In "Lamb to the Slaughter," why is Patrick's profession important?

Roald Dahl must have had many reasons for deciding to make the character of Patrick Maloney a policeman. Perhaps the most important was that the response to his murder would be greater and last longer. The house is filled with cops looking for clues, including a murder weapon. They stay a long time, which is essential because Mary needs a long time to cook a frozen leg of lamb. And there are plenty of hungry cops to devour it when it is ready. The cops are giving special attention to the crime because it happened to "one of their own." They want to be sure the murderer is caught and punished, and they naturally assume this was a revenge killing by some hardened criminal whom Patrick had arrested at some time in the past.

Another reason that Patrick's profession is important to the story is that his wife Mary has learned a lot about police procedure from being married to a cop. She establishes an alibi before she calls to report the murder. She quickly proceeds to destroy the murder weapon by putting it in the oven and turning up the temperature as high as it will go. She knows most of these cops personally. They all believe she is a devoted wife and that she and Patrick had a happy marriage. It is common for the police to suspect a spouse in a domestic murder, but Mary is almost above suspicion because she really was a loving wife until she succumbed to a sudden rage and bashed her husband over the head with the frozen leg of lamb.

The fact that Patrick was a policeman meant that his own behavior was exemplary. When he tells Mary he wants a divorce, he says certain things that show the investigators will find nothing in his personal life that will suggest Mary might have been motivated to kill him out of jealousy.

"So there it is," he added. "And I know it's a tough time to be telling you this, but there simply wasn't any other way. Of course, I'll give you money and see that you're taken care of. But there really shouldn't be any problem. I hope not, in any case. It wouldn't be very good for my job." 

This suggests that Patrick has been leading an exemplary life because he wants to get regular promotions. We see, anyway, that he could hardly be carrying on an extramarital affair because he keeps such regular hours.

When the clock said ten minutes to five, she began to listen, and a few moments later, punctually as always, she heard the car tires on the stones outside, the car door closing, footsteps passing the window, the key turning in the lock.

We do not know everything Patrick told Mary during the time covered in the following paragraph:

"This is going to be a big shock to you, I'm afraid," he said. "But I've thought about it a good deal and I've decided that the only thing to do is to tell you immediately." And he told her. It didn't take long, four or five minutes at most, and she sat still through it all, watching him with puzzled horror.

But there is no reason to believe he told her he was in love with another woman. Patrick must want out of the marriage because he feels suffocated by all the attention he gets from his clinging, needy, mothering wife. The cops will naturally look into Patrick's off-hours activities, but they won't find anything irregular.

Another reason that Roald Dahl must have decided to make Patrick a cop was that Mary would know many of the investigating officers personally. This would allow for a little laxity in their professional behavior. When she invites them to eat the fully cooked leg of lamb, they do so because they feel she is "one of their own." They would not behave the same way if they were investigating a murder in the home of strangers.

Can trees help reduce the damage done by earthquakes?

In an earthquake, a fault line experiences a disruption. There are a few types of disruptions, but all of them occur at a single point on a fault line, where the ground will slide and push against itself.

After this sliding action, a wave travels through the rock, dirt, and any other material it hits. If it passes into the water, for example, the result is a tsunami, and the waves are not just at the surface, but rather throughout the planet, all the way down to the core. These waves carry enormous energies, and propagate at fantastic speeds. For example, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale can carry approximately the same energy yield as an atomic bomb. The speed of an earthquake is about 5 kilometers per second. To compare, the speed of sound in air is about .3 kilometers per second. The denser the material, in fact, the faster and more violent the propagation of the wave. Were the trees to compact the soil, this would make the earthquakes worse, not better.

On the other hand, trees are known for breaking and penetrating the soil, turning it and reducing density.

Trees are not incredibly strong; rather, they are flexible in nature and bend easily when they encounter a strong force. In an earthquake, trees tend to just bend out of the way as the wave travels, rather than trying to stop the wave through strength.

Earthquake resistant structures are designed the same way, with the intent of just bending out of the way rather than taking the force head on. To conclude, trees would do next to nothing in preventing earthquake damage, as they would stay out of harm's way.

This website will tell you more about the nature of earthquakes.

This is a video of trees during an earthquake above a fault line. You can see how little they do to stop the earthquake.

If we did not have an atmosphere, would we humans be able to live here on Earth?

The atmosphere is the layer of gases above us and is necessary for supporting life on Earth. The atmosphere contains all the oxygen that we breathe in. This oxygen is used in the process of respiration, and so without atmosphere, there would be no oxygen present on Earth for human survival. If any oxygen was produced by plants, it would immediately escape into space. The atmosphere also contains ozone gas (in the lower levels of the stratosphere). This gas protects us from the harmful UV (ultra-violet) radiations of the sun, thereby protecting us from skin cancer and other diseases. The presence of the atmosphere also ensures that debris from outer space will not be able to fall directly on the earth. The atmosphere also helps in the global cycling of various nutrients and hence is vital for the survival of life on Earth.

Hope this helps. 

What are the implications of this line for the reader, "For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you"?

There are a lot of ways to understand this line. I guess the question that naturally comes up is, how? How can "every atom" be the same?

The line could be suggesting that:

1) We are the same in that we each are participants in the democratic spirit of the U.S.

2) We are the same in that we are each living, feeling beings, poetically engaged with the world.

3) We are the same in that we are each poets, writing through our lives our own poems.

To me, the line represents nothing less than a stupendous reinvention poetry itself. By positing that poet and reader are the same -- no matter how you understand it -- Whitman throws into doubt the roles of reader and writer. If we are the same, then, somehow, the reader is as much responsible for the poem as the writer. The idea is that the real poem is the meaning created when the "you" and "me" of the line meet in the lines Whitman has written. In this way, the reader actually becomes a kind of author!

Why did the United States not ratify the Treaty of Versailles?

The Treaty of Versailles was the peace treaty that ended World War I. After the treaty was made, the United States Senate had to ratify it. There were several reasons why the United States Senate didn’t ratify the treaty.

There were a group of senators that had concerns or reservations about some parts of the treaty. Led by Henry Cabot Lodge, they attached several amendments to the treaty to address their concerns. The biggest concern centered on Article X. The senators were concerned that this portion of the treaty might force the United States to get involved in an issue that had little relevance to us or might force us to support an action that wasn’t in the best interests of our country. President Wilson refused to accept these amendments.

There were a few other factors that helped prevent our ratification of the treaty. There was some distrust between President Wilson and some Republicans. It didn’t help President Wilson that he didn’t ask any prominent Republicans to join him in Paris while the treaty was being developed. There also were some Americans, especially German and Italian Americans, who felt this treaty was unfair. President Wilson also wasn’t able to campaign for the passage of the treaty because his health began to fail. All of these factors contributed to the refusal of the United States Senate to ratify the Versailles Treaty.

How can I write a soliloquy like Shakespeare? Where should I start?

First of all, don't let the word 'soliloquy' scare you. It simply means a character speaking all by himself, to himself. 

Shakespeare uses soliloquies to show a character's thoughts. The subject of the soliloquy often involves a character trying to make a difficult decision. For example, Macbeth has a soliloquy in Act 5 scene 5:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Here he shows the audience his despair. The glory, power, and fame he envisioned when he first murdered Duncan have not materialized. Instead life has lost all joy and purpose.

When you start writing a soliloquy, first pick a character who has some kind of strong feelings or a difficult decision to make. Then imagine what that character would say about the situation. Is he angry? Is he sad? Is he frightened? 

Once you decide that, write some lines that you think this character would say to express those feelings. If he is trying to make a decision, he would talk about both sides of the problem...what could happen if he made one decision, or what might be the outcome of another decision?

You haven't mentioned if you need to use Shakespearean English or how long this needs to be. But if you put yourself in the mind of the character and concentrate on what he or she would say about the current situation, you should be able to write a strong, convincing soliloquy!

What is the name of the Keller home in The Story of My Life?

The Keller home was known as Ivy Green.

When Helen was young, she lived with her family in a very small house on the family land.  She explains that it was the custom for the family to do this, building a little house she calls an annex neat the homestead “to be used on occasion.”  Her father built the house and moved in there with her mother before she was born.

The Keller homestead, where the family lived, was a few steps from our little rose-bower. It was called "Ivy Green" because the house and the surrounding trees and fences were covered with beautiful English ivy. Its old-fashioned garden was the paradise of my childhood. (Ch. 1)

Helen Keller was not born blind or deaf.  This was the result of an illness as a young child.  She remembered her childhood cabin and wandering around the Keller homestead.  Even at that age, she valued nature.

But the roses--they were loveliest of all. Never have I found in the greenhouses of the North such heart-satisfying roses as the climbing roses of my southern home. (Ch. 1)

Nature is one of the ways that Anne Sullivan, Helen's teacher, was able to get through to her.  Helen loved wandering around the land, and even if she could not see or hear she could experience the land with her other senses.  Helen loved flowers and you can still enjoy them when you are blind.  Smell is one of the strongest senses.  Helen had very good memories of wandering the Keller land smelling the flowers.