SO SUE ME

Texts: NONFICTION, Year 4

by Bill Bryson

I have a friend in Britain, an academic, who was recently approached by the lawyers for an American company to be an expert witness in a case they were handling. They told him they wanted to fly the lead attorney and two assistants to London to meet him.

"Wouldn't it be simpler and cheaper if I flew to New York instead?" my friend suggested.

"Yes," he was told without hesitation, "but this way we can bill the client for the cost of three trips."

And there you have the American legal mind at work.

Now I have no doubt that a large number of American lawyers—well, two anyway—do wonderfully worthwhile things that fully justify charging their clients $150 an hour, which I gather is the going rate now. But the trouble is that there are just too many of them. In fact—and here is a truly sobering statistic—the United States has more lawyers than all the rest of the world put together: almost 800.000 of them, up from an already abundant 260,000 in 1960. We now boast 300 lawyers for every 100,000 citizens. Britain, by contrast, has 82; Japan a mere 31.

And of course all those lawyers need work. Most states now allow lawyers to advertise, and many of them most enthusiastically do. You cannot watch TV for half an hour without encountering at least one commercial 'showing a sincere-looking lawyer saying: "Hi, I'm Vinny Slick of Bent and Oily Law Associates. If you've suffered an injury at work, or been in a vehicular accident, or just feel like having some extra money, come to me and we'll find someone to sue."

Americans, as is well known, will sue at the drop of a hat. In fact, I daresay someone somewhere has sued over a dropped hat, and won $20 million for the pain and suffering it caused. There really is a se'.se that if something goes wrong for whatever reason and you are anywhere in the vicinity, then you ought to collect a pile of cash.

This was neatly illustrated a couple of years ago when a chemical plant in Richmond, California, suffered an explosion that spewed fumes over the town. Within hours, some two hundred lawyers and their representatives had descended on the excited community, handing out business cards and advising people to present themselves at the focal hospital. Twenty thousand residents eagerly did so.

News footage of the event makes it look like some kind of open-air party. Of the twenty thousand happy, smiling, seemingly very healthy people who fined up for examination at the hospital's emergency room, just twenty were actually admitted. Although the number of proven injuries was slight, to say the least, seventy thousand townspeople—virtually all of them—submitted claims. The company agreed to a $180 million settlement. Of this, the lawyers got $40 million.

Every year over ninety million lawsuits are filed in this extravagantly litigious country—that's one for every two and a half people—and many of these are what might charitably be called ambitious. As I write, two parents in Texas are suing a high school baseball coach for benching their son during a game, claiming humiliation and extreme mental anguish. In

Washington State, meanwhile, a man with heart problems is suing local dairies "because their milk cartons did not warn him about cholesterol." I am sure you read recently about the woman in California who sued the Walt Disney Company after she and her family were mugged in a parking lot at Disneyland. A central part of the suit was that her grandchildren suffered shock and trauma when they were taken behind the scenes to be comforted and they saw Disney characters taking off their costumes. The discovery that Mickey Mouse and Goofy were in fact real people inside costumes was apparently too much for the poor tykes.

That case was dismissed, but elsewhere people have won fortunes out of all proportion to any pain or loss they might actually have suffered. Recently there was a much-publicized case in which an executive at a Milwaukee brewery recounted the racy plot of an episode of Semfeld to a female colleague, who took offense and reported him for sexual harassment. The brewery responded by firing the man, and he responded by suing the brewery. Now I don't know who deserved what in this case—it sounds to me like they all wanted a good, sound spanking—but the upshot is that the dismissed executive was awarded $26.6 million, roughly four hundred thousand times his annual salary, by a sympathetic (i.e., demented) jury.

This sort of thing goes to the highest level. As I write, the estate of Richard M. Nixon is suing the government for $210 million—let me just repeat that sum: $210 million—to compensate the Nixon family for lost earnings from papers and other documents that the government seized as evidence in the Watergate case. You understand what I am saying, of course. A president of the United States, after acting with the crassest illegality, is driven from office in disgrace, and twenty-four years later his family is asking for $210 million of the nation's money. The day cannot be far off when Bill Clinton will be suing for the mental trauma suffered from having oral sex while trying simultaneously to run a nation. That must be worth at least a couple of billion, surely.

Allied with the idea that lawsuits are a quick way to a fortune, whether deserved or not, is the interesting and uniquely American notion that no matter what happens, someone else must be responsible. So if, say, you smoke eighty cigarettes a day for fifty years and eventually get cancer, then it must be everyone else's fault but your own, and you sue not only the manufacturer of your cigarettes, but the wholesaler, the retailers, the delivery company that delivered the cigarettes to the retailer, and so on. One of the most extraordinary features of the American legal system is that it allows plaintiffs to sue people and enterprises only tangentialiy connected to the alleged complaint.

Because of the way the system works (or, more accurately, doesn't work) it is often less expensive for a company or institution to settle out of court than to let the matter proceed to trial. I know a woman who slipped and fell while entering a department store on a rainy day and, to her astonishment and gratification, was offered a more or less instant settlement of $2,500 if she would sign a piece of paper agreeing not to sue. She signed.

The cost of all this to society is enormous—several billion dollars a year at least. New York City alone spends $200 million a year settling "slip and fail" claims—people tripping over curbs and the like. According to a recent ABC television documentary on America's runaway legal system, because of inflated product liability costs consumers in the United States pay $500 more than they need to for every car they buy, $100 more for football helmets, and $3,000 more for heart pacemak-ers. According to the documentary, they even pay a little on top (as it were) for haircuts because one or two distressed customers successfully sued their barbers after being given the sort of embarrassing trims that I receive as a matter of routine.

All of which, naturally, has given me an idea. I am going to go and smoke eighty cigarettes, then siip and fall while drinking high-cholesterol milk and relating the plot of a Seinfeld show to a passing female in the Disneyland parking lot, and then I'll call Vinny Slick and see if we can strike a deal, I don't expect to settle for less than $2.5 billion—and that's before we've even started talking about my latest haircut.

From: Bill BrysonJVn a Stranger Here Myself

Natural Sciences: Passage I

Have you ever wondered what it is that tells groundhogs when to begin hibernating in winter and when to awaken in spring? Biologists have, for if they could tap that enzyme, chemical, gene or whatever, they might be able to apply it to other species, including man.

Hibernation, unlike sleep, is a process in which all unnecessary bodily functions are discontinued, for example, growth. The animal's body temperature remains about 1° above the temperature of Its environment. During this period, animals appear to be immune to disease and if subjected to a lethal dose of radiation, the animal will not die until the hibernation period is over. (As a point of interest, bears do not hibernate, they only sleep more deeply in winter.)

Early in this century. Dr. Max Rubner proposed that aging was a result of the amount of energy expended in tissues. Rubner found that the total lifetime energy expenditure per gram of tissue during the adult stage is roughly constant for several species of domestic animals. The higher the metabolism, the shorter the life span and vice versa.

In this vein, scientists found that the storage of body fat was vital to a hibernating animal's survival: it loses 20-AG percent of its body weight while dormant. The body fat involved here is called "brown fat" and differs structurally from normal white fat ceils which gives it a greater heat producing potential. A low temperature signals the brown fat to increase in temperature, which warms the animal's blood and spreads the warmth to other parts of the body. Newborn human babies have an unusually high percentage of brown fat which diminishes as they grow older. Adults do have some brown fat, and those with underproductive thyroid glands have more than normal.

Rats subjected to cold temperatures show an increased ratio of brown fat to white fat. It seems reasonable to expect that cold acclimation in man, through a carefully controlled program of cyclic hypothermia , will increase brown fat deposits. After these deposits reach a certain body level, they might perform the same regulatory functions in human hibernation that brown fat performs in natural hibernators.

About ten years after Rubner's experiments, Drs. Jacques Loeb and John-Northrop discovered that reduced temperatures extended the life span of fruit flies. In applying this to animals, however, those that were not natural hibernators or who had not been prepared for hibernation, developed ventricular fibrillations (where the heart muscle quivers and stops pumping blood). When a person "freezes to death" this is the cause, not ice crystals forming in the veins. The process involved in artificially cooling an animal's body temperature is called induced hypothermia. Research in this field led space biologist Dale L.Carpenter (McDonnell Douglas—Long Beach) to determine that both hibernating and non-hibernating animals have the same basic temperature control and he believes that were a non-hibernating mammal to be artificially biochemically prepared with proper enzymes and energy producing chemicals, it could hibernate. He found that if an animal was cooled just until its heart began quivering and then rewarmed, it could survive. If cooled a second time, a slightly lower temperature could be achieved before ventricular fibrillations occurred, and so on. Each exposure to the cold seemed to condition the heart to accept lower temperatures. This is cyclic hypothermia.

Even with this kind of progress, however, the search goes on for the chemical or enzyme that triggers the hybernation process, that tells the animals it is winter or spring. Scientists hope to gain some insight into this mystery from human infants, who besides having more brown fat than adults, seem less susceptible to ventricular fibrillations. They have different forms of hemoglobin and myoglobin in their tissues which are more efficient in attracting and releasing oxygen. This may hold the clue.

If hibernation could be induced in humans, this could solve the problem of interstellar travel. One would not have to worry about traveling near the speed of light, for the crew would not age as fast and would have more time to reach their destination. Maxwell Hunter suggests that this "biological time dilation" be applied not only to the crews, but to those that remain on Earth.

We are thus faced with the prospect of a whole society dilated in time. This would form the basis for a Galactic Club which was based on travel rather than communication.

We are not talking about timefaring in the classic science fiction sense where people are able to

go both backward and forward in time at will. We are postulating, rather, dilating the time

experienced by people in one direction in the future which would permit a society to expand throughout the galaxy. If, when one went to bed at night, he actually went into hibernation during which many months passed, it would not seem any different to him than a standard eight-hour sleep ... When a ship returned home, its crew would be greeted by friends, business colleagues, etc. who had aged no more than the crew.

Report of the Committee on Science and Technology, "The Possibility of Intelligent Life in the Universe"

Natural Sciences: Passage 2

The history of science is composed of three periods: antiquity; classical science, starting with the Renaissance; and modern science, which started at the turn of this century.

What characterizes the science of antiquity is the naive faith in the perfection of our senses and reasoning. What man sees is the ultimate reality. Everybody, being by necessity the center of his universe, knew there was no doubt that ours is a flat earth and man is the center, as expressed in the cosmology of Ptolemy. If we touch something, we find it either hard or soft, wet or dry, cold or warm; so these qualities had to be the ultimate building stones of the universe, as taught by Aristotle. There is an "up" and "down," an absolute space, as expressed in Euclidean geometry. Human reasoning was thought to lead to more reliable results than crude trial and experiment, as reflected by the dictum of Aristotle that a big stone falls faster than a small one. What is remarkable about this statement is not that it is wrong, but that it never occurred to Aristotle to try it. He probably would have regarded such a proposal as an insult.

Two thousand years later, in that great awakening of the Western mind called the Renaissance, something new must have happened to the human mind. A boisterous young man, Galileo by name, went up a leaning tower with two stones, one big and one small, and dropped them simultaneously, having asked his companions to observe which of the two arrived first on the pavement below. They arrived simultaneously. This same man doubted the perfection of his senses, built a telescope to improve the range of his eyes, and thus discovered the rings of Saturn and the satellites of Jupiter. This was a dramatic discovery because nobody had seen these before. So it now seemed scarcely credible that ihe whole universe could have been created solely for man's pleasure or temptation. Galileo was but one of the first swallows of an approaching spring. Somewhat earlier, Copernicus had already concluded that it was not absolutely necessary to suppose that the sun rotates around the earth; it could be the other way around. Johannes Kepler replaced simple observation and reasoning with careful measurement. Somewhat later, Antony van Leeuwenhoek, a greengrocer at Delft, in Holland, improved the range of his senses by building a microscope. With it he discovered a new world of living creatures too small to be seen by the naked eye. Thus began the science which I will call "classical," which reached its peak with Sir Isaac Newton, who, with the concept of gravitation, made a coherent system of the universe.

This classical science replaced divine whims by natural laws, corrected many previous errors, and extended man's world into both the bigger and smaller dimensions, but it introduced nothing new that man could not "understand." By the word "understand" we simply mean that we can correlate the phenomenon- in question with some earlier experience of ours. If 1 tell you that it is gravitation which holds our globe to the sun, you will say "I understand," though nobody knows what gravitation is. All the same, you "understand" because you know that it is gravitation which makes apples fall, and you all have seen apples fall before.

For several centuries, this classical science had little influence on everyday life or human relations and was merely the intellectual playground of the selected few who wanted to look deeper into Nature's cooking pot.

Around the turn of this century (1896), two mysterious discoveries signified the arrival of a new period, the period of modern science. The one was that of Wilhelm Rontgen, who discovered new rays which could penetrate through solid matter. The other was the discovery of radioactivity by Antoine Henri Becquerel, a discovery which shook the solid foundation of our universe, built of indestructible matter.

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, "Horizons of Life Sciences,"

in Ideas in Science, ed. Oscar H. Fidell, Washington Square Press, (N.Y., 1966), pp. 167-9.

Social Sciences: Passage 1

Putting today's cults in proper perspective is no easy task perspective reflects some consensus: most comments about the Peoples Temple seemed to agree, as William Pfaff said in The New Yorker, that "messianic cults commonly arise in periods of trouble or social crisis" and "among uprooted people, among marginal people without an assured place in society, or among those whose accepted values or social assumptions have been broken down or undermined." Theodore Roszak, convinced that "cults and charismatic leaders are among the irrepressible constants of human society," concluded that "people surrender their freedom to totalitarian masters . . . [because] they are morally desperate."

Harvard theologian Harvey Cox sees the appeal of the "new religions" as a reflection on established churches, which "have become more or less part of the furniture. They don't provide much of an alternative, as Jesus did or as St. Francis did." People who join the new groups. Cox said, "want a life with [other] people which is not in competitive terms. There is a side to us that doesn't want to compete. They call each other brother and sister. They share things." Pollster George Galiup, speaking in 1977, noted that leaders of established churches "appear to have very little idea of the changing levels of religious involvement in this nation, let alone commitment." He cited a survey showing that six million Americans were active in Transcendental Meditation, five million practiced yoga, three The fact that so many Americans are involved in non-traditional forms of spiritual search may well point to a common denominator, as Cox and Galiup suggest. But it doesn't help to explain how the Unification Church, for example, has succeeded in recruiting and converting perhaps 3,000 young people, generally with some college education and from middle- or upper-class backgrounds.

Ex-Moonies—- many of whom have been "rescued" by their families and "deprogrammed"—seem agreed that their recruiters practiced a studied deception. The candidates were first invited to share a meal with a group of other young people, living together and engaged in some idealistic venture such as "New Education Development." Once inside, they were surrounded by their new "friends," who employed "love-bombing" techniques to win their confidence. No mention of the Unification Church or the Rev. Moon was made at the outset; only as the recruits displayed their acceptance of their "new family" were they introduced to Moon's belief-system and its aims.

Margaret Thatcher Singer, a University of California psychologist who has worked with several hundred young cultists and ex-cultists, found that "the groups' recruitment and indoctrination procedures seemed to involve highly sophisticated techniques for inducing behavioral change." Many of those recruited, she learned, "joined these religious cults during periods of depression and confusion, when they had a sense that life was meaningless." Once enlisted, they experienced indoctrination in these terms:

The cults these people belonged to maintain intense allegiance through the arguments of their ideology, and through social and psychological pressures and practices that, intentionally or not, amount to conditioning techniques that constrict attention, limit personal relationships, and devalue reasoning....

The exclusion of family and other outside contacts, rigid moral judgments of the unconverted outside world, and restriction of sexual behavior are all geared to increasing followers' commitments to the goals of the group and in some cases to its powerful leader.

Singer and others who have looked closely at today's cults do see a difference (from cults of the past) that is more than a distinction. It lies in the sophisticated use of a technology of persuasion that has emerged in the 20th century. The more general academic view is voiced by Cox, who sees no "discontinuity" between the persuasive techniques of the advertising world and those of the "new religions." The TV child who overdoses on Sugar Pops is thus equated with the cultist "hooked" by a new messiah.

William A, Koms, "Cults in America and Public Policy"

Social Sciences: Passage 2

All energy which is not needed to maintain life can be considered as surplus energy. This is the source of all sexual activity; it is also the source of all productive and creative work. This surplus of energy shows itself in the mature person in generosity, the result of the strength and overflow which the individual can no longer use for further growth and which therefore can be spent productively and creatively. The mature person is no longer primarily a receiver. He receives but also gives. His giving is not primarily subordinated to his expectation of return. It is giving for its own sake. Giving and producing as Dr. Leon Saul correctly emphasizes in his book on maturity, are not felt by the mature person as an obligation and duty; he gives, produces and spends his energies with pleasure in the service of aims which lie outside of his own person. Just as for the growing child, receiving love and help are the main sources of pleasure, for the mature person pleasure consists primarily in spending his energies productively for the sake of other persons and for outside aims. This generous outward directed attitude is what in ethics is called altruism. In the light of this view, altruism, the basis of Christian morality, has a biological foundation; it is a natural, healthy expression of the state of surplus characteristic for maturity.

You may have the impression that I am speaking of something unreal, of a blueprint instead of reality. But we must realize that things in nature never correspond to abstract ideals. The platonic idea! of maturity in its pure and complete form is never found in nature and is only approached by human beings to a greater or lesser degree. Every adult carries in himself certain emotional remnants of childhood. Even the most perfect machine does not fulfill the ideal conditions of Camot's famous heat machine which exists only on paper—an apparatus which works with the theoretically calculated maximum effectiveness in converting heat into useful mechanical energy. There is always attrition: a

part of heat energy is lost for productive uses. The same is true for the living organisms, which essentially is a complicated thermodynamic machine.

Whenever life becomes difficult beyond the individual's capacity to deal with its pressing problems, there is a tendency to regress towards less mature attitudes, in which a person could still rely on the help of parents and teachers. In our heart, deep down, we all regret being expelled from the garden of Eden by eating from the tree of knowledge—which symbolizes maturity. In critical life situations, most persons become insecure and may seek help even before they have exhausted all their own resources. Many occupations require so much responsibility that a person's ability is taxed beyond his inner means. J could not use a better example than the occupation of the nurse. The nurse's function towards the patient in many respects resembles the maternal role because it is so one-sided in relation to giving and receiving. Like the child, the patient demands help and attention and gives little in return.

It must be realized that there is a proportion between receiving and giving which has limits for each individual and which cannot be transgressed without ill results. As soon as a person begins to feel that his work becomes a source of displeasure for him, this is the sign that the balance between giving and receiving is disturbed. The load must be reduced to such an extent that the work becomes again a source of pleasure. It is therefore highly important that the occupational and the private life should be in a healthy compensatory relationship to each other. Many occupations in which a person assumes leadership and must take care of the dependent needs of others, involve an unusual amount of responsibility. Even the most mature person has his own dependent needs, requires occasional help and advice from others.

Franz Alexander, "Emotional Maturity"

HUMANITIES: PASSAGE 1.

American Pop art was created and developed in New York, but found rapid and early acceptance and a particular individual character on the West Coast, where activity was focused on the two centers of Los Angeles in the south and San Francisco in the north. Los Angeles emerged as the more important center, and was the first to recognize the genius of Andy Warhol, giving him his first one-man show as a fully fledged Pop artist in 1962. The city of Los Angeles itself, perhaps the most extraordinary urban environment in the world, was an important influence on West Coast Pop, and it is also, of course, the home of Hollywood, itself an important influence on Pop art everywhere. Equally significant are the various exotic subcultures that flourish in the area: those of the surfers, the hot-rodders, the drag-racers. the car customizes and the outlaw motor cycle clubs like Satan's Slaves and, most famous of all Hell's Angels.

Commemorated in the title of Tom Wolfe's essay The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby, the amazing paint jobs and baroque body- work created by the car customizers and the elaborate decorations of the California surfboards are examples of an industrial folk art of great impact and brilliance which has set the tone for much West Coast Pop art. So too are the bizarre drag-racing cars and hot rods, and so is the Hell's Angels' "chopped hog," a Harley-Davidson which in the hands of the Angels is stripped down and rebuilt to become virtually a mobile piece of sculpture. The Angels' uniform is also a rich item of folk art, particularly the sleeveless denim jacket bearing the "colors": a winged skull wearing a motor cycle helmet with the name Hell's Angels above with, below, the letters MC and the local chapter name, e.g. San Bernardino. These jackets may be further decorated with chains, swastikas and other signs, slogans and emblems: such as the number 13 (indicating use of marijuana), the notorious red wings, or the Angels' motto "Born to lose."

The world of customizing and of the big bikes is strongly reflected in the work of one of the two major Los Angeles Pop artists. Billy Al Bengston has worked since i960 on a series of paintings of chevrons and motor-bike badges and parts treated as heraldic devices, the images placed centrally on the canvas and painted in glowing colors with immaculate precision and a high degree of finish. About 1962 his painting took on an even greater richness and gloss, when he began to use sprayed cellulose paint on hardboard and later actually on sheets of metal, thus getting even closer to the technique and medium of his sources. Some of these metal sheet works are artfully crumpled, thus adding a suggestion of accident and death to the glamorous perfection of the painted emblem.

The other major Los Angeles Pop artist is Ed Ruscha. He began using Pop imagery (packaging) in 1960 in paintings like Box Smashed Flat, where presentation of commercial imagery and what looks like Edwardian commercial lettering is still combined with a painterly style. But his painting quickly took on an almost inhuman exquisiteness, precision and perfection of finish, as in Noise ... of 1963.

Like [Robert] Indiana, Ruscha is fascinated by words, and these have always formed the principal subject matter of his paintings and graphics. In some works the words appear in isolation floating against backgrounds of beautifully graded color that give a feeling of infinite colored space. Sometimes associated images are introduced, such as the cocktail olive in Sin, and sometimes the word is given a specific context, as with the company names (e.g. "Standard") for Which the architecture becomes a setting in Ruscha's garage paintings (Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas). One lithograph, where the word Hollywood streams unforgettably out of the sunset in the steep zooming perspective and giant lettering of wide-screen title sequences, exemplifies the manner in which Ruscha depicts his words in such a way that their meaning is conveyed pictorially as well as verbally.

Garages in themselves are one of Ruscha's most important motifs after words. They first appear in his work in 1962, not in painting or graphic work, but in a book: Twenty-six Gasoline Stations, consisting of 26 absolutely deadpan, factual, non-arty photographs of Western garages. The attitude behind these photographs comes very close to that of the New York Pop artists, and especially Warhol: the acceptance of aspects of the world which no one had considered in an art context before.

Simon Wilson, Pop.

Humanities: Passage 2

Historically the journey that jazz has taken can be traced with reasonable accuracy. That it ripened most fully in New Orleans seems beyond dispute although there are a few deviationists who support other theories of its origin. Around 1895 the almost legendary Buddy Bolden and Bunk Johnson were blowing their comets in the street and in the funeral parades which have always enlivened the flamboyant social life of that uncommonly vital city. At the same time, it must be remembered, Scott Joplin was producing ragtime on his piano at the Mapie Leaf Club in Sedalia, Missouri; and in Memphis, W.C. Handy was evolving his own spectacular conception of the blues.

Exactly why jazz developed the way it did on the streets of New Orleans is difficult to determine even though a spate of explanations has poured forth from the scholars of the subject. Obviously the need for ii there was coupled with the talent to produce it and a favorable audience to receive it. During those early years the local urge for musical expression was so powerful that anything that could be twanged, strummed, beaten, blown, or stroked was likely to be exploited for its musical usefulness. For a long time the washboard was a highly respected percussion instrument, and the nimble, thimbled fingers of Baby Dodds showed sheer genius on that workaday, washday utensil.

The story of the twenties in Chicago is almost too familiar to need repeating here. What seems pertinent is to observe that jazz gravitated toward a particular kind of environment in which its existence was not only possible but, seen in retrospect, probable. On the South Side of 25 Chicago during the twenties the New Orleans music continued an unbroken development.

The most sensationally successful of ail jazz derivatives was swing, which thrived in the late thirties. Here was a music that could be danced to with zest and listened to with pleasure, (That it provided its younger auditors with heroes such as Shaw, Sinatra, and Goodman is more of a sociological enigma than a musical phenomenon.) But swing lost its strength and vitality by allowing itself to become a captive of forces concerned only with how it could be sold; not how it could be enriched. Over and over it becomes apparent that jazz cannot be sold even when its practitioners can be bought. Like a truth, it is a spiritual force, not a material commodity.

During the closing years of World War II, jazz, groping for a fresh expression, erupted into bop. Bop was a wildly introverted style developed out of a certain intellectualism and not a little neuroticism. By now the younger men coming into jazz carried with them a GI subsidized education and they were breezily familiar with the atonalities of Schonberg, Bartok, Berg, and the contemporary schools of music. The challenge of riding out into the wide blue yonder on a twelve-tone row was more than they could resist. Some of them have never returned. Just as the early men in New Orleans didn't know what the established range of their instruments was, so these new musicians struck out in directions which might have been untouched had they observed the academic dicta adhering even to so free a form as jazz. The shelf on jazz in the music room of the New York Public Library fairly bulges with volumes in French, German, and Italian. It seems strange to read in German a book called the Javdexikon in which you will find scholarly resumes of such eminent jazzmen as Dizzy Gillespie and Cozy Cole. And there are currently in the releases of several record companies examples of jazz as played in Denmark, Sweden, and 55 Australia. Obviously the form and style are no longer limited to our own country. And jazz, as a youthful form of art, is listened to as avidly in London as in Palo Alto or Ann Arbor.

Arnold Sungaard, "Jazz, Hot and Cold'

Publicistic Writing: Passage 1

If Martin Luther King were to reappear by my side today and give us a report card on the last 25 years, what would he say? "You did a good job," he would say, "voting for and electing people who formerly were not electable because of the color of their skin." He would say, "You have more political power and that is good."

"You did a good job," he would say, "letting people who have the ability to do so live wherever they want to live, go wherever they want to go in this great country."

He would say, "You did a good job elevating people of color up the ranks of the U.S. armed forces to the very top and into top levels of the U.S. government."

"You did a good job," he would say, "creating a black middle-class of people who are really doing well. You did a good job opening up opportunity. "

"But," he would say, "1 did not live and die to see the American family destroyed. I did not live and die to see 13-year-old boys get automatic weapons and gun down 9-year-olds just for the kick of it I did not live and die to see people destroy their own lives with drugs and build drug fortunes destroying the lives of others. That is not what I came here to do."

"I fought for freedom," he would say, "but not for the freedom of people to kill each other with reckless abandon, not for the freedom of children to impregnate each orher with babies and then abandon them, nor for the freedom of adult fathers of children to walk away from the children they created and abandon them, as if they didn't amount to anything."

He would say, "This is not what I lived and died for. I fought to stop white people from being so filled with hate that they would wreak violence on black people. I did not fight for the right of black people to murder other black people on a daily basis. "

The other day, the mayor of Baltimore, a dear friend of mine, told me a story of visiting the family of an 18-year-old young man who had been killed on Halloween. He had a bunch of little kids along with him. He always went out with the little-bitty ones so they could trick-or-treat safely. And across the street from where they were walking on Halloween, a 14-year-old boy gave a 13-year-old boy a gun and dared him to shoot the 18-year-old friend he was walking with-and he shot him dead.

Elsewhere, right here in Washington DC-the symbol of freedom throughout the world-look at how that freedom is being exercised. The Washington Post had a story about an 11-year-old child planning her own funeral: "These are the hymns I want sung. This is the dress I want to wear in my coffin. I know I'm not going to live very long."

That is not freedom-the freedom to die before you're a teenager— is not what Martin Luther King lived and died for. If you had told anybody who was here in this church—where Martin Luther King gave his last speech before he was assassinated-that we would have abused our freedom this way, they would have found it hard to believe.

And I tell you it is our moral duty to turn this around.

There are changes we can make from the outside-in-those are the job of the President of the United States and the Congress and the governors and state legislators and mayors- raising standards, community policing. And there is something each of us here can do-from the inside-out-and in the spirit of my faith, I count myself as one of you to turn this thing around from the inside-out as well as the outside-in. Otherwise the outside changes won't matter.

Sometimes, there are no answers from the outside in. Sometimes, the answers have to come from the values and the love and the stirrings and the voices that speak to us from within.

Here, you as the respected leaders and ministers of your faith, play a crucial role.

From the outside, we're doing our best, but I do not believe we can repair the basic fabric of society until people who are willing to work have work. Work organizes life. It gives structure and discipline to life. It gives meaning and self-esteem to people who are parents. It gives a ro'e model to children. We cannot repair the American community and restore the American family until we have the structure, the values, the discipline, and the reward that work gives us....

We have to make a partnership-all the government agencies, all the business folks. But where there are no families, where there is no order, where we have lost jobs because we had to reduce the size of the armed forces after the end of the Cold War, who will be there to give structure, role-modeling, discipline, love, and hope to these children?

You must do that, and we will help you.

Scripture says, "You are the salt of the earth and the light of the world," that "if your light shines before men, they will give glory to the Father in Heaven. " That is what we must do. That is what we must do. And I will work with you.

President Bill Clinton revives the voice and conscience of a martyr, Memphis, TN, November 13, 1993.

Publicistic Writing: Passage 2

This is truly a celebration—a celebration on the contributions women make in every aspect of life: in the home, on the job, in their communities, as mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, learners, workers, citizens and leaders.

It is also a coming together, much the way women come together every day in every country. We come together in fields and in factories. In village markets and supermarkets. In living rooms and board rooms.

Whether it is while playing with our children in the park, or washing clothes in a river, or taking a break at the office water cooler, we come together and talk about our aspirations and concerns. And time and again, our talk turns to our children and our families.

However different we may be, there is far more that unites us than divides us. We share a common future. And we are here to find common ground so that we may help bring new dignity and respect to women and girls all over the world—and in so doing, bring new strength and stability to families as well.

By gathering in Beijing, we are focusing world attention on issues that matter most in the lives of women and their families: access to education, health care, jobs, and credit, the chance to enjoy basic legal and human rights and participate fully in the political life of their countries.

There are some who question the reason for this conference. Let them listen to the voices of women in their homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces.

There are some who wonder whether the lives of women and girls matter to economic and political progress around the globe. Let them look at the women gathered here and at Huairou—the homemakers, nurses, teachers, lawyers, policy makers, and women who run their own businesses.

It is conferences like this that compel governments and peoples everywhere to listen, took and face the world's most pressing problems.

Wasn't it after the women's conference in Nairobi ten years ago that the world focused for the first time on the crisis of domestic violence?

Earlier today. I participated in a World Health Organization forum, where government officials, NGOs, and individual citizens are working on ways to address the health problems of women and girls.

Tomorrow, I will attend a gathering of the United Nations Development Fund for Women. There, the discussion will focus on local—and highly successful—programs that give hard-working women access to credit so they can improve their lives and the lives of their families.

What we are learning around the world is that, if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish.

And when families flourish, communities and nations will flourish.

That is why every woman, every man, every child, every family, and every nation on our planet has a stake in the discussion that takes place here.

Over the past 25 years, I have worked persistently on issues relating to women, children and families. Over the past two-and-a-half years, I have had the opportunity to learn more about the challenges facing women in my country and around the world. I have met new mothers in Jojakarta, Indonesia, who come together regularly in their village to discuss nutrition, family planning, and baby care. I have met working parents in Denmark who talk about the comfort they feel in knowing that their children can be cared for in creative, safe, and nurturing after-school centers. 1 have met women in South Africa who helped lead the struggle to end apartheid and are now helping build a new democracy. I have met with the leading women of the Western Hemisphere who are working every day to promote literacy and better health care for the children of their countries. I have met women in India and Bangladesh who are taking out small loans to buy milk cows, rickshaws, thread and other materials to create a livelihood for themselves and their families. I have met doctors and nurses in Belarus and Ukraine who are trying to keep children alive in the aftermath of Chernobyl. The great challenge of this conference is to give voice to women everywhere whose experiences go unnoticed, whose words go unheard.

Women comprise more than half the world's population. Women are 70% percent of the world's poor, and two-thirds of those who are not taught to read and write. Women are the primary caretakers for most of the world's children and elderly. Yet much of the work we do is not valued --not by economists, not by historians, not by popular culture and not by government leaders.

At this very moment, as we sit here, women around the world are giving birth, raising children, cooking meals, washing clothes, cleaning houses, planting crops, working on assembly lines, running companies, and running countries.

Women are also dying from diseases that should have been prevented or treated; they are watching their children succumb to malnutrition caused by poverty and economic deprivation; they are being denied the right to go to school by their own fathers and brothers; they are being forced into prostitution, and they are being barred from the ballot box and the bank lending office.

Those of us with the opportunity to be here have the responsibility to speak for those who could not.

As an American, I want to speak up for women in my own country—women who are raising children on the minimum wage, women who can't afford health care or child care, women whose lives are threatened by violence, including violence in their own homes. I want to speak up for mothers who arc fighting for good schools, safe neighborhoods, clean air and clean airwaves; for older women, some of them widows, who have raised their families and now find that their skills and life experiences are not valued in the workplace; for women who are working all night as nurses, hotel clerks, and fast food chefs so that they can be at home during the day with their kids; and for women everywhere who simply don't have enough time to do everything they are called upon to do each day.

Speaking to you today, I speak for them, just as each of us speaks for women around the world who are denied the chance to go to school, or see a doctor, or own property, or have a say about the direction of their lives, simply because they are women.

The truth is that most women around the world work both inside and outside the home, usually by necessity.

We need to understand that there is no formula for how women should lead their lives. That is why we must respect the choices that each woman makes for herself and her family. Every woman deserves the chance to realize her God-given potential. We must also recognize that women will never gain full dignity until their human rights are respected and protected.

Our goals for this conference, to strengthen families and societies by empowering women to take greater control over their own destinies, cannot be fully achieved unless all governments-here and around the world—accept their responsibility to protect and promote internationally recognized human rights.

The international community has long acknowledged, and recently affirmed at Vienna, that both women and men are entitled to a range of protections and personal freedoms, from the right of personal security to the right to determine freely the number and spacing of the children they bear.

No one should be forced to remain silent for fear of religious or political persecution, arrest, abuse or torture.

Tragically, women are most often the ones whose human rights are violated. Even in the late 20th century, the rape of women continues to be used as an instrument of armed conflict. Women and children make up a large majority of the world's refugees. And when women are excluded from the political process, they become even more vulnerable to abuse.

I believe that, on the eve of a new millennium, it is time to break our silence. It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights. These abuses have continued because, for too long, the history of women has been a history of silence.

Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words. The voices of this conference
and of the women at Huairou must be heard loud and clear-
It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or
their spines broken, simply because they are girls. It is a violation of human rights when women and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small.

It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and
when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war.
It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to
44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes.
It is a violation of human rights when young girls are brutalized by the painful and degrading
practice of genital mutilation.

It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, it is that human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely and the right to be heard.

Women must enjoy the right to participate fully in the social and political lives of their countries if we want freedom and democracy to thrive and endure.

It is indefensible that many women in non-governmental organizations who wished to participate in this conference have not been able to attend—or have been prohibited from fully taking part.

Let me be clear: Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize, and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions.

In my country, we recently celebrated the 75th anniversary of women's suffrage. It took 150 years after the signing of our Declaration of Independence for women to win the right to vote. It took 72 years of organized struggle on the part of many courageous women and men. It was one of America's most divisive philosophical wars. But it was also a bloodless war. Suffrage was achieved without a shot fired.

We have also have been reminded, in V-J Day observances last weekend, of the good that comes when men and women join together to combat the forces of tyranny and build a better world.

We have seen peace prevail in most places for a half century. We have avoided another world war. But we have not solved older, deeply rooted problems that continue to diminish the potential of half the world's population.

Now it is time to act on behalf of women everywhere.

If we take bold steps to better the lives of women, we will be taking bold steps to better the lives of children and families too. Families rely on mothers and wives for emotional support and care; families rely on women for labor in the home; and increasingly, families rely on women for income needed to raise healthy children and care for other relatives. As long as discrimination and inequities remain so commonplace around the world—as long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not schooled and subjected to violence in and out of their homes—the potential of the human family to create a peaceful, prosperous world will not be realized.

Let this conference bе our, and the world's, call to action.

And let us heed the call so that we can create a world in which every woman is treated with respect and dignity, every boy and girl is loved and cared for equally, and every family has the hope of a strong and stable future.

Thank you very much.

Hillary Rodham Clinton addresses the fourth UN. World Conference on Women, Beijing, 1993.

Official Style Writing: Passage 1

The Normative Documents of Ukraine Ministry of Economy and European Integration of Ukraine

Letter

dated 1 March 2002, No. 83-20/170

In reply to your letter, dated________ , No.____ , regarding the possibility to set the price of a

barter agreement in external economic activities that is to be lower than the established indicative prices and the results of their non-observance, the Ministry of Economy and European Integration of Ukraine informs of the following.

According to Article 1 of the Law of Ukraine "On Regulating Goods Exchange (Barter) Transactions in the Sphere of External Economic Activities," the evaluation of goods under barter agreements is to be made for the purpose of creating conditions for ensuring equivalence of exchange as well as for keeping customs records, determining insurance amounts, evaluating claims and imposing penalties. The condition of exchange equivalency under a barter agreement is the exchange of goods (services) at the prices determined by external economic entities of Ukraine on the contractual basis taking into account supply and demand and other factors, which are effective in relevant markets while concluding barter agreements. In cases stipulated by the legislation of Ukraine contract prices are determined by external economic entities of Ukraine in compliance with indicative prices.

Under the Decree of the President of Ukraine "On Measures as for Improving Market Price Policy in the Sphere of External Economic Activities," dated 10 February 1996, No. 124/96 contract prices in the sphere of external economic activities are determined by external economic entities of Ukraine on the contractual basis taking into account supply and demand and other factors which are effective in the relevant markets while concluding external economic agreements (contracts).

In cases stipulated by this Decree contract prices in the sphere of external economic activities are determined by external economic entities of Ukraine in compliance with indicative prices established by the Ministry of Economy and European integration of Ukraine.

The Ministry of Economy and European Integration of Ukraine may establish indicative prices for goods:

— as for whose export anti-damping measures are taken or anti-damping investigations or
procedures in Ukraine or outside its borders are started;

— as for which special import procedures are applied according to Article 19 of the Law of
Ukraine."On External Economic Activities";

— as for whose export the regime of quotas and licensing is introduced;

— as for whose export special regimes are introduced;

— whose export is to be carried out under the procedure stipulated by Article 20 of the Law of
Ukraine "On External Economic Activities";

— in other cases for the purpose of observing international obligations of Ukraine.

The aforesaid Decree approves the Provision on indicative prices in the sphere of external economic activities. Under this Provision indicative prices are the prices for goods, which correspond to the prices that were set or are set for a corresponding product on the export or import market at the moment of export (import) transaction, taking into account the conditions of supply and settlements determined according to the legislation of Ukraine. Such prices are to be introduced in accordance with the cases indicated in the Decree. Indicative prices introduced under this Provision are compulsory for applying by external economic entities of all forms of ownership whiie concluding and implementing external economic agreements (contracts).

The letter of the Chief State Tax Inspection of Ukraine, dated 25 March 1996, No. 22-112/10-1978 gave the following explanations. If, while concluding a barter agreement, the total value of exported goods is indicated in a foreign currency at the prices lower than the indicative ones, the further export of these goods is to be carried out at the indicative prices and a business entity of Ukraine is to change the terms of the agreement for the purpose of receiving foreign partner's goods for the amount equalling the value of actual export under the relevant contract. If the aforesaid changes to the agreement are not introduced and import has been conducted at the price lower than the value of actual export, a relevant fine should be charged on the difference between the value of export and import.

Article 16 of the Law of Ukraine "On Unified Customs Tariff determines the customs value of goods - imposing duties on goods and other items subject to customs duties. In case of evident non-compliance of the declared customs value of goods and other items with the value determined according to the Provisions of this Article or if it is impossible to check how it was figured out, the customs bodies of Ukraine consistently define customs value on the ground of the price for identical goods and other items, as well as of the price for similar goods and other items, which are effective in the leading countries - exporters of the indicated goods and other items.

Article 29 of the Law of Ukraine "On External Economic Activities" establishes the application of indicative prices while concluding an external economic agreement. According to Article 33 of the said Law if the violations of this Law and related laws of Ukraine made by external economic entities or foreign economic entities caused losses, loss of benefits and/or moral damage incurred by other similar entities or the state, the entities that violated the Law bear full material responsibility. In particular, for the violations of this Law and related laws of Ukraine the following special sanctions such as penalties, individual regime of licensing, temporary suspending of external economic activities may be applied to the external economic entities or foreign economic entities.

State Secretary Deputy of the Ministry of Economy

and European Integration of Ukraine

V. STETSENKO

Official Style Writing: Passage 2:

What identity cards are And how they can benefit students and teachers

"I could not go there. The price for the plane tickets appeared to be S WO more than I expected. Such a pity' I dreamed to see the Big Ben at least once... And now my hopes are going away..." This is a monologue of a person I happened to hear in McDonald's last week. She lacked only $100 to wake her dreams come true. She did not know that if she had received ISIC, the problem would disappear itself because ISIC is a small piece of plastic, but that encompasses lots of discounts, including airfare ones in particular.

Nature of Identity Cards

Nowadays as never before students are willing to see the world. The' world that is full of famous skyscrapers, deepest cavities, famous monuments, places of amusement. Travel opportunities have benefited a lot from development of international co-operation between countries. Going abroad for studying or sightseeing is not a problem any more. However, sometimes the problem is financial considerations. It is not always affordable for a student to pay all costs required for arranging a trip. But still there are ways to reduce such expenses, and one of them —Identity Cards (hereafter -the Card).

As a matter of fact, such cards can be of great value since they have a lot of benefits, for example, various discounts of 10 — 100%. In general the Card can be issued to any student, and not only. The range of persons that can obtain the Card includes the young (even if not students) and teachers. Let us consider them separately.

Types of Identity Cards

International Student Identity Card (ISIC). This one is for full-time students of accredited institutions. You can also be a student of a high school or post-secondary educational establishment, but you must be at least 12 years old. The Card serves as your passport that certifies you are a full time student. ISIC is accepted in nearly 100 countries of the world and about 4 miilion students use this card annually.

In order to be issued the Card, you only need to present a document certifying your full time student status (for example, your current student ID), passport size photo, and to pay a fee (in Ukraine — about $5 depending on agency). ISIC is valid for maximum 16 months.

The ISIC provides you, as a cardholder, with the following services and advantages: access to thousands of discounts in about 100 countries;

— discount student airfares;

— proof of your being a full time student; — 24-hour emergency Help Line;

— sickness and accident travel insurance;

— ISIC Benefit Guide (a guide containing information on ISIC benefits in countries of the
world, travel tips, dos and don'ts, etc.).

Discounts comprise a lot of opportunities of reducing your expenses: from accommodations and transport to retail outlets and restaurants. You can save up to 100% on admissions to theatres, cinema, clubs, exhibitions, etc.—just present your ISIC,

Discount student airfares let you travel by air for less. With ISIC you can buy tickets, change destination cities, travel dates and routes (on way), get refund for the unused portions of tickets, etc. A special organisation arranges this for you (about this and other similar organisations read below).

24-hour emergency Help Line is a 24 hour a day, multilingual emergency assistance service available to all ISIC holders. The main aim of this service is to give advice on emergency situations (lost documents, sickness, etc.). When you receive your ISIC, you can find a special phone number printed on the back of the Card. So, once an emergency happens, dial the given phone number and the operator will be there for assistance. The operator will need to know your name, Card number, nationality, language you prefer to speak, the kind of emergency. The service is available in English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese. Help Line service includes: medical referral, legal referral, referral to a student travel office, emergency message handling, referral to cardholder services.

Travel insurance is a specifically designed for Card holders insurance programme. The main advantages of the programme — its flexibility and adaptation to limited budgets of young travellers. Note, under this programme's terms you are to purchase insurance policies before you start out. Most policies include options for basic medical and accident insurance, trip cancellation or interruption and baggage tracing.

International Young Travel Card (IYTC). If you are not a full-time student, do not despair. You may benefit from almost the same advantages as those of ISIC. You can apply for IYTC. It is issued to the young aged up to 25 years old even if they are not students. Each year about 400_;000 young people travel around the world with iYTC.

In order to receive IYTC, you will be asked to present: proof of your age (photocopy of your birth certificate, passport or a validated ID card with a picture) and one passport size photograph, and to pay a fee. IYTC remains valid for one year from the date it was issued.

The benefits and discounts you can receive by holding IYTP are named below:

— special young airfares;

— commission free currency exchange;

— discounts on airfares, restaurants, etc.

For description of some of the discounts see discounts provided by ISIC.

International Teacher Identity Card (ITIC). It wou

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