TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.
PROBLEM: Passage: In January 1980, Michael Stipe met Peter Buck in Wuxtry Records, the Athens record store where Buck worked. The pair discovered that they shared similar tastes in music, particularly in punk rock and protopunk artists like Patti Smith, Television, and the Velvet Underground. Stipe said, "It turns out that I was buying all the records that [Buck] was saving for himself." Through mutual friend Kathleen O'Brien, Stipe and Buck then met fellow University of Georgia students Mike Mills and Bill Berry, who had played music together since high school and lived together in Georgia. The quartet agreed to collaborate on several songs; Stipe later commented that "there was never any grand plan behind any of it". Their still-unnamed band spent a few months rehearsing in a deconsecrated Episcopal church in Athens, and played its first show on April 5, 1980, supporting The Side Effects at O'Brien's birthday party held in the same church, performing a mix of originals and 1960s and 1970s covers. After considering Twisted Kites, Cans of Piss, and Negro Eyes, the band settled on "R.E.M." (which is an acronym for rapid eye movement, the dream stage of sleep), which Stipe selected at random from a dictionary.The band members eventually dropped out of school to focus on their developing group. They found a manager in Jefferson Holt, a record store clerk who was so impressed by an R.E.M. performance in his hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that he moved to Athens. R.E.M.'s success was almost immediate in Athens and surrounding areas; the band drew progressively larger crowds for shows, which caused some resentment in the Athens music scene. Over the next year and a half, R.E.M. toured throughout the Southern United States. Touring was arduous because a touring circuit for alternative rock bands did not then exist. The group toured in an old blue van driven by Holt, and lived on a food allowance of $2 each per day.During April 1981, R.E.M. recorded its first single, "Radio Free Europe", at producer Mitch Easter's Drive-In Studios in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Initially distributing it as a four-track demo tape to clubs, record labels and magazines, the single was released in July 1981 on the local independent record label Hib-Tone with an initial pressing of 1,000 copies—600 of which were sent out as promotional copies. The single quickly sold out, and another 6,000 copies were pressed due to popular demand, despite the original pressing leaving off the record label's contact details. Despite its limited pressing, the single garnered critical acclaim, and was listed as one of the ten best singles of the year by The New York Times.

SOLUTION: What is the name of the single distributed on the band by a four-track demo at clubs?

PROBLEM: Passage: The 1896 French colonisation of Madagascar brought an end to the rule of the Merina sovereigns. The Rova of Antananarivo was converted into a museum the following year, and the Fitomiandalana tombs were excavated and moved to a new location behind the tombs of Radama I and Rasoherina. The bodies of sovereigns previously interred in the royal tombs at Ambohimanga were exhumed and transferred to the tombs in the Rova grounds, a sacrilegious move that degraded the status of Ambohimanga as a site of sacred pilgrimage. According to Frémigacci (1999), French colonial administrator General Joseph Gallieni undertook this desacralisation of the Rova in an attempt to break popular belief in the power of the royal ancestors. By the same token, his actions relegated Malagasy sovereignty under the Merina rulers to a relic of an unenlightened past.  The desecration of the two most sacred sites of Merina royalty represented a calculated political move intended to establish the political and cultural superiority of the colonial power.Following independence the Rova compound remained largely closed to the public throughout the First (1960–1972) and Second (1975–1992) Republics except on special occasions.  In 1995, three years into the Third Republic (1992–2010), the Rova compound was destroyed by fire. The tombs, chapel, exterior of Manjakamiadina and two traditional wooden houses (Besakana and Mahitsy) have since been restored with further restorations planned to continue until at least 2013.

SOLUTION: What was the last name of the person whose actions relegated Malagasy sovereingnty under the Merina rulers to a relic of an unenlightened past>?

PROBLEM: Passage: Critical opinion as to the merit of The Oceanides has been overwhelmingly positive, and today the piece is counted among Sibelius's masterpieces. Following the 1914 premiere, Olin Downes, the American music critic and Sibelius devotee, described the new work as "the finest evocation of the sea which has ever been produced in music", praising the composer for his "extraordinarily developed feeling for form, proportion and continuity". Downes furthermore assessed Sibelius's Norfolk concert as just the third time since 1900 that he had "felt himself in the presence of a genius of world class" (the other two being Richard Strauss in 1904 and Arturo Toscanini in 1910). An unsigned review in the New York Tribune (almost certainly penned by critic Henry Krehbiel) found the new work "fresh and vital, full of imagination and strong in climax". He continues:
Extremists will probably deplore the fact that the composer is still a respecter of form, still a devotee of beauty, still a believer in the potency of melody; but this is rather a matter for congratulation than regret ... Mr. Sibelius is a fine musical constructionist, an eloquent harmonist and a fine colorist despite his fondness for dark tints.
The influential Swedish critic Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, always a thorn in Sibelius's side and whom the composer had once mocked as "his lordship", required some three encounters with The Oceanides before warming to the new symphonic poem: after hearing the Stockholm Concert Society under Sibelius in 1923, Peterson-Berger at last embraced the piece. "The Oceanides was totally and completely different from three years ago under Schnéevoigt", he wrote. "In this beautiful poem one really heard something of the sound of the Aegean Sea and of Homer".

SOLUTION:
What is the name of the person that was described as a genius of world class?