In Fahrenheit 451, what community effort do the parlor walls incite?

In Fahrenheit 451, the parlor walls are covered with wall-sized television screens in every home. Through the screens, the public are indoctrinated into a mind-numbing stupor by state-approved programming.

In Part 3, Montag runs away after he kills Captain Beatty and burns up a Mechanical Hound with a flame-thrower. Before long, another Mechanical Hound is dispatched from another district to track Montag down. Every move Montag makes is supposedly tracked on the screens of every parlor wall. Hence, the parlor walls also serve as a community tool for enforcing all the dictates of an oppressive government upon a defenseless populace. Each citizen is invited to follow the hunt and to assist, if at all possible, in the task of uncovering Montag's whereabouts.

And if he kept his eye peeled quickly he would see himself, an instant before oblivion, being punctured for the benefit of how many civilian parlour-sitters who had been wakened from sleep a few minutes ago by the frantic sirening of their living-room walls to come watch the big game, the hunt, the one-man carnival.

If he is captured, Montag wonders what he would say to the twenty or thirty million people watching the manhunt on screen. He is devastated when he realizes that he possesses no verbal means to awaken a blinded populace.

What could he say in a single word, a few words, that would sear all their faces and wake them up?

What does Lady Macbeth mean by saying "Come to my woman's breasts...And take my milk for gall?"

This line is from Lady Macbeth's chilling speech in Act I, Scene 5. She has just read a letter from her husband in which he describes his encounter with the witches, who had prophesied that he will become King of Scotland. She resolves at that moment to steel her husband to commit the act that she sees as necessary to his ascent to the throne--the murder of Duncan. So she calls upon the "spirits that tend on mortal thoughts" to "unsex her" and allow her to become filled with cruelty. So filling her "woman's breasts with gall" [i.e., bile] is a reference to that. Shakespeare associates womanhood with gentleness and a nurturing spirit, symbolized most potently by the breasts, which provide milk and nurture life. Lady Macbeth must be the antithesis of the nurturing mother figure in order to carry out her designs for her husband.

At the same time, this phrase alludes to Lady Macbeth's fear that her husband may be too "full of the milk of human kindness," a trait which of course would have been associated with femininity, to go through with the murder. Lady Macbeth will suppress her feminine characteristics in order to drive her husband to meet what she views as his destiny. Shakespeare, with this speech, wants to emphasize not just the wickedness of Lady Macbeth, but the extent to which she embodies the subversion of the natural order of things that accompanies the murder of the legitimate king and the crowning of the usurper Macbeth. This theme, first expressed by the witches, who pronounce "what's fair is foul, what's foul is fair," runs throughout the play.

In Fahrenheit 451 there is a Mechanical Hound. Do the people think about making more?

If I understand your question correctly, you're asking if there is more than one mechanical hound?

There definitely are two hounds referred to in the text. The first hound belongs to Montag's fire house and it's the hound that is described during Part 1. At the beginning of Part 3, Montag pulls up to his house in the Salamander (fire truck) with Captain Beatty to burn the books in his home. After watching Mildred leave, bags packed, Beatty begins to taunt Montag, reminding him that the Hound is somewhere in the neighborhood. Beatty suspects the ear bullet and strikes Montag, knocking it free. After Beatty continues to antagonize Montag, in a final act of desperation, Montag turns the flame thrower onto Beatty. The first mechanical hound attacks Montag, managing to prick him in the leg with the needle before exploding from the flame thrower. As a result, Montag's leg is numb, but the full dose of poison wasn't given to Montag. 

The second Hound is brought in from another district to hunt Montag, leading readers to believe that each district has at least one. That Hound loses Montag's scent once he gets to the river, but kills and chases the fake Montag for the people's benefit. That Hound is presumably destroyed with the rest of the city during the war. 

How does hubris cause Oedipus' downfall?

Every tragic hero has a tragic flaw, a hamartia, and Oedipus is no exception to the rule. Usually this hamartia is hubris: excessive pride or self-confidence. Every mortal needs pride to some degree, but when this self-confidence is so excessive that it blinds the hero to the truth, it prevents him from making sound decisions and ultimately leads to his downfall.

In Greek Mythology, the gods determined a person’s fate. However, sometimes a mortal was so confident in himself that he challenged that destiny and tried to create his own. This angered the gods, and the mortal was then put in his place.

Oedipus does just that. When he is told of an Apollonian prophesy that he will kill his father and marry his mother, his excessive self-confidence leads him to take matters into his own hands, and he flees Corinth in an attempt to distance himself from his “parents” and escape his fate: “I heard and fled, henceforth to share with Corinth only the stars, where I would never see completed the disgrace of those evil oracles of mine.” Little does he know that his real parents are the king and queen of Thebes, which will be his final destination. Ironically, defying the gods and using his free will is what leads him to his heinous fate.

Even after he inadvertently fulfills his destiny, hubris leads Oedipus to the truth about his past while at the same time blinding him from the truth. He forces Tiresias to tell him who Laius’s murderer is, even though the blind seer warns him of the consequences of that information. As wise and revered as Tiresias is, Oedipus feels himself wiser, and threatens the seer with death: “Do you really think you can say this unpunished?Do you really think you can say this unpunished?” When the seer finally reveals the truth, hubris blinds Oedipus, and he mistakenly focuses on finding out his parentage instead of realizing the true message in Tiresias’s words: “I say that you secretly have lived most foully with those who should be most dear, nor do you see to what extent of evil you have come.”I say that you secretly have lived most foully(385) with those who should be most dear, nor do you see to what extent of evil you have come.I say that you secretly have lived most foully(385) with those who should be most dear, nor do you see to what extent of evil you have come.

Finally, Oedipus shows hubris even after he has learned the truth. He attempts to defy the gods yet again when demands that Creon exile him immediately. Creon states that he must wait to see what the gods’ plan is.

 OEDIPUS: Send me from this land.

CREON: You ask me what is God’s to give.

OEDIPUS: The gods hate me.

CREON: Then they will grant your wish. (1545)

 In typical Greek tragedy fashion, at the end of the play, the hero finally learns the error of his ways and is humbled of his hubris.

What are the acute differences between Direct and Indirect election?

Direct and indirect election are basically what they sound like. In a direct election, voters choose the candidate who wins. In an indirect election, voters choose one or more "electors" who then go on to choose the candidate.

In practice, this distinction can get fairly blurry. The election of the President of the United States is technically an indirect election, because of the Electoral College. Under the Constitution what we're actually doing is choosing electors who will then choose the President. But in practice, electors almost always choose the candidate who got the most votes in their own state (and people would get outraged if they didn't), so that for all practical intents and purposes we might as well have a direct election (albeit one with a weird counting system that more or less excludes all Republican votes in California and all Democrat votes in Texas).

A clearer example of indirect election is the Council of Europe, in which the Parliamentary Assembly is not elected by the voters in each country directly, but instead by the respective legislatures of the country who were in turn elected by the people.

Theoretically one could have higher-order indirect elections, in which you elect someone who elects someone who elects someone, but that very rarely happens.

Conversely, you could get even more direct than a direct election and go all the way to direct democracy, in which decisions are directly made by popular vote rather than by elected representatives. Switzerland does this quite often; it probably helps that the country is so small.

The differences between direct and indirect election can be quite important. The more direct the election, the more responsive the officials are to the people. This has upsides and downsides.

Some would argue that it's possible to be too responsive, and making elections direct simply makes politicians pander to a short-sighted public, while indirect elections allow policymakers to make wiser decisions on a longer time horizon. But personally I side much more with those who argue that the more direct we can make democracy the better, that being responsive to the public interest is what democracy is all about.

What shocking thing does Kit do in The Witch of Blackbird Pond? Why does she do it?

Kit does several shocking things throughout the novel. One particularly shocking event happens at the beginning of the story.  

Kit is on a small boat riding back from Saybrook to the ship. A husband, wife, and their little girl have joined them from the town. The child accidentally drops her precious doll into the water. She became extremely upset, but the captain will not turn the boat around as the toy floats away. Kit becomes frustrated and dives into the water, "plung[ing] headlong over the side of the boat." Everyone is shocked, having assumed that she could not swim. Nat dives in after her. Soon they realize that Kit does indeed know how to swim. She retrieves the toy, but everyone on the boat is still showing signs of shock, disapproval, and anger. No one forgets what Kit did and how outrageous they thought it was. 

Discuss the meeting of Raina and Captain Bluntschli in Act 1.

The meeting of Raina and Captain Bluntschli drives the central plot and thematic concerns of the play. Before the meeting, we have a dialogue between Raina and her mother which serves as exposition, letting us know that Raina is engaged to Sergius, who is a soldier in the Bulgarian army during the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885. The play takes place shortly after the Bulgarian victory in the Battle of Slivnitsa.

Captain Bluntschli is a Swiss mercenary fighting for the Serbs who has narrowly escaped being captured by the victors. He climbs up Raina's balcony to hide. His very appearance undermines Raina's romantic notion of a soldier. Although he has a gun and threatens her, he is far from heroic. Not only is he afraid of death and capture, it becomes obvious that he is almost more scared of Raina than she is of him. 

Before the meeting with Captain Bluntschli, Raina expressed conventionally romantic notions about both love and war, in which men were cast as Byronic heroes, but she also mentioned that she had doubts about the reality of this romantic ideal. When she meets Captain Bluntschli, not only do her views change, but so does her role. At the same time that he undermines her ideas about the romantic nature of war, he also emphasizes his dependence on her.

In her engagement with Sergius, Raina was the conventional girl who stayed at home while men saved the country through their heroism. In her interactions with Captain Bluntschli, Raina becomes a strong woman whose quick wits actually save Captain Bluntschli from capture, as well as providing him with food, warm clothing, and a safe place to rest. The beginnings of the romance represent the evolution of Raina from a romantic girl mainly concerned with her social position to a strong woman using her intellect to good purpose.