What is the meaning of the 4th stanza of Eliot's Preludes, especially the lines "I am moved by fancies...Infinitely suffering thing".

A century old this year, T.S. Eliot's
Preludes raises the curtain on his great modernist masterpieces,
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste
Land and The Hollow Men. In essence four poems rather
than one, Preludes can be described as vignettes which span a
single day, and which in their differentiated images reveal the contemptible,
soul-stunting conditions of modern life. These four fragments of a (failed) vision,
themselves point to the theme not only of the poem itself, but virtually all of Eliot's
early work: Western culture is a broken thing. Its human survivors live a rootless,
alienated existence in the modern city.  Only in the fourth vignette does the poet
glimpse a meaning beyond the futility and meaninglessness he
experiences:

I am moved by fancies that are
curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely
gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

At the close
of the day, as "the skies...fade behind a city block", and the streets darken, filled
with the sound of "tramping feet", the poet is left alone to reflect on another tedious
evening of "fingers stuffing pipes" and small-minded "certainties". Yet in a moment his
ennui is changed; he is moved by the inrushing epiphany of a transcendent perception.
For an instant he sees the 'inscape' behind these dreary images, a Christ-like
"infinitely suffering thing" that can save him.

But such a
'prelude' to a transfigured existence is laughable. With a coarse "wipe across your
mouth" the poet returns to his unbelieving way of life where world both visible and
invisible tediously "revolve like ancient women/Gathering fuel in vacant
lots".

Give examples of when Macbeth equivocates in Shakespeare's play, Macbeth.

An href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/equivocator">equivocator is
someone who lies and tells half-truths, or says something ambiguous to mislead another.
In Shakespeare's play, Macbeth, the witches are generally
considered the "great" equivocators in the play in the play. (In the second set of
predictions they deliver in Act Four, they tell half-truths to trick Macbeth.) However,
we can see instances, also where Macbeth is no better than the witches for telling
lies.

The first instance where Macbeth
outright lies is when he says he killed Duncan's guards because he was so upset over
Duncan's murder at their hands. He actually kills them so they cannot raise doubts in
anyone's mind that they were "framed."

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MACBETH:

O,
yet I do repent me of my fury,

That I did kill them.
(II.iii.117-118)

He excuses
his behavior, wondering how anyone could be levelheaded in the face
of such horror: seeing his beloved King murdered.

Another
instance is when Macbeth speaks to Banquo, ostensibly to ask him if he will be gone long
when he goes riding—to remind him not to be late for dinner because Macbeth wants to
speak to him. Macbeth is actually making plans to have his friend murdered because
Banquo heard the witches' initial predictions that told Macbeth he would be king, and
Banquo has told Macbeth that he will not be swayed from what he
believes to be morally correct.

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MACBETH:

We
should have else desired your good advice,

Which still hath
been both grave and prosperous

In this day's council; but
we'll take tomorrow.

Is't far you ride?
(III.i.23-26)

Later in the
same scene, Macbeth meets with the men he has hired to murder Banquo. They are not
professional killers, but simply common men whose lives have taken a turn for the worse.
Macbeth has told the men that Banquo is to blame for their dire
circumstances—when they had originally thought it was Macbeth. (The truth is that it
was Macbeth who had beggared
them.)

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MACBETH:

...Know

That
it was he, in the times past, which held you

So under
fortune, which you thought had been

Our innocent
self?

...“Thus did Banquo.” (81-84;
89)

Macbeth goes on to ask
these men (much like his wife asked him with regard to Duncan) if
they are kind-hearted enough to ignore what Banquo has "done," or if they will
be man enough to do something about it.

Of
course, the men believe Macbeth (as most of his peers do at the beginning), never
expecting that this new King of Scotland is lying to them. He tells them that
he could kill Banquo easily himself, but that he doesn't want to
offend important men who are mutual friends to Macbeth and
Banquo.

Macbeth does all he can not only to take the throne
from Duncan, but to make sure it remains in his possession.

In regard to the following statement, how necessary is bureaucracy?If we can agree that individuals need rules and regulations to live together,...

Bureaucracy is the method of creating and insuring the
application of those rules and regulations that are needed in order for individuals to
live together. Bureaucrats are the writers, administrators, evaluators, and enforcers of
the policies and procedures established by society.

In an
ideal world, I suppose bureaucracy would not be needed because people wouldn't need
rules and regulations. If all people were willing to cooperate and share and respect
each other all the time, we could dispense with the need for creating and enforcing
expectations regarding how people should treat one another in all the situations that
arise in communities. Since we don't live in a utopian setting, we need the bureaucracy
that provides a framework of guidelines for coexistence.

In examining the film version of Hamlet by Branagh, what are some of the comparisions and contrasts between the film and the text?A...

This is rather a difficult question to answer, because you
need to remember that any production of a Shakespeare text involves a creative
interpretation of what at the end of the day is just a set of lines on the page. You
would do better to compare two different versions of this
play.

Having said this, you might want to think about what
Brannagh adds to this excellent tragedy and why he does this. One of the most notable
things that he adds which is clearly not in the original text is a sex scene between
Hamlet and Ophelia, which is used as a flashback at various points during the play to
highlight the tragedy of what happens to Ophelia (and to Hamlet) and also to indicate
that they were both very much in love with each other. In the text, it is never clear if
Hamlet ever truly loved Ophelia, and we are left to decide this for ourselves. The film
makes it clear that, were it not for events beyond his control, Hamlet would have
married Ophelia and they would have been happy
together.

Secondly, another aspect that is different is the
way that Brannagh chose to stage the famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy in Act III
scene 1. The cunning use of two-way mirrors means that Hamlet can deliver this intensely
introspective soliloquy to himself whilst being watched from the other side of the
mirror by an eavesdropping Claudius and Polonius. This helps present Elsinore as a place
where you are never sure who is listening in on you.

How to simplify sqrt(2 + sqrt 3) + sqrt(2 - sqrt 3)?

To calculate this expression, we'll have to use the
identities:

sqrt[a+(sqrtb)] = sqrt{[a+sqrt(a^2 - b)]/2} +
sqrt{[a-sqrt(a^2 - b)]/2}

sqrt[a-(sqrtb)] =
sqrt{[a+sqrt(a^2 - b)]/2} - sqrt{[a-sqrt(a^2 - b)]/2}

Let a
= 2 and b = 3

sqrt[2+(sqrt3)] = sqrt{[2+sqrt(2^2 - 3)]/2} +
sqrt{[2-sqrt(2^2 - 3)]/2}

sqrt[2+(sqrt3)] = sqrt(3/2) +
sqrt(1/2) (1)

sqrt[2-(sqrt3)] = sqrt{[2+sqrt(2^2 - 3)]/2} -
sqrt{[2-sqrt(2^2 - 3)]/2}

sqrt[2+(sqrt3)] = sqrt(3/2) -
sqrt(1/2) (2)

We'll add (1) and (2) and we'll
get:

sqrt[2+(sqrt3)] + sqrt[2-(sqrt3)] = sqrt(3/2) +
sqrt(1/2) + sqrt(3/2) - sqrt(1/2)

We'll eliminate like
terms:

sqrt[2+(sqrt3)] + sqrt[2-(sqrt3)] =
2*sqrt(3/2)

The requested result of the
expression is sqrt[2+(sqrt3)] + sqrt[2-(sqrt3)] =
2*sqrt(3/2).

Why might privatization of jails be a good idea?

If privatization is done correctly, it can be a good
thing.  However, it can potentially be dangerous as
well.

Private companies are, of course, looking to make as
much profit as possible.  This will mean that they will look for ways to cut costs when
they run prisons.  This could be a good thing if their cost-cutting is limited to areas
where it is safe to cut costs.  If this happens, they will still deliver vital services
while saving the government money by cutting back on
extras.

However, it could be that prison companies will cut
costs in areas that are inappropriate.  They might be less worried about providing a
safe environment for prisoners.  They might be less worried about doing anything to
rehabilitate the prisoners.  These are things that might be important but might also be
ignored by a for-profit company.

Therefore, privatization
could be good so long as the government makes very clear what services must be provided
and at what level of quality.  If that is done, private companies can probably save the
taxpayers money.

What are some of the most significant settings in Elizabeth Geogre Speare's novel The Bronze Bow?

Elizabeth George Spear’s novel The Bronze
Bow features a number of significant settings. In general terms, the novel is
set in Roman-occupied Judaea during the time of Jesus (first century C.E.). The youthful
protagonist, Daniel Bar Jamin, is specifically described in the book’s opening
paragraphs as a Galilean:

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A proud race, the Galileans, violent and
restless, unreconciled that Palestine was a conquered nation, refus[ed] to acknowledge
as their lord the Emperor Tiberius in far-off
Rome.

This very early
sentence already implies the crucial role that setting will play in this novel. The book
is set during a time and place of great cultural and religious conflict, and so the
stage is already set in the very first paragraph for descriptions of such conflict in
this book.

Other paragraphs early in the book refer not
simply to Palestine in general but to specific places in Palestine and to specific
geographical features, including a “valley,” “terraces of olive trees,” “thickets of
oleander,” and a “brown, mud-roofed town.”  Spear thus goes out of her way, in the early
pages of the book, to suggest that setting will be important in this book and also to
create a vivid sense of setting by using highly precise imagery.  She describes a kind
of landscape that will seem unusual and even somewhat exotic to many of her young
readers, a great many of whom are residents of modern cities and
suburbs.

Various significant places mentioned in the book
include Ketzah, the village of Daniel’s youth; Capernaum, where Joel’s family plan to
move; Nazareth, the home of Jesus; a mountain; a watchtower; a shop; a synagogue;
Jerusalem; a temple; the Lake of Merom; and numerous other places. By emphasizing and
describing such places, Spear makes her book historically credible while not neglecting
to emphasize the trans-historical significance of the events and characters (especially
Jesus) she depicts.