My love affair with technology began at an early age. On my seventh birthday, my parents bought me a second-hand ZX Spectrum and, in a foretaste of my life to come, I immediately set about learning how to use it to get attention. It's a sign of how rapidly technology develops that my crappy Spectrum, with its 48k of memory, already had 12k more storage power than the computer that had guided the Apollo 11 moon landing eighteen years earlier* With power like that, there seemed to be no limit to what I could do. While my other computer-owning peers would sit for hours while their tape drives squawked away loading 'Manic Miner' or 'Bubble Buster' I was more fascinated by learning to write my own programs. The first of these consisted of just two lines of code* that made the word 'shit' appear again and again on my screen, to the huge amusement of my friends and the irritation of my parents, who obviously had more educational motives for bringing a computer into the house. From that day on, the possibilities offered by technology to both subvert the norm and get attention had me hooked. Years later, at secondary school, I convinced my English teacher, Mr Coen, to teach me desktop publishing, ostensibly to work on the official school magazine, but in reality to produce an alternative underground version - complete with less than flattering articles about teachers and fellow pupils and distributed via the publicly accessible shared hard drive that was supposed to be used for collaborative coursework. That particular stunt got me banned from the school computer room for half a term. And then, in 1997, I discovered the Internet. Throughout history, every fame-hungry media dickhead has found his preferred medium for pursuing fame and wealth (in that order). For Tony Parsons - and Hitler, for that matter - it was books. William Randolph Hearst chose newspapers. Don Imus and Howard Stern preferred radio. For Nick Griffin it's inflammatory leaflets. For Tracy Emin it's art. Or at least an approximation of it. With the... Question: How did Hitler find his preferred medium for pursuing fame and wealth, according to the text? === The answer to the above question is
OPTIONS:
- letters
- Books
- leaflets
- not enough information
Books

Back in middle school, at least I think it was, I had art class. I didn't particularly love it but it was interesting enough at the least to hold my attention. We got to class and the teacher pulled up a list of instructions on the projector. She had each of us follow the instructions and she gave us 20 minutes to complete all of them. It may even have been a bit of a race too, to see who finished it first. This becomes a lot more evident in a second. I can't recall the exact details of the instructions, except that clearly it had to do with art such as having to draw a bunch of things. Anyways, we all went one by one down the instructions getting increasing nervous as to try to be the first one to finish. The class goes quiet while we work. Then I get to the last instruction which reads something along the lines of: "Step 15: Skip steps 114 and put your pencil down." You gotta be freaking kidding me. We're all so confused and mad at ourselves for not reading the whole of the instructions first. She turned this into a lesson for how we need to learn to read all the instructions first and then start, which was pretty clever. She got us! I remember this vividly to this day. But I look back now on this "prank" and I realize that she was kind ofwrong. Sure if the instructions are short like 15 steps it might be good to glance through before you start. But what about a whole load of instructions? Who the hell is going to read through the instructions for how to build their Death Star LEGO set before even starting to build it. Just a waste of time really. Note: I have never built a Death Star LEGO set. Question: How does the author feel about the value of the teacher's prank to the students? === The answer to the above question is
OPTIONS:
- The prank backfired and the teacher was taught a lesson
- The prank taught a good lesson
- The prank was wrong and did not teach a lesson
- not enough information

Answer: The prank was wrong and did not teach a lesson

North Korea's release of three U.S. citizens may help pave the way for talks between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, but questions remain as to whether those talks will succeed. At the White House on Wednesday, Trump continued to speak cautiously about the coming summit, even while praising the North Korean leader for the prisoner release. "Everything can be scuttled," Trump told reporters. "A lot of things can happen a lot of good things can happen, [and] a lot of bad things can happen." North Korea on Wednesday granted amnesty to three Americans of Korean descent. They had been accused of espionage or trying to overthrow the government, charges widely seen as bogus. Pyongyang has detained at least 16 Americans over the past two decades, often attempting to use them as bargaining chips. All were eventually released, although Otto Warmbier, a 22-year-old college student, died shortly after returning to the United States last year. A White House statement Wednesday praised North Korea's latest prisoner release as a "positive gesture of goodwill" ahead of the Trump-Kim summit, which is expected to take place as soon as next month. South Korea's presidential office said Pyongyang's decision was a "very positive" sign for a successful North Korea-U.S. meeting. The freeing of the prisoners coincided with a visit to Pyongyang by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who declined to say whether the release was a U.S. precondition for holding talks with the North. "I don't know the answer to that," Pompeo told reporters on the flight home. "It would have been more difficult [had the prisoners not been released]. ... I'm glad that we don't have to confront that." It's not clear what, if anything, the U.S. gave up in exchange for the prisoners. It's not even clear a concession was needed, since North Korea has for decades sought the presumed legitimacy provided by a summit with a sitting U.S. president. Question: What is probably true about the 16 Americans released over the past two decades? === The answer to the above question is
OPTIONS:
- the Americans released probably still have haunting memories of being prisoners
- the Americans released probably have forgotten about their imprisonment
- not enough information
- The Americans want to return for a visit to North Korea as they've moved on
the Americans released probably still have haunting memories of being prisoners