Read this excerpt from “Life Without Go-Go Boots” by Barbara Kingsolver and answer the question. We lived in the country, in the middle of an alfalfa field; we had no immediate access to Bobbie Brooks sweaters. I went to school in the hand-me-downs of a cousin three years older. She had excellent fashion sense, but during the three-year lag her every sleek outfit turned to a pumpkin. … My black lace-up oxfords, which my parents perceived to have orthopedic value, carried their own weight in the spectacle. I suspected people noticed, and I knew it for sure on the day Billy Stamps announced to the lunch line, “Make way for the Bride of Frankenstein.”
Judging from the diction in the above excerpt, what is one of the writer’s themes?

A) Fashion is good for your posture and social status
B) Fashion accurately shows the world your worth
C) Fashion turns people into monsters.
D) People mistakenly and cruelly judge you based on fashion

Read the excerpt from the code book. without much hope of a theoretical breakthrough, cryptanalysts have been forced to look for a technological innovation. if there is no obvious way to reduce the number of steps required for factoring, then cryptanalysts need a technology that will perform these steps more quickly. silicon chips will continue to get faster as the years pass, doubling in speed roughly every eighteen months, but this is not enough to make a real impact on the speed of factoring—cryptanalysts require a technology that is billions of times faster than current computers. consequently, cryptanalysts are looking toward a radically new form of computer, the quantum computer. if scientists could build a quantum computer, it would be able to perform calculations with such enormous speed that it would make a modern supercomputer look like a broken abacus. the author’s purpose in this paragraph is to convince the readers to pursue a career in analysis. explain the need for faster technology in cryptanalysis. entertain with interesting stories about supercomputers. argue for more money to develop a quantum computer.