He repeatedly calls on his followers to embrace martyrdom since "The walls of oppression and humiliation cannot be demolished except in a rain of bullets." For those yearning for a lost sense of order in an older, more tranquil world, he offers his "Caliphate" as an imagined alternative to today's uncertainty. For others, he offers simplistic conspiracies to explain their world. Bin Laden also relies heavily on the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood executed in 1966 on charges of attempting to overthrow the government, Qutb mixed Islamic scholarship with a very superficial acquaintance with Western history and thought. Sent by the Egyptian government to study in the United States in the late 1940s, Qutb returned with an enormous loathing of Western society and history. He dismissed Western achievements as entirely material, arguing that Western society possesses "nothing that will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence." Three basic themes emerge from Qutb's writings. First, he claimed that the world was beset with barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief (a condition he called jahiliyya, the religious term for the period of ignorance prior to the revelations given to the Prophet Mohammed). Qutb argued that humans can choose only between Islam and jahiliyya. Second, he warned that more people, including Muslims, were attracted to jahiliyya and its material comforts than to his view of Islam; jahiliyya could therefore triumph over Islam. Third, no middle ground exists in what Qutb conceived as a struggle between God and Satan. All Muslims-as he defined them-therefore must take up arms in this fight. Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of destruction. Bin Laden shares Qutb's stark view, permitting him and his followers to rationalize even unprovoked mass murder as righteous defense of an embattled faith. Many Americans have wondered, "Why do 'they' hate us?" Some also ask, "What can we do to stop these attacks?" Bin Laden and al Qaeda have given answers to both these questions.

Question: "What two aspects of Bin Laden's message attract followers?"

Answer: "Simplistic conspiracies to explain their world"

Response: yes

Density is also an important physical property of matter. The concept of density combines what we know about an objects mass and volume. Density reflects how closely packed the particles of matter are. When particles are packed together more tightly, matter is more dense. Differences in density of matter explain many phenomena. It explains why helium balloons rise. It explains why currents such as the Gulf Stream flow through the oceans. It explains why some things float in or sink. You can see this in action by pouring vegetable oil into water. You can see a colorful demonstration in this video.

Question: "How can I observe the role density plays?"

Answer: "By pouring vegetable oil into water"

Response: yes

Coleco Industries Inc., a once high-flying toy maker whose stock peaked at $65 a share in the early 1980s, filed a Chapter 11 reorganization plan that provides just 1.125 cents a share for common stockholders. Under the plan, unsecured creditors, who are owed about $430 million, would receive about $92 million, or 21 cents for each dollar they are owed. In addition, they will receive stock in the reorganized company, which will be named Ranger Industries Inc. After these payments, about $225,000 will be available for the 20 million common shares outstanding. The Avon, Conn., company's stock hit a high in 1983 after it unveiled its Adam home computer, but the product was plagued with glitches and the company's fortunes plunged. But Coleco bounced back with the introduction of the Cabbage Patch dolls, whose sales hit $600 million in 1985. But as the craze died, Coleco failed to come up with another winner and filed for bankruptcy-law protection in July 1988. The plan was filed jointly with unsecured creditors in federal bankruptcy court in New York and must be approved by the court.

Question: "How long after their stocks hit a high did Coleco file for bankruptcy-law protection?"

Answer: "Slightly over three years"

Response: yes

Hundreds of thousands of years before China was to become the world's longest-running civilization, the prologue was enacted by means of the flicker of a carefully tended fire. Peking Man, a forebear of Homo sapiens, achieved a mastery of fire. We might call it the first Chinese invention. Not that he devised flint and steel, matches, or any other way of creating fire. Peking Man simply learned how to capture flame, perhaps from a forest fire, and keep it alight. He thus enjoyed two revolutionary luxuries: light and heat. Technologically and sociologically, it was a phenomenal breakthrough: with fire, communities could live year 'round in one cave, in which cooking and even smelting could be pursued. And so, by 600,000 b.c., about 50 km (31 miles) southwest of present-day Beijing, the ancestors of mankind were ready to settle down. Several hundred thousand years later, when Marco Polo reached the capital of China, he was astonished by a further development in fire technology. The Chinese, he announced, used black stones dug out of mountains as fuel. Europeans did not yet have a word for "coal," nor had they discovered a use for it. The First Dynasty The confluence of mythology and history in China took place around 4,000 years ago during what is referred to as the Xia (Hsia) Dynasty. This was still the Stone Age, but the people are thought to have made silk from thread produced by the worms they cultivated on the leaves of their mulberry trees. And written language (which evolved as early as 4,500 to 5,000 years ago) was already in use, originally by oracles and then by official scribesChina's first scholars. During the second of the quasi-legendary dynasties, the Shang (from about the 16th to 11th centuries b.c.), the Chinese developed an interest in art. Careful geometric designs as well as dragon and bird motifs adorned bowls and implements. And with the arrival of the Bronze Age, the Chinese created bronze vessels of such beauty and originality that, until modern times, archaeologists refused to believe they were cast 3,000 years ago. The Shang Dynasty gave rise to the concept of one Chinese nation under one government.

Question: "What might be called the first Chinese invention?"

Answer: "The mastery of fire"

Response:
yes