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OFFICIAL ACT Form G19 · April 2024

Reading

30 questions ~9 min recommended
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=== The Border Is Open ===
Home is where our individual memories are rooted and never disappear, the place where our inner being begins and ends, a haven for birth and death. Home is the place where we return when we need to adjust to new energies the world presses upon our daily lives. Home is comfort and uneasiness...

=== Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements ===
This passage is from the book Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc by Hugh Aldersey-Williams. The breakthrough that enabled gas to maintain its advantage over the newfangled electric lighting for a little longer during the closing years of the nineteenth century was made by Carl Auer, later the Baron von Welsbach...

=== The Art of Video Games ===
Melissinos grew up with the first games; he later became chief gaming officer at Sun Microsystems, and he is now vice president of corporate marketing at Verisign, a network infrastructure company. He has seen the clunky aliens of Space Invaders and the two-dimensional damsel in distress of Donkey Kong morph into Bioshock and Zack & Wiki. Today drops of animated rain dot computer screens, and characters leave reflections in puddles; it’s like watching cave art become Impressionism in just a few decades, he says. Games are in many respects converging with movies (which, in their infancy, were also belittled as non-art, Melissinos notes). Designers employ photo-realistic aesthetic experiences. Or that the virtual worlds summoned by designers of the best of the 80 games on display aren’t every bit as 'artistic' as the best scenic design for theater or the movies. Or that people can’t have emotional reactions to the events within a game, though it is clear that this aspect of gaming is a work in progress rather than a fully achieved goal. Melissinos says. He still gets goose bumps remembering hidden warp zones in the first Super Mario Brothers. Now Melissinos is the guest curator of 'The Art of Video Games,' an exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum that celebrates 40 years of the genre, from Pac-man to Minecraft. The show will include video-game screen shots, videotaped interviews with game designers, vintage consoles from Melissinos’s personal collection ('I’m having a bit of separation anxiety,' he says) and several opportunities for visitors to seize the arcade joystick or PlayStation controls themselves.

1. The main purpose of the passage is for the author to describe his:

2. The author most strongly suggests that when he was a boy, the time he spent in the desert surrounding his hometown was primarily marked by:

3. The metaphor the author uses of the invisible nest of roots (lines 20–22) mainly helps emphasize the idea that the author:

4. The main point of lines 35–44 is that regarding the author’s feelings about home, he is:

5. The author uses the word natural in line 19 mainly to convey the idea that what he is searching for in other cities is a sense of home that feels:

6. The author states that the horseshoe of El Paso now looks bent and twisted mainly because:

7. In the passage, when the author reflects on the careers that never materialized, his reaction can best be characterized as one of:

8. Which of the following is the best paraphrase for the statement the author makes in lines 54–56?

9. As it is used in lines 76–77, the phrase 'the citizens of your places on earth' most nearly refers to one’s:

10. The main purpose of the last paragraph is to demonstrate that the:

11. Based on the passage, which of the following materials could most reasonably be classified as one of Auer’s 'rare earths' (lines 32–33)?

12. The passage credits Bunsen for pushing Auer to work on the project that would:

13. The use of the word 'sickly' (line 55) most nearly serves to emphasize the author’s point that the light emitted by the gas light Auer patented in 1885 was:

14. According to the passage, compared to the usefulness of Bunsen’s burner to the general public, the usefulness of Auer’s Auerlicht to the general public was:

15. The main point of the fifth paragraph (lines 72–80) is that:

16. The passage states that even as Auer worked to perfect his gas mantle, he sensed that:

17. It can most reasonably be inferred from the passage that, unlike Auer, Bunsen was convinced that the specimens of rare earth minerals that Auer showed him in 1880 were:

18. According to the passage, what made the elements praseodymium and neodymium particularly appealing for use in ceramics and in glass for protective eyewear?

19. The passage asserts that unlike most scientists, Auer also showed talent as a:

20. The author uses the phrase 'grateful continent' (line 67) primarily to emphasize that:

21. The main purpose of the third paragraph of Passage A (lines 13–22) is to:

22. The main point of the fifth paragraph of Passage A (lines 31–37) is that Melissinos believes video games:

23. In Passage A, the main purpose of lines 44–47 is to:

24. The parenthetical information in lines 49–50 of Passage A most strongly suggests that Melissinos believes:

25. The author of Passage B uses the phrase 'to grapple with' (line 57) mainly to emphasize:

26. It can most reasonably be inferred from Passage B that Melissinos’s intention in 'using the cultural lens of an art museum' (lines 76–77) for the exhibit is to encourage viewers to:

27. As it is used in line 86, the word driving most nearly means:

28. Concerning the potential value of The Art of Video Games, the attitudes of the passage authors differ in that the author of Passage B is more:

29. Which of the following statements best describes how the passages present Melissinos’s belief about whether people should consider video games to be art?

30. Which of the following questions is answered in both passages?

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