Low Down

The FBI model classifying offenders as disorganized, organized, or mixed was only the beginning of an effort to classify serial killers. Part of the problem is that there is no precise definition of insanity—doctors define insanity differently from courts of law. The insanity plea has existed in English jurisprudence since the reign of Henry III (1216–1272), when the king could commute a death sentence of an insane criminal if it was demonstrated that irrational behaviour was not unusual for the person in the past. In such cases, the prisoner would often end up being confined in a monastery. In the next century the plea was moved into the regular appeals process, no longer requiring the king’s authority. In 1581 legal authorities were arguing what a test of insanity should consist of in law, settling upon “knowledge of good and evil” as the test. In 1843, English jurisprudence developed the concept of insanity as a defense against charges of murder. A mentally ill man named...

Motivation refers to “why” – why you are studying a language in the first place, why you like reading better than listening (if you do), why you study rather than party or vice versa. When you come right down to it, motivation is behind all the choices you make and everything you do. Here we focus on motivation in language learning. There are different approaches to general motivation and at how people can lose their motivation (demotivation). v Some kinds of motivation v Motivation and choices v Losing motivation (demotivation) The two best-known ways of looking at motivation are called intrinsic–extrinsic and integrative instrumental. There is some overlap between the two approaches. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation have to do with whether the motivator is more inside you or outside of you. Intrinsic motivation is about doing something because it makes you feel happy, more whole, or because it fits in some way with something important to who you are. Extrinsic motivation has...

When the cowboys and homesteaders arrived on the G reat Plains, Amerindian peoples like the Sioux had been roaming across them for hundreds o f years . The Sioux lived by hunting the buffalo. In the early part o f the nineteenth century an estimated twelve million of these gentle, h eavy animals wandered the Great P lains . They moved about in herds. Sometimes these herds were so big that they stretched as far as the eye could see. The buffalo pro v ided the Sioux with everything that they needed -food, clothing, tools, homes .   In the 1840s wagon trains heading for Oregon and California began to cross the Great Plains. The Amerindians usually let them pass without trouble. Then railroads began to push across the grasslands. The railroads carried white people who stayed on the prairies and began to plough them. At first the Amerindians tried to drive the newcomers away from their hunting grounds.   But soon they saw that this was impossible.   So they made...