TEACHING READING

Summary
To The Queen
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

This poem is the epilogue of Tennyson´s most notable work “Idylls of the King”, a series of twelve poems retelling part of the story of Arthur and his knights. It  is  addressed  to  Queen  Victoria,  encouraging her in  her grief  over the death of her beloved Prince Albert not to allow Britain to lose strength  in carrying out her  destiny.
The work is, he says,

''an old imperfect tale,
New-old, and shadowing sense at war with soul.''

By ''new-old" he means that he will re-tell these old stories as a nineteenth-century poet, and with the best ideals of his own age in full view ; that, while retaining the mediaeval imagery, he will adapt the legends to the feelings and sentiments of his own generation.

Summary
Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead 
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

The body of a dead soldier is brought home to his wife and she cannot show her sorrow because she is in shock. The maid believes that her mistress should cry out her pain, otherwise the grief will kill her. She tries to make her weep by praising the dead husband but the wife stills without showing any reaction. Then the maid removes the cloth that covers the face hoping the grief to flow out, but it does not. A ninety year old nurse puts their child upon her knee,  suddenly tears roll down and she can finally show her pain.

Summary

An ecology of houses
by Kevin Burke

The article “An Ecology of Houses” by Kevin Burke brings us face to face with the relationship between nature and human beings, the process of changing the environment and altering it by natural selection.

As human beings we have made up a romantic picture of nature in our minds during the time. Sceneries which don’t include people and idealistic landscapes show up in our imagination.

But currently we are far away from such an idyllic set and are in constant conflict with our environment. The modifying of the methods of natural selection has consequences for human evolution, as nature is in part created by humans.

The process is the transforming of the environment by the subjects themselves being an essential part of it and the fact of the capability of changing it. We call this ecological niche construction.

In the United States the suburban sprawl has been the main cause of modification of environment. Natural selection in this case is strongly related with profit and economic growth. But can we talk about natural selection then? It seems that the terms ecology and economy actually don’t fit together in sense of sprawl and construction, even if they have the same root.

In the 1950s in USA, people in many cities tended to move their residences to the countryside. The land that was used for farming before was now converted into residential neighborhoods and that fact had bigger consequences for local and global environment.

In global terms sprawl has caused global warming because of higher emissions from cars that are necessary to move to outside the cities. 

But the most serious problem due to the sprawl is water contamination and consequently water depletion which has been a great concern in modern US cities.

In conclusion we have to reconsider the meaning of natural selection. We must be aware in what way we are altering evolution by creating our urban living spaces.  That doesn't  instantly mean that we have to put behind our romantic picture of nature and how we should include it in our city planning. We have to be conscious that we are part of nature and nature is part of us and that we depend each from another.

Summary

The Velociraptor-Like Robot That Could Save Your Life

by Valerie Ross

In this article we learn about biologist Robert Full’s design of search and rescue robots by studying the behavior of lizards.

Especially African agama lizards have an enormous capacity to make a perfect landing after a flight by moving their tails up and down. Full wants apply the technique to the robot that must persist upright when climbing difficult landscape.

Full has built a four-wheeled vehicle with a tail, which he and his team call Tailbot. By lifting its tail before jumping from a ramp it is able to land even more perfectly than the lizards.

That invents led Full to another area, paleontology. He discovered that the dinosaur velociraptor used much the same skill. He made a model that shows that the raptors were apparently even better at staying upright by using their tails. Despite of not being able to confirm his theory he could show his knowledge in the movie Jurassic Park where the dinosaurs jump and move in a perfect way.