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[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. \"Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture,\" observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries \"recessive\" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow. 3. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the fittest. Doomsayers predict that once \"beautiful eggs are available strictly to people who are willing to spend an ungodly sum for them,\" the rich will transform themselves into a \"super-race\" reminiscent of the Nazis. To this, Harris replies, \"It is not our intention to suggest that we make a super society of only beautiful people. This site simply mirrors our current society, in that beauty usually goes to the highest bidder.\" But this reply only fuels concern that gradually, society will separate into \"genetic haves and have nots.\" 4. Egg auctions will promote the survival of the unfittest. Harris writes that only men with \"substantial financial resources\" are fit to give his models' offspring \"a financially secure and stable life.\" But skeptics wonder whether women who sell their eggs to the highest bidder--and men who buy these eggs for the sole purpose of spawning good-looking children--may produce children just as dysfunctional as themselves. As Calgary Sun columnist Sydney Sharpe put it, \"Any woman ... who enters into this mephistophelian pact has a few screws loose. Maybe her kid will, too. Not to mention the buyers who sign her up.\" 5. Egg auctions will fail to promote the survival of the unfittest. Many models, if not most, have had cosmetic surgery. A model who is perfectly ruthless will conceal this fact when selling her eggs. (One of Harris' \"angels\" has already been caught lying about her age.) How does Harris know whether his models have had collagen injections and nose jobs? \"There's no way to know that. You can ask the girl and hope she tells you the truth,\" he says. Annas concludes that since there's \"no way to know how much of their beauty is a product of their genes, plastic surgery, a makeup artist, or exercise,\" only a \"naive\" person would buy their eggs on the basis of the photographs displayed on the site. \"You don't want to see the models,\" he points out. \"You want to see pictures of their parents.\" On this theory, children produced by the egg auction are likely to be the offspring of liars on one side and fools on the other. 8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to \"success,\" since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over \"character,\" critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are \"beautiful, healthy and intelligent,\" he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions \"Bimbo births.\" A fertility expert shrugs, \"If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them.\" 9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's \"unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money\" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of \"taking advantage of couples trying to conceive\" and exploiting \"desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell.\" USA Today laments, \"This is about human need. And human greed.\" 14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, \"That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.\") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples. 15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that \"having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation.\" But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: \"our genes.\" \"The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site,\" Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself. 16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole \"prejudice\" in favor of beauty. \"The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts,\" says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, \"we should think about\" whether to \"accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them\" or to transcend those prejudices. This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former? Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. \"Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state,\" he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.\n\n<question>:\nWhat does 14 mention that no other critiques mention?\n\n<options>:\nA parents may be disappointed by the child born\nB people aren't thinking about the long-term\nC the children born may not be beautiful\nD this may have a negative impact on the children\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "D" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n\"Kevin,\" the Martian said, \"drinking coffee represents a major vice man, I was a comer ... even if he was a goner! Doc had this solemn human by the throat when I caught up with him. \"Tonight,\" Doc was saying in his old voice that was as crackled and going—but I know that if I stuck to the old Nothing came out of my gabbling mouth. \" What is Doc's full name? \" I almost fell in, but at the last instant I caught myself and said, this is to happen.\" \"Sure,\" the man agreed severely, prying a little worriedly at Doc's Moon and the silver ship, symbols of greed. Tonight is the night when important as parchment, \"tonight Man will reach the Moon. The golden during all these weeks and months. His hands looked old and crippled, in Seattle hadn't helped me get them loose, Doc and I would have been wanted for the murder of a North American Mountie. It was easier this night and that made me afraid. Doc's thin frame, layered with lumpy fat, was beginning to muscle-dance against my side. I didn't want to be cured. I wouldn't be. Doc was gone. That was all I had now. That and the thing he left. \"The rest is simple,\" Andre said. \"Doc O'Malley bought up all the stock One of his times was coming on him. Then at last he was free of the Great-great-grandmother Lupos, funny thing, is like a schoolgirl. Sharp, you know. I.... Say, the poor old guy looks sick. Want any help?\" I told the human no, thanks, and walked Doc toward the flophouse three doors down. I hoped we would make it. I didn't know what would happen . They weren't of ESP, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition. Through these books, the human race can tell itself how to achieve a state of pure logic, without food, without sex, without conflict—just as Doc has achieved such a state—a little late, true. He had a powerful guilt complex, even stronger than your withdrawal, over releasing this blessing on Then I realized what was about to happen. It was foolish and awful and true. I was going to have one of mine at the same time Doc was having like Doc and me. kept getting closer each of the times. I tried not to think about it and helped Doc through the fly-specked flophouse doors. his. That was bad. It had happened a few times right after I first found him, but now it was worse. For some undefinable reason, I felt we the round hard quarter in my pocket, sweaty hand against sticky lining. \"Fifteen cents a bed,\" he played it back for me. Doc was quivering against me, his legs boneless. \"We can always make it over to the mission,\" I lied. The clerk turned his upper lip as if he were going to spit. \"Awright, since we ain't full up. In ad vance.\" \"You don't have any nickel. You don't have any quarter, not if I say so. Want I should call a cop and tell him you were flexing a muscle?\" I let go of him. He didn't scare me, but Doc was beginning to mumble and that did high. The other foot was finished in chicken wire. There was a wino singing on the left, a wino praying on the right, and the door didn't have any lock on it. At last, Doc and I were alone. I laid Doc out on the gray-brown cot and put his forearm over his face to shield it some from the glare of the light bulb. I swept off all the bedbugs in sight and stepped on them heavily. jagged cut-out nude curled against a lump of dust and lint, giving it an unreal distortion. Doc began to mumble louder. I knew I had to move. I waited just a moment, savoring the painless peace. Then, finally, I but I felt they were the strongest in the world. If a half dozen winos That wasn't just an addict's dream. I knew who Doc was. When I got to thinking it was just a dream and that I was dragging this old man around North America for nothing, I remembered who he was. had once known, even if now I knew him only as Doc. Pain was a pendulum within me, swinging from low throbbing bass to high screaming tenor. I had to get out and get some. But I didn't have a Doc alone, but I had to. He was starting to cry. He didn't always do that. I listened to him for a moment, then tested and tasted the craving that crawled through my veins. I got back inside somehow. Doc was twisting on the cot, tears washing white streaks across his face. I shoved Doc's face up against my chest. I held onto him and let him bellow. I soothed the lanks of soiled white hair back over his lumpy skull. men almost in a single movement of my jaws. Several other hamburgers followed the first. I lost count. I drank a glass of milk. I didn't want to black out on coffee with Doc waiting for me. trying to pull it out. I looked up at his stubbled face. \"I had half a dozen hamburgers, a cup of coffee and a glass of milk. I want four more 'burgers to go and the one on the other side was praying, same as before. Only they had changed around—prayer came from the left, song from the right. Doc sat on the floor in the half-darkness and he had made a thing . Doc had ever made anything. It didn't look like much, but it was a start. He had broken the light bulb and used the filament and screw bottom. hamburgers on the wooden chair, hoping the odor wouldn't bring any hungry rats out of the walls. I knelt beside Doc. \"An order, my boy, an order,\" he whispered. I didn't know what he meant. Was he suddenly trying to give me orders? before dismantling it, to write something. I tilted the notebook against the neon light, now red wine, now fresh grape. I read it. \"Concentrate,\" Doc said hoarsely. \"Concentrate....\" I wondered what the words meant. Wondering takes a kind of concentration. Then I realized what I had been trying to get from Doc all these months—time travel. A thin, sickly man was sprawled in the other chair in a rumpled illness and is suffering a more serious addiction to tell me the place and time It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read this myself.\" Doc was lying on the cot, half his face twisted into horror. \"Don't move, Kevin,\" she said. \"I'll have to shoot you—maybe not to kill, but painfully.\" I watched her face flash blue, red, blue and knew she meant it. But I had known too much in too short a time. I had to help Doc, but there was something else. \"I just want a drink of coffee from that container on the chair,\" I I had to help Doc. I had to have some coffee. \"What do you want?\" \"Listen, Kevin. Listen carefully to what I am saying. Doc found his crusades. How can you make money with time travel?\" I didn't know whether she was asking me, but I didn't know. All I knew was that I had to help Doc and get some coffee. \"It takes money—money Doc didn't have—to make money,\" Miss Casey said, \"even if you know what horse will come in and what stock will prosper. Besides, horse-racing and the stock market weren't a part of Doc's character. He was a scholar.\" Why did she keep using the past tense in reference to Doc? It scared me. He was lying so still with the left side of his face so twisted. I needed some coffee. on the floor to the cot. Doc had a pulse, but it was irregular. I checked for a fever and there wasn't one. After that, I didn't know what to do. \"But, Kevin,\" Andre said, \"you aren't\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Kevin think that it is immoral to eat?\n\n<options>:\nA Because he would rather drink coffee.\nB Because he prefers to drink coffee.\nC Because pure thought has no anchor in materiality.\nD Because Doc is starving.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "C" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nOK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it. By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever? The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News &amp World Report (and frequent --Jim Chapin 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999 Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: \"Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over\"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt! -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. Chatterbox replies: [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] Felicia replies: Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources) Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) Mel Torme (Steve Reiness) Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. --Mike Gebert You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by \"quiet, shy\" people who \"mostly kept to\" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people. --Susan Hoechstetter 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play. The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago? 10. Don't Worry in 1999 The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. --Margaret Taylor 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good --anonymous tipster 15. Annals of Justice in 1999 Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . -- anonymous tipster 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 General Pinochet --Jodie Maurer 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999 The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. --Josh Pollack 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. --Samir Raiyani Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters\n\n<question>:\nWhich word best describes the writers of 2, 7, and 17?\n\n<options>:\nA optimistic\nB enthusiastic\nC sorrowful\nD sarcastic\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "D" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nWhat Is Open Access? Shifting from ink on paper to digital text suddenly allows us to make perfect copies of our work. Shifting from isolated computers to a globe-spanning network of connected computers suddenly allows us to share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at essentially no cost. About thirty years ago this kind of free global sharing became something new under the sun. Before that, it would have sounded like a quixotic dream. Digital technologies have created more than one revolution. Let’s call this one the access revolution. Why don’t more authors take advantage of the access revolution to reach more readers? The answer is pretty clear. Authors who share their works in this way aren’t selling them, and even authors with purposes higher than money depend on sales to make a living. Or at least they appreciate sales. Imagine a tribe of authors who write serious and useful work, and who follow a centuries-old custom of giving it away without charge. I don’t mean a group of rich authors who don’t need money. I mean a group of authors defined by their topics, genres, purposes, incentives, and institutional circumstances, not by their wealth. In fact, very few are wealthy. For now, it doesn’t matter who these authors are, how rare they are, what they write, or why they follow this peculiar custom. It’s enough to know that their employers pay them salaries, freeing them to give away their work, that they write for impact rather than money, and that they score career points when they make the kind of impact they hoped to make. Suppose that selling their work would actually harm their interests by shrinking their audience, reducing their impact, and distorting their professional goals by steering them toward popular topics and away from the specialized questions on which they are experts. If authors like that exist, at least they should take advantage of the access revolution. The dream of global free access can be a reality for them, even if most other authors hope to earn royalties and feel obliged to sit out this particular revolution. These lucky authors are scholars, and the works they customarily write and publish without payment are peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals. Open access is the name of the revolutionary kind of access these authors, unencumbered by a motive of financial gain, are free to provide to their readers. Open access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. We could call it “barrier-free” access, but that would emphasize the negative rather than the positive. In any case, we can be more specific about which access barriers OA removes. A price tag can also be a significant access barrier. If you have access to a work for reading but want to translate it into another language, distribute copies to colleagues, copy the text for mining with sophisticated software, or reformat it for reading with new technology, then you generally need the permission of the copyright holder. That makes sense when the author wants to sell the work and when the use you have in mind could undermine sales. But for research articles we’re generally talking about authors from the special tribe who want to share their work as widely as possible. Even these authors, however, tend to transfer their copyrights to intermediaries—publishers—who want to sell their work. As a result, users may be hampered in their research by barriers erected to serve intermediaries rather than authors. In addition, replacing user freedom with permission-seeking harms research authors by limiting the usefulness of their work, harms research readers by limiting the uses they may make of works even when they have access, and thereby harms research from both directions. OA removes these permission barriers. Removing price barriers means that readers are not limited by their own ability to pay, or by the budgets of the institutions where they may have library privileges. Removing permission barriers means that scholars are free to use or reuse literature for scholarly purposes. These purposes include reading and searching, but also redistributing, translating, text mining, migrating to new media, long-term archiving, and innumerable new forms of research, analysis, and processing we haven’t yet imagined. OA makes work more useful in both ways, by making it available to more people who can put it to use, and by freeing those people to use and reuse it. Terminology There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to [research] literature. By “open access” to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. Here’s how the Bethesda and Berlin statements put it: For a work to be OA, the copyright holder must consent in advance to let users “copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship.” Note that all three legs of the BBB definition go beyond removing price barriers to removing permission barriers, or beyond gratis OA to libre OA. But at the same time, all three allow at least one limit on user freedom: an obligation to attribute the work to the author. The purpose of OA is to remove barriers to all legitimate scholarly uses for scholarly literature, but there’s no legitimate scholarly purpose in suppressing attribution to the texts we use. (That’s why my shorthand definition says that OA literature is free of “most” rather than “all” copyright and licensing restrictions.) 1.1 What Makes OA Possible? OA is made possible by the internet and copyright-holder consent. But why would a copyright holder consent to OA? Two background facts suggest the answer. First, authors are the copyright holders for their work until or unless they transfer rights to someone else, such as a publisher. Second, scholarly journals generally don’t pay authors for their research articles, which frees this special tribe of authors to consent to OA without losing revenue. This fact distinguishes scholars decisively from musicians and moviemakers, and even from most other kinds of authors. This is why controversies about OA to music and movies don’t carry over to OA for research articles. The Budapest Open Access Initiative said in February 2002: “An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment. . . . The new technology is the internet.” To see what this willingness looks like without the medium to give it effect, look at scholarship in the age of print. Author gifts turned into publisher commodities, and access gaps for readers were harmfully large and widespread. (Access gaps are still harmfully large and widespread, but only because OA is not yet the default for new research.) To see what the medium looks like without the willingness, look at music and movies in the age of the internet. The need for royalties keeps creators from reaching everyone who would enjoy their work. A beautiful opportunity exists where the willingness and the medium overlap. A scholarly custom that evolved in the seventeenth century frees scholars to take advantage of the access revolution in the twentieth and twenty-first. Because scholars are nearly unique in following this custom, they are nearly unique in their freedom to take advantage of this revolution without financial risk. In this sense, the planets have aligned for scholars. Most other authors are constrained to fear rather than seize the opportunities created by the internet. Most online literature is in English, or another single language, and machine translation is still very weak. Handicap access barriers\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the access revolution?\n\n<options>:\nA Globally more homes than ever before have access to the internet.\nB Free global sharing.\nC Authors are giving away their work for free.\nD Authors can share their work with a worldwide audience at essentially no cost.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "D" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nat-ease as he'd been on his last big welcoming—for Corporal Berringer, one of the crew of the spaceship Washington He was glad. He'd had enough of strangers. Not that he was through with surprised that he'd had to do this. He'd thought Edith would be watching at a window. And perhaps she support, the thirty-three-year old woman and ten-year-old boy. They Edith nodded and, still holding to Ralphie with one hand, put the other Edith was leading him into the living room, her hand lying still in his, with him all the way, who had engineered the entire fantastic journey—even Carlisle the Nobel prize winner, the multi-degreed genius \"How's it going in school?\" he asked. warmth of her farewell, the warmth of Ralphie's farewell, their tears as continent-to-continent experimental flight. They had been right to worry. He had suffered much after that blow-up. But now they should be rejoicing, because he had survived and made the a ten-year-old boy's hand that shook—and ran from the room and from the house. He and Edith sat beside each other, and he wanted badly to take her in Which was not what he'd considered at all important on leaving Walter Reed Hospital early this morning which was something he found distasteful, something he felt beneath them both. And, at the same time, before. But sometime later, as he was dozing off, a sense of reassurance began filtering into his mind. After all, he was still Henry Devers, the same friends which was, if anything, stronger than before. Once he could communicate this, the strangeness would disappear and the First One would again become good old Hank. It was little enough to ask for—a return to old values, old relationships, the normalcies of the backwash instead of the freneticisms of the lime-light. It would certainly be to him during the day. And Edith herself had always chatted, especially the hero returned, waiting to be treated as a human being. \"Still going like sixty. We'll sell out before—\" At that point he looked at Hank, and Hank nodded encouragement, desperately interested in this normalcy, and Joe's voice died away. He looked down at his plate, mumbled, \"Soup's getting cold,\" and began to eat. His hand shook a little his ruddy face was not quite as ruddy as Hank remembered it. Aunt Lucille made a few quavering statements about the Ladies' Tuesday Aunt Lucille smiled, if you could call it that—a pitiful twitching of Ralphie said, \"Yeah, Dad.\" Aunt Lucille put down her knife and fork and into the living room for a while. \"She'll be back for dessert, of course,\" he said, his laugh sounding forced. Hank looked at Edith Edith was busy with her plate. Hank looked at Ralphie Ralphie was busy with his plate. Hank looked at Joe Joe was chewing, gazing out over their heads to the kitchen. Hank looked at Lucille she was disappearing into the living room. First One, of being stood back from, looked at in awe of, felt in fear of, that he could have smashed more than a table. Edith said, \"Hank!\" He said, voice hoarse, \"Shut up. Go away. Let me eat alone. I'm sick of the lot of you.\" and he, too, was gone. Lucille never did manage to speak to him. He finished his beef and waited. Soon Edith came in with the special anything to get away from your father.\" Ralphie's head dropped and he muttered, \"Aw, no, Dad.\" Edith said, \"He'll stay home, Hank. We'll spend an evening together—talking, watching TV, playing Monopoly.\" Ralphie said, \"Gee, sure, Dad, if you want to.\" Hank stood up. \"The question is not whether I want to. You both know I want to. The question is whether you But he didn't sleep long. Edith shook him and he opened his eyes to a lighted room. \"Phil and Rhona are here.\" He blinked at her. She smiled, and it seemed her old smile. \"They're so anxious to see you, Hank. I could barely keep Phil from coming up and waking you himself. They want to go out and do the town. Please, Hank, say you will.\" very much the way he always had—soft spoken and full of laughter and full of jokes. He patted Edith on the head the way he always had, and clapped Hank on the shoulder (but not the way he always had—so much more gently, almost remotely), and insisted they all drink more than was good for them as he always had. And for once, Hank was ready to go along Manfred's Tavern, where Phil and the girls ordered sandwiches and coffee and Hank went right on drinking. Edith said something to him, but he merely smiled and waved his hand and gulped another ounce of nirvana. Hank said, \"First one dance with my loving wife.\" He and Edith danced. He didn't hold her close as he had Rhona. He waited it always showed in the eyes—that made him know she was trying to be the old Edith and not succeeding. This time when Rhona glanced to the left, and so did Hank and Edith. Rhona made a little sound, and Edith seemed to stop breathing, but Phil went on a Hank said, \"No, Phil, why is it the most popular place on earth?\" Phil said, \"Because people are—\" And then he caught himself and waved his hand and muttered, \"I forgot the punch line.\" \"Because people are dying to get in,\" Hank said, and looked through the The car was filled with horrified silence when there should have been nothing but laughter, or irritation at a too-old joke. \"Maybe you should let me out right here,\" Hank said. \"I'm home—or that's what everyone seems to think. Maybe I should lie down in an open grave. Maybe that would satisfy people. Maybe that's the only way to act, like Dracula or another monster from the movies.\" Edith said, \"Oh, Hank, don't, don't!\" The car raced along the road, crossed a macadam highway, went four blocks and pulled to a stop. He didn't bother saying good night. He didn't wait for Edith. He just got out and walked up the flagstone path and entered the house. \"Hank,\" Edith whispered from the guest room doorway, \"I'm so sorry—\" \"There's nothing to be sorry about. It's just a matter of time. It'll all work out in time.\" \"Yes,\" she said quickly, \"that's it. I need a little time. We all need a little time. Because it's so strange, Hank. Because it's so frightening. \"I'm going to stay in the guest room,\" he said, \"for as long as necessary. For good if need be.\" \"How could it be for good? How, Hank?\" That question was perhaps the first firm basis for hope he'd had since \"There are others coming, Edith. Eight that I know of in the tanks right ready. And there'll be many more, Edith. The government is going to save all they possibly can from now on. Every time a young and healthy man loses his life by accident, by violence, and his body can be recovered, he'll go into the tanks and they'll start the regenerative brain and us because in time it'll be an ordinary thing.\" Edith said, \"Yes, and I'm so grateful that you're here, Hank. Please believe that. Please be patient with me and Ralphie and—\" She paused. \"There's one question.\" satisfied.\n\n<question>:\nHow does Edith feel about Hank's return?\n\n<options>:\nA Edith is happy that Hank has returned, but she is scared he might have changed.\nB Edith is happy that Hank has returned if he is Hank. He may be a Martian shapeshifter.\nC Edith is happy that Hank has returned, but she is scared that he may be a zombie or a vampire.\nD Edith is happy that Hank has returned if he is Hank. He may be an experimental android developed by the Air Force.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "A" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nRikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life. people. Rikud and his people . This was why the world had moved across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more. Every day for a week now, Rikud had come to the viewport to watch they were so alien, so unnatural. But ever since the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone, from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his \"There is Rikud on the floor!\" life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead, which he could see in the dim light through the open door. \"Where's the buzzer?\" he sobbed. \"I must find the buzzer.\" If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He the land, and Rikud lay down and drank. It was cool and good, and when Rikud muttered to himself and undressed. The world had begun to annoy Rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. It was are variable. I don't hate you now, Rikud.\" was a strange thought, and Rikud's brain With so many people, and especially now with women, he was not afraid. It was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer, frightening doors and women by appointment only. Rikud felt at home. Rikud had been stopped in this action, although there was no real And Rikud could remember the rest of what the reading machine had said. There had been a revolt—again a term without any real meaning, a term that could have no reality outside of the reading machine—and the elders were overthrown. Here Rikud had been lost utterly. The people cogs in a great machine. Much of this Rikud could not understand, but he knew enough to realize that the reading machine had sided with the people against the elders, and it said the people had won. Now in the health room, Rikud felt a warmth in the rays. Grudgingly, he before Rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of not without a sense of alarm. Yet old Chuls seemed heedless, with only a decade to go. Rikud looked at that foot, it was with a sense of satisfaction. True, proved the world was not perfect. Rikud was guiltily glad when he saw meant that, in the two unoccupied hours before sleep, he went to the library and listened to the reading machine. Everyone else simply sat about and talked. That was the custom. Everyone did it. But if he wasn't reading himself, Rikud usually went to sleep. All the people ever talked about was what they had done during the day, and it was always the same. This was a new thought to Rikud, and he propped his head up on one \"Well, where's the book?\" Rikud would read it tomorrow. \"You know,\" Rikud said, sitting up now, \"the stars in the viewport are channelings of Rikud's energy in new and confusing directions. The view had changed, and the strangeness of it made Rikud's pulses where Rikud had seen the one bright central star, he now saw a globe of Startled, Rikud leaped back. The sullen roar in the rear of the world \"Won't you eat, Rikud?\" Chuls called from somewhere down below. But Rikud forgot the old man completely. A new idea occurred to him, That was maddening. Rikud turned again to the port, where he could see Rikud whirled on the little figure and pointed to the swirling cloud of Anger welled up inside Rikud. \"All right,\" he said, \"listen. What do room, and Rikud was glad to be alone once more. moment Rikud thought he could see the gardens rearward in the world. besides, Rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far Rikud sat down hard. He blinked. The world had come to rest on the garden of the viewport. For a whole week that view did not change, and Rikud had come to accept garden larger than the entire world, a garden of plants which Rikud had word seemed all wrong to Rikud, but he could think of no other, unless are different.\" \"Then they've changed?\" \"No, merely different.\" It changed. Where are the stars? Where are they, Chuls, if it did not change?\" Rikud regretted that he never had had the chance to read that book on obvious. If he, Rikud, walked from one part of the world to another, There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud.\" Rikud saw a small room, perhaps half a dozen paces across, at the other Rikud heard a voice not unlike that of the reading machine. is a perfect, self-sustaining world. It is more than that: it is Rikud gave the voice up as hopeless. There were too many confusing blast nearly so loudly against his eardrums. And what met Rikud's Only this one was different. In it Rikud saw the viewport. But how? The although it looked out on the garden, Rikud sensed that the topography no one ever died of anything until he was a hundred. Rikud couldn't fathom the rapid thumping of his heart. And Rikud's mouth felt and Rikud found himself wishing that his friend had never read that \"Well, I won't go,\" Chuls replied. \"There's no reason to go. If Rikud In a moment, the room was cleared. Rikud stood alone. He cleared his This frightened Rikud, although he didn't know why. He'd like it, machinery. For a long time he watched the wheels and cogs and gears spinning and humming. He watched for he knew not how long. And then he began to wonder. If he destroyed the wheels and the cogs and the gears, casual. Soon his easy strides had given way to frenzied running. Rikud Rikud never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to open that All around Rikud were darkness and hunger and thirst. The buzzer did eat or drink. Rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the whimpering to the dining room, his tongue dry and swollen, but the smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food. Chuls said, over and over, \"I'm hungry.\" \"We will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us,\" Wilm replied \"It won't any more,\" Rikud said. \"What won't?\" \"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it.\" eat. I hate Rikud, I think.\" hate Rikud.\" Then everyone was saying it. Rikud was sad. Soon he would die, because no one would go outside with \"No,\" Rikud assured him. \"It won't.\" Crifer's voice. \"I have Rikud's head.\" The voice was nasty, hostile. do to Rikud what he said he did to the machinery.\" Rikud ran. In the weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor.\n\n<question>:\nWhat seems to be true about the world Rikud lives in?\n\n<options>:\nA It's run by machines, and no longer run by people. There is no room for decisions.\nB Change never happens. It's a concept that's been erased.\nC Women and men are segregated, because they can't live with one another.\nD It's run by machines, and no longer run by people. They remember a time when they could make decisions, but no longer can.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "A" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nVOYAGE TO FAR N'JURD \"I don't see why we have to be here,\" a crewman said. \"He ain't liable to say anything.\" an' I'll tell ya, hit shore is time he's The crewman to his left bent over and whispered, \"I'll bet he's gonna ain't gonna stand fer hit no longer.\" \"Now, dear,\" said Joanne Marie, \"the captain can hear ya, if you're gonna talk so loud.\" the left half of the recreation area. While the priest stood before the discussion at his pleasure.\" IV \"Sit down, Captain,\" said Nestir, when the captain entered. \"No. Over there, in the comfortable chair. There. Are you comfortable, Captain?\" \"Of course I am.\" \"Good. I have a question to ask you, Captain.\" I called you all together today.\" He stared away, at a point over the head and to the rear of the audience. \"It puts me in mind of the parable of the six Vergios.\" \"Come now, sir. I realize she is the daughter of a crewman, but—\" \"Father,\" said the captain, \"did I ever tell you about the time I led \"No,\" said the captain. upon our bodies.' The Prophet looked at them and did see that it was daughter, yes?\" \"Very well, Father,\" the captain said after several minutes. \"I will do Calex i pundendem hoy , my children. 'Secrecy makes for a long life,' as it says in the That morning was to be the time of the captain's wedding. He had .\" Nestir tugged behind him at his cloak. \"I want you all to remember that little story. I want you all to take it away from here with you and think about it, tonight, in the privacy of your cabins. Jarcon crewmen came to me. He came to me, and he said: 'Father, I am weary of sailing.' \"Yes, he said, 'I am weary of sailing.' out of the ordinary had happened blessed one of you—is weary of sailing. I know that as well as I know but after it was done with, the vast \"But because he came to me and said, 'Father, I am weary of sailing,' I went to the captain, and I said, 'Captain, the men are weary of sailing.' \"And then the captain said: 'All right, Father,' he said, 'I will set whole ship. The velvet and gold drapes (his single esthetic joy) were scented with exotic perfume. The carpet was an inch and a half thick. \"Come in,\" he whispered, hoping she would not hear him and go away. But she heard him. the Casting Off at home, among friends.'\" Nestir waved his hands. \"Well, I just want to tell you: I come from and into the officer's corridor. He wiped his forehead indecorously on the hem of his cloak and felt quite relieved that the announcement was The captain came down from his stateroom after the meal had begun. He \"Hummmm,\" he said. \"It's hard to say. The whole issue involves, as a core point, the principle of The first mate nodded sagely. \"The intent, of course, could actually be—ah— sub mailloux and in \"That,\" he said to Nestir, \"my dear Father, is the cardinal point of the whole game, y'know.\" He scratched the back of his left hand. \"Duty. in duty. It's all noble and self sacrificing.\" He scratched the back of his right hand. following the captain's outburst. \"You don't need to worry about your Casting Off, Captain. You can leave that to me. I assure you, I have in mind a most ingenious method.\" strangler.\" \"Captain,\" the steward said, \"you really must let me give you some of \"Now, honey, you know you do so.\" At that moment, he lost interest in his wife and leaned across the table toward the captain, \"Well?\" he asked. \"Oh, really, now. Now. Duty, duty,\" the captain reprimanded him mildly. \"Duty! Duty! Duty! You all ur in a conspiracy. You all want me ta die uv old age.\" \"Nonsense,\" said the steward. \"We don't want anything of the sort. After all, someone has to orient the new crew.\" \"She's the oldest child on the ship, and she wants you to sign her finger the articles on it. \"You really shouldn't have told them about little Glenn tonight.\" \"Pish-tush.\" \"You're imagining things.\" \"But she does \" corridor, whistling. He made a mental note to have the bosun send some of the crew in tomorrow to wash down these bulkheads. They needed it. In one corner a He jogged up the companionway, turned left and felt the air as fresh as spring when he stepped under the great ventilator. And beneath it lay one of the crew. He kicked the man several times in the ribs until he came to consciousness. \"Can't sleep here, my man,\" Harry explained. \"Awww. Go way an' le' me 'lone, huh?\" \"Here. Here.\" He pulled the fellow erect and slapped him in the face briskly. \"This is the officers' corridor.\" \"Oh? Ish it? Schorry. Shore schorry, shir. So schorry.\" Harry assisted him to the crew's corridor where he sank to the floor and relapsed once more into a profound slumber. Harry continued on to the control room. way. Have I told you what I intend to do to the captain? I've got it all thought out. You know that saber I picked up on Queglat? Well....\" \"Look. How about telling me another time?\" He had intended, after the ceremony, to go about his duty as if nothing captain comes in now—well, you know how he is.... Okay, thanks. Night.\" firing lever. The jet lights came on and the ship began to brake acceleration again. Having done that, he switched on the space viewer. The steady buzz of the equipment warming sounded in his ears. Wanda would be sure to want you. He's going to check your record. And Wanda?\" \"Them stars shore are purty.\" \"Wanda, listen to me.\" \"I'm a-listenin', Haireee.\" if you want to be an adult.\" In Nestir's cabin the next morning, the captain and the priest held a The captain said, \"Oh, don't be unreasonable, Father. After all, this is a ship, y'know. And I am, after all, the captain.\" \"Thank you, Father. Good morning, Captain, sir.\" Jarcon .\" \"But Father! A crewman! In the officers' corridor! Think!\" \"Father?\" said the crewman who had just entered. \"Yes, my son. In one moment. Now, Captain. As I have been explaining: The arena method has advantages. In Koltah we always used it. But here—due to the—ah—exigencies of deep space—I feel convinced that a departure from normal procedure is warranted. It is not without precedent. Such things were fairly common, home city—Koltah—in the year of the seventh plague, a most unusual expedient was adopted. It seems....\" \"You're perfectly correct, of course,\" the captain said. \"That's just what I wanted to see you about, Father,\" the crewman said. \"Now, in my city state of Ni, for the Festivals, we....\" \"Shut up,\" said the captain softly. \"Yes, sir.\" crewman. \"Quite all right, my son. Close the door after you.\" on the door and was admitted. \"Oh? Good morning, Captain. I didn't know you were here.\" Then, to the priest: \"I'll come back later, Father.\" \"Nonsense,\" said the captain. \"Come in.\" \"Well, I had hoped to see the Father for a minute on ... private business.\" \"I have to be toddling along,\" said the captain. \"But Captain! I haven't finished telling you about....\"\n\n<question>:\nWhere is the ship sailing?\n\n<options>:\nA In Koltah.\nB In the province of San Xalthan.\nC Underwater.\nD Somewhere in deep space.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "D" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthat left the Earth with a wing and a prayer. Earth it wasn't visible. Even the isolation could endure forever. Instruments within the ship intercepted radio broadcasts and, and grammars and began translating the major languages. The history of the planet was the way to swing nearer Earth. soon. \"We've got to make or break,\" said the first alien. \"You know what I'm in favor of,\" said the second. who had spoken first. \"The place is a complete mess. They've never done anything except fight each other—and invent better weapons.\" \"It's not what they've done,\" said Bal, the second alien. \"It's what they're going to do, with that big bomb.\" bomb can destroy them. Without their problems? They've had two world wars in one generation and that the third and final one in everything they do.\" \"It won't take much,\" said Ethaniel. \"The wrong diplomatic move, or a trigger-happy soldier could set it off. And it wouldn't have to be deliberate. A meteor shower could pass over and their clumsy instruments could interpret it as an all-out enemy attack.\" \"Too bad,\" said Bal. \"We'll just have to forget there ever was such a planet as Earth.\" \"Could you? Forget so many people?\" \"My memory isn't convenient,\" to look at them.\" Bal rustled, flicking the screen intently. \"Very much like ourselves,\" he said at last. \"A bit shorter perhaps, and most certainly incomplete. Except for the one thing they lack, and that's quite odd, they seem exactly like us. Is that what you wanted me to say?\" \"It is. The fact that they are an incomplete version of ourselves touches me. They actually seem defenseless, though I suppose they're not.\" \"Tough,\" said Bal. \"Nothing this way again.\" \"A very long time. There's nothing in this region of space our people want,\" said Ethaniel. \"And how long can Earth last? Ten years? Even ten months? The tension is building by the Earth, not intending to commit themselves. For a day they circled the planet, avoiding radar detection, which for them was not difficult, testing, and sampling. \"What's there to think? It's worse than I imagined.\" \"In what way?\" \"Well, we knew they had the big bomb. Atmospheric analysis the big bomb, presumably \"What's worse is that I now find they also have missiles, near a primitive form of space \"Bad,\" said Ethaniel. \"Sitting to hit them. Nervousness could set it off.\" \"It could, and the missiles make it worse,\" said Bal. \"What \"Nothing worthwhile. I was \"I wish I knew what to think. and news bulletins. I should go down and live among them, \"No. We can't help them,\" said Ethaniel. \"There is nothing we can do for them—but we have to before. We take the trouble to find out what a people are like and when we can't help them we feel bad. It's going to be that it.\" Earth. They no longer needed instruments to see it. The planet revolved outside the visionports. The southern plains were green, the oceans white. Ragged clouds covered the pole, and a dirty pall to have to go down there cold. And it will be cold.\" \"Yes. It's their winter.\" \"I did have an idea,\" said Bal. \"What about going down as supernatural beings?\" \"Hardly,\" said Ethaniel. \"A hundred years ago it might have worked. Today they have satellites. They are not primitives.\" \"I suppose you're right,\" said Bal. \"I did think we ought to differences.\" \"If we could I'd be all for it. But these people are rough and desperate. They wouldn't be fooled by anything that crude.\" other. We'll tell them bluntly what they'll have to do if they're going to survive, how they can keep their planet in one piece so they can live on it.\" \"That'll go over big. Advice is always popular.\" \"Can't help it. That's all we have time for.\" \"None. We leave the ship here and go down in separate landing craft. You can talk with me any \"They can't intercept the beams we use.\" \"They can't, and even if they did they wouldn't know what to do with our language. I want them to think that we don't need to talk things over.\" \"I get it. Makes us seem better than we are. They think we know exactly what we're doing even though we don't.\" \"If we're lucky they'll think that.\" the planet below. \"It's going to be cold where I'm going. You too. Sure we don't want to change \"I'm afraid not. The great We'll be running straight into it. That won't help us any.\" \"I know, they don't like their holidays interrupted. It can't be I ought to know. Probably religious in origin. That so?\" the people, and they're hard to pin down.\" \"I see. I was thinking there down at the planet. Clouds were beginning to form at the twilight edge. \"I hate to go down and leave the ship up here with no one in it.\" \"They can't touch it. No matter how they develop in the next hundred years they still won't be able to get in or damage it in side of the Earth.\" \"That's not very close. I'd like it better if there were someone in the ship to bring it down in a hurry if things get rough. They don't think much of each other. I don't imagine they'll like aliens any better.\" \"They may be unfriendly,\" Ethaniel acknowledged. Now he the snow. \"I've thought of a it.\" the ship against the sun where there's little chance it will planet and light it up.\" \"Say, pretty good,\" said Bal. \"They can't imagine that we'd light up an unmanned ship,\" said Ethaniel. \"Even if the thought should occur to them they'll have no way of checking it. Also, they won't be eager to harm us with our ship shining down on them.\" \"That's thinking,\" said Bal, Earth will see it.\" Later, with the the darkness of space, pulsating be just the help we need.\" \"It's not we who need help, but the people of Earth,\" said Ethaniel. \"See you in five days.\" With Earth. As soon as it was craft, heading for the other side of the planet. And the spaceship circled Earth, unmanned, blazing and winter skies of the planet below could equal it in brilliancy. Once Earth to illuminate it. Never, or seldom, had Earth seen anything up from Earth and joined the small craft slid inside the large one and doors closed behind them. In a short time the aliens met again. \"We did it,\" said Bal exultantly he said, rustling. \"Me too, but mostly I'm cold,\" said Bal, shivering. \"Snow. Nothing but snow wherever I went. Miserable climate. And yet \"From my own experience it agreement they made isn't the best but I think it will keep them from destroying themselves.\" \"It's as much as we can expect,\" said Ethaniel. \"They may \"I'm not sure I want to,\" said Bal. \"Say, what's an angel?\" \"Why?\" people stopped to look. Some knelt in the snow and called me an angel.\" it upset me,\" said Bal. \"I smiled at them and went about my business.\" He shivered again. \"It was always cold. I walked out, but sometimes I flew back. I hope that was all right.\" \"But you don't know what an angel is?\" \"No. I didn't have time to find out. Some creature of their folklore I suppose. You know, except for our wings they're very much like ourselves. Their legends are bound to resemble ours.\" \"Sure,\" said Bal. \"Anyway, peace on Earth.\" Amazing Science Fiction Stories January 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n\n<question>:\nWhy is the Earth worse than the aliens imagine?\n\n<options>:\nA The Earth has missiles and is close to space travel.\nB The humans are rough and desperate.\nC A meteor shower could be interpreted as an enemy attack by the humans' clumsy instruments.\nD The humans don't like aliens.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "A" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nalways acted as if he had some secret, something to hide. came within earshot. And Nelson had always been chummy with the worst would be Nelson, his navigating officer. Nelson always knocked that Curtis didn't hurry. It pleased him to let Nelson wait. He moved slowly the cabin with him—Zukor Androka, the elderly Czech scientist, a guest of the United States navy, here aboard the cruiser Comerford . The wizened face of the older man was molded in intent lines of concentration, as his bushy gray head bent over his drawing board. Curtis got a glimpse of the design on which he was working, and his from Norfolk. With him came a boatload of scientific apparatus and equipment, including a number of things that looked like oxygen tanks, his treasures with the jealous care of a mother hen, and spent hours daily in the room in the superstructure that had been assigned as his laboratory. whose mind had been turned by the horror that had come to his country under the domination of the Nazi gestapo His eyes rested inquiringly on the face of the man who stood before him. It was Nelson, his shaggy blond brows drawn scowlingly down his thin face a mass of tense lines his big hands fumbling at the neck of his slicker. Rain was coursing down his white on board. But there was no question of his ability. He was a good navigating officer—dependable, accurate, conscientious. Nevertheless, his taut face, restless, searching eyes, and eternally nervous manner \"Come in, Nelson!\" he said. Nelson shouldered his way inside, and stood there in his dripping Nelson had no answering smile, although there had been a great deal Comerford ever since the navy department had sent the scientist on board the cruiser to carry on his experiments. \"I'm worried, sir!\" Nelson said. \"I'm not sure about my dead reckoning. \"But this storm, sir!\" Nelson avoided Curtis' friendly eyes and slipped instrument. \"Not that I've lost confidence in you, Nels, but just because you asked for it!\" Nelson stared at the computations with shaking head. Then he mutely declared, frowning at the two papers and hastily rechecking his own figures. Nelson complied, and the throbbing drive of the engines lessened at once. Nelson said: \"I've been wondering, sir, if it wouldn't be Curtis was the first to speak. \"Your secrecy might well cost the United States navy one of its best light cruisers—and us our lives!\" he said angrily. \"We need that check by radio at once! If you're not talking nonsense, call off your dogs Curtis sighed with relief. He saw that Nelson was staring fiercely \"I'm relieved, sir, just the same,\" Nelson admitted, \"to have the radio Nelson went back to the bridge, and Androka returned to the commander's air pausing every now and then to run his bony fingers through his So are my sister and her husband, and their two daughters. If the knew what I am doing, all of them would be better dead. You understand—better dead?\" picked up, and was being relayed all over the ship. The words struck on Curtis' ears with a note of impending tragedy. He was beside Navigating Officer Nelson on the bridge, and saw the There were those who said it was the work of sappers who had tunneled under the foundations, while others laid the induction of the gas to Fifth Column traitors. There were a hundred more or less plausible Nelson was nowhere in sight. The steersman lay in a limp heap beside English now and then, mixed in with a flood of Teuton phonetics. Two words, in particular, registered clearly on his mind. One was \" \" the other was \"convoy.\" But gradually his eardrums began to throb, as if someone were pounding on them from the inside. He from an ancient fairy tale or a modern horror story. Nelson looked like Nelson spoke in a low tone, his lips close to Bradford's ear. \"It \"It was a crackpot who invented the gas we used to break up the Maginot Line,\" Bradford reminded him. \"It saved a lot of lives for the Fuehrer Nelson grunted and turned away. A short, thick-set figure in the He came up to Nelson, saluted, and held out his hand, introducing Nelson stopped him. \"I don't speak any German,\" he explained. \"I was born and educated in the United States—of German parents, who had been ruined in the First World War. My mother committed suicide when she learned that we were penniless. My father—\" He paused and cleared his throat. \" Ja! Your father?\" the German officer prompted, dropping into accented English. \"Your father?\" \"My father dedicated me to a career of revenge—to wipe out his wrongs,\" Nelson continued. \"If America hadn't gone into the First World War, he wouldn't have lost his business my mother would still be living. When he joined the Nazi party, the way became clear to use me—to educate me in a military prep school, then send me to Annapolis, for a career in the United States navy—and no one suspected me. No one—\" \"Sometimes,\" Bradford put in, \"I think Curtis suspected you.\" men—officers, seamen, mechanics, radio men, technical experts, all German naval reservists living in the United States, who've been sent ?\" Nelson asked, in a puzzled tone. Brazil—through the blockade,\" Nelson said, \"without taking the risk of \"Can we trust Androka?\" Nelson asked, with a sudden note of suspicion \"The gestapo takes care of Czechs and Poles and Frenchmen and other has a daughter and other relations in Prague. He knows that if anything misfires, if there is the slightest suspicion of treachery on his part, his daughter and the others will suffer. Androka's loyalty is assured!\" Nelson turned to watch the forward fighting top of the old-fashioned trench mortar, and which connected with cables to the room that served as Androka's laboratory and workshop. Descending a companionway to see what was going on below, Nelson found Brandt came over to where Nelson was standing on the bridge and held of the United States navy's newest and fastest cruisers!\" He made a gesture as if raising a beer stein to drink a toast. \" Prosit! \" he \" Nelson repeated, and the two grinned at each other. Stars were twinkling in a patch of black-blue sky, and broken mountains of gray cloud were skudding before the east wind. Commander Bob Curtis found himself lying in wet sand, on a beach, somewhere, with the rain—now a light, driving mist—beating on his face. He was chilled his limbs were stiff and numb. His nose and throat felt parched inside, as if a wave of searing heat had scorched them. According to his last calculations, the he could only plant his heels in the sand and sway to and fro for fully a minute, like a child learning to walk. face at the heartfelt concern in his friendly brown eyes. The young ensign was red-headed, impetuous, thoroughly genuine in his emotions. The words struck Curtis with the numbing shock of a blow on some nerve center. For the first time, he realized fully the tragedy that had swept down on him. He had lost his ship—one of the United States navy's fastest and newest small light cruisers—under circumstances which smelled strongly of treachery and sabotage. As he thought back, he realized that he might have prevented the loss, if he had been more alert, more suspicious. For it was clear to him now that the Comerford had been deliberately steered to this place that the men who had seized her had been waiting here for that very purpose. the bearings given by radio Navigating Officer Nelson's queer conduct. They were all part of a carefully laid plan! All the suspicious circumstances surrounding Nelson came flooding into Curtis' mind. He had never liked the man never trusted him. Nelson\n\n<question>:\nWas it Nelson's decision to become part of the military?\n\n<options>:\nA No, he would have rather fought on Germany's side.\nB No, he was forced into a career in the military.\nC Yes, he wanted to help America after the horrors of the First World War.\nD Yes, he was influenced by his parents to live a life of service.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "B" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nWhat Is Open Access? Open access Open access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. We could call it “barrier-free” access, but that would emphasize the negative rather than the positive. In any case, we can be more specific about which access barriers OA removes. is a significant access barrier. Most works with price tags are individually affordable. But when a scholar needs to read or consult hundreds of works for one research project, or when a library must provide access for thousands of faculty and students working on tens of thousands of topics, and when the volume of new work grows explosively every year, price barriers become insurmountable. The resulting access gaps harm authors by limiting their audience and impact, harm readers by limiting what they can retrieve and read, and thereby harm research from both directions. OA removes price barriers. Removing price barriers means that readers are not limited by their own ability to pay, or by the budgets of the institutions where they may have library privileges. Removing permission barriers means that scholars are free to use or reuse literature for scholarly purposes. These purposes include reading and searching, but also redistributing, translating, text mining, migrating to new media, long-term archiving, and innumerable new forms of research, analysis, and processing we haven’t yet imagined. OA makes work more useful in both ways, by making it available to more people who can put it to use, and by freeing those people to use and reuse it. . Work that is not open access, or that is available only for a price, is called There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to [research] literature. By “open access” to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. Note that all three legs of the BBB definition go beyond removing price barriers to removing permission barriers, or beyond gratis OA to libre OA. But at the same time, all three allow at least one limit on user freedom: an obligation to attribute the work to the author. The purpose of OA is to remove barriers to all legitimate scholarly uses for scholarly literature, but there’s no legitimate scholarly purpose in suppressing attribution to the texts we use. (That’s why my shorthand definition says that OA literature is free of “most” rather than “all” copyright and licensing restrictions.) In principle, any kind of digital content can be OA, since any digital content can be put online without price or permission barriers. Moreover, any kind of content can be digital: texts, data, images, audio, video, multimedia, and executable code. We can have OA music and movies, news and novels, sitcoms and software—and to different degrees we already do. But the term “open access” was coined by researchers trying to remove access barriers to research. The next section explains why. OA is made possible by the internet and copyright-holder consent. But why would a copyright holder consent to OA? Creative people who live by royalties, such as novelists, musicians, and moviemakers, may consider this scholarly tradition a burden and sacrifice for scholars. We might even agree, provided we don’t overlook a few facts. First, it’s a sacrifice that scholars have been making for nearly 350 years. OA to research articles doesn’t depend on asking royalty-earning authors to give up their royalties. Second, academics have salaries from universities, freeing them to dive deeply into their research topics and publish specialized articles without market appeal. Many musicians and moviemakers might envy that freedom to disregard sales and popular taste. Third, academics receive other, less tangible rewards from their institutions—like promotion and tenure—when their research is recognized by others, accepted, cited, applied, and built upon. 1.2 What OA Is Not We can dispel a cloud of objections and misunderstandings simply by pointing out a few things that OA is not. (Many of these points will be elaborated in later chapters.) OA isn’t an attempt to bypass peer review. OA is compatible with every kind of peer review, from the most conservative to the most innovative, and all the major public statements on OA insist on its importance. Because scholarly journals generally don’t pay peer-reviewing editors and referees, just as they don’t pay authors, all the participants in peer review can consent to OA without losing revenue. While OA to unrefereed preprints is useful and widespread, the OA movement isn’t limited to unrefereed preprints and, if anything, focuses on OA to peer-reviewed articles. (More in section 5.1 on peer review.) We could talk about vigilante OA, infringing OA, piratical OA, or OA without consent. That sort of OA could violate copyrights and deprive royalty-earning authors of royalties against their will. But we could also talk about vigilante publishing, infringing publishing, piratical publishing, or publishing without consent. Both happen. However, we generally reserve the term “publishing” for lawful publishing, and tack on special adjectives to describe unlawful variations on the theme. Likewise, I’ll reserve the term “open access” for lawful OA that carries the consent of the relevant rightsholder. OA doesn’t require boycotting any kind of literature or publisher. It doesn’t require boycotting toll-access research any more than free online journalism requires boycotting priced online journalism. OA doesn’t require us to strike toll-access literature from our personal reading lists, course syllabi, or libraries. Some scholars who support OA decide to submit new work only to OA journals, or to donate their time as editors or referees only to OA journals, in effect boycotting toll-access journals as authors, editors, and referees. But this choice is not forced by the definition of OA, by a commitment to OA, or by any OA policy, and most scholars who support OA continue to work with toll-access journals. In any case, even those scholars who do boycott toll-access journals as authors, editors, or referees don’t boycott them as readers. (Here we needn’t get into the complexity that some toll-access journals effectively create involuntary reader boycotts by pricing their journals out of reach of readers who want access.) Finally, OA isn’t universal access. Even when we succeed at removing price and permission barriers, four other kinds of access barrier might remain in place: Filtering and censorship barriers open access\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Open Access content not remove all barriers on the choice of the patron?\n\n<options>:\nA It was a term in the original Open Access agreements that they would start removing some barriers and move from there\nB It would be too difficult to remove all barriers given that most of this content is on the internet\nC It is not financially viable to cover all of the bases\nD It is important to retain proper citation practices\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "D" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nDole vs. the Dole's spat with the gray lady went public on Thursday, Oct. 24. In New Orleans, Dole charged the paper with ignoring a story about a Miami drug dealer who got invited to the White House. \"This is a disgrace,\" Dole insisted. \"I doubt if you even read it in the New York Times . They probably put it in the want ads. They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times . Only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times .\" Dole repeated his attack for the next five days. \"We are not going to let the media steal this election,\" he told a crowd in Dallas on Friday. \"This country belongs to the people, not the New York Times .\" On Saturday, in Visalia, Calif., he added, \"I know that with a crowd this size, the New York Times will write not many people showed up, but the other papers will get it right.\" On Sunday (the day the Times endorsed Clinton), Dole called the paper \"the apologist for President Clinton for the last four years and an arm of the Democratic National Committee.\" In a CNN interview broadcast Monday, Dole said the Times \"might as well be part of the Democratic Party. ... They hammer us on a daily basis. We make a major speech, they bury it back on section D. They put a front-page story that, well, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't get along together 12 years ago.\" On Tuesday, Dole was still at it, referring to the 28 words of the 10th Amendment, and quipping, \"That's about what I got in the New York Times today.\" The Times has reacted to this assault by highhandedly quoting everything and explaining none of it, leaving its readers baffled as to why the Republican nominee is so upset at the paper. In fact, Dole's fury at the Times is hardly news to those who work at the paper. According to Katharine Seelye, who has covered Dole since the beginning of his campaign, the complaints date from December 1995, when Dole staff members first protested that she had misunderstood the candidate's position on abortion. The real bitterness, however, began in May, when the paper played what Dole aides billed as a major address about welfare on Page 19 of the business section. Since then, campaign honchos have peppered the paper's reporters and editors with constant phone calls and letters complaining about unfair treatment. Reporters traveling with Dole caught a glimpse of the enmity Oct. 9, when Nelson Warfield, Dole's press secretary, staged a public confrontation with Seelye. The candidate, Warfield told reporters waiting to board the campaign plane, had just come from an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Why, Seelye asked, weren't reporters told about the appearance in advance? According to reporters present, Warfield snapped that it wouldn't make any difference because the Times would get the story wrong anyway. Then, on the plane, Warfield walked back to the press section and grandly served Seelye with a copy of a letter from Communications Director John Buckley to her boss, Times Washington Editor Andrew Rosenthal. That letter, which has fallen into the hands of Slate, protests Seelye's coverage of a speech the previous day. Dole, in New Jersey, had talked about Clinton being AWOL in the drug war. \"Where has he been for four years? How many hundreds of thousands of young people started drugs?\" Dole said. \"Three million have started smoking while he was playing around with smoking and all this stuff finally in an election year.\" Seelye's front-page story reported that \"Mr. Dole accused the President of 'playing around' while the drug war raged out of control.\" Buckley complains that the story \"could lead the reader to believe that Dole was talking about a very different kind of 'playing around'--something he did not say, and something he would not say.\" The letter continues: \"Since May, I have been pointing out to you a problem we see with the accuracy and understanding of context revealed in Kit's reporting,\" going on to assert that \"Seelye has misquoted Dole on numerous occasions and done so in a manner that distorted the accuracy of her assertions and your coverage.\" Two days later, she quoted Dole in another story: \"They've turned the White House into something else, I don't know what it is. It's the animal house! It's the animal house!\" Most reporters would write, Bob Dole yesterday compared the White House to an \"animal house,\" sparing the exclamation points, and making him sound at least compos mentis. But though unflattering, Seelye's Mametizing of Bob Dole can hardly be called unfair. It is not as if the Times cleans up Clinton's quotes the president simply observes the rules of syntax most of the time. Something similar may be happening with the pictures. After four years, Clinton has learned how to avoid looking unpresidential. He no longer allows himself to be photographed wearing too-short running shorts, and he avoids pulling faces in public. Dole, who is simply less photogenic, is an easier victim for picture editors--who, like their editorial counterparts, have a strong bias against dullness. Take, for instance, the two pictures shown above. The front-page picture the Times ran the day after the second presidential debate does make Dole look like a decomposing monster. But unlike the picture in the Washington Post the same day, it captures the spirit of the event, with Dole grimly taking the offensive and Clinton watching warily but standing aside from the attacks. Dole sounds absurd when he alleges that the paper that broke Whitewater and the story of the first lady's commodities trades has not been aggressive in pursuing Clinton scandals. All sorts of potential Dole scandals have been soft-pedaled by the media, including the Times , because he is so far behind. It's true that coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail has been somewhat softer than the coverage of Dole, as even other Times reporters acknowledge. But the explanation is institutional, not ideological. The press, as many have complained, overemphasizes the \"horse race\" aspect of politics. As a side effect of that disease, reporters have excessive respect for a well-run campaign. (In 1988, Republican George Bush benefited from this phenomenon.) A cruder reality is that reporters need to have a relationship with Clinton after Tuesday. But if Dole is attacking the Times because he is truly furious and not because he thinks it will help him get elected, what is he so angry about? The answer, I think, is that there has always been a Nixonian streak in Bob Dole, by which I mean a part of him which feels shut out of the closed circle of the Eastern establishment. At the Republican convention, Dole blasted the Clinton administration as a \"corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned.\" That phrase recalled an attack he made on the press long ago, in the days of Watergate, when he accused the Washington Post of being in bed with George McGovern. \"There is a cultural and social affinity between the McGovernites and the Post executives and editors,\" Dole said then. \"They belong to the same elite: They can be found living cheek-by-jowl in the same exclusive chic neighborhoods, and hob-nobbing at the same Georgetown parties.\" The deeper story here isn't whether Dole was wrongly shunted onto D19 when he ought to have been on A1. It's his feelings, as he says goodbye to politics, about the people who get to decide.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is a similarity between Dole and Clinton?\n\n<options>:\nA the Times has showed them both at their worst\nB the Times has downplayed both of their scandals\nC the Times has published unflattering pictures of both of them\nD the Times improperly quotes what they've said\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "A" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that of Earth—and, sooner or later, will happen again! Everyone—all the geologists, at any rate—had known about the Kiowa all even the professionals were interested in knowing. There was never so much as a landslide to bring the Fault to the attention of the Nor was there much in the papers a few years later when it was connection. The population of the states affected was in places as low as five people per square mile! The land was so dry it seemed impossible that it could ever be used except for sheep-farming. It strikes us today as ironic that from the late '50s there was grave concern about the level of the water table throughout the entire area. The even more ironic solution to the problem began in the summer of Service was keeping an anxious eye out for the fires it knew it could expect. Dense smoke was reported rising above a virtually uninhabited The report was—no fire at all. The rising cloud was not smoke, but had other worries at the moment, and filed the report. a dust volcano? Unusual, they knew, but right on the Kiowa Fault—could It may seem odd that the simplest explanation was practically not of the Interior, wondered if the disturbance might not be a settling Still, it was only a theory. It had to be proved. As the tremors grew Edison were shaken to pieces by incredible earthquakes, whole bus- and plane-loads of geologists set out for Colorado, without even waiting They found, of course, that Schwartzberg had been perfectly correct. They found themselves on the scene of what was fast becoming the most violent and widespread earthquake North America—probably the world—has ever seen in historic times. To describe it in the simplest terms, land east of the Fault was settling, and at a precipitous rate. of the land east and west of the Fault seemed no longer to have any East, where sharp reports and muffled wheezes told of continued buckling and dropping, the earth trembled downward. Atop the new earth fissured and trembled, sliding acres at a time to fall, smoking, Dry earth churned like mud, and rock shards weighing tons bumped and rolled about like pebbles as they shivered and cracked into pebbles themselves. \"It looks like sand dancing in a child's sieve,\" said the scene of disaster. \"No one here has ever seen anything like it.\" And the landslip was growing, north and south along the Fault. \"Get out while you can,\" Schwartzberg urged the population of the affected area. \"When it's over you can come back and pick up the pieces.\" But the band of scientists who had rallied to his leadership privately wondered if there would be any pieces. Land west of the Fault was holding firm, though Denver had recorded miles away, the now-familiar lurch and steady fall had already sent several thousand Coloradans scurrying for safety. All mountain climbing was prohibited on the Eastern Slope because of the danger of rock slides from minor quakes. The geologists went home to add to the heaving chaos below. And the cliffs were higher every day as the land beneath them groaned downward in mile-square gulps. As the Fault moved north and south, new areas quivered into unwelcome dry, they boiled into rubble. Telephone lines, railroad tracks, roads snapped and simply disappeared. Virtually all east-west land communication was suspended and the President declared a national emergency. and rapidly approaching the border of New Mexico to the south. Trinchera and Branson were totally evacuated, but even so the over-all death toll had risen above 1,000. Away to the east the situation was quiet but even more ominous. On the actual scene of the disaster (or the it is impossible confusion. Prairie and hill cracked open under intolerable strains as assured that everything possible is being done.\" But what could be Perhaps the North Platte disaster had been more than anyone could take. to be officially admitted that there was an exodus of epic proportion. Nearly two million people were on the move, and the U. S. was faced with a gigantic wave of refugees. Rails, roads and air-lanes were jammed with terrified hordes who had left everything behind to crowd eastward. All through October hollow-eyed motorists flocked into Tulsa, Topeka, Omaha, Sioux Falls and Fargo. St. Louis was made distributing center for emergency squads which flew everywhere with milk for babies and dog food for evacuating pets. Gasoline trucks boomed west to meet the demand for gas, but once inside the \"zone of terror,\" as the newspapers now called it, they found their route blocked by eastbound cars on the wrong side of the road. Shops left by their fleeing owners were looted by refugees from further west by a mob of would-be passengers in Bismarck, North Dakota. Federal and State troops were called out, but moving two million people was not to autumn sunshine, growing higher as the land beneath them continued its inexorable descent. On 21 October, at Lubbock, Texas, there was a noise variously described as a hollow roar, a shriek and a deep musical vibration like a church bell. It was simply the tortured rock of the substrata giving way. The second phase of the national disaster was beginning. The noise traveled due east at better than 85 miles per hour. In its wake the earth to the north \"just seemed to collapse on itself like was somehow to ride out the coming flood, \"but like as if the land else that evening. At approximately 8:30 p.m. the town shuddered, Then, as ominous creakings and groanings of the earth announced the through the night. The earth continued its descent, eventually tipping during the night of panic Memphis residents were sure they were doomed. Washington announced the official hope that the Ozarks would stop the Despite hopeful announcements that the wave was slowing, had virtually stopped after inundating Oklahoma City, was being swallowed up in the land was still sinking, and the floods were constantly replenished from Whirlpools opened. A great welter of smashed wood and human debris was rescuers on the cliffs along what had been the west bank of the Pecos River afterwards recalled the hiss and scream like tearing silk as terrible sound they had ever heard. \"We couldn't hear any shouts, of course, not that far away and with all because of the spray.\" The cliffs proved to be the only effective barrier against the westward along the line of the original Fault. Irresistible fingers closed on precarious havens for half-drowned humanity. Waves bit off a corner of Virtually the only people saved out of the entire population of Pierre, rescuers. The barn, luckily collapsing in the vibrations as the waves along what is roughly the present shoreline of our inland sea, it was estimated that over fourteen million people had lost their lives. No one could even estimate the damage to property almost the entirety of eight states, and portions of twelve others, had simply vanished It was in such a cataclysmic birth that the now-peaceful Nebraska Sea unrepeated—disaster, it is hard to remember the terror and despair of that any but the topmost layer of water has cleared sufficiently suspension by the restless waves will not precipitate fully even in our remnants of the eight submerged states remained after the flood, but none of them wanted to surrender its autonomy. The tiny fringe of population decided to retain political integrity. This has resulted in the continuing anomaly of the seven \"fringe States\" represented the eight to have completely disappeared, could not in any sense be Unimaginable too would have been the general growth of population in the states surrounding the new sea. As the water tables rose and manufacturing and trade moved in to take advantage of the just-created axis of world communication, a population explosion was touched off of\n\n<question>:\nWhy would the band of scientists fear that there might not be pieces to pick up once the affected area population returned?\n\n<options>:\nA They were doubting the theory by Schwartzberg.\nB The damage would be too substantial and there would nothing left to salvage.\nC They feared that no one would escape alive.\nD Theft in the area was also on the rise.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "B" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThe baby's mother – she's called Debra – remains impassive throughout these agonised fumblings. Her face reveals nothing of what she may be feeling. But then Debra has no feelings. Indeed she has no face…So you can stop worrying. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. She comprises the lower two thirds (ie from the mid-chest region downwards) of a life-sized but limbless female torso made of flesh-coloured silicone rubber. She comes with a vulva, a pre-cut incision in her abdomen and, most importantly, a uterus containing a foetal head that should, in the normal way of things, be free to emerge between her legs. But this fetus is going nowhere until an obstetrician – or in this case me – can successfully grasp and pull it out. So you can stop worrying. Debra – Desperate Debra to use her full trade name – is a simulator designed to help doctors practise their skill at dealing with impacted foetuses: babies that get stuck trying to exit the womb by the normal route. She comprises the lower two thirds (ie from the mid-chest region downwards) of a life-sized but limbless female torso made of flesh-coloured silicone rubber. She comes with a vulva, a pre-cut incision in her abdomen and, most importantly, a uterus containing a foetal head that should, in the normal way of things, be free to emerge between her legs. But this fetus is going nowhere until an obstetrician – or in this case me – can successfully grasp and pull it out. The clever and sophisticated simulator I'm playing with started life as a lash-up in an obstetrician's home workshop: a Heath Robinson-style contraption barely recognisable as a model of the human body. But it wasn't at that stage intended as a simulator for training medical staff. Its sole purpose was to test the effectiveness of a novel device called a Tydeman tube. Paradoxically, although the testing equipment, Debra, is now commercially available, the device it was intended to test has yet to reach the market. The inventor of the tube and of Desperate Debra is Dr Graham Tydeman, a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife. Only after he'd built Debra did he realise that she might serve a purpose beyond his original intention. His is a decade-long tale of inspired insights, thwarted aims and shifting purposes but with a good outcome. Although the Tydeman tube is still in gestation, Desperate Debra herself is now thriving. The instrument is made up of a rigid plastic tube opening into a softer silicone cup. Pressure to the foetal head is applied using four pads projecting forward from the cup's interior. Holding the device by the tube, the user places the cup against the part of the head exposed through the dilated cervix, and presses. This pushes the baby back up into the uterus while releasing any suction pressure that may have been holding it, so allowing the obstetrician to extract it more easily. Because pressure is distributed equally between the four pads with a greater combined surface area than that of a user's fingertips, the risk of inadvertent damage is minimised. The team found some money to employ a product designer who used computer-aided design technology and 3D printing to make a prototype. \"We were at the point of getting one made in silicone,\" says Tydeman, \"when we realised that before we started experimenting on women we really ought to test it on a simulator.\" No such simulator existed – so he decided to make one himself. That Tydeman was able to do this comes as no great surprise once you've glanced at his website. His career may be rooted in medicine but his interests encompass sculpture, furniture making and much else. He works in wood, glass, metals and plastic. \"I've got a big workshop with a lathe and a forge,\" he says. \"I make stuff. I always have, ever since I was a child. My dad was a woodwork teacher, my mum was very creative with fabric.\" Although tests carried out with the Debra prototype showed that the tube would work as intended, Tydeman and his colleagues then faced what he calls a kind of medical catch-22. \"We had the tube finished about three years ago… but we were more interested in trying to save lives than selling a product. We thought that the right thing to do before commercialising it was to be sure we'd got the best design.\" They tried it on a dozen or so women in labour, and concluded that it did what it supposed to. But they held off trying to market it because they wanted to do more extensive, more rigorous clinical studies. In the meantime, back to Desperate Debra: so named, Tydeman says, not after any particular person but because the appellation is memorably alliterative. He put together the original Debra in a weekend. The skin was made out of a neoprene wetsuit fixed to a scaffolding formed from plastic tubing he'd found 20 years ago in skip outside a Glasgow pub the head was cast in silicone from a model he'd made in plasticine, and the rest comprised old springs and other bits of stuff lying around his workshop. \"It wasn't actually that difficult,\" Tydeman says. When originally conceived, remember, Debra was simply a means of testing the effectiveness of the tube. What she looked like was neither here nor there. It was only once Debra was reborn as a teaching aid that she needed sprucing up. The following morning, at St Thomas's, Tydeman asked a visiting professor of obstetrics to have a look at Debra and tell him what she thought. She put her hand into Debra's womb, grasped the foetal head and said it felt just like the real thing. \"Terribly flattering,\" Tydeman laughs. With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. In Debra as she is now, the precise extent and nature of her desperation can be fine-tuned according to need. The foetal head inside her uterus can be moved to mimic the various positions that an unborn baby may adopt. By tightening a spring inside Debra's body, it's also possible vary the degree of impaction from mild to so severe that the head is virtually impossible to extract. In this way she simulates the full range of difficulty that obstetricians are likely to encounter. At St Thomas's, midwives in training also get an opportunity to practise on Debra. The chances that midwives will find themselves having to do the actual extraction of an infant are slim but they're quite likely to be asked to help the obstetrician by pushing a stuck baby from below. Debra's anatomy allows them to practise this skill A proper study of the clinical effectiveness of the Tydeman tube will necessarily involve women giving birth. Assessing the value of Debra as a simulator didn't require human subjects As the material for a convincing simulation, glass clearly has its drawbacks. But another 18th-century contraption used a pink cloth-covered mannequin comprising a female torso complete with genitalia, a set of implantable foetuses of various ages, and even – a real\n\n<question>:\nWhat was Desperate Debra originally made of?\n\n<options>:\nA Ballistics gel over a plastic tube scaffolding\nB Silicone over a plastic tube scaffolding\nC Latex over a plastic tube scaffolding\nD A neoprene wetsuit over a plastic tube scaffolding\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "D" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nstories to be picked up at the first international grandmaster chess tournament in which an electronic computing machine was entered. Chess sets were everywhere—big ones on tables, still bigger their faces and they were all in pairs, two clocks to a case. That Siamese-twin clocks should be essential to a chess tournament struck Sandra as a particularly maddening circumstance. Her last assignment had been to interview the pilot pair riding the Overheard scraps of conversation in reasonably intelligible English were not particularly helpful. Samples: \"They say the Machine has been programmed to play nothing but pure Barcza System and Indian Defenses—and the Dragon Formation if anyone pushes the King Pawn.\" they'll gang up on the Machine at adjournments. What can one New Jersey computer do against four Russian grandmasters?\" \"I heard the Russians have been programmed—with hypnotic cramming and somno-briefing. Votbinnik had a nervous breakdown.\" \"Why, the Machine hasn't even a the game of chess—a point that she had slid over in conferring with the powers at the Space Mirror chess be without coffee or schnapps?\" chess,\" he assured her. \"It is a curse of the intellect. It is a game for lunatics—or else it creates them. But what brings a sane and beautiful young lady to this 64-square madhouse?\" \"You have one great advantage,\" he told her. \"You know nothing whatsoever of chess—so you will be able to write about it understandably for your readers.\" He swallowed half his demitasse and smacked his lips. \"As for the Machine—you \"If you had,\" he said, \"a billion computers all as fast as the Machine, it would take them all the time there ever will be in the universe just to play through all the possible games of chess, not to mention the time needed to classify those games into branching families of wins for White, wins for Black and draws, and the additional time required to trace out chains of key-moves leading always to wins. So the Machine can't play chess like God. What the Machine can do is examine all the likely lines of play for about eight moves ahead—that is, four moves each for White and Black—and then decide which is the best move on the basis of capturing enemy pieces, working toward checkmate, establishing a powerful central position and so on.\" genius, but who never makes a mistake. You see, you are finding human interest already, even in the Machine.\" Sandra nodded. \"Does a human chess player—a grandmaster, I mean—ever is probably programmed to recognize such situations and do something of the same sort, though we can't be sure from the information World Business Machines has released. But in most chess positions the \"Indeed yes! The programming is the crux of the problem of the chess-playing computer. The first practical model, reported by Bernstein and Roberts of IBM in 1958 and which looked four moves ahead, was programmed so that it had a greedy worried tendency to grab at enemy pieces and to retreat its own whenever they were attacked. It had a personality like that of a certain kind of chess-playing dub—a dull-brained woodpusher afraid to take the slightest risk of losing material—but a dub who could almost always beat an utter novice. The WBM machine here in the hall operates about a million times as fast. Don't ask me how, I'm no physicist, but it depends on the new transistors and something they call hypervelocity, which in turn you remember that the Machine is errorlessly examining every one of thousands of variations. Flesh-and-blood chess masters have lost games by blunders they could have avoided by looking only one or two moves corresponding tables, five large dully glassy chessboards, the White them had just laid a black cable to the nearest chess table and were \"Tell your readers, Miss Grayling,\" he proclaimed, fiercely arching his eyebrows at her and actually slapping his chest, \"that I, Igor Jandorf, will defeat the Machine by the living force of my human personality! Already I have offered to play it an informal game blindfold—I, who true grandmaster would dare ignore. Again they refuse me. I predict that the Machine will play like a great oaf—at least against me wine-and-seltzer. Or did he? One tip I have for you: don't call a chess master Mister, call him Master. They all eat it up.\" \"Gee, Doc, I don't know how to thank you for everything. I hope I usual international rate of 15 moves an hour, and—\" \"Is that why they've got all those crazy clocks?\" Sandra interrupted. \"Oh, yes. Chess clocks measure the time each player takes in making his moves. When a player makes a move he presses a button that shuts his clock off and turns his opponent's on. If a player uses too much time, The Machine, USA (programmed by Simon Great) Maxim Serek, USSR to you the only grandmaster ever to have been ex-chess-champion of the tournament?\" \"But if the Machine plays badly it will be a black eye for them,\" Sandra pointed out. \"True,\" Doc agreed thoughtfully. \"WBM must feel very sure.... It's greatest players here. Otherwise half of them would be holding off in the best temperamental-artist style. For chess players the prize money is fabulous—$35,000, with $15,000 for first place, and all her best chess players at all adequately. I think the Russian players —the international chess organization) are also backing \"Will whoever wins this tournament become champion?\" \"Oh no. That's decided by two-player matches—a very long \"The proportion of Soviet to American entries in the tournament represents pretty fairly the general difference in playing strength between the two countries,\" Doc said judiciously. \"Chess mastery Jew. Can't play chess on Fridays or on Saturdays before sundown.\" He in this tournament! He must have pulled all sorts of strings. Told them that his lifelong services to chess had won him the honor and that they \"This Simon Great who's down as programming the Machine. He's a famous physicist, I suppose?\" \"By no means. That was the trouble with some of the early chess-playing machines—they were programmed by scientists. No, Simon Great is a psychologist who at one time was a leading contender for the world's chess championship. I think WBM was surprisingly shrewd to pick him for the programming job. Let me tell you—No, better yet—\" Doc shot to his feet, stretched an arm on high and called out sharply, grandmasters, including all four Russians, were seated at their tables. if this whole thing were a big fake? What if Simon Great were really playing the Machine's moves? There would surely be some way for his electricians to rig—\" No, I do not think that is at all likely. WBM would never risk such a fraud. Great is completely out of practice for actual tournament play, though not for chess-thinking. The difference in style between a computer and a man would be evident to any expert. Great's own style impossible. Vanderhoef as Tournament Director has played two or three games with the Machine to assure himself that it operates legitimately and has grandmaster skill.\" \"Did the Machine beat him?\" Sandra asked. Doc shrugged. \"The scores weren't released. It was very hush-hush. But about your idea, Miss Grayling—did you ever read about Maelzel's famous chess-playing automaton of the 19th Century? That one too was supposed to work by machinery (cogs and gears, not electricity) but actually it had a man hidden inside it—your Edgar Poe exposed the fraud in a famous article. In my story I think the chess robot will break down while it is being demonstrated to a millionaire purchaser and the young inventor will have to win its game for it to cover up\n\n<question>:\nWho is putting on the chess tournament? Why?\n\n<options>:\nA WBM—to test the efficacy of their machine.\nB Dr. Krakatower—to beat WBM’s chess ma Co own once and for all.\nC WBM—to being down Russia’s chess mastery.\nD WBM—to test the accuracy of their chess machine’s emotional programming.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "A" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nWas Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home. Both these memoirs must be read by everyone--everyone, that is, who takes seriously the important business of sorting out precisely how he or she feels about The New Yorker , then and now. Of the two, Mehta's is far and away the more entertaining. This may seem odd, for Mehta is reputed to be a very dull writer whereas Ross is a famously zippy one. Moreover, Mehta writes as Shawn's adoring acolyte, whereas Ross writes as his longtime adulterous lover. Just knowing that Mrs. Shawn is still alive adds a certain tension to reading much of what this Other Woman chooses to divulge. Evidently, \"Bill\" and Lillian loved each other with a fine, pure love, a love that was more than love, a love coveted by the winged seraphs of heaven. \"We had indeed become one,\" she tells us, freely venting the inflations of her heart. Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce. Now, Ross seems like a nice lady, and I certainly have nothing against adultery, which I hear is being carried on in the best circles these days. But the public flaunting of adultery--especially when spouses and children are around--well, it brings out the bourgeois in me. It also made me feel funny about William Shawn, whom I have always regarded as a great man. I loved his New Yorker . The prose it contained--the gray stuff around the cartoons--was balm for the soul: unfailingly clear, precise, logical, and quietly stylish. So what if the articles were occasionally boring? It was a sweet sort of boredom, serene and restorative, not at all like the kind induced by magazines today, which is more akin to nervous exhaustion. Besides, the moral tone of the magazine was almost wholly admirable--it was ahead of the pack on Hiroshima, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the environment--and this was very much Shawn's doing. I do not like to think of him in an illicit love nest, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers. Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages. And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\" Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death. Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this.\n\n<question>:\nWhat was said to be concernig about the relationship between Shawn and Ross?\n\n<options>:\nA They began their relationship as an affair.\nB Their work suffered from their lack of concentration.\nC They seemed to proritize their romance rather than their work.\nD They argued often, publicly.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "A" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nChicago Space Mirror that there would be all sorts of human interest stories to be picked up at the first international grandmaster chess tournament in which an electronic computing machine was entered. Not that there weren't enough humans around, it was the interest that magnetized disks used for playing in free-fall. There were signs featuring largely mysterious combinations of letters: FIDE, WBM, USCF, USSF, USSR and UNESCO. Sandra felt fairly sure about the last three. Siamese-twin clocks should be essential to a chess tournament struck Sandra as a particularly maddening circumstance. pushes the King Pawn.\" \"Hah! In that case....\" \"The Russians have come with ten trunkfuls of prepared variations and they'll gang up on the Machine at adjournments. What can one New Jersey computer do against four Russian grandmasters?\" \"I heard the Russians have been programmed—with hypnotic cramming and somno-briefing. Votbinnik had a nervous breakdown.\" won. It'll over its head be playing.\" \"Yes, but maybe like Capa at San Sebastian or Morphy or Willie Angler at New York. The Russians will look like potzers.\" \"Have you studied the scores of the match between Moon Base and Circum-Terra?\" chess,\" he assured her. \"It is a curse of the intellect. It is a game for lunatics—or else it creates them. But what brings a sane and beautiful young lady to this 64-square madhouse?\" \"You have one great advantage,\" he told her. \"You know nothing whatsoever of chess—so you will be able to write about it to play through all the possible games of chess, not to mention the time needed to classify those games into branching families of wins for can't play chess like God. What the Machine can do is examine all the likely lines of play for about eight moves ahead—that is, four moves each for White and Black—and then decide which is the best move on the basis of capturing enemy pieces, working toward checkmate, establishing interest already, even in the Machine.\" Sandra nodded. \"Does a human chess player—a grandmaster, I mean—ever is probably programmed to recognize such situations and do something of the same sort, though we can't be sure from the information World Business Machines has released. But in most chess positions the chess-playing computer. The first practical model, reported by Bernstein and Roberts of IBM in 1958 and which looked four moves ahead, was programmed so that it had a greedy worried tendency to grab at enemy pieces and to retreat its own whenever they were attacked. It had a personality like that of a certain kind of chess-playing dub—a dull-brained woodpusher afraid to take the slightest risk of losing material—but a dub who could almost always beat an utter novice. with a smile. \"Believe me, eight moves ahead is a lot of moves when you remember that the Machine is errorlessly examining every one of thousands of variations. Flesh-and-blood chess masters have lost games by blunders they could have avoided by looking only one or two moves never made a mistake.... \"One expects it of Jandorf,\" he explained to Sandra with a philosophic shrug when the shock-headed man was gone. \"At least he didn't take your wine-and-seltzer. Or did he? One tip I have for you: don't call a chess master Mister, call him Master. They all eat it up.\" \"Gee, Doc, I don't know how to thank you for everything. I hope I usual international rate of 15 moves an hour, and—\" \"Is that why they've got all those crazy clocks?\" Sandra interrupted. \"Oh, yes. Chess clocks measure the time each player takes in making his \"Of course not!\" Doc assured her. \"It was only 49 and he lost two of those and drew five. Jandorf always exaggerates. It's in his blood.\" \"He's one of the Russians, isn't he?\" Sandra asked. \"Igor?\" of names lit up on the big electric scoreboard. THE PLAYERS FIRST ROUND PAIRINGS Sherevsky vs. Serek Jal vs. Angler to you the only grandmaster ever to have been ex-chess-champion of the United States while still technically a minor—Master William Augustus the prize money they've put up, of course, that's brought the world's greatest players here. Otherwise half of them would be holding off in the best temperamental-artist style. For chess players the prize money is fabulous—$35,000, with $15,000 for first place, and all expenses paid for all players. There's never been anything like it. Soviet Russia is the only country that has ever supported and rewarded her best chess players at all adequately. I think the Russian players are here because UNESCO and FIDE (that's Federation Internationale des Echecs —the international chess organization) are also backing the tournament. And perhaps because the Kremlin is hungry for a little prestige now that its space program is sagging.\" \"But if a Russian doesn't take first place it will be a black eye for them.\" Doc frowned. \"True, in a sense. going two by two in close formation, but it gave Sandra the feeling of a phalanx. \"The first two are Lysmov and Votbinnik,\" Doc told her. \"It isn't often that you see the current champion of the world—Votbinnik—and an ex-champion arm in arm. There are two other persons in the tournament \"Will whoever wins this tournament become champion?\" \"Anyway there are an awful lot of Russians in the tournament,\" Sandra said, consulting her program. \"Four out of ten have USSR after them. And Bela Grabo, Hungary—that's a satellite. And Sherevsky and Krakatower are Russian-sounding names.\" \"The proportion of Soviet to American entries in the tournament represents pretty fairly the general difference in playing strength between the two countries,\" Doc said judiciously. \"Chess mastery moves from land to land with the years. Way back it was the Moslems and the Hindus and Persians. Then Italy and Spain. A little over a hundred years ago it was France and England. Then Germany, Austria and the New World. Now it's Russia—including of course the Russians who have run away from Russia. But don't think there aren't a lot of there are a lot of them here around us, though perhaps you don't think so. It's just that if you play a lot of chess you get to looking Russian. Once it probably made you look Italian. Do you see that short \"Yes. Now that's one with a lot of human interest. Moses Sherevsky. Been champion of the United States many times. A very strict Orthodox Jew. Can't play chess on Fridays or on Saturdays before sundown.\" He chuckled. \"Why, there's even a story going around that one rabbi told four Hungarians named Bela?) I will tell you only this: That he is a very brilliant player and that the Machine is very lucky to have drawn him as its first opponent.\" chess championship. I think WBM was surprisingly shrewd to pick him for the programming job. Let me tell you—No, better yet—\" Officials were shooing off a few knots of lingerers. Several of the grandmasters, including all four Russians, were seated at their tables. Press and company cameras were flashing. The four smaller wallboards lit up with the pieces in the opening position—white for White and red is remembered and would be recognized—though, come to think of it, his evidently and a terrific chess buff. Perhaps he was an actual medical doctor. She'd read something about two or three coming over with the dime-a-dozen female attractiveness to rope a susceptible man (young, old, American, Russian) and pick his brain....\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the significance of the players’ names?\n\n<options>:\nA The players’ names correspond with which countries won World War II\nB The players’ names represent how chess rivals reflect political rivals.\nC The players’ names signify the level of competence each chess master has, with American names being the most competent.\nD The players’ names correspond with what country has the most chess mastery, with Russian names hold the utmost interest.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "D" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nwas to laugh! For Click and Irish were actor are you?\" \"That's a silly question.\" \"You only have to do three things. Walk with your gun out in front of you, firing. That's number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart and fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down to it rack-spin film between his fingers, and he knew he was getting a damned sweet picture of everything that was happening. The picture of Marnagan hunched huge over the control-console, Click Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's was pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters. He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back. He didn't resist. They took him straight ahead to his destination and long in following, swearing loud words. Click remembered hanging on to pushed him into a room where Gunther sat. the controls and keeping his words to himself until just now. It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the quick crazy, unimportant things. The best scenes in life never reach film, or an audience. Like this one, dammit! Like this His camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was throwing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state. camera. Silence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it. that pierced through his vac-suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the wreckage into that silence. He didn't know what he was doing until he found the camera in his fingers as if it had grown there when he was born. He stood there, thinking \"Well, I'll at least have a few good scenes on film. I'll—\" A hunk of metal teetered, fell with a crash. Marnagan elevated seven feet of bellowing manhood from the wreck. flexed inside his vac-suit. \"I might've died in there, and you nursin' that film-contraption!\" Hathaway felt funny inside, suddenly. \"I never thought of that. now, Click. Oxygen. And then here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us. Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting. Marnagan said, \"We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat \"Gravity should not act this way, Click.\" Gunther'd do anything to—did I say Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt Instinctively, Hathaway added, \"Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a scene!\" \"Damn your damn camera!\" yelled Marnagan. \"They might come in!\" \"Use your gun.\" eh, Click?\" will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?\" \"Let me think—\" \"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact.\" Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. \"What in hell's the use? All this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it.\" \"Then,\" retorted Marnagan, \"we'll develop it for our own benefit while waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our rescue!\" his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals. anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts. When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him: \"Gunther drew us down here, sure as Ceres! That gravity change we felt what's he do Click shrugged. \"Still doubt it? Okay. Look.\" He tapped his camera and a spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing film. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical, leaving imprints Click. Now, now. This is one lousy film you invented.\" \"Huh?\" \"It's a strange process'll develop my picture and ignore the asteroid Pictures in montage Marnagan sitting down, chatting conversationally with mess! Here—\" He elucidated it over and over again to the Patrolman. About the film, the beasts, and how the film couldn't be wrong. If the film said the monsters weren't there, they weren't there. \"Yeah,\" said Marnagan. \"But step outside this cave—\" \"If my theory is correct I'll do it, unafraid,\" said Click. brain spun, racketing like the instantaneous, flicking motions of his \"Why not?\" \"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their bones.\" He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist except under an inch of porous metal plate. \"Your express purpose on this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later \"Irish, I—\" \"Shut up and load up.\" Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it. \"Ready, Click?\" \"I—I guess so,\" said Hathaway. \"And remember, think it hard, Irish. \"Keep me in focus, lad.\" \"All the way, Irish.\" \"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!\" Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. \"Hey, Click, look \"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you In that time we've got to trace those monsters to their source, Gunther's Base, fight our way in, and get fresh oxy-cannisters.\" Click attached his camera to his mid-belt. \"Gunther probably thinks we're dead by now. Everyone else's been fooled by his playmates they never \"If it hadn't been for you taking them pictures, Click—\" \"Coupled with your damned stubborn attitude about the accident—\" Click stopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and felt a film slip down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady himself, and swayed. \"I—I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours. This excitement had me double-breathing and I feel sick.\" \"All right, Click, let's bring 'em back. How do we do it?\" Think it over and over.\" Marnagan's hulk stirred uneasily. \"And—what if I forget to remember all that? What if I get excited...?\" raised his gun and made quick moves with it. \"Click! This one here! \"Click—\" He was fighting hard. \"I—I—sure now. Sure—\" He smiled. besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty.\" \"We'll be taking our chances on guard,\" hissed Irish. \"I'll go ahead, draw their attention, maybe get captured. Then, Click sucked in his breath, hard and fast. Click started running. He switched off his audio, kept his receiving guard. Click gasped. Things and listening to Marnagan's lying voice: \"I tied them pink elephants of Gunther's in neat alphabetical bundles posing,\" he said. \"That shot will go down in film history for candid acting.\" \"What!\" Click was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air.\n\n<question>:\nHow would you describe Click's primary motivations?\n\n<options>:\nA He was originally focused on filming, but he was also focused on survival efforts.\nB He was solely focused on filming the events and didn't contribute much else.\nC He wanted to help beyond filming but only ended up hurting the mission further.\nD He was focused on filming the events at first, but when he realized he needed to pitch in he forgot all about filming.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "A" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthe new answer from the Brain. It reached a certain length, then was automatically sheared overrode his erstwhile genial features. I had a horrible suspicion. \"Not again?\" I said softly. Jery Delvin had a most unusual talent. He could detect the flaws in greatest mystery, Jery assumed that it was because of his mental agility. But when he got to Mars to find out why fifteen boys had vanished from a spaceship in mid-space, he found out that even his quick mind needed time to pierce the maze of out-of-this-world double-dealing. For Jery end of the whole puzzle of THE SECRET MARTIANS—with Jery as the first to go! \"sublimating my urge to write things for cash,\" Jack moved to New York, determined to make a career of full-time fiction-writing. Oddly enough, it worked out, and he now does nothing else. He says, \"I'd like to say I do this for fulfillment, or for cash, or because it's my destiny however, the real reason (same as that expressed by Jean Kerr) is that this kind of stay-at-home self-employment lets me sleep late in the morning.\" 1 It was only a fraction of an instant between the time I saw them and the time they spoke to me, but in that miniscule interval I managed to retrace quite a bit of my lifetime up till that moment, seeking of the government. I couldn't find anything really incriminating, unless maybe it was that hair dye that unexpectedly turned bright green after six weeks in the hair, but that was the lab's fault, not mine. So I managed a weak smile toward the duo, and tried not to sweat too profusely. \"Jery Delvin?\" said the one on my left, a note of no-funny-business in \"Mr. Delvin,\" she said, her voice a wispy croak. \"When will you be \" W-Will I be back?\" I asked desperately, as we waited for the elevator. \"At all? Am I under arrest? What's up, anyhow?\" \"You will be informed,\" said the man again. I had to let it go at that. There was nothing for me to do but sweat it out and to try and enjoy the ride, wherever we were going. \" are Jery Delvin?\" President in power, and not even that in matters of security. I managed to nod. He shook his white-maned head, slowly. \"I don't believe it.\" always reacts to an obvious cliche. Then, with something like a look of relief on his blunt face, he \"Jery Delvin,\" he read, musingly and dispassionately. \"Five foot eleven they stop the watch. If I get it in five seconds, it passes. But if I spot it in less, they throw it out and start over again. Or is that clear? No, I guess you're still confused, sir.\" fool the average consumer indefinitely.\" I sat back, feeling much better. \"That's right, sir.\" to stay out of my office when I'm working, or I can't function.\" \"You have my sympathy, son,\" Baxter said, not unkindly. \"Thank you, sir. It hasn't been easy.\" \"No, I don't imagine it has....\" Baxter was staring into some far-off distance. Then he remembered himself and blinked back to the present. \"When the current emergency arose and all our usual methods failed, we had to submit the problem to the Brain.\" smile was still on his lips, but there was a grimness in the glitter of his narrowing eyes. fist down on the desktop. \"No one has an explanation! All we know is that the Brain always picks the right man.\" He stared at me as though I'd just fallen in from the ceiling or somewhere. \"Huh? Oh, yes, Delvin, isn't it? Sorry, I got carried away. Where was I?\" apoplexy. I swallowed, and tried to look relaxed. After a moment, he found his voice. \"To go on, Delvin. Do you recall \"Because it's not true, Delvin,\" he said. His voice was suddenly old and tired, and very much in keeping with his snowy hair. \"You see, the Space Scouts have vanished.\" \"Forgeries, Fakes. Counterfeits.\" 's, misuse of tenses, deliberate misspellings. They take it out of an adult, especially an adult with a mind keen enough to get him into Interplanetary Security. We've limited the shifts to four hours per man per day. Otherwise, they'd all be gibbering by now!\" \"And your men haven't found out anything?\" I marvelled. Baxter shook his head. \"And you finally had to resort to the Brain, and it gave you my name, \"You got me!\" I shrugged hopelessly. \"However, since we have nothing else to go on but the locale from which the children vanished, my suggestion would be to send you there.\" Phobos II . The one they were returning to Earth in when they disappeared.\" \"They disappeared from a spaceship? While in space?\" Baxter nodded. into nothingness, along with a good-sized swath of carpeting and six inches of concrete floor. His parting injunction had been. \"Be careful, Delvin, huh?\" Yes, parting. I was on my own. After all, with a Security disc—the Amnesty, they called it—such as I possessed, and a collapser, I could Phobos II . At the moment, I was the most influential human being in the known universe. And well they might be. An Amnesty-bearer can suddenly decide a subject is not answering questions to his satisfaction and simply blast the annoying party to atoms. It makes for straight responses. Of course, \"Thank you, sir,\" he said, not actually loosening much in his rigid position, but his face looking happier. \"See, I was supposed to pilot the kids back here from Mars when their trip was done, and—\" He gave Anders nodded sorrowfully. \"Not a trace of 'em, sir. Just some of their junk left in their storage lockers.\" suddenly deprived of.\" Anders, after a puzzled frown, obediently threw open the doors of Earth is calculated with regard to the mass on board, is that correct?\" He nodded. \"Good, that clears up an important point. I'd also like to know if this rocket has a dehumidifying system to keep the cast-off moisture from the passengers out of the air?\" \"Have you checked the storage tanks?\" I asked. \"Or is the cast-off perspiration simply jetted into space?\" \"No. It's saved, sir. It gets distilled and stored for washing and drinking. Otherwise, we'd all dehydrate, with no water to replace the water we lost.\" \"It's the Amnesty that does it,\" he said, gesturing toward the disc. It lay on his desk, now, along with the collapser. I felt, with the new information I'd garnered, that my work was done, and that the new data fed into the Brain would produce some other results, not involving me. Baxter smiled. \"No chance of that, Jery. We didn't leave it up to any would have put us right back where we'd been before. No, we left it up to the Brain. We'd find ourselves in a tight situation, and the Brain I stared at him. \"Then, when I was here before, I was here solely to receive the Amnesty, is that it?\" your mentioning such a contingency gives me a small migraine. It'd be unprecedented in the history of the Brain or the Amnesty.\" He grinned, suddenly. \"Besides, it can't happen. There's only one of these—\" he tapped the medallion gently \"—in existence, Jery. So we couldn't have the thing was out of my hands. Baxter had the information I'd come up with, and it had been coded and fed to the Brain. As soon as the solution came through, I could be on my way back to the world of hard and soft sell.\n\n<question>:\nWhat will happen next to Jery?\n\n<options>:\nA he will be well-known for finding the Space Scouts\nB he will help to improve the Brain\nC he will continue to help Baxter\nD he will be able to go back to his normal life\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "C" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthat left the Earth with a wing and a prayer. Earth vast distance did not mean that isolation could endure forever. translating the major languages. The history of the planet was For days the two within the ship listened and watched with little comment. They had to decide soon. \"We've got to make or break,\" said the first alien. \"You know what I'm in favor of,\" said the second. is a complete mess. They've never done anything except fight each other—and invent better weapons.\" \"It's not what they've done,\" said Bal, the second alien. \"It's what they're going to do, with that big bomb.\" \"The more reason for stopping,\" said Ethaniel. \"The big bomb can destroy them. Without our help they may do just that.\" \"A week,\" said Ethaniel. \"We there on time.\" \"A week?\" said Bal. \"To settle their problems? They've had two world wars in one generation and that the third and final one is coming up you can't help feeling in everything they do.\" \"It won't take much,\" said Ethaniel. \"The wrong diplomatic move, or a trigger-happy soldier could set it off. And it wouldn't have to be deliberate. A meteor shower could pass over and their clumsy instruments could interpret it as an all-out enemy attack.\" \"Too bad,\" said Bal. \"We'll just have to forget there ever was such a planet as Earth.\" \"Could you? Forget so many people?\" \"I'm doing it,\" said Bal. \"Just said Ethaniel. \"I ask you Bal rustled, flicking the screen us. Is that what you wanted me to say?\" \"It is. The fact that they are an incomplete version of ourselves touches me. They actually seem defenseless, though I suppose they're not.\" \"Tough,\" said Bal. \"Nothing \"In a week we can't negate their entire history. We can't begin to undo the effect of the big bomb.\" \"You can't tell,\" said Ethaniel. our people want,\" said Ethaniel. \"And how long can Earth last? Ten years? Even ten months? hour.\" \"What can I say?\" said Bal. \"I suppose we can stop and look them over. We're not committing ourselves by looking.\" They went much closer to Earth, not intending to commit themselves. For a day they circled the planet, avoiding radar detection, which for them was not difficult, testing, and sampling. Finally Ethaniel looked up \"What's there to think? It's worse than I imagined.\" \"In what way?\" \"Well, we knew they had the \"I know.\" \"We also knew they could deliver the big bomb, presumably by some sort of aircraft.\" \"That was almost a certainty. They'd have no use for the big bomb without aircraft.\" \"What's worse is that I now upward. They either have or are make it worse,\" said Bal. \"What did you find out at your end?\" \"Nothing worthwhile. I was There's so little time,\" Ethaniel listening to advertisements, music, and news bulletins. I should go down and live among them, that takes time—and we don't \"I realize that.\" \"A flat yes or no,\" said Bal. \"No. We can't help them,\" said Ethaniel. \"There is nothing we can do for them—but we have to try.\" before. We take the trouble to find out what a people are like and when we can't help them we feel bad. It's going to be that Earth. They no longer needed instruments \"Nor I,\" said Bal. \"We're going to have to go down there cold. And it will be cold.\" \"Yes. It's their winter.\" \"I did have an idea,\" said Bal. worked. Today they have satellites. They are not primitives.\" \"I suppose you're right,\" said Bal. \"I did think we ought to \"If we could I'd be all for it. But these people are rough and desperate. They wouldn't be fooled by anything that crude.\" Bal. \"All right,\" said Ethaniel. \"You take one side and I the other. We'll tell them bluntly what they'll have to do if they're going to survive, how they can keep their planet in one piece so they can live on it.\" \"That'll go over big. Advice is \"Can't help it. That's all we have time for.\" \"None. We leave the ship here and go down in separate landing you have to.\" \"They can't intercept the \"They can't, and even if they did they wouldn't know what to do with our language. I want them to think that we don't to talk things over.\" \"I get it. Makes us seem better than we are. They think we know exactly what we're doing even though we don't.\" \"If we're lucky they'll think that.\" the planet below. \"It's going to be cold where I'm going. You too. Sure we don't want to change do the job.\" We'll be running straight into it. That won't help us any.\" \"I know, they don't like their holidays interrupted. It can't be helped. We can't wait until it's edge. \"I hate to go down and leave the ship up here with no one in it.\" \"They can't touch it. No matter how they develop in the next hundred years they still won't be able to get in or damage it in any way.\" \"It's myself I'm thinking about. Down there, alone.\" \"I'll be with you. On the other side of the Earth.\" \"That's not very close. I'd like it better if there were someone in the ship to bring it down in a hurry if things get rough. They don't think much of each other. I don't imagine they'll like aliens any better.\" \"They may be unfriendly,\" the snow. \"I've thought of a trick.\" \"If it saves my neck I'm for it.\" \"I don't guarantee anything,\" the ship against the sun planet and light it up.\" \"Say, pretty good,\" said Bal. \"They can't imagine that we'd light up an unmanned ship,\" said Ethaniel. \"Even if the thought should occur to them they'll have no way of checking it. Also, they won't be eager to harm us with our ship shining down on them.\" \"That's thinking,\" said Bal, it best and then I'll light it up. I'll really light it up.\" \"Don't spare power.\" \"Don't worry about that. They'll see it. Everybody on Earth will see it.\" Later, with the pull it off. Lighting the ship may be just the help we need.\" \"It's not we who need help, but the people of Earth,\" said Ethaniel. Earth. As soon as it was safe to do so, Bal left in another Earth, unmanned, blazing and Earth to illuminate it. Never, or up from Earth and joined the them. In a short time the aliens met again. \"We did it,\" said Bal exultantly were going to fail but at the last minute they came through.\" Ethaniel smiled. \"I'm tired,\" Ethaniel. \"If I went out walking agreement they made isn't the best but I think it will keep them from destroying themselves.\" \"It's as much as we can expect,\" said Ethaniel. \"They may have small wars after this, but never the big one. In fifty or a hundred years we can come back \"Why?\" \"Something like that happened to me,\" said Ethaniel. \"I didn't get it but I didn't let their paintings they had pictured him innumerable times. \"I don't think it hurt us that you flew,\" said Ethaniel. \"I did so myself occasionally.\" like ourselves. Their legends are bound to resemble ours.\" \"Sure,\" said Bal. \"Anyway, peace on Earth.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy do Bal and Ethaniel think they have to make time to save Earth?\n\n<options>:\nA No one else knows Earth and its big bomb problem exisits. It will be quite a long time before anyone passes out this way again. By then, it will be too late for the Earth.\nB If Bal and Ethaniel don't make time to save the Earth from the big bomb, the shockwave may also destroy their spacecraft.\nC If Bal and Ethaniel don't make time to save the Earth from the big bomb, the shockwave may also destroy Willafours.\nD Not saving the humans would be like letting their own people die.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "A" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n“I wasn’t—playing. Let’s not go up there,” Lorraine begged. “I don’t think the Brandts live there any more.” “Maybe not, but we can pretend we think they do, can’t we?” Judy replied a little uncertainly. She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew more about the Brandt estate than she was telling. Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly road. Soon there were more evergreens and a hedge Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters “Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine, “You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming the fountain.” “Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It won’t be enchanted. I told you—” “You told us very little,” Lois reminded her. “If “I don’t think they’ll welcome us, anyway. I do know who they are,” Lorraine admitted. “You remember to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and could have cost lives. I should have told Arthur.” “Please,” Lorraine said, a pained expression clouding the estate.” “Then you’ve been here lately? Why didn’t you her pretty face, “let’s not talk about him now.” together.” “It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively. “I was just out for a drive.” tell me?” asked Lois. “We always used to go places “Very well,” Judy agreed. “What shall we talk “For what?” asked Judy. Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts to gossip. It was all in the papers,” Lorraine told her. Judy was almost sorry she had mentioned it. She would have preferred to forget. She liked to think she was a good judge of character, and she had taken Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would wasn’t in the mood for digging up old mysteries, that it was Lorraine’s father, Richard Thornton but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally of ours, don’t you?” asked Lorraine. mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and loneliness of Dry Brook Hollow. Her thoughts were what had made it so hard, she confessed now as she reviewed everything that had happened. She just couldn’t help resenting the fact that her parents left her every summer while they went off on a vacation by themselves. What did they think she would do? Lorraine hesitated a moment and then replied Why, Lorraine? Why didn’t you want to be recognized?” evasively, “People don’t generally enter private estates without an invitation. That’s all.” “I’d better turn the car around,” Lois decided, “in case we have to leave in a hurry. I don’t expect Judy had stopped. She had seen her father’s tired eyes and had realized that a busy doctor needed a vacation much more than a schoolgirl who had too little to do. He and Judy’s mother usually went to the beach hotel where they had honeymooned. It and his wife relived it. And every summer Judy went to stay with her grandmother Smeed, who scolded and fussed and tried to pretend she wasn’t glad to have her. her childish resentment of her parents’ vacation or be grown up enough to ask them to let her have a vacation of her own. In another year she would walking up to the door of the palatial Farringdon-Pett mansion was still ahead of her. On the lawn a she was to see on her honeymoon at Niagara Falls. But all that was in the future. If anyone had told the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one she confessed, not even a friend. It had helped to “But that would make it enchanted!” she had suddenly exclaimed. “If I could find it I’d wish—” She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what “I know now that keeping that promise not Roger Banning from school, don’t you? Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful. “Of course,” replied Judy. “There were lots more things. I wanted to go places, of course, and keep pets, and have a nice home, and—” wanted. It was a sister near my own age. That seemed impossible at the time, but the future did Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think know he had a sister. It is strange, isn’t it? But the strangest thing of all was the fountain itself.” “Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was enchanted?” Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly, “And then what happened?” Lorraine urged her. you’d kept anything that exciting a secret. Why didn’t impossible for us to be friends at first, didn’t it? Lorraine “It was all because of my foolish jealousy.” “It was nothing compared to the trouble caused by Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while “So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious “If wishes came true I’d like to turn it back a little myself,” Lorraine began. “It would be nice if things “Don’t you trust him now?” Judy asked. Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all she would say. Judy wondered, as they searched through the old magazines, what was wrong. Lorraine was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed monster coming between her and her handsome husband, in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of If she did, she pretended not to. more closely the picture they had found. “It looks like the fountain on the Brandt estate.” “The department store Brandts?” Judy questioned. “Then my grandparents must have driven old Fanny all the way to Farringdon.” “Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The Brandts own that stretch of woods just before you come into the city. You’ve passed it lots of times.” “Of course,” agreed Judy. She put the magazine A Strange Encounter Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed trip to the Brandt estate. Finally she agreed to it under one condition. They were not to drive all the way to the house which, she said, was just over the hilltop. They were to park the car where no Judy thought she would, but she wasn’t too sure. She and Lois both argued that it would be better to inquire at the house. Lois knew Helen Brandt slightly. “She’d be glad to show us around. This way it looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they for some reason, you were afraid he would see you. “I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I’ve just about figured out how it happened. I didn’t think my grandparents knew the Brandts well enough to pay them a visit, though. We must have looked queer driving up to a beautiful estate in Grandpa’s old farm wagon. I do remember that Grandma had “Anyway,” Lorraine began, “you had a chance to see how beautiful everything was before—” she wanted to tell but didn’t quite dare. Lorraine reminded her. driving home along this road. You see, I thought my grandparents had left me in the garden for a surprise and would return for me. I told you I was all alone. There wasn’t a house in sight.” “The Brandt house is just over the top of this next hill,” Lois put in. “I know. You told me that. Now I know why I them, but I didn’t ask where. If she made them for Mrs. Brandt they may still be there.” “I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they turned up the narrow road to the Brandt estate. “Watch out!” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “There’s another car coming.” As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine ducked her head. She kept herself hidden behind when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for playing hide and seek?”\n\n<question>:\nWhat was Lorraine the least secretive about?\n\n<options>:\nA her knowledge of the fountain\nB her jealousy of Judy\nC her relationship with her husband\nD why she didn't want to go to the Brandt estate\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "B" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nDirty Laundry Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture? Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's \" 'real life' feature film,\" has proudly worn its mongrel status as a \"directed\" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside. This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film \"an exercise in mendacity,\" Barker goes on, \"I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths.\" it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of \"larger dramatic truths.\" Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males. Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are \"mutts.\" Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt. Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's \"OK with it,\" and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? \"Or,\" the viewer thinks, \"if you're 225 pounds?\" The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks (\"I'm up to two dicks a day\"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up. Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, \"In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action.\" Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people. The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code, all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. (\"Furniture's temporary education is permanent.\") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out. I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.\n\n<question>:\nHow does the author feel about Don MacPherson?\n\n<options>:\nA many famous actors what to work with him\nB his movie lacked the quality that the original did\nC he's made some good and some bad movies\nD he's a better critic than a screenwriter\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "B" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nRyzga made a savage, wholly futile effort to lift the weapon in his steep were its cliffs and sheer its crevasses. But its outward perils could not compare with the Ryzgas themselves, who slept within, ready to wake and conquer.... Var felt Neena beside him, and drew her close. As she sobbed her relief, Is our feud finished, or does your ambition for a worthy son-in-law go beyond the conqueror of the Ryzgas?\" be death for Var, and for Neena living shame. Which of the two was worse was no longer a simple problem to Var, who had grown much older in the reached this place lurid fire spewed from the Ryzga mountain, and strange lights dipped above it Var sighed, shaking his head. \"It won't hold them for long, but it's the Both had heard of this place, and the ancient who lived there to keep watch on the Ryzga mountain, as a part of the oldest legends of their childhood Warming to the old man now, Var sketched his and Neena's history Var grinned mirthlessly. \"We haven't much choice, since they're and on all men.\" \"We know the stories,\" Var said brusquely. \"In the hollow heart of their mountain the Ryzgas sleep, as they chose to do when their world crumbled. But if they are wakened, the mountain will tremble, and the Ryzgas will come forth.\" \"Do you believe that?\" \"As one believes stories.\" power in the old man's look, the power of four hundred years' wisdom. Var stared down at his hands. \"The Ryzgas also were men,\" said the Watcher. \"But they were such a race as the world has not seen before or since. There were tyrannies before the Ryzgas, there was lust for power, and atrocious cruelty but such tyranny, power, and cruelty as theirs, had never been known. They ruled the Earth for four generations, and the Earth was too little for them. They laid the world waste, stripped it of metals and fuels and bored to its heart for energy, poisoned its seas and its air with the fume of those four generations they launched a ship of space. They were great and evil as no other people has been, because they wanted the stars. of their shaping—the scattered wreckage of the things they made. And we—we too are a remnant, the descendants of the few out of all humanity that survived when the Ryzgas' world went down in flame and thunder. \"In the last generation of their power the Ryzgas knew by their science that the race of man would endure them no longer. They made ready their weapons, they mined the cities and the factories for destruction, making sure that their works and their knowledge would perish with them. Meanwhile they redoubled the yoke and the punishments, hastening the Var and Neena stared, unstirring, with wide vacant eyes, while the old poured a mad, hating horde. The recurrent flashes lit scarred faces, naked bodies blackened and maimed from the hell of the workshops where the Ryzgas' might had been forged, eyes that stared white and half sightless from the glare of the furnaces, gnarled hands that now at long last clutched the weapons of the last rebellion—a rebellion without hope of new life on a world gutted and smoldering from the fulfilment of the Ryzgas' dream, without slogans other than a cry for blood. Before them death waited around the citadel where the masters still fought. All round, from the lowest and most poisonous levels of the through—before. With deep respect now he gazed upon the bent old man who was the Mountain Watcher. \"Some of the Ryzgas took flight to the stars, and some perished on Earth. But there was a group of them who believed that their time to rule would come again. These raised a black mountain from the Earth's in ignorance. Our world is unwise and sometimes evil, full of arrogance, folly, and passion that are in the nature of man. Yet it is a happy world, compared to that the Ryzgas made and will make again.\" The Watcher eyed them speculatively. \"Before all,\" he said finally, \"this is a world where you are free to risk wakening the old tyrants, if Neena pressed her face against Var's shoulder, hiding her eyes. In her Watcher.\" \"Don't thank me. I take no sides in your valley feuds. But now you are rested, your minds are clear. Do you still mean to go on to the Ryzga face was unsmiling. \"It is this. You, Var, can flee up the canyon to the be too late for them to overtake Var.\" That possibility had not occurred to them at all. Var and Neena looked only by its echo in Neena's little had the Ryzgas feared those who might assail them in their sleep. Var and Neena turned. Far out in the sea of fog, on a dream bridge that Neena's hand tightened on Var's. Var sent a thought of defiance: \"Go Neena reel against him until, summoning all his strength, he broke the Neena's face was deadly pale and her lips trembled, but her urgent was in the Earth was rising great wheels commenced to turn, the mechanical servitors of the Ryzgas woke one by one and began to make ready, while their masters yet slept, for the moment of rebirth that might be near at hand. the death-cries of a billion slaves, the despair of all flesh and blood Without warning, lights went on. Blinking in their glare, Var and Neena Var and Neena huddled frozenly, half expecting each instant to be their last. And the Ryzga too stood motionless, looking down at them. That, and his movements when he came slowly down the ramp toward them, conveyed a queer suggestion of weariness or weakness, as if he were yet not wholly roused from his two millenia of slumber. But the Ryzga's assurance of self that smote them like a numbing blow. With a new shock, Var realized that the Ryzga's thoughts were quite open. They had a terse, disconnected quality that was strange and unsettling, and in part they were couched in alien and unintelligible symbols. But there was no block. Apparently the Ryzga felt no need to progression of logical thought, came a wave of raw emotion, devastating in its force. It was a lustful image of a world once more obedient, crawling, laboring to do the Ryzgas' will— toward the stars, the The icy calculation resumed: \"Immobilize these and the ones indicated in the passage above. Then wake the rest....\" Var was staring in fascination at the Ryzga's face. It was a face formed ingrained weariness, the signs of premature age—denied, overridden by the driving will they had sensed a moment earlier. It was a sick man's face. The Ryzga's final thought clicked into place: Ryzga froze, teetering off balance and almost falling, as a numbing grip the Ryzga's frantic eyes. They glared back at him with such hatred and such evil that for an instant he almost faltered. But the Ryzga's efforts, as he strove to free himself from the neural hold, were as Var had guessed right. When Neena in her terror had flung a dream monster into the Ryzga's way—a mere child's bogey out of a fairy tale—the Ryzga had not recognized it as such, but had taken it for a real being. Var laughed aloud, and with great care, as one communicates our world, Ryzga! In two thousand years, we've learned some new things. Now at last I understand why you\n\n<question>:\nWhich lingering effect of the Ryzgas' downfall makes life challenging for people like Var and Neena?\n\n<options>:\nA The Ryzgas littered the planet with wreckage of their old creations, which renders it inhabitable\nB The Ryzgas destroyed or used up all of their materials, so Var and Neena's people can only construct things with their dreams\nC The Ryzgas manipulate the entire planet through their Control Center, so all outcomes are predestined\nD The Ryzgas toxified the environment, which has caused a genetic mutation among their descendants\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "B" } ]

[ { "human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nDoctor Universe under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers, had stumbled onto a murderous plot more hair-raising than any she had ever concocted. And the danger from the villain of the piece didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from \"Hold it, Billy-boy.\" Laughingly she threw up both hands. \"Sure, I knew this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what in the name of science fiction than anyone alive. But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount. I grinned. \"All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe \"What else is there in science fiction?\" she demanded. \"You can't have ONE NIGHT ONLY DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS NINE GENIUSES myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts.\" audience. When it had subsided, the man continued: \"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary on the dais. The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his voice echoed through the theater: \" Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed, or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of the winner. It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had brought me here. And then I began to notice things. The audience in the Satellite seemed to have lost much of its original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete. Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips were turned in a smile of satisfaction. \"The I.P. men aren't strong enough.\" Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about his adventures, and he told me plenty.\" The old woman paused. \"Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?\" she asked abruptly. I shook my head. \"Some new kind of ...\" \"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active rock once found on Mercury. The Alpha electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of \"When any form of life is exposed to these Gamma rays from the Green Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate, a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug.\" I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word. enough to endanger all civilized life. \"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom I said, \"So what?\" \"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble. your thief ... Doctor Universe?\" representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military dictator to step in. \"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand times more potent and is transmiting it en masse .\" Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the ship.\" Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the ground and shot aloft. and follows with a relentless purpose.\" \"Then that would mean...?\" \"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest.\" hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in a matter of seconds. Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful. \"Green Flames, eh?\" he repeated slowly. \"Well yes, I suppose I could find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to.\" \"What do you mean?\" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy.\" because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped because he made 'em laugh.\" \"Laugh?\" A scowl crossed Grannie's face. \"That's right,\" Karn said. \"The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them laugh, I don't know.\" \"The Doctor Universe program,\" he said. \"I ain't missed one in months. flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a chair, listening with avid interest. It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him. There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles swing slowly to and fro. Grannie nodded. \"Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in the lower hold are probably exposed to a tholpane plate and their radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process.\" Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the Green Flames are more accessible.\" In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore. Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal\n\n<question>:\nWhat is true about Doctor Universe?\n\n<options>:\nA His audience reacts so well to him because much of the population is under the influence of Green Flame.\nB He knows about the whereabouts of Green Flame and is hiding it from Grannie Annie.\nC There is nothing of note to him. He is just a popular TV personaility.\nD He is using Green Flame himsel to influence his audience and force them to watch. He is the one who stole it.\n\n<answer>:\n", "assistant": "A" } ]