Questões de Concurso
Sobre interpretação de texto | reading comprehension em inglês
Foram encontradas 9.421 questões
Disponível em: https://www.gocomics.com/bignate/2023/10/25
What is the main objective of the characters in this comic strip and what is their plan to achieve it?
Disponível em: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes
What does Hobbes suggest when he says: "And boy, will you have to cough up to keep me quiet'?
“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."
― Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz's statement emphasizes:
What concept is George Carlin's quote, "If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?" attempting to convey? Choose the correct alternative.
Disponível em: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes
In the fourth strip, when Calvin says "What difference does that make?", what does the word "THAT" refer to in his question?
At UK's AI Summit developers and govts agree on testing to help manage risks
Leading AI developers agreed to work with governments to test new frontier models before they are released to help manage the risks of the rapidly developing technology, in a "landmark achievement" concluding the UK's artificial intelligence summit.
Some tech and political leaders have warned that AI poses huge risks if not controlled, ranging from eroding consumer privacy to danger to humans and causing a global catastrophe, and these concerns have sparked a race by governments and institutions to design safeguards and regulation.
At an inaugural AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, home of Britain's World War Two codebreakers, political leaders from the United States, European Union and China agreed on Wednesday to share a common approach to identifying risks and ways to mitigate them.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that declaration, the action on testing and a pledge to set up an international panel on risk would "tip the balance in favour of humanity".
He said the United States, EU and other "like-minded" countries had reached a "landmark agreement" with select companies working at AI's cutting edge on the principle that models should be rigorously assessed before and after they are deployed.
Disponível em: https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-pm-sunak-lead-ai-summit-talks-before-musk-meeting-2023-11-02/
Based on the passage, what is one of the main outcomes of the UK's artificial intelligence summit in relation to managing the risks of AI?
How will future climate change affect the world?
Scientists say limiting temperature rise to 1.5C is crucial to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change - although these increase with every extra increment of warming.
The 1.5C warming limit was partly designed to avoid crossing so-called "tipping points".
These are thresholds beyond which changes could accelerate and become irreversible in different parts of the Earth's climate system, such as the collapse of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
But it's not clear precisely where these thresholds sit. Some may have already been crossed; some may be further away than first thought.
Disponível em: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24021772
Based on the passage, what is one of the main purposes of limiting temperature rise to 1.5C in the context of climate change?
DisponÌvel em: https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes
In the comic strip, when Hobbes says, "Maybe they're not very self-aware," what does this statement suggest about Calvin?
Read the excerpt to answer questions 26 to 28.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
― Charles Dickens
Which of the following elements is NOT part of the contrasting pairs mentioned in the quote?
Read the excerpt to answer questions 26 to 28.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
― Charles Dickens
What is the contrast that Dickens establishes in the quote, "It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness"?
Leia o texto e responda as questões.
Read the text and provide responses to questions.
California woman arrested in theft of 65 Stanley cups - valued at nearly $2,500
By C Mandler
January 22, 2024 / 3:05 PM EST / CBS News
On Jan. 17, police in Roseville, California, discovered a 23-year-old woman had allegedly absconded with 65 Stanley cups from a nearby store — worth nearly $2,500.
"Staff saw a woman take a shopping cart full of Stanley water bottles without paying for them," said the Roseville Police Department in a statement on Facebook.
After being confronted by retail staff, the woman refused to stop, stuffing the cups into her car. She was subsequently arrested on a charge of grand theft and has yet to be identified by officers.
"While Stanley Quenchers are all the rage, we strongly advise against turning to crime to fulfill your hydration habits," said the Roseville police.
One commenter on the post pointed out that in addition to the trove of cups in the trunk and front seat, there was also a bright red Stanley cup in the cup holder, which they hoped police also confiscated. Colorful Stanley cups caused consumer mayhem earlier this month when the brand dropped a limited-edition batch of Valentine's Day colors of the popular tumbler at in-Target Starbucks locations.
Viral video showed shoppers running toward displays of the cups, as well as long lines of consumers waiting to get their hands on one of the coveted Quenchers.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stanley-cups-theft-california-target-2500-65/ (First published on January 22, 2024 /3:05PM EST)
C Mandler is a social media producer and trending topics writer for CBS News, focusing on American politics and LGBTQ+ issues.
FIGURA 1
Fonte: CBS NEWS, 2024.
Based on the information provided in the text, select the correct statement regarding the influence of cultural and societal norms on criminal acts and their impact on perspectives on crime and punishment:
Acerca dos eixos organizadores propostos para o componente Língua Inglesa na Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC), avalie as afirmações abaixo como VERDADEIRAS ou FALSAS:
(__)O eixo Leitura aborda práticas de linguagem decorrentes da interação do leitor com o texto escrito, especialmente sob o foco da construção de significados, com base na compreensão e interpretação dos gêneros escritos em língua inglesa, que circulam nos diversos campos e esferas da sociedade.
(__)O eixo Oralidade envolve as práticas de linguagem em situações de uso oral da língua inglesa, com foco na compreensão (ou escuta) e na produção oral (ou fala), articuladas pela negociação na construção de significados partilhados pelos interlocutores e/ou participantes envolvidos, com ou sem contato face a face.
(__)O eixo Dimensão intercultural consolida-se pelas práticas de uso, análise e reflexão sobre a língua, sempre de modo contextualizado, articulado e a serviço das práticas de oralidade, leitura e escrita.
A sequência CORRETA é:
O texto seguinte servirá de base para responder às questões de 1 a 9.
Valdivia Figurines and the appeal of 'the oldest'
(1º§) The logo for the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture website is about my favourite thing of the afternoon which is saying a lot since I spent much of the day reading about giant Olmec heads. Three Valdivia Figurines in the colours of the Ecuadorian flag? I am sold! Golly, I love Valdivia figurines for all the right and all the wrong reasons.
(2º§) There are two things that can easily be said about Valdivia figurines: they are VERY Ecuadorian and they are VERY looted. The first explains why they appear prominently on the Ministry of Culture website (and on stencilled graffiti around Quito circa 2007). Ancient Ecuador has played second fiddle to Ancient Peru since the early days of archaeology. The Valdivia culture, however, represents something that Peru doesn't have, 'the oldest'. Everyone loves 'the oldest', national pride, etc. etc.
(3º§) Who else loves 'the oldest'? Collectors and Museums. If the Valdivia pottery sequence is the oldest in the new world, collectors want a slice of that pie. Heck, even better than some junky pottery, the Valdivia made interesting figurines: lovely ladies that look good on stark black backgrounds in auction catalogues. They are part of 'the oldest' yet they also look good.
(4º§) Valdivia sites are famously looted and Valdivia figurines are famously faked. A few years back I started doing some initial work into looting in Ecuador (which led to fieldwork in Quito and the cloud forest that didn't really go anywhere as of yet) and I, like anyone else going down that road, came across Bruhns and Hammond's 1983 Journal of Field Archaeology piece 'A Visit to Valdivia'. Knowing nothing at all about Ecuador at the time, I had never heard of Valdivia, a wonder since the only Ecuadorian archaeology books that Cambridge owns are a few by the late Betty Meggars and Emilio Estrada from the 1950s and 1960s which link uber-ancient Ecuador to Jomon Period Japan (yeah...I know). As Bruhns and Hammond relate, Meggars detected faking at Valdivia immediately after the start of her excavations: practical jokers who discovered a market for their copies. As the market for the pieces grew, the presumed fakes get more and more elaborate and fanciful...and Valdivia sites were just looted to pieces.
(5º§) So really with Valdivia we are left with a situation where we don't know what is real. It is directly comparable to the Cycladic Figurine problem: the corpus is mostly looted, it contains tons of forms not found in the limited archaeological excavations that have been conducted, and we intellectual consumers of artefacts don't know what to believe. To me Valdivia figurines are the perfect looting Catch 22: they warrant study so that the interested public can learn about 'the oldest', but they can't be studied because collectors wanted 'the oldest' so sites were looted and buckets of fakes were produced.
(6º§) In 2007 I bought a fake Valdivia figurine in Otavalo which now stands in a Spondylus shell on my counter and watches me cook. The fella selling it to me told me it was real. I knew it wasn't but made to put it back saying something along the lines that law breaking makes me sick. He quickly agreed that it wasn't real and cut his asking price by a ton. Que Sera. Three cheers, Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture, your logo is the best.
https://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2012/09/valdivia-figurines-a
nd-appeal-of-oldest.html
What might be the implications for the study of Valdivia figurines if it is indeed challenging to distinguish between authentic artifacts and well-crafted fakes?
O texto seguinte servirá de base para responder às questões de 1 a 9.
Valdivia Figurines and the appeal of 'the oldest'
(1º§) The logo for the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture website is about my favourite thing of the afternoon which is saying a lot since I spent much of the day reading about giant Olmec heads. Three Valdivia Figurines in the colours of the Ecuadorian flag? I am sold! Golly, I love Valdivia figurines for all the right and all the wrong reasons.
(2º§) There are two things that can easily be said about Valdivia figurines: they are VERY Ecuadorian and they are VERY looted. The first explains why they appear prominently on the Ministry of Culture website (and on stencilled graffiti around Quito circa 2007). Ancient Ecuador has played second fiddle to Ancient Peru since the early days of archaeology. The Valdivia culture, however, represents something that Peru doesn't have, 'the oldest'. Everyone loves 'the oldest', national pride, etc. etc.
(3º§) Who else loves 'the oldest'? Collectors and Museums. If the Valdivia pottery sequence is the oldest in the new world, collectors want a slice of that pie. Heck, even better than some junky pottery, the Valdivia made interesting figurines: lovely ladies that look good on stark black backgrounds in auction catalogues. They are part of 'the oldest' yet they also look good.
(4º§) Valdivia sites are famously looted and Valdivia figurines are famously faked. A few years back I started doing some initial work into looting in Ecuador (which led to fieldwork in Quito and the cloud forest that didn't really go anywhere as of yet) and I, like anyone else going down that road, came across Bruhns and Hammond's 1983 Journal of Field Archaeology piece 'A Visit to Valdivia'. Knowing nothing at all about Ecuador at the time, I had never heard of Valdivia, a wonder since the only Ecuadorian archaeology books that Cambridge owns are a few by the late Betty Meggars and Emilio Estrada from the 1950s and 1960s which link uber-ancient Ecuador to Jomon Period Japan (yeah...I know). As Bruhns and Hammond relate, Meggars detected faking at Valdivia immediately after the start of her excavations: practical jokers who discovered a market for their copies. As the market for the pieces grew, the presumed fakes get more and more elaborate and fanciful...and Valdivia sites were just looted to pieces.
(5º§) So really with Valdivia we are left with a situation where we don't know what is real. It is directly comparable to the Cycladic Figurine problem: the corpus is mostly looted, it contains tons of forms not found in the limited archaeological excavations that have been conducted, and we intellectual consumers of artefacts don't know what to believe. To me Valdivia figurines are the perfect looting Catch 22: they warrant study so that the interested public can learn about 'the oldest', but they can't be studied because collectors wanted 'the oldest' so sites were looted and buckets of fakes were produced.
(6º§) In 2007 I bought a fake Valdivia figurine in Otavalo which now stands in a Spondylus shell on my counter and watches me cook. The fella selling it to me told me it was real. I knew it wasn't but made to put it back saying something along the lines that law breaking makes me sick. He quickly agreed that it wasn't real and cut his asking price by a ton. Que Sera. Three cheers, Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture, your logo is the best.
https://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2012/09/valdivia-figurines-a
nd-appeal-of-oldest.html
In the context of the text, what does "looted" mean?
O texto seguinte servirá de base para responder às questões de 1 a 9.
Valdivia Figurines and the appeal of 'the oldest'
(1º§) The logo for the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture website is about my favourite thing of the afternoon which is saying a lot since I spent much of the day reading about giant Olmec heads. Three Valdivia Figurines in the colours of the Ecuadorian flag? I am sold! Golly, I love Valdivia figurines for all the right and all the wrong reasons.
(2º§) There are two things that can easily be said about Valdivia figurines: they are VERY Ecuadorian and they are VERY looted. The first explains why they appear prominently on the Ministry of Culture website (and on stencilled graffiti around Quito circa 2007). Ancient Ecuador has played second fiddle to Ancient Peru since the early days of archaeology. The Valdivia culture, however, represents something that Peru doesn't have, 'the oldest'. Everyone loves 'the oldest', national pride, etc. etc.
(3º§) Who else loves 'the oldest'? Collectors and Museums. If the Valdivia pottery sequence is the oldest in the new world, collectors want a slice of that pie. Heck, even better than some junky pottery, the Valdivia made interesting figurines: lovely ladies that look good on stark black backgrounds in auction catalogues. They are part of 'the oldest' yet they also look good.
(4º§) Valdivia sites are famously looted and Valdivia figurines are famously faked. A few years back I started doing some initial work into looting in Ecuador (which led to fieldwork in Quito and the cloud forest that didn't really go anywhere as of yet) and I, like anyone else going down that road, came across Bruhns and Hammond's 1983 Journal of Field Archaeology piece 'A Visit to Valdivia'. Knowing nothing at all about Ecuador at the time, I had never heard of Valdivia, a wonder since the only Ecuadorian archaeology books that Cambridge owns are a few by the late Betty Meggars and Emilio Estrada from the 1950s and 1960s which link uber-ancient Ecuador to Jomon Period Japan (yeah...I know). As Bruhns and Hammond relate, Meggars detected faking at Valdivia immediately after the start of her excavations: practical jokers who discovered a market for their copies. As the market for the pieces grew, the presumed fakes get more and more elaborate and fanciful...and Valdivia sites were just looted to pieces.
(5º§) So really with Valdivia we are left with a situation where we don't know what is real. It is directly comparable to the Cycladic Figurine problem: the corpus is mostly looted, it contains tons of forms not found in the limited archaeological excavations that have been conducted, and we intellectual consumers of artefacts don't know what to believe. To me Valdivia figurines are the perfect looting Catch 22: they warrant study so that the interested public can learn about 'the oldest', but they can't be studied because collectors wanted 'the oldest' so sites were looted and buckets of fakes were produced.
(6º§) In 2007 I bought a fake Valdivia figurine in Otavalo which now stands in a Spondylus shell on my counter and watches me cook. The fella selling it to me told me it was real. I knew it wasn't but made to put it back saying something along the lines that law breaking makes me sick. He quickly agreed that it wasn't real and cut his asking price by a ton. Que Sera. Three cheers, Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture, your logo is the best.
https://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2012/09/valdivia-figurines-a
nd-appeal-of-oldest.html
What inference can be made about the author's view on the relationship between Valdivia figurines and national identity?
O texto seguinte servirá de base para responder às questões de 1 a 9.
Valdivia Figurines and the appeal of 'the oldest'
(1º§) The logo for the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture website is about my favourite thing of the afternoon which is saying a lot since I spent much of the day reading about giant Olmec heads. Three Valdivia Figurines in the colours of the Ecuadorian flag? I am sold! Golly, I love Valdivia figurines for all the right and all the wrong reasons.
(2º§) There are two things that can easily be said about Valdivia figurines: they are VERY Ecuadorian and they are VERY looted. The first explains why they appear prominently on the Ministry of Culture website (and on stencilled graffiti around Quito circa 2007). Ancient Ecuador has played second fiddle to Ancient Peru since the early days of archaeology. The Valdivia culture, however, represents something that Peru doesn't have, 'the oldest'. Everyone loves 'the oldest', national pride, etc. etc.
(3º§) Who else loves 'the oldest'? Collectors and Museums. If the Valdivia pottery sequence is the oldest in the new world, collectors want a slice of that pie. Heck, even better than some junky pottery, the Valdivia made interesting figurines: lovely ladies that look good on stark black backgrounds in auction catalogues. They are part of 'the oldest' yet they also look good.
(4º§) Valdivia sites are famously looted and Valdivia figurines are famously faked. A few years back I started doing some initial work into looting in Ecuador (which led to fieldwork in Quito and the cloud forest that didn't really go anywhere as of yet) and I, like anyone else going down that road, came across Bruhns and Hammond's 1983 Journal of Field Archaeology piece 'A Visit to Valdivia'. Knowing nothing at all about Ecuador at the time, I had never heard of Valdivia, a wonder since the only Ecuadorian archaeology books that Cambridge owns are a few by the late Betty Meggars and Emilio Estrada from the 1950s and 1960s which link uber-ancient Ecuador to Jomon Period Japan (yeah...I know). As Bruhns and Hammond relate, Meggars detected faking at Valdivia immediately after the start of her excavations: practical jokers who discovered a market for their copies. As the market for the pieces grew, the presumed fakes get more and more elaborate and fanciful...and Valdivia sites were just looted to pieces.
(5º§) So really with Valdivia we are left with a situation where we don't know what is real. It is directly comparable to the Cycladic Figurine problem: the corpus is mostly looted, it contains tons of forms not found in the limited archaeological excavations that have been conducted, and we intellectual consumers of artefacts don't know what to believe. To me Valdivia figurines are the perfect looting Catch 22: they warrant study so that the interested public can learn about 'the oldest', but they can't be studied because collectors wanted 'the oldest' so sites were looted and buckets of fakes were produced.
(6º§) In 2007 I bought a fake Valdivia figurine in Otavalo which now stands in a Spondylus shell on my counter and watches me cook. The fella selling it to me told me it was real. I knew it wasn't but made to put it back saying something along the lines that law breaking makes me sick. He quickly agreed that it wasn't real and cut his asking price by a ton. Que Sera. Three cheers, Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture, your logo is the best.
https://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2012/09/valdivia-figurines-a
nd-appeal-of-oldest.html
What does the author imply about the market demand for Valdivia figurines over time based on the information provided?
O texto seguinte servirá de base para responder às questões de 1 a 9.
Valdivia Figurines and the appeal of 'the oldest'
(1º§) The logo for the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture website is about my favourite thing of the afternoon which is saying a lot since I spent much of the day reading about giant Olmec heads. Three Valdivia Figurines in the colours of the Ecuadorian flag? I am sold! Golly, I love Valdivia figurines for all the right and all the wrong reasons.
(2º§) There are two things that can easily be said about Valdivia figurines: they are VERY Ecuadorian and they are VERY looted. The first explains why they appear prominently on the Ministry of Culture website (and on stencilled graffiti around Quito circa 2007). Ancient Ecuador has played second fiddle to Ancient Peru since the early days of archaeology. The Valdivia culture, however, represents something that Peru doesn't have, 'the oldest'. Everyone loves 'the oldest', national pride, etc. etc.
(3º§) Who else loves 'the oldest'? Collectors and Museums. If the Valdivia pottery sequence is the oldest in the new world, collectors want a slice of that pie. Heck, even better than some junky pottery, the Valdivia made interesting figurines: lovely ladies that look good on stark black backgrounds in auction catalogues. They are part of 'the oldest' yet they also look good.
(4º§) Valdivia sites are famously looted and Valdivia figurines are famously faked. A few years back I started doing some initial work into looting in Ecuador (which led to fieldwork in Quito and the cloud forest that didn't really go anywhere as of yet) and I, like anyone else going down that road, came across Bruhns and Hammond's 1983 Journal of Field Archaeology piece 'A Visit to Valdivia'. Knowing nothing at all about Ecuador at the time, I had never heard of Valdivia, a wonder since the only Ecuadorian archaeology books that Cambridge owns are a few by the late Betty Meggars and Emilio Estrada from the 1950s and 1960s which link uber-ancient Ecuador to Jomon Period Japan (yeah...I know). As Bruhns and Hammond relate, Meggars detected faking at Valdivia immediately after the start of her excavations: practical jokers who discovered a market for their copies. As the market for the pieces grew, the presumed fakes get more and more elaborate and fanciful...and Valdivia sites were just looted to pieces.
(5º§) So really with Valdivia we are left with a situation where we don't know what is real. It is directly comparable to the Cycladic Figurine problem: the corpus is mostly looted, it contains tons of forms not found in the limited archaeological excavations that have been conducted, and we intellectual consumers of artefacts don't know what to believe. To me Valdivia figurines are the perfect looting Catch 22: they warrant study so that the interested public can learn about 'the oldest', but they can't be studied because collectors wanted 'the oldest' so sites were looted and buckets of fakes were produced.
(6º§) In 2007 I bought a fake Valdivia figurine in Otavalo which now stands in a Spondylus shell on my counter and watches me cook. The fella selling it to me told me it was real. I knew it wasn't but made to put it back saying something along the lines that law breaking makes me sick. He quickly agreed that it wasn't real and cut his asking price by a ton. Que Sera. Three cheers, Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture, your logo is the best.
https://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2012/09/valdivia-figurines-a
nd-appeal-of-oldest.html
Which of the following best summarizes the author's attitude towards Valdivia figurines?
O texto seguinte servirá de base para responder às questões de 1 a 9.
Valdivia Figurines and the appeal of 'the oldest'
(1º§) The logo for the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture website is about my favourite thing of the afternoon which is saying a lot since I spent much of the day reading about giant Olmec heads. Three Valdivia Figurines in the colours of the Ecuadorian flag? I am sold! Golly, I love Valdivia figurines for all the right and all the wrong reasons.
(2º§) There are two things that can easily be said about Valdivia figurines: they are VERY Ecuadorian and they are VERY looted. The first explains why they appear prominently on the Ministry of Culture website (and on stencilled graffiti around Quito circa 2007). Ancient Ecuador has played second fiddle to Ancient Peru since the early days of archaeology. The Valdivia culture, however, represents something that Peru doesn't have, 'the oldest'. Everyone loves 'the oldest', national pride, etc. etc.
(3º§) Who else loves 'the oldest'? Collectors and Museums. If the Valdivia pottery sequence is the oldest in the new world, collectors want a slice of that pie. Heck, even better than some junky pottery, the Valdivia made interesting figurines: lovely ladies that look good on stark black backgrounds in auction catalogues. They are part of 'the oldest' yet they also look good.
(4º§) Valdivia sites are famously looted and Valdivia figurines are famously faked. A few years back I started doing some initial work into looting in Ecuador (which led to fieldwork in Quito and the cloud forest that didn't really go anywhere as of yet) and I, like anyone else going down that road, came across Bruhns and Hammond's 1983 Journal of Field Archaeology piece 'A Visit to Valdivia'. Knowing nothing at all about Ecuador at the time, I had never heard of Valdivia, a wonder since the only Ecuadorian archaeology books that Cambridge owns are a few by the late Betty Meggars and Emilio Estrada from the 1950s and 1960s which link uber-ancient Ecuador to Jomon Period Japan (yeah...I know). As Bruhns and Hammond relate, Meggars detected faking at Valdivia immediately after the start of her excavations: practical jokers who discovered a market for their copies. As the market for the pieces grew, the presumed fakes get more and more elaborate and fanciful...and Valdivia sites were just looted to pieces.
(5º§) So really with Valdivia we are left with a situation where we don't know what is real. It is directly comparable to the Cycladic Figurine problem: the corpus is mostly looted, it contains tons of forms not found in the limited archaeological excavations that have been conducted, and we intellectual consumers of artefacts don't know what to believe. To me Valdivia figurines are the perfect looting Catch 22: they warrant study so that the interested public can learn about 'the oldest', but they can't be studied because collectors wanted 'the oldest' so sites were looted and buckets of fakes were produced.
(6º§) In 2007 I bought a fake Valdivia figurine in Otavalo which now stands in a Spondylus shell on my counter and watches me cook. The fella selling it to me told me it was real. I knew it wasn't but made to put it back saying something along the lines that law breaking makes me sick. He quickly agreed that it wasn't real and cut his asking price by a ton. Que Sera. Three cheers, Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture, your logo is the best.
https://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2012/09/valdivia-figurines-a
nd-appeal-of-oldest.html
Based on the text, what can be inferred about the author's opinion regarding the study of Valdivia figurines?
O texto seguinte servirá de base para responder às questões de 1 a 9.
Valdivia Figurines and the appeal of 'the oldest'
(1º§) The logo for the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture website is about my favourite thing of the afternoon which is saying a lot since I spent much of the day reading about giant Olmec heads. Three Valdivia Figurines in the colours of the Ecuadorian flag? I am sold! Golly, I love Valdivia figurines for all the right and all the wrong reasons.
(2º§) There are two things that can easily be said about Valdivia figurines: they are VERY Ecuadorian and they are VERY looted. The first explains why they appear prominently on the Ministry of Culture website (and on stencilled graffiti around Quito circa 2007). Ancient Ecuador has played second fiddle to Ancient Peru since the early days of archaeology. The Valdivia culture, however, represents something that Peru doesn't have, 'the oldest'. Everyone loves 'the oldest', national pride, etc. etc.
(3º§) Who else loves 'the oldest'? Collectors and Museums. If the Valdivia pottery sequence is the oldest in the new world, collectors want a slice of that pie. Heck, even better than some junky pottery, the Valdivia made interesting figurines: lovely ladies that look good on stark black backgrounds in auction catalogues. They are part of 'the oldest' yet they also look good.
(4º§) Valdivia sites are famously looted and Valdivia figurines are famously faked. A few years back I started doing some initial work into looting in Ecuador (which led to fieldwork in Quito and the cloud forest that didn't really go anywhere as of yet) and I, like anyone else going down that road, came across Bruhns and Hammond's 1983 Journal of Field Archaeology piece 'A Visit to Valdivia'. Knowing nothing at all about Ecuador at the time, I had never heard of Valdivia, a wonder since the only Ecuadorian archaeology books that Cambridge owns are a few by the late Betty Meggars and Emilio Estrada from the 1950s and 1960s which link uber-ancient Ecuador to Jomon Period Japan (yeah...I know). As Bruhns and Hammond relate, Meggars detected faking at Valdivia immediately after the start of her excavations: practical jokers who discovered a market for their copies. As the market for the pieces grew, the presumed fakes get more and more elaborate and fanciful...and Valdivia sites were just looted to pieces.
(5º§) So really with Valdivia we are left with a situation where we don't know what is real. It is directly comparable to the Cycladic Figurine problem: the corpus is mostly looted, it contains tons of forms not found in the limited archaeological excavations that have been conducted, and we intellectual consumers of artefacts don't know what to believe. To me Valdivia figurines are the perfect looting Catch 22: they warrant study so that the interested public can learn about 'the oldest', but they can't be studied because collectors wanted 'the oldest' so sites were looted and buckets of fakes were produced.
(6º§) In 2007 I bought a fake Valdivia figurine in Otavalo which now stands in a Spondylus shell on my counter and watches me cook. The fella selling it to me told me it was real. I knew it wasn't but made to put it back saying something along the lines that law breaking makes me sick. He quickly agreed that it wasn't real and cut his asking price by a ton. Que Sera. Three cheers, Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture, your logo is the best.
https://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/2012/09/valdivia-figurines-a
nd-appeal-of-oldest.html
According to the passage, why are Valdivia figurines prominently featured on the Ministry of Culture website?
FlexSea’s biodegradable plastics attract £3m investment
01 FlexSea, a startup with its roots at Imperial College London, has announced the completion
02 of a seed round worth £3 million in equity and grants. The investment will help the company
03 commercialize a range of sustainable packaging solutions it has developed, based on plastics
04 derived from seaweed. The aim is to address the catastrophic impact of conventional plastics
05 on the environment, in particular the single-use plastic products that persist in the ocean for
06 many hundreds of years after they are discarded. In contrast, the biodegradable plastics
07 devised by FlexSea will break down in the sea or the soil within a matter of weeks.
08 Carlo Fedeli, the co-founder and Chief Executive of FlexSea, first started to think about
09 biodegradable plastics during the COVID pandemic. “I noticed the amount of plastic packaging
10 that was piling up at home, because of the online groceries and other deliveries we relied on
11 at the time, and I just had enough,” he says. He started looking into the biodegradable plastics
12 that were already available, and found that they often had shortcomings. Some didn’t actually
13 break down very rapidly under day-to-day environmental conditions, while others involved
14 unsustainable production methods. For example, plastics derived from seaweed are often made
15 from brown seaweed, which is usually harvested from nature, rather than the commonly
16 cultivated red seaweed. He set out to develop a thin-film plastic from red seaweed. “By the
17 end of lockdown I had the first prototype, a transparent flexi-film, and that is still the backbone
18 technology of our solvent-cast thin films,” he says.
19 FlexSea was set up in 2021 with co-founder Thibaut Monfort-Micheo. Their first home was
20 at Scale Space, on the White City Campus, and they received support from across Imperial's
21 enterprising ecosystem. In 2021 they joined the Centre for Climate Change Innovation’s
22 Greenhouse Accelerator, and in 2022 they took part in Imperial’s Venture Catalyst Challenge,
23 winning the energy and environment track. "FlexSea has the potential to change the pattern
24 of human consumption of plastic and therefore change the sustainability path of our planet,”
25 says Stephan Morais, Managing General Partner of lead investor Indico Capital. "This
26 investment will allow us ___ (make) significant progress and penetrate the market effectively,”
27 says Carlo Fedeli, the co-founder and Chief Executive of FlexSea.
(Available at: www.imperial.ac.uk/news/248154/flexseas-biodegradable-plastics-attract-3m-investment/ – text especially adapted for this test).
In the excerpt “By the end of lockdown I had the first prototype” (l. 16-17), the underlined structure suggests that the prototype was developed:
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