Attendance question: How does the device
described in “Old Machine, New Answers”
contribute to your understanding of
competition in ancient Greece?

substitute y = 2x - 4 to x + 2y = 12:

x + 2(2x - 4) = 12     use distributive property

x + (2)(2x) + () = 12

x + 4x - 8 = 12     add 8 to both sides

5x = 20     divide both sides by 5

x = 4

put the value of x to the first equation:

y = 2(4) - 4

y = 8 - 4

y = 4

when connie willis was 12 years old, her mother died. in january of 2003, willis was interviewed for locus magazine. she recognized that death is a major issue in her writing, specially because the vacuous and appalling things that people tend to say in order to support you when someone you loved dies.

but there is another aspect that i have learned from connie willis's quote. in his famous work "danubio", the italian writer claudio magris describes literature as house removals. some messages reach us, other messages get lost in the labyrinth. those messages which are our inheritance teach us how to live and how to die, how to love and how to hate, how to laugh and how to cry. i think that tales really shape us if we listen to them. maybe through the stories we read we learn how to emphatize with others, knowing that the bells tolls for every each of us.