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Q1279887
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: UECE-CEV Órgão: UECE Prova: UECE-CEV - 2013 - UECE - Vestibular - Língua Inglesa - 2ª fase |
Q1279887 Inglês
TEXT

     BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s highest court has long viewed itself as a bastion of manners and formality. Justices call one another “Your Excellency,” dress in billowing robes and wrap each utterance in grandiloquence, as if little had changed from the era when marquises and dukes held sway from their vast plantations.
     In one televised feud, Mr. Barbosa questioned another justice about whether he would even be on the court had he not been appointed by his cousin, a former president impeached in 1992. With another justice, Mr. Barbosa rebuked him over what the chief justice considered his condescending tone, telling him he was not his “capanga,” a term describing a hired thug. 
      In one of his most scathing comments, Mr. Barbosa, the high court’s first and only black justice, took on the entire legal system of Brazil — where it is still remarkably rare for politicians to ever spend time in prison, even after being convicted of crimes — contending that the mentality of judges was “conservative, pro-status-quo and pro-impunity.”
     “I have a temperament that doesn’t adapt well to politics,” Mr. Barbosa, 58, said in a recent interview in his quarters here in the Supreme Federal Tribunal, a modernist landmark designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer. “It’s because I speak my mind so much.” 
     His acknowledged lack of tact notwithstanding, he is the driving force behind a series of socially liberal and establishment-shaking rulings, turning Brazil’s highest court — and him in particular — into a newfound political power and the subject of popular fascination. 
   The court’s recent rulings include a unanimous decision upholding the University of Brasília’s admissions policies aimed at increasing the number of black and indigenous students, opening the way for one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping affirmative action laws for higher education. 
     In another move, Mr. Barbosa used his sway as chief justice and president of the panel overseeing Brazil’s judiciary to effectively legalize same-sex marriage across the country. And in an anticorruption crusade, he is overseeing the precedent-setting trial of senior political figures in the governing Workers Party for their roles in a vast vote-buying scheme.
   Ascending to Brazil’s high court, much less pushing the institution to assert its independence, long seemed out of reach for Mr. Barbosa, the eldest of eight children raised in Paracatu, an impoverished city in Minas Gerais State, where his father worked as a bricklayer.  
    But his prominence — not just on the court, but in the streets as well — is so well established that masks with his face were sold for Carnival, amateur musicians have composed songs about his handling of the corruption trial and posted them on YouTube, and demonstrators during the huge street protests that shook the nation this year told pollsters that Mr. Barbosa was one of their top choices for president in next year’s elections.
     While the protests have subsided since their height in June, the political tumult they set off persists. The race for president, once considered a shoo-in for the incumbent, Dilma Rousseff, is now up in the air, with Mr. Barbosa — who is now so much in the public eye that gossip columnists are following his romance with a woman in her 20s — repeatedly saying he will not run. “I’m not a candidate for anything,” he says. 
     But the same public glare that has turned him into a celebrity has singed him as well. While he has won widespread admiration for his guidance of the high court, Mr. Barbosa, like almost every other prominent political figure in Brazil, has recently come under scrutiny. And for someone accustomed to criticizing the so-called supersalaries awarded to some members of Brazil’s legal system, the revelations have put Mr. Barbosa on the defensive. 
     One report in the Brazilian news media described how he received about $180,000 in payments for untaken leaves of absence during his 19 years as a public prosecutor. (Such payments are common in some areas of Brazil’s large public bureaucracy.) Another noted that he bought an apartment in Miami through a limited liability company, suggesting an effort to pay less taxes on the property. In statements, Mr. Barbosa contends that he has done nothing wrong. 
     In a country where a majority of people now define themselves as black or of mixed race — but where blacks remain remarkably rare in the highest echelons of political institutions and corporations — Mr. Barbosa’s trajectory and abrupt manner have elicited both widespread admiration and a fair amount of resistance. 
     As a teenager, Mr. Barbosa moved to the capital, Brasília, finding work as a janitor in a courtroom. Against the odds, he got into the University of Brasília, the only black student in its law program at the time. Wanting to see the world, he later won admission into Brazil’s diplomatic service, which promptly sent him to Helsinki, the Finnish capital on the shore of the Baltic Sea. 
     Sensing that he would not advance much in the diplomatic service, which he has called “one of the most discriminatory institutions of Brazil,” Mr. Barbosa opted for a career as a prosecutor. He alternated between legal investigations in Brazil and studies abroad, gaining fluency in English, French and German, and earning a doctorate in law at Pantheon-Assas University in Paris. 
   Fascinated by the legal systems of other countries, Mr. Barbosa wrote a book on affirmative action in the United States. He still voices his admiration for figures like Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice in the United States, and William J. Brennan Jr., who for years embodied the court’s liberal vision, clearly drawing inspiration from them as he pushed Brazil’s high court toward socially liberal rulings.
    Still, no decision has thrust Mr. Barbosa into Brazil’s public imagination as much as his handling of the trial of political operatives, legislators and bankers found guilty in a labyrinthine corruption scandal called the mensalão, or big monthly allowance, after the regular payments made to lawmakers in exchange for their votes. 
    Last November, at Mr. Barbosa’s urging, the high court sentenced some of the most powerful figures in the governing Workers Party to years in prison for their crimes in the scheme, including bribery and unlawful conspiracy, jolting a political system in which impunity for politicians has been the norm.  
     Now the mensalão trial is entering what could be its final phases, and Mr. Barbosa has at times been visibly exasperated that defendants who have already been found guilty and sentenced have managed to avoid hard jail time. He has clashed with other justices over their consideration of a rare legal procedure in which appeals over close votes at the high court are examined. 
     Losing his patience with one prominent justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, who tried to absolve some defendants of certain crimes, Mr. Barbosa publicly accused him this month of “chicanery” by using legalese to prop up certain positions. An outcry ensued among some who could not stomach Mr. Barbosa’s talking to a fellow justice like that. “Who does Justice Joaquim Barbosa think he is?” asked Ricardo Noblat, a columnist for the newspaper O Globo, questioning whether Mr. Barbosa was qualified to preside over the court. “What powers does he think he has just because he’s sitting in the chair of the chief justice of the Supreme Federal Tribunal?” 
      Mr. Barbosa did not apologize. In the interview, he said some tension was necessary for the court to function properly. “It was always like this,” he said, contending that arguments are now just easier to see because the court’s proceedings are televised. 
     Linking the court’s work to the recent wave of protests, he explained that he strongly disagreed with the violence of some demonstrators, but he also said he believed that the street movements were “a sign of democracy’s exuberance.” 
     “People don’t want to passively stand by and observe these arrangements of the elite, which were always the Brazilian tradition,” he said. 
One of the reasons Mr. Barbosa got very irritated was the fact that some of the mensalão defendants
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Q1279886
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: UECE-CEV Órgão: UECE Prova: UECE-CEV - 2013 - UECE - Vestibular - Língua Inglesa - 2ª fase |
Q1279886 Inglês
TEXT

     BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s highest court has long viewed itself as a bastion of manners and formality. Justices call one another “Your Excellency,” dress in billowing robes and wrap each utterance in grandiloquence, as if little had changed from the era when marquises and dukes held sway from their vast plantations.
     In one televised feud, Mr. Barbosa questioned another justice about whether he would even be on the court had he not been appointed by his cousin, a former president impeached in 1992. With another justice, Mr. Barbosa rebuked him over what the chief justice considered his condescending tone, telling him he was not his “capanga,” a term describing a hired thug. 
      In one of his most scathing comments, Mr. Barbosa, the high court’s first and only black justice, took on the entire legal system of Brazil — where it is still remarkably rare for politicians to ever spend time in prison, even after being convicted of crimes — contending that the mentality of judges was “conservative, pro-status-quo and pro-impunity.”
     “I have a temperament that doesn’t adapt well to politics,” Mr. Barbosa, 58, said in a recent interview in his quarters here in the Supreme Federal Tribunal, a modernist landmark designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer. “It’s because I speak my mind so much.” 
     His acknowledged lack of tact notwithstanding, he is the driving force behind a series of socially liberal and establishment-shaking rulings, turning Brazil’s highest court — and him in particular — into a newfound political power and the subject of popular fascination. 
   The court’s recent rulings include a unanimous decision upholding the University of Brasília’s admissions policies aimed at increasing the number of black and indigenous students, opening the way for one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping affirmative action laws for higher education. 
     In another move, Mr. Barbosa used his sway as chief justice and president of the panel overseeing Brazil’s judiciary to effectively legalize same-sex marriage across the country. And in an anticorruption crusade, he is overseeing the precedent-setting trial of senior political figures in the governing Workers Party for their roles in a vast vote-buying scheme.
   Ascending to Brazil’s high court, much less pushing the institution to assert its independence, long seemed out of reach for Mr. Barbosa, the eldest of eight children raised in Paracatu, an impoverished city in Minas Gerais State, where his father worked as a bricklayer.  
    But his prominence — not just on the court, but in the streets as well — is so well established that masks with his face were sold for Carnival, amateur musicians have composed songs about his handling of the corruption trial and posted them on YouTube, and demonstrators during the huge street protests that shook the nation this year told pollsters that Mr. Barbosa was one of their top choices for president in next year’s elections.
     While the protests have subsided since their height in June, the political tumult they set off persists. The race for president, once considered a shoo-in for the incumbent, Dilma Rousseff, is now up in the air, with Mr. Barbosa — who is now so much in the public eye that gossip columnists are following his romance with a woman in her 20s — repeatedly saying he will not run. “I’m not a candidate for anything,” he says. 
     But the same public glare that has turned him into a celebrity has singed him as well. While he has won widespread admiration for his guidance of the high court, Mr. Barbosa, like almost every other prominent political figure in Brazil, has recently come under scrutiny. And for someone accustomed to criticizing the so-called supersalaries awarded to some members of Brazil’s legal system, the revelations have put Mr. Barbosa on the defensive. 
     One report in the Brazilian news media described how he received about $180,000 in payments for untaken leaves of absence during his 19 years as a public prosecutor. (Such payments are common in some areas of Brazil’s large public bureaucracy.) Another noted that he bought an apartment in Miami through a limited liability company, suggesting an effort to pay less taxes on the property. In statements, Mr. Barbosa contends that he has done nothing wrong. 
     In a country where a majority of people now define themselves as black or of mixed race — but where blacks remain remarkably rare in the highest echelons of political institutions and corporations — Mr. Barbosa’s trajectory and abrupt manner have elicited both widespread admiration and a fair amount of resistance. 
     As a teenager, Mr. Barbosa moved to the capital, Brasília, finding work as a janitor in a courtroom. Against the odds, he got into the University of Brasília, the only black student in its law program at the time. Wanting to see the world, he later won admission into Brazil’s diplomatic service, which promptly sent him to Helsinki, the Finnish capital on the shore of the Baltic Sea. 
     Sensing that he would not advance much in the diplomatic service, which he has called “one of the most discriminatory institutions of Brazil,” Mr. Barbosa opted for a career as a prosecutor. He alternated between legal investigations in Brazil and studies abroad, gaining fluency in English, French and German, and earning a doctorate in law at Pantheon-Assas University in Paris. 
   Fascinated by the legal systems of other countries, Mr. Barbosa wrote a book on affirmative action in the United States. He still voices his admiration for figures like Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice in the United States, and William J. Brennan Jr., who for years embodied the court’s liberal vision, clearly drawing inspiration from them as he pushed Brazil’s high court toward socially liberal rulings.
    Still, no decision has thrust Mr. Barbosa into Brazil’s public imagination as much as his handling of the trial of political operatives, legislators and bankers found guilty in a labyrinthine corruption scandal called the mensalão, or big monthly allowance, after the regular payments made to lawmakers in exchange for their votes. 
    Last November, at Mr. Barbosa’s urging, the high court sentenced some of the most powerful figures in the governing Workers Party to years in prison for their crimes in the scheme, including bribery and unlawful conspiracy, jolting a political system in which impunity for politicians has been the norm.  
     Now the mensalão trial is entering what could be its final phases, and Mr. Barbosa has at times been visibly exasperated that defendants who have already been found guilty and sentenced have managed to avoid hard jail time. He has clashed with other justices over their consideration of a rare legal procedure in which appeals over close votes at the high court are examined. 
     Losing his patience with one prominent justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, who tried to absolve some defendants of certain crimes, Mr. Barbosa publicly accused him this month of “chicanery” by using legalese to prop up certain positions. An outcry ensued among some who could not stomach Mr. Barbosa’s talking to a fellow justice like that. “Who does Justice Joaquim Barbosa think he is?” asked Ricardo Noblat, a columnist for the newspaper O Globo, questioning whether Mr. Barbosa was qualified to preside over the court. “What powers does he think he has just because he’s sitting in the chair of the chief justice of the Supreme Federal Tribunal?” 
      Mr. Barbosa did not apologize. In the interview, he said some tension was necessary for the court to function properly. “It was always like this,” he said, contending that arguments are now just easier to see because the court’s proceedings are televised. 
     Linking the court’s work to the recent wave of protests, he explained that he strongly disagreed with the violence of some demonstrators, but he also said he believed that the street movements were “a sign of democracy’s exuberance.” 
     “People don’t want to passively stand by and observe these arrangements of the elite, which were always the Brazilian tradition,” he said. 
Speaking with journalists recently, the Chief Justice explained the reason why
Alternativas
Q1279885
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: UECE-CEV Órgão: UECE Prova: UECE-CEV - 2013 - UECE - Vestibular - Língua Inglesa - 2ª fase |
Q1279885 Inglês
TEXT

     BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s highest court has long viewed itself as a bastion of manners and formality. Justices call one another “Your Excellency,” dress in billowing robes and wrap each utterance in grandiloquence, as if little had changed from the era when marquises and dukes held sway from their vast plantations.
     In one televised feud, Mr. Barbosa questioned another justice about whether he would even be on the court had he not been appointed by his cousin, a former president impeached in 1992. With another justice, Mr. Barbosa rebuked him over what the chief justice considered his condescending tone, telling him he was not his “capanga,” a term describing a hired thug. 
      In one of his most scathing comments, Mr. Barbosa, the high court’s first and only black justice, took on the entire legal system of Brazil — where it is still remarkably rare for politicians to ever spend time in prison, even after being convicted of crimes — contending that the mentality of judges was “conservative, pro-status-quo and pro-impunity.”
     “I have a temperament that doesn’t adapt well to politics,” Mr. Barbosa, 58, said in a recent interview in his quarters here in the Supreme Federal Tribunal, a modernist landmark designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer. “It’s because I speak my mind so much.” 
     His acknowledged lack of tact notwithstanding, he is the driving force behind a series of socially liberal and establishment-shaking rulings, turning Brazil’s highest court — and him in particular — into a newfound political power and the subject of popular fascination. 
   The court’s recent rulings include a unanimous decision upholding the University of Brasília’s admissions policies aimed at increasing the number of black and indigenous students, opening the way for one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping affirmative action laws for higher education. 
     In another move, Mr. Barbosa used his sway as chief justice and president of the panel overseeing Brazil’s judiciary to effectively legalize same-sex marriage across the country. And in an anticorruption crusade, he is overseeing the precedent-setting trial of senior political figures in the governing Workers Party for their roles in a vast vote-buying scheme.
   Ascending to Brazil’s high court, much less pushing the institution to assert its independence, long seemed out of reach for Mr. Barbosa, the eldest of eight children raised in Paracatu, an impoverished city in Minas Gerais State, where his father worked as a bricklayer.  
    But his prominence — not just on the court, but in the streets as well — is so well established that masks with his face were sold for Carnival, amateur musicians have composed songs about his handling of the corruption trial and posted them on YouTube, and demonstrators during the huge street protests that shook the nation this year told pollsters that Mr. Barbosa was one of their top choices for president in next year’s elections.
     While the protests have subsided since their height in June, the political tumult they set off persists. The race for president, once considered a shoo-in for the incumbent, Dilma Rousseff, is now up in the air, with Mr. Barbosa — who is now so much in the public eye that gossip columnists are following his romance with a woman in her 20s — repeatedly saying he will not run. “I’m not a candidate for anything,” he says. 
     But the same public glare that has turned him into a celebrity has singed him as well. While he has won widespread admiration for his guidance of the high court, Mr. Barbosa, like almost every other prominent political figure in Brazil, has recently come under scrutiny. And for someone accustomed to criticizing the so-called supersalaries awarded to some members of Brazil’s legal system, the revelations have put Mr. Barbosa on the defensive. 
     One report in the Brazilian news media described how he received about $180,000 in payments for untaken leaves of absence during his 19 years as a public prosecutor. (Such payments are common in some areas of Brazil’s large public bureaucracy.) Another noted that he bought an apartment in Miami through a limited liability company, suggesting an effort to pay less taxes on the property. In statements, Mr. Barbosa contends that he has done nothing wrong. 
     In a country where a majority of people now define themselves as black or of mixed race — but where blacks remain remarkably rare in the highest echelons of political institutions and corporations — Mr. Barbosa’s trajectory and abrupt manner have elicited both widespread admiration and a fair amount of resistance. 
     As a teenager, Mr. Barbosa moved to the capital, Brasília, finding work as a janitor in a courtroom. Against the odds, he got into the University of Brasília, the only black student in its law program at the time. Wanting to see the world, he later won admission into Brazil’s diplomatic service, which promptly sent him to Helsinki, the Finnish capital on the shore of the Baltic Sea. 
     Sensing that he would not advance much in the diplomatic service, which he has called “one of the most discriminatory institutions of Brazil,” Mr. Barbosa opted for a career as a prosecutor. He alternated between legal investigations in Brazil and studies abroad, gaining fluency in English, French and German, and earning a doctorate in law at Pantheon-Assas University in Paris. 
   Fascinated by the legal systems of other countries, Mr. Barbosa wrote a book on affirmative action in the United States. He still voices his admiration for figures like Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice in the United States, and William J. Brennan Jr., who for years embodied the court’s liberal vision, clearly drawing inspiration from them as he pushed Brazil’s high court toward socially liberal rulings.
    Still, no decision has thrust Mr. Barbosa into Brazil’s public imagination as much as his handling of the trial of political operatives, legislators and bankers found guilty in a labyrinthine corruption scandal called the mensalão, or big monthly allowance, after the regular payments made to lawmakers in exchange for their votes. 
    Last November, at Mr. Barbosa’s urging, the high court sentenced some of the most powerful figures in the governing Workers Party to years in prison for their crimes in the scheme, including bribery and unlawful conspiracy, jolting a political system in which impunity for politicians has been the norm.  
     Now the mensalão trial is entering what could be its final phases, and Mr. Barbosa has at times been visibly exasperated that defendants who have already been found guilty and sentenced have managed to avoid hard jail time. He has clashed with other justices over their consideration of a rare legal procedure in which appeals over close votes at the high court are examined. 
     Losing his patience with one prominent justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, who tried to absolve some defendants of certain crimes, Mr. Barbosa publicly accused him this month of “chicanery” by using legalese to prop up certain positions. An outcry ensued among some who could not stomach Mr. Barbosa’s talking to a fellow justice like that. “Who does Justice Joaquim Barbosa think he is?” asked Ricardo Noblat, a columnist for the newspaper O Globo, questioning whether Mr. Barbosa was qualified to preside over the court. “What powers does he think he has just because he’s sitting in the chair of the chief justice of the Supreme Federal Tribunal?” 
      Mr. Barbosa did not apologize. In the interview, he said some tension was necessary for the court to function properly. “It was always like this,” he said, contending that arguments are now just easier to see because the court’s proceedings are televised. 
     Linking the court’s work to the recent wave of protests, he explained that he strongly disagreed with the violence of some demonstrators, but he also said he believed that the street movements were “a sign of democracy’s exuberance.” 
     “People don’t want to passively stand by and observe these arrangements of the elite, which were always the Brazilian tradition,” he said. 
One criticism made by Mr. Barbosa was that judges’ mentality in Brazil, besides being prostatus quo, was also
Alternativas
Q1279884
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: UECE-CEV Órgão: UECE Prova: UECE-CEV - 2013 - UECE - Vestibular - Língua Inglesa - 2ª fase |
Q1279884 Inglês
TEXT

     BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s highest court has long viewed itself as a bastion of manners and formality. Justices call one another “Your Excellency,” dress in billowing robes and wrap each utterance in grandiloquence, as if little had changed from the era when marquises and dukes held sway from their vast plantations.
     In one televised feud, Mr. Barbosa questioned another justice about whether he would even be on the court had he not been appointed by his cousin, a former president impeached in 1992. With another justice, Mr. Barbosa rebuked him over what the chief justice considered his condescending tone, telling him he was not his “capanga,” a term describing a hired thug. 
      In one of his most scathing comments, Mr. Barbosa, the high court’s first and only black justice, took on the entire legal system of Brazil — where it is still remarkably rare for politicians to ever spend time in prison, even after being convicted of crimes — contending that the mentality of judges was “conservative, pro-status-quo and pro-impunity.”
     “I have a temperament that doesn’t adapt well to politics,” Mr. Barbosa, 58, said in a recent interview in his quarters here in the Supreme Federal Tribunal, a modernist landmark designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer. “It’s because I speak my mind so much.” 
     His acknowledged lack of tact notwithstanding, he is the driving force behind a series of socially liberal and establishment-shaking rulings, turning Brazil’s highest court — and him in particular — into a newfound political power and the subject of popular fascination. 
   The court’s recent rulings include a unanimous decision upholding the University of Brasília’s admissions policies aimed at increasing the number of black and indigenous students, opening the way for one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping affirmative action laws for higher education. 
     In another move, Mr. Barbosa used his sway as chief justice and president of the panel overseeing Brazil’s judiciary to effectively legalize same-sex marriage across the country. And in an anticorruption crusade, he is overseeing the precedent-setting trial of senior political figures in the governing Workers Party for their roles in a vast vote-buying scheme.
   Ascending to Brazil’s high court, much less pushing the institution to assert its independence, long seemed out of reach for Mr. Barbosa, the eldest of eight children raised in Paracatu, an impoverished city in Minas Gerais State, where his father worked as a bricklayer.  
    But his prominence — not just on the court, but in the streets as well — is so well established that masks with his face were sold for Carnival, amateur musicians have composed songs about his handling of the corruption trial and posted them on YouTube, and demonstrators during the huge street protests that shook the nation this year told pollsters that Mr. Barbosa was one of their top choices for president in next year’s elections.
     While the protests have subsided since their height in June, the political tumult they set off persists. The race for president, once considered a shoo-in for the incumbent, Dilma Rousseff, is now up in the air, with Mr. Barbosa — who is now so much in the public eye that gossip columnists are following his romance with a woman in her 20s — repeatedly saying he will not run. “I’m not a candidate for anything,” he says. 
     But the same public glare that has turned him into a celebrity has singed him as well. While he has won widespread admiration for his guidance of the high court, Mr. Barbosa, like almost every other prominent political figure in Brazil, has recently come under scrutiny. And for someone accustomed to criticizing the so-called supersalaries awarded to some members of Brazil’s legal system, the revelations have put Mr. Barbosa on the defensive. 
     One report in the Brazilian news media described how he received about $180,000 in payments for untaken leaves of absence during his 19 years as a public prosecutor. (Such payments are common in some areas of Brazil’s large public bureaucracy.) Another noted that he bought an apartment in Miami through a limited liability company, suggesting an effort to pay less taxes on the property. In statements, Mr. Barbosa contends that he has done nothing wrong. 
     In a country where a majority of people now define themselves as black or of mixed race — but where blacks remain remarkably rare in the highest echelons of political institutions and corporations — Mr. Barbosa’s trajectory and abrupt manner have elicited both widespread admiration and a fair amount of resistance. 
     As a teenager, Mr. Barbosa moved to the capital, Brasília, finding work as a janitor in a courtroom. Against the odds, he got into the University of Brasília, the only black student in its law program at the time. Wanting to see the world, he later won admission into Brazil’s diplomatic service, which promptly sent him to Helsinki, the Finnish capital on the shore of the Baltic Sea. 
     Sensing that he would not advance much in the diplomatic service, which he has called “one of the most discriminatory institutions of Brazil,” Mr. Barbosa opted for a career as a prosecutor. He alternated between legal investigations in Brazil and studies abroad, gaining fluency in English, French and German, and earning a doctorate in law at Pantheon-Assas University in Paris. 
   Fascinated by the legal systems of other countries, Mr. Barbosa wrote a book on affirmative action in the United States. He still voices his admiration for figures like Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice in the United States, and William J. Brennan Jr., who for years embodied the court’s liberal vision, clearly drawing inspiration from them as he pushed Brazil’s high court toward socially liberal rulings.
    Still, no decision has thrust Mr. Barbosa into Brazil’s public imagination as much as his handling of the trial of political operatives, legislators and bankers found guilty in a labyrinthine corruption scandal called the mensalão, or big monthly allowance, after the regular payments made to lawmakers in exchange for their votes. 
    Last November, at Mr. Barbosa’s urging, the high court sentenced some of the most powerful figures in the governing Workers Party to years in prison for their crimes in the scheme, including bribery and unlawful conspiracy, jolting a political system in which impunity for politicians has been the norm.  
     Now the mensalão trial is entering what could be its final phases, and Mr. Barbosa has at times been visibly exasperated that defendants who have already been found guilty and sentenced have managed to avoid hard jail time. He has clashed with other justices over their consideration of a rare legal procedure in which appeals over close votes at the high court are examined. 
     Losing his patience with one prominent justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, who tried to absolve some defendants of certain crimes, Mr. Barbosa publicly accused him this month of “chicanery” by using legalese to prop up certain positions. An outcry ensued among some who could not stomach Mr. Barbosa’s talking to a fellow justice like that. “Who does Justice Joaquim Barbosa think he is?” asked Ricardo Noblat, a columnist for the newspaper O Globo, questioning whether Mr. Barbosa was qualified to preside over the court. “What powers does he think he has just because he’s sitting in the chair of the chief justice of the Supreme Federal Tribunal?” 
      Mr. Barbosa did not apologize. In the interview, he said some tension was necessary for the court to function properly. “It was always like this,” he said, contending that arguments are now just easier to see because the court’s proceedings are televised. 
     Linking the court’s work to the recent wave of protests, he explained that he strongly disagreed with the violence of some demonstrators, but he also said he believed that the street movements were “a sign of democracy’s exuberance.” 
     “People don’t want to passively stand by and observe these arrangements of the elite, which were always the Brazilian tradition,” he said. 
One of the Chief Justice’s positive actions the text mentions was
Alternativas
Q1279883
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: UECE-CEV Órgão: UECE Prova: UECE-CEV - 2013 - UECE - Vestibular - Língua Inglesa - 2ª fase |
Q1279883 Inglês
TEXT

     BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s highest court has long viewed itself as a bastion of manners and formality. Justices call one another “Your Excellency,” dress in billowing robes and wrap each utterance in grandiloquence, as if little had changed from the era when marquises and dukes held sway from their vast plantations.
     In one televised feud, Mr. Barbosa questioned another justice about whether he would even be on the court had he not been appointed by his cousin, a former president impeached in 1992. With another justice, Mr. Barbosa rebuked him over what the chief justice considered his condescending tone, telling him he was not his “capanga,” a term describing a hired thug. 
      In one of his most scathing comments, Mr. Barbosa, the high court’s first and only black justice, took on the entire legal system of Brazil — where it is still remarkably rare for politicians to ever spend time in prison, even after being convicted of crimes — contending that the mentality of judges was “conservative, pro-status-quo and pro-impunity.”
     “I have a temperament that doesn’t adapt well to politics,” Mr. Barbosa, 58, said in a recent interview in his quarters here in the Supreme Federal Tribunal, a modernist landmark designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer. “It’s because I speak my mind so much.” 
     His acknowledged lack of tact notwithstanding, he is the driving force behind a series of socially liberal and establishment-shaking rulings, turning Brazil’s highest court — and him in particular — into a newfound political power and the subject of popular fascination. 
   The court’s recent rulings include a unanimous decision upholding the University of Brasília’s admissions policies aimed at increasing the number of black and indigenous students, opening the way for one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping affirmative action laws for higher education. 
     In another move, Mr. Barbosa used his sway as chief justice and president of the panel overseeing Brazil’s judiciary to effectively legalize same-sex marriage across the country. And in an anticorruption crusade, he is overseeing the precedent-setting trial of senior political figures in the governing Workers Party for their roles in a vast vote-buying scheme.
   Ascending to Brazil’s high court, much less pushing the institution to assert its independence, long seemed out of reach for Mr. Barbosa, the eldest of eight children raised in Paracatu, an impoverished city in Minas Gerais State, where his father worked as a bricklayer.  
    But his prominence — not just on the court, but in the streets as well — is so well established that masks with his face were sold for Carnival, amateur musicians have composed songs about his handling of the corruption trial and posted them on YouTube, and demonstrators during the huge street protests that shook the nation this year told pollsters that Mr. Barbosa was one of their top choices for president in next year’s elections.
     While the protests have subsided since their height in June, the political tumult they set off persists. The race for president, once considered a shoo-in for the incumbent, Dilma Rousseff, is now up in the air, with Mr. Barbosa — who is now so much in the public eye that gossip columnists are following his romance with a woman in her 20s — repeatedly saying he will not run. “I’m not a candidate for anything,” he says. 
     But the same public glare that has turned him into a celebrity has singed him as well. While he has won widespread admiration for his guidance of the high court, Mr. Barbosa, like almost every other prominent political figure in Brazil, has recently come under scrutiny. And for someone accustomed to criticizing the so-called supersalaries awarded to some members of Brazil’s legal system, the revelations have put Mr. Barbosa on the defensive. 
     One report in the Brazilian news media described how he received about $180,000 in payments for untaken leaves of absence during his 19 years as a public prosecutor. (Such payments are common in some areas of Brazil’s large public bureaucracy.) Another noted that he bought an apartment in Miami through a limited liability company, suggesting an effort to pay less taxes on the property. In statements, Mr. Barbosa contends that he has done nothing wrong. 
     In a country where a majority of people now define themselves as black or of mixed race — but where blacks remain remarkably rare in the highest echelons of political institutions and corporations — Mr. Barbosa’s trajectory and abrupt manner have elicited both widespread admiration and a fair amount of resistance. 
     As a teenager, Mr. Barbosa moved to the capital, Brasília, finding work as a janitor in a courtroom. Against the odds, he got into the University of Brasília, the only black student in its law program at the time. Wanting to see the world, he later won admission into Brazil’s diplomatic service, which promptly sent him to Helsinki, the Finnish capital on the shore of the Baltic Sea. 
     Sensing that he would not advance much in the diplomatic service, which he has called “one of the most discriminatory institutions of Brazil,” Mr. Barbosa opted for a career as a prosecutor. He alternated between legal investigations in Brazil and studies abroad, gaining fluency in English, French and German, and earning a doctorate in law at Pantheon-Assas University in Paris. 
   Fascinated by the legal systems of other countries, Mr. Barbosa wrote a book on affirmative action in the United States. He still voices his admiration for figures like Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice in the United States, and William J. Brennan Jr., who for years embodied the court’s liberal vision, clearly drawing inspiration from them as he pushed Brazil’s high court toward socially liberal rulings.
    Still, no decision has thrust Mr. Barbosa into Brazil’s public imagination as much as his handling of the trial of political operatives, legislators and bankers found guilty in a labyrinthine corruption scandal called the mensalão, or big monthly allowance, after the regular payments made to lawmakers in exchange for their votes. 
    Last November, at Mr. Barbosa’s urging, the high court sentenced some of the most powerful figures in the governing Workers Party to years in prison for their crimes in the scheme, including bribery and unlawful conspiracy, jolting a political system in which impunity for politicians has been the norm.  
     Now the mensalão trial is entering what could be its final phases, and Mr. Barbosa has at times been visibly exasperated that defendants who have already been found guilty and sentenced have managed to avoid hard jail time. He has clashed with other justices over their consideration of a rare legal procedure in which appeals over close votes at the high court are examined. 
     Losing his patience with one prominent justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, who tried to absolve some defendants of certain crimes, Mr. Barbosa publicly accused him this month of “chicanery” by using legalese to prop up certain positions. An outcry ensued among some who could not stomach Mr. Barbosa’s talking to a fellow justice like that. “Who does Justice Joaquim Barbosa think he is?” asked Ricardo Noblat, a columnist for the newspaper O Globo, questioning whether Mr. Barbosa was qualified to preside over the court. “What powers does he think he has just because he’s sitting in the chair of the chief justice of the Supreme Federal Tribunal?” 
      Mr. Barbosa did not apologize. In the interview, he said some tension was necessary for the court to function properly. “It was always like this,” he said, contending that arguments are now just easier to see because the court’s proceedings are televised. 
     Linking the court’s work to the recent wave of protests, he explained that he strongly disagreed with the violence of some demonstrators, but he also said he believed that the street movements were “a sign of democracy’s exuberance.” 
     “People don’t want to passively stand by and observe these arrangements of the elite, which were always the Brazilian tradition,” he said. 
According to the text, Mr. Barbosa’s eminence could truly be seen when
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Q1279882
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: UECE-CEV Órgão: UECE Prova: UECE-CEV - 2013 - UECE - Vestibular - Língua Inglesa - 2ª fase |
Q1279882 Inglês
TEXT

     BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s highest court has long viewed itself as a bastion of manners and formality. Justices call one another “Your Excellency,” dress in billowing robes and wrap each utterance in grandiloquence, as if little had changed from the era when marquises and dukes held sway from their vast plantations.
     In one televised feud, Mr. Barbosa questioned another justice about whether he would even be on the court had he not been appointed by his cousin, a former president impeached in 1992. With another justice, Mr. Barbosa rebuked him over what the chief justice considered his condescending tone, telling him he was not his “capanga,” a term describing a hired thug. 
      In one of his most scathing comments, Mr. Barbosa, the high court’s first and only black justice, took on the entire legal system of Brazil — where it is still remarkably rare for politicians to ever spend time in prison, even after being convicted of crimes — contending that the mentality of judges was “conservative, pro-status-quo and pro-impunity.”
     “I have a temperament that doesn’t adapt well to politics,” Mr. Barbosa, 58, said in a recent interview in his quarters here in the Supreme Federal Tribunal, a modernist landmark designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer. “It’s because I speak my mind so much.” 
     His acknowledged lack of tact notwithstanding, he is the driving force behind a series of socially liberal and establishment-shaking rulings, turning Brazil’s highest court — and him in particular — into a newfound political power and the subject of popular fascination. 
   The court’s recent rulings include a unanimous decision upholding the University of Brasília’s admissions policies aimed at increasing the number of black and indigenous students, opening the way for one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping affirmative action laws for higher education. 
     In another move, Mr. Barbosa used his sway as chief justice and president of the panel overseeing Brazil’s judiciary to effectively legalize same-sex marriage across the country. And in an anticorruption crusade, he is overseeing the precedent-setting trial of senior political figures in the governing Workers Party for their roles in a vast vote-buying scheme.
   Ascending to Brazil’s high court, much less pushing the institution to assert its independence, long seemed out of reach for Mr. Barbosa, the eldest of eight children raised in Paracatu, an impoverished city in Minas Gerais State, where his father worked as a bricklayer.  
    But his prominence — not just on the court, but in the streets as well — is so well established that masks with his face were sold for Carnival, amateur musicians have composed songs about his handling of the corruption trial and posted them on YouTube, and demonstrators during the huge street protests that shook the nation this year told pollsters that Mr. Barbosa was one of their top choices for president in next year’s elections.
     While the protests have subsided since their height in June, the political tumult they set off persists. The race for president, once considered a shoo-in for the incumbent, Dilma Rousseff, is now up in the air, with Mr. Barbosa — who is now so much in the public eye that gossip columnists are following his romance with a woman in her 20s — repeatedly saying he will not run. “I’m not a candidate for anything,” he says. 
     But the same public glare that has turned him into a celebrity has singed him as well. While he has won widespread admiration for his guidance of the high court, Mr. Barbosa, like almost every other prominent political figure in Brazil, has recently come under scrutiny. And for someone accustomed to criticizing the so-called supersalaries awarded to some members of Brazil’s legal system, the revelations have put Mr. Barbosa on the defensive. 
     One report in the Brazilian news media described how he received about $180,000 in payments for untaken leaves of absence during his 19 years as a public prosecutor. (Such payments are common in some areas of Brazil’s large public bureaucracy.) Another noted that he bought an apartment in Miami through a limited liability company, suggesting an effort to pay less taxes on the property. In statements, Mr. Barbosa contends that he has done nothing wrong. 
     In a country where a majority of people now define themselves as black or of mixed race — but where blacks remain remarkably rare in the highest echelons of political institutions and corporations — Mr. Barbosa’s trajectory and abrupt manner have elicited both widespread admiration and a fair amount of resistance. 
     As a teenager, Mr. Barbosa moved to the capital, Brasília, finding work as a janitor in a courtroom. Against the odds, he got into the University of Brasília, the only black student in its law program at the time. Wanting to see the world, he later won admission into Brazil’s diplomatic service, which promptly sent him to Helsinki, the Finnish capital on the shore of the Baltic Sea. 
     Sensing that he would not advance much in the diplomatic service, which he has called “one of the most discriminatory institutions of Brazil,” Mr. Barbosa opted for a career as a prosecutor. He alternated between legal investigations in Brazil and studies abroad, gaining fluency in English, French and German, and earning a doctorate in law at Pantheon-Assas University in Paris. 
   Fascinated by the legal systems of other countries, Mr. Barbosa wrote a book on affirmative action in the United States. He still voices his admiration for figures like Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice in the United States, and William J. Brennan Jr., who for years embodied the court’s liberal vision, clearly drawing inspiration from them as he pushed Brazil’s high court toward socially liberal rulings.
    Still, no decision has thrust Mr. Barbosa into Brazil’s public imagination as much as his handling of the trial of political operatives, legislators and bankers found guilty in a labyrinthine corruption scandal called the mensalão, or big monthly allowance, after the regular payments made to lawmakers in exchange for their votes. 
    Last November, at Mr. Barbosa’s urging, the high court sentenced some of the most powerful figures in the governing Workers Party to years in prison for their crimes in the scheme, including bribery and unlawful conspiracy, jolting a political system in which impunity for politicians has been the norm.  
     Now the mensalão trial is entering what could be its final phases, and Mr. Barbosa has at times been visibly exasperated that defendants who have already been found guilty and sentenced have managed to avoid hard jail time. He has clashed with other justices over their consideration of a rare legal procedure in which appeals over close votes at the high court are examined. 
     Losing his patience with one prominent justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, who tried to absolve some defendants of certain crimes, Mr. Barbosa publicly accused him this month of “chicanery” by using legalese to prop up certain positions. An outcry ensued among some who could not stomach Mr. Barbosa’s talking to a fellow justice like that. “Who does Justice Joaquim Barbosa think he is?” asked Ricardo Noblat, a columnist for the newspaper O Globo, questioning whether Mr. Barbosa was qualified to preside over the court. “What powers does he think he has just because he’s sitting in the chair of the chief justice of the Supreme Federal Tribunal?” 
      Mr. Barbosa did not apologize. In the interview, he said some tension was necessary for the court to function properly. “It was always like this,” he said, contending that arguments are now just easier to see because the court’s proceedings are televised. 
     Linking the court’s work to the recent wave of protests, he explained that he strongly disagreed with the violence of some demonstrators, but he also said he believed that the street movements were “a sign of democracy’s exuberance.” 
     “People don’t want to passively stand by and observe these arrangements of the elite, which were always the Brazilian tradition,” he said. 
When Mr. Barbosa was a teenager, he was employed as a
Alternativas
Q1264747
Inglês Pronomes | Pronouns ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: FATEC Órgão: FATEC Prova: FATEC - 2013 - FATEC - Vestibular |
Q1264747 Inglês
Considere o texto a seguir para responder a questão.

Tooth fairy quantum mechanics

The reason I can’t show you a Higgs boson1 is also the solution to a parental dilemma.
Posted by Jon Butterworth
Sunday 23 December 2012 18.36 GMT, theguardian.com

   I do sometimes get asked “If you’ve found a Higgs boson, can you show me a picture of it?” Unfortunately, the answer is no. But the reason for this provides a resolution to a severe parental dilemma, and explains why I am in fact sometimes the tooth fairy. Bear with me.
  I can’t show you something which is definitely the new boson, but I can show evidence for it, for example in the picture below. It shows the distribution (black dots) of the mass you get when you combine the energy and momenta2 of pairs of photons (particles of light) in the ATLAS detector. The bump shows that there are more of these photon pairs at masses corresponding to around 125 GeV than would be expected from the trend. This excess implies the existence of a particle at about this mass which decays to pairs of photons.


   The bump3 in this plot would not be there unless there were a new boson (credit, ATLAS experiment and CERN). The key is that even if I show you a collision event with a pair of photons which exactly gives the “Higgs mass”, i.e. at the top of that peak, it is still not possible to be sure that this exact pair of photons came from a Higgs boson. There may be several possible ways of producing a set of new particles from the incoming ones; but if the resulting set is identical, it is not physically meaningful to say which way occurred.
     Now, to the parental dilemma. It is especially acute at this time of year, but if you have children who are losing their milk teeth, it is ever-present. Is the tooth fairy real? What about Father Christmas? Do you spoil the fun or do you lie? Something in me hates the idea of lying to my kids, and undermining4 trust. Here’s my way out. Anything which has the same initial state (tooth) and final state (money) might in fact be an event in which a tooth fairy was present. To put it another way, anything which removes the tooth and delivers money shares such an essential property with a tooth fairy that it can be said to be one (anything removing both teeth and money is probably a dentist. Or possibly a mugger5 ). 
      By now, my son doesn’t believe a word of it of course. But in the early days it was the truth. We managed this transition without lies, betrayal and tears because actually, when tiptoeing into the bedroom with a shiny pound coin, I really am the tooth fairy. I am of course also at the same time Dad. This seemed to work, and now he’s older, it’s still fun. It’s not much of stretch to extend this to Father Christmas, and it also explains why sometimes Father Christmas uses the same wrapping paper as your parents - he and they are, in a sense, indistinguishable quantum possibilities for the delivery process.

(theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2012/dec/23/tooth-fairy-quantum-mechanics Acesso em: 26.08.2013. Adaptado)

Glossário
1Higgs boson: partícula subatômica teórica que ficou conhecida publicamente após ter sido divulgada como a “partícula de Deus”. Sua existência é associada a pesquisas acerca da origem do universo.
(topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/higgs_boson/index.html Acesso em 02.10.2013. Adaptado)
2momenta: plural de momentum – conceito físico associado à quantidade de movimento de uma partícula.
3bump: choque ou elevação.
4undermine: tornar algo gradativamente mais fraco, especialmente a confiança ou autoridade de alguém.
5mugger: assaltante.
Os pronomes he e they presentes no último parágrafo do texto – he and they are, in a sense, indistinguishable quantum possibilities for the delivery process – substituem, respectivamente, os termos
Alternativas
Q1264746
Inglês Pronomes | Pronouns , Pronome relativo | Relative clauses , Aspectos linguísticos | Linguistic aspects ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: FATEC Órgão: FATEC Prova: FATEC - 2013 - FATEC - Vestibular |
Q1264746 Inglês
Considere o texto a seguir para responder a questão.

Tooth fairy quantum mechanics

The reason I can’t show you a Higgs boson1 is also the solution to a parental dilemma.
Posted by Jon Butterworth
Sunday 23 December 2012 18.36 GMT, theguardian.com

   I do sometimes get asked “If you’ve found a Higgs boson, can you show me a picture of it?” Unfortunately, the answer is no. But the reason for this provides a resolution to a severe parental dilemma, and explains why I am in fact sometimes the tooth fairy. Bear with me.
  I can’t show you something which is definitely the new boson, but I can show evidence for it, for example in the picture below. It shows the distribution (black dots) of the mass you get when you combine the energy and momenta2 of pairs of photons (particles of light) in the ATLAS detector. The bump shows that there are more of these photon pairs at masses corresponding to around 125 GeV than would be expected from the trend. This excess implies the existence of a particle at about this mass which decays to pairs of photons.


   The bump3 in this plot would not be there unless there were a new boson (credit, ATLAS experiment and CERN). The key is that even if I show you a collision event with a pair of photons which exactly gives the “Higgs mass”, i.e. at the top of that peak, it is still not possible to be sure that this exact pair of photons came from a Higgs boson. There may be several possible ways of producing a set of new particles from the incoming ones; but if the resulting set is identical, it is not physically meaningful to say which way occurred.
     Now, to the parental dilemma. It is especially acute at this time of year, but if you have children who are losing their milk teeth, it is ever-present. Is the tooth fairy real? What about Father Christmas? Do you spoil the fun or do you lie? Something in me hates the idea of lying to my kids, and undermining4 trust. Here’s my way out. Anything which has the same initial state (tooth) and final state (money) might in fact be an event in which a tooth fairy was present. To put it another way, anything which removes the tooth and delivers money shares such an essential property with a tooth fairy that it can be said to be one (anything removing both teeth and money is probably a dentist. Or possibly a mugger5 ). 
      By now, my son doesn’t believe a word of it of course. But in the early days it was the truth. We managed this transition without lies, betrayal and tears because actually, when tiptoeing into the bedroom with a shiny pound coin, I really am the tooth fairy. I am of course also at the same time Dad. This seemed to work, and now he’s older, it’s still fun. It’s not much of stretch to extend this to Father Christmas, and it also explains why sometimes Father Christmas uses the same wrapping paper as your parents - he and they are, in a sense, indistinguishable quantum possibilities for the delivery process.

(theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2012/dec/23/tooth-fairy-quantum-mechanics Acesso em: 26.08.2013. Adaptado)

Glossário
1Higgs boson: partícula subatômica teórica que ficou conhecida publicamente após ter sido divulgada como a “partícula de Deus”. Sua existência é associada a pesquisas acerca da origem do universo.
(topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/higgs_boson/index.html Acesso em 02.10.2013. Adaptado)
2momenta: plural de momentum – conceito físico associado à quantidade de movimento de uma partícula.
3bump: choque ou elevação.
4undermine: tornar algo gradativamente mais fraco, especialmente a confiança ou autoridade de alguém.
5mugger: assaltante.
No segundo parágrafo do texto, o pronome relativo which em – I can’t show you something which is definitely the new boson – pode ser substituído, mantendo-se a sentença gramaticalmente correta, por
Alternativas
Q1264745
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: FATEC Órgão: FATEC Prova: FATEC - 2013 - FATEC - Vestibular |
Q1264745 Inglês
Considere o texto a seguir para responder a questão.

Tooth fairy quantum mechanics

The reason I can’t show you a Higgs boson1 is also the solution to a parental dilemma.
Posted by Jon Butterworth
Sunday 23 December 2012 18.36 GMT, theguardian.com

   I do sometimes get asked “If you’ve found a Higgs boson, can you show me a picture of it?” Unfortunately, the answer is no. But the reason for this provides a resolution to a severe parental dilemma, and explains why I am in fact sometimes the tooth fairy. Bear with me.
  I can’t show you something which is definitely the new boson, but I can show evidence for it, for example in the picture below. It shows the distribution (black dots) of the mass you get when you combine the energy and momenta2 of pairs of photons (particles of light) in the ATLAS detector. The bump shows that there are more of these photon pairs at masses corresponding to around 125 GeV than would be expected from the trend. This excess implies the existence of a particle at about this mass which decays to pairs of photons.


   The bump3 in this plot would not be there unless there were a new boson (credit, ATLAS experiment and CERN). The key is that even if I show you a collision event with a pair of photons which exactly gives the “Higgs mass”, i.e. at the top of that peak, it is still not possible to be sure that this exact pair of photons came from a Higgs boson. There may be several possible ways of producing a set of new particles from the incoming ones; but if the resulting set is identical, it is not physically meaningful to say which way occurred.
     Now, to the parental dilemma. It is especially acute at this time of year, but if you have children who are losing their milk teeth, it is ever-present. Is the tooth fairy real? What about Father Christmas? Do you spoil the fun or do you lie? Something in me hates the idea of lying to my kids, and undermining4 trust. Here’s my way out. Anything which has the same initial state (tooth) and final state (money) might in fact be an event in which a tooth fairy was present. To put it another way, anything which removes the tooth and delivers money shares such an essential property with a tooth fairy that it can be said to be one (anything removing both teeth and money is probably a dentist. Or possibly a mugger5 ). 
      By now, my son doesn’t believe a word of it of course. But in the early days it was the truth. We managed this transition without lies, betrayal and tears because actually, when tiptoeing into the bedroom with a shiny pound coin, I really am the tooth fairy. I am of course also at the same time Dad. This seemed to work, and now he’s older, it’s still fun. It’s not much of stretch to extend this to Father Christmas, and it also explains why sometimes Father Christmas uses the same wrapping paper as your parents - he and they are, in a sense, indistinguishable quantum possibilities for the delivery process.

(theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2012/dec/23/tooth-fairy-quantum-mechanics Acesso em: 26.08.2013. Adaptado)

Glossário
1Higgs boson: partícula subatômica teórica que ficou conhecida publicamente após ter sido divulgada como a “partícula de Deus”. Sua existência é associada a pesquisas acerca da origem do universo.
(topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/higgs_boson/index.html Acesso em 02.10.2013. Adaptado)
2momenta: plural de momentum – conceito físico associado à quantidade de movimento de uma partícula.
3bump: choque ou elevação.
4undermine: tornar algo gradativamente mais fraco, especialmente a confiança ou autoridade de alguém.
5mugger: assaltante.
O autor do texto afirma que
Alternativas
Q1264744
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: FATEC Órgão: FATEC Prova: FATEC - 2013 - FATEC - Vestibular |
Q1264744 Inglês
Considere o texto a seguir para responder a questão.

Tooth fairy quantum mechanics

The reason I can’t show you a Higgs boson1 is also the solution to a parental dilemma.
Posted by Jon Butterworth
Sunday 23 December 2012 18.36 GMT, theguardian.com

   I do sometimes get asked “If you’ve found a Higgs boson, can you show me a picture of it?” Unfortunately, the answer is no. But the reason for this provides a resolution to a severe parental dilemma, and explains why I am in fact sometimes the tooth fairy. Bear with me.
  I can’t show you something which is definitely the new boson, but I can show evidence for it, for example in the picture below. It shows the distribution (black dots) of the mass you get when you combine the energy and momenta2 of pairs of photons (particles of light) in the ATLAS detector. The bump shows that there are more of these photon pairs at masses corresponding to around 125 GeV than would be expected from the trend. This excess implies the existence of a particle at about this mass which decays to pairs of photons.


   The bump3 in this plot would not be there unless there were a new boson (credit, ATLAS experiment and CERN). The key is that even if I show you a collision event with a pair of photons which exactly gives the “Higgs mass”, i.e. at the top of that peak, it is still not possible to be sure that this exact pair of photons came from a Higgs boson. There may be several possible ways of producing a set of new particles from the incoming ones; but if the resulting set is identical, it is not physically meaningful to say which way occurred.
     Now, to the parental dilemma. It is especially acute at this time of year, but if you have children who are losing their milk teeth, it is ever-present. Is the tooth fairy real? What about Father Christmas? Do you spoil the fun or do you lie? Something in me hates the idea of lying to my kids, and undermining4 trust. Here’s my way out. Anything which has the same initial state (tooth) and final state (money) might in fact be an event in which a tooth fairy was present. To put it another way, anything which removes the tooth and delivers money shares such an essential property with a tooth fairy that it can be said to be one (anything removing both teeth and money is probably a dentist. Or possibly a mugger5 ). 
      By now, my son doesn’t believe a word of it of course. But in the early days it was the truth. We managed this transition without lies, betrayal and tears because actually, when tiptoeing into the bedroom with a shiny pound coin, I really am the tooth fairy. I am of course also at the same time Dad. This seemed to work, and now he’s older, it’s still fun. It’s not much of stretch to extend this to Father Christmas, and it also explains why sometimes Father Christmas uses the same wrapping paper as your parents - he and they are, in a sense, indistinguishable quantum possibilities for the delivery process.

(theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2012/dec/23/tooth-fairy-quantum-mechanics Acesso em: 26.08.2013. Adaptado)

Glossário
1Higgs boson: partícula subatômica teórica que ficou conhecida publicamente após ter sido divulgada como a “partícula de Deus”. Sua existência é associada a pesquisas acerca da origem do universo.
(topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/higgs_boson/index.html Acesso em 02.10.2013. Adaptado)
2momenta: plural de momentum – conceito físico associado à quantidade de movimento de uma partícula.
3bump: choque ou elevação.
4undermine: tornar algo gradativamente mais fraco, especialmente a confiança ou autoridade de alguém.
5mugger: assaltante.
Segundo as indicações do texto, o gráfico apresentado
Alternativas
Q1264743
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: FATEC Órgão: FATEC Prova: FATEC - 2013 - FATEC - Vestibular |
Q1264743 Inglês
Considere o texto a seguir para responder a questão.

Tooth fairy quantum mechanics

The reason I can’t show you a Higgs boson1 is also the solution to a parental dilemma.
Posted by Jon Butterworth
Sunday 23 December 2012 18.36 GMT, theguardian.com

   I do sometimes get asked “If you’ve found a Higgs boson, can you show me a picture of it?” Unfortunately, the answer is no. But the reason for this provides a resolution to a severe parental dilemma, and explains why I am in fact sometimes the tooth fairy. Bear with me.
  I can’t show you something which is definitely the new boson, but I can show evidence for it, for example in the picture below. It shows the distribution (black dots) of the mass you get when you combine the energy and momenta2 of pairs of photons (particles of light) in the ATLAS detector. The bump shows that there are more of these photon pairs at masses corresponding to around 125 GeV than would be expected from the trend. This excess implies the existence of a particle at about this mass which decays to pairs of photons.


   The bump3 in this plot would not be there unless there were a new boson (credit, ATLAS experiment and CERN). The key is that even if I show you a collision event with a pair of photons which exactly gives the “Higgs mass”, i.e. at the top of that peak, it is still not possible to be sure that this exact pair of photons came from a Higgs boson. There may be several possible ways of producing a set of new particles from the incoming ones; but if the resulting set is identical, it is not physically meaningful to say which way occurred.
     Now, to the parental dilemma. It is especially acute at this time of year, but if you have children who are losing their milk teeth, it is ever-present. Is the tooth fairy real? What about Father Christmas? Do you spoil the fun or do you lie? Something in me hates the idea of lying to my kids, and undermining4 trust. Here’s my way out. Anything which has the same initial state (tooth) and final state (money) might in fact be an event in which a tooth fairy was present. To put it another way, anything which removes the tooth and delivers money shares such an essential property with a tooth fairy that it can be said to be one (anything removing both teeth and money is probably a dentist. Or possibly a mugger5 ). 
      By now, my son doesn’t believe a word of it of course. But in the early days it was the truth. We managed this transition without lies, betrayal and tears because actually, when tiptoeing into the bedroom with a shiny pound coin, I really am the tooth fairy. I am of course also at the same time Dad. This seemed to work, and now he’s older, it’s still fun. It’s not much of stretch to extend this to Father Christmas, and it also explains why sometimes Father Christmas uses the same wrapping paper as your parents - he and they are, in a sense, indistinguishable quantum possibilities for the delivery process.

(theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2012/dec/23/tooth-fairy-quantum-mechanics Acesso em: 26.08.2013. Adaptado)

Glossário
1Higgs boson: partícula subatômica teórica que ficou conhecida publicamente após ter sido divulgada como a “partícula de Deus”. Sua existência é associada a pesquisas acerca da origem do universo.
(topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/higgs_boson/index.html Acesso em 02.10.2013. Adaptado)
2momenta: plural de momentum – conceito físico associado à quantidade de movimento de uma partícula.
3bump: choque ou elevação.
4undermine: tornar algo gradativamente mais fraco, especialmente a confiança ou autoridade de alguém.
5mugger: assaltante.
De acordo com o texto, é correto afirmar que o bóson de Higgs
Alternativas
Q1263485
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: PUC-MINAS Órgão: PUC-MINAS Prova: PUC-MINAS - 2013 - PUC-MINAS - Prova - Medicina |
Q1263485 Inglês
Why the Internet is so addictive
    "Checking Facebook should only take a minute." Those are the famous last words of countless people every day, right before getting sucked into several hours of watching cat videos or commenting on Instagrammed sushi lunches. That behavior is natural, given how the Internet is structured, experts say. The Internet’s omnipresence and lack of limits encourage people to lose track of time, making it hard to exercise the self-control to turn it off.
    "The Internet is not addictive in the same way as pharmacological substances are," said Tom Stafford, a cognitive scientist at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. "But it's compulsive; it's compelling; it's distracting." Humans are social creatures. Therefore, people enjoy the social information available via email and the Web.     
    The main reason the Internet is so addictive is that it lacks boundaries between tasks, Stafford said. Someone may set out to "research something, and then accidentally go to Wikipedia, and then wind up trying to find out what ever happened to Depeche Mode," Stafford said, referring to the music band. Studies suggest willpower is like a muscle: It can be strengthened, but can also become exhausted. Because the Internet is always "on," staying on task requires constantly flexing that willpower muscle, which can exhaust a person's self-control.
    For those who want to loosen the grip of the Web on their lives, a few simple techniques may do the trick. Web-blocking tools that limit surfing time can help people regain control over their time. Another method is to plan ahead, committing to work for 20 minutes, or until a certain task is complete, and then allowing five minutes of Web surfing, Stafford said.
(Adapted from: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/computers/stories/why-the-internet-is-so-addictive) 
If you want to gain control over your time, you should
Alternativas
Q1263484
Inglês Pronomes | Pronouns , Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: PUC-MINAS Órgão: PUC-MINAS Prova: PUC-MINAS - 2013 - PUC-MINAS - Prova - Medicina |
Q1263484 Inglês
Why the Internet is so addictive
    "Checking Facebook should only take a minute." Those are the famous last words of countless people every day, right before getting sucked into several hours of watching cat videos or commenting on Instagrammed sushi lunches. That behavior is natural, given how the Internet is structured, experts say. The Internet’s omnipresence and lack of limits encourage people to lose track of time, making it hard to exercise the self-control to turn it off.
    "The Internet is not addictive in the same way as pharmacological substances are," said Tom Stafford, a cognitive scientist at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. "But it's compulsive; it's compelling; it's distracting." Humans are social creatures. Therefore, people enjoy the social information available via email and the Web.     
    The main reason the Internet is so addictive is that it lacks boundaries between tasks, Stafford said. Someone may set out to "research something, and then accidentally go to Wikipedia, and then wind up trying to find out what ever happened to Depeche Mode," Stafford said, referring to the music band. Studies suggest willpower is like a muscle: It can be strengthened, but can also become exhausted. Because the Internet is always "on," staying on task requires constantly flexing that willpower muscle, which can exhaust a person's self-control.
    For those who want to loosen the grip of the Web on their lives, a few simple techniques may do the trick. Web-blocking tools that limit surfing time can help people regain control over their time. Another method is to plan ahead, committing to work for 20 minutes, or until a certain task is complete, and then allowing five minutes of Web surfing, Stafford said.
(Adapted from: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/computers/stories/why-the-internet-is-so-addictive) 
The word It in “It can be strengthened” (paragraph 3) refers to
Alternativas
Q1263483
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: PUC-MINAS Órgão: PUC-MINAS Prova: PUC-MINAS - 2013 - PUC-MINAS - Prova - Medicina |
Q1263483 Inglês
Why the Internet is so addictive
    "Checking Facebook should only take a minute." Those are the famous last words of countless people every day, right before getting sucked into several hours of watching cat videos or commenting on Instagrammed sushi lunches. That behavior is natural, given how the Internet is structured, experts say. The Internet’s omnipresence and lack of limits encourage people to lose track of time, making it hard to exercise the self-control to turn it off.
    "The Internet is not addictive in the same way as pharmacological substances are," said Tom Stafford, a cognitive scientist at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. "But it's compulsive; it's compelling; it's distracting." Humans are social creatures. Therefore, people enjoy the social information available via email and the Web.     
    The main reason the Internet is so addictive is that it lacks boundaries between tasks, Stafford said. Someone may set out to "research something, and then accidentally go to Wikipedia, and then wind up trying to find out what ever happened to Depeche Mode," Stafford said, referring to the music band. Studies suggest willpower is like a muscle: It can be strengthened, but can also become exhausted. Because the Internet is always "on," staying on task requires constantly flexing that willpower muscle, which can exhaust a person's self-control.
    For those who want to loosen the grip of the Web on their lives, a few simple techniques may do the trick. Web-blocking tools that limit surfing time can help people regain control over their time. Another method is to plan ahead, committing to work for 20 minutes, or until a certain task is complete, and then allowing five minutes of Web surfing, Stafford said.
(Adapted from: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/computers/stories/why-the-internet-is-so-addictive) 
According to Tom Stafford, the main reason the Internet is so addictive is that
Alternativas
Q1263482
Inglês Advérbios e conjunções | Adverbs and conjunctions , Os advérbios (grau, a finalidade, contraste ...) | Adverbs (degree, purpose, contrast...) , Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension , Aspectos linguísticos | Linguistic aspects
Ano: 2013 Banca: PUC-MINAS Órgão: PUC-MINAS Prova: PUC-MINAS - 2013 - PUC-MINAS - Prova - Medicina |
Q1263482 Inglês
Why the Internet is so addictive
    "Checking Facebook should only take a minute." Those are the famous last words of countless people every day, right before getting sucked into several hours of watching cat videos or commenting on Instagrammed sushi lunches. That behavior is natural, given how the Internet is structured, experts say. The Internet’s omnipresence and lack of limits encourage people to lose track of time, making it hard to exercise the self-control to turn it off.
    "The Internet is not addictive in the same way as pharmacological substances are," said Tom Stafford, a cognitive scientist at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. "But it's compulsive; it's compelling; it's distracting." Humans are social creatures. Therefore, people enjoy the social information available via email and the Web.     
    The main reason the Internet is so addictive is that it lacks boundaries between tasks, Stafford said. Someone may set out to "research something, and then accidentally go to Wikipedia, and then wind up trying to find out what ever happened to Depeche Mode," Stafford said, referring to the music band. Studies suggest willpower is like a muscle: It can be strengthened, but can also become exhausted. Because the Internet is always "on," staying on task requires constantly flexing that willpower muscle, which can exhaust a person's self-control.
    For those who want to loosen the grip of the Web on their lives, a few simple techniques may do the trick. Web-blocking tools that limit surfing time can help people regain control over their time. Another method is to plan ahead, committing to work for 20 minutes, or until a certain task is complete, and then allowing five minutes of Web surfing, Stafford said.
(Adapted from: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/computers/stories/why-the-internet-is-so-addictive) 
The word Therefore in: “Therefore, people enjoy the social information…” (paragraph 2) indicates
Alternativas
Q1263481
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: PUC-MINAS Órgão: PUC-MINAS Prova: PUC-MINAS - 2013 - PUC-MINAS - Prova - Medicina |
Q1263481 Inglês
Why the Internet is so addictive
    "Checking Facebook should only take a minute." Those are the famous last words of countless people every day, right before getting sucked into several hours of watching cat videos or commenting on Instagrammed sushi lunches. That behavior is natural, given how the Internet is structured, experts say. The Internet’s omnipresence and lack of limits encourage people to lose track of time, making it hard to exercise the self-control to turn it off.
    "The Internet is not addictive in the same way as pharmacological substances are," said Tom Stafford, a cognitive scientist at the University of Sheffield in the U.K. "But it's compulsive; it's compelling; it's distracting." Humans are social creatures. Therefore, people enjoy the social information available via email and the Web.     
    The main reason the Internet is so addictive is that it lacks boundaries between tasks, Stafford said. Someone may set out to "research something, and then accidentally go to Wikipedia, and then wind up trying to find out what ever happened to Depeche Mode," Stafford said, referring to the music band. Studies suggest willpower is like a muscle: It can be strengthened, but can also become exhausted. Because the Internet is always "on," staying on task requires constantly flexing that willpower muscle, which can exhaust a person's self-control.
    For those who want to loosen the grip of the Web on their lives, a few simple techniques may do the trick. Web-blocking tools that limit surfing time can help people regain control over their time. Another method is to plan ahead, committing to work for 20 minutes, or until a certain task is complete, and then allowing five minutes of Web surfing, Stafford said.
(Adapted from: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/computers/stories/why-the-internet-is-so-addictive) 
Why do people usually lose track of time when they are surfing the net?
Alternativas
Q1262964
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: PUC-MINAS Órgão: PUC-MINAS Prova: PUC-MINAS - 2013 - PUC-MINAS - Prova 1 |
Q1262964 Inglês
Read the following passage and choose the option which best completes each question, according to the text:  

Footfalls

    London is a city made for walking. Unlike, for example, Los Angeles its centre is easily accessible on foot. Between 2001 and 2011 the number of trips made daily on foot in London increased by 12%. Each day 6.2m walks are made across the city.
   Several reasons account for the walking boom. The number of Londoners increased by 12% from 7.3m in 2001 to 8.2m in 2011, and Underground trains are hot and overcrowded. But other factors also encourage pedestrians. In 2004 Ken Livingstone, then mayor of London, promised to make London a “walkable city”. Some of his plans were carried on by Boris Johnson, the current mayor. These include a scheme to create clearly-marked maps for use across the city and make streets more pedestrian-friendly. Londoners may also be more aware of the advantages of walking. Health campaigns like the National Health Service’s “Live Well” emphasize that walking is the easiest form of exercise.
   High streets and town centres need to win back walkers. Learning from London’s incentives could be a start. 

(Adapted from: http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21582576-urban-pedestrians-buck-national-trend-footfalls.) 

The word could in “Learning from London’s incentives could be a start.” (paragraph 03) indicates
Alternativas
Q1262963
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: PUC-MINAS Órgão: PUC-MINAS Prova: PUC-MINAS - 2013 - PUC-MINAS - Prova 1 |
Q1262963 Inglês
Read the following passage and choose the option which best completes each question, according to the text:  

Footfalls

    London is a city made for walking. Unlike, for example, Los Angeles its centre is easily accessible on foot. Between 2001 and 2011 the number of trips made daily on foot in London increased by 12%. Each day 6.2m walks are made across the city.
   Several reasons account for the walking boom. The number of Londoners increased by 12% from 7.3m in 2001 to 8.2m in 2011, and Underground trains are hot and overcrowded. But other factors also encourage pedestrians. In 2004 Ken Livingstone, then mayor of London, promised to make London a “walkable city”. Some of his plans were carried on by Boris Johnson, the current mayor. These include a scheme to create clearly-marked maps for use across the city and make streets more pedestrian-friendly. Londoners may also be more aware of the advantages of walking. Health campaigns like the National Health Service’s “Live Well” emphasize that walking is the easiest form of exercise.
   High streets and town centres need to win back walkers. Learning from London’s incentives could be a start. 

(Adapted from: http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21582576-urban-pedestrians-buck-national-trend-footfalls.) 

The National Health Service’s campaign “Live Well” call attention to the fact that
Alternativas
Q1262962
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: PUC-MINAS Órgão: PUC-MINAS Prova: PUC-MINAS - 2013 - PUC-MINAS - Prova 1 |
Q1262962 Inglês
Read the following passage and choose the option which best completes each question, according to the text:  

Footfalls

    London is a city made for walking. Unlike, for example, Los Angeles its centre is easily accessible on foot. Between 2001 and 2011 the number of trips made daily on foot in London increased by 12%. Each day 6.2m walks are made across the city.
   Several reasons account for the walking boom. The number of Londoners increased by 12% from 7.3m in 2001 to 8.2m in 2011, and Underground trains are hot and overcrowded. But other factors also encourage pedestrians. In 2004 Ken Livingstone, then mayor of London, promised to make London a “walkable city”. Some of his plans were carried on by Boris Johnson, the current mayor. These include a scheme to create clearly-marked maps for use across the city and make streets more pedestrian-friendly. Londoners may also be more aware of the advantages of walking. Health campaigns like the National Health Service’s “Live Well” emphasize that walking is the easiest form of exercise.
   High streets and town centres need to win back walkers. Learning from London’s incentives could be a start. 

(Adapted from: http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21582576-urban-pedestrians-buck-national-trend-footfalls.) 

The word these in “These include a scheme...” (paragraph 02) refers to
Alternativas
Q1262961
Inglês Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension ,
Ano: 2013 Banca: PUC-MINAS Órgão: PUC-MINAS Prova: PUC-MINAS - 2013 - PUC-MINAS - Prova 1 |
Q1262961 Inglês
Read the following passage and choose the option which best completes each question, according to the text:  

Footfalls

    London is a city made for walking. Unlike, for example, Los Angeles its centre is easily accessible on foot. Between 2001 and 2011 the number of trips made daily on foot in London increased by 12%. Each day 6.2m walks are made across the city.
   Several reasons account for the walking boom. The number of Londoners increased by 12% from 7.3m in 2001 to 8.2m in 2011, and Underground trains are hot and overcrowded. But other factors also encourage pedestrians. In 2004 Ken Livingstone, then mayor of London, promised to make London a “walkable city”. Some of his plans were carried on by Boris Johnson, the current mayor. These include a scheme to create clearly-marked maps for use across the city and make streets more pedestrian-friendly. Londoners may also be more aware of the advantages of walking. Health campaigns like the National Health Service’s “Live Well” emphasize that walking is the easiest form of exercise.
   High streets and town centres need to win back walkers. Learning from London’s incentives could be a start. 

(Adapted from: http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21582576-urban-pedestrians-buck-national-trend-footfalls.) 

What is one of reasons for the walking boom in London mentioned in the text?
Alternativas
Respostas
4121: D
4122: C
4123: B
4124: B
4125: A
4126: D
4127: B
4128: D
4129: C
4130: D
4131: D
4132: A
4133: B
4134: C
4135: D
4136: C
4137: C
4138: D
4139: B
4140: A
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