Answer from cs61c-el (David Tung 16479725) for Question 2
C has if, >, <, >=, <=, ==, !=, !, &&, ||, and ?:, as well as more that I probably cannot think of.  However, MIPS on the other hand only has slt (set on less than), beq (branch if equal), and bne (branch if not equal) to make decisions.  Since the designers of MIPS were working  to make a language that was simple so the hardware could be simple, they probably restricted the number of instructions to make the hardware simpler, especially since all of the other statements that C uses can be written with these three instructions, and the j(ump) instruction.