Born in Moscow, Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen. By the time he finished school as part of the first graduating class of the prestigious Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo near Saint Petersburg, his talent was already widely recognized within the Russian literary scene. After school, Pushkin plunged into the vibrant and raucous intellectual youth culture of the capital, Saint Petersburg. In 1820 he published his first long poem, Ruslan and Lyudmila, amidst much controversy about its subject and style. Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform and emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals. This angered the government, and led to his transfer from the capital (1820). He went to the Caucasus and to the Crimea, then to Kamenka and Chisinau, where he became a Freemason.

Question: "What were main events in Pushkin's early years of writing poetry? After school, Pushkin plunged into the vibrant and raucous intellectual youth culture of the capital, Saint Petersburg."

Answer: "He published his first poem at the age of fifteen. His talent was already widely recognized within the Russian literary scene by the time he finished school"

Response: yes

The rally took place on October 17, the shooting on February 29. Again, standard filmmaking techniques are interpreted as smooth distortion: "Moore works by depriving you of context and guiding your mind to fill the vacuum -- with completely false ideas. It is brilliantly, if unethically, done." As noted above, the "from my cold dead hands" part is simply Moore's way to introduce Heston. Did anyone but Moore's critics view it as anything else? He certainly does not "attribute it to a speech where it was not uttered" and, as noted above, doing so twice would make no sense whatsoever if Moore was the mastermind deceiver that his critics claim he is. Concerning the Georgetown Hoya interview where Heston was asked about Rolland, you write: "There is no indication that [Heston] recognized Kayla Rolland's case." This is naive to the extreme -- Heston would not be president of the NRA if he was not kept up to date on the most prominent cases of gun violence. Even if he did not respond to that part of the interview, he certainly knew about the case at that point. Regarding the NRA website excerpt about the case and the highlighting of the phrase "48 hours after Kayla Rolland is pronounced dead": This is one valid criticism, but far from the deliberate distortion you make it out to be; rather, it is an example for how the facts can sometimes be easy to miss with Moore's fast pace editing. The reason the sentence is highlighted is not to deceive the viewer into believing that Heston hurried to Flint to immediately hold a rally there (as will become quite obvious), but simply to highlight the first mention of the name "Kayla Rolland" in the text, which is in this paragraph.

Question: "Who was president of the NRA on February 29?"

Answer: "Hoya"

Response: no

Michigan will lose $2 million in federal funding and $600,000 in state funding to provide legal aid to the poor in 2003, according to Deierdre L. Weir, executive director of the Legal Aid and Defender Association, Inc., the state's largest provider of legal services to the poor. Current federal funds of nearly $10.7 million from the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) will drop to $8.7 million for next year, according to Weir. She said that the reductions reflect a decline in the number of persons in the state who are living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2000 census. LSC uses census data to determine funding across the nation, and according to the census, the state's poverty population fell from an estimated 1.2 million in 1990 to an estimated 968,000 in 2000. The state's legal aid agencies are also bracing for yet another cut in 2003 of some $600,000 of state funding. A portion of filing fees paid by litigants in the state's circuit courts, and a portion of interest on lawyers trust accounts (IOLTA) are earmarked for Michigan legal aid programs. These funds are expected to drop from currently $7.5 million in 2002 to $6.9 million when the Michigan State Bar Foundation makes distributions next year. Most of the decrease is attributed to the past year's low interest rates. "The irony of these funding cuts is that while there may be fewer poor people in Michigan today, the demand for service will not change because the poverty population remains so large and the legal aid funding so little that local providers will never able to serve all who need our service," said Weir. "It's as if the poor will be victimized twice-once for being poor and again as victims of these funding cuts." The U.S. Census Bureau, in spite of its best efforts, cannot locate every poor person living in a census tract, therefore the poor are also undercounted, added Weir. The brunt of these cuts will be felt most in Wayne County where according to the census some 333,000 poor people live, the largest concentration of poverty in the state. LAD will lose more than $870,000 for legal aid in Wayne County, nearly half of the state's total loss, said Weir. While difficult to measure, the loss of funds will mean that several thousand of Michigan's poor in need of legal service will not receive it, or they will receive significantly limited service. Cutbacks will include service in such civil legal matters as landlord-tenant, bankruptcy, consumer, child custody, predatory lending, mortgage foreclosure, utility shutoffs, social security, wills, and probate. "Local providers will have to work harder and smarter and use more technology instead of staff to provide as much service as we can with fewer dollars," said Weir. "We will be providing more selfhelp training to clients enabling them to navigate the legal system on their own in routine matters, more assistance on the telephone, and less direct representation by attorneys in specific, high impact matters. Currently, Michigan has 13 legal aid agencies covering the state's 83 counties.

Question: "What are the consequences of LAD funding cuts and who will be affected most?"

Answer: "No change to services"

Response: no

Josie started planning her new garden in the winter. She chose flowers and vegetables that could grow in her area. She looked through the seed magazines. She ordered the tastiest kind of each vegetable and the prettiest kind of each flower. She talked to a friend about her plans. It seemed like the snow would never melt. But Josie didn't have to wait for spring to get started. Six weeks before the last frost, Josie planted seeds indoors. The tiny seedlings pushed up through the soil and began to grow. Finally spring arrived. Each day, Josie moved the seedlings outside for a few hours so they could get used to the cooler temperatures. Josie worked in her garden, digging the soil. She added a special growing mix from the garden store to make the soil better. When everything was ready, she removed the seedlings from their trays and planted them in her garden. The warm sun and rich soil helped her vegetables and flowers grow.

Question: "What kinds of things did Josie do to prepare for a garden?"

Answer: "Plough the fields"

Response:
no