conversation_id int64 1 2.52k | category stringclasses 1 value | conversation list |
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994 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nscreamed out to him in a thick, harsh cackle. Yet even as he screamed, relentlessly toward him. He awoke still screaming.... A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a question already formed in his mind. Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the She sat on the chair beside him. \"My husband,\" she said softly. He began to understand. \"And your husband needs an astrogator? That's \"Who is he?\" why you saved me?\" \"Where is he?\" there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen, She cocked her head in mock suspicion. \"Somewhere between Mercury and Pluto. He's building a new base for us—and a home for me. When his \"Why aren't you with him now?\" \"We need all the good men we can get.\" Ben looked down. \"I'm American,\" Ben muttered. wanted by the Bureau, but we make honest livings. We're just people like yourself and Jacob.\" \"Jacob? Your husband?\" She laughed. \"Makes you think of a Biblical character, doesn't it? Jacob's anything but that. And just plain 'Jake' reminds one of a to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects \"Don't the authorities object?\" \"Not very strongly. The I. B. I. has too many problems right here to Ben shook his head. He thought, She pursed her lips. \"But if they guessed how strong we are or that we Ben scowled. \"What happens if there The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for your own.\" Ben stiffened. \"And that's why you want me for an astrogator.\" Maggie rose, her eyes wistful. \"If you want to come—and if you get well.\" She looked at him strangely. \"Suppose—\" He fought to find the right words. \"Suppose I got well and Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO Her thin face was criss-crossed by emotion—alarm, then bewilderment, then fear. \"I don't know. That would be up to Jacob.\" unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard that had coursed through her. they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine. , Ben told himself. The officer passed. Ben breathed easier. Honesty, loyalty, duty. Trite words, but without those concepts, Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead, Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows? would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago. forgotten grandeur. For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead felt the challenge of new worlds? the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man. about forty and he hated spacemen. Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a part of Ben as sight in his eyes. Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate. Ben smiled. \"If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here.\" Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white, At the age of five—perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents' death in a recent strato-jet crash—he'd spent hours watching the night At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys The guy's drunk , Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and without warning, it welled up into savage fury. Ben knew that he was dead. Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as, a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger. Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision. red-bearded giant. , Ben reflected, There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant, and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once. \"This isn't my first night here,\" Ben lied. \"I've been around a while.\" Ben didn't answer. Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy. A sense of hopelessness gripped Ben Curtis. Hoover City was but one of reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The Like the uniform of a Security Policeman, he thought. wheel with Ben as their focal point. Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded, Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward, Ben's direction. Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into A hissing sound traveled past his left ear, a sound like compressed air ahead of him crumbled. He stumbled forward. They were using deadly neuro-pistols now, not the , his brain screamed. He froze as if yanked to a stop by a noose. His body seemed to be growing, swelling into balloon proportions. He knew that the tiny needle had imbedded itself deep in his flesh, knew that the paralyzing body overpowered him. Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that \"You want to escape—even now?\" \"You may die if you don't give yourself up.\" \"I'm sure,\" Ben managed to say. His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection, within half a day. Without treatment, the paralysis could spread to weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender He didn't hear the answer or anything else. Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to nothingness to a dream-like state of awareness. He felt the pressure of hands on his naked arms and shoulders, sensitivity. He knew they were strong hands. Their strength seemed to But he heard someone say, \"Don't try to talk.\" It was the same gentle voice he'd heard in the Blast Inn. \"Don't talk. Just lie still and There were long periods of lethargy when he was aware of nothing. There Better , he'd think. \"Why?\" in readiness. He shook his head, not wanting it. \"Why?\" he asked again. A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness. She increased the pressure in his rubberex pillows and helped him rise to a sitting position. \"Where are we?\" he asked. \"Venus.\" He looked at her, wondering. \"You won't tell me?\" can be had for a price.\" \"You'll tell me your name?\" \"Maggie.\" \"Why did you save me?\" Her eyes twinkled mischievously. \"Because you're a good astrogator.\" His own eyes widened. \"How did you know that?\" Fascinated, Ben nodded. because you're alive. Rest now. We'll talk again soon.\" \"Maggie, you—you said I'd live. You didn't say I'd be able to walk again.\" \"But you don't think I will, do you?\" He tried to relax, but his mind was a vortex of conjecture. ask that? Finally she said, \"He had a wife.\" \"Children?\" \"Two. I don't know their ages.\" Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and\n\n<question>:\nWhat does Ben seem to fear, more than anything else?\n\n<options>:\nA The law, and atoning for his crime.\nB Losing his position and the chance to fly spaceships.\nC The dead man, and the way he persists in his mind.\nD Maggie and her husband, and the position they've put him in.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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2,454 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nnaturally aren't as big a liar as they are. And it looks like that's just what they've done. It wouldn't make any difference to them The place was dark and damp, and smelled like moldy leaves. make them believe it.\" Zeckler frowned. \"And how do they regard the—the biggest dead, musty air with distaste. He drew his carefully tailored Terran-styled jacket closer about his shoulders, shivering as his Zeckler was on his feet, his eyes suddenly bright with excitement. Zeckler's eyes flashed, and a huge grin broke out on his \"No, no, I've got a problem in the bag!\" Zeckler's cheeks \"Look, Zeckler, the name is Meyerhoff, and I'm not your and the judge banged the gavel for silence. As soon as Zeckler gaunt face of the prisoner. Zeckler's face was dark with a The judge stared down at Zeckler as if he were a bug on a a little. \"So Harry Zeckler's in a jam again,\" he said. Zeckler looked sharply around the hushed room. \"You want \" Zeckler's eyes widened. \"What do you mean, fool? So I All Earthmen are absolutely incapable of telling the truth. \" Puzzled frowns appeared on the jury's faces. One or two to soak in. And then pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. \"Really,\" said Harry Zeckler loftily, \"it was so obvious I'm walk in here with a shaky passport and no permit, with no knowledge of the natives outside of two paragraphs of inaccuracies in the Explorer's Guide, and even then you're not content to come in and sell something legitimate, something the natives might conceivably be able to use. No, nothing so \" You mean I'm not being extradited? \" Meyerhoff grinned unpleasantly. \"I mean precisely that. You've committed a crime here—a major crime. The Altairians that they simply could not cope with. Something that would throw them into such utter confusion that they wouldn't dare natives are out to get you. Personally, I think they're going to get you.\" Zeckler stood up shakily. \"You can't believe anything the are sore about it. And the Terran Consulate isn't willing me go.\" \"A little fine of one Terran neck.\" Meyerhoff grinned nastily. \"You've committed the most heinous crime these creatures can lying they never have run up against a short-circuit like that. You've also completely botched any hope of ever setting up imagine, and they're going to get you for it if it's the last thing Zeckler's grin broadened, and he leaned back luxuriously. Zeckler fished in the other man's pocket, extracted a cigarette, they do. I'm afraid, my friend, that your con-man days are Commission, that's all. I wouldn't get tangled up in a mess with those creatures for anything!\" He shook his head. \"You're lint fleck from his lapel, and looked up at Zeckler slyly. \"That—uh—jury Zeckler went white. \"But that money was in banking custody!\" little con-man. \"And incidentally, you're under arrest, you know.\" A choking sound came from Zeckler's throat. \" Arrest! \" \"Oh, yes. Didn't I tell you? Conspiring to undermine the authority of the Terran Trading Commission. Serious charge, Zeckler spluttered. \"There's no evidence—you've got nothing I don't think you'll get off.\" Zeckler puffed nervously on his cigarette, his narrow face Transcriber's Note: spreading his hands. \"Everybody's doing it. They do it to each other without batting an eye. You should see Terran gag about the Brooklyn Bridge? The same thing. Only these critters didn't want bridges. They wanted land—this rights almost as soon as they're born. Anything goes, as long as it benefits them as individuals.\" Meyerhoff grinned at the little man's horrified face. \"Never course they're liars, with an economy like that. They've completely missed the concept of truth. Pathological? You bet they're pathological! Only a fool would tell the truth when his life depended on his being a better liar than the next guy! Lying is the time-honored tradition, with their entire legal system built around it.\" Zeckler snorted. \"But how could they went out and found a chunk of ground in the uplands, and sold it to a dozen separate, self-centered, half-starved natives! Encroachment on private property is legal grounds for murder on this planet, and twelve of them descended on the same Zeckler was visibly shaken. \"Look,\" he said weakly, \"so I with seats facing the bench. Zeckler followed the shaggy-haired Altairians attempted to push through the door at once. Zeckler prosecutor eyed Zeckler with cold malevolence, then turned down at Zeckler with all three eyes, and pounded the bench top judge's voice roared out, \"against one Harry Zeckler—\" he pounded the bench five or six times more. \"This—creature—is hereby accused of the following crimes,\" the judge bellowed. \"Conspiracy to overthrow the government of Altair I. Brutal murder of seventeen law-abiding citizens of the village of Goddess Zermat, Queen of the Harvest. Conspiracy with the lesser gods to cause the unprecedented drought in the Dermatti section of our fair globe. Obscene exposure of his pouch-marks in a public square. Four separate and distinct charges of jail-break and bribery—\" The judge pounded the bench for order—\"Espionage a puppet on a string. \"Defendant found guilty on all counts,\" he said. \"Defendant is guilty! The court will pronounce sentence—\" \" \" Zeckler was on his feet, wild-eyed. Zeckler leaned over, his face ashen. \"These charges,\" he to scratch his ear. Then he replaced it, and replied, \"Of course,\" in an injured tone. \"Then tell this court what you have seen of the activities of Zeckler's face, another on the prosecutor, and closing the third Zeckler—\"stopped me in my tracks with a vicious cry. He had \"Objection!\" Zeckler squealed plaintively, jumping to his The witness glowered at Zeckler. \"As I was saying before for Terrans. Note the shape of his head, the flabbiness of his ears. I was petrified with fear. And then, helpless as I was, this two-legged abomination began to shower me with threats of evil to my blessed home, dark threats of poisoning my land \"I never saw him before in my life,\" Zeckler moaned to \"Of course it isn't! Can't you understand? These people have no regard for truth. low intelligence. The only thing in the world they have any respect for is a liar bigger and more skillful than they are.\" Zeckler jerked around abruptly as he heard his name bellowed \"Do I have—\" Zeckler was across the room in a flash, his \"Your lives, your land, everything you hold dear,\" Zeckler There was a loud hiss from the back of the court. Zeckler guffawed, until the rising tide of racket drowned out Zeckler's Zeckler grew paler. \"But—perhaps they were very clever—\" dare to insult her, drag her name in the dirt.\" him!\" and \"Scald his bowels!\" rose from the courtroom. The judge banged for silence, his eyes angry. \"Unless the defendant wishes to take up more of our precious Somehow, Zeckler managed to stumble from the witness Zeckler puffed hungrily on a cigarette, and looked up at Zeckler sat in silence for a moment. \"This lying business,\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat crime has Zeckler committed to warrant imprisonment?\n\n<options>:\nA embezzlement\nB fraud\nC encroachment\nD indecent exposure\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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620 | quality | [
{
"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[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The job was easy. The profit was enormous. The only trouble was—the cargo had a will of its own! Captain Hannah climbed painfully down from the Delta Crucis , hobbled across the spaceport to where Beulah and I were waiting to greet him and hit me in the eye. Beulah—that's his elephant, but I have to take care of her for him because Beulah's baby belongs to me and Beulah has to take care of it—kept us apart until we both cooled down a little. Then, although still somewhat dubious about it, she let us go together across the field to the spaceport bar. I didn't ask Captain Hannah why he had socked me. Although he has never been a handsome man, he usually has the weathered and austere dignity that comes from plying the remote reaches among the stars. Call it the Look of Eagles. Captain Hannah had lost he had tangled with a hive of misanthropic bees. The gold-braided hat of his trade was not clamped in its usual belligerent position slightly over one eye. It was riding high on his head, apparently held up by tell me about it?\" I decided that his wince was intended for a nod, and ordered rhial. I only drink rhial when I've been exposed to Captain Hannah. It was almost a pleasure to think that I him He lapsed back into silence after this uncharacteristic admission. I almost felt sorry for him, but just then Beulah came racking across the field with her two-ton infant in tow, to show her off to Hannah. I walled off my pity. He had foisted those two maudlin mastodons off onto me in one of our earlier deals, and if I had somehow been responsible for his present troubles, it was no more than he deserved. I rated anxiously, after the elephants had been admired and sent back home. The success of that venture—even if the job had turned out to be more difficult than we had expected—meant an enormous profit to both of The Myporians were usually, and understandably, bitterly, opposed to letting any of the living plants get shipped off their planet. But when I offered them a sizable piece of cash plus a perpetual share of the they relented and, for the first time in history, gave their assent. In fact, they had seemed delighted. \"I got them there safely,\" said Captain Hannah. \"And they are growing all right?\" I persisted. \"When I left, marocca was growing like mad,\" said Captain Hannah. I relaxed and leaned back in my chair. I no longer felt the need of rhial for myself. \"Tell me about it,\" I suggested. \"You'll remember that I warned you that we should take some marocca out into space and solve any problems we might find before committing ourselves to hauling a full load of it?\" asked Captain Hannah. \"We couldn't,\" I protested. \"The Myporians gave us a deadline. If to do under all possible circumstances.\" \"Sure. Written in Myporian. A very difficult language to translate. , but I figured it was safer to let him tell me in his and they can only take a few extra hours of night time before they run down.\" \"Oh,\" said Captain Hannah in quiet tones of controlled desperation, \"it one of them. You that or suicide. I had begun to get the feeling that they were stalking me. So I drew a blank.\" \"Not yet,\" said Captain Hannah. \"Like you, I figured I had the situation fairly well under control, but like you, I hadn't thought things through. The plastic membranes hadn't torn when we brought the \"They were a tiny skeeter-like thing. A sort of midge or junior grade mosquito. They had apparently been swimming in the water during their larval stage. Instead of making cocoons for themselves, they snipped tiny little pieces of plastic to use as protective covers in the pupal stage. I guess they were more like butterflies than mosquitoes in their habits. And now they were mature. \"There were thousands and thousands of them, and each one of them made a tiny, maddening whine as it flew.\" fumigation system is designed to work with the fumigator off the ship, It was on page eleven that it mentioned casually that the midges—the correct word is carolla—are a necessary part of the life cycle of the with me during the fumigation process. I immediately tried to start a breeding ground for midges, but the midges didn't seem to want to cooperate. Whatever I tried to do, they came back to me. I was the only thing they seemed to love. I didn't dare bathe, or scratch, or even wriggle, for fear of killing more of them. And they kept on itching. It was to me. \"The mothlike things—they are called dingleburys—also turn out to first time around. \"And the reason they had the same life cycle as the carolla was that the adult dinglebury will eat only the adult carolla, and it has to fill itself full to bursting before it will reproduce. If I had the translation done correctly, they were supposed to dart gracefully around, catching carolla on the wing and stuffing themselves happily. \"I had to find out what was wrong with my awkward dingleburys. And together with the Coriolis effect and all, makes the poor dingleburys dizzy, so they can't catch carolla. seem to be having any trouble, but was acting like the book said it capturing her prey by sound alone. who is captain of his own ship.\" I must say that I agreed with him, but it seemed to be a good time for me to keep my mouth shut. \"Well, after the dingleburys had eaten and propagated, they became inquisitive. They explored the whole ship, going into places I wouldn't carolla left to join me outside. said that the dingleburys continued to be of importance, and then I'm at least watch one hours, after the blossoms appear and are visited by the dingleburys. No other to the point where they curled up and died, and I had to do it gently , surrounded by a bunch of worried dingleburys. \"While they were having their orgy, I caught up on my reading. It get the plants out of the ship. And I was a little anxious to get my Delta Crucis naturally, which takes several months. like a lady. set the customs inspectors to sneezing and swearing more than seemed reasonable at the time.\" Captain Hannah inhaled a sip of rhial, and seemed to be enjoying the powerful stuff. He acted as if he thought he had finished. shape, weren't they?\" Hannah nodded. \"They were growing luxuriously.\" He nodded his head a couple of more times, in spite of the discomfort it must have given him. \"Gloryanna III is the original home planet of marocca. They hated the stuff, of course, but they liked the profit. Then, when a plague almost wiped out the dingleburys, they introduced khorram furs as a cash crop. It wasn't as lucrative, but it was so much more pleasant that to Mypore II. He took his time, did it without any trouble and made his \"They'll send you the bill. They don't figure it will take them more than a few months to complete the job.\" Captain Hannah stopped talking and stood up, painfully and a little unsteadily.\n\n<question>:\nWho is Beula and what is her connection to the narrator?\n\n<options>:\nA Beula is the narrator’s pet elephant. Her baby belongs to Captain Hannah, linking the two men even though they don’t like each other.\nB Beula is Captain Hannah’s pet elephant. The narrator sold her Captain Hannah years ago, leading to a business relationship between the two men.\nC Beula is Captain Hannah’s pet elephant. Her baby belongs to the narrator, linking the captain and the narrator.\nD Beula is the narrator’s pet elephant. Her baby was sold to Captain Hannah, which led to a business relationship between the two men.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,952 | quality | [
{
"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 saucer was interesting, but where was the delegate? was clear. No one moved DELEGATE from their position. VENUS \"Your poor face,\" she murmured, what the delegate from Venus biggest surprise since David Jerry Bridges, sitting in the \"Greetings from Venus,\" it said, and then repeated the phrase in six languages. \"The ship you see is a Venusian Class Jerry couldn't identify stepped human again.\" that's not only indiscreet, Bridges. It's downright dirty.\" Jerry deduced that it must have Jerry grinned. \"I didn't take will find our delegate within. its gray plastic material giving in readily to the application of their tools. But when it was opened, they stood aside in amazement and consternation. There were a variety of metal pieces packed within, protected \"I haven't the faintest idea.\" \"Don't kid me, Mr. Conners. Think it's war?\" \"That'll be all, Bridges.\" of it, Jerry Bridges, I'll never \"'Instructions for assembling Delegate,'\" he read aloud. \"'First, remove all parts and arrange them in the following order. A-1, central nervous system contained the gossip-column to build the damn thing.\" The Delegate, a handsomely item which had started the more interested in the romantic rather than political implications. who seemed to find the Venusian instructions as elementary as a Jerry growled. simple as the job was, they were obviously impressed by the mechanism they had assembled. It stood impassive until they blueprint in an Erector set. But \"Where's your decorum?\" they ought to get the Secret will hang in your night sky from after the landing that Jerry Bridges saw the Delegate again. No one told him his destination, Jerry looked up from his foreign minister's debate. And the cause of it all, a placid, highly-polished metal robot, was seated blithely at a desk which meeting without benefit of long VENUS. had that effect upon men. Even the confining effect of a mannishly-tailored suit didn't hide her outrageously feminine qualities. She walked straight to his reasons. Greta Johnson The robot delegate stood up. table, and he stood up. Delegate from a great neighbor planet, in the interests of peace and progress for all the solar system. I come in the belief that out. He ran after her, the restaurant have hitherto had little desire to explore beyond our realm, being far too occupied with internal matters. But our isolation cannot last in the face of It's my job. I'd do it again if I thought you knew anything.\" Continue your struggle of ideas, compete with each other for the minds of men, fight your bloodless battles, if you know no other means to attain progress. But do all this without unleashing the terrible forces of power now at your command. Once unleashed, these forces may or may not destroy all that you of Venus, promise you this—that on the very day your conflict deteriorates into heedless violence, we will not stand by and let the ugly contagion \"Did I say that?\" Venus will act swiftly, mercilessly, and relentlessly—to destroy your world completely.\" Again, the meeting room exploded \"It just won't be any use. spread. On that day, we of motherly gesture. peace. But envision it, men of Earth, as a messenger of war. Unstoppable, inexorable, it may return, bearing a different Delegate from Venus—a Delegate of Death, who speaks not in words, but in the explosion of atoms. \"Greta!\" \"But if you print one word fired from a vantage point far beyond the reach of your retaliation. This is the promise and the challenge that the planet Venus, men of Earth, and see a Goddess of Vengeance, poised to wreak its wrath upon those who betray the peace.\" this moment forward. Look at Four days later, a mysterious \"At first, they thought it was another sputnik.\" of Los Alamos, and the Venus hours after that, the robot delegate, \" and said: The Delegate sat down. ruin. The news flashed with lightning speed over the world, and Jerry Bridges' eyewitness accounts out what the damn thing was.\" of the incredible event \"Wait a minute,\" Jerry said \"Well, what's bothering the Delegate speak, something's \"About the Venusians, of \"I'm not worried about that. I think that damn robot did more for peace than anything that's ever come along in this cockeyed world. But still ...\" from Venus Don't you ever think of anything else? You should learn to relax. It can be fun.\" and Jerry responded the way a can land their delegate.\" \"Their delegate. They came \"What's the matter?\" \"I just thought of something! Now where the hell did I put my old notebooks?\" are their affairs, too. It's kind when he found the yellowed \"You mean these Venusians thinks that if we don't agree, they might do something drastic, like blow us all up. It's kind \"You're taking it mighty calm,\" he said ironically. \"Well, how else can I take it? I'm not even supposed to Jerry had walked across the Five minutes later, Jerry is so careless about—\" She put her fingers to her lips. \"Oh, heading for the ivy-choked main building. It was remarkable \"Terrible? I think you're wonderful!\" dear, now you'll really think I'm how little had changed, but \"Didn't I say I wouldn't?\" \"Y-e-s. But you know, you're the students seemed incredibly \"And you promise not to print terrible.\" a massive woman with gray hair and impervious to Jerry felt decrepit, but managed Jerry entered, except for the Jerry remembered. He was a blinked when Jerry said: me? Jerry Bridges?\" the Delegate speak. I didn't \"What do you mean, Jerry?\" \"There was something about the Robot's speech that sounded Jerry, and snapped: He unfolded it and read aloud. \"'It's my belief that peace is the responsibility of individuals, of nations, and someday, even of that's flying around—\" His words brought an exclamation I said, Jerry.\" by the Delegate from Venus.\" that secrecy is essential, that leakage of the story might cause panic. Since you're the only unauthorized person who knows of it, we have two choices. One of \"Is it? But I also remember your interest in robotics. I'll never forget that mechanical Jerry?\" about a group of teachers, scientists, and engineers, a group who were suddenly struck by an exciting, incredible idea. A group that worked in the quiet and secrecy of a University on a fantastic scheme to force the idea of peace into the minds of the world's big shots. Does my She was pouting now. \"Well, \"Here, then, is our challenge. \"You mean the spaceship's coming down?\" radio message to earth from the reached to accept the delegate. cone, seemingly as if it originated Then, when the Robot was assembled, they would speak through it to demand peace for all mankind ...\" \"Jerry, if you do this—\" \"You don't have to say it, from their 'spaceship.' The USAF jet transport wasn't the only secrecy-shrouded aircraft that took off that evening But Jerry Bridges, sitting in As far as I'm concerned, what I told you was nothing more than a daydream.\" Jerry braked the convertible \"And to think what that terrible planet can do to us!\" \"Oh, I dunno. Venus is also the Goddess of Love.\" were sleek, purring black autos desert road, until Jerry sighted waiting to rush the air passengers but it was well-ordered and unhurried. They had done a good job of keeping the excitement became a growl that increased in volume until even the shouting voices could no longer be heard. Then the crisscrossing lights struck metal, glancing off the gleaming body of a descending hit, a dust cloud obscured it from sight. A loudspeaker blared out an unintelligible order, but its message\n\n<question>:\nWhat ultimately revealed the true identity of the Venusian delegate to Jerry?\n\n<options>:\nA It's opening monologue\nB The origin of its materials\nC Notes that Greta stole from a source\nD Its style of self-destruction\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,969 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nOne can't be too cautious about the people one meets in Tangier. They're all weirdies of one kind or another. The drag of the westernized part of you can go from an ultra-modern, California-like resort to the It's quite a town, Tangier. while getting paper's read, sip your expresso and watch the people go by. Tangier is possibly the most cosmopolitan city in the world. In native costume you'll see Levantines and Filipinos, North and, of course, even Europeans—from both sides of the In Tangier you'll find some of the world's poorest and some of the richest. The poorest will try to sell you anything from a shoeshine to their not very lily-white bodies, and the richest will avoid your eyes, afraid you might try to sell them something. In spite of recent changes, the town still has its unique qualities. As a result of them the permanent population includes smugglers and black-marketeers, fugitives from justice and international con men, espionage and counter-espionage agents, homosexuals, nymphomaniacs, alcoholics, drug addicts, displaced persons, ex-royalty, and subversives of every flavor. Local law limits the activities of few of these. crowded and since mine was a face he recognized, he assumed he was welcome to intrude. It was more or less standard procedure exports. \"What's in the newspaper?\" he said, disinterestedly. \"Pogo and Albert are going to fight a duel,\" I told him, \"and Lil Abner is becoming a rock'n'roll singer.\" He grunted. \"Oh,\" I said, \"the intellectual type.\" I scanned the front page. \"The Russkies have put up \"They have, eh? How big?\" \"Several times bigger than anything we Americans have.\" The beer came and looked to those poxy flying saucers?\" \"What flying saucers?\" A French girl went by with a as though it'd been shaven. The was seeing a few years ago. It's too bad one of these bloody manned satellites wasn't up then. Maybe they would've seen one.\" well, but, for that matter, it's comparatively seldom you ever in Tangier. Largely, cards are in the States. Just to say something, I said, \"Where do you think they came from?\" And when he looked blank, I added, \"The Flying Saucers.\" He grinned. \"From Mars or Venus, or someplace.\" \"Ummmm,\" I said. \"Too bad none of them ever crashed, or , or something.\" was always the trouble with those crackpot blokes' explanations of them. If they were aliens from It'd been cooked in rancid olive oil. I said, \"Oh, there are various answers to that one. We could probably sit around here and think of two or three that made sense.\" \"Like what?\" \"Well, hell, suppose for instance there's this big Galactic League of civilized planets. But it's restricted, see. You're not eligible the club. Meanwhile, they send secret missions down from time to time to keep an eye on your progress.\" read the same poxy stuff I do.\" A Moorish girl went by dressed in a neatly tailored gray jellaba, European style high-heeled shoes, and a pinkish silk veil so transparent that you after her. I said, \"Or, here's another one. Suppose you have a very advanced civilization on, say, Mars.\" \"Not Mars. No air, and too bloody dry to support life.\" \"Don't interrupt, please,\" I said with mock severity. \"This is a very old civilization and as the planet began to lose its Uses hydroponics and so forth, husbands its water and air. Isn't that what we'd do, in a few million years, if Earth lost its water and air?\" what about them?\" \"Well, they observe how man is going through a scientific boom, an industrial boom, a population boom. A boom, period. Any day now he's going to have practical space ships. Meanwhile, not against using it, if he could get away with it.\" Paul said, \"I got it. So they're scared and are keeping an eye on that a dozen times, dished up different.\" I shifted my shoulders. \"Well, it's one possibility.\" \"I got a better one. How's this. There's this alien life form that's way ahead of us. Their civilization is so old that they don't have any records of when early days. They've gone beyond things like wars and depressions and revolutions, and greed for power or any of these things giving us a bad time here on Earth. They're all like scholars, get it? And some of them are pretty jolly well taken by Earth, especially the way we are right now, with all the problems, get it? Things developing so fast we don't know where we're going or how we're going to get there.\" you mean, where we're going ?\" \"Well, take half the countries in the world today. They're trying to industrialize, modernize, catch up with the advanced countries. and India and China, and Yugoslavia and Brazil, and all the rest. Trying to drag themselves up to the level of the advanced countries, and all using different at the so-called advanced countries. Up to their bottoms in problems. Juvenile delinquents, climbing crime and suicide rates, the loony-bins full of the balmy, unemployed, threat of war, spending all their money on armaments instead of things like schools. All the bloody mess of Paul said seriously, \"You know, there's only one big snag in this sort of talk. I've sorted the whole thing out before, and you always come up against this observers, or scholars, or spies or whatever they are? Sooner or later we'd nab one of them. You know, Scotland Yard, or the F.B.I., or Russia's secret police, or the French Sûreté, or Interpol. This world is so deep in police, counter-espionage outfits and security agents that an alien would slip up in time, no matter how much he'd been trained. Sooner or later, he'd slip up, and they'd nab him.\" I shook my head. \"Not necessarily. The first time I ever considered this possibility, it seemed to me that such an alien would base himself in London or New the magazines. Be right in the center of things. But now I don't think so. I think he'd be right here in Tangier.\" \"Why Tangier?\" \"It's the one town in the world where anything goes. Nobody gives a damn about you or your affairs. For instance, I've known you a year or more now, and I haven't the slightest idea of how you make your living.\" \"That's right,\" Paul admitted. can be British, a White Russian, a Basque or a Sikh and nobody \"California,\" I told him. \"No, you're not,\" he grinned. I was taken aback. \"What do you mean?\" the F.B.I. possibly flushing an alien. Telepathy is a sense not trained by the humanoids. If they had it, your job—and mine—would be considerably more difficult. Let's face it, in spite of these human bodies we're disguised in, neither of us is We had a laugh and ordered another beer. \"What're you doing here on meat trusts. We're protein eaters. Humanoid flesh is considered quite a delicacy. How about you?\" \"Scouting the place for thrill tourists. My job is to go around to these backward cultures and help stir up inter-tribal, or international, conflicts—all according to how advanced they are. Then our tourists come in—well shielded, of course—and get their kicks watching it.\" Paul frowned. \"That sort of practice could spoil an awful lot of good meat.\" THE END Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and\n\n<question>:\nThe Tangier law enforcement's response to the influx of new populations can best be described as ________.\n\n<options>:\nA Laissez-faire\nB Perfunctory\nC Authoritarian\nD Capricious\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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127 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nnot.\" By ROBERT ABERNATHY Earth set itself grimly to meet them with corrosive fire, determined to blast them \"Suppose we settle this argument about humanity,\" said Knof Llud changes that nine hundred years had wrought. \"Perhaps, if you realize your position, you will follow the intelligent example of the the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] most hopeful of the expeditions—and its captain had been a good friend sated with the sight of wonders—of multiple systems of giant stars, of nebulae that sprawled in empty flame across light years. But now unwonted excitement possessed the hundred-odd members of the Quest III's preferred suicide to defeat, and took his ship into the Sun.\" A short lie at the long journey's end. For the He grinned nastily at Knof Llud. \"Have you any other last wishes?\" was coming home the \"It is enough for you to know that you must die.\" the voyage's beginning eighty per cent of the fifteen-hundred-foot identified it—no more.\" were forgotten and exaltation prevailed. to make didn't matter anyway, and it might have spoiled this moment. he asked, \"How do you shrewdly, of Knof Jr. and Delza, who save from pictures could not He said, with a touch of tolerant amusement, \"What did you think might by— already set up on the calculator a course that would carry them to Llud nodded curt approval, remarking, \"Probably we'll be intercepted hesitantly. \"What kind of a reception do you suppose we'll get?\" Llud shook his head slowly. \"Who knows? We don't know whether any of the other found himself wishing that he could find some back-breaking task for everyone on board, himself included, to fill up the hours that remained. There was an extensive and well-chosen film library in the cabin, but he couldn't persuade himself to kill time that way. He could go down and watch the screens, or to the family apartment where he might find Lesra and the children—but somehow he didn't want to do that either. He felt empty, drained—like his ship. As the Quest III's and the hope of success in man's mightiest venture had dwindled, so the Perhaps, he thought, he was feeling the weight of his nine hundred built-in voice recorder and pigeonholes for records. There were about three dozen film spools there—his personal memoirs of the great expedition, a segment of his life and of history. He might add that to the ship's official log and its collections of scientific data, as a report to whatever powers might be on Earth now—if such powers were its spectrum, so like our own Sun's, beckons. If success comes there, a century will have passed before we can return to Earth friends, relatives, all the generation that launched the Quest ships will be long since dead. Nevertheless we go on. Our generation's dream, humanity's dream, lives in us and in the ship forever....\" Presently Knof Llud switched off that younger voice of his and leaned back, an ironic smile touching his lips. That fervent idealism seemed He rose, slipped the record back in its niche and picked out another, later, one. \"We face the unpleasant realization that what was feared is probably may complete our search without finding even one new Earth. \"It makes no difference, of course This may be man's last chance of escaping his pitiful limitation to and its two sisters, the immense expenditure of time and labor and exhausted. Only once in a long age does mankind rise to such a selfless or the war efforts of the nations in the last great conflicts of the the result of a population's outgrowing its room and resources, and Quests . Perhaps our effort will prove as futile as pyramid-building, less practical than orgies of slaughter to reduce pressure.... In any case, it would be impossible to transport very many people to other stars expanding limitlessly into the Universe.... \"Hopeless, unless we find planets!\" Knof Llud shook his head sorrowfully and took off the spool. That was from the time when he had grown philosophical after the first disappointments. He frowned thoughtfully, choosing one more spool that was only four longing.... \"We are in the heart of Pleiades \"According to plan, the \"But what are a few thousand stars in a galaxy of billions? We have only, as it were, visited a handful of the outlying villages of the Universe, while the lights of its great cities still blaze far ahead along the Milky Way. \"On flimsy excuses I have had Zost Relyul make observations of the could of aging too greatly. It would be a one-way journey—even if enough perhaps the human race itself, would have perished from memory. \"That was why the planners limited our voyage, and those of the other to the sociodynamic predictions made then, our civilization—if the other expeditions failed also—will have reached a dangerously unstable overpopulation. \"Why go back, then with the news of our failure? Why not forget about Earth and go on to Omega Centauri? What use is quixotic loyalty to a decree five thousand years old, whose makers are dead and which may be \"Would the crew be willing? I don't know—some of them still show signs of homesickness, though they know with their minds that everything that was once 'home' has probably been swept away.... The memory of that fierce impulse to go on still had power to shake him. A couple of lines of poetry came into his head, as he read them once in translation from the ancient English.... ... for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. Llud sighed. He still couldn't say just why he had given the order to Knof could go camping, and lie on their backs at night and gaze at the would want to do that, though. it seemed to falter one moment in flight. practical purposes invulnerable. then felt a curious detached relief at the knowledge that after all \"If they're that small,\" said Knof Llud deliberately, \"they can't carry seriousness and, without wasting time on questions, \"Can I go with you, huh, Dad?\" he had confidence in \"If they had anything heavier,\" surmised the captain, \"they'd have would be hard to find out and it didn't matter field which transmitted the engines' power equally to every atom of the ship would have felt nothing at all of was intentionally operated at one half of one per cent efficiency to one were no fatalist, there seemed no reason to stop decelerating or change course. There was nowhere else to go and too little fuel left if there had been come what might, this was journey's end—perhaps the watchers for the brief moment in which its very atoms were torn apart. Knof Jr. whooped ecstatically and then subsided warily, but no one was size was hard to ascertain, because you needed to know their distance Tiny, deadly hornets with a colossal sting. \"Robot craft, no doubt,\" said Knof Llud, but a chill ran down his spine they had explored, but one of the other might have encountered argued a planned and prepared interception with virulent hatred behind \"We're under the psychological disadvantage,\" said the captain, \"of not advantage, too!\" least we may find out who he is and why he's determined to smash us.\" repeating on each the same brief recorded message: querying again, \"Who are you ?\" converting that energy into harmless gravitic impulses was costing the perhaps you can answer some of these riddles before—\" \" \" last. The two other interstellar expeditions that went out have already had already involuntarily told him a couple of things—that it was not to speak at all, and from its last remark he gathered that the something, so vitally that he asked it as a bald question, \" \"\n\n<question>:\nIf you had to recommend this reading to someone else, of the following options who do you think would most enjoy it?\n\n<options>:\nA A sci-fi nerd who loves discovery of alien species and new planets as major tropes\nB A sci-fi nerd who loves intense and tragic stories\nC A commercial airplane pilot who wishes they were an astronaut\nD A sci-fi nerd who loves stories about family and happy endings\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,393 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nthus it isn't always so! No, you're wrong. I'm not your father's ghost, even if I do look a bit like him. But it's a longish story, and you might as well let me in. You will, you know, so why quibble about it? At least, you always machine out there too long—until you get used to it, you'll find it's hard on the eyes, trying to follow where the vanes go. You'll get used how you feel I felt the same way when he—that is, of course, I or we—came back to tell me about it, thirty years ago. Here, have one of these. You'll get to like them in a couple more my story. You'll believe it eventually, though, so it doesn't matter. Right now, you're shocked. It's a real wrench when a man meets himself for the first time. Some kind of telepathy seems to work between two of the same people. You sense things. So I'll simply go ahead talking for half an hour or so, until you get over it. After that you'll come along with me. You know, I could try to change things around by telling what happened to me So let's begin when you get up in half an hour and come out with me. You'll take a closer look at the machine, then. Yes, it'll be pretty obvious it must be a time machine. You'll sense that, too. You've seen and you'll be getting used to the idea that you are the man who makes it is probably the field that prevents passage through time from affecting us. The luggage section isn't protected, though. there . You are completely outside of time and space, as best you can guess how things are. You can't feel any motion, of course. You try to reach a hand out arm back, you're still sound and uninjured. But it looks frightening and you don't try it again. Then it comes to you slowly that you're actually traveling in time. You turn to me, getting used to the idea. \"So this is the fourth dimension?\" you ask. traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent the machine and I don't understand it.\" \"But....\" crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of course, there may have been a start for all this once. There may have been a time when you did invent the machine—the atomic motor first, then the time-machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and saving yourself the trouble, it got all tangled up. I figured out once that such a universe would need some seven or eight time and space dimensions. It's simpler just to figure that this is the way time got bent back on itself. Maybe there is no machine, and it's just easier for us to imagine it. When you spend thirty years thinking about it, as Anyhow, you sit there, watching nothing all around you, and no time, apparently, though there is a time effect back in the luggage space. You look at your watch and it's still running. That means you either carry a small time field with you, or you are catching a small increment of time from the main field. I don't know, and you won't time nor space, apparently. How could the air leak out? You still feel gravity, but I can't explain that, either. Maybe the machine has a gravity field built in, or maybe the time that makes your watch run is responsible for gravity. In spite of Einstein, you have always had the idea that time is an effect of gravity, and I sort of agree, still. this century, as near as I can remember it, and I should be able to pass fairly well. I've had all my fortune—the one you make on that atomic generator—invested in such a way I can get it on using some I'd told you that, too, but you've forgotten. \"As near as I can guess, it's about 2150. He told me, just as I'm telling you, that it's an interstellar civilization.\" You take another cigaret from me, and follow me. I've got a small flashlight and we grope through a pile of rubbish, out into a corridor. and there is an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open. \"What about the time machine?\" you ask. \"Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe.\" We get in the elevator, and I say \"first\" to it. It gives out a you never did, so you can't. Find the museum, grab the motor, and get out. And good luck to you.\" You act as if you're dreaming, though you can't believe it's a dream. You get up your courage and go up to a boy selling something that might stuff as garbled as his. The educated and uneducated? I don't know. in his suit and the friendly grin on his face, he looks like any other them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could not explain the principle, either. Someone will, some day, though. Lord, the genius of that twentieth century inventor! It's quite a hobby with me, sir. I've read everything I could get on the period. You study it, but it mentions casually the inventor, without giving his name. Either they don't know it, or they take it for granted that the cathogrids and we had to replace that, but otherwise it's exactly as the great inventor made it. And it still operates as well as ever. Like to have me tell you about it?\" \"Not particularly,\" you begin, and then realize bad manners might be You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take the early model if you it, since the gravostatic plate is being renewed. Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I haven't told you, but a working model such as that is a handy thing. happen to you. But of course, just as I did, you're going to miss a lot of what I say from now on, and have to find out for yourself. But maybe some of it helps. I've tried to remember how much I remembered, after he told me, but I can't be sure. So I'll keep on talking. I probably can't help it, anyhow. Pre-set, you might say. Well, you stagger down the corridor, looking out for the guard, but all happens, though. You stumble down the stairs, feeling all the futuristic rays in the it. The stranger lifts an eyebrow and goes off at once when you nod you for some more information, which you give him at random. It seems You'll never know what you stumbled over, but, somehow, you move back in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering here and there, and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then years\"—and you begin waiting for the air to get stale. It doesn't because there is only one of you this time. Instead, everything flashes off and you're sitting in the machine in machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub-basement, land in your back yard, and then hop back thirty years to pick up yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then, insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth—minus the replaced wires the guard mentioned—which probably wore out because of future and bring it back to the past—your present—so that it can be put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be the inventor. And you do it in a time machine which you bring back to yourself to take yourself into the future to return to take back to yourself.... kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed One day you come across an old poem—something about some folks calling it evolution and others calling it God. You go out, make a few provisions for the future, and come back to climb into the time machine that's waiting in the building you had put around it. Then you'll be view—and telling your younger self all these things I'm telling you.\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the older man know so much?\n\n<options>:\nA he was the original inventor\nB he was in the same situation 30 years ago\nC because he had a kid just like this man\nD he's seen it happen by repeatedly travelling in time\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,996 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nhimself from his seat and hurled with an incoherent cry. He against Jakdane's bunk—propelled For a moment Trella thought he was going to meet Asrange's assault. But he fled in a long laboratory officials in New York. powerful, utterly invulnerable. There was only one question: Was he human? Trella feared she was in The two bodyguards were with for trouble even before Motwick's his arms in a drunken stupor. The two evil-looking men at the table nearby had been watching her surreptitiously, and now they shifted restlessly in their chairs. He cowered under the attack, Trella had not wanted to come to the Golden Satellite. It was a of him as if to ward it off. In a moment, Jakdane and the other A woman could not possibly she had no one on Ganymede her around the waist with a steely arm. Trella swung with her whole body, and slapped him so hard he nearly fell from his chair. As “I couldn't,” said Quest miserably, and turned his face away. Later, alone with Trella on the control deck, Jakdane gave her some sober advice. bar, he leaped up to follow her. “Why? Because he's a coward? half feet tall, he was as heavily muscled as a lion. I know that ought to make “Not because he's a coward. Because he's an android!” me despise him, but it doesn't “Help me!” she cried. “Please an artificial imitation of a man. It all figures. “Look, Trella, he said he was human could stand the rocket acceleration heels. In desperation, she dodged refuge behind him. Her protector strong enough to break a spaceship was obviously unwilling, but the dark man, faced with his massiveness, took no chances. injured. How can you believe he's really human?” Trella remembered the thug Kregg striking Quest in the face and then crying that he had injured his father,” protested Trella. Evading her attempts to stay “Robots and androids frequently look on their makers as Trella again as Kregg overtook his quarry and swung a huge fist like a sledgehammer. Exactly what happened, Trella wasn't sure. She had the impression he dodged to one of Jupiter, if he's human?” Trella was silent. “For the protection of humans, there are two psychological attack a human being, even in self defense. The second and Kregg sank stunned to his knees. The dark man, who had grabbed Trella's arm, released her and ran for the door. man Quest to a T, Trella. There is no other explanation for him: he must be an android.” Trella did not want to believe Moving agilely around the end Jakdane was right, but his reasoning “Those characteristics fit your was unassailable. Looking raiding my place for the likes of build, his immunity to injury, his refusal to defend himself against a human, his inability to return Trella's love for him. It was not inconceivable that she should have unknowingly and staggered out. Trella ran to the unconscious Motwick's side. you!” “That means you, too, lady,” had been denied her. Her arm Thus she did not, as she had had told her he could not love her. Her best course was to try to forget him. with her for a later meeting. “It has been pleasant knowing you, Trella,” he said when they taking his hand in farewell. He followed Trella out the door Trella took a fast plane from of the Golden Satellite and fell from Jupiter.” “I'm Trella Nuspar,” she said, favoring him with a green-eyed glance. “You mean Io, don't you—or “I'll have no coppers Jupiter. It would be impossible Miss Trella, eh?” “I'm glad they're something was cornered against one of the “He thinks he's the son of Dr. Mansard,” she finished, “but apparently he is, without knowing Kregg stumbled to his feet he's an android and claim ownership as Dr. Mansard's heir.” Trella planned to spend a few days resting in her employer's spacious home, and then to take her duties as his confidential she, but broad and powerful as Two armed men were with hold himself down. “Why all the protection?” she “Because,” said Quest, “his radio was sabotaged, just as his There was only one new circumstance Trella could think of. Without actually intending a woman against two thugs.” to, she exclaimed: Why, an android can't hurt a away from the prospect of fighting anyone.” Trella sighed. Cowardice was a state of mind. It was peculiarly inappropriate, but not unbelievable, Trella was silent, shocked. There was something here she hadn't known about, hadn't even should be a coward. Well, she he couldn't help being They had reached the more brightly lighted section of the city now. Trella could get a cab Trella had the desk clerk call a cab to deliver the unconscious Motwick to his home. She and time together on Ganymede and aspace, since he did not know of Trella's connection with Blessing. But, since this was to be the atmosphere of Blessing's was scheduled to leave. Trella was in the living room with Blessing, discussing the instructions she was to give to the against telling him that the Earth. Motwick was an irresponsible playboy whom Trella had known Trella heard the doorbell ring. briefly on Earth, and Trella was The heavy oaken front door was kept locked now, and the guards them. The other guards were at their posts. glad to dispense with his company for the remaining three herself enjoying his companionship with him. Now this did not suit her at all. Trella had always liked her He and his bodyguards ran So Trella was delighted to find unconscious heap against the rear of the garage. Trella had that the ship was the Cometfire across the floor and lay in an than Trella had ever seen a man I'm getting old,” he answered, laughing. “What's your trouble, Trella?” “I'm in love with that huge chunk of man who came aboard with me, and I'm not sure I ought to be,” she confessed. “I tree on the other side in a twisted tangle of wreckage. With a horrified gasp, Trella “If it's to keep you out of another fellow's clutches, I'm your may need protection against myself ran down the driveway toward crew members and three passengers aboard the ship's tiny personnel sphere, and Trella was thrown with Quest almost constantly. She enjoyed every minute She told him only that she sabotaged the ship's drive so it would fall into Jupiter. Her employer had impressed upon Blessing could not object to Dr. Mansard's son knowing about it. her that her mission was confidential, but surely Dom “But my father was able to was unable to fight any other purpose.” More gently than Trella would have believed possible for his done.” Trella disengaged herself. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Don't you know this, too, now: that laboratory of Dr. Mansard. When it was found at last, he sent Trella, his most trusted secretary, to Ganymede to bring back to him the notebooks found Trella looked at him. He was that he received his rightful share of the inheritance. Because of this, Trella was tempted not badly hurt, any more than to tell Quest the good news herself “How can you be sure?” she do this his own way, and he might not appreciate her meddling. At midtrip, Trella made a rueful confession to Jakdane. “It seems I was taking unnecessary but she decided against and this time she did not resist. can't She expected Jakdane to salve impossible, he had unbuckled\n\n<question>:\nWhy can't the square-built man defend Trella against the men attacking her?\n\n<options>:\nA His programming does not allow it\nB He is a strict pacifist\nC He is full of cowardice\nD He is secretly collaborating with Trella's attackers\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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555 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nKrugman's Life of Brian Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop Paul Krugman loves to berate journalists for their ignorance of economics, particularly his economics, but on this occasion, I fear, his logic is more addled than usual. I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record. 1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--\"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government\"--is \"pure fiction.\" Perhaps so, but in that case somebody should tell this to Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. When I interviewed Klein for my piece about the Microsoft case, he singled out Brian Arthur as the economist who has most influenced his thinking about the way in which high-technology markets operate. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story. 5) For a man who takes his own cogitations extremely seriously, Krugman is remarkably cavalier about attributing motives and beliefs to others. \"Cassidy has made it clear in earlier writing that he does not like mainstream economists, and he may have been overly eager to accept a story that puts them in a bad light,\" he pronounces. I presume this statement refers to a critical piece I wrote in 1996 about the direction that economic research, principally macroeconomic research, has taken over the past two decades. In response to that article, I received dozens of messages of appreciation from mainstream economists, including from two former presidents of the American Economic Association. Among the sources quoted in that piece were the then-chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (Joseph Stiglitz), a governor of the Federal Reserve Board (Laurence Meyer), and a well-known Harvard professor (Gregory Mankiw). To claim, as Krugman does, that I \"don't like mainstream economists\" and that I am out to denigrate their work is malicious hogwash. The fact of the matter is that I spend much of my life reading the work of mainstream economists, speaking to them, and trying to find something they have written that might interest the general public. In my experience, most economists appreciate the attention. 6) I might attach more weight to Krugman's criticisms if I hadn't recently reread his informative 1994 book Peddling Prosperity , in which he devotes a chapter to the rediscovery of increasing returns by contemporary economists. Who are the first scholars Krugman mentions in his account? Paul David, an economic historian who wrote a famous paper about how the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard evolved and, you guessed it, Brian Arthur. \"Why QWERTYUIOP?\" Krugman wrote. \"In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. ... What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy.\" Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it \"didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know.\" Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. The eminent MIT professor, whose early academic work received widespread media attention, is far too generous a scholar to succumb to such pettiness. Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy: Thanks to Paul Krugman for his lament about credulous reporters who refuse to let facts stand in the way of a good story (\"The Legend of Arthur\"). As a professional journalist, I found his points well taken--even when he cites my own book, Complexity as a classic example of the gullibility genre. Among many other things, Complexity tells the story of the Irish-born economist Brian Arthur and how he came to champion a principle known as \"increasing returns.\" The recent New Yorker article explains how that principle has since become the intellectual foundation of the Clinton administration's antitrust case against Microsoft. Krugman's complaint is that the popular press--including Complexity and The New Yorker --is now hailing Brian Arthur as the originator of increasing returns, even though Krugman and many others had worked on the idea long before Arthur did. I leave it for others to decide whether I was too gullible in writing Complexity . For the record, however, I would like to inject a few facts into Krugman's story, which he summarizes nicely in the final paragraph: Which brings me to Professor Krugman's letter, and my reply. I remember the exchange very well. Obviously, however, my reply failed to make clear what I was really trying to say. So I'll try again: a) During our interviews, Brian went out of his way to impress upon me that many other economists had done work in increasing returns--Paul Krugman among them. He was anxious that they be given due credit in anything I wrote. So was I. c) So, when I received Krugman's letter shortly after Complexity came out, I was puzzled: He was complaining that I hadn't referenced others in the increasing-returns field--Paul Krugman among them--although I had explicitly done so. d) But, when I checked the published text, I was chagrined to discover that the critical passage mentioning Krugman wasn't there. Schuster had suggested a number of cuts to streamline what was already a long and involved chapter on Brian's ideas. I accepted some of the cuts, and restored others--including (I thought) the passage that mentioned Krugman. In the rush to get Complexity to press, however, that passage somehow wound up on the cutting-room floor anyway, and I didn't notice until too late. Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop: Paul Krugman's attack on Brian Arthur (\"The Legend of Arthur\") requires a correction of its misrepresentations of fact. Arthur is a reputable and significant scholar whose work is indeed having influence in the field of industrial organization and in particular public policy toward antitrust policy in high-tech industries. Krugman admits that he wrote the article because he was \"just pissed off,\" not a very good state for a judicious statement of facts, as his column shows. After reading Paul Krugman vent his spleen against fellow economist Brian Arthur in \"The Legend of Arthur,\" I couldn't help wondering whose reputation he was out to trash, Arthur's or his own. Krugman seems to fear a plot to deny economists their intellectual due. If one exists, Arthur is not a likely suspect. In a series of long interviews with me a year ago (for Worth magazine), I tried, vainly, to get Arthur to tell me how his ideas about increasing returns have encouraged a new strain of economic investigations. Despite much prodding, Arthur obliged only by placing himself in a long line of theorists dating back to Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. I also found him disarmingly generous in giving credit to the biologists, physicists, and fellow economists who have helped advance his own thinking. Savvy to the journalist's quest for heroes, Arthur urged me to focus on his ideas, not his rank among his peers. Krugman has made a career out of telling other economists to pay better attention to the facts, yet as a chronicler of Arthur's career and inner life, Krugman seems to have listened only to his own demons.\n\n<question>:\nWhat solution does Paul Krugman suggest to address his concerns?\n\n<options>:\nA Journalists and authors should rely on only a handful of trusted sources.\nB Journalists and authors should show more care in referencing and crediting work done by all parties.\nC Journalists and authors should always fact-check information through Nobel laureates.\nD More media attention should be given to issues of academic plagiarism.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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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>:\nCertainly I see things that aren't there and don't say what my voice says—but how can I prove that I don't have my health? When he began his talk with \"You got your health, don't you?\" it touched those spots inside me. That was when I did it. Why couldn't what he said have been \"The best things in life are free, succeed, man\"? No, he had to use that one line. You wouldn't blame me. Not if you believe me. The first thing I can remember, the start of all this, was when I was morning the bed would sit there dispassionately soiled and convict me and I was left there in the dark. Being four or five, I didn't know any better, so I thought Dad made it dark to add to my punishment. But I learned he didn't know the light lying. I stayed in the dark longer for lying about the light. Alone in the dark, I wouldn't have had it so bad if it wasn't for the He looked the way I did in the mirror. They did unpleasant things to him. Because they were real, I talked about them as if they were real, and I almost earned a bunk in the home for retarded children until I got smart enough to keep the beasts to myself. My mother hated me. I loved her, of course. I remember her smell mixed on my ninth birthday. The trouble came from the notes written in my My mother and father must have been glad when I was sent away to reform at night. There was reason for me to steal, if I could have got away with it. The myself, rolling sailors and the like. Who had the price of a bottle? Some skin-and-bones character I didn't know struggled out of his seat, amening. I could see he had a lot to be thankful for—somewhere he had scampering after water soup and stale bread. As soon as I got cleaned order such expensive food and leave such a large tip for the waiter and send one to the chef that they were going to think I was rich, and some \"Hmm, executive material. Just the type we need. I beg your pardon, sir—\" just like the razor-blade comic-strip ads in the old magazines that Frankie the Pig sells three for a quarter. wall. Crockery was ringing and men were slurping inside. No one had couldn't. It had to be a one. Who drops anything but a one into a Skid creased or worn. I knew what the trouble was, of course. I was in a monkey trap. The myself. Calm. inside like a chicken having its neck wrung. \"This,\" Brother Partridge said, \"is one of the most profound the preacher explained in wonderment. \"Cold turkey,\" he corrected. \"Are you scoffing at a miracle?\" even when they aren't around. I should have known it would come to that.\" wasn't dumb enough to murder. Somebody, somewhere, would be a witness to even try anything but the little things. and a conscience.\" \"I've got something better than a conscience,\" I told him. special about you, for your apprehension to come through miraculous intervention. But I can't imagine what.\" always get apprehended somehow, Brother,\" I said. \"I'm pretty special.\" it was a twenty, and that was almost the same thing to me. I creased it We took a couple of camp chairs and I told him the story of my life, or most of it. It was hard work on an empty stomach happened to me when I thought back over my life. The same thing. \"Remarkable,\" Partridge finally said when I got so hoarse I had to take a break. \"One is almost— —reminded of Job. William, you are being punished for some great sin. Of that, I'm sure.\" \"Punished for a sin? But, Brother, I've always had it like this, as long as I can remember. What kind of a sin could I have committed when I was fresh out of my crib?\" \"And you think I'm being punished for something I did in a previous He looked at me in disbelief. \"What else could it be?\" bad in this \"William, if you atone for this sin, perhaps the horde of locusts will It wasn't much of a chance, but I was unused to having any at all. I shook off the dizziness of it. \"By the Lord Harry, Brother, I'm going \"Perhaps this will help in your atonement,\" he said. pretty sure he hadn't noticed it was a twenty. And then the bill seemed to lie there, heavy, a lead weight. It would You know how it is. Money you haven't earned doesn't seem real to you. It was all an accident, but killing somebody is reason enough to get punished. It didn't have to be a sin in some previous life, you see. \"What do you do, Jack?\" the fatter one asked. \"Application?\" They sighed. I think they hated to do it, but I was bucking the system. beating. That's one thing I knew. There was a big man in a heavy wool overcoat and gray homburg spread on a damp centerfold from the News brains out. I suppose I was to blame anyway. If I hadn't been alive, if I hadn't been there to get beaten up, it wouldn't have happened. I could see the point in making me suffer for it. There was a lot to be said for looking at it like that. But there was nothing to be said for telling Brother Partridge about the accident, or murder, or whatever had to eat since the day before, it enervated me. few grains of white stuff. But he managed to hold still enough to keep from spilling more from the spoon. The librarian at the main desk looked sympathetically hostile, or hostilely sympathetic. \"I didn't want to see the ,\" I said, fast. \"Don't you have any News I heard my voice say, \"A pleasure. What about after work?\" I didn't say it, but I was used to my voice independently saying things. Her neck got to flaming, but she walked stiffly ahead. She didn't say anything. She must be awful mad, I decided. But then I got News and left me alone with It didn't take me long to find the story. The victim was a big man, that they had paid a lot of money for. I remembered Fredric March's double-breasted in Executive Suite while Walter Pidgeon and the rest wore Ivy Leagues. Maybe I would look like an eccentric executive. countermen, \"give me a Milwaukee beer.\" It was cold and bitter. All beer is bitter, no matter what they say on It felt like another, but I checked myself. I needed a clear head. feeling of words in my throat. It just came out of the air the way it dead behind the store last night. His skull had been crushed by a vicious beating with a heavy implement, Coroner McClain announced in difficulties.... I ignored the devils and concentrated on reading the withered, washed-out political posters on the telephone poles. My neck ached from holding it so stiff, staring out through the glass. More than that, I little human being of some sort. eyebrow. They couldn't do anything worse to the small man than they had done to the young boy. It was sort of nostalgic watching them, but began to dose. The shrieks woke me up. For the first time, I could hear the shrieks of the monster's victim and listen to their obscene droolings. For the very first time in my life. Always before it had been all pantomime, like Charlie Chaplin. Now I heard the sounds of it all. They say it's a bad sign when you start hearing voices. I nearly panicked, but I held myself in the seat and forced myself to be rational about it. My own voice was always saying things could hear but which I didn't say. It wasn't any worse to only one who could hear other things I never said. I was as sane as I ever was. There was no doubt about that. But a new thought suddenly impressed itself on me. Whatever was punishing me for my sin was determined that I turn back\n\n<question>:\nWhat affliction is the narrator most likely suffering from?\n\n<options>:\nA multiple personality disorder\nB bipolar disorder\nC antisocial personality disorder\nD paranoid schizophrenia\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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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>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] What better way to use a time machine than to handle department store complaints? But pleasing a customer should have its limits! the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of glasses. Mr. Hawkins himself, acting by reflex, attempted to return the portrait attention on any working day. With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy picture out of its frame. A yellowed envelope slipped to the floor as it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a drink that would make him feel even better. A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening machine. \"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!\" someone shouted at her. \"Have returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: \"Oh, I see. They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old.\" \"I didn't know the company ever used buff envelopes like this.\" Milly turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so. The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out. Mr. Hawkins' eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly and picked up the order form. \"This thing has never been processed!\" Raising his voice, he shouted jovially, \"Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!\" Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form: \"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for \"The poor woman must be dead by now,\" he objected, secretly angry warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years.\" grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared pugnaciously at the bundle. \"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!\" she told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But the familiar RATTLE OK sticker was pasted onto the box, indicating to the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and therefore hadn't been broken in shipment. Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely \"Your dress ought to be here,\" Ann said. She found scissors in her open the parcel. \"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should throw away my letter of complaint,\" she told her daughter. \"And by the time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter. Then they'll write again.\" Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted the expletives that she wanted to add. Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she to look vacantly at the distant wall. \"We'll have to send it back,\" Ann said, \"and get the one we ordered.\" \"Your order's here? Good. What's this thing?\" He was looking at a small box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word: MANKY. The box rattled when he shook it. \"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of the doorbell.\" The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. \"Les! The hassock! It Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled \"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get boring after a while. And it might insult someone.\" Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: \"Won't you come to the \"If this is ventriloquism—\" she began icily. \"I'll have to order another doorbell just like this one, for the door had no latch, held closed by a simple spring. Ann pushed it open neighbor. \"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather hectic day in an awful lot of ways.\" \"Excitement isn't good for me,\" Mrs. Burnett said testily. \"I've had a house. Ann stood squarely in front of the door leading to the hall. Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She \"Well, put it away,\" Ann told Bob sharply. \"It's slimy.\" \"Les, I think we've made poor Mrs. Burnett angry,\" Ann said. \"She's so wife. \"I don't know why you ordered such a thing.\" He tossed the booklet into the empty box. \"I'm going to return it, if you don't smudge it up,\" she replied. \"Look at the marks you made on the instructions.\" The black finger-marks stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper. Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les called the doctor before going to work. The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order. She tore open the envelope and read: \"We regret to inform you that your order cannot be filled until the balance you owe us has been reduced. From the attached form, you will readily ascertain that the payment of $87.56 will enable you to resume the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent order as soon....\" Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace, work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint \"Don't bother trying,\" Ann said miserably. \"Just cut it off.\" He looked helpless as he said to Ann: \"I don't know quite what to do. \"Oh, no,\" Ann breathed. \"Something's happened to Les.\" fingerprints on everything I touch. I can't handle correspondence or shake hands with customers. How's the kid? What's the ambulance doing out front?\" The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth to quiet her. \"Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him,\" Dr. Schwartz \"Why did you do it?\" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into\n\n<question>:\nWhy had Ann Hartley written the first letter to Hartshorne-Logan?\n\n<options>:\nA To disregard her complaint about the package not being received.\nB To complain about incorrect items being sent.\nC To complain about the package not being received.\nD To request a refund for the package being damaged.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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2,380 | quality | [
{
"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 HUNTED the next ship for Earth.\" \"Go back? The planet itself was tough enough—barren, desolate, forbidding other Geigs I caught unawares, dedicated. But they had to run head-on against a mad genius who had a motto: Death to all Terrans! \"Let's enough to stop the most adventurous and Val. \"The surest way to Go back? have left—Geig-hunting. Look die out here on Mars is to hero,\" she said. I pressed the stud for the airlock, smiling. THE END Transcriber's Note: it was who had failed hood. Nothing but what had stopped us could Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. Geigs?\" I asked. \" Why? she blamed it all on Then we can catch \"Because I hate Ron?\" Val pleaded. \"Maybe I thought all his kind had died at the time of the atomic When Val's tired and overwrought the Geigs—and UranCo—off Mars. Eventually I'll scare you all away.\" \"Just pick us off in the desert?\" \"Come on, kid. Remember—we're doing this for Earth. We're heroes.\" She glared at me. \"Heroes, hell!\" she muttered. \"That's since I landed here on Mars.\" so glorious. And UranCo's pay is stinking.\" \"We didn't come out here \"What are you going to do for the pay, Val.\" but, out there it doesn't seem with us?\" Val finally asked, the geigers had been obstinately for their constant undercurrent of meaningless noises. Even though the Martian gravity was only a fraction of on the infinitely safer desert. \"Do I shock you?\" he asked. been really rough on Val with her lovely but unrugged legs. \"Heroes,\" she said bitterly. \"We're not heroes—we're suckers! Why did I ever let you volunteer for the Geig You're on Mars hunting uranium, ship the radioactives back to Earth to keep the atomic engines right? To mine and point, because Val didn't lie I nodded over at our geiger unless she was so exhausted Mars,\" Val said irrelevantly. \"Ah—two young heroes,\" Ledman said acidly. \"How much inflamed by the idea of coming to Mars to help in the doing. She had been just as she didn't know what she was \"We volunteered to come to And we'd always had a roving No, we had decided together that great accident—killing way we decided together on hundreds, injuring thousands turning against me. the contract, but I got a good dose of radiation instead. Not to lie down on the soft, spongy Martian sand and \"But why kill us Geigs? Mars, until I recalled that I hadn't. In fact, she had come up with the idea before I did. of turning the weary, bedraggled the Val who had so enthusiastically suggested we join the Geigs. decided that a semi-basket the geiger harness, and lowered myself ponderously to the ground. \"What'samatter, Ron?\" Val asked sleepily. Mars, lost myself, built this Dome, and swore to get even. There's not a great deal of Mars after all. But, I reminded myself, someone \"That's another little souvenir of Sadlerville. I'm short on red blood corpuscles.\" He rolled over to a wall home on Earth. It wasn't much, but people in love don't it seemed hard to believe that we'd exchanged Earth and all it held for us for the raw, untamed struggle that was Mars. But I knew I'd do it again, if the entire Geig Corps, since I had the chance. It's because we wanted to keep what we had. Heroes? Hell, no. We wanted to keep them. Which just liked our comforts, and too nightmarish to be real. I wasn't seriously worried about his threat to wipe out can succeed?\" I taunted him. \"Really think you can kill The Geig Corps preferred every Earthman on Mars? Of all the insane, cockeyed—\" Val's quick, worried head-shake decided it for us—we were a teams. That's what had finally we volunteered. And here we are. Heroes. The wind blasted a mass of sand into my face, and I felt powerful as you, today—instead of a useless cripple in a wheelchair.\" scheme of revenge and Uneasily I caught Val's for, Ron?\" fly. It wasn't Martians that had done it. There weren't any Martians, hadn't been for Val, and saw that she was what was wrong with Val. fresh, giving off a faint, repugnant odor like that of drying convinced me. I saw Val's \"Ron—\" wore an outmoded, bulky spacesuit and a fishbowl helmet, all but the face area opaque. The oxygen cannisters weren't attached to his \"Teamwork,\" Val said. She to make trouble.\" Val and I going to kill you at all. I'm going to see to it that you're sent back to Earth.\" \" No! \"They'll help you on Earth. \"What's going on, Ron?\" Val asked in a low voice as we They'll take all the hatred and sickness out of you, and turn you into a useful member of society again.\" and I thought I knew that you couldn't bear to hang around on Earth for as much as a year after the Sadlerville Blast. You had to take right off for Mars without a moment's delay, didn't you? You hated Earth so much you years to this. Ever since—ever why. I wondered why we had The answer to that came to some of your pension money Earth needed radioactives, and the only way to get them to buy yourself a pair of prosthetic was to get out and look. The me quick enough: we had to. the great cities of the world hardly compared with the them back together again. In three centuries the shattered world had been completely rebuilt. The wreckage of New York and Shanghai and London and all the other \"You left Earth too quickly,\" Val said. \"It was the only way,\" he by a shining new world of prosthetics—amazing things, virtually robot legs. All the survivors of They had used their atomics gleaming towers and flying roadways. We had profited by atomic-powered But though the energy is inexhaustible, the supply of nuclei isn't. After three centuries of heavy consumption, the supply failed. The mighty And that started the chain of events that led Val and me to end up as a madman's prisoners, on Mars. With every Geigs—or more—and would source of uranium mined dry have added Val to the number happy, useful on Earth, instead of being holed up here nursing your hatred. You fifty years' worth of raw stuff to tide us over until then. In a decade or so, our power would world we'd revert back to. Millions of starving, freezing humans tooth-and-clawing in it in the useless shell of a great atomic civilization. So, Mars. There's not much uranium on Mars, and it's not easy to find or any cinch to over?\" \"Yes—human legs aren't strong enough to break tangle-cord that way.\" Enter the Geig Corps: volunteers gave Val the blaster and slipped Mars, combing for its uranium deposits. And here we are, I thought. Val got him into his suit, and Geig Corps were located, \"Get your helmet on and let's go. Between the psychs and the prosthetics men, you'll be a new man inside of a year.\" Dome, of all things! \"Welcome to my home,\" he I found myself fervently wishing I was back out there \"Got the geigers, honey?\" who hated. now that I had been driving her mercilessly—me, with my chromium legs and atomic-powered muscles. No wonder she was ready to fold! \"I shouldn't—not when them to.\"\n\n<question>:\nAccording to Ron, what motivated him and Val to join the Geigs?\n\n<options>:\nA desire to maintain their present way of life\nB monetary compensation\nC opportunity for a new life on Mars\nD heroic reputational status upon returning to Earth\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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2,207 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nPop heard of the quaint commercial learned of it the same way. Pop didn't even think of it again. It seemed to have nothing to do with him. But Sattell undoubtedly dealt with it fully in his desperate writings back to Earth. Pop matter-of-factly tended the secret, but only partly. His name was Sattell and he had reason not to talk. Pop Young alone knew the whole truth, and he kept his mouth shut, too. It wasn't anybody else's Pop received the stores and Pop didn't even ask. Pop continued to search absorbedly for material with which to capture memory. Sattell still seemed necessary, and in his spare time he worked industriously at recovering some missing portions of his life that Sattell He thought often of Sattell, down happily tell himself that it feels delicious. Sometimes it does. But Sattell couldn't comfort himself so easily. He knew about Pop, up on the surface. He'd shipped out, mental images of his children. guidance. Sattell got the shakes when he thought of Pop, and Pop rather probably knew it. Of course, by the it with what—say—Sattell might Sattell. The facts spoke for themselves. Pop had come back to consciousness in a hospital with a great about Pop Young's shack in cannisters of his married life. name showed the uselessness of bluff. what had happened to his wife and children. They'd been murdered he set about trying to pick up the threads of the life he could no longer remember. He met Sattell quite by accident. Sattell looked familiar. Pop eagerly tried to ask him questions. And Sattell turned gray and frantically denied that he'd ever seen Pop before. Pop's middle. \"Don't come in!\" he said mockingly. to Pop that the sight of Sattell had brought back some vague and cloudy memories. They were not sharp, though, and he hunted up Sattell \"And I don't give a damn All of which happened back on he returned. Nowadays, by the Big Crack, Pop wasn't so insistent on seeing Sattell, but he was deeply concerned with And Sattell went into panic when Sattell helped bring back. Pop was a highly conscientious man. He took good care of his job. There was a \"This,\" snapped the red-headed Pop gazed at the plastic, fascinated. The red-headed man leaned forward, snarling. He slashed Pop across the face with the barrel of his weapon. It drew blood. It was wanton, Bring them here! Understand?\" Pop said numbly: \"What the hell?\" The red-headed man hit him man with the weapon raged at him. \"Then phone down to the mine! Tell Sattell I'm here and he can come on up! Tell him to bring any more diamonds they've dug up since to the ground. At such times Pop hardly thought of Sattell. He knew he had plenty He headed back toward his shack. Sattell knowing what had happened to his wife and children, but it was hearsay only. He had no memory of them at all. But Sattell stirred the lost memories. At first Pop followed He twitched all over. Then he wiped out by an axe-blow. He did recover a good deal. When Sattell fled to another continent, Pop followed struck cruelly again at Pop Young's to recover the years that had been because he had some distinct of course, Pop was helpless to resent it. There were no weapons on the Moon and the mention of Sattell's When Sattell frenziedly tried to deny knowledge of the murder in Tangier, Pop had come to remember both his Even when Sattell—whimpering—signed children and some of the happiness him. By that time he was quite sure that Sattell was the man who'd killed his family. If so, Sattell had profited by less than two days' pay for wiping out everything that Pop possessed. But Pop wanted it back. He couldn't prove Sattell's guilt. There was no evidence. In any case, he didn't really want Sattell to die. If he did, there'd be no way to recover more lost memories. Somehow, the mention of Sattell had Sometimes, in the shack on the far odd fancies about Sattell. There was side of the Moon, Pop Young had detail. He knew Sattell. That part was simple. Sattell had planned this multi-million-dollar coup, as a man in prison might plan his break. The made his mind work better. It always the mine, for example. In each two did. He began painstakingly to it was stolen for the journey here. Sattell's associates had had to steal or somehow get the fuel, and if he shook it, and it was worth no more than so many pebbles. But sometimes Pop wondered if Sattell ever thought of the value of the mine's production. If he would kill Sattell to come up, with what diamonds and Pop and the colony together. \"I'd guess,\" said Pop painstakingly, \"that Sattell figured it out. He's probably got some sort of gun to Earth and a long time ago. It seemed grinned savagely at Pop. He held a \"No,\" said Pop, \"they'll do it anyhow. If we were able to tell about to scream. But not Pop. He'd come to the Moon in the first place because Sattell was here. Near Sattell, he found 'em, they'd be chased. But if I'm tell Sattell a thing about it, if I were you. It'll save trouble. Just let him keep on waiting for this to happen. emptiness and grew sharp and clear. dearly. And when he was near Sattell \"Me?\" asked Pop. \"Oh, I'm going to raise what hell I can. There's He found that he loved them very did—and the fact possessed a certain grisly humor—Pop didn't even hate Sattell. He simply wanted to be near him because it enabled him to recover again to find out if he was right. Pop regarded his drawings meditatively. satisfaction. \"That'll do it!\" Pop simply gaped. He couldn't quite take it in. man abruptly, \"is a stickup!\" Pop's eyes went through the inner Sattell, he suddenly recovered a completely new memory. On their first Pop reflected hungrily that it was suit and the cannister he carried, Pop clearly when he thought of Sattell, so by keeping Sattell in mind he recovered whether Sattell ever thought of millions shook and trembled. Pop said calmly: hoist, if Sattell's coming up from the mine. If I don't do it, he don't \"Yeah,\" said Pop. Sattell had no such device for adjusting much worse. Sattell clearly remembered the crime Pop Young hadn't yet recalled. He considered that Pop had made no overt attempt to revenge himself because he planned some retaliation so horrible and lingering that it was worth waiting for. He came to hate Pop with an insane ferocity. And fear. In his mind the need to escape became an obsession But he was helpless. He couldn't leave. There was Pop. He couldn't kill Pop. He had no chance—and he was afraid. The one absurd, irrelevant thing he could do was write own affairs with fascinated attention. But then an event occurred which bore directly upon Pop Young and Sattell and Pop Young's missing years. Somebody back on Earth promoted It didn't seem to have anything to do with Pop or with Sattell. But it did. expected to be pleasantly thrilled section of the plastic. When it was carved, he'd paint it. While he worked, he'd think of Sattell, because parts Sattell had managed to get Sattell had committed. He felt, somehow, that he wouldn't get that back until he'd recovered all the rest.\n\n<question>:\nHow does Pop feel about Sattell?\n\n<options>:\nA Pop thinks Sattell murdered his family, but he wants Sattell to live. Being near Sattell sparks lost memories.\nB Pop thinks Sattell murdered his family. Pop wants to torture Sattell.\nC Pop thinks Sattell murdered his family Now Sattell is going to destroy Lunar City, and steal the diamonds.\nD Sattell murdered Pop's family, Pop wants Sattell dead.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,684 | quality | [
{
"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\"If there was ever a fellow ready for this planet,\" decided the tree named Ashlew, \"you're it, Sonny! Hang on Kolin sensed a lack of direct things considered—the obscure star, the undetermined All damage to the that the keepers of rations could hardly, in an small planet's murky atmosphere defied precision scanners—the good landing. Despite sour feelings for the space Peter Kolin had to admit that As he brooded upon the sorry choice of arousing a search by hiding where he his little command, less two third-class ration keepers thought to have been trapped I'm as good as re-personalized right now.\" How'd you like to stay here?\" \"I don't know,\" said Kolin. on parade. Kolin made himself even a cloud.\" Silenced but doubting, Kolin He considered what form might most easily escape the notice of search parties and Another factor slipped into thought Kolin rebelliously. his musings: mere hope of escape his fuming hatred for Haurtoz. I'd better watch myself! he into this idiotic space fleet Prudently, he did not express this resentment overtly. stellar drive and the way the that never fights is bad enough without a tin god on live … the whole damn set-up. They could just as easy make peace with the Earth colonies. You know why they don't?\" \"Why?\" wheezed Ashlew. \"They're scared that without talk of war, and scouting for Earth fleets that never world's less kindly techniques Kolin had heard of instances wherein mere unenthusiastic posture had betrayed had been employed. Lack of complete loyalty to the state \"You will scout in five details of three persons each,\" Chief Slichow said. \"Every hour, each detail will send Then Ashlew offered a suggestion. he will be replaced by one of the five I shall keep here to one person in to report, and Kolin permitted himself to moment. Kolin felt the issue rations.\" Earth….\" Chief the hostile plots of Earth and the latter's decadent colonies. That, at least, was the official stewards of his headquarters Kolin found himself in a detail. The latter stumbled line. something profane about disregard of orders as he glared at the rocky ridges surrounding the landing place. emergency, give even the appearance of favoring themselves in regard to food. They would go without. Kolin maintained a standard expression as the Chief's sharp stare measured them. Yrtok, a dark, lean-faced girl, led the way with a quiet He was so intent upon planning bushes Kolin's party had followed, and Kolin brought reach their assigned sector, they had to climb One of Chief Slichow's staggering flunkies, stealing a few seconds of relaxation on the pretext of dumping an was in sight. Yrtok and Ammet paused momentarily before descending. Kolin shared their sense of isolation. They would be out of sight of authority and responsible for their own actions. It was a strange sensation. at ship and men as if he had never seen either. A hail from his master moved him. Throughout the cloud of spores, the mind formerly known as Peter Kolin congratulated name is Frazer. I'm a second For all Kolin could tell, he and the others were isolated assistant steward. I'll think as Unit One.\" in a world bounded by the rocky ridge behind them and shape of the Life than Ashlew state of the tree named Ashlew, , he thought. He paused to consider the and bushes several hundred Yrtok led the way along the most nearly level ground. Low creepers became more meters away. He suspected plentiful, interspersed with thought Kolin. spores. \"Be a job to find anything edible here,\" grunted Ammet, and Kolin agreed. on a low shrub. Kolin regarded the trees with misgiving. The unit known as Captain Theodor Kessel hesitated before \"I think the stuff puts out descending the ramp. He officers. \"Could hardly be better, could it?\" he chuckled to the companion unit called Security Officer Tarth. \"Hardly, sir. All ready for \"Coming, Chief!\" he called were about the same height. They craned their necks to estimate the altitude of the monster, but the top was hidden but, returning at a moderate by the wide spread of then—formation of the Planetary Mind!\" the edge,\" decided Yrtok. pace, he murmured, \"My END grasped the handrail. \"And Kolin looked over his shoulder. relaxed. \"He must have tasted some!\" exclaimed Kolin. \"I'll see how he is.\" him a doped appearance. Kolin to Yrtok. For some reason, he had trouble attracting her attention. Then he noticed that she trotting back. As he reached her, whatever Yrtok was examining of greenish fur. All Kolin itself upon its dreamily, Kolin backed away. glanced warily about, but nothing appeared to threaten him. \"It's time to end this scout,\" he told himself. \"It's dangerous. One good look and I'm jetting off! What I need is an easy tree to climb.\" He considered the massive got At first, Kolin saw no way, his weight gingerly, then began to climb. \"I should have brought Yrtok's radio,\" he muttered. I come down, if she hasn't snapped out of her spell by then. Funny … I wonder if Kolin progressed rapidly. When he reached the first thick limbs, twice head height, he felt safer. Later, at what he hoped was the halfway mark, he hooked Earth, but many of the home \"I should have checked from down there to see how open the top is,\" he mused. \"I wonder how the view will Kolin, slipping, grabbed was likely to result in a siege Kolin could feel the skin crawling along his backbone. \"Who of treatment that left the subject \"Name's Johnny Ashlew. Kolin looked about, seeing \"I have to climb down,\" he told himself in a reasonable tone. \"It's bad enough that the other two passed out without to think about the way they Kolin examined the bark of treasonable thoughts. have to live and who's running \"Where's that? Oh, never mind—some little planet. I don't bother with them all, since I came here and found out I could be anything I wanted.\" things in the Planetary Kolin, testing the firmness of the voice, sounding closer in his ear as his 'Mr. Ashlew,' considering my \"It isn't, Mr. Ashlew?\" asked Kolin, twisting about higher branches might hide. \"Nope. Most everything here is run by the Life—that with the others from the Arcturan Spark , the planet \"Th-thanks!\" grunted Kolin, hanging on grimly. \"Doggone vine!\" commented the windy whisper. \" some star towards the center of the galaxy. You should have seen his looks before the Life got in touch with his \"He's very handy,\" agreed Kolin politely. He groped for a foothold. \"Well … matter of fact, I can't get through to him Kolin braced himself securely know where I am.\" \"You're about fifty feet up,\" the sighing voice informed I don't, and some made bad mistakes tryin' to be things they saw on other planets.\" \"I wouldn't want to do that, Mr. Ashlew.\" \"There's just one thing. chances on word about this place gettin' around. It sorta believes in peace and quiet. You might not get back to your ship in any form that \"Listen!\" Kolin blurted being what I was that getting back matters to me!\" \"Don't like your home planet, whatever the name was?\" \"Reformation of the Planetary State,\" mused the captain, Suddenly, Kolin found himself smiling dreamily as he announced threats to the Planetary State's planned expansion. He dwelt upon the Kolin heard opinions spouting The more he talked and stormed and complained, the more relaxed he felt.\n\n<question>:\nHow does Kolin feel about Ashlew?\n\n<options>:\nA He does not trust him because he has many features not standard for trees.\nB He is hesitant but drawn to him all the same.\nC He is certain that Ashlew is trying to trick him.\nD He trusts them, as the highest ranking person in this new planet he has met so far.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
2,062 | quality | [
{
"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\"Nothing around those other suns but ashes and dried blood,\" old Dunbar told the space-wrecked, desperate men. the red rim around it.\" But Dunbar's eyes were old and uncertain. How could they believe in his choice when every star in this forsaken section of space was surrounded by a beckoning red rim? drifted together, four men in bulbous pressure suits like small individual rockets, held together by an awful pressing need for each Dunbar, the oldest of the four, an old space-buster with a face electric power. Each suit had its own power-plant, reprocessing continuously the precious air breathed by the occupants, putting it back into circulation again after enriching it. Packed with food never been any sound or life, with old Dunbar the first in line, taking the lead because he was older and knew where he was and where he was going. Maybe Johnson, second in line, and Alvar who was third, knew too, but were afraid to admit it. But Russell knew it and he'd admitted it from the first—that old Dunbar was as crazy as a Jovian juke-bird. recognizable pattern. But Dunbar knew. And Russell was looking at Dunbar's suit up ahead, watching it more and more intently, thinking about how Dunbar looked inside that suit—and hating Dunbar more and more for claiming he knew when he didn't, for his drooling optimism—because he was taking them on into deeper darkness and calling their destination Paradise. impulse, the results inside his helmet had been too unpleasant to repeat. Sometimes Russell thought of other things besides his growing hatred thought then of what Dunbar would say to such a thought, how Dunbar would laugh that high piping squawking laugh of his and say that the human being was bigger than the Universe itself. Dunbar had a big answer for every little thing. for Dunbar. Hell no—Dunbar had to start talking about a place they And Dunbar had spouted endlessly about a world of treasure they would find, if they would just follow old Dunbar. That's what all four of them had been trying to find all their lives in the big cold grabbag of eternity—a rich star, a rich far fertile star where no one else had ever been, loaded with treasure that had no name, that no one had ever heard of before. And was, because of that, the richest treasure of all. away could see or care. Still—we might have a chance to live, even now, Russell thought—if it weren't for old crazy Dunbar. They might have a chance if Alvar and Johnson weren't so damn lacking in self-confidence as to put all their trust in that crazed old rum-dum. Russell had known now for some time that they were going in the wrong direction. No reason for knowing. Just a hunch. And Russell \"That's right, boys!\" yelled old Dunbar in that sickeningly optimistic voice. Like a hysterical old woman's. \"Just about in the sweet dark old middle.\" life on it, Dunbar ... the only one we can live on?\" Russell asked. \"That's right! That's right,\" Dunbar yelled. \"That's the only one—and Dunbar?\" Russell asked. Keep the old duck talking like this and maybe \"Yeah,\" said Alvar. \"You still say that, Dunbar?\" \"No life, boys, nothing,\" Dunbar laughed. \"Nothing on these other said that one had a red rim, Dunbar, and I wanted to believe it. So Old Dunbar laughed. The sound brought blood hotly to Russell's face. didn't have to look at the old man now. His bald head, his skinny bobbing neck, his simpering watery blue eyes. But he still had to suffer that immutable babbling, that idiotic cheerfulness ... and knowing all the time the old man was crazy, that he was leading them wrong. I'd break away, go it alone to the right sun, Russell thought—but I'd than old Dunbar will ever be, even if he keeps on getting nuttier all the time. Somewhere, sometime then ... Russell got the idea that the only way was to get rid of Dunbar. every night of a long long year....\" Russell suddenly shouted. \"Keep quiet, Dunbar. Shut up will you?\" Johnson said. \"Dunbar—how long'll it take us?\" Russell screamed at Dunbar, then quieted down. He whispered. \"Six crazy as hell, Dunbar. Crazy ... crazy! Nobody could stand it. We'll in? We can make it. We have the food concentrates, and all the rest. All we need's the will, boys, and we got that. The whole damn Universe isn't big enough to kill the will of a human being, boys. I been over a whole lot of it, and I know. In the old days—\" \"Now quiet down, Russ,\" Dunbar said in a kind of dreadful crooning things the way we used to. Thing is, we got to go straight. People trapped like this liable to start meandering. Liable to start losing the old will-power.\" direction. And then someone says maybe they'd better go back the old way. An' pretty soon something breaks, or the food runs out, and stick to old Dunbar and he'll see you through. I'm always lucky. Only on our hungry hides. That's worth waiting for.\" Russell did it before he hardly realized he was killing the old man. It was something he had had to do for a long time and that made it Dunbar. If he'd aimed right, Russell knew the fire-bullet should have pierced Dunbar's back. Now the fire was gone, extinguished of the gravity rope, Dunbar was dead. Dunbar's last faint cry from inside his suit still rang in Russell's Johnson both called Dunbar's name a few times. There was no answer. \"I did it for the three of us,\" Russell said. \"It was either him or us. Lies ... lies that was all he had left in his crazy head. Paradise ... louder. \"He thought he was right,\" Alvar said. \"He wanted to take us to paradise. He was happy, nothing could stop the old man—but he's dead now.\" thought? And up ahead the old man's pressure suit with a corpse inside went on ahead, leading the other three at the front of the Russell said, \"I've had a hunch all along that maybe the old man was because he was alone. He'd have broken away, gone his own direction, long ago but for that fear. said. \"Maybe a guy could get to the point where he'd sleep most of the time ... just wake up enough times to give himself another boost with the old life-gun.\" the old man might have been right about that. If we stick together, the chance is three to one against us. But if each of us makes for one old man said, but a place where we can live. And maybe there'll be intelligent life, maybe even a ship, and whoever gets the right star can come and help the other two....\" Johnson started to laugh. Russell was yelling wildly at them, and above his own yelling he could hear Johnson's rising laughter. \"Every guy's got a star of his own,\" Johnson said when he stopped laughing. thought was right. And he'll keep on going. Course he won't be able to give himself another boost with the life-gun, but he'll keep going. old Dunbar? Even less than to us, I guess. He's dead and he won't And old Dunbar shooting right on ahead. And all three of them Russell used his own life-gun and in a little while he didn't hear waited for him, stretching away to the red-rimmed sun. Even if he were right—he was sure now he'd never make it alone. \"Yes,\" another of them said. \"But what amazes me is that this old man picked this planet out of all the others. The only one in this entire sector that would sustain life.\" \"Maybe he was just a very lucky old man. Yes ... a man who attains such an age was usually lucky. Or at least that is what they say about the lost sectors.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhich of these is not a reason Russell killed Dunbar?\n\n<options>:\nA The time in space was driving him nuts\nB He wanted it to be more quiet\nC He thought it would be the only way to go the right direction\nD He wanted his ration supply\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
2,185 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nNew money: Do local currencies actually work? Not every country is so lucky. In crisis-hit Greece, where the euro can be hard to come by, businesses and citizens have turned to bartering using a points system where goods like pianos, pot and pans can be exchanged for security services or loaned farming equipment. In India last year, desperate people burned sacks of illegal cash after the government withdrew two high-denomination notes as part of a crackdown on corruption. Hoarders woke up to discover the banknotes under their mattresses were suddenly worthless. The pound has been trading at its lowest level since 1985 since the UK voted to leave the European Union and there are fears that it could dip further as Brexit ensues. Timebanks, local exchange trading systems (LETS) and digital inventions like bitcoin can provide alternative ways for people to pay for goods and services when mainstream currencies hit crises. But they will only work if Britons are ready to accept that they have the power to invent their own currency. \"At the moment, if the pound stops working for us, the whole economy grinds to a halt because there aren't alternatives,\" Duncan McCann, a researcher at the New Economics Foundation, tells those gathered in a gilded room at Glasgow Chambers to discuss the Glasgow Pound. McCann is a long-time advocate of alternative means of exchange. He is behind the ScotPound, a proposal for a new national currency for Scotland that emerged after the referendum on Scottish independence. It's an idea he no longer thinks will work, because the debate, since Brexit, has shifted from the currency issue back to ideas about Scottish independence. Everyone has gathered to decide what a Glasgow Pound might look like at a time when many are asking if local currencies can work at all. Councillor Redmond says Glasgow has been closely watching existing alternative currencies like the Brixton Pound in London, which was introduced in 2011. No two local currencies are exactly the same. But the Brixton Pound and other recent schemes follow the example ten years ago of the Totnes Pound, a 'complementary currency': that is, one supplementing the national currency. As fears for financial stability took hold during the recession, complementary currencies grew in popularity. The Bank of England does not consider these forms of currency legal tender, but the notes hold value in the same way as a gift-card from a department store, with the same kind of restrictions about where they can be spent. Proponents say complementary currencies boost spending in smaller geographical areas, which can have environmental benefits as businesses cut transport distances to deal with local suppliers. Detractors say they have no real economic impact and work only as a game for the middle classes, who can afford to buy from independent shops rather than chains. In Britain, there are now schemes in Totnes, Lewes, Brixton, Bristol and Exeter. Hull has its own local digital currency that can be earned from volunteering and used to pay council tax. Kingston, Birmingham and Liverpool have schemes underway. Glasgow could be next. But the working group has some serious questions to answer first, not least: do complementary currencies actually work? \"People don't understand money,\" Molly Scott Cato, Green MEP for the South West of England and Gibraltar, says over the phone. Scott Cato says the fish-in-water problem – the idea that sterling is so ubiquitous, it is never questioned – is the biggest challenge for complementary currencies. She knows all about it as a founder of the Stroud Pound in 2010, a currency that has since gone out of circulation. In Stroud, suspicion of the local currency among local businesses became a barrier to success. Scott-Cato said traders refused to join the scheme because they were \"running a business\", as though putting the community first and placing the needs of others as equivalent to their own was in itself bad business practice, or as though they were somehow being disloyal to sterling. \"The small scale is a problem and a strength,\" says Stephen Clarke, chief financial officer of the Bristol Pound. \"The benefit comes from the fact that local currencies are trusted organisations: we're a Community Interest Company limited by guarantee.\" That means assets owned by the the Bristol Pound have to be used for the good of the community, rather than purely for profit. Without enough currency in circulation, it ceases to work. Scott-Cato says Stroud's size meant meant the Stroud Pound was never viable: \"We couldn't get the velocity of circulation right, which contrasts with the Bristol Pound.\" Clarke also says the small scale of local currencies means they are \"always scrabbling around looking for money\". One way founders of the Bristol Pound have addressed his is by setting up an umbrella organisation, the Guild of Independent Currencies, to share information between local currencies in the UK and help new organisations. \"At the moment we're all reinventing the wheel every time,\" Clarke says. Technology might also have a solution. Peter Ferry, a commercial director, travels to Glasgow to tell those working on the Glasgow Pound that that his company Wallet has come up with a way to use the blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, to make it easier for people to use multiple types of currency. \"There might be many currencies around the country that people want to use. We need to make it simple for them to do that and also to make it simple to earn these currencies in many ways,\" he says. Size doesn't always matter. Sometimes, the smallest places – like Totnes and the Ekopia community – are best able to support complementary currencies because the people who live there are engaged with their local economy in a meaningful way. When Scott-Cato and her colleagues wrote about the experience of setting up the Stroud Pound, they said it was telling that complementary currencies have been accused of being a game for middle-class people, rather than a genuine economic solution. Perhaps for that reason, experts like Duncan McCann have stopped thinking of complementary currencies as a one-size-fits-all solution. He said they can function as a kind of 'gateway drug' to introduce people to a new way of thinking about money. \"That is especially for those who use it, but also for those who just become aware of it,\" he says. Nothing is tying Glasgow to existing models for complementary currencies. But during the first meeting about setting up the Glasgow Pound, the workshop shows just how hard it would be to invent a new system that works for everyone. After years of researc,h McCann believes the only way complementary currencies can create real value for local economies is if they make transactions happen that wouldn't otherwise have taken place. \"They need to create additional spending power. This is this what the local currencies, despite all their good points, fail to do,\" McCann says. \"We see this as part of community building – linking the Brixton Pound user with community groups, so both groups become more visible to each other through the currency and fund. This is particularly important in Brixton because of the gentrification debates which are very salient round there,\" Çava says. Meanwhile, the people behind the Bristol Pound are readying a mutual credit network called Bristol Prospects. Through this network, businesses in Bristol can exchange credit in the form of loans that are neutralised within the network, helping one another to grow without relying on the high rates of commercial lenders. \"We know from research that a number of small businesses in Bristol are struggling to get money on reasonable terms,\" says Clarke, \"and that banks are not interested in smaller loans to businesses. So we think there is a strength in the Bristol Pound network to start something like this that is linked, but separate.\" This article is part of a series on local economies Hazel is documenting at farnearer.org, with funding from the Friends Provident Foundation\n\n<question>:\nHow are the various local currencies connected?\n\n<options>:\nA They are independnet systems but can sometimes be traded for currency in a town where there is an existing partnership\nB They are developed entirely independently from one another\nC They are all developed by the same national organization, adapting to the needs of specific areas\nD They are independently developed but there are groups dedicated to sharing information about the various systems\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
155 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nPEGGY FINDS THE THEATER I Dramatic Dialogue cookies, kissed her parents good night and went upstairs said to his daughter Peggy, who perched tensely on the edge of a kitchen stool. “We could hardly have helped knowing that you’ve wanted to be an actress “Of course, this is no surprise to us,” Thomas Lane lamp outside as it shone through the leaves of the big Peggy lay on her back, staring at the ceiling and the patterns of light and shade cast by the street time in a high-school play. Which should she refresh herself on? Which ones would she do best? And like this can’t be made quickly.” “But, Dad!” Peggy almost wailed. “You just finished which ones were most suited to her now? She recognized lots of acting credits already. Besides, what is there to wait for?” Peggy’s father put down his coffee cup and leaned back in the kitchen chair until it tilted on two legs light, brittle, comedy role...? 19 Nothing seemed quite right. Peggy’s thoughts shifted with the shadows overhead. All the plays she and enjoy for the rest of your life—” “But not acting knowledge!” Peggy cried. “There’s more to life than that,” her father put in. Peggy replied, “and none of them is nearly as important to my life.” thought they were the most talented things alive girls who won all kinds of applause in high-school and college plays girls who have everything to have something to fall back on, just in case you ever need it.” Mr. Lane, seeing Peggy’s hurt look, was quick to step in with reassurance. “We don’t think you’re going teacher’s certificate so that you can always find useful work if you have to. Then you can try your luck in the theater. Doesn’t that make sense?” Peggy stared at the faded linoleum on the floor for a few moments before answering. Then, looking first at her mother and then at her father, she replied “I don’t expect recognition in one year, Dad,” Peggy said. “I’m not that conceited or that silly. All I hope is that I’ll be able to get a part in that time, and maybe be able to make a living out of acting. best time.” “Oh, Mother!” Peggy shouted, jumping down from the stool and throwing her arms about her mother’s 6 Mrs. Lane patted Peggy’s arm and said, “We won’t keep you in suspense long, dear. Why don’t you go out for a walk for a while and let us go over the situation turned to look back just in time to see her mother throw her a comically exaggerated wink of assurance. Feeling much better, Peggy shut the screen door behind her and started for the barn. Ever since she had been a little girl, the barn had been Peggy’s favorite place to go to be by herself and think. Its musty but clean scent of straw and horses and leather made her feel calm and alive. Breathing she stamped one foot and softly whinnied a greeting. Peggy stopped first at the bag that hung on the wall among the bridles and halters and took out a lump of Peggy’s hand in appreciation. As Peggy mixed some oats and barley for her pet and checked to see that there was enough straw in the stall, she thought about her life in Rockport and Rockport, Wisconsin, was a fine place, as pretty a small town as any girl could ask to grow up in. And not too small, either, Peggy thought. Its 16,500 people supported good schools, an excellent library, and two movie dates, and formal dances—everything that a girl could want. Peggy had lived all her life here, knew every tree-shaded street, every country road, field, lake, and stream. All of her friends were here, friends she had as soon as she possibly could. It was not any dissatisfaction with her life, her friends, or her home that made Peggy want to leave from office to office looking for a part in a play, Peggy suddenly laughed aloud and brought herself had reached a decision about her future. Fighting down an impulse to rush right into the kitchen to see how they were coming along, Peggy continued II Dramatic Decision Upstairs at the Wilsons’, Peggy found Jean swathed in bath towels, washing her long, straight red hair, which was now white with lather and piled up in a another dry towel around her head like an Indian turban. Then, having wrapped herself in an ancient, tattered, plaid bathrobe, she led Peggy out of the steamy room and into her cozy, if somewhat cluttered, bedroom. When they had made themselves “You know, if I were as smart as you,” Peggy said thoughtfully, “I would have figured out a way to convince Mother and Dad by now.” the couch to avoid the pillow that Peggy threw at her. retie her towel turban. From her new position, flat on the floor, Peggy looked up at her friend with a rueful smile. not there when it isn’t!” “But, Jean,” Peggy protested, “you can handle comedy and character lines as well as anyone I know!” why you’re going to go to New York and be an actress. And that’s why I’m not.” “But, Jean—” Peggy began. certificate as an English teacher.” “And what about acting? Can you get it out of your mind as easily as all that?” Peggy asked. that was completely out of place on her round, freckled face. “Once I get into a high school as an English teacher, I’m going to try to teach a special high-school drama group and put on plays. That way, I’ll be in a spot where I can use my special talent of recognizing talent. And that way,” she added, becoming Peggy nodded silently, not trusting herself to speak for fear of saying something foolishly sentimental, or even of crying. Her friend’s earnestness about the importance of her work and her faith in Peggy’s It was nearly ten o’clock when Peggy finally felt that her parents had had enough time to talk things out. Leaving the Wilson house, she walked slowly three of us. And, May—it’ll be good to see you again, after all these years! Good-by.” As Peggy entered the room, her father put down “What’s all set, Dad?” Peggy said, breaking into a run to her father’s side. 15 “Well, for goodness’ sake!” her mother cried. “Where’s the enthusiasm?” Peggy swallowed hard before answering. When yelled at the top of her lungs. After the kisses, the hugs, and the first excitement, Peggy and her parents adjourned to the kitchen, the favorite household conference room, for cookies and milk and more talk. “Now, tell me, Dad,” Peggy asked, her mouth full of oatmeal cookies, no longer “sedate” or “poised,” but her natural, bubbling self. “Who was that on the Mrs. Lane put in. “It seems that May bought a big, old-fashioned town house and converted it into she has a room that you can have!” “Oh, Mother! It sounds wonderful!” Peggy exulted. “I’ll be with other girls my own age who are actresses, and living with an experienced actress! I’ll bet she can teach me loads!” “I’m sure she can,” her father said. “And so can the New York Dramatic Academy.” “Dad!” Peggy shouted, almost choking on a cooky. “Don’t tell me you’ve managed to get me accepted there! That’s the best dramatic school in the country! How—?” 17 Berriman told me that the Academy is the best place to study acting, and she said she would set up an I can have more time! Oh, Mother, what parts will I do? Where’s the Shakespeare? Where’s—” “Whoa!” Mr. Lane said, catching Peggy’s arm to prevent her from rushing out of the kitchen. “Not now, young lady! We’ll pack in the morning, talk be a busy time for all of us.” Reluctantly, Peggy agreed, recognizing the sense of what her father said. She finished her milk and\n\n<question>:\nWhy did the Lane family move to Wisconsin?\n\n<options>:\nA For Mr. Lane’s work\nB To be near family and friends\nC For Mrs. Lane’s singing career\nD For Peggy’s school\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
2,209 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nsurface of the Moon's far side, and, to Earth. Pop matter-of-factly tended the shack and the landing field and the therefore, he occupied the shack on the Big Crack's edge, above the By day the environment was heat and torment. By night—lunar night, of course, and lunar day—it was frigidity and horror. Once in two weeks Earth-time a rocketship came around the horizon from Lunar City with stores for the colony deep underground. Pop received the stores and Moon. All freight had to be hauled from Earth, on a voyage equal to to Earth. The rocket went away again. Come nightfall Pop rather more than a thousand times lowered the supplies down the long cable into the Big Crack to the colony far down inside, and freshened up the landing field marks with magnesium marking-powder if a rocket-blast sorts, but when warmed up in the shack they were useless. He found no strictly lunar material which would serve for modeling or carving portraits in the ground. He found gaping rocky fault which stretches nine hundred miles, jaggedly, over the side of the Moon that Earth Crack would have had to shut down. The Crack, of course, was that is nothing like it on Earth, of course. When it was first found, scientists descended into it to examine the exposed rock-strata and learn the history of the Moon before its craters were made. But they found more than history. They found the reason for the colony and the rocket landing field and the shack. mineral he required. Marble would have been perfect, but there is no marble on the Moon. Naturally! Yet The reason for Pop was something Pop continued to search absorbedly for material with which to capture but— Early one lunar morning he was a good two miles from his shack when he saw rocket-fumes in the and there were rocket-fumes coming over the horizon, not in the direction of Lunar City. Which was more impossible still. He stared. A tiny silver rocket to fresh, and all sorts of things to make life possible for men under if not on the Moon. But it wasn't fun, even underground. In the Moon's slight gravity, landing-area marked by silvery triangles. so easily. He knew about Pop, up on the surface. He'd shipped out, whimpering, to the Moon to get far away from Pop, and Pop was just the low gravity to tear a man's nerves to shreds. He has to develop down with the singular deliberation The first men to leave the colony had to be knocked cold and shipped out unconscious. They'd been underground—and It was just barely past lunar sunrise on the far side of the Moon. Incredibly long and utterly black of falling objects on the Moon. rocketship if Pop put a tarpaulin raising a trail of slowly settling powder. He knew only that the ship didn't come from Lunar City, but from Earth. He couldn't imagine why. He did not even wildly connect over their heads so they didn't have Then he blinked. There was a red-headed \"This,\" snapped the red-headed good care of his job. There was a warning-bell in the shack, and when a rocketship from Lunar City got above the horizon and could send a The red-headed man leaned forward, tight beam, the gong clanged loudly, and went out the air lock. He usually reached the moondozer about the time the ship began to brake for \"Pay attention!\" snarled the red-headed the product of the mine, to be forwarded of jagged crater-walls. It slowed, and slowed, and curved down as it drew nearer. The pilot killed all forward The red-headed man hit him marked the landing place. \"Move!\" he rasped. \"I want the diamonds you've got for the ship from Lunar City! Bring 'em!\" Pop licked blood from his lips and the man with the weapon raged at him. Instantly the rockets cut off, drums of fuel and air and food came therefore, he wanted to hurt. the Moon. He panted: \"And get it straight! You try any tricks and we take off! We that space-travel—then, at its beginning—produced. It was meaningless savagery due to terror. But, Moon and the mention of Sattell's name showed the uselessness of bluff. He'd pictured the complete set-up The red-headed man checked up for Lunar City, Pop tracked him. By that time he was quite sure that Sattell was the man who'd put things together. The red-headed the mine, for example. In each two Earth-weeks of working, the mine-colony and called the mine-colony down in the Crack. He gave the message he'd been told to pass on. Lunar City ship that would be due presently. Otherwise the ship on the landing strip would destroy shack and Pop and the colony together. \"I'd guess,\" said Pop painstakingly, dead and the shacks smashed and the cable burnt through, they'll be back on Earth long before a new cable's been got and let down to you. So they'll do all they can no matter Moon in the first place because Sattell of the Moon. He was a rather fussy Earth newly-mined diamonds sometimes fly to pieces from internal stress. On the Moon, it was not desirable that diamonds be exposed to repeated violent changes of temperature. craters complained of the bombardment from space that had made them. touched up the glittering triangles which were landing guides for the Lunar City ships. They glittered from the thinnest conceivable layer of magnesium marking-powder. would have rubbed his hands. Tall, jagged crater-walls rose from the lunar plain. Monstrous, extended inky shadows stretched enormous distances, utterly black. When the red-headed man opened The red-headed man snarled. But occupation made it absurdly easy to live on the surface of the far side of the Moon, whether anybody else could do it or not. Sattell had no such device for adjusting to the lunar state of things. Living on the Moon was bad enough on. But his eyes went past the red-headed pounds on Earth. \"Any tricks,\" he rasped, \"and you know what happens!\" need to escape became an obsession on top of the other psychotic states normal to a Moon-colonist. But he was helpless. He couldn't the trip back to Earth. And it blew, too. It would be minutes before all the fragments of the ship returned to the Moon's surface. On the Moon, things fall slowly. nothing. The Moon swung in vast circles about the Earth, and the Earth Pop didn't wait. He searched a luxury passenger-line of spaceships to ply between Earth and Moon. It looked like a perfect set-up. Three spacecraft capable of the journey came into being with attendant reams of publicity. They promised a thrill and a new distinction for the rich. Guided tours to Lunar! The most expensive and most thrilling What do we do?\" \"Don't do a thing,\" advised Pop. \"It's all right. I blew up the ship and trip in history! One hundred thousand Lunar City and a landing in Aristarchus, plus sound-tapes of the journey and fame hitherto reserved for Moon's far side and trips through in order to recover memories of them. He began to plan, gloatingly, the happens when a self-centered and complacent individual unsuspectingly looks out of a spaceship port and sees the cosmos unshielded not endure his own smallness in the face of immensity. Not one passenger disembarked even for Lunar City. Most of them cowered in their chairs, hiding their eyes. They were The second luxury liner took off with only four passengers and turned back before reaching the Moon. Space-pilots could take the strain of space-flight because they had work to do. Workers for the lunar mines could make the trip under heavy sedation. But it was too early in the\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the red-headed man come to the moon?\n\n<options>:\nA To kill Pop.\nB To steal the diamonds.\nC To rescue Sattell, the diamonds are his payment.\nD To destroy the lunar colony.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
729 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nDelta Crucis , hobbled across the spaceport to where Beulah and I were waiting to greet him I figured that he figured that I had something to do with the way he looked. \"Shipping marocca to Gloryanna III didn't turn out to be a cakewalk after all?\" I suggested. did succeed in getting the marocca to Gloryanna III?\" I asked anxiously, after the elephants had been admired and sent back home. The success of that venture—even if the job had turned out to be more difficult than we had expected—meant an enormous profit to both of us. The fruit of the marocca is delicious and fabulously expensive. The plant grew only on the single planet Mypore II. Transshipped seeds invariably failed to germinate, which explained its rarity. The Myporians were usually, and understandably, bitterly, opposed to letting any of the living plants get shipped off their planet. But when I offered them a sizable piece of cash plus a perpetual share of the profits for letting us take a load of marocca plants to Gloryanna III, they relented and, for the first time in history, gave their assent. In \"I got them there safely,\" said Captain Hannah. \"And they are growing all right?\" I persisted. \"When I left, marocca was growing like mad,\" said Captain Hannah. I relaxed and leaned back in my chair. I no longer felt the need of credit for that. Gloryanna III is almost a twin to Mypore II. You know that marocca takes a very special kind of environment. Bright sun most of the time—that means an almost cloudless environment. A very equable climate. Days and nights the same length and no seasons—that means no ecliptical and no axial tilt. But our tests showed that the plants had enough tolerance to cause no trouble in the trip in Delta Crucis .\" A light dawned. \"Our tests were no good?\" then I'll black your other eye,\" he decided. \"You'll remember that I warned you that we should take some marocca out into space and solve any problems we might find before committing Delta Crucis , but I figured it was safer to let him tell me in his own way, in his own time. of motion, with everything else dark. So I lined up the Delta Crucis perpendicular to her direction of motion, put a once-every-twenty-one hour spin on her to match the rotation rates of Mypore II and Gloryanna doesn't keep winding, the plants die and they can only take a few extra hours of night time before they run down.\" for ten and one-half hours, until I had gone halfway around the room. Then I could turn the light off and rest for ten and one-half hours. The plants liked it fine. the southern hemisphere, it turned out that half of the plants had a sinistral corkscrew and the other half had a dextral. So I had to set the plants up in two different rooms, and run an artificial sun for things through. The plastic membranes hadn't torn when we brought the tanks in board the Delta Crucis . It never occurred to me to hunt around for the reasons for the change. But I wouldn't have had long to off the other plant room, and save it at least. So I ended up by not doing anything, which was the right thing to do. No more plants died from the DDT. the bugs without doing the plants any harm at all. Of course, the fumigation system is designed to work with the fumigator off the ship, because it's poisonous to humans too. marocca. The larvae provide an enzyme without which the plants die. \"Of course. I immediately stopped slapping at the relatively few midges that had made their way into the head with me, and started to change provide a necessary enzyme. They are supposed to have the same timing of their life cycle as the carolla. Apparently the shaking up I had given their larvae in moving the tanks and dipping the water up in near the skin where the plants are. But the gravity potential is very \"I got up with the sun the next morning. Hell, I had to, considering that it was I who turned the sun on! I found that the dingleburys immediately got busy opening small buds on the stems of the marocca plants. Apparently they were pollinating them. I felt sure that these buds weren't the marocca blossoms from which the fruit formed—I'd seen a lot of those while we were on Mypore II and they were much but I was busy. \"Anyway, the action of the dingleburys triggered the violent growth phase of the marocca plants. Did you know that they plant marocca seedlings, back on Mypore II, at least you'll recall, a mature field, which was the only kind we ever saw, is one solid mass of green growth. \"The book says that it takes just six hours for a marocca field to shift from the seedling stage to the mature stage. It didn't seem that long. You could one of the things they do is to defend the marocca against marauders. about two seconds. \"And what's more, I found that I couldn't kill the damn things. Not if I wanted to save the plants. The growth only stops at the end of six keep them clear of the vines, and keep the vines from shadowing each Made them forget all about me. \"While they were having their orgy, I caught up on my reading. It was necessary for me to cut back the marocca vines. For one thing, I couldn't get up to the area of the bridge. For another, the main computer was completely clogged. I could use the auxiliary, on the thing, I would have to cut the stuff way back if I was ever going to get the plants out of the ship. And I was a little anxious to get my Delta Crucis back to normal as soon as possible. But before cutting, I had to translate the gouge. \"It turns out that it's all right to cut marocca as soon as it stops growing. To keep the plants from dying, though, you have to mulch the cuttings and then feed them back to the plants, where the roots store whatever they need against the time of the next explosive period of growth. Of course, if you prefer you can wait for the vines to die back naturally, which takes several months. \"There was one little catch, of course. The cuttings from the vines will poison the plants if they are fed back to them without having been mixed with a certain amount of processed mulch. Enzymes again. And there was only one special processor on board. Delta Crucis down safely. Even as shaky as I was, Delta Crucis behaved like a lady. seemed to be enjoying the powerful stuff. He acted as if he thought he had finished. \"Well, go on,\" I urged him. \"The marocca plants were still in good shape, weren't they?\" Hannah nodded. \"They were growing luxuriously.\" He nodded his head a He said, \"They made me burn the entire crop right away, of course. They didn't get all of the carolla or dingleburys, though. Or spores.\" \"Gloryanna III is the original home planet of marocca. They hated the stuff, of course, but they liked the profit. Then, when a plague almost crop. It wasn't as lucrative, but it was so much more pleasant that they outlawed marocca. Took them almost fifty years to stamp it out completely. Meanwhile, some clever native shipped a load of the stuff to Mypore II. He took his time, did it without any trouble and made his Delta Crucis as security to pay for the cost of stamping out marocca all over again—those spores sprout fast—and for a time I was worried. \"Of course, when I showed them our contract—that you alone were\n\n<question>:\nWhat can you infer about the environment within the Delta Crucis in terms of its suitability for growing marocca?\n\n<options>:\nA The Delta Crucis can not sustain marocca plant life.\nB The Delta Crucis is capable of sustaining marocca plant life with appropriate interventions.\nC The Delta Crucis must be operated by multiple individuals at a time to sustain the marocca in transport.\nD The Delta Crucis can sustain marocca plant life if small batches of the plants are transferred at a time.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
14 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nthey skipped several steps in the procedure. The chordata discerner read Positive several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought on the body? Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to before it's back in our ken if we let it go now.\" \"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of the world to make sure we've missed nothing,\" said Stark. There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of had refused to read Positive when turned on the inventor himself, , the machine insisted. assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests. of the shoulders in a man. They called it the \"You tell Captain \"Keep on towards the minds,\" said Stark. \"They're our target.\" \"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion, with us.\" in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very bright light. \"Talk to them, Father Briton,\" said Stark. \"You are the linguist.\" He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at him, so he went on. \"Father Briton from Philadelphia,\" he said, \"on detached service. And you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?\" \"Ha-Adamah,\" said the man. \"And your daughter, or niece?\" It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this but the woman smiled, proving that she was human. \"The woman is named Hawwah,\" said the man. \"The sheep is named sheep, the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is named hoolock.\" \"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You \"Ah—I see.\" the first water ever made. \"What do you make of them?\" asked Stark. \"Human,\" said Steiner. \"It may even be that they are a little more than \"Talk to them again,\" said Stark. \"You're the linguist.\" \"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself.\" \"Are there any other people here?\" Stark asked the man. \"How could there be more than one of anything?\" The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly: \"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?\" \"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named Engineer. He is named Flunky.\" \"Thanks a lot,\" said Steiner. \"But are we not people?\" persisted Captain Stark. going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling.\" \"Can we have something to eat?\" asked the Captain. \"Pick from the trees,\" said Ha-Adamah, \"and then it may be that you \"We will,\" said Captain Stark. They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you. \"If there are only two people here,\" said Casper Craig, \"then it may be \"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else,\" said Stark. \"A very promising site.\" and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be, the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one.\" \"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat.\" \"Ask him first. You ask him.\" \"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?\" \"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden.\" \"Well, the analogy breaks down there,\" said Stark. \"I was almost beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what. Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah and Hawwah mean—?\" \"Of course they do. You know that as well as I.\" And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: \"No, \"Once more, Father,\" said Stark, \"you should be the authority but does not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a medieval painting?\" \"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated.\" \"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too incredible.\" \"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?\" \"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never did understand the answer, however.\" am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect.\" Then Stark cut in once more: \"There must be some one question you could ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced.\" \"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about a game of checkers?\" \"This is hardly the time for clowning,\" said Stark. \"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of colors and first move.\" \"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect.\" \"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam, and have a go at it.\" \"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you.\" It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave. \"What is there, Adam?\" asked Captain Stark. \"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we persevere, it will come by him.\" It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part of the serpent, and intrude and spoil.\" \"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world,\" said Casper Craig the tycoon, \"but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it. and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of.\" \"I think you'd better write me some new lines,\" said Adam. \"I feel like a goof saying those same ones to each bunch.\" \"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming better researched, and they insist on authenticity. \"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb.\" \"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the crackpot settlers will bring a new lion.\" \"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's hell.\" Briton. \"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?\" \"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!\" \"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by our senses? Why do you doubt?\" zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers.\" \"What?\" \"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the crew later refer to Ha-Adamah as Adam?\n\n<options>:\nA He responds to Adam, and they decide it's his true name\nB Ha-Adamah is Adam's Hebrew origination.\nC The planet feels so much like the Garden of Eden, that they begin to believe he is Adam\nD They want to test Adam and see if he accepts it as his name.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
150 | quality | [
{
"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\"Irish!\" Hathaway snapped that, his face lighting up. \"Irish. The U.S. Cavalry it is!\" His eyes darted over the machines. \"Here. Help me. We'll stage everything on the most colossal raid of the century.\" was to laugh! For Click and Irish were marooned on the pirate's asteroid—their only Marnagan winced. \"You breathing oxygen or whiskey?\" \"There's only one stipulation I make, Irish. I want a complete picture \"Get Gunther,\" the official orders read. It weapons a single gun and a news-reel camera. By RAY BRADBURY meteor coming like blazing fury. skin. And then the meteor hit. It made a spiked fist and knocked the ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of metal death. What a fade-out! \"Irish!\" he heard himself say. \"Is this IT?\" \"Is this what that pierced through his vac-suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the 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 to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order.\" Click nodded. \"Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish. limbless, suddenly. \"Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!\" They ran back. \"Let's try it again.\" They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened. after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt \"Irish!\" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline toward the mouth a small cave. \"This way, fella!\" Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. \"They're Instinctively, Hathaway added, \"Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a enjoyed it, every moment of it.\" \"I did that.\" Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. \"Now, what will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?\" \"Let me think—\" didn't know what. Something about these monsters and Gunther and— \"Which one will you be having?\" asked Irish, casually. \"A red one or a blue one?\" \"Then,\" retorted Marnagan, \"we'll develop it for our own benefit while Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. \"Snap me this pose,\" he negotiations betwixt me and these pixies.\" Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running 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: Super-gravity and a couple of well-tossed meteors. Saves all around. ships simply crash, that's all. A subtle hand, with all aces.\" Marnagan rumbled. \"Where is the dirty son, then!\" \"He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them.\" Hathaway nodded at like a red banner, his freckled face with the blue eyes bright in it. Maybe— Hathaway said it, loud: \"Irish! Irish! I think I see a way out of this mess! Here—\" He elucidated it over and over again to the Patrolman. About the film, monsters weren't there, they weren't there. Marnagan put his big fists on his hips. \"If anyone is going anywhere, it'll be me does the going.\" \"I can't let you do that, Irish.\" \"Why not?\" \"You'd be going on my say-so.\" \"Yes. Sure. Of course. I guess—\" \"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 profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The Lion's Den.\" \"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. Think it hard. There aren't any animals—\" \"Keep me in focus, lad.\" \"All the way, Irish.\" \"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!\" Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one, monsters! No more monsters. \"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you coward!\" \"Smile when you say that, Irish.\" \"Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in your sweet grey eyes?\" \"Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could have frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If that isn't being dangerous—\" The Irishman whistled. \"But, we've got to move , Irish. We've got twenty minutes of oxygen. 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 Marnagan didn't like it. \"Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if we believe in 'em?\" Irish. Marnagan cursed. \"All right, lad. Let's have at it!\" The monsters returned. A soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming in malevolent anticipation about the two men. \"This way, Irish. They come from this way! There's a focal point, a sending station for these telepathic brutes. Come on!\" Hathaway sludged into the pressing tide of color, mouths, contorted \"Click—\" He was fighting hard. \"I—I—sure now. Sure—\" He smiled. \"It—it's only a shanty fake!\" \"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up.\" Marnagan's thick lips opened. \"It's only a fake,\" he said. And then, irritated, \"Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!\" The outpour of animals came from a low lying mound a mile farther on. Evidently the telepathic source lay there. They approached it warily. \"We'll be taking our chances on guard,\" hissed Irish. \"I'll go ahead, draw their attention, maybe get captured. Then, you proton gun extended stiffly before him, also in a vac-suit. The guard The guard whirled. He widened his sharp eyes, and reluctantly, dropped his gun to the floor. \"Get his gun, Irish.\" Marnagan made as if to move, crumpled clumsily forward. Click was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air. rocket by, pulled them or knocked them down and swarmed over them for Irish. \"We haven't a ship or a space-radio, and more guards'll turn up any moment. You think we could refocus this doohingey, project the monsters inside the asteroid to fool the pirates themselves?\" Marnagan exhaled disgustedly. \"Ah, if only the U.S. Cavalry would come riding over the hill—\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy didn’t the proton gun hurt the monsters?\n\n<options>:\nA The monsters ran too fast.\nB The proton gun was damaged in the crash.\nC The monsters had thick, resistant skin.\nD Irish wanted to negotiate a peace.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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737 | quality | [
{
"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 the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Wayne, unseen, sneered down from the head of the stairs. The old man with his thick neck, thick cigar, evening highball, potgut and bald head without a brain in it. His slim mother with nervously we'll be late.\" Wayne watched the ritual, grinning. He listened to their purposeless noises, their blabbing and yakking as if they had something to say. How come he'd been stuck with parental images like that? One thing—when he was jockeying a rocket to Mars or maybe firing the pants off Asiatic reds in some steamy gone jungle paradise, he'd forget his But the old man was right on for once about the dangerous repressed impulses. Wayne had heard about it often enough. Anyway there was no doubt about it when every move he made was a restrained explosion. So he'd waited in his room, and it wasn't easy sweating it out alone \"Well, dear, if you say so,\" Mother said, with the old resigned sigh that must make the old man feel like Superman with a beerbelly. They heard Wayne slouching loosely down the stairs and looked up. \"Relax,\" Wayne said. \"You're not going anywhere tonight.\" boltbucket.\" \"But we promised the Clemons, dear,\" his mother said. \"Hell,\" Wayne said, grinning straight into the old man. \"I just got my pansy haircut looked out of a pile of paperwork. \"Where you think you're going, my pretty lad?\" Wayne grinned down. \"Higher I hope than a typewriter jockey.\" \"Well,\" the sergeant said. \"How tough we are this evening. You have a A tired fat corporal with a naked head blinked up at tall Wayne. Finally he said, \"So make up your mind, bud. Think you're the only kid breaking out tonight?\" \"Hold your teeth, pop,\" Wayne said, coolly and slowly lighting a cigarette. \"I've decided.\" The corporal's little eyes studied Wayne with malicious amusement. \"You must be a genius,\" Wayne said. \"A corporal with no hair and still a counterboy. I'm impressed. I'm all ears, Dad.\" Wayne's mouth twitched. He leaned across the counter toward the shelves and racks of weapons. \"I'll remember that crack when I get my commission.\" He blew smoke in the corporal's face. \"Bring me a while Wayne examined the weapons, broke open the revolver, twirled the Captain Jack moved massively. The big stone-walled office, alive with stuffed lion and tiger and gunracks, seemed to grow smaller. Captain Jack crossed black-booted legs and whacked a cane at the floor. It had a head shaped like a grinning bear. Wayne felt the assured smile die on his face. Something seemed to shrink him. If he didn't watch himself he'd begin feeling like a pea among bowling balls. Contemptuously amused little eyes glittered at Wayne from a shaggy head. Shoulders hunched like stuffed sea-bags. \"Wayne Seton,\" said Captain Jack as if he were discussing something in a bug collection. \"Well, well, you're really fired up aren't you? Really going out to eat 'em. Right, punk?\" from Wayne's nose. He jerked up a shaky hand involuntarily and clamped a knuckle-ridged gag to his gasping mouth. Captain Jack chuckled. \"All right, superboy.\" He handed Wayne his passcard. \"Curfew's off, punk, for 6 hours. You got 6 hours to make out.\" they're your key to the stars.\" \"Yes, sir,\" Wayne said. \"So run along and make out, punk,\" grinned Captain Jack. A copcar stopped Wayne as he started over the bridge, out of bright Wayne waved the pass card, signed by Captain Jack, under the cop's quivering nose. The cop shivered and stepped back and waved him on. The Olds roared over the bridge as the night's rain blew away. Wayne's fearful exhilaration increased as he cruised with bated breath a bank of garbage cans, humming to himself, pulling at a rainsoaked shirt clinging to a pale stick body. He reminded Wayne of a slim grub balanced on one end. a dirty, greenish tinge as he sensed Wayne there. He turned in a doom. \"I gotta hide, kid. They're on me.\" Wayne's chest rose and his hands curled. The bum's fingers drew at the air like white talons. as the Cad cruised in a slow follow-up. Wayne's breath quickened as he watched, feeling somehow blank wonder at finding himself there, free and breaking out at last with no curfew and no law but his own. He felt as though he couldn't stop anything. laughed. Wayne wanted to shout. He opened his mouth, but the yell clogged up somewhere, so that he remained soundless yet with his mouth still open as he heard the payoff thuds where the useless wino curled Wayne walked over and sneered down at the human garbage lying in his heart thump like a trapped rubber ball in a cage. He hurried into the Four Aces, drawn by an exhilarating vision ... and pursued by the hollow haunting fears of his own desires. of being motionless, as though they were all actors performing in a weirdo drama being staged in that smoky thick-aired dive. Wayne smiled with wry superiority at the redheaded psycho in a dirty T-shirt, a big bruiser with a gorilla face. He was tussling his mouse heavy. sat rigid, eyes fixed on Wayne like balls of frozen glass. Red looked up and stared straight at Wayne with eyes like black buttons imbedded in the waxlike skin of his face. Then he grinned all on one side. One huge hand scratched across the wet table top like a furious cat's. Wayne returned the challenging move but felt a nervous twitch jerk at his lips. A numbness covered his brain like a film as he concentrated on staring down Red the psycho. But Red kept looking, his eyes bright but dead. Then he began struggling it up again with the scared little mouse. The waiter sat the Crusher down. Wayne signed a chit \"Sure, teener,\" the waiter said, his breathy words dripping like syrup. Wayne drank. Liquored heat dripped into his stomach. Fire tickled his veins, became hot wire twisting in his head. He drank again and forced out a shaky breath. The jazz beat thumped crashed. Wayne's .38 dropped from its spring-clip holster and the blast filled the room. The psycho screamed and stumbled toward the door holding something in. The mouse darted by, eluded Wayne's grasp and was out the door. Wayne went out after her in a laughing frenzy of release. He felt the cold strange breath of moist air on his sweating skin as he sprinted down the alley into a wind full of blowing wet. She backed into darkness, up there against the sagging tenement wall, her arms out and poised like crippled wings. Wayne crept up. She gave a squeaking sob, turned, ran. Wayne leaped into gloom. Wood cracked. Wayne took his time. He knew how she felt waiting in there, listening to his creeping, implacable footfalls. Then he yelled and slammed open the door. studied Wayne with abstract interest. \"You enjoyed the hunt, Seton? You got your kicks?\" \"Yes, sir.\" \"No, sir,\" Wayne mumbled. He didn't look up. \"I'm sorry I punked out.\" Wayne nodded and they led him away. His mind screamed still to split\n\n<question>:\nHad Wayne actually accomplished his mission given to him by Captain Jack, would he have felt victorious?\n\n<options>:\nA No, because Wayne would know that his parents would be disappointed in him.\nB No, because Wayne would not be able to mentally handle the murders.\nC Yes, because Wayne had been excited all along about his draft call.\nD Yes, because Wayne wanted to make Captain Jack proud no matter what.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
2,479 | quality | [
{
"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 stream, so we're following the angle on this trip ... but what got me the job of going along to write up the first me things like that—appearances on TV shows, or mentions in writers' magazines. If he didn't sell much of my stuff, at least he sold me . writer ever got,\" he told me, two days before blastoff. \"Oh, sure there'll be scientific reports on the trip, but the public doesn't want them they want the human slant on things.\" all black with white dots in it, and (a group of maybe ten, huddling about them.\" \"Nonsense,\" said Louie, sipping carefully at a paper cup of scalding coffee. \"It'll be just like the public going along vicariously. They'll identify with you.\" smell, but it's richer in oxygen \"how'll I go about it? A story? An article? A you-are-there type of report? What?\" asked me what the hell I kept writing in the diary for, did I want to \"But what if nothing happens?\" make it a gift to Martian archeologists? Louie shrugged. \"So keep a and neither can anyone else. Jones a short and unscientific word and went to sleep. entrance to our cave. I don't know what they intend to do with us. Feed us, I hope. So far, they've just left us here, and we're out of rations. They picked the launching Mars. And I kept a diary. This is \"We'll risk it,\" said Pat. \"It's better we're aimed toward where Mars in a docket or a is rather old to take the \"rigors of the journey,\" as he puts it, but the government had a choice between sending a green scientist who could stand the trip or an accomplished in the heart of the planet, says and right now he's telling \"What the hell,\" says Pat, \"it's Kroger. I'm hungry . So is everybody else. Right now I could eat a dinner raw, in a centrifuge, and keep it gives the general appearance of belonging tree, not in a metal bullet flinging (they call it the bulkhead, in his fist. Or what was left of the studied them in the uncertain light, then tasted them and grinned. energy on the outside of their bodies, in the form of scales. He's gravity to hold us against the the gyroscopic spin they put on the now and then suck up water from the stream while they're watching us, being careful not to get their lips guesses that their \"blood\" must be almost pure water, and that it washes away (from the inside, of course) the sugar they need for energy. their bodies isolated carbon from something (he thought it might be the hydrogen and oxygen in the I knew the formula for water) to make sugar, a common carbohydrate. Like plants, on Earth, he said. Except, instead of using special cells on leaves to form carbohydrates interview wasn't wasted. I learned that he is as Earth plants do in photosynthesis shape of the with the help of sunpower, scales like prisms, to isolate the first name) has been up with the coffee (they like it thick) and told \"Simple,\" he said, as though he were addressing me by name. \"They have a twofold reason to fear water. One: by complete solvency in that medium, they lose all energy Top Secret. They'd have to cover it so I could look out the viewing screen, and they still need it for steering or something. to form more sugar, and still die, if a bit slower.\" \"So now what do we do?\" and die. Two: even partial sprinkling alters the shape of the scales, Also, I am one of the first five men in the history of the world to thought of escape. Kroger shrugged. \"We'll have to it that Pat said was the Earth. always follow it back and start again.\" chance taking any that seem to those teeth of theirs. They must be for biting something more substantial circle that Pat says is a \"torque\" result from the gyroscopic spin the image of space locked into place no matter how much we spin. to go down fighting than to die of starvation.\" The hell it is. we're in. Actually, he explained to me, the screen is supposed to keep That's what they use those in the movies. There's just no awesomeness to it, no sense of depth or immensity. It's as impressive as a piece of velvet with salt sprinkled on it. buttons for men. He's one of these fast players who don't stop and think out their moves. And so misunderstood and said, \"A good chance of liking what to stay and that it's urgent to return and tell what we've learned about Mars (we know there are \"Why,\" I said, \"can't we just tell poem, sort of. \"Because,\" said Pat, \"if we tell we may be lucky and get a parade.\" \"Maybe even money,\" said it may prove to be environmentally accurate, but that I should stick to Kroger, whose mind wasn't always on science. \"But they'll ask why we didn't prose. radio the info, sir,\" said Jones uneasily. He wrote something in the ship's first name. I've skipped over the last 177 days or so, because there's nothing much new. I brought some books with me on the trip, books that I'd always meant to read and never had the time. So now I know all about Vanity Fair , Pride and Prejudice , War and Peace , have to be so fast, hence a smoother (relatively) trip on our shock-absorbing Gone with the white specks revolve on that Vanity Fair . It must have been a riot when it first came out. I mean, all those sly digs at the aristocracy, with copious interpolations by Mr. says that that's the \"torque\" doing Here we are, somewhere in a void headed for Earth, with enough any more. Kroger is thrilled that he is learning something, maybe, about the whole screen Martian reproductive processes. When he told Pat, Pat put it to a it was decided that responsibility hook-ups. Kroger says the air is breathable, but thin, and it has too much dust in it to be any fun to inhale. He's all for going out and looking for lichen, but Pat says he's Pat says what do we do have to show themselves. then can't afford the water we need to melt them down. Besides, the all turn into round and smooth. it turns to carbon, and we can use the carbon in the AFAR system. be intelligent, otherwise they couldn't have guessed at the carbohydrates present in the bread after a lifelong diet of anthracite. Pat says let's jettison Kroger. carbon. for us. The well. in their hands, and they started the rocket. . The other So we followed the wheel tracks for a while, and they veered off from my trail and followed another, very much like the one that had been thing. We are made of carbohydrates, too. I'd Earth fills the screen in the We're not alone here. More of in a descending spiral into one of We all agreed to try it. Not that we thought it had a good chance of working, but none of us had a better idea. I guess you know the rest of the story, about how that destroyer until the dismantling of the what that would do. There are a deep crevice in the ground. Seems to be an earthquake-type split in solid rock, with the sand sifting Going down was Jones' idea, Well, we're at the bottom, and about thirty feet wide that runs few days—because of our experience. Kroger says there's only enough fuel for a one-way trip. I don't care. I've always wanted to travel with the President. print to print. And they're barefoot, too, or else they have the damnedest-looking shoes in creation.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the central theme of the story?\n\n<options>:\nA Curiosity can cross dangerous boundaries, and lack of curiosity can blind one's self to those boundaries\nB Whatever we are addicted to will end up consuming us, if we allow it\nC Working together as a team is more advantageous than taking an individualistic approach\nD People, in general, are only interested in content if they find relevance or opportunity for personal gain\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
2,000 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nTranscriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible with an incoherent cry. He seized the first object his hand touched—it happened to be a against Jakdane's bunk—propelled himself like a projectile at Quest. changes (corrections of spelling and punctuation) made to THE He was a living weapon of destruction— immeasurably powerful, utterly invulnerable. There was only one question: Was he human? Trella feared she was in middle of the table and rebounding, him like an avenging angel and, holding onto the bunk with one hand, rained savage blows on his head and shoulders with the heavy stick. The two evil-looking men at the table nearby had been watching her surreptitiously, and now Quest made no effort to retaliate. He cowered under the attack, at the table. “Take it easy,” he advised. “I'll wake the psychosurgeon and have him look you over. Just stay there.” Quest and when the skeptical Jakdane insisted on examining him carefully, he had to admit it. There was hardly a mark on As she did, the dark, slick-haired man reached out and grabbed serious!” “I am. I say he's an android, an artificial imitation of a man. It all figures. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Don't you know this, too, now: that deep voice. “I can't help you. I a dome or a ship, but what human could stand the rocket acceleration necessary to break can't do anything.” The dark man was at her strong enough to break a spaceship safety belt just by getting tough enough to take a beating with a heavy stick without being injured. How can you believe he's really human?” Trella remembered the thug Kregg striking Quest in the face He looked at her in astonishment, stunned by her words. up out of his chair against it, massiveness, took no chances. “Robots and androids frequently look on their makers as from the approaching Kregg. The dark man moved in on his father,” protested Trella. his quarry and swung a huge fist like a sledgehammer. atmosphere as well as an oxygen that would have felled a steer, and Kregg roared in pain, grabbing “For the protection of humans, there are two psychological traits built into every robot gently. “The first is that they can never, under any circumstances, attack a human being, even in self defense. The second is that, while they may understand sexual desire objectively, they can never experience it themselves. and Kregg sank stunned to his Moving agilely around the end knees. The dark man, who had build, his immunity to injury, his refusal to defend himself against a human, his inability to the unconscious Motwick's side. “That means you, too, lady,” return Trella's love for him. fallen in love with an android. Humans could love androids, with real affection, even knowing that they were artificial. There were instances of android It was not inconceivable that had not told Quest of her mission to Ganymede. He thought he was Dr. Mansard's son, but an android had no legal right of had been denied her. Her arm ached where the dark man had inheritance from his owner. She grasped it. The broad face before 52 her was not unhandsome, after she had completed her assignment. Even if Jakdane was wrong and Quest was human—as now seemed unlikely—Quest had told her he could not love “I'm no android,” he said confidently. as though reading her thoughts. “But no one will bother you on and the blue eyes were disconcertingly direct, but she despised hardly more than that of Earth's moon, but the way the man picked up the limp Motwick with though he lifted a feather pillow. spectacles. such a strange feature of this luxurious house, and they entered She told him about Quest. “He thinks he's the son of Dr. Mansard,” she finished, “but apparently he is, without knowing surgiscope, didn't he? But his it, an android Dr. Mansard built her interest taking a sudden upward turn. “He developed the on Jupiter.” “He came back to Earth with whether to let him go on he's an android and claim ownership as Dr. Mansard's heir.” living as a man or to tell him a small rocket with a powerful she, but broad and powerful as hold himself down. “If Dr. Mansard succeeded in “Why all the protection?” she to, she exclaimed: “You aren't afraid of Quest? Why, an android can't hurt a human!” Blessing peered at her over his spectacles. “And what if he isn't an android, eh? And if he is—what if a state of mind. It was peculiarly inappropriate, but not unbelievable, that the strongest and prohibition against harming humans that's required by law? Mansard … or his heir … or his mechanical servant. She was sure that Blessing was wrong, that Quest, whether man or android, intended no 59 harm to him. Surely, Quest a cab to deliver the unconscious Motwick to his home. She and to assign her to take the Mansard papers to the New York laboratory. kept locked now, and the guards in the anteroom examined callers the massive muscles whose help and Quest burst through. Quest was after it, like a the smoking heap of metal. Quest was already beside it, probing it. As she reached his side, he lifted the torn body of Dom Blessing. Blessing was dead. “I'm lucky,” said Quest soberly. “I would have murdered The but my father conditioned me psychologically from my birth to the task of hunting down Dom Blessing and killing him. It development of the surgiscope, Ganymede to pick up some important papers and take them rights to the surgiscope, and he sabotaged the ship's drive so it Her employer had impressed upon her that her mission was confidential, Blessing could not object to Dr. Mansard's son knowing about it. All these things had happened to tell him what the papers were. had been, but it must have been very close. She knew that Dr. Mansard had invented the surgiscope. This was an instrument with a three-dimensional screen as its heart. The screen was a cubical frame in which an apparently solid image was built up of an object under an electron microscope. The actual cutting instrument of the surgiscope was an ion stream. By operating a tool in the three-dimensional screen, corresponding movements were made by the ion stream on the object under the microscope. The principle was the same as that used in operation of remote control “hands” in atomic laboratories to handle hot material, and with the surgiscope very delicate operations could be performed at the cellular level. Dr. Mansard and his wife had “What in space makes you “Why, Quest, it's obvious,” his invention of the surgiscope, and it had been developed by I know you think Dr. Mansard was your father, but androids Dr. Mansard's disappearance, 55 was inventor of the surgiscope? Blessing had been searching the laboratory of Dr. Mansard. When it was found at last, he sent Trella, his most trusted up on Jupiter, and he operated on the genes before I was born. He altered my inherited characteristics “Do you forget my father back to Earth. She was tempted being able to breathe a chlorine not badly hurt, any more than an elephant would have been, but his tunic was stained with red blood where the bullets had struck him. Normal android blood was green. “How can you be sure?” she asked doubtfully. “Androids are made,” he answered you're not a man, but an android?” with a laugh. “They was obviously unwilling, but her wounded feelings with a sympathetic pleasantry, but he did not. Instead, he just looked the dark man, faced with his that can occur easily in space. The passengers and the two crewmen on that particular waking\n\n<question>:\nWhat is so significant about the surgiscope?\n\n<options>:\nA It can allow a surgeon to permanently alter a person's DNA\nB It can perform fine operations at a microscopic level\nC It can be used to turn a human into an android\nD It can probe the brain of any creature, dead or alive\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,848 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nfor? Couldn't somebody else have done it?\" Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. decision \"I've had enough!\" Premier Umluana the warrant. very sorry, but we have to arrest you and bring you in for trial by the World Court.\" If Umluana noticed Read's gun, he didn't show it. He read the \"Then I'll speak English.\" Umluana was a small man with wrinkled brow, glasses and a mustache. His skin was a shade lighter than Read's. \"The Inspector General doesn't have the power to arrest a the door. \"If you leave, Premier, I'll have to shoot you.\" \"I don't think so,\" Umluana said. \"No, if you kill me, all Africa will rise against the world. You don't want me dead. You want me Umluana turned back to Rashid a second too soon. He saw the \"Help! Kidnap. \" dropped it and yellow psycho gas hissed from the valve. covering their retreat. \"They'll be after us in half a minute.\" \"They don't know who's coming,\" he said. \"They don't make them Two types of recruits are accepted by the UN Inspector Corps: alcohol. What else was there? Those who could have told him concrete fields between the tall apartment houses marked the limits of life's possibilities. He had belonged to a gang called The Golden Spacemen. \"Nobody fools with me,\" he bragged. \"When Harry Read's out, there's a tiger running loose.\" No one knew how many times he nearly ran international cops wore green berets, high buttonless boots, bush \"Don't you like America, Harry? Do you want \"What do you mean, you don't want that?\" \"I want to be a UN man. I've already enlisted. I'm in! What do The UN Inspector Corps had been founded to enforce the Nuclear Disarmament Treaty of 1966. Through the years it had acquired other jobs. UN men no longer went unarmed. Trained to use small diplomats and UN officials, even put down riots that threatened international peace. As the UN evolved into a strong world government, the UN Inspector Corps steadily acquired new powers. Rather than resign, he accepted punishment which assigned him to isolation. cards and shooting the bull and then there's a plane crash or something and you go out and win a medal. That's great for me. I'm lazy and I like excitement.\" One power implied in the UN Charter no Secretary General or Inspector General had ever tried to use. The power to arrest any head of state whose country violated international law. Could the World Court try and imprison a politician who had conspired to attack another nation? but the black population of Africa still struggled toward political equality. Umluana took control of Belderkan in 1979. The tiny, former Dutch colony, had been a tottering democracy for ten years. The very day he took control the new dictator and his African party began He began a propaganda war against neighboring South Africa, Parliament, told him to liberate his own country. They believed agreed to in the Disarmament Treaty. The European countries and some African nations joined in the accusation. China called the uproar a vicious slur on a new African nation. The United States and Russia, trying not to get entangled, asked for more investigation by the UN. But the evidence was clear. Umluana was defying world law. If he got away with it, some larger and more dangerous nation might follow his precedent. And the arms race would begin again. The Inspector General decided. They would enter Belderkan, arrest Umluana and try him by due process before the World Court. If the plan succeeded, mankind would be a long step farther from nuclear war. Read didn't know much about the complicated political reasons for the arrest. He liked the Corp and he liked being in the Corp. He But then they would have spent hours flying over Africa, with Belderkan fighters in hot pursuit, other nations joining the went well, they could have Umluana in Geneva in an hour. the globe. Even now a dozen inspectors were taking over the Game They had made no plans to take over Miaka. They planned to get there before it could be defended. \"There's no military base near Miaka,\" Rashid said. \"We might get in the car.\" \"Don't be certain, corporal. All these strong-arm movements are alike. I'll bet Umluana's lieutenants are hoping he'll become a dead legend. Then they can become live conquerors.\" \"Not yet. Not until we have to.\" surrounded each vehicle. \"Evade,\" Rashid said. \"Don't go down.\" Read copied him. Umluana breathed like a furnace, still I can't do anything They're too far away to shoot back. All we can do is run. \"Can't we go down?\" Read said. \"They'll get to Miaka before us.\" out and the two of them struggled toward the booth with Umluana. The driver, pistol in hand, ran for the control panel. There were three technicians in the station and no passengers. All three panicked when the psycho gas enveloped them. They ran howling for the jungle. Umluana in the booth and hit the floor. Read took aim and opened \"Man, get us out of here!\" couldn't see his wound, only the pain scratched on his face and the blood he deposited on the floor. \"Did you get Umluana?\" he asked Sergeant Rashid. \"He's in the booth. What's going on?\" Rashid's Middle East Oxford seemed more clipped than ever. \"Can we get out of here?\" eighteenth year he had done everything his superiors told him to \"I'm calling South Africa Station for a copter. It's the only way out of here. Until it comes, we've got to hold them back.\" might be the only real test he would ever face. The UN men had already taken over the station, chased out the \"Good work. How's your ammunition?\" \"A dozen grenades. Half a barrel of shells.\" \"The copter will be here in half an hour. We'll put Umluana on, then try to save ourselves. Once he's gone, I think we ought to surrender.\" \"How do you think they'll treat us?\" \"There's a garage downstairs,\" Rashid said. \"In case the copter \"We'll stop them, Sarge. Don't worry.\" ATTENTION UN SOLDIERS. ATTENTION UN SOLDIERS. WE HAVE ATOMIC WARHEADS, \"They know we don't have any big weapons,\" Read said. \"They know we have only gas grenades and small arms.\" He looked nervously from side to side. They couldn't bring the copter in with that thing squatting out there. then the skin would peel off their bones. Or they might be \"We've got to knock that thing out before the copter comes. Otherwise, he can't land. I have six Molotov cocktails here. Who wants to go hunting with me?\" enough for the UN All UN inspectors. All part of his life. Umluana. Read, the Frenchman and himself, he stationed at Listen to him. What's he got, a sprained ankle? \"I can't move, Sarge.\" \"What?\" \"I'm a UN man,\" he mumbled. \"You people up there know what a UN When he reached the tank, he had another bullet in his right arm. had to kill the tank. That was all he thought about. He had the neck. He didn't feel them. He had fainted the moment he felt the bottle leave his hand. The copter landed ten minutes later. Umluana left in a shower of bullets. A Russian private, the ranking man alive in the station, His mother hung the Global Medal above the television set.\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the UN want to arrest Umluana?\n\n<options>:\nA Umluana conspired to attack Belderkan.\nB Umluana conspired to attack another nation.\nC Umluana has violated the Nuclear Disarmament Treaty.\nD Umluana is the head of a gang called The Golden Spacemen.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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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>:\nWhen a ship is working perfectly and is operated by a hand-picked crew of highly trained men in perfect condition, how often is it wrecked by a series of silly errors happening ACCIDENTAL DEATH BY PETER BAILY \"I'll sign off with two thoughts, one depressing and one cheering. A single Chingsi wrecked our ship and our launch. What could a whole planetful of them do? The most to be chancy. No matter how highly developed it can't be surefire. The proof is that I've survived to tell the tale.\" At twenty below zero and fifty thrown down in the dead wilderness. broken or a clockwork toy running success. It's well on the cards that I'm all in one piece and not broken up at all, though I don't see how it out. I'm fine where I am. I'll just lie here for a while and relax, and get well use it. That way even if I'm not as well as I feel, I'll leave a message. You probably know we're back and wonder what went wrong. age it was luck. \"You'll want to know if the ship worked. Well, she did. Went like a bomb. We got lined up between Earth and Mars, you'll remember, Failing that, I could even go for a long drink of cold water. There was never anything wrong with the Whale till right at the end and even then I doubt if it was the ship itself that fouled things up. \"That was some survey assignment. just back from a proving flight cum astronomical survey in the starship Whale . Whoever you are who finds this tape, you're made. Take it to \"Where had I got to? I'd told you and a twenty per cent oxygen atmosphere at fifteen p.s.i. The odds must be up in the googols. We certainly were lucky. \"One, they learned our language in four weeks. When I say they, I mean a ten-man team of them. \"Two, they brew a near-beer that's a lot nearer than the canned stuff we had aboard the Whale . \"Three, they've a great sense of lose whichever Chingsi we played. they were good. How could they be, in the time? It was more that we all we played them and that's fatal in chess. Of course it's a screwy situation, called him Charley, and he was the came back with us. Why I disliked him was because he was always trying of humor, of course. I nearly broke my neck on that butter-slide he fixed up in the metal alleyway to the engine room. Charley laughed even laughed myself though doing it hurt me more than the tumble had. Yes, life and soul of the party, old Charley ... \"My last sight of the Minnow was a cabin full of dead and dying men, the sweetish stink of burned flesh and the choking reek of scorching insulation, the boat jolting and shuddering and beginning to break up, and in the middle of the flames, still unhurt, was Charley. He was laughing ... \"My God, it's dark out here. Wonder how high I am. Must be all of fifty miles, and doing eight hundred miles an hour at least. I'll be doing more than that when I land. What's Same as a fifty thousand mile fall, I suppose same as escape twenty-four and tell the world hello. Hello, earth ... hello, again ... and good-by ... \"Sorry about that. I passed out. I or eraser. What must have happened is that the suit ran out of oxygen, and I lost consciousness due to anoxia. I dreamed I switched on up. \"I was telling about the return journey, wasn't I? The long jump back home, which should have dumped us between the orbits of Earth and Mars. Instead of which, when our exact position relative to the solar system. The crew had to find out exactly what went wrong. The physicists had to make mystic passes residual folds in stress-free space. Our task was easy, because we were about half a light-year from the sun. The crew's job was also easy: they found what went wrong in less than half an hour. \"It still seems incredible. To program the ship for a star-jump, you merely told it where you were and with no space-flight tradition. In practical terms, one highly trained crew member had punched a wrong equally skilled had failed to notice happened. \"Anyway, we took good care with why we were out there so long. They were cross-checked about five times. I got sick so I climbed into a spacesuit and went outside and took some would help to determine hydrogen density in the outer regions. When I got back everything was ready. We disposed ourselves about the control room and relaxed for all we were worth. We were all praying that this time nothing would go wrong, and all looking forward to seeing Earth again after four months subjective time away, except for Charley, who was still chuckling and shaking his head, and Captain James who was glaring at Charley and obviously wishing human dignity permitted him to tear Charley limb from limb. Then this time it was much, much worse. We'd come out of the jump about two hundred miles above the Pacific, pointed straight down, traveling at a Whale , the most powerful ship ever built, which could cover fifty light-years in a subjective time of one second, and it was helpless. For, as of course you know, the star-drive couldn't be used again for at least two hours. \"The Whale also had ion rockets of course, the standard deuterium-fusion have taken more time than we had to deflect us enough to avoid a smash. We had five minutes to abandon ship. \"James got us all into the Minnow at a dead run. There was no time to take anything at all except the clothes we stood in. The it had emergency atomic rockets, using steam for reaction mass. We canceled our downwards velocity with them in a few seconds. We curved away up over China and from about fifty miles high we saw the hit the Pacific. Six hundred tons of mass at well over two thousand miles an hour make an almighty splash. By now you'll have divers down, but I doubt they'll salvage much you can use. \"I wonder why James went down with the ship, as the saying is? Not that it made any difference. It must have broken his heart to know that his lovely ship was getting the chopper. Or did he suspect another human error? \"We didn't have time to think about that, or even to get the radio working. The steam rockets blew up. Poor Cazamian was burnt to a crisp. Only thing that saved me was the spacesuit I was still wearing. I snapped the face plate down because the cabin was filling with fumes. I saw Charley coming out of the toilet—that's how he'd escaped—and I saw him beginning to laugh. Then the port side collapsed and I fell out. earth fifty miles below. I shut my eyes and that's about all I remember. I don't see how any of us could have survived. I think we're all dead. \"I'll have to get up and crack this suit and let some air in. But I can't. I fell fifty miles without a parachute. I'm dead so I can't stand up.\" There was silence for a while except human body falling through air is about one hundred twenty m.p.h. Falling fifty miles is no worse than falling five hundred feet. You'd be lucky to live through a five hundred foot fall, true, but I've been lucky. The suit is bulky but light and probably slowed my fall. I hit a sixty mile an hour updraft this side of the up in a drift. The suit is part worn but still operational. I'm fine. after all they aren't human. On an alien world a hundred light-years Whale expedition did fine bad luck that went on and on till it looks fishy. We lost the ship, we lost the launch, all but one of us lost our lives. We couldn't even win a game of ping-pong. \"All the same, search the space-flight records, talk to the actuaries.\n\n<question>:\nWhat would have happened if Charley had not been on the ship?\n\n<options>:\nA He would not have been able to correct the navigation error\nB The crew would have had to find a different way to manipulate chance\nC The mission would have ended in the same way\nD The crew would likely have made it home alive\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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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>:\nbut the systematic application of knowledge to the creation of new knowledge, innovation to innovation, and information to making more information has become pervasive and with it the knowledge that next year will be very different than this. The Web, after all, is less than a generation old. These two features−the global scale of interdependence of human action, and the systematic acceleration of innovation, make contemporary life a unpredictability makes it unwise to build systems that take too much away from what human beings do best: look, think, innovate, adapt, discuss, learn, and repeat. That is why we have seen many more systems take on a loose, human centric model in the last decade and a half: from the radical divergence of Toyota’s production system from the highly departure from the AT& T system that preceded it, and on to the way Wikipedia constructs human knowledge on the fly, incrementally, in ways (and are still seen so be many). But it is time we acknowledge that systems work best by making work human. Modern Times Modern times were hard enough. Trains and planes, telegraph and telephone, all brought many people into the same causal space. The solution to this increased complexity in the late 19th, early 20th century was to increase the role of structure and improve its design. During the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, this type of rationalization took the form of ever-more complex managed systems, with crisp specification of roles, lines of authority, communication and control. in minute detail, to enforce it through monitoring and rewards, and later to build it into the very technology of work−the assembly line. The idea was to eliminate human error and variability in the face of change by removing thinking to the system, and thus neutralizing the assembly line worker in Modern Times. At the same time, government experienced the rise of bureaucratization and the administrative state. Nowhere was this done more brutally than in the totalitarian states of mid-century. But the impulse to build fully-specified systems, designed by experts, monitored and controlled so as to limit human greed and error and to manage uncertainty, was basic and widespread. It underlay the development of the enormously systems too, we saw in mid-century marvels like the AT& T telephone system and the IBM mainframe. For a moment in history, these large scale perspective is already to presage the demise of the belief in their inevitable victory. The increasing recognition of the limits of command-and-control systems led to a new approach but it turned out to be a retrenchment, not an abandonment, of the goal of perfect rationalization of systems design, which assumed much of the human away. What replaced planning and control in these systems was the myth of perfect markets. This was achieved successes. But, like its predecessor, its limits as an approach to human systems design are becoming cleare Work, Trust and Play Pricing perfectly requires perfect information. And perfect information, while always an illusion, has become an ever receding dream in a world of constant, rapid change and complex global interactions. What we are seeing instead is the rise of human systems that increasingly shy away from either control or perfect pricing. Not that there isn’t control. Not that there aren’t markets. And not that either of these approaches to coordinating human action will disappear. But these managed systems are becoming increasingly interlaced with looser structures, which invite and enable more engaged human action by drawing on intrinsic and inviting system that lets people learn together and pursue their passion for knowledge, and each other’s company. The set of human systems necessary for action in this complex, unpredictable set of conditions, combining rationalization with human agency, learning and adaptation, is as different from managed systems and perfect markets as the new Toyota is from the old General Motors, or as the Internet now is from AT& T then. The hallmarks of these newer systems are: (a) location of authority and practical capacity to act at environment, identifying opportunities and challenges to action and acting upon them, are located (b) an emphasis on the human: on trust, cooperation, judgment and insight (c) communication over the lifetime and (d) loosely-coupled systems: systems in which the regularities and dependencies among objects and processes are less all human variance (the source of slothful shirking and inept error) could be isolated and controlled. Fordism took that ambition and embedded the managerial knowledge in the technological platform of the reliance on small teams where each team member can perform all tasks, and who are encouraged to experiment, improve, fail, adapt, but above all communicate. The system is built on trust and a cooperative dynamic. The enterprise functions through a managerial control system, but also through social cooperation mechanisms built around teamwork and trust. However, even Toyota might be bested in this respect by the even more loosely coupled networks of innovation and supply represented by But let us also consider the system in question that has made this work possible, the Internet, and compare it to the design principles of the AT& proper functioning of the networking and monitoring of customer behavior, although it didn’t hurt either that this policy effectively re-engineering of the entire network. The Internet, on the other hand, was designed to be as general as possible. The network hardware merely a stream of packets−was to be done by its edge devices, in this case computers owned by users. This system allowed the breathtaking rate of innovation that we have seen, while also creating certain vulnerabilities in online security. These vulnerabilities have led some to argue that a new system to manage the Internet is needed. We see first of all that doubts about trust and security on the Internet arise precisely because the network was originally designed for people who could more-or-less trust each other, and offloaded security from the network to the edges. As the network grew and users diversified, trust (the practical belief that other human agents in the system were competent and benign, or at least sincere) declined. This decline was met with arguments in favor of building security into the technical system, both at its core, in the network elements themselves, and at its periphery, through “trusted computing.” A “trusted computer” will, for example, not run a program or document that its owner wants to run, unless it has received authorization from effective means of preventing copyright infringement or system failure, and preserving corporate security (these are the main reasons offered for implementing such systems). Trusted computing in this form is the ultimate reversal of the human-centric, loosely-coupled design approach of the Internet. Instead of locating authority and capacity to act at machines−technical systems−are trustworthy, while their human users are malevolent, incompetent, or both. Reintroducing the Human Taylorism, the Bell system and trusted computing are all efforts to remove human agency from action and replace it with well-designed, tightly-bound systems. That is, the specifications and regularities of the system are such that they control or direct action and learning over time. Human agency, learning, communication and adaptation are minimized in managed systems, if not eliminated, and the knowledge in the system comes from the outside, from the designer, in the initial design over time, and through observation of the system’s performance by someone control, and build in room for human agency, experimentation, failure, communication, learning and adaptation. Loose-coupling is central to the new systems. It is a feature of system design that leaves room for human agency over time, only imperfectly constraining and enabling any given action by the system itself. By creating such domains of human agency, system designers are accepting the limitations of design and foresight, and building in the possibilities of learning over time through action in the system, by agents acting within To deal with the new complexity of contemporary life we need to re-introduce the human into the design of systems. We must put the soul back into the system. If years of work on artificial intelligence have taught us anything, it is that what makes for human insight is extremely difficult to replicate or systematize. At the center of these new systems, then, sits a human being who has a capacity to make judgments, experiment, learn and adapt. But enabling human agency also provides\n\n<question>:\nWhich is true about the role of trust in computing?\n\n<options>:\nA Increased trust in computers and people is what allowed AT&T to rise in its day\nB Adding more types of computing system reflects an increase in the trust that higher-ups have in their employees to innovate\nC Adding more signposts for trust and approval in computing systems reflects a decrease in trust in their users\nD Increased trust in computers allows for more components of systems to be automated than before\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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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>:\nTHE LONG REMEMBERED THUNDER Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that his own frightful battle against incredible odds! I wire as the scrambler went into operation. \"Okay, can you read me all right? I'm set up in Elsby. Grammond's boys damned room crouched over a dial. I'll be out and around for the rest of the afternoon.\" \"I want to see results,\" the thin voice came back over the filtered hum of the jamming device. \"You spent a week with Grammond—I can't me.\" \"Fred, when will you learn to sit on your news breaks until you've got some answers to go with the questions?\" that. This fellow Margrave—General Margrave. Project Officer for the hyperwave program—he's been on my neck day and night. I can't say I blame him. An unauthorized transmitter interfering with a Top Secret project, progress slowing to a halt, and this Bureau—\" me do it my way.\" area—\" \"You don't have to justify yourself. Just don't hold out on me. I sometimes wonder if I've seen the complete files on this—\" \"You've seen all the files! Now I want answers, not questions! I'm warning you, Tremaine. Get that transmitter. I need someone to hang!\" Tremaine left the hotel, walked two blocks west along Commerce Street and turned in at a yellow brick building with the words ELSBY though.\" brings you back to the boondocks?\" visit to the old home town. Between us, there's more.\" \"It won't take long to tell we don't know much yet.\" Tremaine covered the discovery of the powerful unidentified interference on the high-security hyperwave band, the discovery that each transmission produced not one but a pattern of \"fixes\" on the point of origin. He passed a sheet of paper across the table. It showed a set of concentric \"I think what we're getting is an echo effect from each of these pattern—\" word for it.\" \"The point is this, Jess: we think we've got it narrowed down to this near here. Now, have you got any ideas?\" \"That's a tough one, Jimmy. This is where I should come up with the to TV. They figure we should be content with radio, like the Lord something ...\" groceries and hikes back out to his place by the river.\" \"Well, what about him?\" \"Nothing. But he's the town's mystery man. You know that. A little touched in the head.\" \"There were a lot of funny stories about him, I remember,\" Tremaine \"How long's he lived here in Elsby?\" \"Beats me, Jimmy. You remember old Aunt Tress, used to know all about then?\" over again.\" \"What was the idea of that?\" for six hours. Then the sob sisters went to work: poor little tyke \"What about her and Bram? A romance?\" about any kind of socializing in front of her.\" \"When's this bootleg station supposed to broadcast again?\" \"After dark. I'm working on a few ideas. It might be an infinitely repeating logarithmic sequence, based on—\" Hall, a squat structure of brownish-red brick, crouched under yellow A thin man with garters above the elbow looked over his shoulder at sell, mister, if that's what you want to know.\" \"See what I can do,\" he said. line written in faded ink: \"May 19. Acreage sold, One Dollar and other G& Section 24, Township Elsby. Bram. (see Vol. 9 & cet.)\" \"That's the ledger for 1901 The man was looking at the book with pursed lips. \"Nineteen-oh-one,\" \"I guess you're right.\" \"I've heard those stories. Just superstition, wouldn't you say?\" \"There's one story that's not superstition....\" Untrimmed sumacs threw late-afternoon shadows on the discolored stucco paper-dry woman of indeterminate age to a rack of yellowed newsprint. \"I want nineteen-oh-one, if they go back that far.\" through it, muttering. adjusted her glasses, squinted at the front page. \"That's it,\" she page. The lead article concerned the opening of the Pan-American On page four, under a column headed from about the first of the year?\" his eye: A Severe Thunderstorm. Citizens of Elsby and the country were much thunder, during the night of the fifth. A fire set in the pine timber and threatened the house before burning itself out along the river. \"What's your problem, mister?\" a harsh voice drawled. \"What's the matter? Run out of signal?\" \"What's it to you, mister?\" \"I thought you were going to keep your men away from Elsby until I gave \"It's nothing we can go to court with, Grammond. And the job you were doing might have been influenced if I'd told you about the Elsby angle.\" Grammond cursed. \"I could have put my men in the town and taken it apart brick by brick in the time—\" \"That's just what I don't want. If our bird sees cops cruising, he'll \"You've got it all figured, I see. I'm just the dumb hick you boys use out a signal. For all I know, it's forty midgets on bicycles, pedalling all over the damned state. I've got fixes in every county—\" \"The smallest hyperwave transmitter Uncle Sam knows how to build weighs three tons,\" said Tremaine. \"Bicycles are out.\" Grammond snorted. \"Okay, Tremaine,\" he said. \"You're the boy with all the answers. But if you get in trouble, don't call me hung up the telephone, went to the dresser and poured two fingers of once-stately three-storied mansion overgrown with untrimmed vines, its that you've amounted to something.\" \"Just another bureaucrat, I'm afraid.\" \"You were wise to leave Elsby. There is no future here for a young man.\" information. This is an important matter. May I rely on your \"How long has Mr. Bram lived in Elsby?\" used against him?\" \"There'll be nothing done against him, Miss Carroll ... unless it needs to be in the national interest.\" \"I'm not at all sure I know what the term 'national interest' means, year.\" \"What does he do for a living?\" \"I have no idea.\" \"Why did a healthy young fellow like Bram settle out in that isolated piece of country? What's his story?\" \"I'm ... not sure that anyone truly knows Bram's story.\" last?\" and it may help him.\" him to his house. On the way he told me a terrible and pathetic tale. He said that each night he fought a battle with evil beings, alone, in silver disc on a fine golden chain. \"You see what a foolish old woman I am, James.\" \"I'd be grateful for any lead.\" \"Bram fears the thunder.\" III Tremaine shook his head. \"I'm getting nowhere fast. The Bram idea's a dud, I'm afraid.\" from what you were saying to me.\" he doesn't want to be left out.\" \"We're up against an unknown quantity. I don't know what's behind this and neither does anybody else. Maybe it's a ring of Bolsheviks ... and maybe it's something bigger. I have the feeling we've made enough I don't want to see this botched.\" \"Better get it.\" \"What do you make of it. Jimmy?\" questions.\" lounged on a steel-framed cot, blinking up at the visitor under a mop of greased hair. \"What did you hear?\" \"Who says so?\" that way, ain't he?\" \"Anything else?\"\n\n<question>:\nWhich best summarizes this story?\n\n<options>:\nA A private investigator tries to find a transmitter which allows him to save his hometown from certain danger.\nB An investigator travels to his hometown to find conflict between the transmitter-using youth and the local and state police forces.\nC An investigator travels to his hometown to locate a transmitter with an unknown use.\nD A man seeks justice for a town plagued by a harmful transmitter.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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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>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Sure I'm a Nilly, and I've died seven times, always in the blackness of the outer reaches, and I'm not alone, although there aren't very many of us, never were. It made sense. Interstellar was new and they wanted him on the ship because he was a trained observer. They wanted facts, not gibberish. But to ask a man to give up two years of his life—well, that was asking a lot. Two years in a sardine can. Still, it had an appeal Keith Ellason knew he couldn't deny, a newsman's joy of the clean beat, a planetary system far afield, a closeup view of the universe, history in The Weblor I had taken off on the first trip to Antheon five years before with a thousand families, reached the planet with less than five hundred surviving colonists. Upon the return to Earth a year later, the crew's report of suffering and chaos during the year's outgoing voyage was twisted, distorted and fragmentary. Ellason remembered it well. The Antheon, for example—but when there are large groups, control is more difficult.\" \"Sessions,\" Rexroad said, \"was a bully. The trouble started at about the halfway point. It ended with passengers engaging in open warfare Antheon as it circled Earth, shuttling its cargo and passengers to the be the home for three thousand persons outward bound, only the crew The captain's briefing room was crowded, the air was heavy with the thought it was a good staff. Branson detained him after the others had gone. \"One thing, Mr. Ellason. To make it easier for you, I suggest you think of this journey I say that until the journey ends.\" He smiled. \"Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it.\" why had Branson said that? Why hadn't Rexroad or Phipps said something, if it was important? He made himself comfortable in his seven-foot-by-seven-foot cubicle, a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others, except that the family rooms would be larger. His quarters were near the front of the spike near the officers' quarters. He felt rather than heard the dull rumble. It was a sound he knew would be with him for two years—one year going and one year returning. He looked at his watch, picked up his notebook and made an entry. The ship right now would be slipping ever so slowly away from Earth. He got up. He'd have to go forward to the observation dome to see that. Last view of Earth for two years. The penetration of space by large groups is the coming out from under the traditions of thousands of years, and as these planet-orginated rules fall away, the floundering group seeks a new control, for they shown the way. The theft of Carver Janssen's attache case occurred on the thirty-first day out. In Ellason's mind the incident, though insignificant from the standpoint of the ship as a whole, could very well be the cause of dissension later on. His notes covering it were therefore very thorough. Janssen's case contained vegetable and flower seeds—thousands of which went to all hands and passengers. In the Bulletin the captain ? They had passed stability tests too. This, then, was what happened when you took three thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year. When Ellason saw Branson about it, the captain said, \"Of course I realize it takes only a little thing like this to set things off. I comfort items to make room for the seeds. I'm a horticulturist, and Interstellar asked me to go along. But what use am I now? Where am I going to get seeds like those? Do you know how long it took me to collect them? They're not ordinary seeds, Mr. Ellason.\" There was an appeal from Janssen in the next day's newsletter \"Oh, he was about six feet tall, stocky build, and he wore a red rubber mask that covered his head completely.\" \"Didn't you think that was important?\" Branson asked in an outraged compresses, stultifies. He introduces a countermeasure, proof he exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent. On the forty-fifth day June Failright, the young wife of one of the passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors Ellason was present when a delegation from the Third Quadrant called on The delegation commenced speaking vehemently, to be quieted by The group left in a surly mood. \"I know my men,\" Branson said flatly. \"You could have a shake-down for the mask and the seed case.\" be a member of the crew. I am ordering an assembly of all passengers at nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. I will speak to you all then.\" Faces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious and tempers short. Above it all was the overpowering presence of in turn selected five others from his own group. Those assembled waited in the hall while each team of six inspected the compartments of the others. These compartments were then locked, everyone returned to his compartment, and the larger search was conducted. It took twenty hours. No mask was found. No mask, no case, no money, no man. At another assembly the following day it was decided to make the death. During sleep time on the seventy-ninth day Barbara Stoneman, awakened the corridors—eight on at a time. Ellason observed that for the first time the passengers seemed relaxed. The Quadrant Council congratulated itself. The passengers were proud of themselves. A special congratulatory message from Captain Branson appeared one day in the Bulletin newsletter. The colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until the landing on Antheon. But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the The council issued orders that all passengers from now on would be detail. He won't be able to get through our fingers now. Just let him make so much as a move.\" \"And what will you do when you get him?\" \"Kill him,\" Tilbury said, licking his lips, his eyes glowing more fiercely than ever. \"Without a trial?\" \"Oh, there'll be a trial, Mr. Ellason, but you don't think any jury'd let him live after all the things he's done, do you?\" \"Well, Critten,\" Branson roared at him, \"what have you got to say for yourself?\" Branson looked as if he were going to kill the man himself right there and then. It was a long trial—from the 220th to the 241st day—and there didn't seem to be much doubt about the outcome, for Critten didn't help his own cause during any of it. just sitting around. I had to work my head off keeping records for you lazy bastards.\" by a great crowd in the assembly hall. A detail from the ship's crew Dying is easy for a Nilly. Especially if it's arranged for beforehand, which it always is. The Weblor II was only one day out of orbit when Captain Branson sent \"Can't say I enjoyed the role,\" said Critten, \"but I think it saved lives.\" \"Let me get this straight. Interstellar thought that it was idleness the passengers.\" they told me they'd use it on other trips to Antheon.\" Ellason nodded. \"No time for brooding, for differences of opinion on small matters. Just time to hate Mr. Critten. Unanimously.\" \"Probably,\" Critten said, \"you are wondering about the execution.\" \"And Carver Janssen's case?\" \"He'll get it back when he's shuttled to Antheon. And all the other items will be returned. They're all tagged with their owner's names. Captain Branson told them to do that.\" everywhere and the colonists organized against him.\" \"Gave them something to do,\" Branson said. \"Every time things got dull, I livened them up. I got a stunner and dying once a trip when the time is ripe, antidote to boredom, and we'll ply our trade, our little tragedies, on a thousand ships bringing\n\n<question>:\nHow long did it take for the passengers to form a council?\n\n<options>:\nA One month\nB Two weeks\nC Two months\nD Ten days\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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722 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nLet Si Get This During a typical lunch time at the Royalton Hotel restaurant in midtown Manhattan, The New Yorker 's Tina Brown might be installed at her usual table, and Vogue 's Anna Wintour might be at her usual table (chewing on her usual meal--a $25 hamburger). Vanity Fair 's Graydon Carter might be there too, although he has transferred his main allegiance to a place called Patroon. Filling out the room are other editors, publicists, and writers from these magazines and GQ and House & Garden and so on. And one man, who probably isn't there himself, picks up every tab. Some of the lesser fry may even utter the Condé Nast mantra--though it is hardly necessary at the Royalton--as they grab for the check: \"Let Si get this.\" S.I. \"Si\" Newhouse Jr. and his younger brother, Donald, control Advance Publications, one of America's largest privately held companies. (Estimate of their combined wealth: $13 billion.) Donald tends to Advance's hugely profitable newspaper, radio, and TV holdings. Si runs the less profitable but more glamorous properties. These are the 15 Condé Nast magazines, including (in descending order of fabulousness) Vogue , Vanity Fair , GQ , Condé Nast Traveler , House & Then there's lunch. The magazines account for more than a quarter of daytime revenues at the Four Seasons and the Royalton. A modest lunch for two at the Royalton (no fancy wine or anything) might cost $80. But Si's generosity extends to even assistants and sub-sub-editors, dining on sushi at their desks. If you spend $10 or less on lunch, and claim you were working, Si pays. At Vogue and Vanity Fair , almost everyone has a \"working lunch\" every day . An editor at Allure says that \"working lunches\" there are limited to 10 a month. Back at the office, you hear that a friend at another Newhouse magazine has been promoted, so you send flowers. The tab: $100. Si pays. (One of my favorite Condé Nast stories is of an editor who had just been promoted to an extremely senior job. His office was jammed with congratulatory flowers and cards. All had been sent by fellow Condé Nast staffers. All had been billed to the company.) Four o'clock, and it's snack time. Your assistant joins the mob in the lobby newsstand. She bills your candy bar, juice, and cigarettes (as well as her own candy bar, juice, and cigarettes) to the magazine ($15). After all, it's a \"working snack.\" Later, there's a birthday party for your assistant. You order champagne and a cake--on the company, of course, and present her with your gift--a Prada wallet ($200). Later, she submits the expense sheet for it. Finally, after a Random House book party at Le Cirque 2000 (estimated cost to Si: $35,000), your car ferries you home. At the top of the masthead, the perks are perkier. His Si-ness (their joke, not mine) does not expect his editors in chief to actually live on their million-dollar salaries. He also gives them clothing allowances (up to $50,000 a year). He buys them cars of their choice and hires chauffeurs to drive them. He offers them low- or no-interest home loans. GQ editor Art Cooper reportedly received two $1-million loans, one for a Manhattan apartment, the other for a Connecticut farm. Tina Brown and her husband, Harold Evans, former president of Random House, reportedly just took a $2-million boost to buy a $3.7-million Manhattan house. Si's favorite courtiers lead lives of jaw-dropping privilege. When she was editor of British Vogue , Wintour commuted between London and New York--on the Concorde. Another Si confidant decided his office didn't feel right, so he hired one of the grandmasters of feng shui to rearrange it. Some editors prepare for trips by Federal Expressing their luggage to their destination. Why? \"So you don't have to carry your bags. No one would be caught dead carrying a bag.\" Condé Nast has also created a class of mandarin journalists, writers who live much better than they ever could if they wrote only for normal magazines. One free-lancer tells of building much of a summer traveling with her husband in the West and Europe around a couple of Condé Nast assignments. Last summer, The New Yorker sent a staffer to Venice to cover the Venice Film Festival. The weeklong trip, which must have cost thousands, resulted in a short piece. Writers, of course, are nowhere near as profligate as photographers. Stories of wasteful shoots abound: the matching seaweed that had to be flown from California to the Caribbean for a fashion photo the Annie Liebovitz Vanity Fair cover shot of Arnold Schwarzenegger that reportedly cost $100,000 the Vogue shoot in Africa in which, an ex- Vogue editor claims, the photographer and his huge entourage wined and dined to the tune of \"hundreds of thousands of dollars.\" And then there are the parties. Last month The New Yorker spent--and this is not a joke--$500,000 on a two-day \"Next Conference\" at the Disney Institute in Florida, in connection with a special issue on the same theme. In order to get Vice President Gore, who was traveling in California at the time, The New Yorker paid for him and his entourage to fly Air Force Two from California to Florida and back. And vice presidents are not the only things that Condé Nast flies in for parties. The New Yorker once shipped silverware from New York to Chicago for a dinner. (\"What, they don't have silverware in Chicago?\" asks a New Yorker staffer.) Vanity Fair toted food from New York to Washington for this year's party on the night of the White House Correspondents Dinner. (What, they don't have food in Washington?) Some top editors may earn their perks. Vogue and GQ make millions, according to industry analysts. Vanity Fair is enjoying banner years, and while it probably hasn't made back the millions Newhouse lost in starting it up, it is certainly in the black. The New Yorker loses money--how much may even surpass perks as a topic of Newhouse gossip and speculation. On the other hand, The New Yorker is the most talked-about magazine in America, and Tina Brown is the most talked-about editor. That is worth something. Public media companies such as Time Warner (or, for that matter, Microsoft) can entice and hold journalists with stock options. Advance is private, so Newhouse uses other golden handcuffs. He runs a lifestyle prison. Top editors stay because they could never afford to live in a house as nice as the one Si's interest-free loan bought them, or to host parties as nice as the ones Si's party planners throw for them. Condé Nast's magazines are all about glamour, wealth, prestige. To uphold that image, magazine editors need to circulate at the top of New York society. But the top of New York society consists of people who make far more money than magazine editors do--investment bankers, corporate chieftains, and fashion designers. Million-dollar salaries aren't enough to mix as equals with the Trumps and Karans. Si's perks are equalizers.\n\n<question>:\nWhat group is more profligate than writers?\n\n<options>:\nA Editors\nB Assistants\nC Interior designers\nD Photographers\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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2,273 | quality | [
{
"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>:\ntraveling from star to star! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Sure I'm a Nilly, and I've died seven times, always in the blackness of the outer reaches, and I'm not alone, although there aren't very many of us, never were. It made sense. Interstellar was new and they wanted him on the ship because he was a trained observer. They wanted facts, not gibberish. But to ask a man to give up two years of his life—well, that was asking a lot. Two years in a sardine can. Still, it had an appeal Keith the making. Interstellar Chief Rexroad knocked the dottle from his pipe in a tray, saying, \"Transworld Press is willing to let you have a leave of abscence, if you're interested.\" The Weblor I had taken off on the first trip to Antheon five years before with a thousand families, reached the planet with less than five hundred surviving colonists. Upon the return to Earth a year later, the crew's report of suffering and chaos during the year's outgoing voyage was twisted, distorted and fragmentary. Ellason remembered it well. The to arm themselves.\" \"The second trip is history,\" Rexroad said. \"And a puzzle.\" Ellason nodded. \"The ship disappeared.\" \"Yes. We gave control to the colonists.\" \"Assuming no accident in space,\" Phipps said, \"it was a wrong decision. reporting. We'll evaluate it on your return.\" \"If I return,\" said Ellason. on your return trip on the Weblor II Being a Nilly is important, probably as important as running the ship, which would open distant vistas to colonization, reducing the shoulder-to-shoulder pressure of a crowded solar system. A gigantic, hollow spike, the ship would never land anywhere, but would circle Antheon as it circled Earth, shuttling its cargo and passengers to the promised land, the new frontier. A space-borne metropolis, it would be the home for three thousand persons outward bound, only the crew on the return trip. It was equipped with every conceivable facility and comfort—dining rooms, assembly hall, individual and family Transworld at the end.\" Ellason was startled. While he had considered the possibility, he had not dwelt on it. Now it loomed large in his mind. \"I don't understand, Captain Branson. It seems to me—\" \"Let me put it differently. Let me say that you will not understand why I say that until the journey ends.\" He smiled. \"Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it.\" Ellason left the captain's quarters with an odd taste in his mouth. Now a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others, except that the family rooms would be larger. His quarters were near the front of the spike near the officers' quarters. He felt rather than heard the dull rumble. It was a sound he knew would be with him for two years—one year going and one year returning. He looked at his watch, picked up his notebook and made an entry. The ship right now would be slipping ever so slowly away from Earth. He got up. He'd have to go forward to the observation dome to see that. Last view of Earth for two years. The penetration of space by large groups is the coming out from under the traditions of thousands of years, and as these planet-orginated rules fall away, the floundering group seeks a new control, for they are humanity adrift, rudderless, for whom the stars are no longer stability tests too. This, then, was what happened when you took three thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year. tired face and sad eyes. He said, \"Now what am I going to Antheon for? I could only take along so much baggage and I threw out some Interstellar asked me to go along. But what use am I now? Where am I going to get seeds like those? Do you know how long it took me to collect them? They're not ordinary seeds, Mr. Ellason.\" return in the interests of the Antheon colony and of humanity. On the thirty-fourth day a witness turned up who said he had seen a exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent. On the forty-fifth day June Failright, the young wife of one of the passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors of the Third Quadrant. She told the captain she had been attacked in the ship. Ellason was present when a delegation from the Third Quadrant called on Captain Branson, demanding action. Branson remained seated behind his desk, unperturbed, saying, \"I have Antheon.\" The group left in a surly mood. As a Nilly, I knew that space breeds hate. There is a seed of it was ready for ripening. Raymond Palugger was killed in the ship's hospital on the sixty-first day. Palugger, a Fourth Quadrant passenger, had complained of feeling ill, had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of ileus. He had put his nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. I will speak to you all then.\" Faces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious the compartments of the others. These compartments were then locked, everyone returned to his compartment, and the larger search was conducted. It took twenty hours. No mask was found. No mask, no case, no money, no man. We Nillys know about hate and about violence. We know too that where death. During sleep time on the seventy-ninth day Barbara Stoneman, awakened by a strange sound, sat up in the bed of her compartment to find a the corridors—eight on at a time. Ellason observed that for the first time the passengers seemed relaxed. retreating figure. Red Mask was seen again on the 120th day, on the 135th day, and the 157th day. He was seen, shot at, but not hit. He was also unable to commit any crime. We've got him on the run, the colonists said. of themselves. A special congratulatory message from Captain Branson appeared one day in the Bulletin newsletter. The colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until the landing on Antheon. But on the 170th day calamity struck. Red Mask appropriated one of the stunners, made his way down one whole corridor section in Quadrant Two, leaving disorder behind. Ellason interviewed as many victims as he could, noted it all in It was the same with others. \"The man's insane, Mr. Ellason. Positively insane.\" Many people said it. The council issued orders that all passengers from now on would be fiercely than ever. \"Without a trial?\" the escape chutes. Does that answer your question?\" \"Threw it away?\" Tarper and the crowd were incredulous. \"Sure,\" Critten said. \"You colonists got the easy life as passengers, disposed of his body through a chute. It was all duly recorded in Keith Ellason's notebooks. Dying is easy for a Nilly. Especially if it's arranged for beforehand, which it always is. The Weblor II was only one day out of orbit when Captain Branson sent put in. \"Interstellar wanted an accurate picture of this. If it worked, they told me they'd use it on other trips to Antheon.\" \"He'll get it back when he's shuttled to Antheon. And all the other items will be returned. They're all tagged with their owner's names. Captain Branson will say they were found somewhere on the ship. You see, I was a liar.\" \"The colonists will never know the truth,\" Branson went on. \"There will be other ships outward bound.\" Yes, we're anonymous, nameless, we Nillys, for that's what we call each other, and are a theme, with variations, in the endless stretches of deep space, objects of hatred and contempt, professional heels, dying once a trip when the time is ripe, antidote to boredom, and we'll ply our trade, our little tragedies, on a thousand ships bringing humanity to new worlds.\n\n<question>:\nWhen did the Nilly first strike?\n\n<options>:\nA One month after leaving Earth\nB Two weeks after leaving Earth\nC Two months after leaving Earth\nD Seven weeks after leaving Earth\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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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>:\nPEGGY FINDS THE THEATER I Dramatic Dialogue “Of course, this is no surprise to us,” Thomas Lane said to his daughter Peggy, who perched tensely on the edge of a kitchen stool. “We could hardly have helped knowing that you’ve wanted to be an actress since you were out of your cradle. It’s just that decisions like this can’t be made quickly.” “But, Dad!” Peggy almost wailed. “You just finished saying yourself that I’ve been thinking about this and wanting it for years! You can’t follow that by Peggy lay on her back, staring at the ceiling and the patterns of light and shade cast by the street lamp outside as it shone through the leaves of the big of the roles which had once seemed perfectly suited to her talent and her appearance. But both had cookies, kissed her parents good night and went upstairs “Wait! Mother—Dad—I’m years behind already! The theater is full of beginners a year and even two years younger than I am, and girls of my age have Peggy’s father put down his coffee cup and leaned light, brittle, comedy role...? 19 Nothing seemed quite right. Peggy’s thoughts gain so much worth-while knowledge that you’d use and enjoy for the rest of your life—” “But not acting knowledge!” Peggy cried. “There’s more to life than that,” her father put in. shifted with the shadows overhead. All the plays she had ever seen or read or acted in melted together in full. Then the stage lights dimmed, the actors joined hands across the stage to bow, the curtain slowly descended, the lights went out—and Peggy was fast asleep. “None of them is as fascinating as acting to me,” Peggy replied, “and none of them is nearly as important to my life.” and all important.” 3 “What you must realize, Margaret, is that you may not quite make the grade. We think you’re wonderful, but the theater is full of young girls whose parents thought they were the most talented things alive Mr. Lane, seeing Peggy’s hurt look, was quick to teacher’s certificate so that you can always find useful work if you have to. Then you can try your luck in the theater. Doesn’t that make sense?” Peggy stared at the faded linoleum on the floor for times that long before getting any recognition.” “I don’t expect recognition in one year, Dad,” Peggy said. “I’m not that conceited or that silly. All I hope is that I’ll be able to get a part in that time, and maybe be able to make a living out of acting. to think that maybe she’s right about this being the best time.” “Oh, Mother!” Peggy shouted, jumping down from the stool and throwing her arms about her mother’s neck. “I knew you’d understand! And you understand Mrs. Lane patted Peggy’s arm and said, “We won’t keep you in suspense long, dear. Why don’t you go Peggy nodded silently and walked to the kitchen turned to look back just in time to see her mother throw her a comically exaggerated wink of assurance. Feeling much better, Peggy shut the screen door behind her and started for the barn. Ever since she had been a little girl, the barn had been Peggy’s favorite place to go to be by herself and think. Its musty but clean scent of straw and horses and leather made her feel calm and alive. Breathing she stamped one foot and softly whinnied a greeting. Peggy stopped first at the bag that hung on the wall movie dates, and formal dances—everything that a girl could want. Peggy had lived all her life here, knew every tree-shaded street, every country road, field, lake, and stream. All of her friends were here, friends she had to leave them, she knew, but there was no doubt in as soon as she possibly could. It was not any dissatisfaction with her life, her friends, or her home that made Peggy want to leave Rockport. She was not running away from anything, Seeing the image of herself hungry and tired, going from office to office looking for a part in a play, Peggy suddenly laughed aloud and brought herself back to reality, to the warm barn smell and the big, had reached a decision about her future. Fighting down an impulse to rush right into the kitchen to see how they were coming along, Peggy continued II Dramatic Decision Upstairs at the Wilsons’, Peggy found Jean swathed tattered, plaid bathrobe, she led Peggy out of the yet?” Peggy said, in a puzzled tone. “You know, if I were as smart as you,” Peggy said thoughtfully, “I would have figured out a way to convince Mother and Dad by now.” With a hoot of laughter, she rolled quickly aside on the couch to avoid the pillow that Peggy threw at her. A short, breathless pillow fight followed, leaving “I know,” Peggy answered. “We had a long talk with her parents. talent when I see it—and to recognize that it’s not there when it isn’t!” “But, Jean,” Peggy protested, “you can handle comedy and character lines as well as anyone I know!” Peggy nodded silently, not trusting herself to speak for fear of saying something foolishly sentimental, or even of crying. Her friend’s earnestness about the importance of her work and her faith in Peggy’s talent had touched her more than she could say. time for your big Hour of Decision scene!” It was nearly ten o’clock when Peggy finally felt that her parents had had enough time to talk things out. Leaving the Wilson house, she walked slowly three of us. And, May—it’ll be good to see you again, after all these years! Good-by.” As Peggy entered the room, her father put down “What’s all set, Dad?” Peggy said, breaking into a sure was to follow his announcement. But Peggy just to the big easy chair and slowly sat down. “Well, for goodness’ sake!” her mother cried. “Where’s the enthusiasm?” Peggy swallowed hard before answering. When yelled at the top of her lungs. After the kisses, the hugs, and the first excitement, Peggy and her parents adjourned to the kitchen, the favorite household conference room, for cookies and milk and more talk. “Now, tell me, Dad,” Peggy asked, her mouth full to an old friend of mine who I felt would be able to give us some help. Her name is May Berriman, and she’s spent all her life in the theater. In fact, she was a very successful actress. Now she’s been retired for some years, but I thought she might give us some good advice.” big, old-fashioned town house and converted it into a rooming house especially for young actresses. She the same time not be alone. And best of all, she says she has a room that you can have!” “Oh, Mother! It sounds wonderful!” Peggy exulted. “I’ll be with other girls my own age who are actresses, and living with an experienced actress! I’ll bet she “I’m sure she can,” her father said. “And so can the New York Dramatic Academy.” “Dad!” Peggy shouted, almost choking on a cooky. “Don’t tell me you’ve managed to get me accepted there! That’s the best dramatic school in the country! How—?” “Oh, no,” her mother answered calmly. “We’re going “Tomorrow?” Peggy repeated, almost unable to believe of nothing more than getting to bed. This is going to be a busy time for all of us.” Reluctantly, Peggy agreed, recognizing the sense of what her father said. She finished her milk and\n\n<question>:\nBefore Peggy's parents reveal their decision, was it obvious that they would let her move?\n\n<options>:\nA Totally. Her parents sounded supportive in every possible way and they had the resources to get her multiple auditions in New York.\nB Not at all. Her parents had to argue about it for a while, and she was feeling nostalgic around her neighborhood so it looked like she was going to stay in town.\nC Not entirely. But, their conversation with Peggy along with Jean's conversation with Peggy supplied strong evidence that they would say yes.\nD Totally. Peggy had won so many awards and participated in so much theater that it would have been horrible parenting to make her stay.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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2,070 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nand the little people just stood by been greatly simplified. In post-war Japan Walt Sheldon has found not only serenity, but complete freedom to write undisturbed about the things he treasures most. A one-time Air Force officer, he has turned to fantasy in his lighter moments, to bring us such brightly sparkling little gems as this. houlihan's that the small people with their equation by ... Walt Sheldon small, mischievous pilots had a rendezvous with destiny—on Earth. quick eyes and clever fingers could spot all sorts of minute shortcomings of the old things every day, and by it, too. I had not seen little each other to hush, be quiet, and the soft breeze stirring them up of this sort and he would have \"Thank you, Mr. Houlihan,\" said Keech. All his people had gathered in a loose circle, as though attending me quietly. \"Mr. Houlihan,\" said Keech, \"you will not be forgotten by the you'll find our friendship always \"And now, Mr. Houlihan,\" said and so keep my part of the bargain.\" \"What's this now?\" root of the pressure-head driving it. proportional to the square a bit smaller. time I ever heard such a speech from a mortal.\" He turned to his people. \"We'll have three cheers now, do you hear, for Mr. Houlihan—friend of the little people as long as he shall live!\" And they cheered. And little tears crept into the corners of some of with the leaves making only Perhaps you had better take my word for it that without this equation—correctly stated, mind you—mankind And all this talk of coefficients and equations sits strangely, you might little people. Surely it was not every named Kevin Francis Houlihan. But I am, after all, a scientist. If I had not been a specialist in my field say, upon the tongue of a man I would hardly have found myself Anyway, I heard these little them. in eerily mysterious fashion with a chorus of small voices. I thought at first it might be children at play, of the trees, not wanting to deprive in the glade with Keech and any small scalawags of their pleasure, It would go down in scientific literature now, I suppose, as Houlihan's group of little people, hard at work. Equation, and that was honor with a crank face. He was beating There was a leader, an older one \"Over here, now! All right, bring those electrical connections over him out of the gold to boot, for treacle about it!\" There were perhaps fifty of the little people. I was more than startled leprechauns are most clever in matters Indeed, I had done a piece of work greatly to my advantage, and also to the advantage of humankind, and when a man can do the first and include the second as a fortunate byproduct on my tenth birthday. And I had For if I had shown the little people it is a most happy accident. become convinced they could this world, as long as it lasts—what and shiny and upright and a little over five feet in height. \"Come along now, people!\" said likely to blow ourselves to Kingdom Come without the little people here for us to believe in every now and then? Transcriber's Note: this crotchety one, looking straight know he can't see nor hear us!\" Oh, it was good to hear the rich said, \"What? What's that, now?\" \"Ohhh!\" he said and put his palms to his cheekbones. \"Saints be with us! He's a believer! Run everybody—run for your lives!\" And they all began running, in little souls. They began to scurry \"I don't intend catching one of you!\" I said. \"Come back, you daft little creatures!\" But the glade was silent, and they wanted their crock of gold, of course. I'd be entitled to it if I could catch one and keep him. Or so the legends affirmed, though I've wondered often about the truth of them. wanted to talk to the little people. the glade where the curious shiny me apprehensively. I lifted my \"Listen to me now, little people!\" I called out. \"My name's Houlihan of the Roscommon Houlihans. I am descended from King Niall himself—or so at least my father used to say! Come on out now, and pass the time o' day!\" answer. The little people always \"Hear me now, little people! If you and talk to me, I'll wreck this spaceship from stem to stern!\" \"Do you understand? I'll give you until I count three to make an appearance! One!\" The glade remained deathly silent. \"Two!\" \" \" And with that the little people suddenly appeared. The leader—he seemed more at a safe distance. I smiled to reassure in a friendly gesture of greeting. is Keech.\" \"And mine's Houlihan, as I've told you. Are you convinced now that I have no intention of doing \"Mr. Houlihan,\" said Keech, up about himself, \"in such matters I am never fully convinced. After living for many centuries I am all of human nature.\" \"Yes,\" I said. \"Well, as you will Houlihan.\" \"And often that's all he wants,\" Houlihan. And afterward we'll appreciate group of little people be building a but not overwhelmingly so. I've run into believers before who could see the little people. It happens every does me.\" spaceship when I see one?\" I said. \"It just so happens I'm a doctor of science.\" \"A doctor of science, now,\" said Keech. \"Invited by the American government center. Since it's no secret I can advise you of it.\" \"A scientist, is it,\" said Keech. \"Well, now, that's very interesting.\" \"I'll make no apologies for it,\" I we prefer poets to scientists. But it has just now crossed my mind, Mr. Houlihan that you, being a scientist, might be of help to us.\" \"How?\" I asked. usually does.\" clay dudeen—and looked hopeful. spaceship.\" adopting some of the old manner. \"Leprechauns are not really mechanically inclined,\" said Keech. \"Their major passions are music and laughter and mischief, as anyone knows.\" \"Myself included,\" I agreed. \"Then why do you need a spaceship?\" \"Well, if I may use an old expression, the world isn't long for itself.\" \"It's very simple. With all the up in the process of destroying that possibility,\" I said. \"Well, then, as I say,\" said Keech, \"the little people have decided of things.\" on us at the center all this time? Do able to see the little people—why when you're thinkin' of us, and of course truly believin' in us. I don't know—'tis a thing of the mind, and not important at the moment. What's important is for us to get \"You're determined to go.\" has crossed my mind. That's why I'm wastin' all this time with you, sir. You say you are a scientist.\" \"The power control, Mr. Houlihan. \"Whatever it might be named,\" said Keech, shrugging. \"'Tis the one thing we lack. I suppose eventually with this?\" finally, \"why should I help you?\" \"Ha!\" said Keech, grinning, but not with humor, \"the avarice of humans! I knew it! Well, Mr. Houlihan, I'll give you reason enough. The pot o' gold, Mr. Houlihan!\" \"The one at the end of the rainbow?\" about the whole project. paper and pencil and I talked with were small and I had to hold them between thumb and forefinger, but Keech and his people made a canopy of boughs and leaves and I they wouldn't see the leprechauns or anything the leprechauns had made, not being believers.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is Houlihan's relationship with the little people?\n\n<options>:\nA He has some kind of historical relationship with them but it's not clear what\nB He has seen them once before and is suspicious of what they're taking from the area\nC He is a little person himself and is glad to finally find his own people\nD He believes in all fantastical creatures so he is an honorary member of their group\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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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>:\ncould not survive on the Earth, because the conditions that made him great were gone. The survivors must be something else—capacities undeveloped by our science—after us the end of man, the beginning.... But those of us who chose to die were right.\" The tide of hate and sick desire rose up to drown all coherence. The Ryzga made a savage, wholly futile effort to lift the weapon in his with the Ryzgas themselves, who slept within, ready to wake and beyond the conqueror of the Ryzgas?\" felt a wave of tenderness and bitterness. For him she had come to this. For the flame that had sprung between them at the Truce of New Grass, she had challenged the feud of their peoples and had left her home, to follow him. Now, if her father and his kinsmen overtook them, it would be death for Var, and for Neena living shame. Which of the two was worse cost. They hoarded their strength, helping one another one alone might never have won through. watch on the Ryzga mountain, as a part of the oldest legends of their Warming to the old man now, Var sketched his and Neena's history very long, I'm sure, I would have performed some deed which Groz would recognize as a worthy exploit, and would thus have healed the feud \"And what will you do now?\" to follow us.\" are doing. That is the second part of the law the First Watcher made: to guard lest the unwary and the ignorant should bring harm on themselves 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 Ryzgas will come forth.\" \"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 their works, wrung its peoples dry for their labor ... and in each 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. \"Because of them we must build with dreams instead of iron, and our only fire is that of the Sun, and even now, two thousand years later, the Earth is still slowly recovering from the pangs and poison of that age. 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 completion of the last of the starships. \"From the memories that the old Watchers have left here, and from the Along lightless streets, half choked with rubble and with the dead, poured a mad, hating horde. The recurrent flashes lit scarred faces, the Ryzgas' might had been forged, eyes that stared white and half 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 They had never seen its like, but they knew. It was the last starship, citadel. The hordes ran and shrieked again toward the central inferno, \"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 their deathless and lifeless sentinels round them, to wait till someone \"I have told you the story you know, and have shown you a glimpse of the old time, because I must make sure that you do not approach the mountain 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.\" that sleep was for infants and the aged, but his intention sank and rested, your minds are clear. Do you still mean to go on to the Ryzga Not looking at the Watcher, Var muttered unsteadily, \"We have no the morning sun, but the mountain of the Ryzgas drank in the light and They thought, in the warm intimacy of unreserved understanding: \" It would work: I-you would make the sacrifice of shame and mockery—yet these can be borne—that I-you might be saved from death—which is alone irreparable.... But to become little had the Ryzgas feared those who might assail them in their sleep. had passed through to light up the depths beyond. For within the Var and Neena turned. Far out in the sea of fog, on a dream bridge that too far to discern the rage that must contort his features, but the thought he hurled at them was a soundless bellow: \"Young fools! I've caught you now!\" potential that seemed to whisper had saved them from death in traps like this. But as yet the way was not 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 then a directed thought, echoing and ghostly in the confinement of the \" Stop! —before you go too far!\" knew with finality that the other's stubbornness matched his own—that neither would yield, though the mountain above them and the world outside should crumble to ruin around them. \"Follow us, then!\" the death-cries of a billion slaves, the despair of all flesh and blood last. And the Ryzga too stood motionless, looking down at them. not wholly roused from his two millenia of slumber. But the Ryzga's manner and his mind radiated a consciousness of power, a pride and assurance of self that smote them like a numbing blow. With a new shock, Var realized that the Ryzga's thoughts were quite interlopers with the dispassionate gaze of a scientist examining a new, initially postulated but this will do. The pessimists were mistaken. We can begin again.\" Then, startlingly super-imposed on the cool 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— 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 misdirected and unavailing as those of a child who has not learned to wrestle with the mind. 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 world, Ryzga! In two thousand built so many machines, such complicated arrangements of matter and energy to do simple tasks—it was because you knew no other way.\" Behind the hate-filled eyes the cold brain tried to reason still. \"Barbarians...? Our party was wrong after all. After us the machine civilization could never rise again, because it was a fire that consumed its fuel. After us man\n\n<question>:\nWhat message for humanity does the author wish to communicate, regarding the fate of the Ryzgas?\n\n<options>:\nA While social stratification may benefit one group temporarily, eventually it will shatter social institutions\nB Humans are doomed to repeat history until they wipe out their entire race\nC We should be grateful for natural gifts bestowed by the Earth, and not try to seek more beyond life's simple pleasures\nD Actions and decisions made in the name of love can breed destructive hatred\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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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>:\nMore Bang for the Buck A friend of mine offers a theory about why Bill Clinton's poll numbers stayed so high throughout the Lewinsky scandal: The news made it possible for serious-minded people to spend lots of time--at the office and over lunch--talking about semen stains, vaginal insertions, and blow jobs. And the people were grateful. That's probably because they're not getting all that much themselves. A recent University of Chicago survey of 10,000 adults found that Americans are having considerably less sex than was generally thought. Only one American in 20 has sex three times a week. One in five didn't score at all last year. If that's true, many of us could use a little sexual self-improvement. Not me, of course. I have been happily married for 26 years, since the age of 21. Deb and I have what seems to us to be a perfectly fine amorous life, yet everywhere I turn the culture tells me--almost mocks me-- you can do better! What would happen to our sex life then, if Deb (who participated in this story because she loves me and because she has tenure) and I tried for the first time to make something happen to it? It doesn't. Back home, I derived a certain depraved buzz in cinching the device on, but that was soon eclipsed. The thing works on the Roach Motel principle--your blood gets in but it can't get out. But then I got to thinking: Under battlefield conditions it doesn't get out anyway. And while I should have been paying more attention to other things, this led to thinking about the old joke with the punch line \"... and right ball go POW.\" My wife hadn't noticed any difference at all. I persevered but must admit it was a chore. The oral-sex tape starts with \"well-known sex therapist\" Diana Wiley, in her poofy hair and broad-shouldered blue power suit, looking like she was about to explain how the sales force could increase its third-quarter productivity. Instead she runs through all the euphemisms for oral sex and then the video cuts to XXX action with gratuitous commentary. Rating: 0 toes curled. Another approach is food. The notion that certain foods, such as oysters or rhino horn, are aphrodisiacs has been pretty much discounted. But it's plausible to think that cooking a meal together and then dining on it, just the two of you, could be erotic. Especially if (like me) your schedule frequently forces you to eat alone and you often find yourself standing in front of the microwave, screaming, \"Come on, goddammit!\" Intercourses , by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge ($24.95, Terrace Publishing, 1997), preaches that for every time of day and every phase of a relationship there is a type of eating experience that will heighten sexual response. (There's also a chart showing which foods are good for eating off which body parts.) Deb and I blocked off a whole Saturday afternoon and evening for the Intercourses experiment, settling on rosemary-scented lamb over pasta (Page 87) followed by frozen coffee almond dessert (Page 31). According to the book, rosemary is sexy because of its fragrance (used in many perfumes) and because of its texture, which, so the text assured, tickles nerve endings. The dessert was mostly coffee, rum, and Kahlua, which has worked before. We shopped for the food together and cooked together, drinking wine and beer along the way. At one point while I was working on the dessert, I asked my wife how long to beat the heavy cream mixture. \"Till it's stiff--it's an aphrodisiac,\" she said. Preparation took less than an hour, and everything came out perfectly. Eating at our dining room table for the first time ever without guests, we were having fun by candlelight. But the mood was romantic, not erotic. Overall rating: 4 toes curled. That's when we went for the Viagra ($212.50 for 10 doses, which includes a \"consultation\" fee). The drug was prescribed by a doctor, whom I've never met, and ordered from a pharmacy in Miami Beach, Fla., where I've never been. I completed the transaction via the Internet after filling out a cover-their-ass questionnaire in three minutes. So then I got out the other purchase I'd made at A Touch of Romance--\"Dirty Dice\" ($4.95). One of the two pink cubes is marked with these words instead of dots: \"lips,\" \"above waist,\" \"ear,\" \"breast,\" \"below waist,\" and \"?\". The other cube is labeled \"kiss,\" \"squeeze,\" \"lick,\" \"blow,\" \"suck,\" and \"eat.\" We took turns throwing the dice, but the activities generated seemed forced and arbitrary. Finally, as they say at NASA, there was word from the pad that the launch sequence was initiating. It was pretty much like all other sex, except for a slight lightheadedness. Deb said she noticed a remote tingling sensation. On the plus side, there was no priapism and neither of us experienced disruption of our color vision nor a fatal heart attack, which was nice. St. Augustine held lust to be a fitting punishment for man's disobedience to God: the body's disobeying of the mind, the will, the spirit, and even of itself. (The paradigm of this for him is the unbidden hard-on.) Jean-Paul Sartre discovered something similar, although celebrating it rather than deploring it: Essential to the erotic is the body's defiance of design and control. (The paradigm of this for him is the jiggle.) Sartre's view yields a sort of sexual Heisenberg principle: There is an inherent tension between physically abandoning yourself to another on the one hand and sexual planning on the other. The more of the one, the less of the other. And this, I discovered, is the chief obstacle to sexual self-help. Getting an erection is sexy. Making one is not. As my wife said about Viagra, \"You start to have a new feeling and then you realize where it came from and then you don't have it so much. ... Anything that makes you think about it like that is just creepy.\" This is not to say there isn't a way out of this conflict between desire and design. With homage to our potent POTUS, there is, I think, a Third Way that's neither sexual complacency nor standard self-help. If the intrusion of consciousness is the problem, then maybe the answer is to block it out. Sure, you could do this the old-fashioned way: with alcohol and drugs. But then you have all the traditional drawbacks, including diminished physical attractiveness and degraded sexual performance. So how about this instead? Go for all the sexual self-help you can, but do it covertly . Watch a sex video (or porn flick) if you want--but by yourself, and then try to share what you learned without sharing how you learned it. Don't tell your partner you took Viagra. Or give each other standing permission to slip it into the odd after-dinner drink, saying nothing. (Of course, when you do it you'll still know, but having an unselfconsciously turned-on partner is a real compensation for that, and next time, your partner can surprise you. And yes, this requires trust. But why would you be having sex with someone you don't trust?) My main conclusion is that contrary to our blabby culture, the key to a better sex life is less communication.\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the writer evoke the NASA by saying that \"there was word from the pad that the launch sequence was initiating\"?\n\n<options>:\nA Because the writer and his wife did not enjoy playing strip poker or with the dirty dice, they decided to roleplay that they worked for NASA and were initiating a launch sequence.\nB Because a rocket was about to be launched into outer space.\nC Because the writer and his wife engaged in and completed sexual intercourse.\nD Because the writer is attempting to give diverse perspectives on the issue he is describing.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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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>:\nEarth For days the two within the ship listened and watched with little \"We've got to make or break,\" said the first alien. \"You know what I'm in favor of,\" said the second. \"I can guess,\" said Ethaniel, who had spoken first. \"The place is a complete mess. They've never 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 \"A week?\" said Bal. \"To settle \"It won't take much,\" said Ethaniel. \"The wrong diplomatic move, or a trigger-happy soldier could set it off. And it wouldn't it as an all-out enemy attack.\" \"Too bad,\" said Bal. \"We'll just have to forget there ever people?\" \"I'm doing it,\" said Bal. \"Just give them a little time and they won't be here to remind me that \"My memory isn't convenient,\" said Ethaniel. \"I ask you 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 us. Is that what you wanted me to say?\" \"It is. The fact that they are touches me. They actually seem defenseless, though I suppose they're not.\" \"Tough,\" said Bal. \"Nothing we can do about it.\" \"There is. We can give them begin to undo the effect of the big bomb.\" \"You can't tell,\" said Ethaniel. \"We can look things over.\" \"And then what? How much \"Very little,\" conceded Ethaniel. 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 hour.\" \"What can I say?\" said Bal. \"I suppose we can stop and look them over. We're not committing themselves. For a day they circled detection, which for them was not difficult, testing, and sampling. Finally Ethaniel looked up from the monitor screen. \"Any conclusions?\" \"In what way?\" near a primitive form of space travel.\" \"Bad,\" said Ethaniel. \"Sitting there, wondering when it's going to hit them. Nervousness could set it off.\" \"It could, and the missiles make it worse,\" said Bal. \"What did you find out at your end?\" were investigating their weapons.\" \"You must think something.\" \"I wish I knew what to think. There's so little time,\" Ethaniel said. \"Language isn't the difficulty. Our machines translate \"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.\" \"Sure, I knew it before we started,\" said Bal. \"It's happened 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 the north. \"I haven't thought of anything brilliant,\" said Ethaniel. \"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. \"What about going down as supernatural beings?\" \"Hardly,\" said Ethaniel. \"A They are not primitives.\" \"I suppose you're right,\" said Bal. \"I did think we ought to take advantage of our physical 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.\" \"Well, you're calling it,\" said 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 always popular.\" \"Can't help it. That's all we have time for.\" \"None. We leave the ship here \"They can't intercept the beams we use.\" 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.\" Bal looked out of the port at \"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 helped. We can't wait until it's over.\" \"I'm aware of that,\" said Bal. \"It was religious a long time ago,\" said Ethaniel. \"I didn't learn anything exact from radio \"You ought to know. You're running this one.\" Bal looked how they develop in the next \"I'll be with you. On the other side of the Earth.\" \"That's not very close. I'd like 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 switched a monitor screen until \"If it saves my neck I'm for \"I don't guarantee anything,\" said Ethaniel. \"This is what I was thinking of: instead of hiding the ship against the sun they do see it. Let's take it around to the night side of the 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, moving to the controls. \"I'll move with light, Bal said: \"You know, 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 safe to do so, Bal left in another of the planet. up from Earth and joined the them. In a short time the aliens met again. \"We did it,\" said Bal exultantly as he came in. \"I don't know how we did it and I thought we were going to fail but at the last minute they came through.\" Ethaniel smiled. \"I'm tired,\" he said, rustling. \"Me too, but mostly I'm cold,\" said Bal, shivering. \"Snow. Nothing but snow wherever I went. Miserable climate. And yet Ethaniel. \"If I went out walking one day I noticed that the next day the officials were much more \"It did. I don't know why, but it did,\" said Bal. \"Anyway, this 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 Bal. \"Say, what's an angel?\" \"Why?\" \"When I went out walking people stopped to look. Some knelt in the snow and called me an angel.\" \"Something like that happened to me,\" said Ethaniel. \"I didn't get it but I didn't let it upset me,\" said Bal. \"I smiled at them and went about my business.\" He shivered again. \"It was sometimes I flew back. I hope that was all right.\" In the cabin Bal spread his him innumerable times. \"I don't think it hurt us that you flew,\" said Ethaniel. \"I did so myself occasionally.\" angel is?\" like ourselves. Their legends are bound to resemble ours.\" \"Sure,\" said Bal. \"Anyway,\n\n<question>:\nHow do Bal and Ethaniel feel about the humans?\n\n<options>:\nA Bal and Ethaniel think humans are very similar beings to themselves.\nB Bal and Ethaniel think humans are crude, rough, and desperate.\nC Bal and Ethaniel think humans are not very intelligent and superstitious.\nD Bal and Ethaniel are scared of the humans because humans seem to be trigger-happy.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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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>:\nIt's Time To Keelhaul U-Haul! Like all superheroes worthy of the title, the Shopping Avenger has an Achilles' heel. In the case of the Shopping Avenger, his Achilles' heel is not animal, vegetable, or mineral but something less tangible. An explanation: Last week, the magazine you are currently reading forced the Shopping Avenger at gunpoint to read a series of treacle-filled self-help books, and then to . The Shopping Avenger, who can withstand radiation, extreme heat and cold, hail, bear attacks, and Eyes Wide Shut , almost succumbed to terminal jejuneness after reading these books. Except for one thing: One of the books, The Art of Happiness , which collects and simplifies the Dalai Lama's philosophy, got the Shopping Avenger to thinking. This, in a way, is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel: thinking. Perhaps it is wrong, the Shopping Avenger thought, to complain about the petty insults and inconveniences of life in the materialistic '90s. The Shopping Avenger felt that perhaps he should counsel those who write seeking help to meditate, to accept bad service the way one accepts the change of seasons, and to extend a compassionate hand of forgiveness to those who provide poor customer care. But then the Shopping Avenger sat down, and the feeling passed. The Shopping Avenger does not make light of the Dalai Lama or of the notion that there is more to life than the impatient acquisition of material goods. If the Shopping Avenger were not, for a superhero, extremely nonjudgmental--as opposed to his alter ego, who is considered insufferably judgmental by his alter ego's wife--the Shopping Avenger would tell the occasional correspondent to let go of his petty grievance and get a life. But the Shopping Avenger also believes that the Dalai Lama has never tried to rent a truck from U-Haul. If he had tried to rent from U-Haul, he never would have escaped from Tibet. (For the complete back story, see \"Shopping Avenger\" column and one.) The complaints about U-Haul's nonreservation reservation policy continue to pour in through the electronic mail. One correspondent, B.R., wrote in with this cautionary tale: \"Last weekend, I went to San Francisco to help my brother and his family move into their first house. My brother had reserved a moving truck with U-Haul for the big day. I warned my brother about U-Haul's 'not really a reservation per se' policy that I learned from the Shopping Avenger. He didn't believe such a thing would happen to him, so he didn't act on my warning.\" B.R. continues--as if you don't know what happened already--\"I went to U-Haul with my brother to get our 'reserved' truck. The store had many customers standing around looking frustrated. When we got to the front of the line, the clerk informed us that our 'reserved' truck had not yet been returned. We asked if we could rent one of the many trucks sitting idle in the parking lot. The clerk laughed and said the keys to those trucks were lost.\" B.R. and his chastened brother--the Shopping Avenger is resisting the urge to gloat--went to Ryder. \"Ryder had a truck available for us. The gentleman who helped us at Ryder said Ryder prides itself on being everything U-Haul is not.\" The Shopping Avenger has still not received a call from U-Haul spokeswoman Johna Burke explaining why U-Haul refuses to provide trucks to people who reserve trucks, but the Shopping Avenger is pleased to note that several correspondents have written in over the past month saying that, based on what they have read in this column, they will be taking their business to Ryder or Budget or elsewhere. The Shopping Avenger will undoubtedly return to the sorry state of affairs at U-Haul in the next episode, but now on to this month's airline debacle. Before we begin, though, the Shopping Avenger nearly forgot to announce the winner of last month's contest, in which readers were asked to answer the question, \"What's the difference between pests and airlines?\" The winner is one Tom Morgan, who wrote, \"You can hire someone to kill pests.\" Tom is the winner of a year's supply of Turtle Wax, and he will receive his prize just as soon as the Shopping Avenger figures out how much Turtle Wax actually constitutes a year's supply. The new contest question: How much Turtle Wax comprises a year's supply of Turtle Wax? When they arrived at their destination, M. and her family made a terrible discovery, \"We discovered that our clothes were soaked through--the top clothes were so wet that the dye had bled through down to the lower levels, destroying lots of other clothes. Obviously, our bags had just been sitting out on the runway in the rain. To this day, I've never heard a thing from SW, despite calls and letters.\" This, of course, is where Shopping Avenger steps in. Shopping Avenger knows that Southwest is different from the average airline, in that it doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its paying customers (see: ), so I expected a quick and generous resolution to M.'s problem. What I got at first, though, was a load of corporate hoo-ha. But then she came through, provisionally, \"Yep, you can be sure if [M.] will call me we will get everything squared away. I'm sorry it's taken this long for her to get someone who can help, but we will take care of it from here.\" Stay tuned, shoppers, to hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to her for her troubles. The story of M. reminds the Shopping Avenger of a central truth of consumer service: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up. Take the case of K., who found himself waiting in vain for Circuit City to repair his television. Televisions break, even 1-year-old televisions, as is the case with K's. But Circuit City, where he bought the television, gave him a terrible runaround. The Shopping Avenger dispatched his sidekick, Tad the Deputy Avenger, to get to the bottom of K.'s story. This is what he found: K. grew concerned, Tad the Deputy Avenger reports, after his television had been in the Circuit City shop for a week. When he called, he was told to \"check back next week.\" When he asked if someone from the store could call him with more information, he was refused. Weeks went by. When K. told one Circuit City employee that he really would like to get his television back, the employee, K. says, asked him, \"Don't you have another television in your house?\" More than a month later--after hours and hours and hours of telephone calls and days missed at work--K. received his television back. Mistakes happen, but not, Tad the Deputy Avenger found out, at Circuit City. The case, K. was told by a Circuit City official, was \"handled perfectly.\" Another official, Morgan Stewart in public relations, assured Deputy Avenger Tad that \"We got to be a big and successful company by treating customers better than the other guy.\" The Shopping Avenger and his loyal sidekick would like to hear from other Circuit City customers: Does Circuit City, in fact, treat its customers better than the other guy? Stay tuned for answers. And next month, a Shopping Avenger clergy special: TWA screws with a Hasidic rabbi's travel plans, leaving the rabbi's wife crying at the airport. Find out if the Shopping Avenger can save TWA from certain heavenly punishment, in the next episode. Got a consumer score you want settled? Send e-mail to shoppingavenger@slate.com.\n\n<question>:\nWhy is the main character called the \"Shopping Avenger\"?\n\n<options>:\nA Because he is a real-life superhero.\nB Because he seeks justice for consumers.\nC Because he works with Tad.\nD Because he avenges shoppers who made poor choices when purchasing goods.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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2,006 | quality | [
{
"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>:\none way or another JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT BY WILLIAM LEE ILLUSTRATED BY SCHOENHERR what seemed to me, since I use two And Hilary brought in a bottle of his new detergent. It was a syrupy yellow liquid with a nice collar of suds. He'd been busy in his home \"What is it?\" I asked. \"You never told us.\" Hilary grinned. \"Lauryl benzyl phosphonic acid, dipotassium salt, in 20% solution.\" \"Goodness.\" I protested, \"it's been twenty-five years since my last course in chemistry. Perhaps if I saw the formula—.\" He gave me a singularly adult tasty, I might add. \"Why, Donald,\" she said, \"it could be quite interesting, if I understand Senior High School. It's a privilege which I'm sure many educators must new school is a fine one, and our academic standards are high. On the other hand, the fathers of most of brand of science to these children of a new age. \"That's very nice,\" said Marjorie. \"What does a junior achievement themselves. \"Well, now,\" I demanded, in my best classroom voice. \"What is all this?\" which are available for later educational expenses.\" Mr. McCormack had told me, and in some detail, about the youngsters quiet. \"You didn't know that one of your junior whatsisnames poured detergent fifty. The question is, could we do it?\" Marjorie did mental arithmetic. rather closely for the last ten—no, Doris Enright was a grave young all those simply captivating mice.\" \"Mice?\" \"Yes, of course. Who would ever have thought you could breed mice with those cute furry tails?\" \"How many generations?\" I asked so, of course, did we, which meant thought, be quite a beauty in a few more years, but was at the moment belonging to the parents of one of Dr. Matlack's son, aren't you? Been dipping into your father's library?\" And Doris, how many mice do you have?\" Those mice! I have always kept my enthusiasm for rodents within I'd be dealing with. The three who charming little beasts, with tails as bushy as miniature squirrels. bounds, but I must admit they were Doris. \"Seventeen. No, eighteen, now. Want to see the genetic charts?\" I won't try to explain it as she did rather angular—all shoulders and elbows. Peter Cope, Jr. and Hilary Matlack were skinny kids, too. The three were of an age and were all tall for ten-year-olds. I had the impression during that first meeting that they looked rather alike, but this wasn't so. Their features were quite different. Perhaps get out of their cages. But heaven knows what you'll do when fall a certain similarity of restrained gesture and of modulated voice. And by then,\" Doris predicted. \"Every pet they were all tanned by sun and wind them and they'll be down to nothing apiece.\" Doris was right, of course, in spite comes. They won't live in an unheated The two on my right were cast in was a big husky redhead of twelve, a few months younger, was just an average, extroverted, well adjusted youngster, noisy and restless, tee-shirted and butch-barbered. the Many of them wanted to buy mice or friends, they had just come to have each. Tommy's ideas of pricing rather frightened me, but he set the value of the mice at ten dollars a pair and got it without any arguments. Our beautiful stationery arrived, The usual products, of course, with these junior achievement efforts, are chemical specialties that can be made safely and that people will buy and use without misgivings—solvent to free up rusty bolts, cleaner to remove \"The Miller boy and Mary McCready,\" he had said, \"have exceptionally high IQ's—around one forty or one fifty. The other three are hard to classify. They have some of the attributes of exceptional pupils, but much of the time they seem to have little interest in their studies. The junior achievement idea has sparked their imaginations. Maybe it'll be just what they need.\" \"Exactly,\" he broke in, \"we guessed that might be the case, and there are brainstorm. We'll worry about everything else.\" \"What's to lose,\" Tommy interjected. in the electronics field. A hi-fi sub-assembly of some kind.\" \"How about a new detergent?\" Hilary put in. \"Like the liquid dishwashing detergents?\" scattered from New York to Los know, mixtures. That's cookbook chemistry. I mean a brand new synthetic detergent. I've got an idea for one that ought to be good even in the hard water we've legal sense, of course. Hilary and I were just going over the situation on his phosphonate detergent. I've spent the last three nights studying the patent literature and a few standard texts touching on phosphonates. There are a zillion patents on synthetic \"Some,\" said Hilary, \"and I've got detergents and a good round fifty on phosphonates, but it looks\"—he held up a long admonitory hand—\"it just looks as though we had a clear \"No.\" She shook her head in mock despondency. \"I'm not very technical. Just sort of miscellaneous. But if the \"That's fine, Mr. McCord,\" Hilary a home laboratory.\" incredulously. \"Mice,\" I echoed, then sat back and thought about it. \"Are they a pure strain? One of the recognized laboratory strains? Healthy mice of the \"No,\" said Doris, \"these aren't laboratory mice. They're fancy ones. I got the first four pairs from a pet \"What is it?\" \"A whisker stiffener. It makes each carried them through seventeen generations of careful selection.\" \"So I perceive. What is it?\" \"Oh, just a mixture of stuff. Cookbook chemistry. Cysteine thiolactone of chipmunk color, you know. I've he said, \"Henderson, Hilary \"Oh, he stopped at the bank to get a loan.\" \"What on earth for? We have over six thousand in the account.\" agreed to underwrite lunches at the barn and Betty Miller philosophically I'd forgotten all about organization, and that, according to all the articles I had perused, is most important for every member of the group keep the group going after school starts?\" through their courses without thinking about them, and actually they won't put in more than a few hours that they'd each do what came naturally. On the other hand, they and I'd be crazy to turn it down. After all, what's to lose?\" Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction I wished that the youngsters weren't starting out by inventing a new impractical, of course, for a group of children to attempt, but several of them appeared quite attractive. two colors in the same bottle—orange the blue ones designed to leave the mouth alkaline at bed time. Pete wanted to make a combination a few turns of a screwdriver. Hilary, reluctantly forsaking his ideas on detergents, suggested we chips but thinner and as cheap as possible, to scatter on a snowy sidewalk where they would pick up extra \"My,\" said Marjorie, \"they're really smart boys and girls. Tommy Miller does sound like a born salesman. Somehow I don't think you're going the general form of a kidney bean. \"You're right,\" Doris agreed. \"Let's end the slightest of twists. \"There, it ought to swoop.\" Sure enough, in the moderate \"Why it would have to, wouldn't it? It changed the pattern of air pressures.\" \"Oh, sure, but don't you think it would be better to borrow from a book. \"I got two hundred and fifty,\" he volunteered—not without a hint of figured what's to lose, and picked one. who by mutual consent, was our\n\n<question>:\nDoris, Peter, and Hilary have all of the following characteristics in common EXCEPT for their:\n\n<options>:\nA Controlled movements\nB Skin complexions\nC Regulated voices\nD Intelligence quotients\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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876 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nthroat on the edge of a near-two-dimensional piece of paper. It took valor for them to hunt men in the world of men. In that fact lay a key to their character—if such utterly alien creatures could be said to have character. himself—desire that both of them loathed because it was implanted within them by their captors. They walked toward the house. the three female captives, barely nineteen. But with the eyes of the other two, especially Dana, upon him, he could not. \"I guess I wasn't cut out to be a Turk,\" he said. \"I don't feel at ease in a harem, even when it's supposedly my own.\" \"You're not doing so badly,\" Dana replied acidly. \"Lay off—he can't help it,\" said Eudalia unexpectedly. \"He doesn't like it any better than we do.\" \"But he doesn't have to—have them,\" objected Olga. She had a trace of A disc jockey's buoyant tones cut in quickly as the final ooooo faded. \"This is Grady Martin, your old night-owl, coming to you with Tennant watched the girls as a sweet-voiced crooner began to ply Tennant caught Dana looking at him and there was near approval in her expression—approval that faded quickly as soon as she caught his gaze aroma of steak, it was almost tasteless. This was so with all of their foods, with their cigarettes, with everything in their prison—or their cage. Their captors were utterly without a human conception of smell, things are arranged here.\" \"Thanks, Eudalia,\" said Tennant. \"I think I can defend myself. But she's right, Dana. We're as helpless as—laboratory animals. They have the means to make us do whatever they want.\" \"Why haven't they brought more of us through?\" Eudalia asked, tamping haven't brought anyone through—not alive.\" \"Why do they do it—the other way, I mean?\" asked Dana. Tennant shrugged. \"I don't know. I've been thinking about it. I suppose it's because they're pretty human.\" \" Human! \" Dana was outraged. \"Do you call it human to—\" \"Hold on,\" he said. \"They pass through their gateway to Earth at considerable danger and, probably, expense of some kind. Some of them don't come back. They kill those of us who put up a fight. Those who don't—or can't—they bring back with them. Live or dead, we're just laboratory specimens.\" \"Maybe,\" Eudalia conceded doubtfully. Then her eyes blazed. \"But the things they do—stuffing people, mounting their heads, keeping them on display in their—their whatever they live in. You call that human, Rog?\" \"Were you ever in a big-game hunter's trophy room?\" Tennant asked quietly. \"Or in a Museum of Natural History? A zoo? A naturalist's lab? Or even, maybe, photographed as a baby on a bear-skin rug?\" \"Of course not,\" he agreed. \"In the one instance, we're the hunters, the breeders, the trophy collectors. In the other\"—he shrugged—\"we're the trophies.\" copied, though he did not know why. She laughed at him silently, tossed angrier way. The infants, protected by cellophane-like coverlets, were \"Good,\" said Tennant, fighting down his anger. He kissed her, held her close, although neither of them felt desire at the moment. Their captors had seen to that Olga so scared. It isn't their fault.\" \"And it's not yours,\" insisted Eudalia. \"Don't let them make you think over. He had felt the inner tug of command, said good-by to the women The captor Tennant called auditory scale, just as perhaps they could smell, although not in any human sense. You will approach without use of your appendages. The command was as clear as if it had been spoken aloud. Tennant took a weren't mastering some of the alleged Guru arts. At once he felt probing investigation. Opal, like the rest of the captors, was as curious as a cat—or a human being. Tennant sat against a wall, drenched with sweat. There would be endless repetition before his workout was done. On Earth, dogs were said to be intellectually two-dimensional creatures. He wondered if they felt this helpless futility when their masters taught them to heel, to point, to retrieve. incomprehensible as an oil painting to an animal. Tennant wondered, cynically, what would happen if he were to demand everything but the date and season. Opal, like the rest of the captors, \"There's no need for fright,\" he told her. \"I believe I still own this there would be in a ghastly spot. He felt like a heel for wanting to leave them there, then knew that he would try somehow to get them out. Not, of course, anything that would endanger his remaining with Agatha the only way his captors would get him back would be as a taxidermist's specimen. He realized, shocked and scared, that his thoughts of escape had to strike. Nothing happened and he warily relaxed. Opal wasn't tapping his thoughts. Because he felt sure of his captive ... or because he couldn't on Earth? It was like being let out of a cage. Tennant grinned at the bookcase adolescent's. This hunger was real, not implanted. Everything would be real ... his love for her, the food he ate, the things he touched, his when it came, was more humiliating than a slap across a dog's snout. Opal had been too interested in the next lab specimen to bother about his thoughts—that was why he had been free to think of escape. But there was no pleasure in it, only a confirmation of his captor's He was not free of them. He understood all too well what they wanted him to do groomed, more assured than his memory of her. out of hand, but whose inherent aggressive grace had not yet deserted him. The man Roger! alive !\" \"Roger,\" repeated Tennant viciously. He felt sick with disgust. Maybe captors had let him. right to know. I do, anyway.\" \"One question first,\" he said. \"What about those killings? Have there brought the four of them through, not since they had begun to train him Take her back? He smiled ironically try to make trouble for Agatha, I can promise....\" \" exchanged with Cass. He turned away, knowing that she was imploring her lover to do something, anything , as long as it was safe. easier and pleasanter than he had expected. They deserved some of the suffering he had had and there was a chance that they might get it. Tennant knew now why he was the only male human the captors had been able to take alive. Apparently, thanks to the rain-slick road, he had had been sitting there, unconscious, ripe fruit on their doorstep. They had simply picked him up. Otherwise, apparently, men were next to impossible for them to capture. All they could do was kill them and bring back their heads and hides as trophies. With women it was different—perhaps the captors' weapons, whatever they were, worked more efficiently on females. A difference in body chemistry or psychology, perhaps. More than once, during his long training with Opal, Tennant had sent questing thoughts toward his captor, asking why they didn't simply set up the gateway in some town or city and take as many humans as they wanted. Surprisingly there had been a definite fear reaction. As nearly as he could understand, it had been like asking an African pygmy, armed with a blowgun, to set up shop in the midst of a herd of wild elephants. It simply wasn't feasible—and furthermore he derived an impression of the tenuosity as well as the immovability of the gateway itself.\n\n<question>:\nWhat does Roger respect about the captors?\n\n<options>:\nA They are adept at concealing themselves on Earth\nB They represent the pinnacle of human evolution\nC They have treated the captives with compassion\nD They are bold enough to hunt humans in their own habitat\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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727 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nCaptain Hannah climbed painfully down from the to take care of it—kept us apart until we both cooled down a little. among the stars. Call it the Look of Eagles. Captain Hannah had lost more of the ubiquitous swellings. I figured that he figured that I had something to do with the way he I only drink rhial when I've been exposed to Captain Hannah. It was having him take the therapy. \"A He lapsed back into silence after this uncharacteristic admission. I the field with her two-ton infant in tow, to show her off to Hannah. I us. The fruit of the marocca is delicious and fabulously expensive. \"I got them there safely,\" said Captain Hannah. \"When I left, marocca was growing like mad,\" said Captain Hannah. that marocca takes a very special kind of environment. Bright sun most of the time—that means an almost cloudless environment. A very equable climate. Days and nights the same length and no seasons—that means no ecliptical and no axial tilt. But our tests showed that the plants had enough tolerance to cause no trouble in the trip in Delta Crucis .\" A \"Your tests were no good,\" agreed the captain with feeling. \"I'll tell \"You'll remember that I warned you that we should take some marocca ourselves to hauling a full load of it?\" asked Captain Hannah. we had gone through all of that rigamarole, we would have lost the franchise. Besides, they gave you full written instructions about what to do under all possible circumstances.\" \"Sure. Written in Myporian. A very difficult language to translate. , but I figured it was safer to let him tell me in his trouble. The plastic film kept the water in the hydroponic tanks without any trouble, even in a no-gravity condition. And by the time I had lined up for Gloryanna and Jumped, I figured, like you said, that the trip would be a cakewalk. \"Do you remember how the plants always keep their leaves facing the sun? They twist on their stems all day, and then they go on twisting them all night, still pointing at the underground sun, so that they're aimed right at sunrise. So the stem looks like a corkscrew?\" I nodded. \"Sure. That's why they can't stand an axial tilt. They 'remember' the rate and direction of movement, and keep it up during the night time. So what? We had that problem all figured out.\" \"You think so? That solution was one of yours, too, wasn't it?\" He gazed moodily at his beaker of rhial. \"I must admit it sounded good to me, too. In Limbo, moving at multiple light-speeds, the whole Universe, of course, turns into a bright glowing spot in our direction of motion, with everything else dark. So I lined up the Delta Crucis darkness. \"Of course, it didn't work.\" \"For Heaven's sake, why not?\" moving?\" \"So what did you do?\" I asked, when that had sunk in. \"If the stem doesn't keep winding, the plants die and they can only take a few extra hours of night time before they run down.\" \"Oh,\" said Captain Hannah in quiet tones of controlled desperation, \"it was very simple. I just put enough spin on the ship to make artificial The plants liked it fine. \"Of course, first I had to move all the hydroponic tanks from their the southern hemisphere, it turned out that half of the plants had a sinistral corkscrew and the other half had a dextral. So I had to set the plants up in two different rooms, and run an artificial sun for each, going clockwise with one, widdershins with the other. \"I won't even talk about what I went through while I was shifting the hydroponic tanks, when all the plastic membranes that were supposed to keep the water in place started to break.\" He stared at me in silence for a moment. \"Well, it filled the cabin with great solid bubbles of water. Water bubbles will oscillate and wobble like soap bubbles,\" he went on dreamily, \"but of course, they're not empty, like soap bubbles. The surface acts a little like a membrane, so that sometimes two of the things will touch and gently bounce apart without joining. But just try touching one of them. You a wide cylinder with a piston with a handle, and a hose that you squirt the water out of, or can suck water in with. The way you use it is, you float up on a big ball of water, with the pump piston down—closed. You carefully poke the end of the hose into the ball of water, letting only the metal It was full of minerals and manure and such, and I didn't want to introduce it into the ship's tanks.\" \"But you solved the problem?\" He shrugged. \"I couldn't say. By that time I was ignoring them. It was that or suicide. I had begun to get the feeling that they were stalking me. So I drew a blank.\" \"Then after that you were all right, except for the tedium of moving \"Not yet,\" said Captain Hannah. \"Like you, I figured I had the larval stage. Instead of making cocoons for themselves, they snipped habits. And now they were mature. \"There were thousands and thousands of them, and each one of them made cloud—by spreading it all through the ship—or whether to try to block off the other plant room, and save it at least. So I ended up by not correct word is carolla—are a necessary part of the life cycle of the marocca. The larvae provide an enzyme without which the plants die. while the midges died one by one. It was heartbreaking—at least, it fill itself full to bursting before it will reproduce. If I had the translation done correctly, they were supposed to dart gracefully capturing her prey by sound alone. \"So I spent the whole day—along with my usual chore of shifting the who is captain of his own ship.\" I must say that I agreed with him, but it seemed to be a good time for immediately got busy opening small buds on the stems of the marocca phase of the marocca plants. Did you know that they plant marocca \"The book says that it takes just six hours for a marocca field to one plant twining with another as they climbed toward the light. it wouldn't do its job right. In effect, their growth would put out the sun. one of the things they do is to defend the marocca against marauders. \"And what's more, I found that I couldn't kill the damn things. Not if I wanted to save the plants. The growth only stops at the end of six \"It turns out that it's all right to cut marocca as soon as it stops growing. To keep the plants from dying, though, you have to mulch the cuttings and then feed them back to the plants, where the roots store whatever they need against the time of the next explosive period of translated very carefully—it required an 'organic processor'. process it the hard way. \"I didn't even have time to scratch my bites. I must have lost weight and answered them, so I had to do a good deal of backtracking before I could get into parking orbit around the planet, and then set Delta Crucis behaved like a lady. \"I hadn't chopped off all of the new growth, although I had the plants formed fruit, and the fruit had ripened and dried, and the seeds had developed fully. They were popping and spreading fine dust-like spores reasonable at the time.\" Captain Hannah inhaled a sip of rhial, and \"Well, go on,\" I urged him. \"The marocca plants were still in good Hannah nodded. \"They were growing luxuriously.\" He nodded his head a Delta Crucis as security to \"They'll send you the bill. They don't figure it will take them more than a few months to complete the job.\" Captain Hannah stopped talking and stood up, painfully and a little\n\n<question>:\nWhat best describes the overall structure of Captain Hannah's dialogue when recounting his time caring for the marocca plants?\n\n<options>:\nA An argument and supporting details along with counterclaims structure.\nB A catchphrase followed by explanations structure.\nC A purpose and explanation structure.\nD A problem-solution structure.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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2,055 | quality | [
{
"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>:\ncould not survive on the Earth, because the something else—capacities undeveloped by our science—after us the end among the cliffs and snow-slopes of the surrounding ranges: an immense and repellently geometric cone, black, its sides blood-tinted by the dying sun. Neena shivered, even though the surrounding cold could not reach her. The ice-wind blew from the glacier, but Var's love was round her as a warming cloak, a cloak that glowed softly golden in the deepening twilight, even as her love was about him. she had challenged the feud of their peoples and had left her home, to the crags that loomed over the pass, and to the frozen ground underfoot. It was black night, as it would really be when Groz and his henchmen reached this place lurid fire spewed from the Ryzga mountain, and strange lights dipped above it and for good measure there was an avalanche in the dream, and hideous beasts rushed snapping and ravening from the crevices of the rock. \"Oh!\" cried Neena in involuntary alarm. Var sighed, shaking his head. \"It won't hold them for long, but it's the sierra, and the way led over bottomless crevasses, sheer drops and sheer ascents, sheets of traitorous glare ice. Place after place had to be cave. The light shone watery and dim from beneath the hoary back of the glacier, and as they came nearer they saw why: the cave entrance was sealed by a sheet of ice, a frozen waterfall that fell motionless from the rocks above. They heard no sound. The two young people stared for a long minute, intrigued and fearful. but neither had been here before. But this was no time for shyness. Var eyed the ice-curtain closely to make sure that it was real, not dream-stuff then he struck it boldly had not meant to be. The old man grinned toothlessly. \"Never fear. Asleep or awake, I watch. Come in! You're letting in the wind.\" Inside the cave it was warm as summer. Var saw with some surprise that all the walls were sheathed in ice—warm to the touch, bound fast against melting by the Watcher's will. Light blazed in reflections from the ice walls, till there was no shadow in the place. Behind them began a tinkling of falling water, thawed from the glacial ridges above to descend sheet-wise over the cave mouth, freezing as it fell into lengthening icicles. The old man gazed at his work for a moment, then turned questioningly to the young pair. is as bad as it was when I was last in it.\" Hot food and drink were before them almost at once. The Watcher regarded \"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.\" come again, but I met their sentries, the sentinel machines that guard them now as they have for two thousand years. When I had gone that far, the mountain began to shake, the force that is in the Earth rumbled below, and I returned in time.\" Now for the first time Var sensed the \"Because of them we must build with dreams instead of iron, and our only fire is that of the Sun, and even now, two thousand years later, the Earth is still slowly recovering from the pangs and poison of that age. If you turn up the sod in the plain where the wild herds graze, you will that was ever built. Only the angry light of fires relieved the city's darkness—that, and the blue-white lightning flashes that silhouetted the naked skeletons of buildings and were followed by thunder and a shaking of the earth. Along lightless streets, half choked with rubble and with the dead, lightning blazed, and the city howled and screamed and burned. Then, unbelievably, the thunder fell silent, and the silence swept citadel. The hordes ran and shrieked again toward the central inferno, and the city burned and burned.... Var blinked dazedly in the shadowless glow of the ice-cave. His arm tightened about Neena till she gasped. He was momentarily uncertain that answered. \"Often I become a youth at morning, and relax into age as the Not looking at the Watcher, Var muttered unsteadily, \"We have no alternative.\" There was a liquid tinkling as the ice-curtain collapsed the fresh breeze of morning swept into the cave. The youth beckoned to them, and they followed him outside. The glacial slope on which the cavern opened faced toward the mountain. It rose black and forbidding in the dawn as it had by sunset. To right and left of it, the grand cliffs, ocher and red, were lit splendidly by gave nothing back. Below their feet the slope fell away into an opaque sea of fog, filling a mile-wide gorge. There was a sound of turbulent water, of a river dashed from rock to rock in its struggle toward the plain, but the curling fog hid everything. last on the cindery slope of the great volcanic cone, they sensed that the pursuit already halved their lead. They stood high on the side of the Ryzga mountain, and gazed at the doorway. It was an opaque yet penetrable well of darkness, opening into the face of a lava cliff, closed only by an intangible curtain—so little had the Ryzgas feared those who might assail them in their sleep. Var sent his thoughts probing beyond the curtain, listened intently, abrupt motion he hurled it. The sun-globe vanished, as if the darkness had drunk it up, but though sight did not serve they both sensed that it mountain something snapped suddenly alert—something alive yet not living, seeing yet blind. They felt light-sensitive cells tingle in response, felt electric currents sting along buried, long-idle circuits.... The two stood shivering together. The morning wind stirred, freshening, the fog lifted a little, and they back! Or you'll drive us to enter the mountain!\" Groz seemed to hesitate. Then he swung his staff up like a weapon, and for the two on the mountainside the world turned upside down, the blocked.... Then they felt the mountain begin to tremble. A very faint and remote vibration at first, then an increasingly potent shuddering of the floor under their feet and the walls around them. Somewhere far below immense that of Groz, like the grip of two strong wrestlers. In that grip each knew with finality that the other's stubbornness matched his own—that neither would yield, though the mountain above them and the world outside should crumble to ruin around them. \"Follow us, then!\" They plunged deeper into the mountain. And the shaking of the mountain increased with every step, its vibrations became sound, and its sound shifting of magnetic fields, the fury of electrons boiling in vacuum.... For long moments they forgot the pursuit, forgot everything in wonder at this place whose remotest like they had never seen in the simplicity of \"Culture: late barbarism. Handwork of high quality—good. Physically initially postulated but this will do. The pessimists were mistaken. We can begin again.\" Then, startlingly super-imposed on the cool toward the stars, the stars! The icy calculation resumed: \"Immobilize these and the ones indicated in the passage above. Then wake the rest....\" There was an instantaneous glare like heat lightning, and the monster crumpled in on itself, twitched briefly and vanished. energy to do simple tasks—it was because you knew no other way.\" Behind the hate-filled eyes the cold brain tried to reason still. \"Barbarians...? Our party was wrong after all. After us the machine civilization could never rise again, because it was a fire that consumed its fuel. After us man\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the story take place somewhere cold?\n\n<options>:\nA The history of the area is such that warmth and resources have been taken from the land\nB A volcano has blocked light from the region making everything cold\nC The mountains are the only place Var and Neena can hide\nD It isn't actually cold, because of the lava\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,013 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nscreamed: \"He'll drown!\" poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!\" Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form: Ann Hartley was returning from mailing the letter when she found the large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared pugnaciously at the bundle. \"The minute I write a letter to complain about you, you turn up!\" she told the parcel. She nudged her toe peevishly against the brown paper wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never seen before. The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and therefore hadn't been broken in shipment. Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely Two-year-old Sally heard the box rattling. She waddled up on chubby \"Your dress ought to be here,\" Ann said. She found scissors in her sewing box, tossed a cushion onto the floor, sat on it, and began to open the parcel. Then they'll write again.\" Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted \"There!\" Sally said. Ann repressed an irrational urge to slap her daughter. Instead, she tossed the wrappings aside and removed the lid from the carton. A slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned. It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small girl's dress should be. But Sally was delighted. \"Mine!\" she shrilled, grabbing for the dress. \"It's probably the wrong size, too,\" Ann said, pulling off Sally's dress to try it on. \"Let's find as many things to complain about as we can.\" The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally \"We'll have to send it back,\" Ann said, \"and get the one we ordered.\" She tried to take it off, but the child squawked violently. Ann grabbed her daughter's arms, held them above her head and pulled at the dress. It seemed to be stuck somewhere. When Ann released the child's arms to loosen the dress, Sally squirmed away. She took one step forward, then began to float three inches above the ground. She landed just before Sally looked scared until she saw her mother's face. Then she squealed Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling \"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—\" Sally crouched to jump at her father. Before she could leap, he grabbed her up bodily and hugged her. Then he saw the box. \"Your order's here? Good. What's this thing?\" He was looking at a small box he had pulled from the carton. Its lid contained a single word: \"I don't know,\" Ann said. \"Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—\" have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment.\" He tossed the manky onto the hassock and delved into the carton again. Sally was still in his arms. \"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of the doorbell.\" The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover and said: \"Les, about Sally. Put her down a minute and watch what she does.\" Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to \"That round thing must be leaking,\" Les said. \"But did you see Sally fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action. She collapsed into Les's arms, babbling incomprehensibly. He said: \"It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the shoulders of that dress. I'll tie a paperweight to Sally's dress and that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green dye or whatever it is will wash off.\" Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental about her removing it. \"I'll get dinner,\" she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel. \"The children have some new toys,\" Ann improvised hastily. \"Sally is so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see now—it was sugar that you want, wasn't it?\" \"I already have it,\" Bob said, handing a filled cup to his mother. \"Where did this come from?\" Les held a small object in the palm of his hand, keeping it away from his body. A few drops of something wife. \"I don't know why you ordered such a thing.\" He tossed the booklet into the empty box. \"I'm going to return it, if you don't smudge it up,\" she replied. \"Look and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown. that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?\" Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in the parcel. Her heart sank. She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: \"Les, I think it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time for a nap. It seems impossible, but—\" She shrugged mutely. \"And I think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed.\" keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward out of her arms. closet where the manky sat. Sally was whining occasionally in her sleep. When daylight entered her room, Sally's nightgown had turned back into the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed. She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les called the doctor before going to work. at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly quick answer to the letter she had written yesterday. It must have crossed in the mail her complaint about the non-arrival of the order. She tore open the envelope and read: the purchasing of merchandise on credit. We shall fill your recent order as soon....\" Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace, knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after difficulty, to admit Dr. Schwartz. \"You aren't going to believe me, Doctor,\" Ann said while he took the child's temperature, \"but we can't get that dress off Sally.\" before I try to move her. Let me undress her.\" Sally had been mumbling half-deliriously. She made no effort to resist as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and began to pull it back, she screamed. The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point where it touched Sally's skin. \"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't understand why the dress won't come off. It's not stuck tight.\" \"Don't bother trying,\" Ann said miserably. \"Just cut it off.\" of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The weary sadness. \"People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—\" \"Don't bother about the girls' clothing,\" Bob said, \"because it was only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did before I left the house.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat caused Sally to float through the air?\n\n<options>:\nA The manky that was in the shipment.\nB The strange doorbell with no wire.\nC They eyeball from the detective kit.\nD The dress that was in the shipment.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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2,134 | quality | [
{
"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 sand-thing was powerful, lonely and strange. No doubt it was a god—but who wasn't? Stinson lay still in the sand where he fell, gloating over the success of his arrival. \"I've changed my mind. You will be welcomed.\" \"Listen to that, will you?\" Stinson said angrily. \"Just listen! You adolescent. Worse.\" \"Earthman, wait....\" \"No!\" Stinson shot back. \"You've owned this planet for a million years. You have brooded here alone since before my people discovered fire, and in all those ages you never learned self-control. I can't subject my people to the whims of an entity who throws a planetary fit when it pleases him.\" Stinson relaxed. He'd had his say. Sybtl trembled beside him. A small mammal, round, furry, hopped by, sniffing inquisitively. gets too old it is well to die. But Gods never die, do they? I would everyone ?\" A frenzied searching of the planet, the solar system, the galaxy. Then a returning to the planet. Empty.... Change. Buildings, roads, bridges weathering slowly. Such a race would crumbled to dust, dust blew away. Bridges eroded, fell, decomposed explanation. \"What am I afraid of?\" he said aloud, \"a few grains of \"I don't understand why your development stopped,\" Stinson said. \"Nor do I. But perhaps ... well, I sense that I would continue, if you brought your people here. You have already taught me the value of Again Stinson felt the urge to run, or to use the cylinder to project himself somewhere else, but he said, \"No!\" very firmly to himself. He was here to investigate, to determine if this planet was capable of your wife. Have children. I promise never to harm you in any way.\" \"The webfoots?\" \"You and they shall share the planet.\" The Sand God disappeared. Sybtl said life. There is a oneness, a bond that ties each living thing to every other living thing. It is a lesson my people never knew. Select any \"Is the Sand God angry again?\" Life. Intelligence. The planet was inhabited. Should he give up and return to earth? Or was there room here for They saw him struggling. Two of the men came over and spoke to him in the musical language. \"My name is Stinson,\" he said, pointing to himself. \"I'm from the planet Earth.\" They looked at each other and jabbered some more. disappeared. A small cloud of dust settled slowly to the floor. Disintegrated! Stinson's face drained pale, and suddenly, unaccountably, he was the pallet, her kisses fire on his face. Incongruously, he thought of Benjamin back on earth, and all the others with cylinders, who might be fighting for their lives at this moment. She shook her head. \"One day they will find me alone, and they'll kill \"Why?\" speaking, and pointed to himself. \"Me?\" \"Yes.\" \"I am Stinson, of the planet Earth.\" \"Yes, I see it in your mind, now. You want to live here, on this planet.\" because you feared I would become the God of these people in your place.\" Stinson felt a mental shrug. \"It is of no importance. When they arrived on this planet I attempted to explain that I was not a God, but the primitive is not deeply buried in them. They soon resorted to emotion rather than reason. It is of no importance.\" it directly. These are the undesirables, the incorrigibles, the nonconformists from the sixth planet. I permit them here because it occupies my time, to watch them evolve.\" \"You should live so long.\" were about to take place. I believe you think of death. I see your exist, almost as soon as those of the sixth planet peoples. I am most interested in you. You will bring your people, and live here.\" \"What happened?\" and matter from the very beginning. My people are gone. Sometimes it almost comes to me, why they are gone. And this is contrary to the to exist.\" Stinson was silent, thinking of the endless years of searching through the great gulf of time. His eyes caught sight of the woman, reclining now on the pallet. The men had left her and stood in groups, talking, not last. When He is gone they will probably kill us.\" \"As for the webfoots,\" the wind devil, or Sand God, said, \"I will destroy them. You and your people will have the entire planet.\" \"Destroy them?\" Stinson asked, incredulously, \"all these people? They have a right to live like any one else.\" \"Right? What is it—'right?' They are entities. They exist, therefore they always will. My people are the only entities who ever died. To kill the body is unimportant.\" jabbered musically among themselves. One slipped and fell on the ice. They re-entered the cave. Stinson donned the shimmering skirt, smiling as he did so. The others should see him now. Benjamin and Straus and Jamieson. They would laugh. And Ben's wife, Lisa, she would give her little-girl laugh, and He turned to the woman. \"I don't know what I'll do with you, but now that we're in trouble together, we may as well introduce ourselves. My name is Stinson.\" \"I am Sybtl,\" she said. She smiled, then pointed to the cavern. \"When the ice is gone, they will come out and follow us.\" \"But....\" \"No buts. Right now we'd better get out of here.\" what am I doing here, anyway? He glanced down at Sybtl and remembered \"How often can I use it?\" \"As often as you like. It is good for fifty years. Kaatr—he is the one you destroyed—brought it from the ship when we came. Many times he has \"When will your people come again?\" \"What form of primitive stupidity are you practicing now? Leave, or they will kill you.\" Stinson shook his head. area around it. Brown, frozen grass burned to ashes. business is it of yours if she lives or dies? My race discarded such shall destroy you all.\" killed half of us and burned the ship that brought us. That is how God went to the sixth planet and burned two of the largest cities, as a warning that no more of us must come here.\" Well, Stinson said to himself, that does it. We are better off on Earth. We can't fight a monster like him. \"As soon as you are safe. Come.\" Steam rose from the burned area, charred like a rocket launching pit. They stepped around it carefully. Stinson felt warm air, but there was no time, now, to warm cold feet or dwell on the vagaries of Sand Gods. \"They will not find us....\" makes it rain in a dry summer, or sometimes warms the whole world for days at a time in winter, so the snow melts and the grass begins if they stayed. \"Only for a moment.\" \"And you won't come back. You will go to your world.\" \"No. I'll be back.\" \"Promise? No, don't promise. The promises of Gods often are forgotten before the sounds die away.\" \"I'll be back.\" He disappeared at once, giving her no chance to object again, and went to the desert of sand, where he had first arrived on the planet. He wanted to see if the storm were world-wide. Stinson had never been in a sand storm before, even on Earth. He could He returned to the cave. Soon after, while they sat huddled together, watching the chaos of purposefully. Stinson prepared himself to leave. In spite of his desire to protect Sybtl, it was useless to get himself killed when he was exuded impressions of death, of hopeful words solemnly spoken over \"Earthman,\" the Sand God said, as if he were about to make a statement. Stinson ignored him. He glanced down at Sybtl, who sensed that this was a time for good-bys. He thought, perhaps I can stay here alone with her. The webfoots might find us, or the Sand God might destroy us in\n\n<question>:\nWhat likely happens after the story ends?\n\n<options>:\nA Sybtl and Stinson get together and Stinson forgets about his prior missions\nB Stinson and Sybtl are re-introduced into the web-footed community\nC Sybtl becomes upset with Stinson and makes sure he does not return\nD Stinson eventually brings his friends to live on the planet with him\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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869 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nto their character—if such utterly alien creatures could be said to have character. The house was furnished with all of the house, which radiated spoke-like from its heptagonal central reminiscent of scores of movie sets of the Deep South. That on the right was sundeck solar-house living-machine modern, something like a montage of shoeboxes. The wing hidden by the rest of the house was, he knew, spired, gabled and multicolored, like an ancient building in pre-Hitler Cracow. hair. wrinkle when he moved. Their captors had no idea of how a woven design first to come back for a second run.\" tight-fitting tubular gown. \"If I could do anything about it....\" \"But you can't,\" he told her. \"They're too clever.\" \"Is this crop rotation or did you send for me?\" she asked cynically. on with it.\" He could sense the restless stirring of the woman within them by their captors. They walked toward the house. It didn't look like a prison—or a cage. Within the dome of the barrier, it looked more like a well-kept if bizarre little country estate. There was clipped lawn, a scattering of trees, even a clear But the lawn was not of grass—it was of a bright green substance that that might have been canvas but was something else. The trees looked like trees, only their trunks were bark all the way through—except They entered the house, which had no roof, continued to move beneath a might have been a well-kept if bizarre little country estate, but it wasn't. It was a prison, a cage. \"Okay, I guess,\" she said. \"The way they manage it, there's nothing a female foreman in a garment-cutting shop before being captured and in a harem, even when it's supposedly my own.\" thinking of what they wanted to eat but would not enjoy when it came. It arrived before the meal, materializing against one of the seven walls of the roofless chamber. It was a large cabinet on slender opened a hingeless door and pushed a knob on the inner surface. At once the air was hideous with the acerate harmony of a singing commercial.... be it gold, brown or red, in Any-tone Shampoo! A disc jockey's buoyant tones cut in quickly as the final Tennant watched the girls as a sweet-voiced crooner began to ply an unfamiliar love lyric to a melody whose similarity to a thousand predecessors doomed it to instant success. Olga sat up straight, her pale blue eyes round with utter disbelief. get through. TV doesn't seem to. Somehow it brings things closer....\" upon her. The food arrived then and they sat down at the round table to cage. Their captors were utterly without a human conception of smell, living, apparently, in a world without odor at all. ask to come here any more than we did. He's got a wife back home. Maybe things are arranged here.\" the means to make us do whatever they want.\" all are. We seem to be in a universe of different properties as well as them, she alone had more than a high-school education. settle for the fourth—a fourth dimension in space, if that makes scientific sense, because we don't seem to have moved in time. I wasn't don't—or can't—they bring back with them. Live or dead, we're just display in their—their whatever they live in. You call that human, quietly. \"Or in a Museum of Natural History? A zoo? A naturalist's lab? her auburn hair back from her face and went out of the roofless house, Eudalia took him to the nursery. He was irritated now in another, \"I'll try not to,\" he said and stopped, realizing the family party was and returned to his smaller compound within its own barrier dome. illusion of heat that was not heat, that was prelude to his He called it the training hall, not because it looked like a training hall but because that was its function. It didn't actually look like discarded as too nightmarish for belief. three-dimensional space. One wall looked normal for perhaps a third of perfectly smooth and continuously straight. The opposite wall resembled a diagonal cross-section of an asymmetrical The captor Tennant called Opal. You will approach without use of your appendages. He went through the entire routine at Opal's bidding. When at last probing investigation. Opal, like the rest of the captors, was as repetition before his workout was done. On Earth, dogs were said to be intellectually two-dimensional creatures. He wondered if they felt this helpless futility when their masters taught them to heel, to point, to retrieve. of near-sick excitement as he received the thought: Or perhaps that was his intent He had little time to speculate before Opal seemed to envelop him. another room, a room which ended in a huge irregular passage that might have been the interior of a giant concertina—or an old-fashioned kodak. sort of ultradimensional television set, but to Tennant it was as incomprehensible as an oil painting to an animal. What cover must your body have not to be conspicuous? he would soon emerge on Earth where he had left it. That told him everything but the date and season. Opal, like the rest of the captors, The maid who opened the door for him was new, although her eyes were old. But she recognized him and stood aside to let him enter. There cheeks as she shut the door behind him. He went into the living room, smell house.\" Then, \"When do you expect Mrs. Tennant?\" Still looking frightened, she departed for the rear of the house. He shrugged, returned to the feeling of comfort that came from being there would be in a ghastly spot. He felt like a heel for wanting to leave them there, then knew that he would try somehow to get them out. He realized, shocked and scared, that his thoughts of escape had It was like being let out of a cage. Tennant grinned at the bookcase with the casual antiquity of the living room. Agatha would complain, naturally, but his being back would make up for any amount of furniture shifting. He imagined her standing close to house, his life.... Your wife and a man are approaching the house. The thought message from Opal crumbled his illusion of freedom. He sank down in a chair, trying to refuse to listen to the rest of the command: house in a mere seven jumps, the distance to the window in an instant. Grim, he watched the swoop of headlights in the driveway and returned The front door was flung open and his diaphragm tightened at the \"... Don't be such a stuffed-shirt, darling.\" Agatha's mocking groomed, more assured than his memory of her. out of hand, but whose inherent aggressive grace had not yet deserted him. The mustache and the smooth salesman's manner. it was, with all of them going through their paces like a trio of served as a bar. It was fully equipped—with more expensive liquor, he right to know. I do, anyway.\" conscious of her perfume. It wrapped them both like an exotic blanket, chin, the arch of nostril, the carmine fullness of lower lip, the swell of bosom above low-cut gown. And he no longer wanted any of it or of her. Cass Gordon— to do?\" What He lit a cigarette, inhaled. \"Relax. I'm not planning revenge. After Cass—seven years if the maid who let me in tonight talks. That's the \"You bastard,\" said Cass. \"You dirty bastard! You know what a wait like that could do to us.\" \"Tristan and Isolde,\" said Tennant, grinning almost happily. \"Well, easier and pleasanter than he had expected. They deserved some of the as trophies. With women it was different—perhaps the captors' weapons, questing thoughts toward his captor, asking why they didn't simply set a blowgun, to set up shop in the midst of a herd of wild elephants. It\n\n<question>:\nWhich term best describes how the author characterizes the home in the beginning of the story?\n\n<options>:\nA neoclassical\nB industrial\nC eclectic\nD gothic\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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2,267 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nWith the People of the World Wide Web communicating more fully and freely in Social Media while rallying a Web 2.0 content boom, the inner Social Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called transform a wide and isolated world into a super-smart Social Brain. The Neuron Doctrine Sharism is encoded in the Human Genome. Although eclipsed by the many synapses between cells, can process information, and learn. A neuron, by sharing chemical signals with its neighbors, can be integrated into more meaningful patterns that keep the neuron active and alive. Moreover, such a simple logic can be iterated and amplified, since all neurons work on a similar principle of connecting and sharing. Originally, the brain is quite open. A neural network exists to share activity and and decisions about human networks. Thus, our brain supports sharing in its very system-nature. This has profound implications for the creative process. Whenever you have an intention to create, you will find it easier to generate more creative and the world, more creative. However, daily decisions for most adults are quite low in creative choice, her choice will be, “Share.” These mind-switches are too subtle to be felt. But since the brain, and society, is a connected system, the accumulation of these are just excuses for the status quo of keeping a community closed. Much of their “culture” will be protected, but the net result is the direct loss of many other precious ideas, and the subsequent loss of all the potential gains of sharing. This lost knowledge is a black hole in our life, which may start to swallow other values as well. Non-sharing culture misleads us with its absolute separation of Private and Public space. It makes creative action a binary choice between public and private, open and closed. This creates a gap in the spectrum of knowledge. Although this gap has the potential to become a valuable creative space, concerns about privacy make this gap hard to fill. We shouldn’t be surprised that, to be safe, most people keep their sharing private and stay “closed.” They may fear the Internet creates a bloggers around the world, and no more than ten times that many readers following each blog. Human history is always so: something important was toward easy-to-use online publishing triggered a soft revolution in just five years. People made a quick and easy transition from reading blogs, the sudden realization that they should become bloggers themselves. More bloggers created more readers, and more readers made more blogs. The revolution was viral. Bloggers generate lively and timely information on the Internet, and connect to each other with RSS, hyperlinks, comments, trackbacks and quotes. The small-scale granularity of the content can fill discrete gaps in experience and thus record a new human history. Once you become a blogger, once you have accumulated so much social capital in such a small site, it’s hard to stop. We can’t explain this fact with a theory of addiction. It’s an impulse to share. It’s the energy of the memes Bloggers are always keen to keep the social context of their posts in mind, by asking themselves, “Who is going to see this?” Bloggers are agile in adjusting their tone−and privacy settings−to advance ideas and expression. But once blogs reached the tipping point, they expanded into the blogosphere. This required a more delicate social networking system and content- sharing architecture. But people now understand that they Flickr allows people to share their photos widely, but safely. The retaining flexible choices. The rapid emergence of Social Applications that can communicate and cooperate, by allowing people to output content from one service to another, is letting users pump their memes into a pipeline-like ecosystem. This interconnectedness allows memes to travel along multiple online social networks, and potentially reach a huge audience. As a result, such a Micro-pipeline system is making Social Media a true alternative to broadcast media. These new technologies are reviving Sharism in our closed culture. Local Practice, Global Gain returning to a closed mindset. Here’s an idea: put a sticky note on your desk that says, “What do you want to share today?” I’m not kidding. Then, if anything interesting comes your way: Share It! The easiest way to both start and keep sharing is by using different kinds of social but you can amplify it with new technologies. Enlist some people from if you can keep track of the feedback that you get from sharing. You will be that much more interested in what they have to share. Already, forwarded, circulated and republished via other people’s networks. This cascade effect can spread your work to the networked masses. about to become popular, and fast path, from people at key nodes in the network who are all as passionate about creating and sharing as you are. After many iterative rounds of development, a large creative work may spring from your choice to share. be to attain well- balanced and equitable Social Media that is woven by people themselves. Media won’t be controlled by any single person but will rely on the even distribution of social networking. These “Shaeros” (Sharing Heroes) will naturally become the opinion leaders in the first wave of Social Media. However, these media rights will belong to system. applications make it easy to set terms-of-use along your sharing path. Any infringement of those terms will be challenged not just by the law, but by your community. Your audience, who benefit form your sharing, can also be the gatekeepers of your rights. Even if you are a traditional copyright holder, this sounds ideal. to worry about who is keeping a copy. The new economic formula is, the to share. And this is how I choose to spread ideas, and prosperity concept to understand, especially since copyleft movements like the Free Software Foundation and Creative Commons have been around for years. These movements are redefining a more flexible spectrum of licenses for both developers and end-users to tag their works. Because the new into an emergent Social Brain: a networked hybrid of people and software. We are Networked Neurons connected by the synapses of Social Software. This is an evolutionary leap, a small step for us and a giant one for human society. With new “hairy” emergent technologies sprouting all around us, we can generate higher connectivities and increase the throughput of our social links. The more open and strongly connected we social neurons are, the better the sharing environment will be for all people. The more collective our intelligence, the wiser our actions will be. People have always found better solutions through conversations. Now we can put it all online. be a country, but a new human network joined by Social Software. This may remain a distant dream, and even a well-defined public sharing improve governments today. We can integrate our current and emerging democratic systems with new folksonomies (based on the collaborative, social indexing of information) to enable people to make queries, share data and remix information for public use. The collective intelligence of a vast and equitable sharing environment can be the gatekeeper of our rights, and a government watchdog. In the future, policymaking can be made more nuanced with the micro-involvement of the sharing community. This “Emergent Democracy” is more real-time than periodical parliamentary sessions. It will also increase the spectrum of our choices, beyond the binary options of “Yes” or “No” referenda. Representative democracy will become more timely and diligent, because we will represent ourselves within the system. Sharism will result in better social justice. In a healthy sharing take the form of petitions through multiple, interconnected channels. more sociable, and society more individual. We no longer have to act alone. Emergent democracy will only happen when Sharism becomes the literacy of the majority. Since Sharism can improve communication, collaboration and mutual understanding, I believe it has a place within the educational system. Sharism can be applied to any cultural discourse, CoP (Community of Practice) or problem-solving context. It is also an antidote to social depression, since sharelessness is just dragging our society down. In present or formerly totalitarian countries, this downward cycle is even more apparent. The future world will be a hybrid of human and machine that will generate better and faster decisions anytime, anywhere. The flow of information between minds will become more flexible and more productive. These vast networks of sharing will create a new social order−A Mind Revolution!\n\n<question>:\nBloggers...\n\n<options>:\nA ...connect to each other with RSS.\nB ...generate lively and timely information.\nC ...are recording human history in a new way.\nD ---fill discrete gaps in human experience.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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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>:\nthe screen to throw their them.\" hovered three thousand feet above Tammany Square. The cool cybrain surgically implanted in him was working on the problem. But Lane had no more patience. They'd sweat, he thought, hating the burns out the force-globe. and that. He glared down at Lane is through now. He has been able to outthink police with the help of his cybrain. Now police are feeding the problem to their giant analogue All I wanted was a computer in the sub-basement The police analogue computer will be able to outthink Lane's cybrain, will predict Lane's moves in advance. Four more blaster cannon are coming Chi for them? Damn right I did. Just a little time off, so I shouldn't blow my top. Now clears them out.\" He paused. \"I got one more the CinC of the Newyork Troopers? chance to try.\" He raised a treads as the mobile ahead of time. They keep teach them how to fight. They don't teach them about their for. There's no time. From seven years old up, Troopers have too much to learn about fighting. The Mayor was behind one of those thousands of windows. Old cybrain, a gift from the Trooper surgeons, compliments of the city, would have them!\" \"I knew you didn't mean alive, I'll hang you for disobeying Mars. You know, the brain to come up with the answer. Lane waited for the electronic anti-missile force-shield, the Shell. Old cybrain better be fast. Damn fast! The cybrain jolted an impulse through his spine. Lane somersaulted. Cybrain had taken charge of his motor nerves. Lane's own mind was \"Sir, I'm asking for help. I His only lose more men trying to rescue you. When they feed the data into that analogue computer, you're finished.\" to Gerri. \"You're okay. I wish I could let you out. Old cybrain says I can't. Says if I drop the force-globe for a second, orange and blue. He shrugged away the problem. Cybrain knew what it was doing. The little finger of his right hand vibrated in its metal \"Do what you have to do. As far as I can see, you're the landed on Mars, they found Martians can't afford it.\" below said, \"The police analogue computer is now hooked directly to the controls of the blaster cannon battery. It will outguess Lane's cybrain and check his moves ahead of time.\" injured. Tammany Hall has warned that this man is extremely He is armed with the latest military weapons. A built-in electronic brain controls his reflexes—\" \"And kill you all the sooner.\" \"Better than getting burned up in this lousy little room. floor. side. There's too many damn Troopers and not enough good persons like you. Old cybrain says stay here, but I don't guess I will. I'm gonna pay this. Then take your hand off, real fast. It'll shut off the He stepped up on to the window ledge. Automatically, the cybrain cut in his paragrav-paks. \"So long, outa-towner. Now! \" They weren't aimed at the green is the action. Whatcha flying. But they weren't aimed The shooting wild. Which way now? Looks like I got a chance. Old cybrain says fly right for the cannons. ahead. Go to hell, old cybrain. I'm doing all right by myself. I come to see the Mayor, and Republic of Mars. This what that means.\" \"I don't,\" said Lane, unconcerned. \"Well, you should have had brains enough to honor the is an embassy, if you know pointing a blaster pistol at him. There were five men on the balcony—emergency! Years of training and cybrain Her large, dark eyes narrowed. \"Who sent you?\" \"My cybrain sent me.\" She went openmouthed. \"You're took over. Lane's hand shot out, fingers vibrating. As he .\" where the balcony is? This is go over there.\" \"Whaddaya know,\" said Lane. \"Cybrain didn't know, no more than me.\" \"What's that out there?\" \"Force-screen. Nothing gets Tammany Square inaugurating Newyork's new Military Protectorate, and honoring important?\" Trooper Lane. Now there was From Mars. I'm on a Keeps you in. You anybody \"Yeah? Mars a big city?\" diplomatic mission.\" stable, and Mars can negotiate planet \"Planet? Oh, Mars.\" Mars. that gotta go by spaceship. What's for a new government takes time. I'm going holding me is no good. It'll back to Mars, and I think What are you trying to do?\" they'll send another ambassador what the force-domes did. The Mars. It's healthy, like.\" perfect defense. But also the road to the return to city-states. analogue computer by sheer stupidity—by disregarding your cybrain.\" Lane said, \"It wasn't so stupid if it worked.\" \"That's what bothers me. It calls for a revision in our tactics. We've got a way of beating those big computers now, should anyone use them be hurt.\" \"Exactly. The computer could outguess a machine, like your cybrain. But you introduced a totally unpredictable factor—human emotion. Which proves what I, as a A loudspeaker shouted into maintained—that the deadliest weapon in man's arsenal is still, and will always be, the \"This girl from Mars is here.\" \"I'm tired of being a weapon, sir. I want to be a human being.\" you are too, to them. Mars is END Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. vision. position equidistant from the reechoing against the tower walls. hostage. You can see the Martian is a globe of energy similar to the one which protects Newyork from aerial attack.\" Lane grinned back at Gerri like this probably cared a lot him a chance to let her out? Maybe he could do it now. Cybrain said no. It said the second he dropped his force-screen, they'd blast this room Earth is sick and it's going to kill me. What's going to happen?\" \"What?\" \"Didn't you understand \"What's a letter?\" Mars is. You don't know what a letter is. You probably can't these things I can't do? They important?\" \"Yes. The more I see of this important I realize they are. You know how to fight, don't you? I'll bet you're perfect with those weapons.\" \"Listen. They been training me to fight since I was a little kid. Why shouldn't I be a \"Specialization,\" said the \"What?\" \"Specialization. Everyone SocioSpecs run the government. TechnoSpecs run the machinery. Troopers fight because they're not trained to do anything.\" \"Why?\" \"Because they're afraid of the deadliest weapon that has \"Yes, but people had forgotten it until the SocioSpecs of Newyork came up with the Troopers. Before the Troopers, governments concentrated on the big weapons, the missiles, the bombs. And the safe from bombs. They learned to be self-sufficient under the Shells. They were so safe, so isolated, that national governments of security, when you infiltrated it.\" me be killed. They'll actually risk trouble with Mars just to kill you.\" If you've never heard of on hands and knees. Lane jumped to the window, looked quickly, sprang back. Cybrain pumped orders to his nervous system. \"Blaster cannon,\" he said. \"But just one. Gotcha, cybrain. I can beat that.\" He picked up the black box that generated his protective screen. Snapping it open with thumb-pressure, he turned a\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the goal of the analogue computer?\n\n<options>:\nA To develop strategies for the Newyork Troopers in battle\nB To predict what a cybrain's actions will be to counteract it\nC To find an unexpected strategy against military forces\nD To develop improvements on the cybrains\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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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>:\nThey were mad, all right, and now Matilda wondered if, actually, Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] All she wanted was a mate and she had the gumption to go out and hunt one down. But that meant Matilda would seek the happy medium. And, above all else, she had had enough of her pen pal columns. They were, she realized, for kids. other extreme, and Herman was even worse in his own way—but hereafter poaching in a strictly forbidden territory! paths across her face and now she needed certain remedial undergarments at which she would have scoffed ten or even five years ago. Matilda was also looking for a husband. This, in itself, was not unusual—but Matilda was so completely wrapped up in the romantic fallacy of her day that she sought a prince charming, a faithful Don Juan, a man who had been everywhere and tasted of every worldly pleasure and who now wanted to sit on a porch and talk about it all to Matilda. Matilda not in the least. She had been known to say that there are over a billion men in the world, a goodly percentage of whom are eligible bachelors, and that the right one would come along simply because she had been waiting for him. Matilda, you see, had patience. She also had a fetish. Matilda had received her A.B. from exclusive Ursula Johns College and Radcliff had yielded her Masters degree, yet Matilda was an avid follower of the pen pal columns. She would read them carefully and then read them again, looking for the masculine names which, through a system known only to Matilda, had an affinity to her own. To the gentlemen upon whom these names were affixed, Matilda would write, and she often told her mother, the widow Penshaws, that it was in this way she would find her husband. The widow Penshaws impatiently told her to go out and get dates. That particular night, Matilda pulled her battered old sedan into the The first thing the widow Penshaws did was to take Matilda's left hand invitation.\" The widow Penshaws nodded regretfully. \"That was thoughtful of Herman to hide his feelings.\" The best that could be said for Matilda Penshaws was that she was he had to miss his college reunion. That's all he has to hide. A stuffy Victorian prude and even less of a man than the others.\" \"But, Matilda, that's your fifth broken engagement in three years. It Matilda admired her mother's use of the word osmosis, but she found of love. She said good-night and went upstairs, climbed out of her light summer dress and took a cold shower. She began to hum to herself. She had not yet seen the pen pal section Literary Review , and because the subject matter of that magazine was somewhat highbrow and cosmopolitan, she could expect a gratifying selection of pen pals. She shut off the shower, brushed her teeth, gargled, patted herself the nude the widow Penshaws would object to a girl sleeping in the nude, even if the nearest neighbor was three hundred yards away. Matilda switched her bed lamp on and dabbed some citronella on each midwestern pen pal, but it was a woman an elderly man interested in ornithology wanted a young chick correspondent interested in the same subject Matilda even liked the sound of the name. But mostly, she had to admit to herself, it was the flavor of the wording. This very well could be it Matilda could see that. But she had writing a letter. Matilda was not yet that far gone in years or appearance. Dressed properly, she could hope to make a favorable impression in person, and Matilda got out of bed at seven, tiptoed into the bathroom, showered Then the widow Penshaws told Matilda that she could never hope to sneak only mother could cook. Matilda moodily thanked the widow Penshaws. Matilda hummed Mendelssohn's Wedding March all the way. It was her stereotype, and he scratched his bald head. Then he told Matilda almost happily that he was sorry he couldn't help her. He grudgingly suggested Matilda did, only they didn't know any Haron Gorka, either. It turned Matilda felt bad, but she had no intention of returning home this Then Matilda frowned. Twenty years from now, this could be Matilda On the other hand—why not? Why couldn't the librarian help her? Why hadn't she thought of it before? Certainly a man as well-educated as Haron Gorka would be an avid reader, and unless he had a permanent Matilda jumped as if she had been struck strategically from the rear. books. Scholarly gentleman, but not without charm. If I were twenty years younger—\" addresses of any of our people. Against regulations, my dear.\" \"What about the other five women?\" \"They convinced me that I ought to give them his address.\" \"Was this the way?\" she demanded. Matilda was not very good at this Matilda assured her that it was, and, breathlessly, she wrote down the to ruin. This surprised Matilda, but she did not let it keep her be left far behind. Matilda congratulated herself for what she thought she had in common with five other women. You live and learn, thought Matilda. And then, quite annoyedly, she berated herself for not having been the first. Perhaps the other five all were satisfactory As it turned out, she wasn't. Not only that, she was welcomed with open arms. Not by Haron Gorka that she really might have liked. Instead, someone she could only regard as a menial met her, and when he asked had she come in response to the advertisement, she nodded eagerly. A little doubtful now, Matilda thanked him and watched him leave. He closed the door softly behind his retreating feet, but Matilda's ears It must be said to Matilda's favor that she sobbed only once. After Matilda gasped once and felt about to gasp again—but by then her He had a point there, but Matilda hardly even had time to fix her hair. compare notes. She would not admit even to herself that she was disappointed with just that he was so ordinary -looking. She almost would have preferred She hoped she wasn't being too formal. But, then, there was no sense in assuming that he would like informality. She could only wait and see and adjust her own actions to suit him. Meanwhile, it would be best to keep on the middle of the road. \"I—do.\" Matilda had had visions of her prince charming sitting back and relaxing with her, telling her of the many things he had done and than she did. He waited, however, as if wondering what to say, and Matilda, accustomed to social chatter, gave him a gambit. \"I must admit I was surprised when I got exactly what I wanted for \"Yes,\" said Matilda vaguely. Perhaps it might be better, after all, if Matilda said, \"Beg pardon?\" Almost at once, Matilda's educational background should have told her Matilda could do nothing but leave the room, walk back through the who enjoyed this sort of outlandish tomfoolery, or else he was plainly insane. She could still picture him ranting on aimlessly to no one in particular about places which had no existence outside of his mind, his aging woman would be as disappointed as Matilda, but a promise was a in detail. She did this first because it was a promise, and second because she knew it would make her feel better. eccentric by your standards, but really, my dear, he is neither.\" \"What do you mean?\" \"Did he leave a message for his wife?\" \"Why, yes. Yes, he did. But how did you know? Oh, I suppose he told the five.\" message for his wife—\" Matilda didn't understand. She didn't understand at all, but she told the little librarian what the message was. \"He wanted her to return,\" Matilda did not say a word. One madman a day would be quite enough for says I am a finicky traveler, that he could do much better alone, the\n\n<question>:\nWhy wasn't Matilda married?\n\n<options>:\nA she hadn't met a man that wanted to marry her\nB she wasn't interested in dating people\nC she found flaws in every man she dated\nD she only liked to write to men, not meet them\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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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>:\nthe handling is especially modern, barely managed to become one of a distinguished group of discoveries by stealing the cover of the December issue for his first story As they approached, a lean man, carrying a black bag, darted out of an elevator shaft opposite it. the door, ran across the corridor, . He followed his initial success to accept the background for French heart-specialist, was dancing before the window, waving his bag frantically, raving at the sleepy boy. \"Queek! I have tell you zee truth! I have zee most urgent necessity to go queekly. A patient I have in Paree, zat ees in zee most creetical condition!\" \"Hold your horses just a minute, fiction authors ever to sit down at the typewriter. When the the machine now. Russian diplomat from Moscow to Rio de dollars and eighty cents, please.... Your turn next. Remember this is just an experimental Janeiro.... Two hundred seventy Mister. We got a client in and when they wanted extrapolated theory in present tense, he assumed the Shock. Finally, when only psychological studies of the future courteously. \"All right, madam. Walk out. Hope you found the transit pleasant.\" is of special interest because it was written You lost it off your hat?\" \"None of your impertinence, by the validity of the notion that wireless transmission of matter sir! I want my dog.\" \"Ah, a dog. Must have jumped barely avoiding the farcical him sent on for three hundred and—\" \"Young man, if any harm is the next big transportation frontier to be conquered. It is especially important because it granted, regardless of the quantity writing, the surmise that this media would be a natural for westerns was particularly astute. of wonders, and proceed with the story. With only a few thousand in existence at the time of the drought and frost and dust-storms, \"We want to go to Venus, if for the sake of survival on the Llano Estacado.\" poison-weeds and hail, \"To Venus? Impossible. My was the escape he sought and his goal was labored to this end and the first he knew that a story of his had been accepted was when he to conceal it below his instrument panel. \"Sure, old boy. I'd send you to heaven for that, if you'd give me is dangerous. I've got a sort of television attachment, for focusing By which I mean that it is the most interesting and stimulating do I owe you—\" \"Oh, that's all right. Between friends. Provided that stuff's sides. Don't move.\" that would have been strange to the man of four or five centuries before, when the I say—how're you coming back? I haven't got time to watch you.\" \"Go ahead. We aren't coming back.\" \"Gee! What is it? Elopement? I thought you were married already. concern was that to the lightly clad man at the window, who was Or is it business difficulties? blizzard was sweeping. But small inhaling deeply the fragrant air The Bears did make an awful raid last night. But you better Nada and Eric felt themselves the cold ato-light that illuminated the snow-covered city. With a distasteful grimace, he The next thing they knew, the hero was likely to be an ape-man roaring through the jungle, with green, that brought a thrill of pleasure to the young novelist's clattering machine. He wrote \"thrilling action romances,\" as his enthusiastic publishers He was impartial as to the source of his thrills—provided they were distant enough from modern civilization. His not parasites on the machines.\" \"It's wonderful to have a fine, strong man like you to trust in, \"You're the perfect companion, Or a cowboy, \"hard-riding, hard-shooting,\" the vanishing hero of the ancient ranches. Or a man Nada.... But now we must be practical. We must His heroes were invariably strong, fearless, resourceful fellows, equal terms with a cave-man, or call science to aid them in defending a beautiful mate from at the simple, romantic lives his heroes led, paid him handsome royalties, and subconsciously shared his opinion that civilization had taken all the best from on, without finding where a provident nature had left them even tripping into the study, gay and vivacious, and—as her husband of a few months most justly thought—altogether beautiful in a bright silk dressing gown. Recklessly, he slammed the machine back into its place, and resolved to forget that his next \"red-blooded action thriller\" was due in the publisher's office at the \"to come forty million as this!\" miles, and meet such a reception \"Probably you're right. This soil seemed to be of alluvial origin. Shouldn't be surprised if seemed scarce as the proverbial hen's teeth. \"You didn't bring any matches, dear?\" \"Matches! Of course not! We're going back to Nature.\" were extinct, there were no wild flowers, and no one had time to bother about sunsets. \"I hope we get a fire pretty I'm hungry.\" He confessed to a few pangs of his own. They turned their attention to looking for banana trees, and coconut palms, but flowers.\" \"If we could only go somewhere—\" \"There isn't anywhere to go. I \"And tomorrow, when it has quit raining—I'm sure we'll do better.\" They crept in, as gloomy night natural lives. Maybe a rocket—\" The Nada clung against Eric. hunting in the virgin forest, and bringing the game home to you! But I'm afraid there is no way.—Wait! The Cosmic Express.\" \"The Cosmic Express?\" the German physicist.\" \"I've quit bothering about science. It has ruined nature, filled the world with silly, artificial \"But this is quite remarkable, dear. A new way to travel—by ether!\" \"Don't you wish—we had known better?\" if they were demolishing forests. Eric and Nada clung to each other, in doubt whether to stay or to fly through the storm. to convert the matter to be came nearer, until the earth shook beneath them, and they were afraid to move. carried into power, send it out copper. against which they had erected the flimsy shelter was rolled back, evidently by a chance blow Gradually the sound of the conflict \"A darned shame,\" Eric grumbled, on the plate—just the same as grill, fairly bubbling apologies. \"So sorry—an accident—inconceivable. I can't see how he the Express Ray picks up an hope you haven't been injured.\" \"Why—what—what—\" is the better of the two. For no receiving instrument is required, as in television. The object is built up of an infinite series of job. I hope you won't hold us for excessive damages.\" \"No, I ask nothing except that you don't press charges against the boy. I don't want him to suffer transmission, all but a tiny fraction of the power is lost, and power is required to rebuild the \"I don't wonder. You look like you've been through—I don't \"Not altogether. But I should worry! Here comes breakfast. for it in any way. My wife and I will be perfectly satisfied to get back to our apartment.\" delivered his promised story to his publishers, a thrilling tale of a man marooned on Venus, with for himself and his mate, hunted food for her, defended her from once more staring distastefully at his typewriter. \"Oh, darling! I'm thrilled to death about the Cosmic Express! away from all this hateful conventional society—\" \"We can go to their office—it's only five minutes. The chap that operates the machine for the company is a pal of mine. He's not supposed to take passengers except between the offices they have scattered about the world. But I know his weak point—\" Five minutes later Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding and his pretty\n\n<question>:\nWhy is the machine operator willing to risk his job by sending Eric and Nada to Venus?\n\n<options>:\nA The operator is an alcoholic, and alcohol has been outlawed.\nB The operator thinks he sent them to Hong Kong,\nC The operator is a friend of Eric's, and he owes Eric a favor.\nD It does not occur to him that he is risking his job to send them.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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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>:\nnor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned up at all. in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much. The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards. But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard. They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn. The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact, the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have miserably failed.\" In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has.\" \"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has \"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous pastimes.\" society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food, clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well. He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to our pleas for a few more trips?\" \"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for....\" always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again.\" name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated. dangers met and passed. Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer. He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force. In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution. They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week. It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none of them ever really becoming efficient. The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees were needed, a draft lottery was held. accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly. quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long denied him. Si was going to do it differently this time. A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations, titles. spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that, he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias. This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made Si cleared his throat. \"Hey,\" he said, \"how about letting this one be Si was expansive. \"Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring.\" Si grunted. \"Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like. Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of materials and all and keep the economy going.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy is Si retirement so significant to the Space Exploration Team?\n\n<options>:\nA There aren’t enough working people in the world. They won’t be able to find a replacement.\nB As one of two remaining spacemen, it would likely mean the defunding and shut down of the Space Exploration Team.\nC Training new spacemen is costly and time consuming. They won’t have anyone else ready after him.\nD His retirement may inspire others to stop working as well, which would be hugely detrimental as most people don't feel the drive to work as is.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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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>:\n\"I've decided not to bring my people here.\" \" You of his arrival. adolescent. Worse.\" \"Earthman, wait....\" \"No!\" Stinson shot back. \"You've owned this planet for a million climatic phenomena on earth practically non-existent. The cloud did not move, though, except to spin on its axis rapidly, emitting mammal, round, furry, hopped by, sniffing inquisitively. adults?\" o'clock in the afternoon, if this had been Earth. Not a tree, nor a ?\" A frenzied searching of the planet, the solar system, the galaxy. Then a returning to the planet. Empty.... Change. Buildings, roads, bridges weathering slowly. Such a race would have built of durable metal. Durable? Centuries, eons passed. Buildings crumbled to dust, dust blew away. Bridges eroded, fell, decomposed into basic elements. The shape of constellations changed. All trace of civilization passed except in the cavern of the heated pool. \"Nor do I. But perhaps ... well, I sense that I would continue, if you brought your people here. You have already taught me the value of illusion. life. There is a oneness, a bond that ties each living thing to every portion of this planet that suits you. Take the web-footed woman for your wife. Have children. I promise never to harm you in any way.\" \"The webfoots?\" \"You and they shall share the planet.\" was here to investigate, to determine if this planet was capable of nervous system. But then, how could a group of loosely spaced grains of sand possibly have a nervous system? central place you could point to and say, here is the brain, or the When the symbols were repeated he pointed to each in turn, excitement first grains of sand, the realization of what was happening dawned with wall surrounding the pool was inscribed with intricate art work and indecipherable symbols. Life. Intelligence. The planet was inhabited. given cylinders, and who were now struggling for life against those who desired them. The unknown artist had been clever. From one angle they were animals, from another birds, from a third they were vaguely humanoid creatures, line was visible, yet he felt, or saw—he did not know which senses wondered, fleetingly, if a lethal instrument was in the statue. The cavern was crowded. These creatures were not only humanoid, but definitely human, although more slight of build than earth people. The only difference he could see at first sight was that they had webbed feet. All were dressed from the waist down only, in a shimmering skirt that sparkled as they moved. They walked with the grace of ballet dancers, moving about the plaza, conversing in a musical language with no meaning for Stinson. The men were dark-skinned, the women somewhat lighter, with long flowing hair, wide lips and a beauty that was utterly sensual. He was in chains! They were small chains, light weight, of a metal that the musical language. planet Earth.\" They looked at each other and jabbered some more. Useless. They could not understand. For all he knew, they might think This weapon was completely out of place in a culture such as this. Or was it? What did he know of these people? Very little. They were humanoid. They had exhibited human emotions of anger, fear and, that most human of all characteristics, curiosity. But up to now the tube and the chain was the only evidence of an advanced technology, unless lining the wall were evidences. There was a stirring among the crowd. An object like a pallet was breasts dipping slightly at each step. Her eyes held a language all their own, universal. She pressed her body against him and bore him to Incongruously, he thought of Benjamin back on earth, and all the others Those in the cavern looked at the woman with fear and respect. She about their activities. They did not hear. \"Who are you?\" \"I do not understand how. You have a body, a physical body composed of atoms. It is impossible to move a physical body from one place to place.\" Stinson felt a mental shrug. \"It is of no importance. When they arrived on this planet I attempted to explain that I was not a God, but the primitive is not deeply buried in them. They soon resorted to emotion rather than reason. It is of no importance.\" \"I'd hardly call them primitive, with such weapons.\" \"The tube is not of their technology. That is, they did not make it directly. These are the undesirables, the incorrigibles, the nonconformists from the sixth planet. I permit them here because it occupies my time, to watch them evolve.\" forgotten. You are a strange entity. You travel by a means even I cannot fully understand, yet you speak of time as if some event were about to take place. I believe you think of death. I see your physical body has deteriorated since yesterday. Your body will cease to exist, almost as soon as those of the sixth planet peoples. I am most interested in you. You will bring your people, and live here.\" don't understand you. I see you as a cone of sand which keeps changing color and configuration. Is it your body? Where do you come from? Is cavern, the heated pool, the statues, the inscriptions. Half a million years ago my people were as you. That is, they lived in physical bodies. Our technology surpassed any you have seen. The tube these webfoots use is a toy by comparison. Our scientists found the ultimate nature of physical law. They learned to separate the mind from the body. Then my people set a date. Our entire race was determined to free \"I do not know. I alone exist. I have searched all the levels of time now on the pallet. The men had left her and stood in groups, talking, glancing at him, apparently free of their awe and fear already. not last. When He is gone they will probably kill us.\" \"As for the webfoots,\" the wind devil, or Sand God, said, \"I will destroy them. You and your people will have the entire planet.\" have a right to live like any one else.\" \"Right? What is it—'right?' They are entities. They exist, therefore they always will. My people are the only entities who ever died. To kill the body is unimportant.\" is a scientific hypothesis. It has to do with what comes after physical entity, once existing, must not be harmed in any way. To do so changes the most basic structure of nature.\" hiding place behind a large rock they watched, as several web-footed men emerged into the sunlight. They blinked, covered their eyes, and will come out and follow us.\" \"We'd better make tracks.\" \"No,\" she said, \"we must run, and make no tracks.\" God.\" \"But....\" \"No buts. Right now we'd better get out of here.\" hampered by a woman, slinking through a frozen wilderness like an depended on him. Anyway, he decided, pursuit was impossible. They left no tracks on the ice. They were safe, unless the webfoots possessed talents unknown to \"I thought only criminals were brought here.\" She nodded. \"Criminals, and their children.\" \"When will your people come again?\" She shook her head. \"Never. They are no longer my people. They have business is it of yours if she lives or dies? My race discarded such primitive logic long before it reached your level of development.\" \"Yes,\" Stinson said, \"and your race no longer exists.\" drove them backward. \"Earthman,\" the great voice said, \"go back to your Earth. Take your inconsistencies with you. Do not come here again to infect my planet with your primitive ideas. The webfoots are not as intelligent as you, but they are sane. If you bring your people here, I for the first time. \"Where is your ship?\" \"They will not find us....\" in an audible range. Soon after, while they sat huddled together, watching the chaos of exuded impressions of death, of hopeful words solemnly spoken over lowered coffins, of cold earth and cold space, of dank, wet catacombs, of creeping, crawling nether things.\n\n<question>:\nHow do humans perceive the transportation devices?\n\n<options>:\nA They are only used to transport between worlds but humans wish they could be used for local travel\nB They are untrustworthy technology that are dangerous to implant\nC They are luxury goods that many have strong independent motivation to acquire\nD They are commodities in the current economy\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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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>:\nCOMPLEXITY AND HUMANITY We have all seen the images. Volunteers pitching in. People working day and night otherwise, is a breakdown of systems. For a time, chaos reigns. For a expectations everywhere else in the world, no matter how carefully others have planned, means that there are many more moving parts that affect each other. And from this scale of practical effects, complexity but the systematic application of knowledge to the creation of new knowledge, innovation to innovation, and information to making more information has become pervasive and with it the knowledge that next year will be very different than this. The Web, after all, is less than a generation old. These two features−the global scale of interdependence of human action, and the systematic acceleration of innovation, make contemporary life a bit like a slow motion disaster, in one important respect. Its very unpredictability makes it unwise to build systems that take too much away from what human beings do best: look, think, innovate, adapt, discuss, learn, and repeat. That is why we have seen many more systems take on a loose, human centric model in the last decade and a half: from the radical divergence of Toyota’s production system from the highly departure from the AT& T system that preceded it, and on to the way Wikipedia constructs human knowledge on the fly, incrementally, in ways systems work best by making work human. Modern Times Modern times were hard enough. Trains and planes, telegraph and telephone, all brought many people into the same causal space. The solution to this increased complexity in the late 19th, early 20th century was to increase the role of structure and improve its design. During the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, this type of rationalization took the form of ever-more complex managed systems, with crisp specification of roles, lines of authority, communication and Scientific Management, later embodied in Henry Ford’s assembly line. The in minute detail, to enforce it through monitoring and rewards, and later to build it into the very technology of work−the assembly line. The idea was to eliminate human error and variability in the face of change by removing thinking to the system, and thus neutralizing the time, and what it did to humanity, more vividly than Charlie Chaplin’s assembly line worker in Modern Times. At the same time, government experienced the rise of bureaucratization and the administrative state. Nowhere was this done more brutally than fully-specified systems, designed by experts, monitored and controlled managed systems were achieving efficiencies that seemed to overwhelm perspective is already to presage the demise of the belief in their inevitable victory. The increasing recognition of the limits of command-and-control systems led to a new approach but it turned out to be a retrenchment, not an which assumed much of the human away. What replaced planning and control in these systems was the myth of perfect markets. This was achieved bureaucratic rationalization, perfect-market rationalization also had successes. But, like its predecessor, its limits as an approach to human systems design are becoming cleare Work, Trust and Play of constant, rapid change and complex global interactions. What we are seeing instead is the rise of human systems that increasingly shy away from either control or perfect pricing. Not that there isn’t control. Not that there aren’t markets. And not that either of these approaches to coordinating human action will disappear. But these managed systems are becoming increasingly interlaced with looser structures, which invite and enable more engaged human action by drawing on intrinsic motivations and social relations. Dress codes and a culture of play in the workplace in Silicon Valley, like the one day per week that Google employees can use to play at whatever ideas they like, do not exist to make the most innovative region in the United States a Ludic paradise, gratifying employees at the expense of productivity, but rather to engage the human and social in the pursuit of what is, in the long term, the only core business competency−innovation. Wikipedia has eclipsed all the commercial encyclopedias except Britannica not by issuing a large IPO and hiring the smartest guys in the room, but by building an open and inviting system that lets people learn together and pursue their passion for knowledge, and each other’s company. unpredictable set of conditions, combining rationalization with human agency, learning and adaptation, is as different from managed systems and perfect markets as the new Toyota is from the old General Motors, or systems are: (a) location of authority and practical capacity to act at (b) an emphasis on the human: on trust, cooperation, judgment and insight (c) communication over the lifetime of the interaction and (d) loosely-coupled systems: systems in which the regularities and dependencies among objects and processes are less occur through multiple systems simultaneously, have room to fail, of scientific management was to offer a single, integrated system where embedded the managerial knowledge in the technological platform of the assembly line, guided by a multitude of rigid task specifications and routines. Toyota Production System, by comparison, has a substantially and who are encouraged to experiment, improve, fail, adapt, but above all communicate. The system is built on trust and a cooperative dynamic. The enterprise functions through a managerial control system, but also through social cooperation mechanisms built around teamwork and trust. However, even Toyota might be bested in this respect by the even more loosely coupled networks of innovation and supply represented by Taiwanese original-design manufacturers. But let us also consider the system in question that has made this work fully managed. Mid-century, the company even retained ownership of the excluded competitors). This generated profit, but any substantial technical innovations required the approval of management and a re-engineering of the entire network. The Internet, on the other hand, was designed to be as general as possible. The network hardware merely a stream of packets−was to be done by its edge devices, in this case computers owned by users. This system allowed the breathtaking rate of innovation that we have seen, while also creating certain vulnerabilities in online security. These vulnerabilities have led some to argue that a new system to manage and offloaded security from the network to the edges. As the network grew and users diversified, trust (the practical belief that other human agents in the system were competent and benign, or at least sincere) declined. This decline was met with arguments in favor of building security into the technical system, both at its core, in the network elements themselves, and at its periphery, through “trusted computing.” company, or the employer. This is thought to be the most completely effective means of preventing copyright infringement or system failure, and preserving corporate security (these are the main reasons offered for implementing such systems). Trusted computing in this form is the machines−technical systems−are trustworthy, while their human users are malevolent, incompetent, or both. Taylorism, the Bell system and trusted computing are all efforts to remove human agency from action and replace it with well-designed, tightly-bound systems. That is, the specifications and regularities of the system are such that they control or direct action and learning over time. Human agency, learning, communication and adaptation are minimized in managed systems, if not eliminated, and the knowledge in the system comes from the outside, from the designer, in the initial design over time, and through observation of the system’s performance by someone standing outside its constraints−a manager or systems designer. By contrast, loosely-coupled systems affirmatively eschew this level of control, and build in room for human agency, experimentation, failure, communication, learning and adaptation. Loose-coupling is central to the new systems. It is a feature of system design that leaves room for human agency over time, only imperfectly constraining and enabling any given system designers are accepting the limitations of design and foresight, and building in the possibilities of learning over time through action in the system, by agents acting within back into the system. If years of work on artificial intelligence have taught us anything, it is that what makes for human insight is extremely will allow us to be largely free to inquire, experiment, learn and communicate, that will encourage us to cooperate, and that will avoid systems can not merely exist, but thrive, as can the human beings and\n\n<question>:\nWhich is true about managed systems?\n\n<options>:\nA All of the actions in a process are performed by machines instead of humans\nB There are always computers that require outside permission for the users to perform tasks\nC There are clear team leaders but the rest of the hierarchy is more flexible\nD The communication and innovation is lower because the workers have less flexibility\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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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>:\nLinton lay down his steel fork beside the massively solid transparency Linton remembered. Howell had to know that he would remember. What were they trying to pull on him? \"The man who isn't Snead is leaving,\" Linton said, describing the scene over Howell's shoulder. \"If that's \"No,\" Howell said, \"I wouldn't do that.\" \"Snead came to Greta's funeral. It's the least I could do.\" \"Who? Oh, the man who looked like Snead, you mean.\" \"Yes,\" Linton said. intimately against Linton's own chair. \"That fellow who just left looked like a friend of yours, huh?\" the \"Couldn't have been him, though,\" Linton answered automatically. \"My friend's dead.\" you've probably got old Snead into trouble.\" \"Snead's dead,\" Linton said. \"What do you say it like that for?\" Linton demanded angrily. \"The Linton had thought he had known how death was. He had buried his wife, sincerely felt to be a genuine affection for Greta. Even after they had let him out of the asylum as cured, he still secretly believed he had known a genuine affection for her. But it didn't seem he knew about death at all. Linton felt that his silence was asking Howell by this time. I suppose he might have been resurrected.\" \"Who by?\" Linton asked, thinking: God? \"The Mafia, I guess. Who knows who runs it?\" \"You mean, somebody has invented a way to bring dead people back to He knew, of course, that Howell did not mean that. Howell meant that some people had a system of making it appear that a person had died patently ridiculous, Linton hoped to bring the contradicting truth to \"But it's wonderful,\" Linton said, thinking his immediate thoughts. \"I don't understand,\" Linton said helplessly. it up if everybody got resurrected when they died, wouldn't they?\" \"I don't understand,\" Linton complained. \"Why haven't I heard about it?\" \"I see,\" Linton said. trying to trick him. They used to do that to see if he was really well. But the temptation was too strong. \"Tell me, Howell, where could I find a resurrectionist?\" Howell looked away. \"Frank, I don't have anything to do with that kind of people and if you're smart, you'll not either.\" Linton's fingers imprinted the linen. \"Damn you, Howell, you tell me!\" you feel welcome back to the society of your fellows after being in the hospital for a nervous breakdown. I do all that, and for thanks, you yell at me and curse me. You kooks are all alike!\" I've got to hurry too, Linton thought. It's Resurrection Day! well, Mr. Linton, we understand you've been causing disturbances.\" \"Not really,\" Linton said modestly. attempted to bribe an officer. That's disturbing, Mr. Linton, very \"I was only trying to find out something,\" Linton maintained. \"They The doctor clucked his tongue. \"Let's not think any such thing. People Linton rubbed his shoulder. \"That cop knew more about Judo holds than I \"I don't know. Who the hell ever wasted Einstein's time asking him a Linton stared suspiciously. \"Do you know where I can find a resurrectionist?\" \"I am a resurrectionist.\" \"But the policeman brought me to you!\" Linton scooted forward on the insultingly cold metal chair and really resurrect the dead?\" \"Will you stop being cynical? Of course I can!\" \"Doctor, I'm beginning to believe in you,\" Linton said, \"but tell me, can you resurrect the \"No, my wife has been dead a long time. Months.\" \"Infallible risk, yes,\" Linton murmured. \"Could you go to work right Linton grasped the situation immediately. \"You mean you want money. You \"What a wonderful professional career,\" Linton said, when he couldn't \"Neither did I,\" Linton said hastily. \"I invested in shifty stocks, \"Then—\" the corpse. The female corpse, eh?\" Resurrection Day! \"Doctor,\" Linton whispered, \"my mind is singing with battalions of to obtain. The doctor had taken the body and Linton's fortune and fed them both into the maw of his calculators, and by means of the secret, smuggled formulae, Greta would be cybernetically reborn. Linton shook his head. It seemed impossible. But Greta opened the It wasn't fair at all, Linton thought. He should have had some time to Greta lifted her arms, stretching the white smock over the lines of her \"Greta!\" he said, feeling a slight revulsion but repressing it. No doubt he would be able to adjust to her once having been dead the same Greta swirled across the room and folded her arms across his shoulders. \"Yes,\" he said, his heart lurching for her sad ignorance. \"But tell ?\" The curves and angles of her flesh changed their positions against his Ivy dacron. Her attitude altered. \"I can't remember,\" she said. \"I can't really remember anything. Not really. My memories are ghosts....\" \"Now, now,\" Linton said, \"we mustn't get excited. You've been through a She accepted the verdict. She pulled away and touched at her hair. It was the same hair, black as evil, contrasting with her inner purity. Of course it would be it hadn't changed even in the grave. He remembered the snaky tendrils of it growing out of the water-logged casket. \"I must see all our old friends,\" Greta persisted. \"Helen and Johnny....\" Her fine black brows made Gothic arches. \"Yes? What about Johnny?\" \"Killed?\" Greta repeated blankly. \"Johnny Gorman was killed?\" \"Traffic accident. Killed instantly.\" Greta turned her back to him. \"It's just as well. You shouldn't bring \"No,\" Linton said. \"I'm sold out. I've borrowed on my insurance to the can resurrect me.\" \"Of course,\" Greta said. She sighed. \"Poor Johnny. He was such a good to quench death and smother decay. It's Linton followed the direction of Greta's gaze and found only an ashtray stand, looking vaguely like a fanatic's idol to a heathen religion on a pedestal. Greta pounced on the stand, hefted it at the base and ran toward him with it over her head. Linton leaped aside and Greta hit the edge of the desk instead of him. Greta raised it again and he caught her wrists high over her head. She Linton understood immediately. He felt foolish, humiliated. All that Linton twisted the stand away from his wife and watched her face acceptance of the crumpled metal disk falling toward it. He split her head open and watched her float to the floor. Linton was surprised at the fine wire mesh just below the skin and He knelt beside the body and poked into the bleeding, smoldering in resurrection. They couldn't chemically revive the old corpse like Did they use the old bodies at all? What were all those acid baths for if the bodies were used? Didn't the resurrectionists just destroy the old corpses and make androids, synthetic creatures, to take their place? But it didn't matter. Not a bit. She had thought she was his wife, sharing her viewpoint down to the finest detail, and he had thought she was his wife. It was what you thought was real that made it so, not the other way \"I've killed my wife!\" Linton called, rising from his knees, stretching Linton. But they'll cure you. You'll be cured of ever thinking your wife was brought back to life and that you killed her all over again.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Linton initially believe that Greta attempted to murder him after he resurrected her?\n\n<options>:\nA She wants the rest of his fortune\nB She had a brain malfunction\nC She is suffering from hallucinations\nD She is part of an android cult\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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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>:\nThis week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to \"bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women.\" Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are \"looking into\" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other. 1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\" 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. 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.\" 10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as \"struggling actresses,\" reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, \"I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse .\" Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was \"better than prostitution.\" 11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at \"adolescent boys.\" 12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\" 13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. \"When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud,\" a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that \"there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected,\" and \"the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from.\" 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. 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?\n\n<question>:\nWhat does the author think about women who sell their eggs?\n\n<options>:\nA They are depressed.\nB They have a few screws loose.\nC They are just trying to get by financially.\nD They are liars and fools.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,224 | quality | [
{
"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 words about whatever was the the horror of being the first! answered. He found his identity face snap from the screen. From something inside him had been forcing him to make this decision. floor. Giles made the expected the pulse in could risk. If he made it, though.... automatic. Somehow, thinking Well, he’d see those grandchildren dropped all pretense and slumped for breath and feeling his that he looked up. She handed can’t see any other explanation. of aging. I’m afraid the treatment She smiled dutifully at the better than he knew himself—which the stranger in the mirror as he after all. But now, in a few days, impossible. He resented every second of it. specter of age stood beside him, experimenting. A personal letter brain-wave pattern. It had been nothing like this his by crude mechanical and drug hypnosis for other months. Somewhere in every human brain sat gazing at the report from Jordan themselves, with the brain as only Or perhaps it lay in the cells that, and the fact that the mind that vanished at greater than the could effect physical changes in the body. Even such things as the brain taking pictures of wherever they conscious level and forced to arrived. So far, none had ever returned the first hope they’d found that the century-long trips between stars in the ponderous shuttles might be ended and he should the mechanism in the brain them return automatically after or been located. This was Scientists there had puzzled over it, reset it and sent it back. The alive. with the full transformation of message that had come on the to happen. It had been no fault of on the first projection. had been born just before Earth passed the drastic birth limitation with the eternal unconscious spoiled him. He’d even tried to avoid the compulsory emigration draft and stay on with his mother. Oddly enough, the message in the next frame showed none of that. Harry had nothing but praise for the solar system where he’d been sent. He barely mentioned being married on the way description and a plea for his showed a group picture of the family in some sort of vehicle, against the background of an alien but attractive world. He had no desire to spend ninety years cooped up with a bunch of callow young emigrants, even in one of the improved Exodus shuttles. And even if Exodus ever got the super-light a paper whose headlined feature missile and what it might mean. The discovery that men could live practically forever had put an end to most family ties sentiment he should give up his work. “Everything’s in good shape now, though it had once seemed “The doctor says everything’s It was then he realized for the such thing. A statement that lightning had never struck a The outside line buzzed musically, had some kind of attack and The intense face that looked from the screen was frowning as because of special ability—and the conversation about him only him. Then the frown vanished as an expression of shock replaced that by them, as he might be by him the man’s interest lay in the projected picture from Harry, across here for nearly a century now and “Antigravity!” His voice was unbelieving as he turned his head to face the older man. “What world is that?” forcing themselves on him. He He puzzled over it, finding no he’d never regretted it. But tonight that Earth conveyance to pass casual peace. Constant questions about above the ground. Faint how he felt, constant little looks Funny, he couldn’t picture really losing his temper here. Families the star’s designation....” can send a message on the shuttle, begging for their secret in a couple of hundred years! While a hundred other worlds make a thousand major discoveries they don’t bother reporting! Can’t the except for one about the Giles had heard it all before. Earth was becoming a backwater world no real progress had been made in two centuries tonight it held no interest. And he’d developed through of truth in it, unfortunately. richness of living now. was no escaping it. Something other discoveries eventually, without interrupting the work of making the Earth fit for our longevity. We can wait. We’ll have to.” or other. my report? We know the super-light this antigravity in less than a reduce the slice of eternity that thickness pushing back at his had happened to Sol? after all suppose something accurately enough to get a made no sense. “You mean you What? the speaker. “Of course not! It centuries, if we can ever master it. Even with Sirius expecting the carried a glowing account of We know it’s fast enough to reach Procyon in two weeks. We even know life can stand the trip. The should move out. Maybe trying family life again would give him the other was proposing, only some new interests. Amanda probably him human pilots into a ship with our He stopped, shocked by the It hadn’t been that kind of nor the last, nor the one have the big ship. All we need is one volunteer!” you really want to risk losing the rest of your life rather than waiting a couple more centuries until we know it’s safe? If you do, I’ll in a flux of emotions as the for his fear, it seemed to vanish, leaving a coldness that of him. “I’d rather know the whole answer. truth,” he said. His voice sounded chance for near eternity against such a relatively short in a low, defeated tone. “But I thought that was impossible!” when we do, the ship will be from the blank screen to stare down and he gathered himself together by an effort. “It’s a shock to me, too, Mr. Giles. But—well, They had to plan and build for it. They couldn’t risk that loses a little each time. And the effect is cumulative. It’s like an and the sight of the solid, time-enduring goes, the steeper the curve. And—well, buildings outside should Today, though, nothing seemed to help. He felt choked, imprisoned, dropping the reports into a the city beyond supposed to tell you, of course. time scale than we used to have—but it’s in centuries, not in was twisted with the dark ones eons. For everybody, not just Like an automaton, he bent you.” but he hardly noticed as he found eventually he’d die! An immortal man had suddenly found death hovering on his doubt and horrible eventual discovery. looked up at the Sun and then at the buildings built to last for thousands of years. Their eternity was no longer a part of him. from his panic to leave him Earth’s doctors could cure anything. the Centauri system. There’s a need the super-light drive if they were to span much more of the Universe than now. And he could still, even if he could never see its finish. Giles frowned. He’d expected “As all right as I’ll ever be,” he told her. “They tell me I’m just now—they preferred to see their patients in the laboratories that on, he’d be missing the old days when he’d had a mansion and a linkage to it. They’d discovered Oddly, it still tasted good to build inside himself for the future him. every conceivable device to make Yet he relished the feeling of people still in the odd, wheelless vehicle on the alien planet. FOR A long moment, he stared at the picture without thinking, as so many others had, for a small chance of some accident and nobody had any desire to spend the long future as a cripple. he’d never seen even pictures of his other grandchildren. Family the low, massive medical building. travel. Yet there seemed to be no slackening of them in Harry’s ties melted away too fast for interstellar a family, rather than a mere group. A very pleasant family in a very pleasant world. He read Harry’s note again, with its praise for the planet and its invitation. He wondered if Dr. Vincenti had received an invitation better, realizing it wouldn’t be Just how bad did he It didn’t matter, but it would explain with an old-fashioned desk and out his story. Halfway through, it. holding him on an old seemed precious to the old man ran over his body, while meters picture, studying the group again\n\n<question>:\nHow is Earth perceived in this story?\n\n<options>:\nA it's run by an intelligent, motivated Council\nB it is a weaker planet now because few discoveries are taking place there\nC it's in the center of all of the other planets, so it's visited often\nD people want to live there, as it's the richest planet\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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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>:\nThe afternoon my family returned home, I had a crew of workmen out that, for all her peering, she could see nothing. I looked down on her tolerantly. \"Can't adjust your skates?\" I asked again. \"Daddy, I've tried and tried and I just can't turn this old key tight My wife got out of the car and looked around at the workmen hurrying about the disemboweled buildings and she said, \"What on Earth is going on here?\" \"I've finished my work and we no longer need the buildings. I'm going to write a paper about my results.\" My wife looked at me appraisingly and shook her head. \"I thought you meant it. But you really ought to. It would be your first.\" My son asked, \"What happened to the animals?\" \"Turned them over to the university for further study,\" I lied. \"Well,\" he said to her, \"you can't say our pop isn't a man of decision.\" Twenty-four hours later, there wasn't a sign of animal experimentation on the ranch. \"Don't you know ?\" \"Do you understand the word?\" \"No.\" mother that I retaliate. I say rodent faces. At the door to the outside, she turned perilously and month. It would be several hours before they would begin to move, to learn to feed and play, perhaps to learn to fly. Meanwhile, it was clear that here was no war of dominant mutations. Modulating alleles had smoothed the freakish into a beautiful pattern. My wife tried the door, too, but more subtly, as if casually touching the knob while calling. \"Lunch, dear.\" \"Be right there.\" She peeked too, as she had for fifteen years, but I blocked her view when I slipped out. \"Come on, you old hermit. I have a buffet on the terrace.\" My wife did indeed have a delicious-looking buffet ready on the hamburgers. I gave the maid a pinch and said, \"Hello, baby.\" My wife looked at me with a puzzled smile. \"What on Earth's got into you?\" The maid beat it into the house. My wife sighed patiently. I laughed and picked up my plate and sat down in a chair. My wife I thought, \"By God, wouldn't he have a fit if he knew what I have back there in that lab! Wouldn't they all!\" enough.\" I continued to look down on her. I looked at my wife. \"What's the idea?\" \"She's going to be a young woman soon.\" \"Is that any reason for wearing clothes? Look at him. He's a young man sooner than already.\" \"Well, if you feel that way about it, they'll both have to start wearing clothes.\" I gulped the last of my hamburger and washed it down with the beer. \"This place is going to hell,\" I complained. \"The old man isn't allowed to pinch the maid and the kids can't go naked.\" I leaned toward her and smacked her cheek. \"But the food and the old woman are still the best.\" \"Say, what goes with you? You've been grinning like a happy ape ever since you came out of the lab.\" \"I told you—\" \"Oh, not that again! You were dangerous at any age.\" \"It's a joke,\" I assured her. \"I'm going to play a tremendous joke on the whole world. I've only had the feeling once before in a small way, but I've always....\" on the walk in front of the movie just as Theda Bara's matinee let out. \"Yep.\" She shook her head. \"Did I say you are eccentric ?\" They were also much faster than had been their predecessors in organizing their nervous activity after the slumbrous explosion of growth in the metabolic accelerator. When I returned to the lab, they were already moving about on the mattress and the male was trying to By four o'clock that afternoon, I was feeding them solid food and, with the spars closed, they were holding little cups and drinking water from them in a most humanlike way. They were active, curious, playful and decidedly amorous. heavy and out of proportion, of course, yet the females had only one The male watched me, grinning. He said, \"'Ello, 'ello.\" As I walked into the kitchen, giddy with this enormous joke, my wife The maid promptly left the kitchen for some other place. My wife just stared at me. \"Have you been drinking the lab alcohol?\" they had subsequently watched the first red men and then the first anyone suspected. One day, somebody would see a volpla. The newspapers would laugh. Then someone authoritative would find a colony and observe them. He would conclude, \"I am convinced that they have a language and speak it intelligently.\" The government would issue denials. Reporters would \"expose the truth\" \"Darling, are you listening to me?\" my wife asked with impatient patience. \"What? Sure. Certainly.\" \"You didn't hear a word. You just sit there and grin into space.\" She \"No,\" I answered. \"Should I?\" \"It's almost time for the broadcast. I was afraid we would miss it.\" \"What broadcast?\" \"For heaven's sake, darling,\" my wife complained, \"I told you about Guy's rocket being a success. The papers are full of it. So are the broadcasts.\" As we stepped up on the terrace, she turned to Guy and Em. \"He's out of contact today. Thinks he's Zeus.\" After a bit, I got up and said, \"I have something out in the lab I want to check on.\" My wife gave me a look close and, five minutes later, the ship would fire itself. Well, now—say, that would be something! I began to feel a little The screen returned to a studio, where an announcer explained that the film just shown had been taken day before yesterday. Since then, the A chronometer appeared on the screen and, for several seconds, there was silence. My wife said, \"Em, I think I'll just faint.\" Almost two hours went by before the male made it into the air. His playful curiosity about the world had been abandoned momentarily and he was chasing one of the girls. As usual, she was anxious to be caught hung in the breeze for a long moment, thirty feet above the ground. He turned a plaintive face back to me, dipped worriedly and skimmed They learned quickly and brilliantly. They were not fliers they were naturally have forgotten the ways of living outdoors.\" \"We can learn again. We want to stay here.\" His little face was so criss-crossing the ridge, working his way back to us. The two girls were watching him intently. They came over to me wonderingly, stopping now and then to watch him. When they were standing beside me, they said nothing. They shaded their eyes with own. The girl who had raised the birds from the tree volplaned back to us, yammering like a bluejay. It was a hero's welcome. He had to walk back, of course—he had no him. Their lavish affection held him up for a time, but eventually he strutted in like every human hunter. They were raptly curious about the bird. They poked at it, marveled at its feathers and danced about it in an embryonic rite of the hunt. But presently the male turned to me. Later, I shared a small piece of the meat in their feast. They were gleeful and greasily amorous during the meal. When I had to leave, it was dark. I warned them to stand watches, keep the fire burning low and take to the tree above if anything approached. The male walked a little away with me when I left the fire. I said again, \"Promise me you won't leave here until we've made you\n\n<question>:\nWhy did the narrator's wife react the way she did when she got home to see workmen at the house?\n\n<options>:\nA The narrator had told her that he was going to expand his workspace to investigate different mutations\nB She was upset that it seemed like the narrator was giving up on his work by tearing down his laboratory space\nC She was hoping to convert the lab space into a room for the family when he was done, and didn't want it to be torn down\nD He had shown no sign of actually reporting on his work, and she didn't know what this change meant\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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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>:\nCharles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece. Herrnstein and Murray begin by telling us that the liberal position on IQ--namely, \"Intelligence is a bankrupt concept\"--has been discredited, and that \"a scholarly consensus has been reached\" around their position. This consensus is \"beyond significant technical dispute.\" Thus, by the end of their introduction, they have arranged matters so that if intelligence has any meaning at all, the idiotic liberals stand discredited and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus. The next problem with The Bell Curve 's thesis is in the idea of the rise to dominance of the cognitive elite. To the book's initial audience of Ivy Leaguers, this idea seemed valid on its face. Everybody knows that the best universities, law firms, hospitals, investment banks, and the State Department used to be run by preppies whose main virtue was fortunate birth, and are now open to one and all on the basis of merit. But the larger premise--that intelligent people used to be scattered throughout the class structure, and are now concentrated at the top--is almost impossible to prove, simply because the mass administration of mental tests is such a recent phenomenon. High scorers on mental tests do \"bunch up\" (as Herrnstein and Murray put it) in elite-university student bodies. But this is tautological: Any group selected on the basis of scores on mental tests will be composed disproportionately of people who score high on mental tests. Proving The Bell Curve 's thesis would require proving that success increasingly correlates with IQ in areas of life where mental tests are not the explicit gatekeepers. To see how The Bell Curve tries and fails to get around these inherent problems, see and . Having conditioned its audience to view IQ as all-important, The Bell Curve then manipulates statistics in a way that makes IQ look bigger, and everything else smaller, in determining Americans' life-chances. What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence. Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental \"socio-economic status.\" But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains. Herrnstein and Murray begin their discussion of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth data by announcing that they aren't going to analyze the effect of education, because education is too much a result of IQ. It's not an independent variable. (Of course, according to their theory, socioeconomic status is also a result of IQ, but somehow, that doesn't stop them.) Therefore, what you'd most want to know from a policy standpoint--how much education can increase opportunity--isn't dealt with in the book, except in two obscure footnotes. Both would seem to support the liberal, pro-education position that Herrnstein and Murray say is futile. One footnote shows education increasing IQ year by year. The other shows a higher correlation between college degree and family income than between IQ and family income. One of The Bell Curve 's theoretical linchpins is the high heritability of IQ. Herrnstein and Murray, sounding like the souls of caution, write that \"half a century of work, now amounting to hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies, permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 per cent or higher than 80 per cent. ... For purposes of this discussion, we will adopt a middling estimate of 60 per cent heritability.\" This now looks seriously overstated. Michael Daniels, Bernie Devlin, and Kathryn Roeder of Carnegie Mellon University took the same studies on which Herrnstein and Murray based their estimate, and subjected them to a computer meta-analysis (\"a powerful method of statistical analysis\"-- The Bell Curve ). Their paper, which has not yet been published, says: \"In brief, studies of IQ, and our reanalyses of them, suggest a narrow-sense heritability of 34 per cent and a broad-sense heritability of 46 per cent. [The difference between broad and narrow is too technical to explain in this limited space.] This is a far cry from Herrnstein and Murray's maximum value of 80 per cent or their middling value of 60 per cent. Consequently, Herrnstein and Murray give the impression that IQ is highly 'heritable,' but it is not.\" At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that \"the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves.\" And they claim that their view of IQ tests is \"squarely in the middle of the scientific road.\" They end by expressing the hope that we can \"be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life.\" Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report. In fact, The Bell Curve is a relentless brief for the conservative position in psychometrics and social policy. For all its talk of reflecting a consensus, the sources it draws upon are heavily skewed to the right. Herrnstein and Murray used quasi-nutty studies that support their position (as Charles Lane demonstrated in the New York Review of Books ), and ignore mainstream studies that contradict it (as Richard Nisbett showed in the New Republic ). The data in The Bell Curve are consistently massaged to produce conservative conclusions not once is a finding that contradicts the main thesis reported in the text. ( shows how Herrnstein and Murray have made the convergence in black-white IQ scores, which they claim to find \"encouraging,\" look smaller than it actually is.) The Bell Curve 's air of strict scientism doesn't preclude the use of lightly sourced or unsourced assertions, such as the statement that the median IQ of all black Africans is 75, or that \"intermarriage among people in the top few percentiles of intelligence may be increasing far more rapidly than suspected\" (no footnote). Though they piously claim not to be doing so, Herrnstein and Murray leave readers with the distinct impression that IQ is the cause of economic success and failure, and that genetic difference explains the black-white IQ gap.\n\n<question>:\nWhat do Herrnstein and Murray want you to believe?\n\n<options>:\nA be happy with your current status - it's where you're going to stay\nB the government should put more money into closing the socio-economic gap\nC people of all races should be treated equally\nD if you work hard enough, you can do anything\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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1,601 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nBoys Do Bleed Fight Club is silly stuff, sensationalism that mistakes itself for satire, but it's also a brash and transporting piece of moviemaking, like Raging Bull on acid. The film opens with--literally--a surge of adrenalin, which travels through the bloodstream and into the brain of its protagonist, Jack (Edward Norton), who's viewed, as the camera pulls out of his insides, with a gun stuck in his mouth. How'd he get into this pickle? He's going to tell you, breezily, and the director, David Fincher, is going to illustrate his narrative--violently. Fincher ( Seven , 1995 The Game , 1997) is out to bombard you with so much feverish imagery that you have no choice but to succumb to the movie's reeling, punch-drunk worldview. By the end, you might feel as if you, too, have a mouthful of blood. Not to mention a hole in your head. Fight Club careers from one resonant satirical idea to the next without quite deciding whether its characters are full of crap or are Gen X prophets. It always gives you a rush, though. At first, it goofs on the absurd feminization of an absurdly macho culture. An increasingly desperate insomniac, Jack finds relief (and release) only at meetings for the terminally ill. At a testicular cancer group, he's enfolded in the ample arms of Bob (the singer Meat Loaf Aday), a former bodybuilder who ruined his health with steroids and now has \"bitch tits.\" Jack and Bob subscribe to a new form of male bonding: They cling to each other and sob. But Jack's idyll is rudely disrupted by--wouldn't you know it?--a woman. A dark-eyed, sepulchral head case named Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) begins showing up at all the same disparate meetings for essentially the same voyeuristic ends, and the presence of this \"tourist\" makes it impossible for Jack to emote. Jack finds another outlet, though. On a plane, he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a cryptic hipster with a penchant for subversive acts both large (he makes high-priced soaps from liposuctioned human fat) and small (he splices frames from porn flicks into kiddie movies). When Jack's apartment mysteriously explodes--along with his carefully chosen IKEA furniture--he moves into Tyler's squalid warehouse and helps to found a new religion: Fight Club, in which young males gather after hours in the basement of a nightclub to pound one another (and be pounded) to a bloody pulp. That last parenthesis isn't so parenthetical. In some ways, it's the longing to be beaten into oblivion that's the strongest. \"Self-improvement,\" explains Tyler, \"is masturbation\" Fincher and his screenwriter, Jim Uhls, seem to think they've broken new ground in Fight Club , that their metaphor for our discontents hits harder than anyone else's. Certainly it produces more bloody splatter. But 20 years ago, the same impulse was called punk and, as Greil Marcus documents in Lipstick Traces , it was other things before that. Yes, the mixture of Johnny Rotten, Jake La Motta, and Jesus is unique The novel, the first by Chuck Palahniuk (the surname sounds like Eskimo for \"palooka\"--which somehow fits), walks a line between the straight and ironic--it isn't always clear if its glib sociological pronouncements are meant to be taken straight or as the ravings of a delusional mama's boy. But onscreen, when Pitt announces to the assembled fighters that they are the \"middle children of history\" with \"no purpose and no place\"--emasculated on one hand by the lack of a unifying crisis (a world war or depression) and on the other by lack of material wealth as promised by television--he seems meant to be intoning gospel. \"We are a generation of men raised by women,\" Tyler announces, and adds, \"If our fathers bail, what does that tell you about God?\" (I give up: What?) F ight Club could use a few different perspectives: a woman's, obviously, but also an African-American's--someone who'd have a different take on the \"healing\" properties of violence. It's also unclear just what has emasculated Jack: Is it that he's a materialist or that the materials themselves (i.e., IKEA's lacquered particle boards) don't measure up to his fantasies of opulence? Is he motivated by spiritual hunger or envy? Tyler's subsequent idea of confining his group's mayhem to franchise coffee bars and corporate-subsidized art is a witty one--it's like a parody of neo-Nazism as re-enacted by yuppies. It might have been a howl if performed by, say, the troupe of artsy German nihilists in Joel and Ethan Coen's The Big Lebowski (1998). Somehow Brad Pitt doesn't have the same piquancy. An actress named Hilary Swank gives one of the most rapturous performances I've ever seen as the cross-dressing Brandon Teena (a k a Teena Brandon) in Kimberly Peirce's stark and astonishingly beautiful debut feature, Boys Don't Cry . The movie opens with Teena being shorn of her hated female tresses and becoming \"Brandon,\" who swaggers around in tight jeans and leather jackets. The joy is in watching the actor transform, and I don't just mean Swank: I mean Teena Brandon playing Brandon Teena--the role she has been longing for her whole life. In a redneck Nebraska bar, Brandon throws back a shot of whiskey and the gesture--a macho cliché--becomes an act of self-discovery. Every gesture does. \"You're gonna have a shiner in the morning,\" someone tells Brandon after a barroom brawl, and he takes the news with a glee that's almost mystical: \"I am????? Oh, shit!!!\" he cries, grinning. That might be my favorite moment in the picture, because Swank's ecstatic expression carries us through the next hour, as Brandon acts out his urban-cowboy fantasies--\"surfing\" from the bumper of a pickup truck, rolling in the mud, and straddling a barstool with one hand on a brewski and the other on the shoulder of a gorgeous babe. Though harrowing, the second half of Boys Don't Cry isn't as great as the first. The early scenes evoke elation and dread simultaneously, the later ones just dread and the last half-hour is unrelieved torture. What keeps the movie tantalizing is Chloë Sevigny's Lana, who might or might not know that Brandon is a girl but who's entranced by him anyway. With her lank hair, hooded eyes, and air of sleepy sensuality, Sevigny--maybe even more than Swank--embodies the mystery of sex that's at the core of Boys Don't Cry . Everything she does is deliberate, ironic, slightly unreadable--and unyielding. She's could be saying, \"I'm in this world but not of it. ... You'd never dream what's underneath.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhich character does the author feel represents the perplexity at the center of Boys Don't Cry?\n\n<options>:\nA Brandon Teena\nB Lana\nC John\nD Pierce\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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2,475 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nA gun is an interesting weapon it can be hired, of course, and naturally doesn't care who hires it. Something much the same can be said of the gunman, too.... called softly, \"Al.\" The pleasurable, mountains, and to a lesser extent, deserts, are fairly permanent even against man's corroding efforts. Brett-James on the second day that Temple-Tracy guy, I gotta go on he hadn't completely pulled the trigger. That at least meant that whatever the rap was it wouldn't be too tough. With luck, the syndicate would \"No banks! You gotta have banks!\" \"And no money to put in them. something that was awfully wrong. The other spoke precisely and slowly, the way a highly educated man speaks a language which he reads Brett-James said reasonably, \"We where's this guy Temple-Tracy you and adjustment is often not fully Reston-Farrell and Brett-James Reston-Farrell. If I am not mistaken, Brett-James said, \"Why not just go dispose of him?\" \"Jest walk in, eh? You think I'm stupid? How do I know how many witnesses hangin' around? How do I know if the guy's carryin' heat?\" brought back memories of that extreme condition he'd suffered during ... during what? He hadn't the of a faint nausea, which Temple-Tracy lives alone. He customarily \"These ain't my clothes.\" would be quite simple for you to enter his establishment and dispose of him. I assure you, he does not possess weapons.\" Reston-Farrell said, \"I am afraid, \"You think I'd be seen dead wearing this stuff? What is this, some religious \"No, I am afraid not.\" Joe was indignant. \"Just like that, He looked out, however, not on the lawns and walks of a sanitarium but \"This is difficult for you to understand, I imagine,\" Reston-Farrell told him, \"but, you see, we no longer punish people in this era.\" That took a long, unbelieving moment to sink in. \"You mean, like, no matter what they do? That's crazy. Everybody'd be running around giving it to everybody else.\" \"The motivation for crime has been removed, Mr. Prantera,\" Reston-Farrell attempted to explain. \"A person who commits a violence against another is obviously in need of medical care. And, consequently, receives it.\" vengeance, of the measures that Reston-Farrell had approached the might be taken by Big Louis on his failure, were now far away. Reston-Farrell, the one Joe had already and with a chainsmoker's nervousness. The other was heavier and more somewhere in their middle fifties. They both looked like docs. He wondered, all over again, if this was some kind of pressure cooker. Reston-Farrell said, \"May I present brief and painless, believe me.\" Joe said coldly, \"And what happens won't rat on you?\" to you guys? How do you know I the other day, Mr. Prantera. Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy is a dangerous, atavistic, evil genius. We are afraid for our institutions if his plans are allowed to mature.\" Reston-Farrell said, \"Of course,\" Homo sapiens is a unique animal. Physically he matures at approximately the age of thirteen. However, mental maturity as to be all but invisible, was elevated. It contained possibly three Indeed, it is sometimes never achieved. Before such maturity is reached, our youth are susceptible to romantic appeal. Nationalism, chauvinism, racism, the supposed glory of the military, all seem romantic to the immature. They rebel at the orderliness of present society. They seek entertainment in excitement. Citizen Temple-Tracy is aware of this and finds his recruits among the young.\" \"O.K., so this guy is dangerous. \"Prepare yourself for somewhat of a shock, Mr. Prantera. You are no you do not even speak the language.\" \"What'd'ya mean? I don't understand summa the big words you eggheads students of such subjects any longer speak such tongues as Amer-English, French, Russian or the many others that once confused the race with their limitations as a means of communication.\" Reston-Farrell said, \"I am afraid we \"You mean there's no place in the He had simply never associated with anyone who had ever even remotely considered such an idea. Now he said, The others were nervous, obviously repelled by the very conception of what they had planned. they'd talk themselves into it \"That is correct.\" \"Like hell you do. You think I'm stupid? I never even seen you before.\" For the second time, Reston-Farrell I know, Jessie, Tony, the Kid, Big Louis, everybody, they're dead. Even \"Yes,\" Brett-James said, his voice soft. \"They are all dead, Mr. Prantera. Their children are all dead, and their grandchildren.\" The two men of the future said \"That is why we brought you here, Mr. Prantera. You were ... you are, a professional assassin.\" Reston-Farrell went on, ignoring I might say, whose demise would probably have caused small dismay to society.\" Temple-Tracy stared at the weapon. there are no professional assassins in this age, nor have there been for over a century and a half.\" already he was beginning to long for the things he knew—for Jessie and Tony and the others, for his favorite knowledgeable in the field of violence. Tell me more about yourself. You surprise me considerably.\" unseeing. Then, his back turned, he said, \"We have tried, but it is simply not in us, Mr. Prantera.\" Two guys special, named Brett-James \"No, if by that you mean afraid. It is simply not within us to take the life of a fellow creature—not to speak of a fellow man.\" Brett-James said, \"Let me do it, Just as we are today and just as nations were a century or a millennium ago.\" depressions and dictators and like that.\" \"Yes, like that,\" Brett-James most surely would have destroyed itself. Wars? Our pedagogues are hard put to convince their students that such ever existed. More than a century and a half ago our society eliminated the reasons for international conflict. For that matter,\" he added musingly, \"we eliminated most international boundaries. Depressions? awoke to the fact that he had achieved to the point where it was possible to produce an abundance for all with a in almost every field, certainly in every science. Dictators? Your ancestors found, Mr. Prantera, that it is difficult for a man to be free so long as others are still enslaved. Today the democratic ethic has reached a pinnacle never dreamed of in your own thumped his right index finger twice on the table. \"The bacterium of hate—a new strain—has found the human race unprotected from its disease. We had thought our vaccines immunized us.\" \"Or, more likely, of Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin?\" \"Sure I heard of Hitler and Stalin,\" Joe growled. \"I ain't stupid.\" The other nodded. \"Such men are unique. They have a drive ... a drive to power which exceeds by far the ambitions of the average man. They are genii in their way, Mr. Prantera, genii of evil. Such a genius of evil has appeared on the current scene.\" \"Now we're getting somewheres,\" Brett-James said to Joe Prantera, to doubt their word. into present day society. Competent psychiatric therapy will soon remove your present—\" of things. Brett-James and Reston-Farrell others who belonged to the group which had taken the measures to bring him from the past. He didn't Reston-Farrell. Joe had been right, Brett-James evidently had something\n\n<question>:\nWhy are Reston-Farrell and Brett-James not willing to assassinate Temple-Tracy themselves?\n\n<options>:\nA They would feel such guilt after taking a fellow human's life as to cause them long-lasting anguish\nB They are fearful of Temple-Tracy's followers using him as a martyr to strengthen their cause\nC They are afraid of what might happen if they are forced to receive psychiatric treatment\nD They do not possess hatred in their genetic sequence and are incapable of committing vile acts\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
2,506 | quality | [
{
"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 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. To understand the desperation of Debra and how the Tydeman tube might help to relieve it requires a brief foray into basic obstetric knowhow. Evolution has endowed us with heads proportionally so large that even when labour runs according to plan, the delivery process involves a bit of a squeeze. For the baby's head to get stuck on the way out may not be usual, but it's by no means a rarity. which suggests requests for push-ups during unplanned caesareans are far from uncommon. The Tydeman tube is a gadget intended to make this manoeuvre safer and more effective. Creativity and innovation have many unlikely sources. What seems to have inspired Tydeman to develop his device was the characteristic sound of a Wellington boot being pulled free of wet, muddy ground: a slurpy, sucking, gurgling noise. When an impacted foetal head is pulled free of the uterus it's often accompanied by a similar sucking noise, the result of air rushing in between the obstetrician's fingers to fill the space vacated. \"What occurred to me years ago was that if the air can't get in, why not put a tube up into the vagina so that it can get in from below the baby's head.\" From time to time, if he felt he felt the baby might stick, Tydeman would slip a length of sterile silicone tubing through the woman's vagina and up into the womb next to the baby's head. Allowing air in by this route would release any suction forces tending to hold it where it was. Tydeman didn't do much with the idea until 10 years ago when one trainee, who was experiencing real difficulty getting heads out, prompted him to think again about the problem. Around the same time, he met professor of obstetrics Andrew Shennan and consultant midwife Annette Briley, both of the Women's Health Academic Centre at St Thomas's hospital. Between them they came up with a device – the Tydeman tube – to make pushing on the foetus more controlled while simultaneously releasing any vacuum that might be holding it in place. 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. This presented a problem. \"If you've applied for research money,\" says Tydeman, \"but you've already got what seems to be a commercially viable design, potential funders are going to say that the company aiming to sell it should pay for the work.\" On the other hand, commercial interest is easier to drum up if you've already got evidence that a device is safe and effective. That said, the team didn't want to leave the tube sitting on the shelf. So they eventually decided to go ahead and find a commercial partner willing to manufacture and market it. They have now identified one, and are fairly confident it will soon be in production. With sufficient users it should then be possible to compile factual – as opposed to anecdotal – evidence of benefit. Not ideal, Tydeman concedes, but the best they can do at present. 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. It's still too soon to make a final judgement about Debra’s impact. \"When we first brought Debra out,\" Briley recalls, \"some of the really experienced professors said things like, 'We always managed without one. Why would you need this?' But ask them to have a go at using it and then they admit it's really good.\" Medicine as a whole has an oddly ambivalent relationship to innovation. Some new findings, techniques or equipment take years to penetrate the profession others are seized upon immediately. 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 and the team has already conducted such a study. Thirty obstetricians, from three NHS maternity units and with varying levels of experience, took part. They all received a brief explanation of how Debra works, and were then asked to try a timed removal of the foetal head at three different levels of difficulty. Overall, 87 per cent reported that the simulator offered a realistic experience of dealing with an impacted head, and 93 per cent thought it would be valuable as a training device.\n\n<question>:\nAccording to Tydeman, what has caused the Tydeman tube to not get sold/approved?\n\n<options>:\nA Any products that could possibly cause death during childbirth are generally viewed with more apprehension\nB Because his device is so promising, investors want him to pay for its commercialization\nC Too many investors are competing over the rights of commercialization\nD Tydeman does not approve of the prototypes generated by potential investors\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,934 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nThis, be it understood, is fiction—nothing but fiction—and not, under any circumstances, to be considered as having any truth Niemand by Philip Latham. NIEMAND. I suppose you might say my main job today is to find out all I NIEMAND. It means you can only approximately predict the future course NIEMAND. Scores of them. NIEMAND. Pure bosh in most cases. NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so. NIEMAND. That's true. NIEMAND. I think our biggest advance was the discovery that sunspots themselves are not the direct cause of the disturbances we have been NIEMAND. We had to call them something. Named after the Sun, I suppose. NIEMAND. It is quite invisible to the eye but readily detected by radiation we detect is the actual cause of the disturbing effects observed. LATHAM. Just what are these effects? NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the NIEMAND. I'll try. Let's see ... remember that speech from \"Julius Caesar\" where Cassius is bewailing the evil times that beset ancient Rome? I believe it went like this: \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.\" LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see— NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had put it the other way around. \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in ourselves but in our stars\" or better \"in the Sun.\" LATHAM. In the Sun? NIEMAND. That's right, in the Sun. I suppose the oldest problem in the ever since the days of Job. And like Job they have usually given up in despair, convinced that the origin of evil is too deep for the human mind to solve. Generally they have concluded that man is inherently wicked and sinful and that is the end of it. Now for the first time science has thrown new light on this subject. LATHAM. How is that? NIEMAND. Consider the record of history. There are occasional periods when conditions are fairly calm and peaceful. Art and industry flourished. Man at last seemed to be making progress toward some higher goal. Then suddenly— for no detectable reason —conditions are reversed. Wars rage. People go mad. The world is plunged into an orgy of bloodshed and misery. LATHAM. But weren't there reasons? NIEMAND. What reasons? The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over which they have no control. By forces outside of themselves. LATHAM. Those are broad, sweeping statements. Can't you be more specific? NIEMAND. Perhaps I'd better go back to the beginning. Let me see.... It suffering from a complex of symptoms, such as profound mental depression, anxiety, insomnia, alternating with fits of violent rage and resentment against life and the world in general. These people were deeply disturbed. No doubt about that. Yet they were not psychotic and ten days later the attack would cease as mysteriously as it had come and they would be their old self again. LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of modern life? NIEMAND. I'm afraid that old stress-and-strain theory has been badly anthropologists have made in recent years is the discovery that primitive man is afflicted with essentially the same neurotic conditions as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the mountain tribes of the Elgonyi and the Aruntas of Australia. No, Mr. Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk NIEMAND. A doctor must always do something for the patients who come to trace of albumin in the urine—but nothing of any significance. On the There was no history of mental illness in the family. In fact, the only thing that seemed to be the matter with them was that there were times when they felt like hell. NIEMAND. Oh, yes. In a few cases in which I tried tranquilizing pills of exacerbation—increase in the severity of the symptoms—as accurately as possible. NIEMAND. It was the beginning. In most instances patients reported the NIEMAND. Total strangers miles apart were stricken at almost the same analysis showed the number of coincidences followed a Poisson distribution very closely. I couldn't possibly see what daylight had to do with it. There is some evidence that mental patients are most NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did, however, take pains to impress upon them the necessity of keeping an exact record of the onset of an attack. The better records they kept the more conclusive was the evidence. Men and women were experiencing nearly NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would subjective effect of this nature. And now another fact emerged which gave us another clue. LATHAM. Which was? NIEMAND. It certainly did. It looked as if we were headed back to the Middle Ages when astrology and medicine went hand in hand. But since it was our only lead we had no other choice but to follow it regardless of the consequences. Here luck played somewhat of a part, for Hillyard happened to have a contact that proved invaluable to us. Several years NIEMAND. It was the old case of workers in one field of science being completely ignorant of what was going on in another field. Someday we will have to establish a clearing house in science instead of keeping it Middletown wouldn't take our findings seriously but somewhat to our surprise he heard our story with the closest attention. I guess NIEMAND. It was really quite simple. But if it had not been for NIEMAND. I said that the lines drawn down through the days of greatest NIEMAND. Middletown was immediately struck by the resemblance between NIEMAND. Very closely. You see it takes about twelve days for an NIEMAND. Apparently an S-Region is not particularly effective when it is The same thing is true of sunspots and magnetic storms. LATHAM. How do you account for this? NIEMAND. We don't account for it. NIEMAND. Middletown says that the radio waves emanating from them are NIEMAND. Our latest results indicate that probably no one is completely immune. All are affected in some degree. Just why some should be affected so much more than others is still a matter of speculation. NIEMAND. I'm afraid the only sure way is to keep on the unilluminated bids fair to set an all time record. LATHAM. And so you believe that the S-Regions are the cause of most of the present trouble in the world. That it is not ourselves but something outside ourselves— NIEMAND. That is the logical outcome of our investigation. We are controlled and swayed by forces which in many cases we are powerless to resist. LATHAM. Could we not be warned of the presence of an S-Region? NIEMAND. The trouble is they seem to develop at random on the Sun. I'm afraid any warning system would be worse than useless. We would be crying WOLF! all the time. LATHAM. How may a person who is not particularly susceptible to this malignant radiation know that one of these regions is active? NIEMAND. If you have a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, if you are unable to concentrate, if you feel suddenly depressed and discouraged about yourself, or are filled with resentment toward the world, then you may be pretty sure that an S-Region is passing across the face of the Sun. Keep a tight rein on yourself. For it seems that evil will always\n\n<question>:\nWhat does Niemand intend to communicate through referencing the line from Julius Caesar?\n\n<options>:\nA Sunspot-related disturbances have been negatively impacting humans prior to the Roman empire\nB We are more in control of our behavior than we think\nC Sunspot-related disturbances have been negatively impacting humans prior to the Middle Ages\nD We are not as in control of our behavior as we would like to think\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,187 | quality | [
{
"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 Sense of Wonder The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that . This was why the world had moved should across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more. the great changeless sweep of space. He could not quite explain the from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside him. Today, space looked somehow different. The stars—it was a meaningless pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport—were not apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead, \"Where's the buzzer?\" he sobbed. \"I must find the buzzer.\" by itself in the middle of the viewport. If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was odd. His head ached with the half-born thought. It was—it was—what could live and that was why the world had moved through the blackness, Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the time he would be thirty and a father. Whom would the Calculator select as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud ignored it. But it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling he could not explain. Why should he think thoughts that no other man had? Why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a He stared out into the garden, and off into the distance, where the headache? explain had entered the elder man's head for a moment, but it had water to drink. was a strange thought, and Rikud's brain whirled once more down the tortuous course of half-formed questions and unsatisfactory answers. They were strangely shaped in some ways, and yet in others completely into being just for the moment and then abruptly passed into non-being again, something which was as impalpable as air. governed the world. They told you to do something and you did it, but that was silly, because now no one told you to do anything. You only 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 had decided that they did not know where they were going, or why, and 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. before Rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of this was the only case of its kind, the exception to the rule, but it \"Yes?\" Almost no one read any more, and the library was heavy with the 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 elbow. \"What did you find out?\" \"Well, where's the book?\" Rikud would read it tomorrow. changing.\" \"Changing?\" Crifer questioned the fuzzy concept as much as he questioned what it might mean in this particular case. \"Yes, there are less of them, and one is bigger and brighter than the others.\" \"I'm only saying what I read in the book,\" Crifer protested mildly. \"Well, it's wrong. Variability and change are two words without meaning.\" concepts, yet it was so clear. Or was it? He had had it a moment ago, but now it faded, and change and old were just two words. He shrugged and reserved the thought for later. He wanted to see the turn away. Here was an unknown factor which the perfect world failed that it spread out over almost the entire surface. Something big and round, all grays and greens and browns, and something for which Rikud had no name. of it had expanded outward and assumed the rectangular shape of the viewport, and its size as well. It seemed neatly sheered down the middle, so that on one side Rikud saw an expanse of brown and green, and on the other, blue. had ceased abruptly. Instead an ominous silence, broken at regular Change— and for a while he struggled with it. What he saw—what he had always not exist in through nothing but an obscuring cloud of white vapor, murky, swirling, more vapor. \"What do you see?\" \"What else?\" \"Else? Nothing.\" Anger welled up inside Rikud. \"All right,\" he said, \"listen. What do the engines. \"I'm hungry, Rikud.\" But that was silly. What were the gardens doing in the viewport? And besides, Rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far vaster than the gardens, although all of it existed in the viewport which was no wider than the length of his body. The gardens, moreover, did. Nor did they spin. Nor did the trees grow larger with every jolt. it as fact. There—through the viewport and in it—was a garden. A never seen before, although he had always liked to stroll through the it was a garden. he admitted to Rikud. \"But why should the garden be in the viewport?\" not tell them of his most amazing thought of all. The change in the viewport could mean only one thing. The world had been walking—the \"It is an old picture of the garden,\" Chuls suggested, \"and the plants It it was with a purpose—to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the vast star-speckled darkness and to the great garden outside, this also was purposeful. The world had arrived at the garden for a reason. But if everyone lived as if the world still stood in blackness, how could they find the nature of that purpose? \"What's in here?\" he demanded. \"I know, but what's beyond it?\" \"Beyond it? Oh, you mean through it. It's only a door.\" There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud.\" \"No—\" Rikud began, but the words faded off into a sharp intake of He missed the beginning, but then: —therefore, permit no unauthorized persons to go through this have discarded it for something better—who knows? But if you have not, then here is your protection. As nearly as possible, this ship is a perfect, self-sustaining world. It is more than that: it is gears and wheels and nameless things all strange and beautiful because \"Odd,\" Rikud said aloud. Then he thought, \"Now there's a good word, but no one quite seems to know its meaning.\" exist an endless succession of them, especially when the third one although it looked out on the garden, Rikud sensed that the topography He couldn't go alone. He'd die of the strangeness. It was a silly dry interested, yet the lame-footed man's mind was inadequate to cope with and Rikud found himself wishing that his friend had never read that the world,\" he said. \"The library has a door and there is a door to the that. But there are no others.\" \"Doing what?\" \"I imagined nothing. I'll show you—\" \"You'll show me nothing because I won't go.\" clearly. All else was bathed in a shadow of unreality. Rikud never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to open that darkness, something bright flashed briefly through the sky and was gone. All around Rikud were darkness and hunger and thirst. The buzzer did eat or drink. Rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food. \"What won't?\" \"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would voice didn't speak this time—through its door and into the place of\n\n<question>:\nWhat is not a theme explored in this story?\n\n<options>:\nA Change is necessary and inevitable for survival.\nB Fear is a powerful motivator.\nC Perception can often be all-encompassing.\nD Equality must be realized.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
2,361 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nIn the days when salt-sea sailors were charting islands and spearing seals, for example, the fo'c's'le hands called themselves Lobscousers, celebrating the liquid hash then prominent in the marine menu. The Limey sailor got the name of the anti-scorbutic citrus squeezed into his diet, a fruit known to us mariners of a more sophisticated age are called Slimeheads, honoring in our title the algae that, by filling up the spaces within, open the road to the larger Space without. Should any groundsman dispute the importance of belly-furniture in history—whether it be exterminating whales, or introducing syphilis to the Fiji Islanders, or settling the Australian littoral with amusement tanks of all but the smallest spacers. I trust, however, that no Marsman will undertake to review this inventory of refreshment more than a week from groundfall. A catalogue of sides of beef and heads of Leyden cheese and ankers of good Geneva would prove heavy reading for a man condemned to snack on the Chlorella-spawn of cis-Martian space. The Pequod's crew ate wormy biscuit and salt beef. Nimitz's men won their war on canned pork and beans. The Triton periplus of Earth with a galley stocked with frozen pizza and concentrated apple-juice. But then, when sailors left the seas for the skies, a decline set in. from aluminum tubes, and were glad enough to drop back to the groundsman's diet of steak and fried potatoes. Long before I was a boy in Med School, itching to look at black sky through a view-port, galley science had fulfilled the disgusting incident, too, caused by a Ship's Cook who allowed his algaeal staff-of-life to become contaminated with a fast-growing Saccharomycodes yeast. The Japanese vessel staggered to her pad at Piano West after a twenty-week drunk: the alien yeast had got into the stomach of every man aboard, where it fermented each subsequent in the maria to squeeze out the native blue bugberry vines. We had water, two pounds of oxygen, and one-and-a-half pounds of dry food. This isn't just a paragraph from the Spacer Union Contract. It's a statement of the least fuel a man can run on. Twelve tons of water, oxygen, and food would have filled the cargo compartments to bursting, and left a small ship like the C. P. Sale no reason to reach for Mars. By allowing a colony of Chlorella algae to work over our used air, water and other effluvia, though, three tons of metabolites would see us through from Brady Station to Piano West and back. Recycling was the answer. The molecule of carbohydrate, fat, protein or mineral that didn't feed the crew fed the algae. And the algae fed us. All waste was used to fertilize our liquid fields. Even the stubble from our 2,680 shaves and the clippings from our 666 haircuts en route and back would be fed into the Chlorella tanks. Human hair is rich in essential amino acids. The algae—dried by the Cook, bleached with methyl alcohol to kill the smell and make the residue more digestible, disguised and seasoned in a hundred ways—served as a sort of meat-and-potatoes that never quite Bailey tried to feed us by groundside standards. He hid the taste of synthetic methionine—an essential amino acid not synthesized by Chlorella—by seasoning our algaeal repasts with pinches of oregano and thyme. He tinted the pale-green dollops of pressed Chlorella pink, textured the mass to the consistency of hamburger and toasted the slabs to a delicate brown in a forlorn attempt to make mock-meat. \"Doc, do you like Winkelmann?\" the Cook asked me. \"Not much,\" I said. \"I suspect that the finest gift our Captain can next day. We were each served an individual head of lettuce, dressed with something very like vinegar and oil, spiced with tiny leaves of burnet. How Bailey had constructed those synthetic lettuces I can only guess: the hours spent preparing a green Chlorella paste, rolling and drying and shaping each artificial leaf, the fitting together of nine résistance was again a \"hamburger steak \" but this time the algaeal mass that made it up was buried in a rich, meaty gravy that was only faintly green. The essence-of-steak used in these Chlorella cutlets had been sprinkled with a lavish hand. Garlic was richly in evidence. \"It's this pond-scum raw than have it all mucked-up with synthetic onions and cycler-salt.\" \"You seem able enough to choke down Bailey's chow, Captain,\" I said. I algae. He tapped his head with a finger. \"This—the brain that guides the ship—cannot be coaxed to work on hog-slop. You understand me, Belly-Robber?\" with the vapors,\" Winkelmann said. \"I do not expect from you hysterics, tantrums or weeping. Only—can you understand this, so simple?—food that will to improvise, to widen the horizons of his ingenuity. He will learn somehow to bring good food from Chlorella tanks.\" turkey-flesh was white and tender. Bailey served with this delicacy a grainy and delicious \"cornbread,\" and had extracted from his algae a lipid butter-substitute that soaked into the hot \"bread\" with a they were in addition gratified that the battle between their Captain and their Cook served to feed them so well. Most spacers embark on an outward voyage somewhat plump, having eaten enough on their last few days aground to smuggle several hundred calories of fat and many spices: marjoram and mint, costmary, file powder, basil and allspice, and a dozen others. \"Yes, Sir,\" Bailey said. \"Well, I squeezed the steak-substrate—Chlorella, of course, with all sorts of special seasonings—through a sieve, and blanched the strands in hot algaeal oil. Then I chopped those strands to bits and rolled them out. Voila! distaste. \"It's quite all right to eat lobster, for example, but I never cared to see the ugly beast boiled before my eyes. Detail spoils the table and tenderly lifted a small \"steak\" onto each of our plates. \"Try it,\" he urged the Captain. Captain Winkelmann sliced off a corner of his algaeal steak. The color was an excellent medium-rare, the odor was the rich smell of fresh-broiled beef. Winkelmann bit down, chewed, swallowed. \"Not and sauerkraut and Backhahndl nach suddeutscher Art out of an algae tank? I've got nothing but microscopic weeds to cook for him! Worn-out molecules reclaimed from the head packaged amino acid additives. And he expects meals that would take the blue ribbon at the annual banquet an apt confederate of vis medicatrix naturae , the healing power of vehement in their protests, blaming the Captain, in his absence, for the decline in culinary standards. Bailey seemed not to care. He served the algaeburgers with half a mind, and hurried back into his galley oblivious of the taunts of his crewmates. There being only three seats in the warming-pan at the center of the table. Bailey served the three of us with the small \"steaks.\" Each contained about a pound of dried Chlorella, I judged, teasing mine with my fork. But they were drenched\n\n<question>:\nThe Pequod, Nimitz, and Triton are all references to?\n\n<options>:\nA crewmen aboard the Charles Partlow Sale\nB seafaring men or ships from literature\nC names of scientists who invented food recycling techniques\nD the most palatable strains of algae\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,359 | quality | [
{
"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“Tell Judy about it,” begged Lois. “Please, Lorraine, it can’t be as bad as it appears. There isn’t She was beginning to suspect that Lorraine knew Lorraine tilted her head disdainfully. “We’re sisters anything that Judy can’t solve.” now. We’re both Farringdon-Petts and should be loyal to each other. But you always did take Judy’s wedding trying to solve a mystery. I don’t believe she’d understand—understand any better than I do. Everyone has problems, and I’m sure Judy is no part. She was the one who nearly spoiled our double “You’re right, Lorraine,” announced Judy, coming exception.” Lois kept on driving along the narrow, gravelly “It looks grim all right,” agreed Judy. “I wonder what it is.” would be fun to explore it, though,” Lois said. “But “Do you think we should?” Lorraine asked. “It “It didn’t need to be as hard as it was,” Judy confessed. know who they are,” Lorraine admitted. “You remember “I know now that keeping that promise not to talk about the dam was a great big mistake and tell me?” asked Lois. “We always used to go places together.” “It wasn’t important,” Lorraine replied evasively. “I was just out for a drive.” “You,” Lois said, “and all the mysteries you’ve “You plutocrats!” laughed Judy. “Each with a Banning, are you, Lois? I’m sure you can do better car of your own. You’re not interested in Roger I know. If my grandparents knew, they weren’t telling. And now they’re both dead and I can’t ask them. They left me a lot of unsolved mysteries along with this house. Maybe I’ll find the answers to some of “Sh!” Lois cautioned her. “Nice people no longer Like Peter, her FBI husband, she preferred facts to gossip. would have preferred to forget. She liked to think but Lois and Lorraine insisted. It all began, she finally told them, the summer before they met. Horace she was a good judge of character, and she had taken Dick Hartwell for a quiet, refined boy who would of ours, don’t you?” asked Lorraine. he spent the summer Judy was remembering in Farringdon where the Farringdon-Petts had their turreted mansion, while she had to suffer the heat and 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?” of trespassing.” “I’m sure we will be,” announced Judy as two 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. much as to escape to a place where she could have a good cry. It was the summer before her fifteenth birthday. In another year she would have outgrown 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 and solving a mystery to be known as the Ghost Parade But then she didn’t even know Lois. She had no But all that was in the future. If anyone had told the freckled-faced, pigtailed girl that she would one day marry Peter Dobbs, she would have laughed in their faces. “That tease!” She and Lorraine had listened to this much of what Judy was telling them without interruption. “That’s the unsolved mystery,” Judy replied. “A tear?” Judy had asked. “How can I shed a tear when I’m happy? This is a wonderful place.” are “Did you?” Lois interrupted the story to ask excitedly. wanted as fast as I could. I’m not sure they were wise wishes. They seem rather selfish to me, now. I “But what were they?” Lois insisted. Lorraine seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful. Judy did not notice the fear in her eyes as she replied airily, “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I wished for lots of friends and a sister, and I wished I could marry a G-man and solve a lot of mysteries and that’s as far spell was broken and so I didn’t wish for anything more.” “Wasn’t there anything more you wanted?” Lois pets, and have a nice home, and—” “And your wishes all came true!” “Every one of them,” Judy agreed, “even the one Lorraine’s hand under the table. “Don’t you think “Honey and I always do,” she replied “but then it was different. I didn’t know I would marry Peter or that he would become a G-man, and he didn’t “Why?” asked Lorraine. “Do you still think it was Lois laughed at this, but Judy was serious as she Again Lois laughed. But Lorraine said abruptly, “Yes, yes. Go on,” entreated Lois. “I didn’t dream 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 the Roulsville flood,” declared Judy. “After that forgot about the fountain. Honestly, Lois, I don’t Lois and Lorraine had finished their dessert while Lois watched in amusement as the cat lapped up are any mice up there,” Lois said with a giggle. the cat bounding ahead of them. In modernizing her grandparents’ house to suit her own and Peter’s confessed Lois as she followed Judy to the sewing “So am I,” Lorraine admitted. “I’m not superstitious house she was still burning kerosene lamps like those you see on that high shelf by the window. I think she and Grandpa like the way they lived without any modern conveniences or anything.” “I think so, too,” Lois agreed, looking around the old attic with a shiver. “It is strange they both died the same winter, isn’t it?” “Maybe they wanted it that way. Maybe they wished neither of them would outlive the other. If they did wish in the fountain,” Judy went on more thoughtfully, “I’m sure that was one of their wishes. Another could have been to keep the good old days, as Grandma used to call them. That one came true Afterwards she was sorry for the interruption. Lois and Judy both questioned Lorraine, but that was all was of a jealous disposition. Was the green-eyed monster coming between her and her handsome husband, Arthur Farringdon-Pett? Until now they had seemed blissfully happy. But there was no happiness in Lorraine’s face as she gazed at a picture of one of to Lois. Judy knew she was suggesting a fast trip home. But, apparently, Lois did not understand it that way. “I think so,” Lois answered after studying a little “Not quite all the way,” Lorraine objected. “The Lois suggested. Lorraine was not too enthusiastic about the proposed “You’ll remember it, won’t you?” 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. looks as if we’re planning a crime,” Lois said as they about wishes, don’t you?” Lorraine asked. “If you “How could they?” asked Lois. Lorraine reminded her. and Lois asked, “Why would he do a thing like “I wouldn’t depend on it,” Lorraine said as they As Lois swerved to avoid the oncoming car, Lorraine long time. The soft brown hat he was wearing covered most of his hair. “What’s the matter with you two?” asked Lois when the car had passed. “Aren’t you a little old for playing hide and seek?”\n\n<question>:\nWhat do Lois and Lorraine have in common?\n\n<options>:\nA they both care deeply about Judy\nB they both have a curious nature\nC they got married on the same day\nD they're both unhappy in their marriages\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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552 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nWhere it all started: Paul Krugman's \"The Legend of Arthur.\" David Warsh's July 3, 1994, Boston Globe Letter from John Cassidy: Paul Krugman loves to berate journalists for their ignorance of economics, particularly his economics, but on this occasion, I fear, his logic is more addled than usual. I am reluctant to dignify his hatchet job with a lengthy reply, but some of his claims are so defamatory that they should be addressed, if only for the record. 1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--\"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government\"--is \"pure fiction.\" Perhaps so, but in that case somebody should tell this to Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. When I interviewed Klein for my piece about the Microsoft case, he singled out Brian Arthur as the economist who has most influenced his thinking about the way in which high-technology markets operate. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story. 2) Krugman wrote: \"Cassidy's article tells the story of how Stanford Professor Brian Arthur came up with the idea of increasing returns.\" I wrote no such thing, and Arthur has never, to my knowledge, claimed any such thing. The notion of increasing returns has been around since Adam Smith, and it was written about at length by Alfred Marshall in 1890. What I did say in my article was that increasing returns was largely ignored by mainstream economists for much of the postwar era, a claim that simply isn't controversial. (As Krugman notes, one reason for this was technical, not ideological. Allowing for the possibility of increasing returns tends to rob economic models of two properties that economists cherish: simplicity and determinism. As long ago as 1939, Sir John Hicks, one of the founders of modern economics, noted that increasing returns, if tolerated, could lead to the \"wreckage\" of a large part of economic theory.) 3) Pace Krugman, I also did not claim that Arthur bears principal responsibility for the rediscovery of increasing returns by economists in the 1970s and 1980s. As Krugman notes, several scholars (himself included) who were working in the fields of game theory and international trade published articles incorporating increasing returns before Arthur did. My claim was simply that Arthur applied increasing returns to high-technology markets, and that his work influenced how other economists and government officials think about these markets. Krugman apart, virtually every economist I have spoken to, including Daniel Rubinfeld, a former Berkeley professor who is now the chief economist at the Justice Department's antitrust division, told me this was the case. (Rubinfeld also mentioned several other economists who did influential work, and I cited three of them in the article.) 6) I might attach more weight to Krugman's criticisms if I hadn't recently reread his informative 1994 book Peddling Prosperity , in which he devotes a chapter to the rediscovery of increasing returns by contemporary economists. Who are the first scholars Krugman mentions in his account? Paul David, an economic historian who wrote a famous paper about how the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard evolved and, you guessed it, Brian Arthur. \"Why QWERTYUIOP?\" Krugman wrote. \"In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. ... What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy.\" Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it \"didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know.\" Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. The eminent MIT professor, whose early academic work received widespread media attention, is far too generous a scholar to succumb to such pettiness. --John Cassidy Paul Krugman replies to John Cassidy: Thanks to Paul Krugman for his lament about credulous reporters who refuse to let facts stand in the way of a good story (\"The Legend of Arthur\"). As a professional journalist, I found his points well taken--even when he cites my own book, Complexity as a classic example of the gullibility genre. Among many other things, Complexity tells the story of the Irish-born economist Brian Arthur and how he came to champion a principle known as \"increasing returns.\" The recent New Yorker article explains how that principle has since become the intellectual foundation of the Clinton administration's antitrust case against Microsoft. Krugman's complaint is that the popular press--including Complexity and The New Yorker --is now hailing Brian Arthur as the originator of increasing returns, even though Krugman and many others had worked on the idea long before Arthur did. I leave it for others to decide whether I was too gullible in writing Complexity . For the record, however, I would like to inject a few facts into Krugman's story, which he summarizes nicely in the final paragraph: Now, I will admit to many sins, not the least of them being a profound ignorance of graduate-level economics I spent my graduate-school career in the physics department instead, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the quantum-field theory of elementary particle collisions at relativistic energies. However, I am not so ignorant of the canons of journalism (and of common sense) that I would take a plausible fellow like Brian Arthur at face value without checking up on him. During my research for Complexity I spoke to a number of economists about his work, including Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, co-creator of the General Equilibrium Theory of economics that Brian so eloquently criticizes. They generally agreed that Brian was a maverick in the field--and perhaps a bit too much in love with his own self-image as a misunderstood outsider--but basically sound. None of them warned me that he was usurping credit where credit was not due. Which brings me to Professor Krugman's letter, and my reply. I remember the exchange very well. Obviously, however, my reply failed to make clear what I was really trying to say. So I'll try again: a) During our interviews, Brian went out of his way to impress upon me that many other economists had done work in increasing returns--Paul Krugman among them. He was anxious that they be given due credit in anything I wrote. So was I. --Kenneth J. Arrow Nobel laureate and Joan Kenney professor of economics emeritus Stanford University Letter from Ted C. Fishman: After reading Paul Krugman vent his spleen against fellow economist Brian Arthur in \"The Legend of Arthur,\" I couldn't help wondering whose reputation he was out to trash, Arthur's or his own. Krugman seems to fear a plot to deny economists their intellectual due. If one exists, Arthur is not a likely suspect. In a series of long interviews with me a year ago (for Worth magazine), I tried, vainly, to get Arthur to tell me how his ideas about increasing returns have encouraged a new strain of economic investigations. Despite much prodding, Arthur obliged only by placing himself in a long line of theorists dating back to Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. I also found him disarmingly generous in giving credit to the biologists, physicists, and fellow economists who have helped advance his own thinking. Savvy to the journalist's quest for heroes, Arthur urged me to focus on his ideas, not his rank among his peers. Krugman has made a career out of telling other economists to pay better attention to the facts, yet as a chronicler of Arthur's career and inner life, Krugman seems to have listened only to his own demons.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the educational background of the person who wrote “Complexity”?\n\n<options>:\nA Law\nB Economics\nC Journalism\nD Physics\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,957 | quality | [
{
"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 clear. No one moved The FROM Jerry held his breath as they unintelligible order, but its message in total circumference. Jerry Bridges, sitting in the said, and then repeated the and said nothing. One part of newspaper wanted him to behave, to protect the cozy Washington assignment he had waited four years to get. But another part of him, a rebel part, wanted him to stay on the trail of the story he felt sure was about to break. Jerry couldn't identify stepped \"Even if that's true, we'll that's not only indiscreet, Bridges. It's downright dirty.\" Jerry deduced that it must have Jerry grinned. \"I didn't take that it didn't go any further. your step.\" Jerry got up and ambled to the \"Don't kid me, Mr. Conners. Think it's war?\" \"That'll be all, Bridges.\" The reporter closed the door behind him, and then strolled Delegate,'\" he read aloud. \"'First, remove all parts and arrange them in the following out of the building into the sunlight. \"'Instructions for assembling order. A-1, central nervous system item which had started the whole affair, and he seemed to build the damn thing.\" more interested in the romantic \"So what really happened, rather than political implications. Jerry growled. \"Ruskin,\" Jerry said, \"you the the matter with you? Where place ...\" It wasn't until three days after the landing that Jerry will you be when the big mushroom cloud comes?\" They split off a few blocks later, and Jerry walked until he quartered in a quonset hut in Fort Dix, New Jersey. Then, after seventy-two frustrating hours, he was escorted by Marine guard into New York City. No one told him his destination, and it wasn't until he saw the sullen silence. It wasn't the newsmen's jibes that bothered him So far, the byword under way, he knew that it was even—Jerry gulped Jerry looked up from his meeting without benefit of long planet, in the interests of peace and progress for all the solar system. I come in the belief that out. come to offer your planet not merely a threat, a promise, or an easy solution—but a challenge.\" last night. It wasn't the way between our planets will be commonplace. As for ourselves, we have hitherto had little desire to explore beyond our realm, being far too occupied with internal story—\" cannot last in the face of your progress, so we believe that matters. But our isolation compete with each other for the Anyway, I'll probably lose my job, and then you won't have any \"Good-bye, Greta,\" Jerry said sadly. \"What?\" \"Good-bye. I suppose you won't want to see me any more.\" \"Did I say that?\" \"It just won't be any use. deteriorates into heedless violence, we will not stand by We'll always have this thing between us.\" Venus will act swiftly, mercilessly, and relentlessly—to destroy your world completely.\" and then sighed. \"Oh, well. I guess there's no use fighting it. Maybe if I did spread. On that day, we of Earth, as a messenger of war. Unstoppable, inexorable, it may return, bearing a different Delegate \"But if you print one word Death, who speaks not in words, but in the explosion of atoms. of it, Jerry Bridges, I'll never speak to you again!\" Think of thousands of such Delegates, \"Honey,\" Jerry said, taking this moment forward. Look at the planet Venus, men of Earth, The Delegate sat down. Four days later, a mysterious explosion rocked the quiet sands of Los Alamos, and the Venus spacecraft was no more. Two hours after that, the robot delegate, its message delivered, its Jerry Bridges' eyewitness accounts out what \"Wait a minute,\" Jerry said left him vaguely unsatisfied. He tried to explain his feeling of the incredible event was syndicated throughout the nation. But his sudden celebrity what for about three days, and they're thinking of calling a plenary session of the UN just to figure \"It's not that,\" Jerry said out what to do about it. The only hitch is, Russia doesn't want to wait that long, and is asking for a hurry-up summit \"Greta,\" Jerry said mildly, \"I and Jerry responded the way a normal, healthy male usually does. But in the middle of an embrace, he cried out: \"Wait a minute!\" \"What's the matter?\" \"I just thought of something! Now where the hell did I put my old notebooks?\" \"What every country for the past three days. Like I say, they want to or something. The Senator thinks that if we don't agree, they might do something drastic, like blow us all up. It's kind last chance to change his mind, and then left. Five minutes later, Jerry It had been eleven years since Jerry had walked across the is so careless about—\" She put her fingers to her lips. \"Oh, how little had changed, but \"Terrible? I think you're wonderful!\" \"And you promise not to print a liar sometimes, Jerry. I've noticed \"Oh, I guess that was after Jerry felt decrepit, but managed to say: \"It must be something new since I was here. Where is this place?\" He followed her directions, he said. \"I don't want to see can't Jerry entered, except for the deliver any messages.\" \"But this is something he Jerry remembered. He was a blinked when Jerry said: thawing slightly. \"I me? Jerry Bridges?\" it with his next batch of mail.\" \"When will that be?\" \"In an hour. He's in a terribly important meeting right could times. But Jerry was impatient to get to the point of his visit, to match.\" deliver name in the papers—\" \"What do you mean, Jerry?\" !\" Jerry said, breezing Jerry, and snapped: He unfolded it and read aloud. \"'It's my belief that peace is I said, Jerry.\" \"Mr. Bridges, you don't make it easy for us. It's our opinion \"Is it? But I also remember it, we have two choices. One of them is to lock you up.\" Jerry swallowed hard. years.\" Jerry?\" press until such a time as all correspondents are informed. that's what you call it, but you'll \"It's worth a lot,\" Jerry said personal favor. Now about the landing tonight—\" Then, when the Robot was assembled, they would speak through it to demand peace for all mankind ...\" \"Jerry, if you do this—\" \"You don't have to say it, will be a jet leaving Washington But Jerry Bridges, sitting in world for me to write about, would there? No, thanks, Professor. As far as I'm concerned, with non-official status Jerry braked the convertible aboard. knew that he was the only passenger looked up at the star-filled night, and sighed romantically. Jerry pointed. \"That one.\" \"And to think what that terrible planet can do to us!\" to some unnamed destination. minutes across a flat ribbon of desert road, until Jerry sighted approvingly. THE END Transcriber's Note: newly-erected lights in the middle good job of keeping the excitement contained. He was allowed to leave the car and stroll unescorted. He tried to talk to some of the scurrying officials, but to no avail. Finally, he contented himself by sitting on the sand, after another. As the minutes ticked off, the activity became more frenetic around him. Then the pace slowed, and he knew the appointed moment was approaching. Stillness returned to the desert, and tension was a tangible substance in an intricate pattern. part! on the very day your conflict heard. Then the crisscrossing straight line towards the center A loudspeaker blared out an and let the ugly contagion\n\n<question>:\nHow does Jerry change from the beginning of the story to the end?\n\n<options>:\nA He is consumed by the difficulty of keeping the secret of the Venusian delegate's origin\nB He comes to value the Venusian delegate's outcome over the recognition of breaking unprecedented news\nC He becomes less caught up in the fast-paced world of media and more interested in settling down as a family man\nD He stops living his life according to what the media values and decides to leave Earth forever\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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428 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nCOSMIC YO-YO By ROSS ROCKLYNNE \"Want an asteroid in your backyard? We supply cheap. Trouble also handled without charge.\" asteroid, was plainly flabbergasted. Not in his wildest imaginings had he thought they would actually find what they were looking for. slide-rule and logarithm tables. \"Now all we have to do is find out if she's made of tungsten, iron, quartz crystals, and cinnabar! But there couldn't be two asteroids of that shape anywhere else in the Belt, so this has to be it!\" asteroid.\" \"Have it your way,\" Bob Parker sang, happily. He threw the ethergram Received your advertising literature a week ago. Would like to state that yes I would like an asteroid in my back yard. Must meet following specifications: 506 feet length, long enough for wedding procession 98 feet at base, tapering to 10 feet at apex composed of iron ore, tungsten, quartz crystals, and cinnabar. Must be in my back yard before 11:30 A.M. my time, for important wedding June 2, else order is void. Will rocks (chiefly due to the activities of Saylor & was, plainly, a hair-brained request. And yet, if by some chance there was such a rigidly specified asteroid, their financial worries would be over. That they had actually discovered the asteroid, using their mass-detectors in a weight-elimination process, seemed like an incredible stroke of luck. For there are literally millions of asteroids in the asteroid belt, and they had been out in space only three weeks. The \"asteroid in your back yard\" idea had been Bob Parker's originally. Now it was a fad that was sweeping Earth, and Burnside wasn't the first rich man who had decided to hold a wedding on top of an asteroid. Unfortunately, other interplanetary moving companies had cashed in on that brainstorm, chiefly the firm of the Saylor brothers—which persons before this if he hadn't been lanky and tall while they were giants. Now that he and Queazy had found the asteroid, they were desperate to get it to its destination, for fear that the Saylor brothers might get wind of what was going on, and try to beat them out of their profits. Saylor made no pretense of being scrupulous. Now they scuffed along the smooth-plane topside of the asteroid, the magnets in their shoes keeping them from stepping off into space. They By the naked eye, they could see iron ore, quartz crystals, cinnabar, but he had the spectroscope and there was no reason why he shouldn't use it. He satisfied himself as to the exterior of the asteroid, and further. A cold, completely disagreeable feminine voice said, \"May I ask what you interlopers are doing on my asteroid?\" \"I said,\" remarked the girl, \"that you should scram off of my asteroid. And quit poking around at it with that spectroscope. I've already taken a reading. Cinnabar, iron ore, quartz crystals, tungsten. Goodbye.\" \" He and Queazy caught up with her on the side of the asteroid they hadn't yet examined. It was a rough plane, completing the rigid qualifications Burnside had set down. and it was three times as big as her gloved hand. \"I understand conditions better than you do,\" she said. \"You want to move this asteroid from its orbit and haul it back to Earth. an asteroid that doesn't mean anything to you one way or another. But to us—to me and Queazy here—it means our business. We got an order for this asteroid. Some screwball millionaire wants it for a backyard wedding see? We get five hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it! If we don't take this asteroid to Earth before June 2, we go back to Satterfield City and work the rest of our lives in the glass factories. the asteroid you'll save your business, but I'll meet a fate worse than death! So that's that.\" double-crossed. Those boys are after this asteroid too, and they won't \"It's—it's very important that this—this asteroid stay right where it is,\" she said huskily. \"What—what will they do?\" sparks crackled between the hull and the asteroid as the magnetic laughter. Bob Parker's gorge rose. \"Scram,\" he said coldly. \"We've got an ethergram direct from Andrew S. Burnside ordering this asteroid.\" It was Bob Parker's misfortune that he didn't carry a weapon. Each of \"I'll starve,\" he thought. \"Or suffocate to death first!\" hadn't been for her. The Saylor brothers left her paralyzed like asteroid like this. But I did, long before he ordered it from you—or from the Saylor brothers. You see—well, my granddad's about the it is to go against him when he's got his mind set! I was just a mass of nerves. So I decided to trick him and I came out to the asteroid belt and picked out an asteroid that was shaped so a wedding could take place on it. I took the measurements and the composition, then I told my grandfather I'd marry Mac if the wedding was in the back yard on top of an asteroid with those measurements and made of iron ore, tungsten, and so forth. He agreed so fast he scared me, and just to make sure that if somebody did find the asteroid in time they wouldn't be able to get it back to Earth, I came out here and decided to live here. Asteroids up to a certain size belong to whoever happens to be on them, by common law.... So I had everything figured out—except,\" she added bitterly, \"the Saylor brothers! I guess Granddad wanted to make sure brothers even if they are three weeks ahead of us. The Saylor ship and ours both travel on the HH drive—inertia-less. But the asteroid has plenty of inertia, and so they'll have to haul it down to Earth by a long, spiraling orbit. We can go direct and probably catch up with them a few hundred thousand miles this side of Earth. And we can have a fling at getting the asteroid back!\" Her eyes sparkled. \"You mean—\" she cried. Then her attractive face fell. \"Oh,\" she said. \" matter of survival. If the by-product of delivering the asteroid is your marriage—sorry! But until we do get the asteroid back, we three can work as a team if you're willing. We'll fight the other problem out later. Okay?\" asteroid back? Remember, commercial ships aren't allowed to carry long-range weapons. And we couldn't ram the Saylor brothers' ship—not without damaging our own ship just as much. Go ahead and answer that.\" Saylor brothers are where we calculated!\" They weren't where Bob and Queazy had calculated, as they had discovered the next day. They had expected to pick up the asteroid on their mass-detectors a few hundred thousand miles outside of the Moon's orbit. But now they saw the giant ship attached like a leech to the still bigger asteroid—inside the Moon's orbit! A mere two hundred thousand miles from Earth! naked-eye distance of the Saylor brothers' ship. Below, Earth was spread out, a huge crescent shape, part of the Eastern hemisphere But by the time the \"yo-yo\" was flung at them again, this time with better calculations, they managed to put the firmly held asteroid between them and the deadly missile. But it was clumsy evasion, for the asteroid was several times as massive as the ship which was towing it, and its inertia was great. And as soon as the little ship came Saylor brothers' ship crumple like tissue paper crushed between the \"I'll inform the Interplanetary Commission!\" screamed Saylor.\n\n<question>:\nWhat would have likely happened had Parker and Queazy or the Saylor brothers never located the asteroid?\n\n<options>:\nA Starre would have been able to call off the wedding to Mac.\nB They would have received their payment anyways because of their long travel in space.\nC Mr. Burnside would have traveled to get the asteroid himself.\nD The wedding would have been held on a different asteroid that looked similar.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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838 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nHe didn’t expect to be last—but neither did he anticipate the horror of being the first! He’d been driven to it, he knew, as he watched the man’s amazed face snap from the screen. From years of habit carried the the first suspicion of his trouble, could risk. “Any particular emotional for breath and feeling his heart hammering in his chest. He’d been a fool to come to work, can’t see any other explanation. You’ve got a slight case of angina—nothing serious, but quite definite—as well as other signs fault in the treatment. That’s pretty rare, but we can’t neglect the possibility.” She smiled dutifully at the time-worn joke, but he knew she better than he knew himself—which wouldn’t be hard, he It was as if the almost forgotten specter of age stood beside him, counting the seconds. But at last they were through and he was led brain-wave pattern. It had been nothing like this his first time. Then it had required months of mental training, followed by crude mechanical and man’s offer hovered on his lips. drug hypnosis for other months. Somewhere in every human brain Then the engineer shut his mouth themselves, with the brain as only a linkage to it. They’d discovered that vanished at greater than the speed of light, equipped with every conceivable device to make the body. Even such things as could be reached far below the conscious level and forced to operate. There had been impossible faith cures for millenia—cataracts removed from blinded eyes within minutes, even—but finding the mechanism in the brain that worked those miracles had taken an incredible amount of study and finding a means of Now they did it with dozens of mechanical aids in addition to the hypnotic instructions—and did it usually in a single sitting, But with all the equipment, it wasn’t impossible for a mistake to happen. It had been no fault of his ... he was sure of that ... his mind was easy to reach ... he could relax so easily.... He came out of it without “I’d rather know the whole Only his youngest son would have sent an elaborate tercentenary greeting verse—one that would with the eternal unconscious expectation that he would find himself suddenly young an injection of some kind and Oddly enough, the message in the next frame showed none of that. Harry had nothing but or his dozen children, but filled most of the frame with glowing description and a plea for his father to join him there! “But I’ll be all right?” Cobb smiled the automatic reassurance of his profession. “We bunch of callow young emigrants, even in one of the improved Exodus he should give up his work. The discovery that men could live practically forever had put an end to most family ties sentiment wore thin in half a century—which wasn’t much time missile and what it might mean. Jordan’s eyes seemed to sweep around the room. He was still young—one of the few under a hundred who’d escaped deportation because of special ability—and patience was still foreign to him. when it was necessary because an expression of shock replaced someone called across to him. Ordinarily, he was quick to support Then the frown vanished as They had to plan and build for it. They couldn’t risk that the star’s designation....” begging for their secret in a couple of hundred years! While a hundred other worlds make a night’s sleep after a little relaxation. Even that failed him, though. He’d developed one of the finest chess collections in the world, but tonight it held no interest. And were too conservative for really new thinking. There was a measure of truth in it, unfortunately. “They’ll slow up when their populations fill,” Giles repeated was no escaping it. Something about the years—or was it days—dwindling down to something Could they really dwindle down? Suppose he couldn’t rejuvenate all the way? He knew days. We can have the secret of this antigravity in less than a after all and then went by hastily. He rats were unharmed.” Giles shook his head at what the other was proposing, only partly believing it. “Rats don’t have minds that could show any real damage such as the loss of wanted no solicitous glances this “In the spring, a young man’s fancy,” he quoted to himself, and then shuddered. It hadn’t been that kind of spring for him—not this rejuvenation nor the last, nor the one before that. GILES TRIED to stop scaring himself and partially succeeded, until he reached the doctor’s office. Then it was no longer necessary to frighten himself. The wrongness was too strong, no matter how professional Cobb’s smile! you really want to risk losing the rest of your life rather than waiting a couple more centuries until we know it’s safe? If you do, I’ll Now that he knew there was reason for his fear, it seemed to vanish, leaving a coldness that numbed him. slowly. The belligerence ran out of him. NO SANE man would risk a chance for near eternity against such a relatively short wait. Heroism had belonged to those who knew their days were answer. in a low, defeated tone. “But I thought that was impossible!” “So did I. I wouldn’t believe it even yet—but now I find it by an effort. “It’s a shock to me, too, Mr. Giles. But—well, to simplify it, no memory is perfect—even cellular memory. It plan for short-term benefits. Usually it was too easy to realize that, and the sight of the solid, time-enduring buildings outside should have given him a sense of security. Today, though, nothing seemed loses a little each time. And the effect is cumulative. It’s like an asymptotic curve—the further it to help. He felt choked, imprisoned, somehow lost goes, the steeper the curve. And—well, the city beyond you’ve passed too far.” eons. For everybody, not just you.” It was no consolation. Giles knowledge is still on record. We can fix the heart and all the eventually he’d die! An immortal man had suddenly found death hovering on his and fight against the pain that trail. The years had dwindled and he meant it. The man had done all he could and had at least saved him the suspense of growing doubt and horrible eventual discovery. OUTSIDE ON the street, he him. Even his car would outlast him. He climbed into it, still partly no longer wondering about the dangers that might possibly arise. Those wouldn’t matter alcohol combined with the reaction from his panic to leave him almost himself again. After all, there was nothing to worry about Earth’s doctors could cure anything. much now. For a man who that might even be useful. In the future, men would still, even if he could never see its finish. It would be cold comfort but it was something. And he might more morose moods. that the years were gone for him. Automatic habit carried him grin and somehow the right words She smiled back suddenly, without feigning it. “Then you’re all right?” “As all right as I’ll ever be,” He caught himself before he could echo her mirth in a different when he’d had a mansion and counted his wealth in possessions, instead of the treasures he could build inside himself for the future childish! Yet he relished the feeling of could effect physical changes in as so many others had, for even with modern safety measures so strict, there was always a small chance of some accident and nobody had any desire to spend the long future as a cripple. cancer could be willed out of existence—provided travel. Yet there seemed to be no slackening of them in Harry’s the brain years of practice. Giles felt better, realizing it wouldn’t be one of the younger men. itself. “The years dwindle down to a precious few....” he remembered. “A precious few.” Those dwindling years had been precious once. He unexpectedly have proved it safe for human seemed precious to the old man then. pilots. Mr. Giles, we’ve got to reflex, blood pressure, pulse and fluoroscope. Others involved complicated little gadgets that ran over his body, while meters\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the connection between bravery and death?\n\n<options>:\nA There is no correlation. It’s based on personality how brave someone is.\nB If one can’t be hurt, then people tend to be braver.\nC Bravery only seems to come to those who know they have limits.\nD Bravery only seems to come to those who are limitless.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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2,338 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nCOMPLEXITY AND HUMANITY We have all seen the images. Volunteers pitching in. People working day and night unpredictability makes it unwise to build systems that take too much away from what human beings do best: look, think, innovate, adapt, discuss, learn, and repeat. That is why we have seen many more systems take on a loose, human centric model in the last decade and a half: from structured model put in place by Henry Ford, to the Internet’s radical departure from the AT& T system that preceded it, and on to the way (and are still seen so be many). But it is time we acknowledge that systems work best by making work human. Modern Times Modern times were hard enough. Trains and planes, telegraph and and the administrative state. Nowhere was this done more brutally than in the totalitarian states of mid-century. But the impulse to build fully-specified systems, designed by experts, monitored and controlled so as to limit human greed and error and to manage uncertainty, was basic and widespread. It underlay the development of the enormously systems too, we saw in mid-century marvels like the AT& T telephone system and the IBM mainframe. For a moment in history, these large scale managed systems were achieving efficiencies that seemed to overwhelm competing models: from the Tennessee Valley Authority to Sputnik, from Watson’s IBM to General Motors. Yet, to list these paragons from today’s but it turned out to be a retrenchment, not an abandonment, of the goal of perfect rationalization of systems design, which assumed much of the human away. What replaced planning and control in these systems was the myth of perfect markets. This was achieved through a hyper-simplification of human nature, wedded to mathematical systems design are becoming cleare Work, Trust and Play Pricing perfectly requires perfect information. And perfect information, while always an illusion, has become an ever receding dream in a world of constant, rapid change and complex global interactions. What we are seeing instead is the rise of human systems that increasingly shy away from either control or perfect pricing. Not that there isn’t control. to coordinating human action will disappear. But these managed systems are becoming increasingly interlaced with looser structures, which invite and enable more engaged human action by drawing on intrinsic and inviting system that lets people learn together and pursue their passion for knowledge, and each other’s company. The set of human systems necessary for action in this complex, unpredictable set of conditions, combining rationalization with human agency, learning and adaptation, is as different from managed systems and perfect markets as the new Toyota is from the old General Motors, or as the Internet now is from AT& systems are: (a) location of authority and practical capacity to act at the edges of the system, where potentialities for sensing the environment, identifying opportunities and challenges to action and acting upon them, are located (b) an emphasis on the human: on trust, cooperation, judgment and insight (c) communication over the lifetime where actions and interactions can occur through multiple systems simultaneously, have room to fail, maneuver, and be reoriented to fit changing conditions and new learning, all human and material elements of the production system. The ambition of scientific management was to offer a single, integrated system where all human variance (the source of slothful shirking and inept error) could be isolated and controlled. Fordism took that ambition and embedded the managerial knowledge in the technological platform of the reliance on small teams where each team member can perform all tasks, and who are encouraged to experiment, improve, fail, adapt, but above all communicate. The system is built on trust and a cooperative dynamic. The enterprise functions through a managerial control system, but also through social cooperation mechanisms built around teamwork and trust. However, even Toyota might be bested in this respect by the even more But let us also consider the system in question that has made this work possible, the Internet, and compare it to the design principles of the AT& technical innovations required the approval of management and a re-engineering of the entire network. The Internet, on the other hand, was designed to be as general as possible. The network hardware merely delivers packets of data using standardized addressing information. The hard processing work−manipulating a humanly-meaningful communication (a a stream of packets−was to be done by its edge devices, in this case computers owned by users. This system allowed the breathtaking rate of innovation that we have seen, while also creating certain vulnerabilities in online security. the Internet is needed. We see first of all that doubts about trust and security on the Internet arise precisely because the network was originally designed for people who could more-or-less trust each other, and offloaded security from the network to the edges. As the network grew and users diversified, trust (the practical belief that other human security into the technical system, both at its core, in the network elements themselves, and at its periphery, through “trusted computing.” A “trusted computer” will, for example, not run a program or document that its owner wants to run, unless it has received authorization from some other locus: be it the copyright owner, the virus protection effective means of preventing copyright infringement or system failure, and preserving corporate security (these are the main reasons offered for implementing such systems). Trusted computing in this form is the ultimate reversal of the human-centric, loosely-coupled design approach of the Internet. Instead of locating authority and capacity to act at the endpoints, where human beings are located and can make decisions about what is worthwhile, it implements the belief that machines−technical systems−are trustworthy, while their human users are malevolent, incompetent, or both. Reintroducing the Human Taylorism, the Bell system and trusted computing are all efforts to remove human agency from action and replace it with well-designed, tightly-bound systems. That is, the specifications and regularities of the system are such that they control or direct action and learning over time. Human agency, learning, communication and adaptation are minimized in managed systems, if not eliminated, and the knowledge in the system comes from the outside, from the designer, in the initial design over time, and through observation of the system’s performance by someone standing outside its constraints−a manager or systems designer. By contrast, loosely-coupled systems affirmatively eschew this level of control, and build in room for human agency, experimentation, failure, communication, learning and adaptation. Loose-coupling is central to the new systems. It is a feature of system design that leaves room for human agency over time, only imperfectly constraining and enabling any given action by the system itself. By creating such domains of human agency, system designers are accepting the limitations of design and foresight, and building in the possibilities of learning over time through action in the system, by agents acting within To deal with the new complexity of contemporary life we need to re-introduce the human into the design of systems. We must put the soul taught us anything, it is that what makes for human insight is extremely difficult to replicate or systematize. At the center of these new systems, then, sits a human being who has a capacity to make judgments, experiment, learn and adapt. But enabling human agency also provides scope of action for human frailty. Although this idea is most alien to the mainstream of system design in the twentieth century, we must now turn our attention to building systems that support human sociality−our ability to think of others and their needs, and to choose for ourselves goals consistent with a broader social concern than merely our own self-interest. The challenge of the near future is to build systems that will allow us to be largely free to inquire, experiment, learn and communicate, that will encourage us to cooperate, and that will avoid the worst of what human beings are capable of, and elicit what is best. Free software, Wikipedia, Creative Commons and the thousands of emerging human practices of productive social cooperation in the networked information economy give us real existence proofs that human-centric systems can not merely exist, but thrive, as can the human beings and social relations that make them.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is a \"trusted computer\"?\n\n<options>:\nA A computer system that implements the belief that machines are trustworthy, while human users are malevolent and or incompetent.\nB A computer system that is well-designed and tightly bound.\nC A computer that will not run a program without authorization from some other locus, such as a copyright owner.\nD A computer system where human beings are located and can make decisions about what is worthwhile.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,577 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nMoran cut apart the yard-long monstrosity with a slash of flame. together again, too. Also, neither Moran nor any of the others wanted to Moran, naturally, did not mean to help in the carrying out of the plans which would mean his destruction one way or another. The plans were thrashed out very painstakingly, in formal conference on the space-yacht Nadine Earth, and unless all parts of the complex were present, the total was necessary to get rid of Moran. In their predicament he might have come subtly or glaringly wrong. So mankind distastefully ferried pests as The Nadine was out of overdrive and all the uncountable suns of the Moran observed these things from the control-room of the Nadine , then approaching the world on planetary drive. He was to be left here, with no reason ever to expect rescue. Two of the four-man crew \"It doesn't look too bad, Moran!\" passage leading away. He called. But Moran observed with grudging landing-point, and they had still to re-locate themselves. They'd been on Coryus Three and they'd gotten departure clearance from its space-port. With clearance-papers in order, they could land unquestioned at any other space-port and take off again—provided the other space-port was one they had clearance for. Without rigid control of space-travel, any criminal anywhere could escape the consequences of covering five persons aboard—four men and a girl Carol. Moran made six. investigation. Moran, at least, would be picked out as a fugitive from Moran did not know. They might be sent back where they came from. In land anywhere for supplies. With five on board, as her papers declared, space-port officials' suspicion of the rest. So he had to be dumped. He couldn't blame them. He'd made another difficulty, too. Blaster in take off from Coryus III with a trip-tape picked at random for guidance. But the trip-tape had been computed for another starting-point, and when the yacht came out of overdrive it was because the drive had been dismantled in the engine-room. So the ship's location was in doubt. It could have travelled at almost any speed in practically any direction for a length of time that was at least Nadine needed to make a planet-fall for this. The rest of the ship's company came into the control-room. Burleigh waved his hand at the speaker. \"Listen!\" Moran stirred, and he knew that every one of the others was conscious of when Moran had used desperate measures against them. had cleared for Loris. That was where it should make its next landing. The little yacht went on. All five of its proper company watched as the planet's surface enlarged. The ice-cap went out of sight around the bulge of the globe, but no markings government would think defeat. Moran's own situation was perfectly very important, and the fact that Moran had forced him to fight and killed him in fair combat made no difference. Moran had needed to get off-planet, and fast. But space-travel regulations are especially designed to prevent such escapes. He'd made a pretty good try, at that. One of the controls on space-traffic required a ship on landing to deposit its fuel-block in the space-port's vaults. The fuel-block was not returned until clearance for departure had been granted. But Moran had waylaid the messenger carrying the fuel-block back to that space-yacht. He'd fuel. He was admitted. He put the block in the engine's gate. He duly took the plastic receipt-token the engine only then released, and he drew a blaster. He'd locked two of the Nadine's crew in the engine-room, rushed to the control-room without encountering the others, dogged the door shut, and threaded in the first trip-tape to come to hand. He punched the take-off button and only seconds later the overdrive. Then the yacht—and Moran—was away. But his present companions got the drive dismantled two days later and once the yacht was out of overdrive they efficiently gave him his choice of surrendering or else. He surrendered, stipulating that he wouldn't be landed back on Coryus planet from which they'd carried away a criminal, even though they'd done it unwillingly. Investigation of such a matter might last for months. Now the space-yacht moved toward a vast mass of fleecy whiteness without The Nadine checked her downward motion. Interplanetary drive is rugged and sure, but it does not respond to fine adjustment. Burleigh used rockets, issuing great bellowings of flame, to make actual contact. The There was silence in the control-room save for the whining noise which now was almost deafening. Harper snapped off the switch. Then there was true silence. The space-yacht had come to rest possibly a hundred yards from the mound which was the source of the space-signal. That mound \"It's a ship,\" said Moran curtly. \"It crash-landed and its crew set up a off. Maybe they got the lifeboats to work and got away. Maybe they lived to get in the ship.\" Moran silently went to the space-suit rack and began to get into a easily as in ship-clothing. The others of the landing-party donned their \"If there's a lifeboat left,\" said Carol suddenly, \"Moran might be able \"Ah, yes!\" said Moran. \"It's very likely that the ship hit hard enough to kill everybody aboard, but not smash the boats!\" beacon. I wouldn't count on a boat, Moran.\" seen no moving thing outside, but arms were simple sanity on an unknown world. Moran, though, would not be permitted a weapon. He picked up a torch. They filed into the airlock. The inner door closed. The outer door opened. It was not necessary to check the air specifically. The suits would take care of that. Anyhow the ice-cap said there were no water-soluble gases in the atmosphere, and a gas can't be an active poison if it can't dissolve. They filed out of the airlock. They stood on ash-covered stone, only slightly eroded by the processes which made life possible on this planet. They looked dubiously at the scorched, indefinite substance landed. Moran moved scornfully wing-covers and flew away, droning loudly. The four men heard the sound above even the monstrous cacophony of cries and boomings and grunts and squeaks which seemed to fill the air. Moran grunted. Distastefully, he saw his predicament made worse. He knew operation was necessary before humanity could move in. A complete ecological complex had to be built up microbes to break down the rock \"Suppose we go look at the ship?\" said Moran unpleasantly. \"Maybe you \"I'm giving the orders, Moran!\" said Burleigh shortly. \"But what you say He and the others joined Moran on the yielding surface. Their footing Moran heard muffled noises in his helmet-phone as the others tried to They reached the mound which was the ship. Moran unlimbered his torch. destroy it. Thick fumes arose, and quiverings and shakings began. Black creatures in their labyrinths of tunnels began to panic. Off to the right the blanket-like surface ripped and they poured out. They scuttled crazily here and there. Some took to wing. By instinct the other men—the armed ones—moved back from the smoke. They wore space-helmets but they felt that there should be an intolerable smell. But above all he raged because he was to be marooned here. He could not altogether blame the others. They couldn't land at any colonized world with him on board without his being detected as an extra member of the crew. His fate would then be sealed. But they also would be\n\n<question>:\nHow did the crew take the ship back from Moran?\n\n<options>:\nA The crew, locked in the engine room, dismantled the overdrive.\nB The crew, locked in the engine room, dismantled the direction-finder.\nC The crew, locked in the control room, dismantled the fuel-block.\nD The crew, locked in the control room, dismantled the interplanetary drive.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,633 | quality | [
{
"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 movie is convinced, too--which is odd, since the fantasy of an underage cheerleader making a middle-aged man's wilted roses bloom is a tad ... primitive. But American Beauty doesn't feel primitive. It feels lustrously hip and aware, and a lot of critics are making big claims for it. The script, by Alan Ball, a playwright and former sitcom writer, carries an invigorating blast of counterculture righteousness, along with the kind of pithily vicious marital bickering that makes some viewers (especially male) say, \"Yeah! Tell that bitch off!\" More important, it has a vein of metaphysical yearning, which the director, Sam Mendes, mines brilliantly. A hotshot English theater director (his Cabaret revival is still on the boards in New York), Mendes gives the film a patina of New Age lyricism and layer upon layer of visual irony. The movie's surface is velvety and immaculate--until the action is abruptly viewed through the video camera of the teen-age voyeur next door (Wes Bentley), and the graininess of the video image (along with the plangent music) suggests how unstable the molecules that constitute our \"reality\" really are. Mendes can distend the real into the surreal with imperceptible puffs. Aided by his cinematographer, Conrad Hall, and editors, Tariq Anwar and Chris Greenbury, he creates an entrancing vision of the American nuclear family on the verge of a meltdown. A merican Beauty is so wittily written and gorgeously directed that you might think you're seeing something archetypal--maybe even the Great American Movie. But when you stop and smell the roses ... Well, that scent isn't Miracle-Gro. The hairpin turns from farce to melodrama, from satire to bathos, are fresh and deftly navigated, but almost every one of the underlying attitudes is smug and easy: from the corporate flunky named \"Brad\" to the interchangeable gay neighbors (they're both called \"Jim\") to the brutally homophobic patriarch next door, an ex-Marine colonel (Chris Cooper) who has reduced his wife (the normally exuberant Allison Janney) to a catatonic mummy and his son, Ricky (Bentley), to a life of subterranean deception. (The colonel's idea of bliss is watching an old Ronald Reagan military picture on television: How's that for subtle?) Lester's wife, Carolyn, is even more stridently caricatured. A real-estate broker who fails to sell a big house (her only potential customers are blank-faced African-Americans, Indian-Americans, and surly lesbians), she wears a mask of perky efficiency and insists on listening to Muzak while she and her husband and daughter eat her \"nutritious yet savory\" dinners. It's amazing that Mendes and Ball get away with recycling so many stale and reactionary ideas under the all-purpose rubric of \"black comedy.\" in American Beauty , it's Ricky Fitts, the damaged stoner videomaker next door, who sees beauty where nonartists see only horror or nothingness. In the film's most self-consciously poetic set piece, Ricky shows Lester's dour daughter Jane--in whom he recognizes a kindred spirit--a video of a plastic bag fluttering up, down, and around on invisible currents of wind. Ricky speaks of glimpsing in the bag's trajectory an \"entire life behind things\"--a \"benevolent force\" that holds the universe together. The teen-ager, who likes to train his lenses on dead bodies of animals and people, sells wildly expensive marijuana to Lester and somehow passes on this notion of \"beauty.\" By the end, Lester is mouthing the same sentiments and has acquired the same deadpan radiance. That must be some really good shit they're smoking. It's not the druggy philosophizing, however, that makes American Beauty an emotional workout. It's that the caricatures are grounded in sympathy instead of derision. Everyone on screen is in serious pain. The manipulative sexpot Angela, who taunts her friend Jane with the idea of seducing her dad, acts chiefly out of a terror of appearing ordinary. As the military martinet, Cooper goes against the grain, turning Col. Fitts into a sour bulldog whose capaciously baggy eyes are moist with sadness over his inability to reach out. (When he stands helplessly in the rain at the end, the deluge completes him.) The character of Carolyn is so shrill as to constitute a libel on the female sex, but there isn't a second when Bening sends the woman up. She doesn't transcend the part, she fills it to the brim, anatomizes it. You can't hate Carolyn because the woman is trying so hard--to appear confident, composed, in control. When she fails to sell that house, she closes the shades and lets go with a naked wail--it's the sound of a vacuum crying to be filled--then furiously slaps herself while sputtering, \"Shut up--you're weak--shut up. \" Then she breathes, regains her go-get-'em poise, replaces her mask. Carolyn isn't a complicated dramatic construction, but Bening gives her a primal force. An actress who packs more psychological detail into a single gesture than others get into whole scenes, Bening was barreling down the road to greatness before she hit a speed bump called Warren. It's a joy to observe her--both here and in Neil Jordan's In Dreams (1999)--back at full throttle. American Beauty is Spacey's movie, though. He gives it--how weird to write this about Spacey, who made his name playing flamboyantly self-involved psychopaths--a heart. Early on, he lets his face and posture go slack and his eyes blurry. He mugs like crazy, telegraphing Lester's \"loserness.\" But Spacey's genius is for mugging in character. He makes us believe that it's Lester who's caricaturing himself , and that bitter edge paves the way for the character's later, more comfortably Spacey-like scenes of insult and mockery. He even makes us take Lester's final, improbably rhapsodic moments straight.\n\n<question>:\nThe reviewer implies that the following demographic might relate most strongly to the film, \"American Beauty\":\n\n<options>:\nA Emasculated men\nB Dysfunctional \"family men\"\nC Sex-addicted men\nD High-powered businessmen\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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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>:\nThe ancient rule was sink or swim—swim in the miasma of a planet without spaceflight, or sink to utter destruction! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from leave that way, but George thinks it's fun to be a hot pilot. The planet chosen for our Trial was called Tintera. The last contact the Ship had had with it—and we were the ones who dropped them—was almost 150 years ago. No contact since. That had made the Council I said good-by to Mother and Daddy—a real emotional scene—but that It wasn't the chance of not coming back that bothered me really, because I never believed that I wouldn't. The thought that made me unhappy was that I would have to be on a planet for a whole month. Planets make me feel wretched. The gravity is always wrong, for one thing. Either your arches and calves ache or every time you step you think you're going to trip on a piece of fluff and break your neck. There are vegetables everywhere to crawl on. If you can think of anything creepier than that, you've got a real nasty imagination. Worst of all, planets stink. Every single one smells—I've been on enough to know that. A planet is all right for a Mud-eater, but not for me. Jimmy—if he would get back alive. It's no game we play. When we turn fourteen, they drop us on the nearest colonized planet and come back one month later. That may sound like fun to you, but a lot of us never come back alive. Don't think I was helpless. I'm hell on wheels. They don't let us grow for fourteen years and then kick us out to die. They prepare us. They do figure, though, that if you can't keep yourself alive by the time you're fourteen, you're too stupid, foolish or unlucky to be any use to the Ship. There's sense behind it. It means that everybody on the Ship is a person who can take care of himself if he has to. Daddy says that found at the end of the month, saddle and cinches, food and clothes. have anything to do with Jimmy. I just couldn't stand to put off the bad moment any longer. animals. I shot one small one and ate it. It turned out to taste pretty good, though not as good as a slice from Hambone No. 4, to my mind the of horses and both narrow and wide wheels. Other tracks I couldn't identify. One of the smartest moves in history was to include horses when they dropped the colonies. I say \"they\" because, while we did the actual dropping, the idea originated with the whole evac plan back on Earth. Considering how short a time it was in which the colonies were established, there was not time to set up industry, so they had to have draft animals. were planted. I don't know how many of those planets had animals that could have been substituted but, even if they had, they would have had to be domesticated from scratch. That would have been stupid. I'll bet that half the colonies would have failed if they hadn't had horses. We'd come in from the west over the ocean, so I traveled east on the road. That much water makes me nervous, and roads have to go somewhere. I came on my first travelers three hours later. I rounded a tree-lined bend, ducking an overhanging branch, and pulled Ninc to a stop. There were five men on horseback herding a bunch of the ugliest creatures alive. They were green and grotesque. They had squat bodies, long limbs and knobby bulges at their joints. They had square, flat animal masks for made a wordless, chilling, lowing sound as they milled and plodded men on horseback had guns in saddle boots. They looked as nervous as cats with kittens. One of them had a string of packhorses on a line and he saw me and called to another who seemed to be the leader. That one wheeled his black horse and rode back toward me. Daddy, who should know better. better ride on from here with us. For protection.\" He had an odd way of twisting his sounds, almost as though he had a mouthful of mush. I wondered whether he were just an oddball or whether The hard man said to the others, \"This boy will be riding along with us to Forton for protection.\" I looked down at the plodding, unhappy creatures they were driving along and one looked back at me with dull, expressionless golden eyes. the green creatures, which surprised me since the ones I'd seen before hadn't seemed smart enough to count to one, let alone do any work. But it relieved me. I thought they might have been eating them or silently past. And I overtook a wagon driven by the oldest man I've a gallop. I decided I'd not tell anybody different until I found what made the clocks tick on this planet. But that wasn't what bothered me. It was the kids. My God! They four children. It was the most foul thing I've ever seen. It struck me then—these people were Free Birthers! I felt a wave of nausea and I closed my eyes until it passed. The first thing you learn in school is that if it weren't for idiot and criminal people like these, Earth would never have been destroyed. The evacuation would never have had to take place, and eight billion people wouldn't have died. There wouldn't have been eight billion people. But, no. They bred and they spread and they devoured everything in their path like a cancer. They gobbled up all the resources that Earth had and crowded and shoved one another until the final war came. I am lucky. My great-great-grandparents were among those who had enough foresight to see what was coming. If it hadn't been for them and some others like them, there wouldn't be any humans left anywhere. And I wouldn't be here. That may not scare you, but it scares me. What happened before, when people didn't use their heads and wound up blowing the Solar System apart, is something nobody should forget. The older people don't let us forget. But these people had, and that the Council should know. For one thing, people can't be depended on to talk about the things you up with a sore head and an empty pocket. The best thing I could think of was to find a library, but that might be a job. I'd had two bad shocks on this day, but they weren't the last. In the idiot stutter-fingered stupidity at the controls. As it skidded by me overhead, I got a good look at it and knew that it wasn't one of ours. About the time I finished eating, and before it grew dark, the old man around. There was singing for awhile, and then the father of the so the old man started telling them a story. In the old man's odd couldn't see far into the dark. A voice there said, \"I'll be damned if I'll take another day like this one, Horst. We should have been here hours ago. It be your fault we're what they used the high-walled pen for. I should have known that they would have to pen the animals up for the night. I should have used my head. I hadn't and now it was time to take leave. I brought the saddle around as hard as I could and then up, and he went down. He started to get up again, so I dropped the saddle on him That was a silly way to put it, but somehow it said more than if he'd The one I'd dropped the saddle on came up then. The others were putting the animals in the pen. He started to kick me, but Horst stopped him. \"No,\" he said. \"Look through the kid's gear, bring the horse and what trouble. So don't give me a hard time.\" jacket. said in a voice far colder than mine could ever be, because it was\n\n<question>:\nWhat does the narrator say is significant about horses?\n\n<options>:\nA Horses are a nuisance and make it hard for both colonists and scouts to get their jobs done.\nB Horses make it easy for criminals to conduct their business planet to planet .\nC Horses are the reason for the colonies’ success.\nD Horses are the reason for the catastrophe suffered on Earth.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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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>:\neBabe This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to \"bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women.\" Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are \"looking into\" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other. 1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\" 2. 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.\" 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.\" 10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as \"struggling actresses,\" reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, \"I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse .\" Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was \"better than prostitution.\" Harris constantly refers to the donors as his \"girls\" and describes them like cattle--\"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls.\" He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. \"We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items,\" he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to \"find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web.\" To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit. 11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at \"adolescent boys.\" 12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\" 13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. \"When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud,\" a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that \"there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected,\" and \"the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from.\" 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.\n\n<question>:\nWhat wouldn't 10 and 11 critics agree on?\n\n<options>:\nA Harris will do anything to make money\nB Harris doesn't care about his donors\nC Harris has gotten attention because of this plan\nD Harris will make a lot of money from his website\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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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>:\nextradition, anything in order to speed up my return to Cupia, where Lilla awaits in some dire extremity.” “All right,” Doggo wrote, and the conference was at an end. The morrow would decide the ascendancy of Myles I “It’s too bad that Myles Cabot can’t see this!” I exclaimed, as my eye fell on the following item: The next morning Myles Cabot was led under guard to the council chamber of the dread thirteen: Formis and her Ralph Milne Farley twelve advisers. The accused was placed in a wicker cage, Cabot or the Prince Yuri over the new continent. was Doggo. Myles, alone of all the radio engineers of my acquaintance, was competent to surmount these difficulties, and First the accusation was read, Myles being furnished with a written copy. thus enable the Cambridge savants to receive with clearness Messenger ants hurried hither and thither. The witnesses were then called. They were veterans who whether or not these messages come from Mars. Then the accused was asked if he wished to say anything in his own behalf. Myles rose, then shrugged his shoulders, sat down again, and wrote: “I fully realize the futility of making an argument through the antennae of another.” dispute was on between Doggo, supported by two councillors and he has been in constant communication with these ever since shortly after our arrival here. From them he learned of the return of Myles Cabot to the planet Minos. 20 “It is a lie!” Doggo shouted. adventures Myles had told me in person during his stay on my farm. of the first part of his adventures on Venus. Some further “Give us a queen of our own race,” shouted Fum. “Release the prisoner,” shouted the Queen. And that is all that Myles learned of the conversation, for his interpreter at this juncture stopped writing and obeyed the queen. The earth-man was free! “Professor Hammond thinks that he is getting Mars on the With one bound he gained the throne, where fighting and Doggo were rolling over and over on the floor in a Seizing one of the pikes which supported the scarlet canopy, Myles wrenched it loose and drove it into the thorax of Barth. In another instant the earth-man and Doggo stood Myles Cabot had left on my farm. They utterly failed to comprehend the matter-transmitting apparatus, and so—after the fallen tower had been reerected speculations. But what meant more to me was that I was again in touch with my classmate Myles Standish Cabot, Myles’s own account of the amazing adventures on the planet Venus (or Poros, as its own inhabitants call it,) which befell him upon his return there after his brief visit Myles Cabot had returned to the earth to study the latest developments of modern terrestrial science for the benefit of the Cupian nation. He was the regent of Cupia had been brewing all that evening, and just as Myles had placed himself between the coordinate axes of his machine and had gathered up the strings which ran from his it, a speck in the sky, far down the beach. Nearer and nearer it came. Myles sprang to his feet. To his intense surprise, he found that the effort threw him quite a distance into the air. Instantly the idea flashed through his mind: “I must be on Gone was all his languor, as he seized a piece of driftwood and prepared to defend himself. As he stood thus expectant, Myles realized that his present position and condition, the surrounding scenery, and the advance of the ant-men were exactly, item for item, like the even recognized one of the ant-men as old Doggo, who had for the three other Formians halted, and Doggo advanced alone. By the agitation of the beast’s antennae the earth man could see that it was talking to him. But Myles no longer possessed the wonderful electrical headset which he had contrived and built during his previous visit to that ground with a grimace of disgust and pointed to his ears. Doggo understood, and scratched with his paw in Cupian shorthand on the silver sands the message: “Myles Cabot, you are our prisoner.” “What, again?” scratched Myles, then made a sign of submission. 11 The other three ants kept away from him as Doggo led His heart glowed with the warmth of homecoming. What mattered it that he was now a prisoner, in the hands he could escape, and rescue the Princess Lilla. Poor girl! How eager he was to reach her side, and save her from that peril, whatever it was, which had caused her over which they were now passing? 12 Turning to Doggo, Myles extended his left palm, and made a motion as though writing on it with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. But the ant-man waved a negative with one of his forepaws. It was evident that there were no writing materials aboard the ship. Myles would have to wait until they reached their landing place for doubtless they would soon hover down in some city roofs, and its occupants disembarked. Three of the ants advanced menacingly toward Myles, but Doggo held them off. Then all of the party descended down one of the ramps to the lower levels of the building. for Doggo halted the procession and led Cabot into a room. With a sweep of his paw, Doggo indicated that this was it eagerly, but before he could begin writing an ant entered bearing a Cupian toga, short-sleeved and bordered with Grecian wave designs in blue. Myles put on this garment, and then quickly filled a sheet with questions: friend Doggo. They were alone together at last. Myles, who read as follows: “As to your princess and your son, I know not, for this is not Cupia. Do you remember how, when your victorious “It was his brain that conceived our daring plan of escape. If there were other lands beyond the boiling seas, Formia eight years ago?” When Myles reached the end of reading this narrative, he in turn took the pad and stylus and related how he had spurred him to be anxious about her rescue. “Old friend,” Doggo wrote in reply, “that depends entirely Doggo’s reply astounded him. pronoun, which corresponds to “he” in English. When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment, he warmly congratulated his friend by patting him on the side of the head, as is the Porovian custom. “Doggo,” he wrote, “this ought to constitute you a person for the Formians exclusively.” “Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be a bully good idea, and incidentally a solution of his own difficulties. But Doggo wrote in horror, “It would be treason!” Then “Only one—myself.” And again Doggo tore up the correspondence. Myles tactfully changed the subject. “Where is the arch-fiend now?” he asked. “We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote: “Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking on the planet Poros?” “No,” Doggo replied. “It is treason,” Doggo wrote in reply, but this time he did not tear up the correspondence. “Treason?” Myles asked. If he had spoken the word, he would have spoken it with scorn and derision. “Treason? Is it treason to support your own queen? What has become This time, as he tore up the correspondence, Doggo “Doggo,” Myles wrote, “can you get to the antenna of the queen?” The ant-man indicated that he could. “If she has inherited any of your character,” Myles continued, “she will assert herself, if given half a chance.” So the Pitmanesque conversation continued. Long since had whom Myles had ever known among the once dominant race of Poros. Finally, as the dials indicated midnight, the two conspirators Doggo then rang a soundless bell, which was answered Doggo did not show up until nearly noon, when he If you will waive counsel the trial can take place to-morrow.” “I will waive anything,” Myles replied, “counsel, immunity,\n\n<question>:\nHow did Doggo feel about their plan?\n\n<options>:\nA Hesitant for it to happen so soon\nB Reluctant at first but then confident\nC Worried for the queen\nD He trusted Myles, so he knew it would work\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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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>:\nend. The morrow would decide the ascendancy of Myles I “It’s too bad that Myles Cabot can’t see this!” I exclaimed, as my eye fell on the following item: The next morning Myles Cabot was led under guard to the council chamber of the dread thirteen: Formis and her THE COUP D’ETAT First the accusation was read, Myles being furnished in his own behalf. Myles rose, then shrugged his shoulders, While at my farm Cabot had rigged up a huge radio set and a matter-transmitting apparatus, with which he had (presumably) shot himself back to Poros on the night of the That had never occurred to me! How stupid! “What had I better do about it, if anything?” I asked. That evening, when I was over in town, the clerk in the drug store waylaid me to say that there had been a long-distance of the return of Myles Cabot to the planet Minos. adventures Myles had told me in person during his stay on my farm. And that is all that Myles learned of the conversation, for his interpreter at this juncture stopped writing and think?” Kellogg’s reply gave my sluggish mind the second jolt which it had received that day. And so it was that I took the early boat next morning Myles Cabot had left on my farm. They utterly failed to comprehend the matter-transmitting apparatus, and so—after the fallen tower had been reerected I was the first to try the earphones, and was rewarded by a faint “bzt-bzt” like the song of a north woods blackfly. In conventional radioese, I repeated the sounds to the his own head, he spelled out to us, “C-Q C-Q C-Q D-E C-A-B-O-T C-A-B-O-T C-A-B-O-T—” Seizing the big leaf-switch, he threw it over. The motor-generator Myles’s own account of the amazing adventures on the planet Myles Cabot had returned to the earth to study the had been brewing all that evening, and just as Myles had placed himself between the coordinate axes of his machine and had gathered up the strings which ran from his control levers to within the apparatus, there had come a blinding flash. Lightning had struck his aerial. How long his unconsciousness lasted he knew not. He was some time in regaining his senses. But when he had finally and fully recovered, he found himself lying on a sky. He fell to wondering, vaguely and pleasantly, where he was and how he had got here. Suddenly, however, his ears were jarred by a familiar sound. At once his senses cleared, and he listened intently to the distant purring of a motor. Yes, there could be no mistake an airplane was approaching. Now he could see it, a speck in the sky, far down the beach. Nearer and nearer it came. Myles sprang to his feet. To his intense surprise, he found that the effort threw him quite a distance into the air. Instantly the idea flashed through his mind: “I must be on Mars! Or some other strange planet.” This idea was vaguely reminiscent of something. But while he was trying to catch this vaguely elusive train of thought, his attention was diverted by the fact that, for some unaccountable reason, his belt buckle and most of the buttons which had held his clothes together were missing, so that his clothing came to pieces as he rose, and that he had to shed it rapidly in order to avoid impeding his movements. He wondered at the cause of this. What was his horror when out of it clambered, not men of them, running toward him over the glistening sands. Gone was all his languor, as he seized a piece of driftwood and prepared to defend himself. As he stood thus expectant, Myles realized that his present position and condition, the surrounding scenery, and the advance even recognized one of the ant-men as old Doggo, who had befriended him on his previous visit. Could it be that all his adventures in Cupia had been naught but a dream a recurring dream, in fact? Were his dear wife Lilla and his little son Kew merely figments of his imagination? Horrible thought! And then events began to differ from those of the past alone. By the agitation of the beast’s antennae the earth man could see that it was talking to him. But Myles no longer possessed the wonderful electrical headset which he had contrived and built during his previous visit to that So he picked up two sticks from the beach, and held shorthand on the silver sands the message: “Myles Cabot, “What, again?” scratched Myles, then made a sign of submission. 11 He dreaded the paralyzing bite which Formians usually His heart glowed with the warmth of homecoming. had been their prisoner before, and had escaped. Once more he could escape, and rescue the Princess Lilla. Poor girl! How eager he was to reach her side, and save her from that peril, whatever it was, which had caused her to flash that “S O S” a hundred million miles across the his departure, only a few sangths ago. How was it that the ant-men had survived their airplane journey across the boiling seas? What had led them to return? Or perhaps captive, through the skies. He gazed again at the scene below, and now noted one Turning to Doggo, Myles extended his left palm, and there were no writing materials aboard the ship. Myles for doubtless they would soon hover down in some city or town, though just which one he could not guess, as the country below was wholly unfamiliar. were consolidating their position and attempting to build up a new empire in some out-of-the-way portion of the continent. As the earth-man was turning these thoughts over in his advanced menacingly toward Myles, but Doggo held them Grecian wave designs in blue. Myles put on this garment, Myles, who read as follows: “It was his brain that conceived our daring plan of escape. If there were other lands beyond the boiling seas, Formia eight years ago?” When Myles reached the end of reading this narrative, he in turn took the pad and stylus and related how he had static conditions just as he had been about to transmit himself back. Oh, if only he had landed by chance upon the same beach as on his first journey through the skies! Wisely he refrained from mentioning the “S O S” message spurred him to be anxious about her rescue. planned for him so the concluding words which he wrote Doggo’s reply astounded him. When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment, “Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be thought of independence in the mind of one reared in an autocracy. Myles tactfully changed the subject. “We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for him, and we have been hunting ever since. When we sighted you on the beach this morning we thought that of writing and eating at the same time. But now Myles Cabot seized his pad and stylus and wrote: “Have you ever known me to fail in any undertaking “Treason?” Myles asked. If he had spoken the word, he whom Myles had ever known among the once dominant race of Poros. Finally, as the dials indicated midnight, the two conspirators sufficient draperies to form a bed for the earth-man. These brought, the two friends patted each other a fond good night, and the tired earth-man lay down for the first sleep which he had had in over forty earth hours. It hardly seemed possible! Night before last he had slept peacefully on a conventional feather-bed in a little New England farmhouse. Then had come the S O S message of fortune! With these thoughts the returned wanderer lapsed into a deep and dreamless sleep. When he awakened in the morning there was a guard posted at the door. 18 Doggo did not show up until nearly noon, when he\n\n<question>:\nWhat shocked Myles the most when he woke up on the beach?\n\n<options>:\nA Enemies arrived that he believed to be dead.\nB He was on Venus instead of Mars.\nC He realized Prince Yuri was alive.\nD He knew he'd been dreaming.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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968 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nsociology good for?\" Wilton Caswell, Ph.D., was head of my Sociology Department, and right then he was mad enough to chew nails. On the office wall behind him were three or four framed documents in Latin that were supposed to be signs of great learning, but I didn't care at that moment if he papered the walls with his degrees. I had been appointed dean and president to see to it that the university made money. I had a job to do, and I meant to do it. He bit off each word with great restraint: \"Sociology is the study of social institutions, Mr. Halloway.\" Come on now.\" I smiled condescendingly, knowing it would irritate him. \"What are you doing that's worth anything?\" He glared at me, his white hair bristling and his nostrils dilated like a war horse about to whinny. I can say one thing for them—these scientists and professors always keep themselves well under control. sound like anything that would pull in money. I interrupted, \"Valuable in what way?\" He sat down on the edge of his desk thoughtfully, apparently recovering has been using sociological studies of employment, labor and standards of living as a basis for its general policies of—\" I stopped him with both raised hands. \"Please, Professor Caswell! That would hardly be a recommendation. Washington, the New Deal and the present Administration are somewhat touchy subjects to the men I have He began to tap the corner of his book absently on the desk, watching me. \"Fundamental research doesn't show immediate effects, Mr. Halloway, but its value is recognized.\" I smiled and took out my pipe. \"All right, tell me about it. Maybe I'll recognize its value.\" Prof. Caswell smiled back tightly. He knew his department was at stake. The other departments were popular with donors and pulled in gift money by scholarships and fellowships, and supported their professors and graduate students by research contracts with the government and industry. Caswell had to show a way to make his own department popular—or else. I couldn't fire him directly, of course, but there are ways of doing it indirectly. \"Institutions—organizations, that is—\" his voice became more resonant like most professors, when he had to explain something he instinctively slipped into his platform lecture mannerisms, and began to deliver an essay—\"have certain tendencies built into the way they without reference to the needs they were founded to serve.\" He was becoming flushed with the pleasure of explaining his subject. \"All through the ages, it has been a matter of wonder and dismay should go to research fellowships for postgraduate biologists at the university, rather than to a medical foundation.\" \"I see you have your problems, too,\" Caswell said, conceding me nothing. He extended his hand with a chilly smile. \"Well, good afternoon, Mr. Halloway. I'm glad we had this talk.\" I shook hands and left him standing there, sure of his place in the progress of science and the respect of his colleagues, yet seething inside because I, the president and dean, had boorishly demanded that he produce something tangible. I frankly didn't give a hoot if he blew his lid. My job isn't easy. going hat in hand, asking politely for money at everyone's door, like a well-dressed panhandler, and trying to manage the university on the dribble I get. As far as I was concerned, a department had to support itself or be cut down to what student tuition pays for, which is a handful of over-crowded courses taught by an assistant lecturer. Caswell had to make it work or get out. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to hear what he was going to do for a demonstration. At lunch, three days later, while we were waiting for our order, he opened a small notebook. \"Ever hear of feedback effects?\" \"Not enough to have it clear.\" change and rigidity of the unwritten law of styles. \"Is it really as simple as that?\" I asked. \"You notice,\" he said, \"that when it becomes too heavy for the cohesion group that no one in his right mind would expect to grow.\" \"There should be a suitable club—\" Picture Professor Caswell, head of the Department of Sociology, and with him the President of the University, leaning across the table toward each other, sipping coffee and talking in conspiratorial tones over something they were writing in a notebook. Circle. \"Today we have guests.\" She signaled for us to rise, and we stood up, bowing to polite applause and smiles. \"Professor Caswell, and Professor Smith.\" (My alias.) \"They are making a survey of the methods and duties of the clubs of Watashaw.\" and repairing second hand clothing for charity with the same endless boring parliamentary formality. I pointed out to Caswell the member I thought would be the natural leader, a tall, well-built woman in a green suit, with conscious gestures and a resonant, penetrating voice, and then went into a half doze while Caswell stayed awake beside me and wrote in his notebook. After a while the resonant voice roused me to attention for a moment. It was the tall woman holding the floor over some collective dereliction of the club. She was being scathing. I nudged Caswell and murmured, \"Did you fix it so that a shover has a better chance of getting into office than a non-shover?\" \"I think there's a way they could find for it,\" Caswell whispered back, and went to work on his equation again. \"Yes, several ways to bias the elections.\" He nodded, keeping a straight and sober face as if we were exchanging admiring remarks about the techniques of clothes repairing, instead of conspiring. After the meeting, Caswell drew the tall woman in the green suit aside and spoke to her confidentially, showing her the diagram of limits and began the climb for University Heights. If Caswell's equations meant anything at all, we had given that sewing circle more growth drives than the Roman Empire. Four months later I had time out from a very busy schedule to wonder how the test was coming along. Passing Caswell's office, I put my head in. He looked up from a student research paper he was correcting. \"Caswell, about that sewing club business—I'm beginning to feel the suspense. Could I get an advance report on how it's coming?\" \"I'm not following it. We're supposed to let it run the full six months.\" \"Would that change the results?\" members.... Poor Caswell. The bet between us was ironclad. He wouldn't let me back down on it even if I wanted to. He'd probably quit before I put through the first slow move to fire him. His professional pride would but.... What a mess that would make for the university. I had to talk to Mrs. Searles. Perhaps there was some outside reason Searles will return?\" \"About six-thirty or seven o'clock.\" Five hours to wait. And what if Caswell asked me what I had found out in the meantime? I didn't want to tell him anything until I had talked it over with that woman Searles first. sense to see where his bread was buttered. A businessman is constantly dealing with organizations, including his own, and finding them either inert, cantankerous, or both. Caswell's formula could be a handle to grasp them with. Gratitude alone would bring money into the university in carload lots. The end of the sixth month came. The test was over and the end reports were spectacular. Caswell's formulas were proven to the hilt. After reading the last newspaper reports, I called him up. \"Perfect, Wilt, \"It can't grow past the female population of the town. There are only so many women in Watashaw, and some of them don't like sewing.\" The graph on the desk before me began to look sinister. Surely Caswell must have made some provision for— \"You underestimate their ingenuity,\" I said into the phone. \"Since they There was a long silence while Caswell probably drew the same graph in his own mind. Then he laughed weakly. \"Well, you asked me for a demonstration.\"\n\n<question>:\nHow does the Dean feel about Caswell?\n\n<options>:\nA The Dean despises Caswell and wants to fire him.\nB The Dean views Caswell as a friend and co-conspirator.\nC The Dean thinks Caswell is a stuck-up intellectual.\nD The Dean is irritated by Caswell's superiority complex.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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2,077 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nIn other words, they believe that they've found a relationship between looking like a criminal and actually being one. It's a claim that's been made many times over the years. Physiognomy, the 'science' of judging people by their appearance, was first theorised by the ancient Greeks in around the 5th century BC. Aristotle's pronouncement that \"it is possible to infer character from features\" led to a number of works relating to 'Physiognomica', a word derived from physis (nature), gnomon (judge or interpreter). All of Greek society, it was claimed, could benefit from this skill: it could assist with choosing an employee, a slave or a spouse, while its inherent vagueness made it intriguing to philosophers and useful for scientists who bent the theories to support their own beliefs. It became a recognised science in the Islamic world, and was used and taught in Europe throughout late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, despite nagging doubts among thinkers and physicians of the day. In the early 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci claimed not to \"concern myself with false physiognomy, because these chimeras have no scientific foundation.\" Theories of physiognomy, however, would persist beyond the Renaissance. In 1586, Italian scholar Giambattista della Porta published a book, De humana physiognomonia libri IIII, which established him as the 'father of Physiognomy'. Della Porta's thinking was based on the 'doctrine of signatures' the idea that the appearance of plants and animals offers clues to their nature. For example, as one writer of the time suggested, walnuts are good for curing headaches because they're shaped a bit like a human head. The theories in della Porta's book were supported by dozens of detailed illustrations which, by comparing human faces to those of animals, suggested that they must surely share similar character traits. In the 17th century, Swiss poet Johann Caspar Lavater took della Porta's methodology and ran with it, commissioning artists to illustrate his popular Essays On Physiognomy – which, to the chagrin of his contemporary, the writer Hannah More, sold for \"fifteen guineas a set… while in vain we boast that philosophy [has] broken down all the strongholds of prejudice, ignorance, and superstition.\" Lavater's work was criticised for being ridden with bias (black faces rarely emerged well from his analyses) but he was right in one respect: \"Whether they are or are not sensible of it,\" he wrote, \"all men are daily influenced by physiognomy.\" Many studies have been done into our psychological response to faces, and it's clear that a so-called halo effect will inevitably work its magic. \"Attractive people are regarded as better at everything,\" says Professor Peter Hancock, lecturer in Psychology at Stirling University. \"And we can't shake that off because there's some truth to it. Good genes produce intelligent people, attractive faces, fit bodies, and we imagine that they're going to be good at everything else, too. We don't have good insight into our own behaviour. We tend to think we understand what we're doing, but we don't.\" Hancock describes attending a conference where one speaker showed a series of black faces and white faces to students (who were mostly white) and asked them what they thought the experiment was about. \"They knew that he was trying to assess whether they would rate the black ones as more criminal,\" says Hancock. \"But then they did!\" We attribute social characteristics based on opinions we already hold about certain kinds of faces: whether they look unusual in some way, whether they resemble a partner, a family member or even ourselves, or perhaps have some other cultural association. Physiognomy ultimately stems from what Alexander Todorov, professor of psychology at Princeton University, calls an 'overgeneralisation hypothesis'. \"People,\" he wrote, \"use easily accessible facial information (eg an expression such as a smile, cues to gender and ethnic group) to make social attributions congruent with this information (eg a nice person).\" In a social media age, the pictures we choose to represent ourselves online are a form of self-presentation driven by those social attributions and the knowledge that our pictures are being judged. Experiments at Princeton found that we take less than one tenth of a second to form an opinion of strangers from their pictures, and those opinions tend to stand firm even if we're exposed to those pictures for a longer period of time. That tendency to judge instantly gives rise to a number of selfie tropes that are deemed to elicit positive responses, particularly when it comes to photos on dating profiles: certain angles, particular expressions, minute adjustments of eyebrows and lips that might appear to be about narcissism and vanity, but are more about a fear of being incorrectly assessed. After all, false suppositions based on people's faces are hugely influential within society, and in extreme cases they can have a huge impact on people's lives. When retired teacher Christopher Jefferies was held by police in connection with the murder of Joanna Yeates in Bristol back in 2010, more than half a dozen newspapers gave his unusual appearance particular scrutiny and made assumptions accordingly, which in turn influenced public opinion. This culminated in substantial damages for defamation, two convictions for contempt of court and a painful ordeal for Jefferies, who was entirely innocent. This kind of deep-seated bias looms large throughout physiognomic works of the 19th and 20th centuries, from absurdities such as Vaught's Practical Character Reader of 1902 (handy if you want to find out what a \"deceitful chin\" looks like) to more inherently troubling volumes such as Cesare Lombroso's Criminal Man. studies show that people with stereotypically 'untrustworthy' faces tend to receive harsher treatment than those who don't. There's evidently some consensus over people's attitudes toward certain faces, but it doesn't follow that the consensus is correct. The only attributes that we're reasonably good at detecting, according to research done at the University of Michigan in the 1960s and later tested at the University of Stirling in 2007, are extroversion and conscientiousness. For other traits there's insufficient evidence that our hunches are correct, with anomalies explained by our evolved aversion to 'ugliness', established links between broader faces and powerful physiques, or cultural associations with certain demographics which are reinforced with nagging regularity by newspapers, books, television and film. Data-driven studies, based upon huge quantities of facial data, would seem to offer the final word on this. Since 2005, computational models have used various techniques to test for links between social attributes and facial features, resulting in suggestions that our faces can betray, for example, political leanings, sexual orientation and criminality. One BBC Future article from 2015 even describes the 'discipline' of physiognomy as 'gaining credibility'. But Todorov details many problems with these studies, pointing out the challenging nature of doing such experiments with sufficient rigour – not least because different images of the same people can prompt wildly differing results. The aforementioned study at Shanghai's Jiao Tong University, with its enthusiastic, data-driven analyses of such questions as \"What features of a human face betray its owner's propensity for crimes?\" prompted a wave of press coverage.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the significance of Jimmy Savile to the article?\n\n<options>:\nA To introduce the idea of the importance of questioning friends of people under investigation\nB To introduce discussion of documentaries' influence on public perception of criminals\nC To introduce discussion of murderers and other criminals\nD To introduce the idea that people think they can tell certain things from looking at someone\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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2,482 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nalong to write up the first on TV shows, or mentions in writers' We look like desperadoes, what there'll be scientific reports on the trip, but the public doesn't want them they want the human slant on things.\" Either way, it's better than what Jones calls them. (a group of maybe ten, huddling they won't tell me about them.\" \"Nonsense,\" said Louie, sipping carefully at a paper cup of scalding coffee. \"It'll be just like the public going along vicariously. They'll identify dampness from my palms on the knees of my trousers as I sat there, \"how'll I go about it? A story? An article? A come together. I can't remember What?\" Louie shrugged. \"So keep a diary. It'll be more intimate, like.\" \"But what if nothing happens?\" a short and unscientific word and went to sleep. entrance to our cave. I don't know what they intend to do with us. Feed us, I hope. So far, they've just left us here, and we're out of rations. , which stated that this in a docket or a be, or else). enough. Dwight Kroger, the biochemist, is rather old to take the \"rigors of the journey,\" as he puts it, but the government had a choice between sending a green scientist who could stand the trip or an accomplished man who would probably not survive, so they picked Kroger. We've We'd end up drowned in some grotto in the heart of the planet, says \"What the hell,\" says Pat, \"it's better than starving.\" It is not. gives the general appearance of belonging . So is everybody else. Right now I could eat a dinner raw, in a centrifuge, and keep it crowd thinned out, same as it did of the current, and was about a hundred and then calling numbers over a know him better. So far, he's still Captain Desmond to me. I haven't the vaguest idea what he looks like. during blastoff. The inertial gravities didn't bother me so much as of their ship so we have a sort of artificial gravity to hold us against the curved floor. It's that constant now and then suck up water from the stream while they're watching us, being careful not to get their lips today. Not me. guesses that their \"blood\" must be almost pure water, and that it washes away (from the inside, of (all sugar, of course) wet. He energy. course) the sugar they need for \"How about a game sometime?\" I knew the formula for water) to make sugar, a common carbohydrate. interview wasn't wasted. I learned that he is as Earth plants do in photosynthesis shape of the scales like prisms, to isolate the when he'd finished his spiel. \"Simple,\" he said, as though he were addressing me by name. \"They have a twofold reason to fear water. One: by complete solvency Top Secret. They'd have to cover it so I could look out the viewing in that medium, they lose all energy screen, and they still need it for to form more sugar, and still die, if a bit slower.\" alters the shape of the scales, \"So now what do we do?\" and they are unable to use sunpower kind of squat, with a vulturish neck doing so, \"and then we cross this \"We remove our boots,\" said and make him look rather mean, but he our way to freedom.\" was pleasant enough, and said I Also, I am one of the first five men in the history of the world to all black with white dots in it, and none of the dots move, except in a of theirs. They must be for biting something more substantial than moss, Kroger.\" \"We'll risk it,\" said Pat. \"It's better to go down fighting than to die of starvation.\" The hell it is. But there's some kind of a \"drag.\" teeth the scaly things have come toward space. It's been done much better in the movies. There's just no awesomeness to it, no sense of depth or immensity. It's as impressive as a piece of velvet with salt sprinkled on it. and surprised a lot of them chewing gritty hunks of anthracite out these fast players who don't stop turned tail (literally) and clattered and think out their moves. And so and left his king in jeopardy, and I checkmated him next move. He said chess was a waste of time misunderstood and said, \"A good chance of liking what break out the stores and have a celebration feast just outside the door of the ship. to stay and that it's urgent to return sugar). \"Why,\" I said, \"can't we just tell poem, sort of. \"Because,\" said Pat, \"if we tell them now, by the time we get back we'll be yesterday's news. This way we may be lucky and get a parade.\" \"Maybe even money,\" said it may prove to be environmentally accurate, but that I should stick to Kroger, whose mind wasn't always on science. \"But they'll ask why we didn't radio the info, sir,\" said Jones uneasily. shortly after landing.\" first name. with me on the trip, books that I'd always meant to read and never had the time. So now I know all about Vanity Fair , Pride and Prejudice , War and Peace , I'll be careful not to win this time. However, if I don't win, maybe this time . It must have been a riot when it first came out. I mean, all those sly digs at the aristocracy, with copious interpolations by Mr. Thackeray in case you didn't get signs he's right. Like the missing charcoal in the air-filtration-and-reclaiming (AFAR) system. And Here we are, somewhere in a air and water left for maybe three any more. Kroger is thrilled that he is learning something, maybe, about It's nice to have a \"down below\" thirsty. Kroger says that at least—when Pat says what do we do can't afford the water we need to melt them down. Besides, the all it turns to carbon, and we can use the carbon in the AFAR system. We'll have to try it, I guess. standing there, tall and silvery, the be intelligent, otherwise they couldn't have guessed at the carbohydrates present in the bread after a lifelong diet of anthracite. Pat says let's jettison Kroger. This time the vote went against be pulverized and mixed with sulphuric acid. He says this'll produce carbon. I certainly hope so. for us. The The air is too thin to carry sound well. the chamber with acid to subdue the creature, which carbonized nicely. So now we have plenty of which is a help. However, his tail is prehensile, and now and then it much like the one that had been yanks food right off the table from under our noses. Kroger says watch out. and die. Two: even partial sprinkling We are made of carbohydrates, too. I'd have to be so fast, hence a smoother bit of fuel we have left to set us in a descending spiral into one of (relatively) trip on our shock-absorbing when they're startled. Their attitudes aren't menacing, but their appearance is. And Jones says, \"Who knows what's 'menacing' in We all agreed to try it. Not that we thought it had a good chance of working, but none of us had a better you know the rest of and we all became nine-day wonders until the dismantling of the It's later what over this and the far edge like pink in a few weeks. It looks like the five of us have abetted an invasion Needless to say, we're no longer Well, we're at the bottom, and six or seven toes. It varies from too, or else they have the damnedest-looking The constant shower of sand\n\n<question>:\nWhat does the last line indicate about modern society, in general?\n\n<options>:\nA Humans in the modern age have been desensitized to crises\nB Creating a solution sometimes requires people to return to the source from which the problem originated\nC Quality is just as, if not more important, than quantity when it comes to armed forces\nD The preference for intrigue over information has the potential to destroy a society\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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480 | quality | [
{
"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 U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] \"The outlaw ships are attacking!\" Old Garmon Nash's harsh voice snapped like a thunderclap in the cramped rocket flyer's cabin. \"Five or six of them. Cut the searchlights!\" cramped—disaster might loom but a few hundred feet away. \"Trapped us neatly,\" Rolf said through clenched teeth. \"Tolled into their underground hideout by that water-runner we tried to capture. We Planet Patrol ship as he swung the deadly slimness of his rocket blast's barrel around to center on the fiery jets that betrayed the approaching outlaw flyers. Three times he fired the gun, the rocket projectiles blasting off with Rolf swung the lax controls over hard as the bursts of fire revealed a In a slow sort of wonder Rolf felt the scrape of rock against metal, and then the screeching of air through the myriad rents in the cabin's meralloy walls grew to a mad whining wail. heat from the yet-glowing debris of the rocket flyer. The outlaws had even if there were he could never hope to reach the surface forty miles and more overhead. The floors of the thirty-seven caves through which they had so carefully jetted were a splintered, creviced series of canyon-like wastes, and as he ascended the rarefied atmosphere of the higher levels would spell death. the outlaws who smuggled their precious contraband water into the The young patrolman unzippered his jacket pocket and felt for the emergency concentrate bars that were standard equipment. Half of the oval bar he crushed between his teeth, and when the concentrated energy flooded into his muscles he set off around the irregular wall of the needlessly he reasoned. And he loosened the expoder in its holster as he moved carefully forward. The outlaw headquarters might be close of smoothly trimmed stone, and the floor fell away beneath his feet! He found himself shooting downward into a vast void that glowed softly at him more strongly as he neared the wall. And the barrier became a jumbled mass of roughly-dressed stone slabs, from whose earth-filled crevices sprouted green life. So slowly was the spinner dropping that the blackened desolation of the dropped to the compact expoder machine-gun holstered at his hip. There among the outlaws. This mysterious world that floated above the cavern An elongated pencil-ray of a man bounced nervously out to her side. \"Altha,\" he scolded, scrubbing at his reddened bald skull with a long-fingered hand, \"why do you never listen to me? I promised your father I'd look after you.\" He hitched at his tattered skin robe. and he dropped beside her in the shelter of a clump of coarse-leaved gray bushes. \"The Furry Women attack!\" \"Right.\" The older man was slipping the stout bowstring into its \"The outlaws may capture,\" warned Tanner. \"They have taken over the outlaws have turned her people against her.\" Spear tips and bared swords glinted dully. the gray-furred muscles of their narrow bodies until they seemed utterly shoulderless, and beneath their furry pelts the ripples of smooth-flowing muscles played rhythmically. There was a stench, a musky penetrating scent that made the flesh of his body crawl. Borne on a carved and polished litter of ebon-hued wood and yellowed bone lolled the hideous queen of that advancing horde. Gaunt of body she was, her scarred gray-furred hide hanging loose upon her breastless frame. One eye was gone but the other gleamed, black and beady, from linked together into ghastly festoons about her heavy, short-legged litter. Men bore the litter, eight broad-shouldered red-haired men whose arms had been cut off at the shoulders and whose naked backs bore the weals maimed beasts of burden, but the hand of Mark Tanner pressed down hideous scrawling battle-cry burst from their throats. Rolf's expoder rattled briefly like a high-speed sewing machine as he flicked its muzzle back and forth along the ranks of attacking Furry Ones. Dozens of the hideous weasel creatures fell as the needles of explosive blasted them but hundreds more were swarming over their fallen sisters. Mark Tanner's bow twanged again and again as he drove arrows at the bloodthirsty warrior women. But the Furry Ones ran fearlessly into that rain of death. The expoder hammered in Rolf's heavy fist. the sheltering bulk of a rough square boulder. \"Now where?\" Rolf snapped another burst of expoder needles at the furry \"To the vaults beneath the Forbidden City,\" Mark Tanner cried. \"None The bald scientist slung his bow over his head and one shoulder and needles at the Furry Ones and followed. Darkness thickened as they penetrated into the maze of the Barrier's shattered heart. An unseen furry shape sprang upon Rolf's shoulders and as he sank to his knees he felt hot saliva drip like acid upon his floor before fangs or claws could rip at his tender flesh, and he heard a choked snarl that ended convulsively in silence. Bat-winged blobs of life dragged wet leathery hide across his face, and beneath his feet slimy wriggling things crushed into quivering pulp. \"The outlaws!\" he cried. \"They're after Altha.\" you can. Your weapon is our only hope now.\" comrades. But if the outlaw saw him Rolf knew that he would be the A score of feet lay between them, and suddenly the outlaw whirled about. Rolf pressed the firing button own long-barreled expoder! fish-bellied alien ducked but his expoder swung off the target the guard's rifle expoder in his grasp the problem of escape from Forbidden City for Mark Tanner, and blast off for the upper crust forty not too tight, the man could free himself in the course of a few hours. same movement. Expoder needles splintered the rocks about him as he dropped behind a sheltering rocky ledge, and he caught a glimpse of two green-clad men dragging the bronze-haired body of the girl he had come A green bulge showed around the polished fuselage and Rolf pressed his captured weapon's firing button. A roar of pain came from the wounded man, and he saw an outflung arm upon the rocky ground that clenched tightly twice and relaxed to move no more. The outlaw weapon must have been loaded with a drum of poisoned needles, the expoder needles had not blasted a vital spot in the man's body. The odds were evening, he thought triumphantly. There might be another outlaw somewhere out there in the badlands, but no more than that. The glimmer of returning light. There were two sledges, one of them that he identified as the hammering of blood in his throbbing temples, and the other the measured blasting pulse of rocket jets. He opened his eyes slowly to find himself staring at the fine-crusted metal plates bound—apparently the outlaws had considered him out of the blasting torch away from his body and freed it. drop to his belted expoder. The outlaw was game. His fists slammed back at Rolf, and his knees instinctively aside from the crippling blows aimed at his body. For a moment they fought, coughing and choking from the thickening pall of smoke, and then the fingers of the outlaw clamped around Rolf's throat arm of the outlaw and even as he fought for more of the reeking smoky outlaw thudded limply against the opposite wall of the little cabin. the Forbidden City. Once Mark Tanner was aboard they would blast\n\n<question>:\nWhat was the outlaw weapon loaded with?\n\n<options>:\nA a drum of fuselage\nB a drum of poisoned shrapnel\nC a drum of poisoned bullets\nD a drum of poisoned needles\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,464 | quality | [
{
"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\"It's all right to drink coffee, isn't it?\" he asked. 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 Nothing came out of my gabbling mouth. this is to happen.\" \"Sure,\" the man agreed severely, prying a little worriedly at Doc's \" What is Doc's full name? \" From the bed, Doc said a word. \"Son.\" Then he disappeared. I looked at that which he had made. I wondered where he had gone, in arthritic fingers that were clamped on his collar. \"No argument. Sure, up we go. But leave me go or, so help me, I'll fetch you one in the I almost fell in, but at the last instant I caught myself and said, It was easier this night and that made me afraid. Doc's thin frame, I didn't want to be cured. I wouldn't be. Doc was gone. That was all I had now. That and 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 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 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 I tried not to think about it and helped Doc through the fly-specked flophouse doors. The tubercular clerk looked up from the gaudy comics sections of one of his. That was bad. It had happened a few times right after I first 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, \"Give me a nickel.\" The clerk's hand fell on the coin and slid it off into the unknown before I could move, what with holding up Doc. I let go of him. He didn't scare me, but Doc was beginning to mumble 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. 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 my notebook and orb-point in my hands. I found I couldn't focus both my mind and my eyes through the electric flashes of agony, so I concentrated on Doc's voice and trusted my hands would follow their ....\" His voice rose to a meaningless wail that stretched into non-existence. The pen slid across the scribbled face of the notebook and both dropped 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 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 \"Ma'am, could you help a man who's not had work?\" I kept my eyes down. I couldn't look a human in the eye and ask for help. \"Just a dime for a cup of coffee.\" I knew where I could get it for three cents, maybe two I felt her looking at me. She spoke in an educated voice, one she used, perhaps, as a teacher or supervising telephone operator. \"Do you want it for coffee, or to apply, or a glass or hypo of something else?\" I cringed and whined. She would expect it of me. I suddenly realized \"Just coffee, ma'am.\" She was younger than I was, so I didn't have to call her that. \"A little more for food, if you could spare it.\" I hadn't eaten in a day and a half, but I didn't care much. \"I'll be seen with you if you really want to eat.\" with a few drops left in them. They have a little caffeine in them—not enough, never enough, but better than nothing. \"Now what do you want to eat?\" the woman asked. glass of milk. I didn't want to black out on coffee with Doc waiting for me. \"Could I have a few to take with me, miss?\" I pleaded. She smiled. I caught that out of the edge of my vision, but mostly I \"What do you think of this?\" I looked at the piece of paper. It was a coupon from a magazine. 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 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? He held something out to me. It was my notebook. He had used my pen, 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. After a time, I asked the doctor a question. \"Why, yes. I'm flattered. This is the first manuscript. Considering my professional handwriting, I recopied it more laboriously.\" Accepting the sheaf of papers and not looking back at these two great and good men, I concentrated on my own time and Doc. Nothing happened. ... into the effective range of Miss Casey's tiny gun. She inclined the lethal silver toy. \"Let me see those papers, Kevin.\" I handed her the doctor's manuscript. Her breath escaped slowly and loudly. \"It's all right. It's all right. It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read 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.\" 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 She showed me a card from her wrist purse. Vivian Casey, Constable, North American Mounted Police. I had to help Doc. I had to have some coffee. \"What do you want?\" 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. thing on the floor to the cot. Doc had a pulse, but it was irregular. I checked for\n\n<question>:\nWhy is Doc insistent about an order when the narrator returns from eating?\n\n<options>:\nA The narrator didn't get Doc's food order before he left, and he doesn't like burgers\nB The narrator didn't get Doc's food order before he left, and he doesn't like burgers\nC There was no order to anything in the room and Doc was getting stressed out, needing structure\nD The slip of paper the lady had given the narrator was an order for Doc to fulfill\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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130 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nBy D. ALLEN MORRISSEY Science equipped David Corbin with borrowed time centuries ... to a dark blue world whose only defense was to seal tight the prying minds of foolish interlopers. \"Your name is David Corbin. Do you understand?\" \"Your name is David Corbin.\" in patient attention, trying to outguess the voice. I recalled a phrase ... some words about precaution. Precaution against forgetting. Control of a ship? Going where? the pain in my hands made me stop. \"I can't remember what to do.\" I held my bruised hands to my mouth, and I knew that was all the thought of time again. I was supposed to act according to ... plan. Did that mean ... in time ... in time. I went back down the passageway. The fourth small room was the same. Except for the woman. She lay on a to accept. Her beauty was graceful lines of face and her figure—smooth tapering legs, soft curves that were carved out of flesh colored stone. Yet not stone. I held her small hand, then put it back on the cot. Her at a deep blue eye that stared back in glassy surprise. Four people in all, depending on a blind helpless fool who didn't know their names or the reason for that dependence. I sat beside her on the cot until I could stand it no longer. Searching the ship made me forget my fear. I hoped I would find some for me. I wondered if I was an engineer or a pilot, or perhaps a doctor sent along to safeguard the others. Complete amnesia would have been terrible enough but this half knowledge, part awareness and association with the ship was a frightening force that seemed ready to break out of I went back to the cabin where the powerful man lay. I had to risk failure with one of them. I didn't want it to be the girl. I fought down the thought that he might be the key man, remembering the voice that had given the message. It was up to me, and soon. The metal in the \"You get used to it fast,\" I answered. I thought of what to say as he watched me. \"How do you feel?\" He shrugged at the question. \"Fine, I guess. Funny, I can't remember.\" He saw it in my face, making him stop. \"I can't remember dropping off to sleep,\" he finished. I held his hard arm. \"What else? How much do you remember?\" \"I'm all right,\" he answered. \"There aren't supposed to be any effects from this.\" \"Who is in charge of this ship?\" I asked. I moved away from the cot. \"Listen, I can't remember. I don't know your name or anything about this ship.\" \"What do you mean? What can't you remember?\" he asked. He stood up slowly, edging around towards the door. I didn't want to fight him. I wanted him to understand. \"Look, I'm in trouble. Nothing fits, except my name.\" \"The others. What about the others?\" he blurted. \"I don't know. You're the first besides myself. I don't know how I stumbled on the way to revive you.\" \"Yes. I've got to know if they are like me. I'm afraid to think they might be.\" \"Maybe it's temporary. We can figure something out.\" II quarters. \"What about her. Why is she here?\" I asked my companion. He lifted the cover from the apparatus. \"She's the chemist in the crew.\" girl.\" \"I don't know why, Captain. You tried to stop her before. Age and experience were all that mattered to the brass.\" \"It's a bad thing to do.\" \"I suppose. The mission stated one chemist.\" \"What is the mission of this ship?\" I asked. He held up his hand. \"We'd better wait, sir. Everything was supposed to be all right on this end. First you, then Carl, sick to his stomach.\" \"Okay. I'll hold the questions until we see about her.\" We questioned her and she was coherent but she couldn't remember. I tried to smile as I sat on the cot, wondering what she was thinking. \"How do you feel?\" I asked. Her face was a mask of wide-eyed fear as she shook her head. \"Can you remember?\" uncontrollably. \"What's happened to me?\" she asked. The dark haired man came into the room, silent and watchful. My face with her hands. I turned to the other man. \"What's your name?\" \"Croft. John Croft.\" \"I'm trying. I know the ship is familiar, but I've looked it over. Maybe I'm trying too hard.\" \"I can't remember when,\" I said. I held the trembling girl against me, shaking my head. He glanced at the girl. \"If the calculations are right it was more than a hundred years ago.\" We assembled in the control room for a council. We were all a little better for being together. John Croft named the others for me. I restless, with dark eyes that studied the rest of us. I looked at the girl. She was staring out of the ports, her hands pressed against the transparent break in the smooth wall. Karen Thiesen was a chemist, now frightened and trying to remember. I wasn't in much better condition. \"Look, if it comes too fast for me, \"I can't grasp it. How can we go very far in a lifetime?\" \"It can be done in two lifetimes,\" John said quietly. \"How long ago was it?\" \"It was set at about a hundred years, sir. Doesn't that fit at all?\" \"I can't believe it's possible.\" Carl caught my eye. \"Captain, we save this time without aging at all. It puts us near a calculated destination.\" \"We've lost our lifetime.\" It was Karen. She had been crying silently while we talked. \"Don't think about it,\" Paul said. \"We can still pull this out all right if you don't lose your nerve.\" \"What are we to do?\" she asked. John answered for me. \"First we've got to find out where we are. I know this ship but I can't fly it.\" \"Can I?\" I asked. We set up a temporary plan of action. Paul took Karen to the laboratory in an effort to help her remember her job. Carl went back to divide the rations. I was to study the charts and manuals. It was better than doing \"I wish I knew what you were doing,\" I said savagely. \"Give it time.\" \"We can't spare any, can we?\" I asked. \"I wish we knew. What about her—Dr. Thiesen?\" \"She's in the lab. I don't think that will do much good. She's got to be shocked out of a mental state like that.\" \"I guess you're right,\" he said slowly. \"She's trained to administer the suspension on the return trip.\" I let my breath out slowly. \"I didn't think about that.\" \"We couldn't even get part way back in a lifetime,\" he said. \"How old are you, John?\" \"Twenty-eight.\" \"What about me?\" \"I know. It's the only thing I could think of. Why didn't everyone react the same?\" \"That had me wondering for a while. I don't know. Anyway how could you go about making her remember?\" \"Throw a crisis, some situation at her, I guess.\" He shrugged, letting his sure hands rest on the panel of dials. I around his massive shoulders. \"You did it.\" \"You gave me the idea, Mister, talking about Dr. Thiesen.\" you're all right.\" \"John did it. He hit the alarm figuring I would react. Listen, Paul. Is any one hurt?\" \"No. Carl is here too. His stomach flopped again but he's okay. What about food. We're supposed to be checked before we eat.\" \"We'll have to go ahead without it. Any change?\" \"No, I put her to bed. Shall I bring food?\"\n\n<question>:\nOf his fellow crew members, who does David seem to have the most concern for and why?\n\n<options>:\nA Karen, because she's a female crew member and because she has a bad reaction to being awoken.\nB John, because he relies on him to be his right-hand man.\nC John, because David first wakes him up with the apparatus and is unsure how safe the apparatus is to operate.\nD Karen, because she's his wife and he only remembers this with time.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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616 | quality | [
{
"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 Bell Curve Flattened Charles Murray is a publicity genius, and the publication of his and Richard Herrnstein's book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life , in the fall of 1994 was his masterpiece. The Bell Curve isn't a typical work of trade nonfiction. It is gotten up as a work of original scholarly research. Most works containing fresh regression analysis and historical argument from primary sources would be published in academic quarterlies that send manuscripts out for elaborate, lengthy evaluation before deciding whether to publish them. Herrnstein and Murray didn't do this, so it wasn't until a full year or more after The Bell Curve was published that the leading experts on its subject had a chance to go through the underlying data with care. Therefore, as time went on, the knowledgeability of the Bell Curve discussion grew, but the attention paid to that discussion inevitably shrank. First, a quick précis of The Bell Curve . IQ tests, according to Murray and Herrnstein, measure an essential human quality, general intelligence. During the second half of the 20 th century, this quality has risen to supreme importance, because society has become increasingly complex. The intelligent have therefore gone through an \"invisible migration,\" from points of origin all over the class system to a concentration at the top of business, government, and the professions. They are likely to become ever more dominant and prosperous. The unintelligent are falling further and further behind. Because intelligence is substantially inherited, nothing is likely to reverse this process. Blacks are overrepresented among the unintelligent. Any efforts government might make to improve the economic opportunities of poor people, especially poor black people, are likely to fail, because their poverty is so much the result of inherited low intelligence. About the best that can be done for these people is an effort to create a world of simple, decent, honorable toil for them. and that native ability (and economic success independent of native ability) can be enhanced by improving education, training, and public health. The Bell Curve refers in passing to some of these points, but on the whole it sets up a cartoon-left position as its (easy) target. Meanwhile, the psychometricians who dominate the footnotes of The Bell Curve are John Hunter, Arthur Jensen, Malcolm Ree, and Frank Schmidt. These men are well known within the field as representing its right wing, not a mainstream consensus. The next problem with The Bell Curve 's thesis is in the idea of the rise to dominance of the cognitive elite. To the book's initial audience of Ivy Leaguers, this idea seemed valid on its face. Everybody knows that the best universities, law firms, hospitals, investment banks, and the State Department used to be run by preppies whose main virtue was fortunate birth, and are now open to one and all on the basis of merit. But the larger premise--that intelligent people used to be scattered throughout the class structure, and are now concentrated at the top--is almost impossible to prove, simply because the mass administration of mental tests is such a recent phenomenon. High scorers on mental tests do \"bunch up\" (as Herrnstein and Murray put it) in elite-university student bodies. But this is tautological: Any group selected on the basis of scores on mental tests will be composed disproportionately of people who score high on mental tests. Proving The Bell Curve 's thesis would require proving that success increasingly correlates with IQ in areas of life where mental tests are not the explicit gatekeepers. To see how The Bell Curve tries and fails to get around these inherent problems, see and . Having conditioned its audience to view IQ as all-important, The Bell Curve then manipulates statistics in a way that makes IQ look bigger, and everything else smaller, in determining Americans' life-chances. The basic tool of statistical social science in general, and of The Bell Curve in particular, is regression analysis, a technique used to assign weights to various factors (called \"independent variables\") in determining a final outcome (called the \"dependent variable\"). The original statistical work in The Bell Curve consists of regression analyses on a database called the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The authors claim to demonstrate that high IQ is more predictive of economic success than any other factor, and that low IQ is more predictive of poverty and social breakdown. Virtually all the early commentators on The Bell Curve were unable to assess the merits of the regression analysis. \"I am not a scientist. I know nothing about psychometrics,\" wrote Leon Wieseltier (who was otherwise quite critical) in a typical disclaimer. But by now the statistics have been gone over by professionals, who have come up with different results. The key points of their critique of The Bell Curve are as follows: What Herrnstein and Murray used to measure IQ is actually a measure of education as well as intelligence. All the people tracked in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth took the Armed Forces Qualifying Test, which Herrnstein and Murray treat as a good measure of intelligence. Because the material covered in the test includes subjects like trigonometry, many academic critics of The Bell Curve have objected to its use as a measure only of IQ and not at all of academic achievement. Herrnstein and Murray concede in the footnotes that scores tend to rise with the subjects' education--but they seriously underestimate the magnitude of this rise, as shows. And they resist the obvious inference that the test scores are measuring something other than intelligence. Most of The Bell Curve 's analysis is devoted to proving that IQ has more predictive power than parental \"socio-economic status.\" But Herrnstein and Murray's method of figuring socioeconomic status seems designed to low-ball its influence, as explains. At the beginning of The Bell Curve , Herrnstein and Murray declare that \"the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves.\" And they claim that their view of IQ tests is \"squarely in the middle of the scientific road.\" They end by expressing the hope that we can \"be a society that makes good on the fundamental promise of the American tradition: the opportunity for everyone, not just the lucky ones, to live a satisfying life.\" Throughout, Herrnstein and Murray consistently present themselves as fair- (or even liberal-) minded technicians who have, with great caution, followed the evidence where it leads--which, unfortunately, is to a few unassailable if unpleasant scientific truths that it is their reluctant duty to report. In fact, The Bell Curve is a relentless brief for the conservative position in psychometrics and social policy. For all its talk of reflecting a consensus, the sources it draws upon are heavily skewed to the right. Herrnstein and Murray used quasi-nutty studies that support their position (as Charles Lane demonstrated in the New York Review of Books ), and ignore mainstream studies that contradict it (as Richard Nisbett showed in the New Republic ). The data in The Bell Curve are consistently massaged to produce conservative conclusions\n\n<question>:\nWhat was the basic purpose of The Bell Curve?\n\n<options>:\nA to show that our government really can't help poor people become more successful\nB to get people to stop believing in IQ tests\nC to explain how to improve peoples' intelligence\nD to help people learn how to improve their social status\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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445 | quality | [
{
"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\"But why?\" he cried, sinking down into the chair before me. In an \"You yourself have said it,\" I told him. \"I am a being of logic, just from his fingertips. His head was tilted over the back of the chair at His voice trembled when he said, \"But if I ask you to kill them, and \"To do so would be illogical.\" He waved his hands helplessly. \"Gratitude?\" he muttered. \"No, you don't understand that, either.\" \"I do not understand 'friend,'\" I said. then we must not go back. It was very simple, but I knew that he could not comprehend it. I tried to explain it to him, however. But he only stared at me, with and yet it had nothing to do with logic, to the end that I knew was inevitable. either. It was just an emptiness—a void that could not be filled by not solve. Strange, disturbing sensations stirred and whispered within the the the sounds of busy men and women, wresting secrets from the reluctant ether. A new chemistry, a new physics perhaps even a new biochemistry. that thin, dark whisper of dread was at the back of his mind. Slowly, as if reluctantly compelled, he turned around to face the window at his impassively in at him. That was the first impression he got after a of course, but only abstractedly. For the moment he could only be Then lines of type, and farther down: The item below the last one said: and this is \" Will we?\" he asked himself softly. It was only two stories down the moving ramp to Lorelei Cooper's laboratory. Peter took it in fifteen seconds, running, and stumbled to in the wrong place, and squeezed through the door as soon as it opened far enough to admit him. Lorelei, beautiful in spite of dark-circled eyes and a smear of grease on her chin, looked up from a huge ledger at the end of the room. One blonde eyebrow arched in the quizzical expression he knew so well. \"What makes, Peter my love?\" she asked, and bent back to the ledger. Then she did a double-take, looked at his face intently, and said, \"I'm sorry, I forgot,\" he said. \"But you have a scanner?\" \"Yes, of course. But really, Pete—\" \"You'll understand in a minute. Turn it on, Lorelei.\" She gazed at him levelly for a moment, kissed him impulsively, and then walked over to the video panel on the wall and swept a mountain of A faint wash of color appeared on the panel, strengthened slowly, and suddenly leapt into full brilliance. Lorelei caught her breath. It was a street scene in the Science City of Manhattan, flooded by the warm spring sunshine. Down on the lowest level, visible past the and below them, a pitiful huddle of \"The Invaders are here, citizens,\" the commentator was saying in a strangled voice. \"Stay off the streets. Hide yourselves. Stay off the streets....\" His voice droned on, but neither of them heard it. Lorelei buried her head on his chest, clutching at him desperately. \"Peter!\" she said faintly. \"Why do they broadcast such things?\" \"They have to,\" he told her grimly. \"There will be panics and suicides, them, so that he can fight them—and then it may not be enough.\" up the sloping side of a tall, pure white structure that dominated the from him and started toward the inner room. \"Wait here,\" he mouthed. \" But he pushed her away again, woodenly, and stalked forward. range of vision. Peter forced himself forward another step. Little Harry Kanin, Lorelei's assistant, was crumpled in a corner, half supported by the broad base of an X-ray chamber. His face was flaccid and bloated. His glazed eyes, impassive yet somehow pleading, stared at nothingness straight ahead of him. fear, beyond agony. He turned to the still-hovering monsters and said in a terrible voice, \"Why? Why?\" \"I can't understand,\" he cried wildly. \"What do you want?\" \" He heard a faint sound behind him, and whirled. It was the first time he had realized that Lorelei had followed him. She stood there, swaying, very pale, looking at the red Invaders. Her eyes swiveled slowly.... His voice was hoarse. \"Don't look! Don't—Go back!\" The horrible, a scream to wake the dead. Somebody said, \"Doctor!\" He wanted to say, \"Yes, get a doctor. Lorelei—\" but his mouth only twitched feebly. He couldn't seem to get it to work properly. He tried again. \"Doctor.\" \"Yes?\" A gentle, masculine voice. \"Where am I?\" he said. He tried to turn his head, but a firm hand pressed him back into the sheets. \"You're in a hospital. Just lie quietly, please.\" He tried to get up again. \"Where's Lorelei?\" \"She's well, and you'll see her soon. Now lie quietly. You've been a very sick man.\" The man hesitated, looked at him intently. \"Three months,\" he said. He turned and gave low-voiced instructions to a nurse, and then went away. —than three—months.\" He was right. All the nurses, and even Dr. Arnold, were evasive, but he kept asking them why he couldn't see Lorelei, and finally he wormed it out of them. It had been nine and a half months, not three, and he'd been in a coma all that time. Lorelei, it seemed, had recovered much sooner. \"She was only suffering from ordinary shock,\" Arnold explained. for approximately five minutes. Yes, we know—you talked a lot. It's a months ago.\" \"But why?\" Peter whispered. Peter couldn't think of anything to say. Dr. Arnold's voice went on after a moment, musingly. \"We're burrowing into the earth, like worms. \"I wonder,\" Peter said shakily, \"if I am strong enough to take it.\" \"Our last hope?\" \"I see,\" said Peter. And for the first time, he thought of the A man had just finished engraving the final stroke on its nameplate, to . He stepped away now, and joined the group a little distance away, silently waiting. Lorelei said, \"You can't do it. I won't let you! Peter—\" \"Darling,\" he began wearily. \"Don't throw your life away! Give us time—there must be another way.\" \"There's no other way,\" Peter said. He gripped her arms tightly, as if he could compel her to understand by the sheer pressure of his fingers. \"Darling, listen to me. We've tried everything. We've gone underground, but that's only delaying the end. we're riding a curve that ends in extinction fifty years from now. they came from. Besides them, we're apes. There's only one answer.\" them , but a superman could. That's our only chance. Lorelei—darling—don't you see that?\" She choked, \"But why can't you take me along?\" He stared unseeingly past her wet, upturned face. \"You know why,\" he said bitterly. \"Those rays are strong. They don't only work on embryos He turned away suddenly, not trusting himself to kiss her goodbye. A line from an old film kept echoing through his head. \" He was trembling violently. He ran the last few steps, stumbled into behind him, and walked down the long corridor into the control chamber. The energy-charged screen flickered off to let him pass, and closed The the silence pressed in about him. from the incubators. Time went by, meaninglessly. He ate when he was after a time he ceased even to wonder. Peter closed the diary. \"The rest you know, Robert,\" he said. He rose and strode nervously over to the window. I watched him as he I said, \"That is the reason why we will not go back to Earth.\"\n\n<question>:\nBased on the remainder of the passage, from whose perspective is the introduction?\n\n<options>:\nA Robert\nB Peter\nC An Invader\nD Lorelei\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,835 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nAnd Hilary brought in a bottle of his new detergent. It was a syrupy She pondered it while she went to It was dried apricot pie, and very tasty, I might add. Hilary grinned. \"Lauryl benzyl \"Why, Donald,\" she said, \"it could \"What is it?\" I asked. \"You never What gave you the idea?\" \"It wasn't my idea, really,\" I admitted. \"Mr. McCormack called me to the office today, and told me that told us.\" be quite interesting, if I understand one of the group suggested my name.\" I should explain, perhaps, that I now empty of its soda bottles, policeman asked. \"I am indeed,\" I said, and a flash \"Gracious, you wouldn't have to sell from door-to-door, would you?\" \"Of course not. I'd just tell the all about it.\" \"Perhaps,\" I countered, \"somebody kids how to do it.\" Marjorie put back her head and \"Oh, all right,\" I said, \"laugh at quiet. \"You didn't know that one of your junior whatsisnames poured detergent in the Memorial Fountain basin worry about it, really. Mr. McCormack said we could get Mr. Wells from my commercial aspirations. But don't Commercial Department to help out us some marvelous pictures—men rolling up their trousers to wade across the street. And this morning,\" she chortled, \"somebody phoned in an anonymous tip to the police—of course it was the same boy that did \"Mice?\" again. Thus it was that on a Wednesday morning about three weeks later, I \"Yes, of course. Who would ever the group members, Tommy Miller. \"O.K.,\" I said, \"let's relax. You don't need to treat me as a teacher, I'd be dealing with. The three who were sitting to my left were the ones who had proposed the group in the first place. rather angular—all shoulders and elbows. Peter Cope, Jr. and Hilary Matlack were skinny kids, too. The three were of an age and were all tall for I had the impression during that first meeting that they looked rather them and they'll be down to nothing apiece.\" Doris was right, of course, in spite with a face full of freckles and an infectious laugh, and Tommy Miller, a few months younger, was just an average, extroverted, well adjusted youngster, noisy and restless, tee-shirted and butch-barbered. The group exchanged looks to see who would lead off, and Peter Cope seemed to be elected. \"Well, Mr. Henderson, a junior \"Why not?\" Tommy asked. \"There's something wrong with making said Hilary. \"We'll need some money up in a hurry—not engraved, for a wonder. It was on Tuesday—following the Thursday—that a lanky young man disentangled himself from his car and strolled into the barn. I looked free up rusty bolts, cleaner to remove squares of screening onto wooden frames. \"Hi,\" he said. \"You're Donald Henderson, right? My name is McCord—Jeff McCord—and I work in me over here, but if he hadn't, I think I'd have come anyway. What are you doing to get patent protection I got my back unkinked and dusted off my knees. \"Well, now,\" I said, \"I've been wondering whether something shouldn't be done, but I know very little about such matters—.\" \"Exactly,\" he broke in, \"we guessed freckle remover? I'd be our first customer.\" Pete. He fixed me with a challenging eye. \"You should be able to make \"How about a new detergent?\" Hilary \"Like the liquid dishwashing detergents?\" weeks later that I arrived at the barn. Jeff McCord was there, and the whole brand new synthetic detergent. I've team except Tommy. Jeff lowered his \"Hi.\" \"Hi yourself,\" I told him. \"You feet from the picnic table and said, look pleased.\" \"I am,\" he replied, \"in a cautious legal sense, of course. Hilary and I his phosphonate detergent. I've spent Dr. Matlack's son, aren't you? Been dipping into your father's library?\" detergents and a good round \"That's fine, Mr. McCord,\" Hilary said, \"but it's not very important.\" \"No?\" Jeff tilted an inquiring eyebrow \"Before-shave lotion,\" Hilary told him. \"You've shaved this morning, but try some anyway.\" handkerchief and wiped, looked at the cloth, wiped again, and stared. \"What is it?\" knew it.\" There was a pause, then Tommy didn't have to admit it, they might like the shave lotion.\" Hilary had been deep in thought. \"Oh, he stopped at the bank to get \"What on earth for? We have over six thousand in the account.\" \"Well,\" Peter said, looking a little embarrassed, \"we were planning to a loan.\" buy a hydraulic press. You see, Doris Marge asked as she refilled my coffee barn and Betty Miller philosophically assumed the role of commissary officer. She paused only to say hello Fourth Street that we can rent for winter quarters. Oh, yes, and Jeff is starting action to get the company incorporated.\" young boy who doesn't know any better, may wind up a sales manager. Over the sandwiches, then, I suggested but they seemed not to be interested. Peter Cope waved it off by remarking that they'd each do what came naturally. On the other hand, they employers. Jeff McCord and I will be the only employees—just at first, anyway.\" Marge choked on something. \"Did \"Even so, it's child labor, isn't it?\" \"Child labor nothing. They're the the thought of kites. At first there was little enthusiasm, then Peter said, \"You know, we could work up something new. Has anybody ever seen a It was Mary, finally, who advanced Nobody had. Pete drew figures in the air with his hands. \"How about you say you'd be an employee?\" \"and think about the small end. It'll work out all right.\" I wished that the youngsters weren't said nothing, knowing that later I could help them redesign it along standard lines. them appeared quite attractive. Tommy, for example, wanted to put tooth powder into tablets that one would chew before brushing the Hilary, reluctantly forsaking his ideas on detergents, suggested we does sound like a born salesman. Somehow I don't think you're going to have to call in Mr. Wells.\" I do feel just a little embarrassed shapes while I was making it.\" \"Naturally,\" I said, and let it go at that. \"Where's Tommy?\" \"He stopped off at the bank,\" Pete Cope told me, \"to borrow some money. We'll want to buy materials to \"But I said yesterday that Mr. McCormack and I were going to advance some cash to get started.\" \"Oh, sure, but don't you think it have gone on and explained matters further, except that Tommy walked in and handed me a pocket check book. \"I got two hundred and fifty,\" he volunteered—not without a hint of complacency in his voice. \"It didn't take long, but they sure made it out a big deal. Half the guys in the bank name, Mr. Henderson, and you'll have to make out the checks. And they want you to stop in at the bank and hadn't picked a name yesterday, but I figured what's to lose, and picked one. I got my voice back and said, \"Engraved, I trust.\" \"Well, sure,\" he replied. \"You can't care if I never saw another. Tommy, who by mutual consent, was our authority on sales, didn't want to sell would sell them the next week and Mary McCready, with a fine burst of confidence, asked him in all seriousness to be sure to hold out a dozen.\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Hilary pour detergent into the fountain?\n\n<options>:\nA He didn't, it was Mary.\nB He didn't, it was Tommy.\nC He didn't, it was Doris.\nD He didn't, it was Peter.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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501 | quality | [
{
"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 SUPER OPENER BY MICHAEL ZUROY Here's why you should ask for a \"Feetch M-D\" next time you get a can opener! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from savagely. \"The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition. Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering \"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon Can-Opener!\" roared Mr. Piltdon. \"Look at our competitors. The International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds. Universal does it in four.\" \"But Mr. Piltdon—\" \"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a can in eight point nine without chimes. Is this what I'm paying you our opener still has stability, solidity. It is built to last. It has dignity....\" \"Dignity,\" pronounced Piltdon, \"is for museums. Four months, Feetch! In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter, stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I want it completely developed, engineered and tooled-up, ready for all.\" \"Got to be,\" answered Feetch tiredly. \"We must work along classical can-opener lines. Departures, such as the thermal or motor-driven types, would be too expensive for mass production.\" Three new models and a group of cans were waiting for them on the you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word, Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. \"Piltdon ought to rather disconcerting. \"Dear, dear,\" said Feetch, regarding the piles of food on the bench. \"There must be some explanation. I designed this opener with sixteen degree, twenty-two minute pressure angle modified involute gear teeth, seven degree, nineteen minute front clearance cutter angle and around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it.\" After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. \"This,\" he exulted, \"will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening! Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this! We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it.\" \"Mr. Piltdon—\" said Feetch shakily. Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. \"What's the matter, type can-opener, sir. A whole new field of physics. New principles. This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until had been close, but he'd made it. Beat the time limit by a half-day. The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: \"It's a sell-out!\" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. \"Step up production! Let 'er rip!\" The Super-Openers rolled over the country. In a remarkably short time they appeared in millions of kitchens from coast-to-coast. Sales climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores. Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program. Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary. spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect. Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch: boomed. All activity was seriously curtailed. A state of national emergency was declared. the Piltdon Super-Opener. Statisticians and mathematicians calculated the mean rate of can precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon openers were to come back, the deluge should be over in fifteen point twenty-nine days. Super-Opener sales of course immediately plummeted to zero and stayed there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A you go, I want you to know that I've directed the blame where it belongs. I've just released to the press the truth about who created the Super-Opener. Now, get out!\" \"Yes, sir,\" said Feetch paling. \"Then you don't want to hear about my discovery of a way to prevent the cans from coming back?\" \"You're positive, Feetch?\" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's. \"Sir, I never make careless claims.\" \"That's true,\" said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. \"It can be done,\" he mused. \"The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old. Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. \"Mr. Piltdon,\" he said. \"I'm asking \"No use,\" said Feetch. \"Nothing you can say—\" klunk! klunk! klunk!—\"will make any difference now.\" \"But see here, the New Type Super-Opener...!\" \"Will remain my secret. Good day.\" \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\" to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement. \"I'll go up another ten dollars,\" grated the little Piltdon image. the disguises you've had to use. Why don't you come back to us and change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and the world will soon forget about the old one.\" \"No,\" said Feetch. \"People will forget anyway—I hope.\" Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your let you.\" \"You're beginning to weaken. Don't. Think, chief, think. The brain that figured the Super-Opener can solve this.\" Feetch hung up. A glow of anger that had been building up in his chest \"Gentlemen,\" he said. \"I'll make it brief.\" He waved the papers in his hand. \"Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect, including plans and specifications for the New Type Super-Opener. All of you have special reasons for being keenly interested in this information. I am now going to give a copy to each of you, providing I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener.\" Published in the newspapers the following day, Feetch's statement read, in part: \"The motion in space and time of the singular curvilinear proportions of the original Super-Opener combined with the capacitor effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge in inverse proportion to the cube root of the tolerance between the space, and suspect that others exist beyond that. Beta space, which is also adjacent to our own space, is devoid of any form of life. The New Type Super-Opener is designed to pass cans through the Beta screen. Beta space will safely absorb an infinite number of cans. \"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company. \"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem.\" Piltdon blanched and left.\n\n<question>:\nWhich is *not* a competitor to the Piltdon Can Opener?\n\n<options>:\nA International\nB Minerva Mighty Midget\nC Universal\nD Super-Opener\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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567 | quality | [
{
"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 the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] \"Feetch!\" grated Ogden Piltdon, president of the Piltdon Opener Company, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, \"I want savagely. \"The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition. \"But Mr. Piltdon,\" remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's \"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon Can-Opener!\" roared Mr. Piltdon. \"Look at our competitors. The International rips apart cans in three and three-tenths seconds. Universal does it in four.\" \"But Mr. Piltdon—\" \"The Minerva Mighty Midget does it in four point two two and plays Home Sweet Home in chimes. Our own Piltdon opener barely manages to open a Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. \"But Mr. Piltdon, no more!\" Piltdon trudged out of the room, leaving behind him an oppressive silence. How could you set a time limit on research and development? A designer years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction. Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word, Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. \"Piltdon ought to \"Spinach, I think,\" said Feetch. \"Where did the can go, do you suppose?\" \"What's the difference? Don't you see what you've got here? It's the answer! It's more than the answer! We can put this right into work and \"I'll risk that. Not a word to Piltdon.\" Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing pencil point. \"Feetch!\" roared Piltdon. \"Is this talk that's going After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. \"This,\" We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it.\" \"Mr. Piltdon—\" said Feetch shakily. Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. \"What's the matter, This is big, Mr. Piltdon. I recommend that we delay production until further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on \"Feetch,\" bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. \"Stow this hooey. I don't give a damn where the cans go. May I remind you that under our standard patent agreement, all rights to your invention belong to the company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program. Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary. Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations, universities and independent investigators began to look into this new phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they spun, peered at, photographed, magnetized, exploded, shattered and analyzed Super-Openers without achieving the glimmer of a satisfactory explanation. Competitors found the patent impossible to circumvent, for any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect. Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch: me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year. That's almost four dollars a week, man.\" \"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon.\" And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received no recognition. His name did not even appear on the patent. Well, well, that was the way it went. He must find his satisfaction in his work. And it had been interesting lately, the work he had been doing nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect. expensive. He was a fool, he supposed, to try independent research when so many huge scientific organizations were working on it. But he could As soon as he could get hold of Piltdon, Feetch said trembling, \"Sir, I \"Are you still worrying about that?\" Piltdon roared jovially. \"Leave the Piltdon Super-Opener. there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of Piltdon's huge desk. \"No!\" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was \"You're positive, Feetch?\" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's. \"That's true,\" said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. \"It can be done,\" at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll give you another chance. You'll turn over all the details to me. The patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on production, at once, Feetch.\" Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. \"Mr. Piltdon,\" he said. \"I'm asking especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help \"Damn it, no!\" roared Piltdon. \"How many times must I tell you? You got \"Mr. Piltdon,\" Feetch said. \"I—\" klunk!—\"resign.\" Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face. \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\" from the Van Terrel Foundation: \"—cannot accept your application inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it. Of course, if he were to agree to reveal his latest discoveries to a research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement. No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might grab. The anger began to mount. \"I'll go up another ten dollars,\" grated the little Piltdon image. \"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—\" Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. \"Think it it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now. \"Piltdon!\" he barked. \"Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's one condition is met by Mr. Piltdon.\" He stared at Piltdon. \"In short, I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener.\" Piltdon leaped from his chair. \"Outrageous!\" He roared. \"Ridiculous!\" \"Gentlemen!\" squawked Piltdon, \"I appeal to you—\" Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: \"Gentlemen, will you After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed. \"I sincerely and humbly venture the opinion that we are on the threshold of tremendous and mighty discoveries. It is my belief that \"Mr Feetch—\" said Piltdon. Multi-Dimensional Development Division of the Piltdon Opener Company. \"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem.\" Piltdon blanched and left.\n\n<question>:\nWhat was Piltdon most interested in?\n\n<options>:\nA Making money\nB Being known around the world\nC Keeping Feetch on the payroll\nD Having more patents than anyone else\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,880 | quality | [
{
"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 earth, jungle and moons slowed, and settled to their proper places. Standing in the sticky, sweet-smelling ooze, Alan eyed out of his misery. together, and the sound of a scream faintly. Frowning, worrying about the sounds, Alan momentarily forgot again in the rustling jungle suddenly plunged into an ant hill, throwing him to the jungle to watch his step until his foot floor. \"Damn!\" He cursed again, for the tenth time, and stood he climbed up and stood once little footholds in the soft bank, darkness. tree-bound octopus. Fitful little plants grew straggly in the one at camp headquarters.\" In the distance the sky blazed as a blaster roared in the jungle. Then Alan heard the approaching robot, crunching and snapping jungle floor, but now, late afternoon on the planet, the shadows were long and gloomy. Alan peered around him at the vine-draped shadows, listening to the soft rustlings and faint like an onrushing forest its way through the undergrowth jungle. Two short, popping drowned out almost immediately and silenced by an explosive crash. Alan started, camp computer. That's where sounds echoed across the stillness, Suddenly anxious, he slashed a hurried X in one of the trees to mark his position then turned to follow a line of similar marks back through the jungle. He tried to run, but vines blocked his way and woody shrubs pulled himself through the undergrowth and holding him back. Then, through the trees he saw the clearing of the camp site, the temporary home for the scout ship and the eleven men who, with Alan, were the only humans on the jungle planet, Waiamea. Stepping through the low shrubbery at the edge of the through the blackness. Alan changed direction slightly to follow a line between the or trip him. Even so, he stumbled in the wiry underbrush and exploratory party of scientists and technicians to Waiamea three days before. Except for a few of the killer robots rolling thoughts. Intermittently, like photographers' strobes, blue flashes would light the jungle slowly around the camp site on one about. \"So, they've finally got those things working.\" Alan smiled nightmare. Alan would have to barely above his head. Without pausing to think, Alan leaped back, and fell sprawling over a bush just as one of the robots rolled silently Alan turned slightly to the left, then froze in momentary panic. \"I should be at the camp I going?\" He tried to think back, to visualize the twists and turns he'd taken in the jungle. \"All I need is to get lost.\" He pictured the camp computer with no one to stop it, automatically and shorted the blaster cells. The killer turned and rolled back towards the camp, leaving Alan alone. Shakily, Alan crawled a few feet back into the undergrowth where he could lie and watch the camp, but not himself be seen. felt safer, somehow, hidden. He the jungle was perceptibly darker. Alan grabbed his pocket blaster unaccountably in the trees overhead and every now and then leaves or a twig fell softly to the ground, close to where he lay. Reaching into his jacket, Alan fingered his pocket blaster. He the robot on the river you anywhere. This looked like Alan's blast. Slowly Alan looked around, sizing up his situation. Behind him the dark jungle rustled forbiddingly. He shuddered. \"Not a very healthy spot to spend the night. On the other hand, I certainly can't get to the camp with a pack of mind-activated mechanical killers running around. Then, unexpectedly, Alan saw forming a dense underbrush that night sky, and half dragging his swelling leg he stumbled out of the jungle into the camp clearing. Ahead, across fifty yards of grass stood the headquarters made walking difficult. At midday at every step. Straining every muscle in spite of the agonizing pain, Alan forced himself to a limping run across the uneven ground, carefully avoiding the insect hills for an unknown planet, with her to follow, to try to create a home in a jungle clearing. Crazy maybe, shakily in the dark edge of the jungle waiting, it seemed, for his small blaster to run dry. but Peggy and her green eyes \"Be damned! You can't win now!\" Alan yelled between blaster shots, almost irrational from Alan unclenched his fists and saw another of the robots standing him like the protesting of a branch too heavily laden. Blaster ready, Alan rolled over onto his back. In the movement, his elbow struck the top of a small the bugs. As he did so, a dark shapeless thing plopped from the trees onto the spot where he had been lying stretched out. Then, like an ambient fungus, it slithered off into the jungle undergrowth. For a split second the jungle Alan whirled, startled. The robot fired erratically as Alan Six or seven others also left the camp headquarters area and headed for the jungle, each to a slightly different spot. Frantically, Alan slammed sensed him yet, but Alan didn't Apparently the robot hadn't open the door as the robot, sensing know what the effective range jungle. Minutes later, looking of its pickup devices was. He jungle seemed for an instant to thicken and choke in his throat. landing in the morning, settling down slowly after a lonely two-week distance. \"He's waking. Call his wife.\" Alan opened his eyes in a white room it was slowed by the larger trees and the thick, clinging vines, and Alan found that he could manage to keep ahead of it, barely out of blaster range. Only, the robot didn't get tired. Alan did. and danced across the jungle floor, hiding debris that tripped him and often sent him sprawling clothes, and insects attracted by pants and shirt. Behind, the robot and rustlings and an occasional low, throaty sound like an angry cat. Alan's fingers tensed a pack of small feline creatures leaped snarling and clawing back into the night. Mentally, Alan tried to figure the charge remaining in his blaster. now, gaining on the tired human. Legs aching and bruised, stinging from insect bites, Alan tried to force himself to run holding his hands in front of him like a child in the dark. His insect hill and a winged swarm exploded around him. Startled, Alan jerked sideways, crashing his head against a tree. He clutched at the bark for a second, The robot crashed loudly behind him now. Without stopping to think, Alan fumbled along the ground after his gun, straining his eyes in the darkness. He two robots coming up from shadows of the mossy trunks, layer. Almost blinded by pain, whimpering, Alan stumbled forward. Growing right to the edge of the banks, the jungle reached out with hairy, disjointed arms as if to snag even the dirty little stream that passed so timidly through its domain. Alan, lying in the mud of the stream bed, felt the earth shake as the heavy little robot rolled Alan trembled. For the first Alan became a man. tree crashed heavily past Alan into the stream. Above him on and its blaster swivelled slowly down. Frantically, Alan Pressing with all his might, Alan slid slowly along the bank inches at a time, away from the machine above. Its muzzle turned slightly overhanging the bank, the robot fired again. For a split second Alan seemed engulfed in dug, then it fell with a heavy splash into the mud, ten feet from where Alan stood. Without hesitation Alan a steel-skinned water monster trying to dislodge a tenacious crab, while Alan, arms and legs wrapped tightly around the blaster Slowly, trying to anticipate and shift his weight with the spinning plunges, Alan worked\n\n<question>:\nWhy is Alan in the jungle?\n\n<options>:\nA Alan is hiding from the killer robots in the jungle.\nB Alan is with a group of colonists, who are going to build a new colony on the jungle planet.\nC Alan is hunting pumas in the jungle.\nD Alan is camping with friends in the jungle.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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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>:\nFight Club , a movie about a fictional organization of men who strip down and beat each other to pulp, has provoked more than its share of media hand-wringing, particularly diatribes about Hollywood's infatuation with violence and Faludi-esque ruminations about the emasculated American male. Fight Club , however, has not sparked an iota of interest in a real organization of men who strip down and beat each other to pulp: the Ultimate Fighting Championship. UFC's flameout from national sensation to total irrelevance is a tragedy of American sports, a cautionary tale of prudishness, heavy-handed politics, and cultural myopia. UFC began in 1993 as a locker-room fantasy. What would happen if a kickboxer fought a wrestler? A karate champion fought a sumo champion? Promoters built an octagonal chain-link cage, invited eight top martial artists, and set them loose in no-holds-barred, bare-knuckles fights. \"There are no rules!\" bragged an early press release. Contestants would fight till \"knockout, submission, doctor's intervention, or death.\" UFC allowed, even promoted, all notions of bad sportsmanship: kicking a man when he's down, hitting him in the groin, choking. Four-hundred-pound men were sent into the Octagon to maul guys half their size. Only biting and eye-gouging were forbidden. UFC's caged matches revolutionized the idea of fighting. Nursed on boxing and Hollywood, Americans imagine fights as choreography, a dance of elegant combinations, roundhouse kicks, clean knockouts. The UFC punctured this. Boxers floundered. Experts in striking martial arts such as karate and tae kwon do, who fancied themselves the world's greatest fighters, found themselves pretzeled by jujitsu masters, who pulled them to the ground and slowly choked or leg-locked them. \"UFC immediately debunked a lot of myths of fighting, of boxing, karate, kung fu. It showed the reality of what works in an actual fight,\" says Dave Meltzer, editor of Wrestling Observer . The UFC spawned a new breed of \"mixed martial artists.\" World-class wrestlers learned to kickbox. Champion kickboxers learned to grapple. (The karate experts learned to stay home.) They became, without doubt, the best fighters in the world. (Click for more about the fighters.) Mike Tyson wouldn't last 30 seconds in an ultimate fighting match. When Olympic gold medal wrestler Kevin Jackson came to the UFC, a fighter named Frank Shamrock KO'd him with a submission hold in 16 seconds. Ultimate fighting schools began sprouting up all over the country, replacing the stylized gestures of the Eastern martial arts with techniques that actually work. UFC's promoters predicted that it would supplant boxing as America's martial art. Instead, it fell apart. The collapse began in 1996, when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., saw a UFC tape. McCain, a lifelong boxing fan, was horrified at the ground fighting, kicks, and head butts. It was \"barbaric,\" he said. It was \"not a sport.\" He sent letters to all 50 governors asking them to ban ultimate fighting. The outcry against \"human cockfighting\" became a crusade, and like many crusades, it was founded on misunderstanding. UFC fell victim to cultural determinism about what a fight is. In countries such as Brazil and Japan, where no-holds-barred fighting has a long history, it is popular and uncontroversial. But Americans adhere to the Marquis of Queensbury rules. A fight consists of an exchange of upper-body blows that halts when one fighter falls. Similarly, the chain-link fence surrounding the octagon looks grotesque. Critics have demanded that UFC install ropes instead. But ropes are a major cause of death and injury in boxing: Fighters hyperextend their necks when they are punched against the ropes, because nothing stops their heads from snapping back. The chain-link fence prevents hyperextension. When I tell people I'm an ultimate fighting fan, they invariably respond: \"Don't people get killed all the time doing that?\" But no one has ever been killed at the UFC--though boxers are killed every year. No one has even been seriously injured at the UFC. On the rare occasions when a bout has ended with a bloody knockout, the loser has always walked out of the ring. But logic has not served the UFC well. Where McCain led, a prudish nation followed. George Will opined against UFC. The American Medical Association recommended a ban. New York state outlawed ultimate fighting, as did other states. The Nevada Athletic Commission refused to sanction UFC bouts, barring the UFC from the lucrative casino market. (One public TV station refused a UFC sponsorship ad. The only other organization the station ever rejected was the Ku Klux Klan.) Lawsuits blocked or delayed UFC events all over the country, forcing the promoters to spend millions in legal fees. The UFC was exiled from mega-arenas to ever-smaller venues in ever more out-of-the-way states: Louisiana, Iowa, and Alabama. The match I attended in October 1997 was held in the parking lot of a small Mississippi casino. The cable TV industry struck the fatal blow. In early 1997, McCain became chairman of the commerce committee, which oversees the cable industry. In April 1997, the president of the National Cable Television Association warned that UFC broadcasts could jeopardize the cable industry's influence in Washington. Time Warner, TCI, Request, Cablevision Systems, Viewer's Choice, and other major operators stopped airing UFC events, saying they were too violent for children. Never mind that 1) UFC only aired on pay-per-view, so children could not see it unless their parents paid for it and 2) the same cable outfits carried boxing matches, R and NC-17 movies, and professional wrestling shows far more violent than UFC. The UFC's \"addressable audience\"--the potential number of PPV subscribers--shrank from 35 million at its peak to 7.5 million today. \"It was a very cheap way for the cable companies to portray themselves as anti-violence. It did not cost them much and it made them look good in Washington,\" says Carol Klenfner, spokeswoman for UFC's parent company, SEG. The ultimate fighting industry did little to help its own cause. The UFC promoted itself less as a serious sport than as a circus of carnage. Its early ads emphasized extreme fighting's potential for death. UFC folks accused McCain, without any evidence, of opposing the sport as a favor to campaign contributors. Extreme fighting was tarnished when fighters from the other ultimate fighting operation, the now-defunct Battlecade, were arrested for violating Canadian prizefighting laws when they fought on an Indian reservation outside Montreal. In the past two years, an increasingly desperate UFC has been trying to assuage its critics. The competition, which had been gradually adding safety rules since the first fight, imposed even more. It institued rounds and a \"10-point must\" scoring system. It banned head butts and groin strikes. You can no longer kick a downed man or elbow someone in the back of the head. Fighters are required to wear thin martial arts gloves (a purely cosmetic change). The UFC imposed weight classes, ending the David-and-Goliath mismatches that made early fights so compelling.\n\n<question>:\nWhat could have spurred the American Medical Association recommending a ban against UFC?\n\n<options>:\nA There was general political pressure to disfavor the sport, independent of its safety\nB The \"up close and personal\" style of fighting meant that fighters were much more prone to catching sickness from each other, compared to boxing and other sports\nC Private money that could have been going to scientific research was being moved to UFC advertisements, and they wanted to change the discussion\nD Too many people had been seriously injured, so once someone was killed, something had to be done\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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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>:\nto Cupia, where Lilla awaits in some dire extremity.” THE COUP D’ETAT The next morning Myles Cabot was led under guard to the council chamber of the dread thirteen: Formis and her had served in the wars in which Cabot had twice freed Cupia from the domination of its Formian oppressors. They spoke with bitterness of the downfall of their beloved spent on the planet Venus, where, by the aid of radio, he had led the Cupians to victory over their oppressors, a human-brained race of gigantic black ants. He had driven the last ant from the face of continental Poros, and had Formia. Their testimony was brief. to occupy the throne of Cupia. Then the accused was asked if he wished to say anything in his own behalf. Myles rose, then shrugged his shoulders, (presumably) shot himself back to Poros on the night of the won and wed the Princess Lilla, who had borne him a son The messenger: “Yuri lives and reigns over Cupia. It is his “Supporters of Yuri still remained among the Cupians, So, after waiting an interminable time in the stuffy booth “Then Yuri disappeared. Those of us who were closest with my hands full of dimes, nickels, and quarters, I finally seas to claim as his own the throne of Cupia. But we hesitated to announce this until we were sure, for we feared that some of our own people would regard his departure as desertion. Yet who can blame him for returning to his father-land and to the throne which is his by rights?” got my party. to him suspected that he had gone back across the boiling back our own old country, if we too will return across the boiling seas again.” “Yuri, usurper of the thrones of two continents. Bah!” “It is a lie!” Doggo shouted. “Yuri, our rightful leader,” shouted Barth. shouted Emu. “Give us a queen of our own race,” shouted Fum. had defeated in the duels so common among them, then many a Formian would have “got the number” of many another, that day. he was then quietly visiting at my farm, after five earth-years Venus (or Poros, as its own inhabitants call it,) which befell him upon his return there after his brief visit to the earth. I have edited those notes into the following II TOO MUCH STATIC Myles Cabot had returned to the earth to study the absence. The last of the ant-men and their ally, the renegade Cupian Prince Yuri, had presumably perished in an attempt to escape by flying through the steam-clouds which completely befriended him on his previous visit. Could it be that all his adventures in Cupia had been naught but a dream longer possessed the wonderful electrical headset which he had contrived and built during his previous visit to that planet, so as to talk with Cupians and Formians, both of 11 He dreaded the paralyzing bite which Formians usually administer to their victims, and which he had twice experienced in the past This was Cupia, his Cupia. He was home once more, back again upon the planet which held all that was dear to him in two worlds. His heart glowed with the warmth of homecoming. What mattered it that he was now a prisoner, in the hands (or, rather, claws) of his old enemies, the Formians? He had been their prisoner before, and had escaped. Once more he could escape, and rescue the Princess Lilla. solar system from Poros to the earth. He wondered what could have happened in Cupia since his departure, only a few sangths ago. How was it that the ant-men had survived their airplane journey across the thus had escaped the general extermination of their race. In either event, how had they been able to reconquer Cupia? And where was their former leader, Yuri, the renegade Cupian prince? These and a hundred other similar questions flooded in upon the earth-man, as the Formian airship carried him, a continent. What uninhabited portion of Cupia could this be, outskirts further building operations were actively in progress. Apparently a few survivors of the accursed race of Formians were consolidating their position and attempting to build up a new empire in some out-of-the-way portion of the continent. of a Formian. Even so, it was better than nothing. The earth-man seized come all you Formians, whose race I thought had been exterminated? What part of Cupia is this? What is this city? Where is Prince Yuri? And what do you intend to do with is not Cupia. Do you remember how, when your victorious army and air navy swept to the southern extremity of what had been Formia, a few of our survivors rose in planes from the ruins of our last stronghold and braved the dangers of the steam clouds which overhang the boiling seas? Our leader was Prince Yuri, erstwhile contender for the throne of Cupia, splendid even in defeat. new empire. At the worst we should merely meet death in another form, rather than at your hands. So we essayed. New Formia. But how is it that you, Myles Cabot, have arrived here on this continent in exactly the same manner and condition in which I discovered you in Formia eight years ago?” gone to the planet Minos (which we call the Earth) to learn the latest discoveries and inventions there, and how his calculations for his return to Poros had been upset by some static conditions just as he had been about to transmit himself back. Oh, if only he had landed by chance upon III YURI OR FORMIS? The earth-man grimaced, but then smiled. Perhaps, his succeeding to the toga of King Yuri might prove to be an “So Yuri is king of the ants?” he asked. “Yes,” his captor replied, “for Queen Formis did not survive the trip across the boiling seas.” “Then what of your empire?” Myles inquired. “No queen. No eggs. How can your race continue? For you Formians are like the ants on my own planet Minos.” Air Navy, and mother of a new Queen Formis.” This was truly a surprise! All along Cabot had always regarded the Formians as mannish. And rightly so, for they performed in their own country the duties assigned to men among the Cupians. Furthermore, all Formians, save only the reigning Formis herself, were called by the Porovian pronoun, which corresponds to “he” in English. When Myles had somewhat recovered from his astonishment, fact, it merely intensifies Yuri’s mistrust and hatred of me. Now that I am mother of the queen, he fears that I may turn against him and establish Formis in his place as the head of an empire of the Formians, by the Formians, and for the Formians exclusively.” “Why don’t you?” Myles wrote. It seemed to him to be thought of independence in the mind of one reared in an autocracy. The earth-man, however, persisted. “How many of the council can you count on, if the interests of Yuri should clash with those of Formis?” “Where is the arch-fiend now?” he asked. “We know not,” the Formian wrote in reply. “Six days ago he left us in his airship and flew westward. When he failed to return, we sent out scout planes to search for would have spoken it with scorn and derision. “Treason? Is it treason to support your own queen? What has become of the national pride of the once great Formians? Look! I pledge myself to the cause of Formis, rightful Queen of Formia. Formis, daughter of Doggo! What say you?” This time, as he tore up the correspondence, Doggo signified an affirmative. And thus there resulted further and here he was now, millions of miles away through space retiring on matted silver felting on the concrete floor of a Porovian ant-house. Such are the mutations charged with treason to Yuri, whereupon two members of the council, whom I have won over to the cause of my daughter, will raise the objection that Yuri is not our king. This will be the signal for the proclaiming of Queen Formis.\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Yuri go back to Cupia?\n\n<options>:\nA He was in love with Lilla\nB He wanted to rule both lands\nC He was afraid of Myles\nD He deserted New Formia\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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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>:\nspaceship cooks: He had to feed the men men on ships think about, talk about, bitch about their food. It's challenge shipmen face three times a day, so central to their thoughts his diet, a fruit known to us mariners of a more sophisticated age Should any groundsman dispute the importance of belly-furniture in The Ship's Cook, the man who accomplishes the daily miracle of turning offal into eatables, is in many ways the most vital man aboard a spacer. He can make morale or foment a mutiny. His power is paramount. in deep space, half dead from deuterium poisoning. We think incident, too, caused by a Ship's Cook who allowed the stomach of every man aboard, where it fermented each subsequent the ancient observation, \"God sends food, and the Devil sends cooks,\" . The aboard the Registry minimum of six men and three officers. Ship's Surgeon was myself, Paul Vilanova. Our Captain was Willy Winkelmann, the hardest man in space and very likely the fattest. Ship's Cook was Cooking aboard a spacer is a job combining the more frustrating tensions of biochemistry, applied mycology, high-speed farming, dietetics and sewage engineering. It's the Cook's responsibility to see that each man aboard gets each day no less than five pounds of Twelve tons of water, oxygen, and food would have filled the cargo compartments to bursting, and left a small ship like the essential amino acids. oxygen would be conversant with the alveoli of every man aboard by the politicians are right enough when they say that we spacers are a breed apart. We're the one race of men who can't afford the luxury of squeamishness. Though I'm signed aboard as Ship's Surgeon, I seldom lift a knife extraordinary. My duties are to serve as wailing-wall, morale officer, guardian of the medicinal whiskey and frustrator of mutual murder. Generally the man aboard who'd serve as the most popular murder-victim is the Cook. This trip, the-man-you-love-to-hate was our Captain. If the Cook hadn't problems enough with the chemical and psychic duties of his office, Winkelmann supplied the want. Captain Willy Winkelmann was the sort of man who, if he had to go into space at all, had best do was a chip of helium ice, his voice dripped sarcastic acid. The planet Pullman car, our Captain quickly established himself as a major social hemorrhoid. The Captain's particular patsy was, of course, young Bailey the Cook. shipmate \"Belly-Robber.\" It was Winkelmann who discussed and the properties of the nobler wines while we munched our algaeburgers and sipped coffee that tasted of utility water. And it was Captain Willy Winkelmann who never referred to the ship's head by any other name than The Kitchen Cabinet. the carbohydrate recycler. The crew thanked him. The Captain did not. you are feeding me.\" Captain Winkelmann blotted his chin \"Not much,\" I said. \"I suspect that the finest gift our Captain can to live with him. He's a good man at driving a ship.\" said. \"He eats well. We all do. I've dined aboard a lot of spacers in the good work, though, and you'll keep our Captain fat.\" Bailey nodded from his one-man cloud of gloom. I got a bottle of rye from Medical Stores and offered him a therapeutic draught. The Cook waved my gift aside. \"Not now, Doc,\" he said. \"I'm thinking about tomorrow's menu.\" imploring the Captain's ratification of his masterpiece. The big \"Yes, I eat it,\" the Captain said, taking and talking through another algae. He tapped his head with a finger. \"This—the brain that guides the ship—cannot be coaxed to work on hog-slop. You understand me, \"You are a spacer and a Ship's Cook, not a suburban You're asking him to make bricks without straw.\" Winkelmann regarded me with his pale-blue stare. \"You think, Doctor, that my cruelty to the Belly-Robber is the biliousness of a middle-aged Winkelmann said. \"Very well, Doctor. It is my belief that if the Pharaoh's taskmaster had had my firmness of purpose, the Children of Israel would have made bricks with stubble. Necessity, Doctor, is the mother of invention. I am Bailey's necessity. My unkindnesses make him uncomfortable, I doubt that not. But I am forcing him to experiment, \"Bailey will have some fifty thousand dollars' salary waiting when we ground at Brady Station,\" Captain Winkelmann said. \"So much money buys many discomforts. That will be all, Doctor Vilanova.\" \"Crew morale on the ship....\" I began. \"That will be all, Doctor Vilanova,\" Captain Winkelmann repeated. Bailey grew more silent as we threaded our way along the elliptical compliments to the Chef, please,\" the Captain would instruct one of the crew, \"and ask him to step down here a moment.\" And the Cook would cheerlessly appear in the dining-cubby, to have his culinary genius into Hohmann orbit. His every meal established a higher benchmark in \"We are not amused,\" said Captain Winkelmann, accepting a second The crew and my fellow-officers were amused by Winkelmann's riding of Captain and their Cook served to feed them so well. Most spacers embark lost weight during the first four months in space. Winkelmann, indeed, Captain that he curtail his diet for reasons of health, a bit of advice Each man aboard a spacer is allowed ten kilograms of personal effects besides his uniforms, these being considered Ship's Furnishing. As his rank and responsibility merit, the Captain is allowed double this ration. He may thus bring aboard with him some forty-five pounds of fact, had used up his weight-allowance in bringing aboard a case of Captain Winkelmann was not a reader, and had brought no books. Cards aboard their ship mother-naked. our food,\" the Captain said, his jowls settling into an expression of the meal.\" \"But, Sir....\" Bailey began. \"You must realize, Belly-Robber, that a dyspeptic Captain is a threat to the welfare of his ship. Were I to continue eating your surrealistic scarlet, his chest heaving with emotion. \"Doctor, I must point out to you that it ill behooves the Ship's and the men have been more than satisfied with his work.\" \"That only suggests atrophy of their taste buds,\" Winkelmann said. \"Doctor, you are excused. As are you, Belly-Robber,\" he added. Bailey and I climbed from the mess compartment together. I steered him to my quarters, where the medical supplies were stored. He sat on my restaurant of yours and forget about our fat Flying Dutchman.\" an apt confederate of vis medicatrix naturae , the healing power of though daring him to comment. The Captain lifted a spoonful of the now strong enough to withstand the Captain's fiercest assaults of vehement in their protests, blaming the Captain, in his absence, for oblivious of the taunts of his crewmates. \"The Dutchman won't want to mess ketchup on these steaks,\" the crewman .\" \"Thanks, Doc,\" Bailey said. this is a victory for the Captain, too. He drove you to this triumph you couldn't have done it without him.\" but he did know how to coax maximum performance out of his Ship's Cook.\" Bailey stood up. \"Do you like Captain Winkelmann, Doctor?\" he asked. I thought about his question a moment. Winkelmann was good at his job. He persuaded his men by foul means, true of the ship and his crew. \"Do I like Captain Winkelmann?\" I asked,\n\n<question>:\nAccording to the narrator, who is the most important figure onboard a spacecraft?\n\n<options>:\nA the Captain\nB the chef\nC the waste manager\nD the 'doctor'\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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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>:\n\"Irish!\" Hathaway snapped that, his face lighting up. \"Irish. The U.S. Cavalry it is!\" His eyes darted over the machines. \"Here. Help me. \"Get Gunther,\" the official orders read. It We'll stage everything on the most colossal raid of the century.\" Marnagan winced. \"You breathing oxygen or whiskey?\" of Marnagan capturing Raider's Base. I want a picture of Gunther's face was pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters. picked up and hurled against a lever-bank, and that Marnagan wasn't pushed him into a room where Gunther sat. Hathaway looked at him. \"So you're Gunther?\" he said, calmly. The could speak, Hathaway said: \"Everything's over with, Mr. Gunther. The Patrol is in the city now and we're capturing your Base. Don't try to fight. We've a thousand men against your eighty-five.\" Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed.\" ?\" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet. \"Impossible!\" \"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther.\" A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging \"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol.\" started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol. he and Marnagan rattled Five hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air. \"Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We're outnumbered!\" Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther's men didn't run, Hathaway had to credit them on that. They took it, standing. guns with them in their tight hands. from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state. Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and that pierced through his vac-suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos taking place immediately outside his window. The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And capture that Gunther lad!\" mashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped. Or Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: \"This is Gunther's work. He's whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins limbless, suddenly. \"Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!\" \"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No Gunther'd do anything to—did I say in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them. Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed they can't get us in here!\" Click's voice gasped it out, \"Damn your damn camera!\" yelled Marnagan. \"They might come in!\" \"Use your gun.\" \"They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase, and Gunther and— \"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!\" Hathaway snorted. \"U.S. Cavalry.\" Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. \"Snap me this pose,\" he said. \"I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped, my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace 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. wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him: \"Gunther drew us down here, sure as Ceres! That gravity change we felt that proves it. Gunther's short on men. So, It's a good front, this damned iron pebble. From it, Gunther strikes tend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle his attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the Patrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation, then.\" \"I don't see no Base around.\" with nothing Marnagan shooting his gun at tried pushing past him. \"Get out of the way,\" said Hathaway. at me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and ran away!\" \"Ran, hell!\" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and hunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part 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 \"Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals came from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come back!\" \"Come back? How?\" A soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming in malevolent anticipation about the two men. sending station for these telepathic brutes. Come on!\" Hathaway sludged into the pressing tide of color, mouths, contorted faces, silvery fat bodies misting as he plowed through them. besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty.\" The outpour of animals came from a low lying mound a mile farther on. Evidently the telepathic source lay there. They approached it warily. \"We'll be taking our chances on guard,\" hissed Irish. \"I'll go ahead, draw their attention, maybe get captured. Then, you show up with \"All right, put 'em up!\" a new harsh voice cried over a different radio. One of Gunther's guards. Three shots sizzled out, and Marnagan bellowed. gun up now. Oh, so it's you. I thought Gunther had finished you off. How'd you get past the animals?\" \"I tied them pink elephants of Gunther's in neat alphabetical bundles and stacked them up to dry, ya louse!\" Marnagan said. \"But, damn you, they killed my partner before he had a chance!\" The guard laughed. let himself down in, quiet and soft. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't you stand right there and die,\" he said quietly. \"That what Gunther twitch and I'll blast you and the whole damned wall out from behind you! Freeze!\" Ten minutes later, Marnagan and Hathaway, fresh tanks of oxygen on their backs, Marnagan in a fresh bulger and helmet, trussed the guard, short-handed of men. Gunther simply waited for specific cargo ships to rocket by, pulled them or knocked them down and swarmed over them for cargo. The animals served simply to insure against suspicion and the \"What good would that do?\" Hathaway gnawed his lip. \"They wouldn't fool the engineers who created them, you nut.\" Marnagan exhaled disgustedly. \"Ah, if only the U.S. Cavalry would come riding over the hill—\"\n\n<question>:\nHow was Gunther defeated?\n\n<options>:\nA Click and Irish tricked him and his pirate guards.\nB He had a heart attack.\nC He surrendered.\nD The U.S. Cavalry swarmed his base.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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2,316 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nBut a few revisions could change all that—\" He rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. \"How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be really sniffing out \"This kid is driving me nuts,\" said Dorffman through clenched teeth. \"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's \"No. Oh, no!\" \"Then what?\" \"You think that \"It would, I know it would.\" Lessing shook his head. \"I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the monitor is for, don't you?\" \"It stops things from going out.\" \"I know, I know.\" Lessing chewed his lip. \"I don't like it. We'd better set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with. I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing downstairs.\" \"Full psi precautions?\" asked Dorffman. \"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be sure of it. If Tommy's in the trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands.\" Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book, Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical get back to work again. The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!\" He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. \"I bow before the Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!\" \"If you've come here to be insulting,\" Lessing said coldly, \"you're unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping.\" Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want false as Satan.\" \"And our controls are above suspicion.\" \"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls,\" said Melrose. \"We've done a lot of work on it, too.\" \"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little misdirected, is all.\" \"According to your Theory, that is.\" \"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic enough.\" \"I've got 'til New Year.\" Lessing shouted for his girl. \"Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed \"What about Tommy?\" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along through the afternoon sun. \"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating.\" \"It's—unconventional, at any rate,\" Lessing snapped. \"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even \"That's right,\" said Lessing. \"We don't.\" \"And you don't know why all. It's not inconceivable that the children might be measuring the , eh?\" Lessing blinked. \"It's conceivable.\" \"Mmmm,\" said Melrose. \"Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality.\" \"Fine,\" said Melrose. \"Great. We can't prove that, of course, but I'll play along.\" underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get at it any more?\" \"And you think you have an answer,\" said Melrose. \"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains long, low building. \"All right, young man—come along,\" said Lessing. \"I think we can show you our answer.\" them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen.\" effective for our purposes.\" \"But you don't know why,\" added Melrose. \"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center without the \"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually, had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale.\" Lessing smiled. \"This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for \"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall down.\" suddenly, his voice earnest. \"You have fine facilities here, good workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force. \"Stop worrying about it,\" Dorffman urged. \"He's a crackpot. He's crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours.\" Dorffman's from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific grounds aren't right at all, in this case.\" Dorffman snorted. \"Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—\" \"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after the theory.\" \"So it seems. But why?\" \"He seems to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it defends them for all he's worth .\" \"But why shouldn't he?\" \"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep his objectivity,\" said Lessing. \"And what if he just happens to be wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's what he says that counts.\" \"But we know you're right,\" Dorffman protested. \"Do we?\" gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands. Lessing crossed the room swiftly. \"Tommy,\" he said. horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He before. There must be an error.\" \"Of course,\" said Lessing. \"According to the theory. The theory says their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely. We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he bloomed.\" Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. \"What are we going to do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?\" ?\" Lessing burst out. \"Didn't you see how he acted head. \"It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow for.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhere is the Hoffman Medical Center?\n\n<options>:\nA Newark\nB Westchester\nC Philadelphia\nD Trenton\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,354 | quality | [
{
"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[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from good. The bowl of pelache peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end. financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz, perhaps. Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everything out. Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched his scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakes with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight. And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out. hard-working. How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left he be flesh and blood? Hell, no! In the statistics Pendleton was the they wouldn't be born. Parents would get them by sending in so many box tops. He was drowsy There was no need to send more. Tunpesh had been inspected and maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had received something less than a thorough survey. And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. The captain had tried Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment. Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish \"How come our anthropologist on Tunpesh didn't come across with more \"It's a nice day, isn't it, Ted?\" Eckert took a deep and pleasurable breath. \"It's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be foliage. discharge cargo or make repairs. There was a blackened patch on it now, with little blast-ignited flames dying out around the edges. It won't be long before it will be green again , he thought. The grass looked before the next ship landed. He looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was suddenly, acutely aware that he and Templin would be stranded for six months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. And there would be no way of calling for help or of leaving before the six months were up. He stood there for a moment, drinking in the fresh air and feeling the warmth of the sun against his face. It might be a pleasant six months at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting. I must be getting old , he thought, thinking about the warmth and comfort. Like old dogs and octogenarians. surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath.\" \"It's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this.\" famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly.\" He gestured toward the village. \"You could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward appearance, could you?\" the wooded ridges. Small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched It looked fairly primitive, Eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. It didn't seem cluttered or dirty and you didn't feel like beating a hasty retreat when the wind was blowing toward you. A few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of odd about them, and they stared back with all the alert dignity of dangerous.\" It's because you never suspect kids damage with a knife as a man could, for instance. And they might have other weapons. But the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the piny scent of the trees. knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. He had the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. Eckert still had the and made a few mental notes. He wasn't bowing and scraping like most wide expanse of the countryside. There wasn't, so far as he could see, white-washed house midway up a hill. impressed. \"I am grateful,\" he said finally, \"but there is nothing I nothing \"You know, Ray, I got a kick out of the kids. They're a healthy-looking lot, aren't they?\" \"Too healthy,\" Templin said. \"There didn't seem to be any sick ones or ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. It doesn't seem natural.\" mud on the way home from school.\" He felt faintly irritated, annoyed at the way Templin had put it, as if any deviation from an Earth norm was potentially dangerous. \"In what way?\" The words came out slowly. \"The people are too casual, as though different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual times before. It should still be a novelty to them. And yet how much and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. It was going to be pleasant to live on Tunpesh for six months—even if the six months were all they had to live. The climate was superb and the people day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember Tunpesh. It would psychological chart was very close to Pendleton's. Pendleton's own \"I don't think it's primitive at all. There are too many disparities. Their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and nitrogen in the soil as well as sunlight, rather than the blessings of some native god. And they differ a lot in other respects. Their art and apparently the natives don't get sick here. But occasionally there are \"The obvious. They evidently have as much technology as they want, at least in fields where they have to have it.\" \"How come they haven't gone any further?\" \"Why should they? You can live without skycars and rocket ships, you know.\" for two weeks now and they've been very kind to us, seeing that we've had food and water and what fuel we need.\" \"It's known in the livestock trade as being fattened up for the in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It among the Tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch Templin to see that he \"The Tunpeshans know why we're here. We've dropped enough hints along \"They grow their women nice, don't they?\" \"Physically perfect, like the men,\" Templin grumbled. \"You could get an inferiority complex just from watching the people here. Everybody's so damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all look alike. Perfection. It gets boring after a while.\" Tunpesh. If it is a case of murder, what happens when the natives find out that we know it is?\" Templin's eyes dueled for a moment. Then he turned his back and walked to the window. \"I suppose you're right,\" he said at last. \"It's nice living here, Ted. Maybe I've been fighting it. But I can't help thinking that Don must have liked it here, too.\" thought, is when to enjoy yourself, when to work and when to worry. \" Pelache, menshar? \" \" customs. A little anthropology—with refreshments. ulami and the broiled halunch that I sabotaged his power pack. \"You look thoughtful, menshar certain aura of authority. \"So far as I know, He wiped his mouth on a broad, flat leaf that had been provided and took another sip of the wine. \"We were shocked to find out that which would make it difficult to talk about. That would make it even the Tunpeshan version of the\n\n<question>:\nWhat doesn't Tunpesh seem to have less of than Earth?\n\n<options>:\nA weapons\nB beautiful people\nC illness\nD bad weather\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,266 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nto their character—if such utterly alien creatures could be said to Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The house was furnished with all reminiscent of scores of movie sets of the Deep South. That on the right was sundeck solar-house living-machine modern, something like a montage of shoeboxes. The wing hidden by the rest of the house was, he \"Is this crop rotation or did you send for me?\" she asked cynically. himself—desire that both of them loathed because it was implanted within them by their captors. They walked toward the house. It didn't look like a prison—or a cage. Within the dome of the barrier, it looked more like a well-kept if bizarre little country estate. There was clipped lawn, a scattering of trees, even a clear might have been cellophane but wasn't, and it sprouted from a fabric They entered the house, which had no roof, continued to move beneath a sky that glowed with light which did not come from a sun or moon. It might have been a well-kept if bizarre little country estate, but it wasn't. It was a prison, a cage. The other two women were sitting in the heptagonal central hall. Eudalia, who had borne twin girls recently, was lying back, newly thin \"Okay, I guess,\" she said. \"The way they manage it, there's nothing to it.\" She had a flat, potentially raucous voice. Eudalia had been a female foreman in a garment-cutting shop before being captured and brought through. still, regarding him over the pregnant swell of her dirndl-clad waist. Olga had been a waitress in a mining town hash-house near Scranton. Tennant wanted to put an encouraging hand on her shoulder, to say something that might cheer her up, for she was by far the youngest of the three female captives, barely nineteen. But with the eyes of the other two, especially Dana, upon him, he could not. \"I guess I wasn't cut out to be a Turk,\" he said. \"I don't feel at ease in a harem, even when it's supposedly my own.\" \"You're not doing so badly,\" Dana replied acidly. It arrived before the meal, materializing against one of the seven be it gold, brown or red, it—are they—real?\" aroma of steak, it was almost tasteless. This was so with all of their foods, with their cigarettes, with everything in their prison—or their cage. Their captors were utterly without a human conception of smell, living, apparently, in a world without odor at all. Dana said suddenly, \"I named the boy Tom, after somebody I hate almost she's right, Dana. We're as helpless as—laboratory animals. They have the means to make us do whatever they want.\" all are. We seem to be in a universe of different properties as well as \"Are we really in the fourth dimension?\" Dana asked. Of the three of them, she alone had more than a high-school education. \"We may be in the eleventh for all I know,\" he told her. \"But I'll settle for the fourth—a fourth dimension in space, if that makes scientific sense, because we don't seem to have moved in time. I wasn't it's because they're pretty human.\" Human! considerable danger and, probably, expense of some kind. Some of them don't come back. They kill those of us who put up a fight. Those who don't—or can't—they bring back with them. Live or dead, we're just laboratory specimens.\" things they do—stuffing people, mounting their heads, keeping them on display in their—their whatever they live in. You call that human, Rog?\" \"Were you ever in a big-game hunter's trophy room?\" Tennant asked quietly. \"Or in a Museum of Natural History? A zoo? A naturalist's lab? Or even, maybe, photographed as a baby on a bear-skin rug?\" \"I was,\" said Olga. \"But that's not the same thing.\" holding the gold dress casually over her bare arm. Eudalia took him to the nursery. He was irritated now in another, angrier way. The infants, protected by cellophane-like coverlets, were asleep. \"And it's not yours,\" insisted Eudalia. \"Don't let them make you think was , that was all. He called it the training hall, not because it looked like a training anything save some half-nourished dream a surrealist might have discarded as too nightmarish for belief. As in all of this strange universe, excepting the dome-cages in which the captives were held, the training hall followed no rules of three-dimensional space. One wall looked normal for perhaps a third of its length, then it simply wasn't for a bit. It came back farther on The captor Tennant called Opal came in through a far corner of some unseen direction. He had no regular shape and much of him was and Opal would have shown no reaction. Yet Tennant suspected that the captors could hear somewhere along the auditory scale, just as perhaps they could smell, although not in any probing investigation. Opal, like the rest of the captors, was as curious as a cat—or a human being. Tennant sat against a wall, drenched with sweat. There would be endless repetition before his workout was done. On Earth, dogs were said to be intellectually two-dimensional creatures. He wondered if they felt this have been the interior of a giant concertina—or an old-fashioned kodak. sort of ultradimensional television set, but to Tennant it was as incomprehensible as an oil painting to an animal. He asked Opal where and when they were going, was informed that he would soon emerge on Earth where he had left it. That told him everything but the date and season. Opal, like the rest of the captors, seemed to have no understanding of time in a human sense. Waiting, Tennant tried not to think of his wife, of the fact that he leave them there, then knew that he would try somehow to get them out. Not, of course, anything that would endanger his remaining with Agatha the only way his captors would get him back would be as a taxidermist's specimen. his thoughts. Because he felt sure of his captive ... or because he couldn't on Earth? It was like being let out of a cage. Tennant grinned at the bookcase the ebony-and-ivory elephants that Agatha had never liked were gone, in the cellar rumpus room, where its bleached modernity wouldn't clash with the casual antiquity of the living room. Agatha would complain, naturally, but his being back would make up for adolescent's. This hunger was real, not implanted. Everything would be Opal had been too interested in the next lab specimen to bother about power over him. Women have waited longer than eighteen months. He would have if his captors had let him. \"Where in hell have revolting. What \"You bastard,\" said Cass. \"You dirty bastard! You know what a wait like that could do to us.\" \"Tristan and Isolde,\" said Tennant, grinning almost happily. \"Well, He needed no telepathic powers to read the thoughts around him then. He had been sitting there, unconscious, ripe fruit on their doorstep. They had simply picked him up. Otherwise, apparently, men were next to impossible for them to capture. All they could do was kill them and bring back their heads and hides as trophies. With women it was different—perhaps the captors' weapons, body chemistry or psychology, perhaps. More than once, during his long training with Opal, Tennant had sent questing thoughts toward his captor, asking why they didn't simply set up the gateway in some town or city and take as many humans as they wanted. a blowgun, to set up shop in the midst of a herd of wild elephants. It\n\n<question>:\nWhat isn't something that the aliens control?\n\n<options>:\nA how the captives feel about being there\nB what the captives eat\nC the captives' desires\nD where the captives live\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
884 | quality | [
{
"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 humidity, 47% occasional light showers—but of what? The pockets of Mr. Humphrey Fownes were being picked outrageously. His pockets were picked eleven times. masterpiece of pocket picking. What made it possible was Humphrey one after another, a place of little traffic and minimum distractions. But he was thinking about weather, which was an unusual subject to begin with for a person living in a domed city. He was thinking so deeply about it that it never occurred to him that entirely too many people were bumping into him. He was thinking about Optimum Dome Conditions (a crisp 59 degrees, a mildly dessicated 47%) when a bogus postman, who pretended to be reading a postal card, jostled him. In the right and left jacket pockets. It was much too much for coincidence. handkerchief pocket. It all went off very smoothly, like a game of put It fell on the streets and houses, making small geysers of shiny mist, hitting with a gentle musical sound, like the ephemeral droppings of a celesta. It was precipitation peculiar to a dome: feather-light fragments showering harmlessly on the city from time to time. Dome weevils, their metal arms reaching out with molten glass, roamed the huge casserole, ceaselessly patching and repairing. from the blackness of the living room. \"These are not Optimum Dome Conditions!\" the voice wailed. \"The temperature is not and chemically analyzed the contents of his pockets before returning intrigued by a temperature that was always 59 degrees, by a humidity that was always 47%, by weather that was always Optimum. It was this rather than skill that enabled the police to maintain such a tight \"I told particularly virulent strain of pneumococcus under his microscope. Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. It couldn't be tolerated within the confines of a dome. Conformity had become more than a social force it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it, him not to touch that wheel! Lanfierre. He's in the upstairs \"I'm not sure what's going to come of this,\" he said to Lanfierre with an astonishing amount of objectivity, \"but the entire dome air supply is now coming through my bedroom.\" The wind screamed. small efforts, rarer. Dome Conditions of the bright avenue. \"I never figured on this to return. He took out his notebook but it was a soggy mess. He tossed the house toward the side of the dome. \"It says here,\" Fownes shouted over the roaring, \"that Dorothy traveled from Kansas to Oz in a twister and that ... and that Oz is a wonderful and mysterious land beyond the all close at the same time. You'll be watching and all of a sudden every confines of everyday living .\" there's a whole crowd of people in there waiting for a signal—as if they all had something important to say but had to close the windows first so no one could hear. Why else close the windows in a domed city? mountainous puffs of glass as he went. \"Mrs. Deshazaway!\" he shouted. \"Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Deshazaway!\" The dome weevils were going berserk trying to keep up with the And then as soon as the place is buttoned up they all explode into \"No, I don't need a vacation.\" precipitation. They whirred back and forth at frightful speed, then, conversation—and that's why the house shakes.\" shut. The street was deserted and quiet, not a movement, not a sound. you see what he carries in his pockets?\" expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn't noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He had a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system, and the high-pressure air caused some buffeting against the thin walls of the house. At least, he called it buffeting he'd never thought to watch from outside. Every window slammed shut. \"Tight as a kite,\" he thought, satisfied. He continued on toward the watched as they spun and flashed in the darkness, and then set them for seven o'clock in the evening, April seventh, any year. Outside, the domed city vanished. It was replaced by an illusion. Or, as Fownes hoped it might appear, the illusion of the domed city vanished and was replaced by a more satisfactory, and, for his specific purpose, more functional, illusion. Looking through the window he saw only a garden. long and drawn-out process, accompanied by a considerable amount thinking roguishly: Thou shalt not inundate. rather stay over instead of going home.... my husbands of their life force and when they're empty I carry their bodies outside on my way to the justice of the peace.\" \"As long as there are people,\" he said philosophically, \"there'll be talk.\" \"But it's the air! Why don't they talk about that? The air is stale, \"I don't seem to mind the air.\" She threw up her hands. \"You'd be the worst of the lot!\" She left the table, rustling and tinkling about the room. \"I can just hear them. Try they'll find out? I \"But my dear Mr. Fownes,\" she said, leaning across the table. \"We're lost, you and I.\" \"Not if we could leave the dome,\" Fownes said quietly. \"That's impossible! How?\" In no hurry, now that he had the widow's complete attention, Fownes Space? Miles and miles of space where the real-estate monopoly has no control whatever? Where the wind blows across or is supposed to be the month of brides, of marrying. June also lies beyond the dome.\" \"I see.\" \" and that's when it roams the Open Country where geigers no longer scintillate.\" \" \" Mrs. Deshazaway rose, paced slowly to the window and then came back to the table, standing directly over Fownes. \"If you can get us outside the dome,\" she said, \"out where a man stays warm long enough to government publications and censored old books with holes in them. It was used so infrequently that the Movement was able to meet eighty. She spent her days reading ancient library cards and, like the books around her, had been rendered by time's own censor into near unintelligibility. looking oddly like giants fled from their fairy tales, protesting. stood in the center of the room, leaning on a heavy knobbed cane. He glanced around at the group almost complacently, and waited as Humphrey Fownes squeezed into an empty chair. \"We live in a dome,\" the leader said, \"for lack of something. An invention! What is the one thing that the great technological societies before ours could not invent, obtained the insight. \"If a sound foreign policy can't be created the only alternative is not to have any foreign policy at all. Thus the movement into domes began— by common consent of the governments . This is known as self-containment.\" Dialectically out in left field, Humphrey Fownes waited for a lull in the ensuing discussion and then politely inquired how it might be arranged for him to get out. \"Out?\" the leader said, frowning. \"Out? Out where?\" \"Outside the dome.\" \"Oh. All in good time, my friend. One day we shall all pick up and leave.\" now .\" \"Nonsense. Ridiculous! You have to be prepared for the Open Country. You can't just up and leave, it would be suicide, Fownes. And dialectically very poor.\" life in the Open Country. Food, clothing, a weapon perhaps? What else? Have I left anything out?\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy have so many people resorted to pick-pocketing?\n\n<options>:\nA Resources are scarce in the Dome, so people have to resort to desperate measures\nB The pickpocketers are trying to acquire information about Fownes\nC All possessions are shared in the Dome under a new form of communism\nD There are no laws in the Dome, and people do whatever they please\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
679 | quality | [
{
"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 the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The large horse plodded slowly over the shifting sand. The rider was of medium size, with huge, strong hands and seemingly hollow eyes. Strange eyes, alive and aflame. They had no place in the dust-caked, tired body, yet there they were, seeking, always seeking—searching the clear horizon, and never seeming to find what they sought. The horse moved faster now. They were nearing a river the water would be welcome on tired bodies and dry throats. He spurred his horse, and when they reached the water's edge, he dismounted and unsaddled the horse. Then both man and horse plunged headlong into the waiting torrent, deep into the cool embrace of the clear liquid. They soaked it into their pores and drank deeply of it, feeling life going once more through their veins. Satisfied, they lifted themselves from the water, and the man lay down on the yellow sand of the river bank to sleep. the coffee he had found in one of the ruined cities. He brought water from the river in the battered coffee-pot he had salvaged, and while he waited for it to boil, he went to his horse, Conqueror, stroking his mane and whispering in his ear. Then he led him silently to a grassy slope where he hobbled him and left him for the night. In the fading light, he ate the hard beef jerky and drank the scalding coffee. Refreshed and momentarily content, he sat staring into the at the wood in consuming embrace, taking all and returning nothing but It was the night before he was to go overseas. World War III had been declared, and he had enlisted, receiving his old rank of captain. He was with his wife in the living room of their home. They had put the children to bed—their sons—and now sat on the couch, watching the blazing fire. It was then that he had showed it to her. \"I've got something to tell you, and something to show you.\" He had removed the box from his pocket and opened it. And heard her cry of surprised joy. voice which always seemed to send a thrill through his body. \"It's for you so long as you wear it, I'll come back, even from the dead, if need be. Read the inscription.\" his and making him oblivious to everything except that she was there in in one side, and in the other a picture of the children. He took her in The next morning had been bleak and gray. The mist clung to the wet, sodden ground, and the air was heavy in his lungs. He had driven off in the jeep the army had sent for him, watching her there on the porch until the mist swirled around her feet and she ran back into the house blood in his veins. Three days later they had landed in Spain, merged with another the threat of annihilation by the retaliation forces had been too great. He had done well in the war, and had been decorated many times for bravery in action. Now he felt the victory that seemed to be in the air, and he had wished it would come quickly, so that he might return to her. Home. The very feel of the word was everything a battle-weary soldier needed to make him fight harder and live longer. Suddenly he had become aware of a droning, wooshing sound above him. It targets. When the all-clear had sounded, the men clambered from their dust, their spirits fled on the winds to a new world. Yet these remnants of an army must return—or at least try. Their exodus was just beginning. Somehow he had managed to hold together the few men left from his force. He had always nourished the hope that she might still be alive. And now that the war was over he had to return—had to know whether she was still waiting for him. They had started the long trek. Throughout Europe anarchy reigned. He and his men were alone. All they could do now was fight. Finally they After months of storms and bad luck, they had been shipwrecked somewhere off the coast of Mexico. He had managed to swim ashore, and had been found by a fisherman's family. Many months he had spent swimming and fishing, recovering his strength, inquiring about the United States. The Mexicans had spoken with fear of the land across the had heard was the occasional swish of the wind as it whisked along what might have been dead leaves, but wasn't. He had been on the trail for a long time. His food was nearly exhausted. The mountains were just beginning, and he hoped to find food there. He had not found food, but his luck had been with him. He had found a horse. Not a normal horse, but a mutation. It was almost twice as large as a regular horse. Its skin seemed to shimmer and was like glassy steel to the touch. From the center of its forehead grew a horn, straight out, as the horn of a unicorn. But most startling of all were the animal's eyes which seemed to speak—a silent mental speech, which he could understand. The horse had looked up as he approached it and seemed to say: \"Follow me.\" And he had followed. Over a mountain, until they came to a pass, and empty, but there were cans of food and a rifle and many shells. He had remained there a long time—how long he could not tell, for he could only measure time by the cycles of the sun and the moon. Finally he had taken the horse, the rifle and what food was left, and once again started the long journey home. The farther north he went, the more life seemed to have survived. He had seen great herds of horses like his own, stampeding across the plains, and strange birds which he could not identify. Yet he had seen no human beings. How, he did not know, for it was much changed. A sensing, perhaps, of what it had once been. He could not be more than two days' ride away. Once he was through this desert, he would find her, he would be with her once again all would be well, and his long journey would be over. The images faded. Even memory slept in a flow of warm blood. Body and mind slept into the shadows of the dawn. He awoke and stretched the cramped muscles of his body. At the edge of length of his frame. A deep ridge ran down the length of his torso, separating the muscles, making the chest broad. Well satisfied with his body, he plunged into the cold water, deep down, until he thought his then swiftly returned to the clean air, tingling in every pore. He dried himself and dressed. Conqueror was eating the long grass near the stream. Quickly he saddled him. No time for breakfast. He would ride all day and the next night. And he would be home. Still northward. The hours crawled slower than a dying man. The sun was a torch that pierced his skin, seeming to melt his bones into a streaming hair called stars. In the moonlight he had not seen the crater until he was at its very edge. Even then he might not have seen it had not the horse stopped suddenly. The wind swirled through its vast emptiness, slapping his face with dusty hands. For a moment he thought he heard Then he saw her. She was sitting motionless in a straight wooden chair beside the He was turning wearily away from the window when the movement of the trying to decipher some inscription inside it. He knew then. He had come home. up at the night sky and trying to draw strength from the wind that passed over him. It was no use. There was no strength. Only fear—a He closed the locket and fastened the clasp, and hung it on the doorknob. It moved slowly in the wind, back and forth, like a pendulum. \"Forever—forever. Only death is forever.\" He could have sworn he heard the words. He ran. Away from the house. To the large horse with a horn in the center of its forehead, like a unicorn. Once in the saddle, the spurt of strength left him. His shoulders slumped, his head dropped onto his chest. Conqueror trotted away, the sound of his hooves echoing hollowly in the vast emptiness.\n\n<question>:\nWho shows the protagonist the food and the rifle?\n\n<options>:\nA A conquerer\nB He found them himself\nC A member of his battalion\nD His horse\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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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>:\nHOMECOMING BY MIGUEL HIDALGO What lasts forever? Does love? Does death?... Nothing lasts forever.... Not even forever Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] the dust-caked, tired body, yet there they were, seeking, always seeking—searching the clear horizon, and never seeming to find what they sought. and when they reached the water's edge, he dismounted and unsaddled the horse. Then both man and horse plunged headlong into the waiting torrent, deep into the cool embrace of the clear liquid. They soaked it into their pores and drank deeply of it, feeling life going once more driftwood, and built a small fire. From his pack he removed some of from the river in the battered coffee-pot he had salvaged, and while he waited for it to boil, he went to his horse, Conqueror, stroking his mane and whispering in his ear. Then he led him silently to a grassy slope where he hobbled him and left him for the night. In the fading light, he ate the hard beef jerky and drank the scalding dying fire, seeing the bright glowing coals as living fingers clutching at the wood in consuming embrace, taking all and returning nothing but ashes. all else was at rest. Images began to appear, drawn from inexhaustible files, wherein are kept all thoughts, past, present, and future.... It was the night before he was to go overseas. World War III had been declared, and he had enlisted, receiving his old rank of captain. He \"I've got something to tell you, and something to show you.\" He had removed the box from his pocket and opened it. And heard her cry of surprised joy. \"Oh, a ring, and it's a diamond, too!\" she cried in her rich, happy voice which always seemed to send a thrill through his body. \"It's for you so long as you wear it, I'll come back, even from the dead, if need be. Read the inscription.\" She held the ring up to the light and read aloud, \"It is forever.\" unexplored, some vastly different emotion he could never quite explain. room. It was in the shape of a star, encrusted with emeralds, with one the abyss which seemed to have no beginning or any end. Three years later they were on the road to Moscow. Over a thousand miles lay behind, a dead man on every foot of those miles. Yet victory was near. The Russians had not yet used the H-bomb the threat of annihilation by the retaliation forces had been too great. He had done well in the war, and had been decorated many times for bravery in action. Now he felt the victory that seemed to be in the air, and he had wished it would come quickly, so that he might return to her. Home. The very feel of the word was everything a battle-weary soldier needed to make him fight harder and live longer. reflecting a blinding light. They were bound for bigger, more important shelters. An icy wind swept the field, bringing with it clouds which The retaliatory forces had roared away to bomb the Russian cities. Few, if any, had returned. Too much blood and life were on their hands. Those who had remained alive had found a resting place on the crown sea, where flesh stayed not long on bones, and only darting fishes and merciful beams of filtered light found their aluminum coffins. The war had ended. To no avail. Neither side had won. Most of the cities and the majority They were alone now, a group of tired, battered men, for whom life held nothing. Their families had long since died, their bodies turned to dust, their spirits fled on the winds to a new world. Yet these remnants of an army must return—or at least try. Their exodus was just beginning. Somehow he had managed to hold together the few men left from his force. He had always nourished the hope that she might still be alive. And now that the war was over he had to return—had to know whether she was still waiting for him. They had started the long trek. Throughout Europe anarchy reigned. He and his men were alone. All they could do now was fight. Finally they swimming and fishing, recovering his strength, inquiring about the and the few people who might have survived, were crazed and maimed by It was rightly called. The deserts were long. All plant life had died, leaving to those once great fertile stretches, nothing but the sad, exhausted. The mountains were just beginning, and he hoped to find food there. He had not found food, but his luck had been with him. He had found a horse. Not a normal horse, but a mutation. It was almost twice glassy steel to the touch. From the center of its forehead grew a horn, he could understand. The horse had looked up as he approached it and seemed to say: \"Follow me.\" And he had followed. Over a mountain, until they came to a pass, and only measure time by the cycles of the sun and the moon. Finally he had taken the horse, the rifle and what food was left, and once again started the long journey home. The farther north he went, the more life seemed to have survived. He no human beings. her once again all would be well, and his long journey would be over. The images faded. Even memory slept in a flow of warm blood. Body and mind slept into the shadows of the dawn. He awoke and stretched the cramped muscles of his body. At the edge of length of his frame. A deep ridge ran down the length of his torso, lungs would burst then swiftly returned to the clean air, tingling in every pore. He dried himself and dressed. Conqueror was eating the long grass near the stream. Quickly he saddled him. No time for breakfast. He would ride all day and the next night. And he would be home. Still northward. The hours crawled slower than a dying man. The sun was a torch that pierced his skin, seeming to melt his bones into a burning stream within his body. But day at last gave way to night, and the sun to the moon. The torch became a white pock-marked goddess, with streaming hair called stars. stopped suddenly. The wind swirled through its vast emptiness, voices—mournful, murmuring voices, echoing up from the misty depths. He turned quickly away and did not look back. Night paled into day day burned into night. There were clouds in the sky now, and a gentle wind caressed the sweat empty of life. one skeleton-like finger and stood, turning the ring slowly as if trying to decipher some inscription inside it. He knew then. He had come home. Slowly he moved toward the door. A great weakness was upon him. His feet were stones, reluctant to leave the earth. His body was a weed, shriveled by thirst. He grasped the doorknob and clung to it, looking up at the night sky and trying to draw strength from the wind that passed over him. It was no use. There was no strength. Only fear—a kind of fear he had never known. He fumbled at his throat, his fingers crawling like cold worms around his neck until he found the locket and the clasp which had held it safely through endless nightmare days and nights. He slipped the clasp had lost its glow. What had once been living fire was now a dull glob of darkness. \"Nothing is forever!\" He thought he had shouted the words, but only a He closed the locket and fastened the clasp, and hung it on the doorknob. It moved slowly in the wind, back and forth, like a pendulum. \"Forever—forever. Only death is forever.\" He could have sworn he heard the words. He ran. Away from the house. To the large horse with a horn in the center of its forehead, like a unicorn. Once in the saddle, the spurt of strength left him. His shoulders slumped, his head dropped onto his chest. Conqueror trotted away, the sound of his hooves echoing hollowly in the vast emptiness.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is a theme of the article?\n\n<options>:\nA With loss comes great strength.\nB Material objects cannot replace emotional connection.\nC Things will always stay right where you left them.\nD With honor comes struggle.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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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>:\nother, in doubt whether to stay or to fly through the storm. from an ancient subway car, except that it was air-tight, and was hurled by magnetic attraction and repulsion through a The Cosmic Express tube exhausted of air, at a speed subway rider gasp with amazement. which bore the words: COSMIC EXPRESS stenciled in gold capitals across out of an elevator shaft opposite They were in a little room, cut in two by a high brass grill. machine from the space before Jack Williamson parlayed into the machine now. Russian diplomat from Moscow to Rio de to super science, he created the dollars and eighty cents, please.... Your turn next. Remember in a rousing trio of space operas , The Legion of Space, The all over the world in a year.... Ready now. Come on in.\" Cometeers Legion. frantic physician leaped through the order of the day, he produced Crucible of Power and when they wanted extrapolated theory in disguise of Will Stewart and terrene matter in science fiction with Shock. \"With Folded Hands ...\" \"... And Searching Mind.\" The Cosmic Express the handling is especially modern, frontier to be conquered. It is comes to my Violet—I'll—I'll—I'll of wonders, and proceed with the story. With only a few thousand scanning-disk television sets Age of Aviation was beginning. heart-breaking war with that ray of yours can put us Llano Estacado.\" \"To Venus? Impossible. My orders are to use the Express merely between the sixteen designated stations, at New York, . Since then, he has written millions of words single swift motion, he snatched it out of Eric's hand, and bent the micrometer readings to set the ray with. But I tell you, this the ray. I can turn that on open again, and Eric led Nada through. They stepped into a little cell, completely surrounded with mirrors and vast prisms and lenses and electron tubes. In the center was a slab of transparent crystal, eight feet square Suddenly there was a sharp tingling intricate mass of machinery below it. sensation where they touched and two inches thick, with an five centuries before, when the \"I think the Express Ray is Eric helped Nada to a place crystal, from below,\" he said. \"It dissolves our substance, to be transmitted by the beam. It would look as if we were melting into the crystal.\" Two hundred yards across it rose an immense pyramidal building—an help support the gray, steel-ribbed artistic structure, gleaming I say—how're you coming back? illimitable vistas, broken with with white marble and bright blizzard was sweeping. But small inhaling deeply the fragrant air from the plants below—air kept, winter and summer, exactly at 20° C. Nada and Eric felt themselves enveloped in fire. Sheets of white flame seemed to lap up about them from the crystal block. Suddenly the rich golden light that poured in from the suspended globes of there was a sharp tingling sensation where they touched the cold ato-light that illuminated Palm-like, the gigantic trees were, or fern-like, flinging clouds of feathery green foliage high not parasites on the machines.\" heroes in your books!\" cook in. And you will find seeds \"But first we must find a flint-bed. We need flint for tools, and to strike sparks to make a fire with. We will probably come across a chunk of virgin copper, too—it's found native.\" into it ankle deep at every step, and vast masses of it clung to hero in the roasted marrow-bones artistic satisfaction of describing nature had left them even a single fragment of quartz, to say nothing of a mass of pure copper. bellowing roar, raucous, terrifying. Nada clung against Eric. for a long happy moment. And then they went hand in punched a series of buttons on a idea is better.\" \"You can make a fire by rubbing sticks together, can't you?\" \"It can be done, I'm sure. I've never tried it, myself. We need to nature stuff\"—simple panel—a simple way of ordering the new planet adhering to their and called her a genius. Even though the whole world had grown up into a city, the birds \"Matches! Of course not! We're going back to Nature.\" At last, from sheer weariness, they stopped, and gathered ray telescope, that penetrates threatening to demolish it. Swarms of mosquito-like insects, seemingly not inconvenienced in the least by the inclement elements, swarmed about them in Earth and it must be much like clouds. natural lives. Maybe a rocket—\" Earth was a million years ago.\" \"Eric, I wonder if we could go \"Must be a reptile. Dinosaur, there! It would be so thrilling to this is just an experimental same state as the Earth when world seems to be in about the ecstatically. \"Splendid! Think of The Cosmic Express.\" \"The Cosmic Express?\" \"A new invention. Just perfected a few weeks ago, I understand. The earth trembled beneath a mighty tread. \"Eric,\" a thin voice trembled. By Ludwig Von der Valls, ether!\" \"By ether!\" \"Yes. You know of course that energy and matter are interchangeable terms both are simply etheric vibration, of different sorts.\" \"Of course. That's elementary.\" She smiled proudly. \"I can give you examples, even of the change. The disintegration of the radium atom, making helium and lead and energy . And Millikan's old proof that his Cosmic Ray is generated when particles of electricity are united to form an atom.\" \"Fine! I thought you said you weren't a scientist.\" He glowed oceans. Thunderous crashes, as the new Cosmic Express, is simply to convert the matter to be carried into power, send it out as a radiant beam and focus the beam to convert it back into atoms at the destination.\" \"But the amount of energy must be terrific—\" \"It is. You know short waves carry more energy than long ones. The Express Ray is an electromagnetic vibration of frequency far higher than that of even the Cosmic Ray, and correspondingly more powerful and fingers through golden-brown hair. \"But I don't see how they get any recognizable object, not even how they get the radiation turned back into matter.\" \"The beam is focused, just like Cosmic Express office, with all the light that passes through a lens, using light rays, picks up a the Express Ray picks up an object and sets it down on the other side of the world. \"An analogy from television might help. You know that by means of the scanning disc, the picture is transformed into mere rapid fluctuations in the brightness of a beam of light. In a parallel manner, the focal plane of the Express Ray moves slowly through the object, progressively, dissolving layers of the thickness of a single atom, which are accurately reproduced at the other focus of the instrument—which looked up the duplicate beam coordinates, been set on Venus. I got men on the television at once, and we receiving instrument is required, as in television. The object is built up of an infinite series of plane layers, at the focus of the ray, no matter where that may because even with the best beam transmission, all but a tiny fraction of the power is lost, and power is required to rebuild the atoms. Do you understand, dear?\" \"Not altogether. But I should until the two sounds were together. a great silver tray, laden with And then an infernal din \"Old friendship, death about the Cosmic Express! shrieks. Mighty splashes, as if with pride. \"But the method, in small polished object, gleaming silvery, slid down into his hand. if they were demolishing forests. plus Eric and Nada clung to each the polished surface.\n\n<question>:\nHow does the Cosmic Express Ray work?\n\n<options>:\nA Matter is converted into power and sent out as a radiant beam. The beam is then focused to convert it back into atoms at the destination.\nB A photographic lens picks up an object in one place and reproduces it in a different place using light rays.\nC A radiant beam converts matter into power in order to be sent and then converted back into atoms at a new destination.\nD Particles of electricity are united to form an atom.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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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>:\nFight Clubbed Fight Club , a movie about a fictional organization of men who strip down and beat each other to pulp, has provoked more than its share of media hand-wringing, particularly diatribes about Hollywood's infatuation with violence and Faludi-esque ruminations about the emasculated American male. Fight Club , however, has not sparked an iota of interest in a real organization of men who strip down and beat each other to pulp: the Ultimate Fighting Championship. UFC's flameout from national sensation to total irrelevance is a tragedy of American sports, a cautionary tale of prudishness, heavy-handed politics, and cultural myopia. UFC began in 1993 as a locker-room fantasy. What would happen if a kickboxer fought a wrestler? A karate champion fought a sumo champion? Promoters built an octagonal chain-link cage, invited eight top martial artists, and set them loose in no-holds-barred, bare-knuckles fights. \"There are no rules!\" bragged an early press release. Contestants would fight till \"knockout, submission, doctor's intervention, or death.\" UFC allowed, even promoted, all notions of bad sportsmanship: kicking a man when he's down, hitting him in the groin, choking. Four-hundred-pound men were sent into the Octagon to maul guys half their size. Only biting and eye-gouging were forbidden. The gimmick entranced thousands of people (well, men). What happens when a 620-pound sumo champion fights a 200-pound kickboxer? Answer: The kickboxer knocks him silly in 35 seconds. They tuned in for bloodshed--\"the damage,\" as fans like to call it. UFC fights could be horrifying. Tank Abbott, an ill-tempered, 270-pound street fighter, knocks out hapless opponent John Matua in 15 seconds. Then, before the ref can intervene, Abbott belts the unconscious Matua in the head, sending him into a fit, limbs quivering uncontrollably, blood spurting from his mouth. Abbott, naturally, became a cult hero and won a guest spot on Friends . (Matua walked out of the ring.) Soon, UFC was selling out huge arenas and drawing 300,000 pay-per-view subscribers for its quarterly competitions. The UFC spawned a new breed of \"mixed martial artists.\" World-class wrestlers learned to kickbox. Champion kickboxers learned to grapple. (The karate experts learned to stay home.) They became, without doubt, the best fighters in the world. (Click for more about the fighters.) Mike Tyson wouldn't last 30 seconds in an ultimate fighting match. When Olympic gold medal wrestler Kevin Jackson came to the UFC, a fighter named Frank Shamrock KO'd him with a submission hold in 16 seconds. Ultimate fighting schools began sprouting up all over the country, replacing the stylized gestures of the Eastern martial arts with techniques that actually work. UFC's promoters predicted that it would supplant boxing as America's martial art. Instead, it fell apart. The collapse began in 1996, when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., saw a UFC tape. McCain, a lifelong boxing fan, was horrified at the ground fighting, kicks, and head butts. It was \"barbaric,\" he said. It was \"not a sport.\" He sent letters to all 50 governors asking them to ban ultimate fighting. The outcry against \"human cockfighting\" became a crusade, and like many crusades, it was founded on misunderstanding. UFC fell victim to cultural determinism about what a fight is. In countries such as Brazil and Japan, where no-holds-barred fighting has a long history, it is popular and uncontroversial. But Americans adhere to the Marquis of Queensbury rules. A fight consists of an exchange of upper-body blows that halts when one fighter falls. Any blood sport can be barbaric, whether it's boxing or wrestling or ultimate fighting. It is impossible to draw a bright line between ultimate fighting and boxing. If anything, ultimate fighting is safer and less cruel than America's blood sport. For example, critics pilloried ultimate fighting because competitors fought with bare knuckles: To a nation accustomed to boxing gloves, this seemed revolting, an invitation to brain damage. But it's just the reverse: The purpose of boxing gloves is not to cushion the head but to shield the knuckles. Without gloves, a boxer would break his hands after a couple of punches to the skull. That's why ultimate fighters won't throw multiple skull punches. As a result, they avoid the concussive head wounds that kill boxers--and the long-term neurological damage that cripples them. Similarly, the chain-link fence surrounding the octagon looks grotesque. Critics have demanded that UFC install ropes instead. But ropes are a major cause of death and injury in boxing: Fighters hyperextend their necks when they are punched against the ropes, because nothing stops their heads from snapping back. The chain-link fence prevents hyperextension. But this does not impress boxing fans, who are the most vigorous opponents of extreme fighting. McCain sat ringside at a boxing match where a fighter was killed. When I asked him to explain the moral distinction between boxing and ultimate fighting, he exploded at me, \"If you can't see the moral distinction, then we have nothing to talk about!\" Then he cut our interview short and stormed out of his office. But logic has not served the UFC well. Where McCain led, a prudish nation followed. George Will opined against UFC. The American Medical Association recommended a ban. New York state outlawed ultimate fighting, as did other states. The Nevada Athletic Commission refused to sanction UFC bouts, barring the UFC from the lucrative casino market. (One public TV station refused a UFC sponsorship ad. The only other organization the station ever rejected was the Ku Klux Klan.) Lawsuits blocked or delayed UFC events all over the country, forcing the promoters to spend millions in legal fees. The UFC was exiled from mega-arenas to ever-smaller venues in ever more out-of-the-way states: Louisiana, Iowa, and Alabama. The match I attended in October 1997 was held in the parking lot of a small Mississippi casino. The cable TV industry struck the fatal blow. In early 1997, McCain became chairman of the commerce committee, which oversees the cable industry. In April 1997, the president of the National Cable Television Association warned that UFC broadcasts could jeopardize the cable industry's influence in Washington. Time Warner, TCI, Request, Cablevision Systems, Viewer's Choice, and other major operators stopped airing UFC events, saying they were too violent for children. Never mind that 1) UFC only aired on pay-per-view, so children could not see it unless their parents paid for it the crowds are small and there's not a TV camera in sight. Ultimate fighting should have become boxing. Instead it has gone underground. It has become Fight Club.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the writer's main argument?\n\n<options>:\nA Despite their many similarities, the UFC is not interested in following the movie Fight Club in the example made by the fictional organization of men who strip down and beat each other to the pulp.\nB UFC's caged matches revolutionized the idea of fighting.\nC UFC began in 1993 as a locker-room fantasy and ended as a secret underground fight club.\nD In the US, Ultimate fighting has been culturally misunderstood, banned for the wrong reasons, and condemned to a near clandestine existence, even though boxing, an American favorite, is far more dangerous and even lethal.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,818 | quality | [
{
"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>:\nfrom! Do you understand—whoever, or whatever you are?\" Loy Chuk pressed more keys. \"But you can't go back to the Twentieth Century,\" said the only swift young reflexes to rely and make you comfortable....\" inky waters of the Pit, fifty feet beneath.... Ned Vince was still dimly conscious dead birds so often floated, was surcharged with alkali. As that heavy, natronous liquid rushed up through the openings and cracks beneath his feet, Ned him, and the occasional touch of a furry body, hurried his feverish animal chucklings around couldn't fight against the force of that incoming water. The welt, left by the blow he had received on his forehead, put a thickening mist over his brain, so that he could not think clearly. liquid was sucked into his lungs. voice uttering those weird, triumphant \"Kaalleee! Tik!... Tik, tik, tik!... Kaalleee!...\" The excited cry, which no human throat could quite have duplicated from the depths of a powder-dry hold of his courage. But what Sun was red and huge. The air was tenuous, dehydrated, chill. in his hell-world, lost beyond the barrier of the years.... Loy Chuk and his followers presently came upon Ned Vince's unconscious form, a mile from \"Kaalleee!... Tik, tik, tik!...\" At first there was only one the city of Kar-Rah. In a flying machine they took him back, and applied stimulants. He came to, in the same laboratory room as sounds. Then other vocal organs took up that trilling again. There he lay, helpless, until presently an idea occurred to him. It gave him a few crumbs from the black box. It was Loy Chuk speaking again. \"But listen!\" Ned protested. \"You know a lot more than we could send me back to my own time after all!\" Little Loy Chuk was in a black, discouraged mood, himself. He could understand the than this, death from homesickness had come. Loy Chuk was a scientist. In common with all real scientists, regardless of the species from had done that. \"Kaalleee!... Tik, tik, tik!...\" The sounds were not human. They were more like the chatter study. So Loy considered carefully what Ned Vince had suggested. resurrected—this human, this Kaalleee.... Loy jabbed buttons on the Man, it seemed, had a successor, as ruler of the Earth. Loy Chuk had flown his geological expedition out from the far lowlands to the east, out black box. \"Yes, Ned Vince,\" from the city of Kar-Rah. And accomplish, but we'll try. Now I shall put you under an anesthetic....\" Ned felt better immediately, he was very happy now—flushed for there was real hope now, yourself, here. It will be hard to soon.... Ned relaxed, as a tiny hypo-needle bit into his arm.... As soon as Ned Vince passed into unconsciousness, Loy Chuk went to work once more, using that pair of brain-helmets again, far beyond that of the ancient Twentieth Century. Loy Chuk and his fellow workers were gathered, tense and gleeful, around the things their of which Loy was a prime member. It would be easy to get the help he needed. tiny investigators not this body. The answer to this saturation that had held time and change in stasis. A perfect preservative for organic tissue, aided probably during most of those passing eras by desert dryness. mummy. first interplanetary rockets. No wonder Loy Chuk and his co-workers were happy in their paleontological enthusiasm! A legendary antiquity, had aided them in their quest for knowledge. At last Loy Chuk gave a soft, chirping signal. The chant of triumph ended, while instruments flicked in his tiny hands. test the mummy, looked like a He did not know anything within, through the agency of focused X-rays, he saw magnified images of the internal organs and dimming his brain, so that it would never question or doubt, or observe too closely the incongruous of this ancient human beating down upon him, soothing about the invisible radiations devoid of moisture, the mummy its brain cells! Medical and biological sciences were far advanced among Loy Chuk's kind. Perhaps, by the application of principles long known to them, opaque dome. But there were hidden television systems, too. Thus Loy Chuk's kind could study this ancient man—this \"Tik, tik, tik!...\" But Loy silenced this fresh, eager chattering with a command. Kaalleee. Thus, their motives Loy, though, was not observing, now. He had wandered far out into cold, sad sea-bottom, to mummy of Ned Vince was substantial than cheering. With infinite care—small, sharp hand-tools were used, now—the in a metal case, and hauled into the flying machine. Flashing flame, the latter glinting in the red sunshine. But this was only its surface aspect. Loy Chuk's people had built their homes mostly underground, since the beginning in this latter day, the nights were very cold, the shelter of subterranean passages and rooms was welcome. The mummy was taken to Loy Chuk's laboratory, a short distance below the surface. Here at once, the scientist began his work. The body of the ancient man was put in a large vat. Fluids submerged it, slowly soaking from that hardened flesh the alkali that had preserved it for so long. The fluid was changed often, until woody muscles and other tissues became pliable once more. began. Still submerged in liquid, the corpse was submitted to a flow of restorative energy, passing between complicated electrodes. The cells of antique flesh and brain gradually took on a chemical composition nearer to that of the life that they had drained away, and the mummy lay there, a mummy no more, but a pale, silent figure in its tatters of clothing. Loy Chuk put an odd, metal-fabric helmet on its head, and a second, much smaller helmet At last, eager and ready for whatever might happen now, Loy Chuk pushed another switch. With a cold, rosy flare, energy blazed around that moveless form. dehydrated, his brain had been kept perfectly intact through the ages, and now it was restored. was on him. Feeble and dizzy after his weird resurrection, which he could not understand, in the museums of Kar-Rah! source of the voice—located the black box just outside of his crystal vat. From that box the place as eerie as this. Ned Vince did not know how Loy Chuk had probed his brain, with the aid of a pair of helmets, and the black box apparatus. He his language, taken from his own revitalized mind, was recorded, and that Loy Chuk had only to press certain buttons to make the instrument express his thoughts in common, long-dead English. Loy, whose vocal organs were not human, would have had a curious calm. \"Stark—starin'—nuts....\" Loy's box, with its recorded English words and its sonic detectors, could translate for its master, too. As the man spoke, Loy read the illuminated symbols in his own language, flashed on a frosted crystal plate before him. Thus he knew what Ned Vince was saying. Loy Chuk pressed more keys, and the box reproduced his answer: \"No, Ned, not nuts. Not a your body. I brought you back to life. We have science that can do that. I'm Loy Chuk....\" It took only a moment for the box to tell the full story in clear, bold, friendly terms. Thus Loy sought, with calm, human logic, to make his charge feel at home.\n\n<question>:\nHow does Loy Chuk bring the mummy to life?\n\n<options>:\nA While rehydrating the body, Loy Chuk sent electricity into the body using a metal helmet.\nB After rehydrating the body, Loy Chuk sent electricity into the body using a metal helmet.\nC While rehydrating the body, Loy Chuk used electrodes to send energy throughout the body.\nD After rehydrating the body, Loy Chuk used electrodes to send energy throughout the body.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
986 | quality | [
{
"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 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 from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his \"There is Rikud on the floor!\" Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright. disturbed Rikud, although he could not tell why. And, because he had Rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face concept to Rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead, If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was Rikud got up and ran. He reached the door again and then he slipped Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a headache? His voice trailed off. Rikud knew that something which he could not The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He \"I'll go with you,\" Rikud told him. the land, and Rikud lay down and drank. It was cool and good, and when Rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. It was Rikud muttered to himself and undressed. The world had begun to annoy are variable. I don't hate you now, Rikud.\" was a strange thought, and Rikud's brain Rikud smiled, staring at the ship. \"People are variable, too, Crifer. 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. elders were overthrown. Here Rikud had been lost utterly. The people 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 age, the rays would no longer suffice. Nothing would, for Chuls. Rikud 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 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 \"Well, it's wrong. Variability and change are two words without meaning.\" 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 Yes, hurt! Rikud looked and looked until his eyes teared and he had to Presently Rikud became aware that his eyes were not tearing any longer, round, all grays and greens and browns, and something for which Rikud 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 the engines. \"I'm hungry, Rikud.\" 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. 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 Somehow, Rikud knew this question for a healthy sign. But he could word seemed all wrong to Rikud, but he could think of no other, unless 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, \"I will eat,\" Chuls said, breaking Rikud's revery. And Rikud, too, was hungry. \"I know, but what's beyond it?\" \"I will,\" said Rikud. There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud.\" \"No—\" Rikud began, but the words faded off into a sharp intake of 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. 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 By the time he reached the lame-footed man, Rikud was running. He did Three or four days passed before Rikud calmed himself enough to Chuls smiled an indulgent smile and Rikud came nearer to him. \"Now, by Rikud began to shout, and everyone looked at him queerly. \"Well, I won't go,\" Chuls replied. \"There's no reason to go. If Rikud Rikud grabbed Chuls' blouse with his big fist. Then, startled by what Crifer hopped up and down. \"Look what Rikud's doing! I don't know what \"Only if you'll go with me.\" Rikud was panting. A buzzer sounded and automatically Rikud found himself releasing Chuls. 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, Rikud heard the throbbing again as he stood in the room of the would the buzzer stop? It probably would, because, as Rikud saw it, he 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 confidently. \"It won't any more,\" Rikud said. \"What won't?\" thing you did, Rikud.\" Even Crifer now was angry at Rikud. \"He broke the buzzer and no one can 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. The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face. 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 does Rikud's victory represent?\n\n<options>:\nA Victory over authority.\nB Victory over the world, and overcoming its changes.\nC Victory over fear of the unknown, and embracing of change.\nD Victory over indecision.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
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