1.

Harnessing the power of ocean Waves

The power of ocean waves can be harnessed to generate electricity using a variety of
technologies. One method is to use a device called a wave energy converter, which captures
the
kinetic energy of waves and converts it into electrical energy.

There are several types of wave energy converters, including point absorbers, oscillating water
columns, and attenuators. Point absorbers are floating devices that move up and down with the
waves, while oscillating water columns are stationary structures that use the motion of the
waves
to force air through a turbine, generating electricity. Attenuators are long, snake-like devices
that
float on the surface of the water and use the motion of the waves to drive hydraulic pumps.

Wave energy has several advantages over other forms of renewable energy. For example,
unlike
solar and wind power, wave energy is predictable and consistent, with waves occurring
regularly
and reliably. Additionally, wave energy has a high power density, meaning that it can produce
large amounts of energy from a relatively small device.

However, there are also challenges to harnessing wave energy, including the high costs of
building and maintaining wave energy converters, as well as the potential environmental impact
on marine life and ecosystems. Despite these challenges, research and development in wave
energy technology is ongoing, with the hope of one day providing a reliable source of clean
energy from the power of the ocean.
2.Words vs deeds in equal employment opportunity by
Anne vens
Equal employment opportunity (EEO) refers to the principle that all individuals should have
equal access to employment opportunities without discrimination based on certain protected
characteristics such as race, gender, religion, national origin, age, and disability. While
organizations may claim to promote EEO, the question is whether their words are backed by
their deeds.

Anne Vens' argument may be that organizations need to go beyond merely espousing their
commitment to EEO in their mission statements or company policies. Rather, they must
demonstrate their commitment to EEO by taking tangible actions that promote equal access
and opportunities for all individuals.

For instance, an organization that claims to promote diversity and inclusion must ensure that its
hiring and promotion practices are unbiased and that individuals from underrepresented groups
are given equal consideration. Additionally, the organization should provide training and
development opportunities to individuals from diverse backgrounds to help them advance in
their careers.

Vens may also argue that organizations should establish clear metrics for measuring progress
toward EEO goals and hold managers and leaders accountable for meeting those targets. By
doing so, organizations can demonstrate their commitment to EEO and ensure that their words
are backed by concrete actions.

In summary, Anne Vens may argue that words alone are not sufficient to promote EEO in
organizations. Rather, organizations must take tangible actions that demonstrate their
commitment to EEO and ensure that their practices are aligned with their stated values.

Dear Tyran Bennett,

I hope this email finds you well. My name is Carmen Behlsten and I am reaching out to you
regarding the project we discussed during our meeting last week.

As a reminder, we talked about the new marketing campaign for our upcoming product launch.
I believe that our team can create a strong and effective strategy that will help us to achieve our
goals.

In order to get started, I would like to schedule another meeting with you and the rest of the
team to discuss the specific details and timeline for the project. Please let me know your
availability for the next week so that we can schedule a time that works for everyone.

Additionally, if you have any further thoughts or ideas regarding the project, please do not
hesitate to share them with me. I value your input and look forward to working with you on this
project.

Thank you for your time and I hope to hear back from you soon.
Best regards,
Carmen Behlsten
3.Make Election Day a National Holiday: Why We Need to Prioritize
Voting Rights
In the United States, the right to vote is considered a fundamental principle of democracy.
However, despite its importance, many Americans face significant barriers to exercising this
right, such as voter ID laws, gerrymandering, and long lines at polling places. To ensure that
every citizen has a fair and equal opportunity to participate in our electoral process, we need to
make Election Day a national holiday.

Currently, Election Day is held on a Tuesday, which can be difficult for many people to vote due
to work or school schedules, family responsibilities, transportation issues, or other obstacles.
By designating Election Day as a federal holiday, we could remove some of these barriers and
make it easier for millions of Americans to cast their ballots.

Moreover, making Election Day a national holiday would send a powerful message about the
value of civic engagement and the importance of voting rights. It would show that we recognize
the vital role that every citizen plays in shaping our democracy, and that we are committed to
protecting and expanding the right to vote for all.

Some critics argue that a holiday would be too expensive or disruptive, or that it would not
necessarily increase voter turnout. However, these objections overlook the long-term benefits
of a more inclusive and participatory democracy. By making it easier and more convenient for
people to vote, we could increase voter turnout and engagement, reduce the influence of
special
interests and wealthy donors, and strengthen the legitimacy of our electoral system.

In addition to making Election Day a national holiday, we should also take other steps to protect
and expand voting rights, such as:

Automatic voter registration for all eligible citizens, with opt-out options for those who prefer
not to register.

Early voting and no-excuse absentee voting, to provide more flexible and accessible options for
casting ballots.

Proportional representation and independent redistricting, to ensure that every vote counts and
that districts are drawn fairly and transparently.

Public financing of elections and strict limits on campaign contributions, to reduce the influence
of money in politics and give ordinary citizens a greater voice.

As we approach the next election cycle, let us remember that democracy is not a spectator
sport, but a participatory one. Let us prioritize voting rights and take bold action to make our
electoral system more inclusive and democratic. Let us make Election Day a national holiday,
and let us ensure that every citizen has the opportunity to exercise their right to vote.
4.Don Quixote
At this point they came in sight of thirty forty windmills that there are on plain, and as soon as
Don Quixote saw them he said to his squire, "Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we
could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or
more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay,
and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes; for this is righteous warfare, and it
is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth."

"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.

"Those thou seest there," answered his master, "with the long arms, and some have them
nearly two leagues long."

"Look, your worship," said Sancho; "what we see there are not giants but windmills, and what
seem to be their arms are the sails that turned by the wind make the millstone go."

"It is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that thou art not used to this business of adventures;
those are giants; and if thou art afraid, away with thee out of this and betake thyself to prayer
while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."

So saying, he gave the spur to his steed Rocinante, heedless of the cries his squire Sancho
sent after him, warning him that most certainly they were windmills and not giants he was going
to attack. He, however, was so positive they were giants that he neither heard the cries of
Sancho, nor perceived, near as he was, what they were, but made at them shouting, "Fly not,
cowards and vile beings, for a single knight attacks you."

A slight breeze at this moment sprang up, and the great sails began to move, seeing which Don
Quixote exclaimed, "Though ye flourish more arms than the giant Briareus, ye have to reckon
with me."

So saying, and commending himself with all his heart to his lady Dulcinea, imploring her to
support him in such a peril, with lance in rest and covered by his buckler, he charged at
Rocinante's fullest gallop and fell upon the first mill that stood in front of him; but as he drove
his lance-point into the sail the wind whirled it round with such force that it shivered the lance to
pieces, sweeping with it horse and rider, who went rolling over on the plain, in a sorry condition.
Sancho hastened to his assistance as fast as his ass could go, and when he came up found
him unable to move, with such a shock had Rocinante fallen with him.

"God bless me!" said Sancho, "did I not tell your worship to mind what you were about, for they
were only windmills? and no one could have made any mistake about it but one who had
something of the same kind in his head."

"Hush, friend Sancho," replied Don Quixote, "the fortunes of war more than any other are liable
to frequent fluctuations; and moreover I think, and it is the truth, that that same sage Friston
who carried off my study and books, has turned these giants into mills in order to rob me of the
glory of vanquishing them, such is the enmity he bears me; but in the end his wicked arts will
avail but little against my good sword."
5. Gertrude Stein

ONE evening in the winter, some years ago, my brother came to my rooms in the city of
Chicago bringing with him a book by Gertrude Stein. The book was called Tender Buttons and,
just at that time, there was a good deal of fuss and fun being made over it in American
newspapers. I had already read a book of Miss Stein's called Three Lives and had thought it
contained some of the best writing ever done by an American. I was curious about this new
book.

My brother had been at some sort of a gathering of literary people on the evening before and
someone had read aloud from Miss Stein's new book. The party had been a success. After a
few lines the reader stopped and was greeted by loud shouts of laughter. It was generally
agreed that the author had done a thing we Americans call “putting something across”—the
meaning being that she had, by a strange freakish performance, managed to attract attention to
herself, get herself discussed in the newspapers, become for a time a figure in our hurried,
harried lives.

My brother, as it turned out, had not been satisfied with the explanation of Miss Stein's work
then current in America, and so he bought Tender Buttons and brought it to me, and we sat for
a time reading the strange sentences. “It gives words an oddly new intimate flavor and at the
same time makes familiar words seem almost like strangers, doesn't it,” he said. What my
brother did, you see, was to set my mind going on the book, and then, leaving it on the table, he
went away.

And now, after these years, and having sat with Miss Stein by her own fire in the rue de Fleurus
in Paris I am asked to write something by way of an introduction to a new book she is about to
issue.

As there is in America an impression of Miss Stein's personality, not at all true and rather
foolishly romantic, I would like first of all to brush that aside. I had myself heard stories of a
long dark room with a languid woman lying on a couch, smoking cigarettes, sipping absinthes
perhaps and looking out upon the world with tired, disdainful eyes. Now and then she rolled her
head slowly to one side and uttered a few words, taken down by a secretary who approached
the couch with trembling eagerness to catch the falling pearls.

You will perhaps understand something of my own surprise and delight when, after having
been fed up on such tales and rather Tom Sawyerishly hoping they might be true, I was taken to
her to find instead of this languid impossibility a woman of striking vigor, a subtle and powerful
mind, a discrimination in the arts such as I have found in no other American born man or
woman, and a charmingly brilliant conversationalist.

“Surprise and delight” did I say? Well, you see, my feeling is something like this. Since Miss
Stein's work was first brought to my attention I have been thinking of it as the most important
pioneer work done in the field of letters in my time. The loud guffaws of the general that must
inevitably follow the bringing forward of more of her work do not irritate me but I would like it
if writers, and particularly young writers, would come to understand a little what she is trying to
do and what she is in my opinion doing.
My thought in the matter is something like this—that every artist working with words as his
medium, must at times be profoundly irritated by what seems the limitations of his medium.
What things does he not wish to create with words! There is the mind of the reader before him
and he would like to create in that reader's mind a whole new world of sensations, or rather one
might better say he would like to call back into life all of the dead and sleeping senses.

There is a thing one might call “the extension of the province of his art” one wants to achieve.
One works with words and one would like words that have a taste on the lips, that have a
perfume to the nostrils, rattling words one can throw into a box and shake, making a sharp,
jingling sound, words that, when seen on the printed page, have a distinct arresting effect upon
the eye, words that when they jump out from under the pen one may feel with the fingers as
one might caress the cheeks of his beloved.

And what I think is that these books of Gertrude Stein's do in a very real sense recreate life in
words.

We writers are, you see, all in such a hurry. There are such grand things we must do. For one
thing the Great American Novel must be written and there is the American or English Stage that
must be uplifted by our very important contributions, to say nothing of the epic poems, sonnets
to my lady's eyes, and what not. We are all busy getting these grand and important thoughts
and emotions into the pages of printed books.

And in the meantime the little words, that are the soldiers with which we great generals must
make our conquests, are neglected.

There is a city of English and American words and it has been a neglected city. Strong broad
shouldered words, that should be marching across open fields under the blue sky, are clerking
in little dusty dry goods stores, young virgin words are being allowed to consort with whores,
learned words have been put to the ditch digger's trade. Only yesterday I saw a word that once
called a whole nation to arms serving in the mean capacity of advertising laundry soap.

For me the work of Gertrude Stein consists in a rebuilding, an entire new recasting of life, in the
city of words. Here is one artist who has been able to accept ridicule, who has even forgone the
privilege of writing the great American novel, uplifting our English speaking stage, and wearing
the bays of the great poets, to go live among the little housekeeping words, the swaggering
bullying street-corner words, the honest working, money saving words, and all the other
forgotten and neglected citizens of the sacred and half forgotten city.

Would it not be a lovely and charmingly ironic gesture of the gods if, in the end, the work of this
artist were to prove the most lasting and important of all the word slingers of our generation!
6.Dish Night , Michael Martone
Every Wednesday was Dish Night at the Wells Theatre. And it worked because she was there,
week in and week out. She sat through the movie to get her white bone china. A saucer. A cup.
The ushers stood on chairs by the doors and reached into the big wooden crates. There was
straw all over the floor of the lobby and bals of newspaper from strange cities. I knew she was
the girl for me. I'd walk her home. She'd hug the dish to her chest. The street lights would be on
and the moon behind the trees. She'd talk about collecting enough pieces for our family of eight.
"Oh, it's everyday and I know it," she'd say, holding it at arm's length. "They're so modern and
simple and something we'll have a long time after we forget about the movies."

I forget just what happened then. She heard about Pearl Harbor at a Sunday matinee. They
stopped the movie, and a man came out on stage. The blue stage lights flooded the gold
curtain. It was dark in there, but outside it was bright and cold. They didn't finish the show.
Business would pick up then, and the Wells Theatre wouldn't need a Dish Night to bring the
people in. The one we had gone to the week before was the last one ever and we hadn't known
it. The gravy boat looked like a slipper. I went to the war, to Europe where she'd write to me on
lined school paper and never failed to mention we were a few pieces shy of the full set.

This would be the movie of my life, this walking home under the moon from a movie with a
girl holding a dinner plate under her arm like a book. I believed this is what I was fighting for.
Everywhere in Europe I saw broken pieces of crockery. In the farmhouses, the cafes. Along the
roads were drifts of smashed china. On a beach, in the sand where I was crawling, I found a bit
of it the sea washed in, all smooth with blue veins of a pattern.

I came home and washed the dishes every night, and she stacked them away, bowls nesting
on bowls as if we were moving the next day.

The green field is covered with these tables. The sky is huge and spread with clouds. The
pickup trucks and wagons are backed in close to each table so that people can sit on the
lowered tailgates. On the tables are thousands of dishes. She walks ahead of me. Picks up a
cup then sets it down again. A plate. She runs her finger around a rim. The green field rises
slightly as we walk, all the places set at the tables. She hopes she will find someone else who
saw the movies she saw on Dish Night. The theater was filled with people. I was there. We do
this every Sunday after church.
7.Hound of the Bastervilles (Sherlock Holmes excerpt)

We had come to a point where a narrow grassy path struck off from the road and wound away
across the moor. A steep, boulder-sprinkled hill lay upon the right which had in bygone days
been cut into a granite quarry. The face which was turned towards us formed a dark cliff, with
ferns and brambles growing in its niches. From over a distant rise there floated a gray plume of
smoke.

‘A moderate walk along this moor-path brings us to Merripit House,’ said he. ‘Perhaps you will
spare an hour that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to my sister.’

My first thought was that I should be by Sir Henry’s side. But then I remembered the pile of
papers and bills with which his study table was littered. It was certain that I could not help with
those. And Holmes had expressly said that I should study the neighbours upon the moor. I
accepted Stapleton’s invitation, and we turned together down the path.

‘It is a wonderful place, the moor,’ said he, looking round over the undulating downs, long green
rollers, with crests of jagged granite foaming up into fantastic surges. ‘You never tire of the
moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and
so mysterious.’

‘You know it well, then?’

‘I have only been here two years. The residents would call me a newcomer. We came shortly
after Sir Charles settled. But my tastes led me to explore every part of the country round, and I
should think that there are few men who know it better than I do.’

‘Is it hard to know?’

‘Very hard. You see, for example, this great plain to the north here with the queer hills breaking
out of it. Do you observe anything remarkable about that?’

‘It would be a rare place for a gallop.’

‘You would naturally think so and the thought has cost several their lives before now. You
notice
those bright green spots scattered thickly over it?’

‘Yes, they seem more fertile than the rest.’

Stapleton laughed.

‘That is the great Grimpen Mire,’ said he. ‘A false step yonder means death to man or beast.
Only yesterday I saw one of the moor ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head
for quite a long time craning out of the boghole, but it sucked him down at last. Even in dry
seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can
find my way to the very heart of it and return alive. By George, there is another of those
miserable ponies!’

Something brown was rolling and tossing among the green sedges. Then a long, agonized,
writhing neck shot upward and a dreadful cry echoed over the moor. It turned me cold with
horror, but my companion’s nerves seemed to be stronger than mine.

‘It’s gone!’ said he. ‘The mire has him. Two in two days, and many more, perhaps, for they get
in the way of going there in the dry weather, and never know the difference until the mire has
them in its clutches. It’s a bad place, the great Grimpen Mire.’

‘And you say you can penetrate it?’

‘Yes, there are one or two paths which a very active man can take. I have found them out.’

‘But why should you wish to go into so horrible a place?’

‘Well, you see the hills beyond? They are really islands cut off on all sides by the impassable
mire, which has crawled round them in the course of years. That is where the rare plants and
the
butterflies are, if you have the wit to reach them.’

‘I shall try my luck some day.’

He looked at me with a surprised face.

‘For God’s sake put such an idea out of your mind,’ said he. ‘Your blood would be upon my
head. I assure you that there would not be the least chance of your coming back alive. It is only
by remembering certain complex landmarks that I am able to do it.’

‘Halloa!’ I cried. ‘What is that?’

A long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. It filled the whole air, and yet it was
impossible to say whence it came. From a dull murmur it swelled into a deep roar, and then
sank
back into a melancholy, throbbing murmur once again. Stapleton looked at me with a curious
expression in his face.

‘Queer place, the moor!’ said he.

‘But what is it?’

‘The peasants say it is the Hound of the Baskervilles calling for its prey. I’ve heard it once or
twice before, but never quite so loud.’

I looked round, with a chill of fear in my heart, at the huge swelling plain, mottled with the green
patches of rushes. Nothing stirred over the vast expanse save a pair of ravens, which croaked
loudly from a tor behind us.

‘You are an educated man. You don’t believe such nonsense as that?’ said I. ‘What do you
think
is the cause of so strange a sound?’

‘Bogs make queer noises sometimes. It’s the mud settling, or the water rising, or something.’
‘No, no, that was a living voice.’
‘Well, perhaps it was. Did you ever hear a bittern booming?’

‘No, I never did.’

‘It’s a very rare bird—practically extinct—in England now, but all things are possible upon the
moor. Yes, I should not be surprised to learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last of
the
bitterns.’

‘It’s the weirdest, strangest thing that ever I heard in my life.’

‘Yes, it’s rather an uncanny place altogether. Look at the hillside yonder. What do you make of
those?’

8. Harmony of the World – Charles Baxter

In the small Ohio town where I grew up, many homes had parlors that contained pianos,
sideboards, and sofas, heavy objects signifying gentility. These pianos were rarely tuned. They
went flat in summer around the Fourth of July and sharp in winter at Christmas. Ours was a
Story and Clark. On its music stand were copies of Stephen Foster and Ethelbert Nevin
favorites, along with one Chopin pre- lude that my mother would practice for twenty minutes
every three years. She had no patience, but since she thought Ohio-all of it, every scrap-made
sense, she was happy and did not need to practice anything. Happiness is not infectious, but
somehow her happiness infected my father, a pharmacist, and then spread through the rest of
the household. My whole family was obstinately cheerful. I think of my two sisters, my brother,
and my parents as having artificial, pasted-on smiles, like circus clowns. They apparently
thought cheer and good Christian words were universals, respected everywhere. The pianos
were part of this cheer. They played for celebrations and moments of pleasant pain. Or rather,
someone played them, but not too well, since excellent playing would have been faintly
antisocial. "Chopin," my mother said, shaking her head as she stumbled through the prelude.
"Why is he famous?"

When I was six, I received my first standing ovation. On the stage of the community auditorium,
where the temper- ature was about ninety-four degrees, sweat fell from my forehead onto the
piano keys, making their ivory surfaces slippery. At the conclusion of the piece, when everyone
stood up to applaud, I thought they were just being nice. My playing had been mediocre; only
my sweating had been extraordinary. Two years later, they stood up again. When I was eleven,
they cheered. By that time I was astonishing these small-town audiences with Chopin and
Rachmani- noff recital chestnuts. I thought I was a genius and read biographies of Einstein.
Already the townspeople were saying that I was the best thing Parkersville had ever seen, that I
would put the place on the map. Mothers would send their children by to watch me practice. The
kids sat with their mouths open while I polished off more classics.

Like many musicians, I cannot remember ever playing badly, in the sense of not knowing what I
was doing. In high school, my identity was being sealed shut: my classmates called me "el
señor longhair," even though I wore a crewcut, this being the 1950s. Whenever the town
needed a demonstration of local genius, it called upon me. There were newspaper articles
detailing my accomplishments, and I must have heard the phrase "future concert career" at
least two hundred times. My parents smiled and smiled as I collected applause. My senior year,
I gave a solo recital and was hired for umpteen weddings and funerals. I was good luck. On the
fourth of July the townspeople brought out a piano to the city square so that I could improvise
music between explosions at the fireworks display. Just before I left for college, I noticed that
our neighbors wanted to come up to me os- tensibly for small talk, but actually to touch me.

In college I made a shocking discovery: other people existed in the world who were as talented
as I was. If I sat down to play a Debussy etude, they would sit down and play Beethoven, only
louder and faster than I had. I felt their breath on my neck. Apparently there were other small
towns. In each one of these small towns there was a genius. Perhaps some geniuses were not
actually geniuses. I practiced con- stantly and began to specialize in the non-Germanic piano
repertoire. I kept my eye out for students younger than I was, who might have flashier
technique. At my senior recital I played Mozart, Chopin, Ravel, and Debussy, with encore
pieces by Scriabin and Thomson. I managed to get the audience to stand up for the last time.

I was accepted into a large midwestern music school, famous for its high standards. Once there,
I discovered that genius, to say nothing of talent, was a common commodity. Since I was only a
middling composer, with no interesting musical ideas as such, I would have to make my career
as a performer or teacher. But I didn't want to teach, and as a performer I lacked pizzazz. For
the first time, it occurred to me that my life might be evolving into something unpleasant, some-
thing with the taste of stale bread.