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HBSE Class 12 English Notes Making Important Question Answer 2024
Read the following passage carefully and make notes on it using headings and sub headings. Supply an appropriate title also : 4 + 1 = 5
Education ought to teach us how to be in love always and what to be in love with. The great things of history have been done by great lovers, saints, men of science and artists, and the problem of civilization is to give every man a chance of being a saint, a man of science and an artist. But this problem cannot be solved unless men desire to be saint, men of science or artists. And if they are to desire that continuously they must be taught what it means to be these things. We think of the man of science, or the artist if not of the saint, as a being with peculiar gifts who exercises more precisely and incessantly perhaps, activities which we all ought to exercise. It is a common place belief now that art has ebbed away out of our ordinary life, out of all the things which we use, and that it is practised no longer by workmen but only a few painters and sculptors. That has happened because we no longer recognize the aesthetic activity as an activity of the spirit and common to all men. We do not know that when a man makes anything he ought to make it beautiful for the sake of doing so, and that when a man buys anything he ought to demand beauty in it for the sake of that beauty. We think of beauty, if we think of it at all, as a mere source of pleasure, and therefore it means to us an ornament added to things for which we can pay extra as we choose. But beauty is not an ornament to life, or the things made by man. It is an essential part of both.
There is an enemy beneath our feet-an enemy the more deadly for his complete impartiality. He recognizes no national boundaries, no political parties. Everyone in the world is threatened by him. The enemy is the earth itself. When an earthquake strikes, the world trembles. The power of a quake is greater than anything man himself can produce. But today scientists are directing a great deal of their effort into finding some way of combating earthquakes, and it is possible that at sometime in the near future mankind will have discovered a means of protecting itself. An earthquake strikes without warning. When it does, its power is immense. If it strikes a modern city, the damage it cause is as great as if it has struck a primitive village. Gas mains burst, explosions are caused and fires are started. Underground railways are wrecked. Whole buildings collapse, bridges fall, dams burst. Gaping crevices appear in busy streets. If the quake strikes at sea, huge tidal waves sweep inland. If it strikes in mountain regions, avalanches roar down into the valley. Consider the terrifying statistics from the past. 1755 : Lisbon, capital of Portugal – the city destroyed entirely and 450 killed. 1970 : Peru-50,000 killed. In 1968, an earthquake struck Alaska. As this is a relatively unpopulated part, only a few people were killed. But it is likely that this was one of the most powerful quakes ever to have hit the world. Geologists estimate that during the tremors, the whole of the state moved over 80 feet farther west into the Pacific Ocean. Imagine the power of something that can move an entire subcontinent ! this is the problem that faces the scientists. They are dealing with forces so immense that man cannot hope to resist them. All that can be done is to try to pinpoint just where the earthquake will strike and work from there. At least some precautionary measures can then be taken to save lives and some of the property.
The nine-letter word “interview” can perspire the most knowledgeable and strong people in the world. In modern times, your prospects depend on the success of an interview. First, an academic question : ‘What is an interview ?’ It is a discussion in which an interviewer faces a candidate for a short while and asks questions to probe his knowledge and awareness of the subject. These are done to assess the personality of the interviewee. It is a very formal means of interaction with one person facing a group of persons, each of whom is a specialist in his or her field. For a successful interview, you have to understand that knowledge is an important component of success. Knowledge has two aspects : range and depth. The former implies that you should know a lot beyond your specialization and the latter means an awareness of the various aspects of the topic under discussion. An indepth knowledge is gained through reading and listening. Next comes appearance, which means your dress for the interview. You must be elegantly attired for the occasion. But remember : going for an interview is different from attending an evening party. Wear a simple outfit that suits your physique and features. Casuals like Kurtapyjamas, jeans, T-shirt or Kolhapuris should not feature in your selection of dress. Conducting yourself in the apt way is equally significant. The way you move yourself, sit on the chair, place your hands and your briefcase and talk to the members reflect your behavior. Expression is the most important aspect of the interview. For good expressions, what you need is clarity of mind and speech. Show your balanced thinking to convey your views clearly. Choose your words carefully. Use right words of normal usage, and abstain from verbosity. Avoid making ambiguous statements. Convey your point of view effectively. Create an impact through your expressions. Give the impression of being a leader. Show that you can cooperate and get it.
A headache is usually caused due to spinal misalignment of the head, due to poor posture. Sleeping on the stomach with the head turned to one side and bending over positions for a long time make it worse. In migraine headaches (One handed headaches), the pain is usually on one side of the head and may be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, irritability and bright spots of flashes of light. This headache is made worse by activity, especially bending. The throbbing pain in the head gets worse by noise and light. Certain triggers for migraines may be chocolate eating, smoking or MSU in certain food items. The pain may last from eight to 24 hours and there may be a hangover for two-three days. Migraines are often preceded by an ‘aura’ – changes in sight and sensation. There is usually a family history of migraine. In a headache the pain originates not from the brain but from irritated nerves of muscles, blood vessels and bones. These send pain signals to the brain which then judges the degree of distress and relays it at appropriate sites. The pain may sometimes be referred to sites other than the problem areas. This is known as referred pain and occurs due to sensation overload. Thus, though most headaches start at the base of the skull the referred pain is felt typically behind the eyes. Factors causing headaches are not fully understood but it is known that a shift in the level of body hormones and chemicals, certain food and drinks and environmental stress can trigger them. If headaches trouble you often, visit the doctor, who will take a full health history relating to diet, lifestyle stresses, the type of headache, triggering factors and relief measures. You may be asked to keep a ‘headache diary’ which tells you to list the time the headache started, when it ended, emotional, environmental and food and drink factors which may have contributed to it. The type and severity of pain and medications used which provided most relief, are also to be listed. This helps the doctor in determining the exact cause and type of headache and the type of drugs to use. Apart from this a physical examination is done to rule out any serious underlying cause. The blood pressure is recorded, vision tested and muscle coordination of the eyes is checked to rule out these as causes. Blood tests may be done out anaemia, diabetes and thyroid disease. If any of the above is abnormal or otherwise a CT Scan or MRI may be done to see tissues and structures around the brain. These will rule out causes such as tumors, haemorrhage and infection of the brain. This examination gives a clear picture of the problem to the doctor. Immediate relief can be certain medications and few simple self-care techniques. Using ice against the pain ‘site’, covering eyes with dark glasses, drinking plenty of fluids and lying down in a dark and quiet room provide relief in a migraine attack. Pain killers like aspirin, Ibuprofen (brufen) and crocin can be taken and provide relief in different proportions. These should be used with caution and under medical supervision if used for long periods and large quantities as all of them can cause many side effects. An antiemetic like perionorm can help the nausea associated with a migraine.
More than a century ago, some countries had no police force. Local leaders devised their own methods of ensuring that their orders were carried out and fulfilled. The offender was not given a second chance to repeat his mistake for he was either killed or hunted out of the district. In England the modern police force grew largely from an unofficial body gathered together by a London Magistrate. He found that it was practically impossible to apprehend any of the criminals in his area unless he deployed some men secretly to detect and hunt the culprits. These unofficial constables had to patrol one large district. They looked upon their position largely as an honorary one and had very little power. Worse still they were sometimes corrupt men themselves for they would conveniently look the other way round in times of trouble, like theft, hooliganism and vandalism. Magistrate Fielding enrolled a few men whom he could explicitly trust and employed them to catch the thieves and other undesirable persons. The majority of the people resented what they thought was a threat to their liberties, intrusion on their privacies and above all spying on them. They maintained that they should have every right to drink themselves to death with any form of alcohol, as so many of them did. They thought too that they should be allowed to quarrel, to fight and even kill among themselves. The situation was made worse by the fact that the penalties for offenses were very heavy in those days and a man could be hanged for the theft of some unimportant thing. Arrest by the magistrate’s men could bring disastrous results. Contrary to general feeling, the authorities gradually admitted that these early policemen were vitally necessary. After much discussion, argument and persuasion, the government secretly agreed to reimburse the magistrate for the men he employed. This step was not made public lest it should be thought that the government was planting spies amidst its people. Eventually the public came to look upon the police with a more friendly spirit as the benefits became more noticeable. At long last, men and women could walk along the streets by day and even by night without fear of robbery and other acts of violence. Hitherto, the people were free to do practically anything – good or bad, irrespective of the possible consequences, as the police force built up. The people gave up their freedom to commit evil deeds so that they might have a greater freedom to do good so as to enable one and all to enjoy life peacefully and harmoniously.
In a very short period of time the internet has had a profound impact on the way we live. Since the internet was made operational in 1983, it has lowered both the costs of communication and the barriers to creative expression. It has challenged old business models and enabled new ones. It has provided access to information on a scale never before achievable. It succeeded because we designed it to be flexible and open. These two features have allowed it to accommodate innovation without massive changes to its infrastructure. An open, borderless and standardised platform means that barriers to entry are low, competition is high, interchangeability is assured and innovation is rapid. The beauty of an open platform is that there are no gatekeepers. For centuries, access to and creation of information was controlled by the few. The internet has changed that and is rapidly becoming the platform for everyone, by everyone. Of course, it still has a way to go. Today there are only about 2.3 billion internet users, representing roughly 30% of the world’s population. Much of the information that they can access online is in English, but this is changing rapidly. The technological progress of the internet has also set social change in motion. As with other enabling inventions before it, from the telegraph to television, some will worry about the effects of broader access to information – the printing press and the rise in literacy that it affected were, after all, long seen as destabilising. Similar concerns about the internet are occasionally raised, but if we take a long view, I’m confident that its benefits far outweigh the discomforts of learning to integrate into our lives. The internet and the world wide web are what they are because literally millions of people have made it so. It is a grand collaboration. It would be foolish not to acknowledge that the openness of the internet has had a price. Security is an increasingly important issue and cannot be ignored. If there is an area of vital research and development for the internet, this is one of them. I am increasingly confident, however, that techniques and practice exist to make the internet safer and more secure while retaining its essentially open quality. After working on the internet and its predecessors for over decades, I’m more optimistic about its promise than I have ever been. We are all free to innovate on the net everyday. The internet is tool of the people, built by the people and it must stay that way.
I remember my childhood as being generally happy and can recall experiencing some of the most carefree times of my life. But I can also remember, even more vividly, moments of being deeply frightened. As a child, I was truly terrified of the dark and getting lost. These fears were very real and caused me some extremely uncomfortable moments. Maybe it was the strange way things looked and sounded in my familiar room at night that scared me so much. There was never total darkness, but a street light or passing car lights made clothes hung over a chair take on the shape of an unknown beast. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw curtains move when there was no breeze. A tiny creak in the floor would sound a hundred times louder than in the daylight and my imagination would take over creating burglars and monsters. Darkness always made me feel helpless. My heart would pound and I would lie very still so that ‘the enemy’ wouldn’t discover me. Another childhood fear of mine was that I would get lost, especially on my way home from school. Every morning, I got on the school bus right near my home – that was no problem. After school, when all the buses were lined up along the curve, I was terrified that I would get on the wrong one and be taken to some unfamiliar neighbourhood. I would scan the bus for the faces of my friends, make sure that the bus driver was the same one that had been there in the morning, and even then ask the others
over and over again to be sure that I was in the right bus. On school or family trips to an amusement park or a museum, I wouldn’t let the leaders out of my sight. And of course, I was never very adventurous when it came to taking walks or hikes because I would go only where I was sure I would never get lost. Perhaps, one of the worst fears I had as a child was that of not being liked or accepted by others. First of all, I was quite shy. Secondly, I worried constantly about my looks, thinking people wouldn’t like me because I was too fat or wore braces. I tried to wear ‘the right clothes’ and had intense arguments with my mother over the importance of wearing flats instead of saddled shoes to school. Being popular was very important to me then and the fear of not being liked was a powerful one. One of the processes of evolving from a child to an adult is being able to recognize and overcome our fears. I have learnt that darkness does not have to take on a life of own, that others can help me when I am lost and that friendliness and sincerity will encourage people to like me. Understanding the things that scare us as children helps to cope with our lives as adult.
Although stupidity is commonly defined as ‘a lack of normal intelligence’, stupid behaviour is not the behaviour of a person lacking in intelligence but the behaviour of a person not using good judgment or sense. In face, stupidity comes from the Latin word that means ‘senseless’. Therefore, stupidity can be defined as the behaviour of a person of normal intelligence who acts in a particular situation as if he or she isn’t very bright. Stupidity exists at three levels of seriousness. First is the simple, relatively harmless level. Behaviour at this level is often amusing. It is humorous when someone places the food from a fast food restaurant on the roof of the car while unlocking the door and then drives away with the food still on the roof. We call this absentmindedness. The person’s good sense or intelligence was temporarily absent. At this level, other than passing inconvenience or embarrassment, no one is injured by the stupid behaviour. The next type – serious stupidity – is more dangerous. Practical jokes such as putting sugar in the salt shakers are at this level. The intention is humorous, but there is a chance of harm. Irresponsible advice given to others is also serious stupidity. An example is the person who plays psychiatrist on the basis of an introductory psychology course or doing a TV program on psychiatry. The intention may be to help, but if the victim really needs psychiatric help, an amateur will only worsen the situation. Even worse is the third kind of stupidity. Kind people, who would never injure another living being, stupidly throw away a box of six-week-old kittens along a country road. Lacking the heart to kill the poor things, they sentence them to almost certain death from wild animals, infections, exposure or the wheels of a passing vehicle. Yet they are able to tell themselves that ‘they will find nice homes’ or ‘animals can get along in the wild’. Another example of this kind of stupidity is the successful local businessman who tries to have as many office affairs as he can get away with. He risks the loss of his business and his home. He fails to see that what he is doing is wrong. This is the true moral stupidity of a person not willing to think about the results of his actions or take responsibility for them. The common defense of a person guilty of stupidity is – ‘But I didn’t think ….’ This, however, is not a proper excuse, especially when serious or harmful stupidity is involved.
The small village of Somnathpur contains an extraordinary temple, built around 1268 A.D. by the Hoyasalas of Karnataka – one of the most prolific temple-builders. Belur and Helebid are among their better-known works. ‘While these suffered during the invasions of the 14th century, the Somnathpur temple stands more or less intact in near-original condition. This small temple captivates the beauty and vitality of its detailed sculpture, covering almost every inch of the walls, pillars and even ceilings. It has three shikharas and stands on a star-shaped, raised platform with 24 edges. The outer walls have a profusion of detailed carvings: the entire surface run over by carved plaques of stone. There were vertical panels covered by exquisite figures of gods and goddesses with many incarnations being depicted. There were nymphs too, some carrying an ear of maize – a symbol of plenty and prosperity. The elaborate ornamentation, the very characteristic of Hoyasala sculptures, was a remarkable feature. On closer look – and it is worth it – the series of friezes on the outer walls revealed intricately carved caparisoned (covered decorative cloth) elephants, charging horsemen, stylized flowers, warriors, musicians, crocodiles, and swans. The temple was actually commissioned by Soma Dandanayaka or Somnath (he named the village after himself), the minister of the Hoyasala king, Narasimha, the third. The temple was built to house three versions of Krishna. The inner center of the temple was the Kalyana Mandapa. Leading from here ‘were three corridors each ending in a shrine, one for each kind of Krishna – Venugopala, Janardana and Prasanna Keshava, though only two remain in their original form. In the, darkness of the sanctum sanctorum, I tried to discern the different images. The temple’s sculptural perfection is amazing and it includes the doors of the temple and the three elegantly carved towers.
It’s 10 pm and the research paper is due the next morning. Sam types frantically. Two weeks ago, it seemed that there was plenty of time to get the paper done. Last week, the final of a soccer match on TV made it hard to study. Now it’s crunch time. Looking at the clock, Sam wonders, “Why do I keep doing this to myself ? Why haven’t I learned not to put things off until the last minute ?” The word procrastination comes from the Latin term ‘Procrastinatus’. It means to put forward until tomorrow. Standard dictionary definitions all include the idea of postponement or delay. Steel, a psychologist who has reviewed hundreds of studies on the subject, states that to procrastinate is “to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse-off for the delay”. Another expert, Dr. Joseph R. Ferrari (2005), distinguishes between people who tend to put things off and “chronic” or “real” procrastinators for whom this is their life and who might even need therapy. Ferrari categorizes procrastinators into three types: (a) stimulation types that get a thrill from beating a deadline, (b) avoiders put off doing things that might make others think badly of them, and (c) decisional procrastinators postpone making a decision until they have enough information to avoid making a wrong choice. Chronic procrastinators tend to have a low self-esteem and focus on the past more than the future. The Discounted Expectancy Theory illustrates with a student like Sam who puts off writing a paper. When the deadline is far off, the rewards for socializing now are greater than those for finishing a task not due until later. As the deadline looms, the rewards or consequences for finishing the paper become more important. Tice and Baumeister (1997) found that procrastinators on the average got lower grades and had higher levels of stress and illness. Chu and Choi (2005) however, say that not all procrastinators are lazy and undisciplined. “Passive procrastinators” are more stressed, less efficient. “Active procrastinators prefer to work under pressure” and “if something unexpectedly comes up, they will knowingly switch gears and engage in new tasks they perceive as more urgent.”
Whether work should be placed among the causes of happiness or among the causes of unhappiness may perhaps be regarded as a doubtful question. There is certainly much work which is exceedingly irksome, and an excess of work is always very painful. However, work is not, to most people, more painful than idleness. There are, in work, all grades; from more relief of tedium up to the profoundest delights, according to the nature of the work and the abilities of the worker. Most of the work that most people have to do is not interesting in itself, but even that work has certain great advantages. To begin with, it fills a good many hour of the day without the need of deciding what one shall do. Most people, when they are left free to fill their own time according to their own choice, are at a loss to think of anything sufficiently pleasant to be worth doing. And whatever they decide on, they are troubled by the feeling that something else would have been more pleasant here. To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization and at present very few people have reached this level. Moreover, the exercise of choice is tiresome in itself. Except, to people with unusual initiative, it is positively agreeable to be told what to do at each hour of the day, provided the orders are not too unpleasant. Most of the idle rich suffer unspeakable boredom. At times they may find relief by hunting big game in Africa or by flying around the world, but the number of such sensations is limited, especially after youth is past. Accordingly, the more intelligent rich men work nearly as hard as if they were poor. Work, therefore is desirable, first and foremost as a preventive of boredom, although uninteresting work is as boring as having nothing to do. With this advantage of work, another associated advantage is that it makes holidays much more delicious when they come. Provided that a man does not have to work so hard as to impair his vigour, he is likely to find far more zest than an idle man would possibly find. The second advantage of most paid work and some of unpaid work is that it gives chances of success and opportunities for ambition. In most work, success is measured by income and while our capitalistic society continues, this is inevitable. However dull work too, becomes bearable, if it is a means of building up a reputation. Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness and that comes chiefly through work.
It is surprising that sometimes we don’t listen to what people say to us. We hear them, but we don’t listen to them. I was curious to know how hearing is different from listening. I had thought both were synonyms, but gradually, I realised there is a big difference between the two words. Hearing is a physical phenomenon. Whenever somebody speaks, the sound waves generated reach you, and you definitely hear whatever is said to you. However, even if you hear something, it doesn’t always mean that you actually understand whatever is being said. Paying attention to whatever you hear means you are really listening. Consciously using your mind to understand whatever is being said is listening. Diving deeper, I found that listening is not only hearing with attention, but is much more than that. Listening is hearing with full attention, and applying our mind. Most of the time, we listen to someone, but our minds are full of needless chatter and there doesn’t seem to be enough space to accommodate what is being spoken. We come with a lot of prejudices and preconceived notions about the speaker or the subject on which he is talking. We pretend to listen to the speaker, but deep inside, we sit in judgement and are dying to pronounce right or wrong, true or false, yes or no, Sometimes, we even come prepared with a negative mindset of proving the speaker – wrong. Even if the speaker says nothing harmful, we are ready to pounce on him with our own version of things. What we should ideally do is listen first with full awareness. Once we have done that, we can decide whether we want to make a judgement or not. Once we do that, communication will be perfect and our interpersonal relationship will become so much better. Listening well doesn’t mean one has to say the right thing at the right moment. In fact, sometimes if words are left unspoken, there is a feeling of tension and negativity. Therefore, it is better to speak out your mind, but do so with awareness after istening to the speaker with full concentration. Let’s look at this in another way. When you really listen, you imbibe not only what is being spoken, but you also understand what is not spoken as well. Most of the time we don’t really listen even to people who really matter to us. That’s how misunderstandings grow among families, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters.
A vast blanket of pollution stretching across South Asia is cutting down sunlight by 10 percent over India, damaging agriculture, modifying rainfall patterns and putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk, according to a new study. The startling findings of scientists working with the United Nations Environment Programme indicate that the spectacular economic growth seen in this part of the world in the past decade may soon falter as a result of pollution. Research carried out in India indicates that the haze caused by pollution might be reducing winter rice harvests by as much as 10 percent, the report said. “Acids in the haze may, by falling as acid rain, have the potential to damage crops and trees. Ash falling on leaves can aggravate the impact of reduced sunlight on earth’s surface. The pollution that is forming the haze could be leading to several hundred of thousands of premature deaths as a result of higher level of respiratory diseases,” it said. Results from seven cities in India alone, including Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Kolkata, estimate that air pollution was annually responsible for 24000 premature deaths in the early 1990s.
Skipping breakfast, especially among primary and secondary school children, affects mental performance in the classroom, thus lending weight to the old adage that a healthy breakfast gets you off to a good start for the day. New research shows that eating breakfast benefits the memory. It provides essential nutrients and energy that contribute to the overall diet quality and adequacy. Children who skip breakfast do not makeup for nutrients and energy deficits later in the day and they tend to perform more poorly in tests of cognition than those who eat their breakfast. A study undertaken by doctors at the University of Wales in the U.K. found that a higher blood glucose level after eating breakfast is one of the key reasons for the improvement in mental performance. It particularly affects the speed of recalling new information, but does not influence other aspects such as intelligence test results or mental tasks related to conditioning or developed skills. Eating breakfast was found to improve performance on retention of new information like recall of stories and word lists. This aspect of memory is called ‘declarative memory’ in which information can be consciously recalled and declared verbally, says the study whose finding have been presented in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Gandhiji the greatest political genius of our time, indicated the path to be taken. He gave living testimony to the fact that man’s will sustained by an indomitable conviction, is more powerful than material forces that seem in surmountable. On the whole, I believe that Gandhiji held the most enlightened view of all political men of our times. We should strive to do things in his spirit : not to use violence in fighting for our cause and to refrain from taking part in anything we believe as evil. Revolution without the use of violence was the method by which Gandhiji brought about the liberation of India. It is my belief that the problem of bringing peace to the world on a supranational basis will be solved only by employing Gandhji’s method on a large scale. The veneration in which Gandhiji has been held throughout the world rests on the recognition, for the most part unconscious, that in our age of moral decay, he was the only statesman who represented that higher conception of human relation in the political sphere to which we must aspire with all our powers.
Real praise, a sincere compliment, is probably the most useful social tool of all. it is the valued gold coin of our conversation. Yet today, it is in danger of losing its brightness. For, it is greatly misused and not properly exchanged. What is a true compliment ? It is one that benefits both the giver and the receiver. We all like to have our sense of personal worth built up or pointed out. And when one expert adds to another’s sense of dignity and speaks favourably of his skill, he is offering a compliment of the highest and rarest kind. A compliment differs from flattery in that it is objective and given without any thought of gain. Flattery is often merely lip service or excessive praise given for motives other than expected. The greatest efforts of the human race have always resulted from the love of praise. This should be inspired in childhood. A wise parent makes it a point to compliment a child who deserves it. There is an art in the giving of compliments. Thus a good compliment is always to the point and timing is important. Don’t wait too long to tell a person what a good talk he gave or how well he cut your grass. But don’t do it immediately when he is expecting it either. Wait. Then, when he thinks you may have forgotten, pass the praise.