affair made Hypatia a powerful feminist symbol and a figure of affirmation for intellectual endeavor in the face of ignorant prejudice. Her intellectual accomplishments alone were quite ______ to merit the preservation and respect of her name, but, sadly, the manner of her death added to it an even greater emphasis.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica. Adapted.

Bermuda Triangle in the last 500 years, over 1000 ships and aircraft have entered the Bermuda Triangle and mysteriously vanished. It is the deadliest place on Earth for planes and boats. The Bermuda Triangle is an area of water about 500,000 square miles in size. One tip of the triangle starts from Miami, Florida and extends northeast towards the island of Bermuda. The next side of the triangle then runs straight south towards the Puerto Rico and then turns back northeast up to Florida.

The story of Flight 19 is one of the most incredible cases of Bermuda Triangle disappearances. In the early afternoon of December 5, 1945, five American military aircraft with 14 men aboard departed from a naval base in Florida on a training flight. These aircraft were called Avengers, and they were among the sturdiest and most reliable aircraft in the world at the time. Commander Charles Taylor, an experienced pilot, was supposed to lead the flight east from the Florida coastline, which would take them into the Bermuda Triangle. The sky was clear, and it was a perfect day for flying but problems began about 90 minutes after takeoff.

Taylor radioed back to his base at 3:40 p.m. that he was lost, and his plane’s compass was not working. This should not have been a problem as the normal procedure for going home was to simply fly west until they returned to the U.S. coast. the men of Flight 19, however, never returned home and the airplanes seemed to have simply vanished. The final radio messages from Flight 19 were very odd. One pilot stated, “Everything looks strange. Even the ocean.” Another one said, “It looks like we’re entering white water. We’re completely lost.” A rescue plane flew into the Bermuda Triangle to try and find the men, but it crashed and all 13 men on board were killed. Later on, a Navy official stated that Flight 19 “flew off to Mars.”

Flight 19’s disappearance is just one of many in the long history of the Bermuda Triangle mystery. Is there a scientific explanation for these disappearances or are there supernatural forces at work in the area? The number of unanswered questions about the fate of the planes only adds to the mystery. Did Taylor, an experienced pilot, really make a simple navigational mistake? If so, why didn’t any of the other men in his flight see the error and correct it? Why has the wreckage of the planes and the men’s bodies never been found after all these years? The US Navy investigated the incident in 1946 and reported that the Flight 19 incident was a “disappearance” with the chilling words “cause unknown” added later on.

Something in the water? Why we love shark films

From the Steven Spielberg classic Jaws, to predators stalking the Seine in Under Paris, there is no shortage of shark films.

Hollywood and audiences love them, seemingly never tiring of the suspense, gore and terror.

There are prehistoric giant sharks in The Meg, genetically engineered ones in Deep Blue Sea, and sharks high on cocaine in the ingeniously named Cocaine Shark.

Even Donald Trump is a fan – he was reportedly due to play the US president in a Sharknado film, before becoming the actual president.

I became hooked on them after watching James Bond film Thunderball, where the villain keeps sharks in his swimming pool.

It led to a lifelong interest in shark films, as well as an irrational fear of swimming pools, even ones filled with chlorine inside leisure centres.

Hayley Easton Street is the British director behind a new shark film, Something in the Water, which tells the story of a group of women stranded at sea.

She explains that, as fan of shark films herself, she “absolutely wanted” to make the movie.

So why are shark movies so popular? “It's the fear of what could be going on with the unknown of [the sea]” she tells BBC News.

“Just being stuck in the middle of the ocean is scary enough. You're trapped in something else's world and anything could happen.”

But despite Street's love of shark films, she did not want the ones in hers to be portrayed as marine serial killers.

“We kill 100 million sharks every year” she notes.

The director was also aware that the release of Jaws led to a huge rise in the hunting of sharks, partly because they had been portrayed as merciless killers.

“As much as I love shark films, I love sharks.”

“I was really conscious of that, because it's easy for people to start seeing them as killing machines... or monsters, which they are not.”

She adds: “I feel it's more scary to have the realistic theme of it, that, you know, if you are out in the ocean and there are sharks and they do mistake you for something else, they will kill you.”

Despite the huge success of Jaws, Spielberg has said he “truly regrets the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film”.

Spielberg is not the only person concerned about Hollywood's portrayal of sharks and the impact it continues to have.

US marine biologist Andriana Fragola dedicates herself to educating people about sharks, often sharing videos of her diving with them.

She says they are “misunderstood predators” that have been harmed by movies and the media.

Andriana tells me that she has watched Netflix's new shark film, Under Paris, and was not impressed.

“Their whole thing was it's about conservation, about studying them, but then the sharks are still eating people.”

“So it's giving a little bit more of a rounded education and a little bit more depth to the story, it's not just people swimming at the beach and getting attacked and eaten.”

“But the bottom line and what people can draw from the movie is that sharks are still really dangerous to people and they're just going to continuously hunt and eat people.”

“If that was true, we would be reduced as a human species. Everyone who goes to the beach, they would be threatened.”

Andriana says the perception of sharks causes a real issue for conservation.

“It's a huge problem because people don't want to protect something that they're scared of.”

“The perception from people is that they're dangerous to humans so we should eradicate them, and that's obviously a huge problem for conservation and getting people to want to empathise or sympathise with sharks and wanting to actually protect them.”

“It's unfortunate because 100 million sharks are killed every year, and globally sharks kill fewer than 10 people every year.”

“We're really focused on the sharks being the monsters and them being out to get us. In reality it's the opposite.”

It is unlikely that Hollywood will stop making shark films, or we will stop watching them.

But the figures show that far from being the serial killers of the sea, sharks are actually much more likely to be the victims of humans.

As fashions in language teaching come and go, the teacher in the classroom needs reassurance that there is some bedrock beneath the shifting sands. Once solidly founded on the bedrock, like the sea anemone, the teacher can sway to the rhythms of any tides or currents, without the trauma of being swept away purposelessly.

Adapted from: Rivers, Wilga M. Communicating Naturally in a Second Language: Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press, 1992. p. 373.

Gabriele Tinti’s Hungry Ghosts is a cycle of 51 poems written in collaboration with the photographer Roger Ballen, whose photographic negatives are reproduced in the book. The images are mostly terrifying, in keeping with the otherworldly inclination of the poems. This bilingual edition includes Tinti’s original Italian poems with English translations by David Graham, interspersed with Greek lines taken from inscriptions found on archaeological objects and from ancient Greek texts.

The book is inspired by the Petavatthu, a Theravada Buddhist scripture that includes stories about the realm of the “hungry ghosts,” a category of supernatural beings ubiquitous in East and South Asian religions, with section headings such as “Abandoned Ghosts,” “Protectors,” “Guardians,” and “Hungry Ghosts.” T he poems are quite short and try to emulate the obscure, esoteric quality of scriptural language, though they struggle, at times, under the weight of too many venerable references drawn from both Buddhist and Greek traditions.

Internet:<poetryfoundation.org>(adapted).

Extraterrestrial tongues

The challenge of imagining alien communication is highlighted in the film Arrival (2016), where linguists confront a language strikingly different from any on Earth. While fictional alien languages like Klingon (Star Trek) often resemble human languages with variations in sound or syntax, the possibilities for extraterrestrial tongues are far more diverse. To truly grasp the potential for alien linguistic systems, we must consider the fundamental components of language itself: signs, structure, semantics, and pragmatics.

The first level, signs, encompasses the means of expression, which could extend beyond spoken words and written symbols to include gestures, smells (as in animal communication), or even electrical impulses. Structure, the second level, involves the organization of language, including grammar and syntax. While we might initially assume alien languages would share structural similarities with our own, they could radically differ, potentially lacking familiar elements like nouns or verbs, or employing entirely novel grammatical categories, perhaps akin to the way maps convey information.

Semantics, the third level, deals with meaning. Here, the problem of untranslatability arises. While some differences in meaning between human languages exist (e.g., the German word "Fernweh"), alien languages might present more fundamental challenges. If aliens perceive and categorize the world in fundamentally different ways, their language might express concepts we struggle to even grasp.

Despite these obstacles, communication may still be possible. Shared needs, such as describing the world or giving commands, could provide a basis for finding points of connection between alien and human languages. Pragmatics, the fourth level, concerns how language is used in context, including metaphors and social conventions. Differences at this level, particularly when combined with semantic differences, as illustrated by the Tamarian language in Star Trek: The Next Generation, can further complicate understanding.

Ultimately, contemplating the possibilities of alien communication pushes us to expand our understanding of language itself. It encourages us to move beyond our "anthropocentric bubble" and consider that alien languages might possess levels or structures we haven't yet imagined, potentially transforming our perspectives on consciousness, intelligence, and what it means to communicate.

Aeon, April 9th, 2025,(Adaptado)

Philipp Ritter keeps his eyes fixed on the deer, pulls the trigger and hits the animal directly in the heart with one shot. It has not noticed anything and within a few moments the deer collapses and lies still. Ritter said that killing is never pleasant for him. He loves nature. The well-being of the forest and the animals are important to him. Hunters, like Ritter, make sure that nature is in balance. If there are too many deer, for example, the trees get damaged. For most of them, hunting is a passion. They treat the animals with respect and take just as many of them as necessary. Ritter has thought a lot about how he can eat meat with a clear conscience. He decided that if he wanted to eat it, he had to be ready to kill it. He started with fishing. It was difficult for him to kill his first fish. But he was also somehow proud. But should a person be able to eat meat without having to kill the animal they eat? Because that, of course, is not the way most people today get their meat. People have gradually moved away from hunting through the intermediate stages of farming and individual butchering to today’s industrial processing of meat, in order to give consumers the most convenience. Nowadays, it is possible to walk into a shop and buy a nicely packaged piece of meat at a cheap price. It is easy to forget that behind every piece of meat is a life that has come to an end.

Clocking out at 5 p.m. on the dot, only doing your assigned daily tasks, limiting chats with colleagues and not working overtime. These are the distinctive features of "quiet quitting," a term coined to describe how people are approaching their jobs and professional lives differently to manage burnout.

The phrase, which isn't actually intended to lead to a resignation, exploded into the popular lexicon in 2022 when a TikTok video went viral. The creator, Zaid Khan, said in the video "I recently learned about this term 'quiet quitting,' where you're not outright quitting your job, but you're quitting the idea of going above and beyond." Nonetheless, “quiet quitting” is a misnomer, at least according to Karen K. Ho, a freelance business and culture reporter. She said that the term doesn't account for the fact that people are watching their grocery bills, fuel costs and housing prices go up, often without so much as a salary increase. "You're literally stagnating as a result of not earning more, not being promoted – and that's why a lot of people are leaving jobs," she completed.

While the words "quiet quitting" are loaded, evoking images of a slacker or ne'er-do-well for some, others say that the approach frees up time to spend with family and friends or to take care of oneself. In short, it's a renewed commitment to life beyond the workplace. On the other hand, the term “quiet quitting” has also received criticism, even from those who generally favor the idea behind it.

However, while the term "quiet quitting" may be a new invention, the mentality behind it is not. The phrase "work to rule," for example, describes a labor action in which employees strictly perform the work laid out in their contract, without taking on additional work. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a major economic movement, The Great Resignation, which saw people leaving their jobs or switching professions in droves, as they re-evaluated their relationship with work during a lifechanging health crisis.

A May 2022 survey by RBC Insurance suggested that more than one-third of recently retired Canadians aged 55-75 had retired sooner than they planned. Another third decided to retire sooner because of the pandemic. Moreover, Statistics Canada reported that the third quarter of 2021 saw a 60% increase in job vacancies compared to pre-pandemic levels in the country.

Both Quiet Quitting and The Great Resignation indicate a marked cultural shift from the early and mid-2010s when "hustle culture" paved the way to "grinding" and "girl-bossing" – two ideas that prioritized work over everything else, with the belief that such effort made employees more desirable to managers, therefore helping them climb up the corporate ladder faster and generating more income.

In addition, it is important to highlight that employees have been re-evaluating how much time they spend commuting, working overtime and generally investing in low-pay, low-reward jobs. It seems they have realized that they work in systems where they are constantly immersed in a hustle culture – which has been repeatedly shown to be only beneficial for corporations and their managers, through bonuses, through increased productivity, through increased revenue and profits and the like.

Furthermore, some employees are advocating for policies, benefits and working conditions that strengthen work-life balance. But critics say it doesn't work as well as it should, with a glaring loophole that allows employers to take advantage by vaguely wording their policies.

Adapted from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/quiet-quitting-workerdisengagement-1.6560226 Last Updated: August 25, 2022