conversation_id int64 1 2.52k | category stringclasses 1 value | conversation list |
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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>:\nO'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head he was already throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on this ship why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one aboard gone in a churning cloud. officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it. By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned resetting the control.\" O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her \"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get.\" \"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?\" \"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!\" gracefully. \"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again,\" Callahan muttered, then snapped back over his shoulder, \"Use your shower!\" O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's, would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now. Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary. Oh, very quite! \"You rockhead!\" Only Callahan back from the burner. \"Didn't I tell you to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway been thinking.\" \"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for myself here.\" Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower door. the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of 'em. \"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee. was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her lovely neck and his own forever. O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone! \"Oh, I'm Trillium,\" she assured Callahan sweetly. \"But Grandmamma's pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up, don't flimflam the Old Woman!\" With which ominous remark, rendered in a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into O'Rielly's shower. O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a spiral nebula. \"My locker!\" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap and coverall uniform of a baggage boy. \"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,\" Trillium explained. \"I knew the burner room would be warm.\" Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. \"Now don't you worry about another thing!\" \"Oh, I'm not,\" she assured him happily. \"Everything is going just the way Grandmamma knew it would!\" O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko, bounced onto the bunk. \"Well, did you hide her good this time? No, don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her.\" \"If what old woman finds whom?\" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more she muttered through her teeth, \"if it is that vino.\" Something horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there again. \"Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for? Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with sweat. Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. \"You \"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite.\" Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And A fine loud \"thump,\" however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk. \"Of all the sappy hiding places!\" Callahan yelped, in surprise of course. \"Trillium?\" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. \"Trillium!\" \"Trillium,\" O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, \"why do you have to O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. \"All right, come along!\" looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. \"Trillium! My as he roared, \"You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium, \"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged,\" His Trillium's advised from the Venus panel. top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take \"Oh, well,\" O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?\" O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium\n\n<question>:\nHow did Trillium end up as a stow-away on the ship?\n\n<options>:\nA She had been kidnapped by the men under the official command of the President of Earth.\nB She had fallen for the Earthmen and had chosen to run away with them.\nC She chose to show away so that the Venus women could bring their cause to the attention of Earth's President.\nD She had accidentally boarded the ship while looking for the shower.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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1,285 | 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,\" they all said, it being almost too obvious for words. , thirty-five years overdue!\" She was calculating the fine as he closed the door. Humphrey Fownes' preoccupation finally came to an end when he was one block away from his house. It was then that he realized something unusual must have occurred. An orange patrol car of the security police The pockets of Mr. Humphrey Fownes were being picked outrageously. was parked at his front door. And something else was happening too. His house was dancing. residence frisking about on its foundation. It was such a strange sight that for the moment he didn't give a thought to what might be causing It was disconcerting, and at the same time enchanting, to watch one's masterpiece of pocket picking. What made it possible was Humphrey curiosity. he was an uncommonly preoccupied individual. He From a prone position on his miniscule front lawn, Fownes watched as The door flung itself open and knocked him back off the porch. deeply about it that it never occurred to him that entirely too many people were bumping into him. He was thinking about Optimum Dome rifled Fownes's handkerchief and inside jacket pockets. He was still thinking about temperature and humidity when a pretty girl with his hair. It was a whistling in his ears, and a tingle on his cheeks. He got hit by a shoe. The sidewalk was wide enough to allow four people to pass at one time. He should surely have become suspicious when two men engaged in a Standing in the doorway with his wet hair plastered down on his dripping scalp, the wind roaring about him, the piano rumbling in the distance like thunder, Humphrey Fownes suddenly saw it all very clearly. handkerchief pocket. It all went off very smoothly, like a game of put and take—the sole difference being that Humphrey Fownes had no idea he rear pants pockets, got his wristwatch and restored the contents of the heated argument came along. In the ensuing contretemps they emptied his was playing. \" There was an occasional tinkle of falling glass. Humphrey Fownes strode through the puffs of falling glass still 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 surveillance on him, a surveillance that went to the extent of getting his fingerprints off the postman's bag, and which photographed, X-rayed and chemically analyzed the contents of his pockets before returning Paris. He left his shoe prints, stride measurement, height, weight and handedness behind. By the time Fownes reached his front door an entire dossier complete Sitting behind the wheel of the orange car, he watched Humphrey Fownes \"You'll have to tell me what you did first!\" \"I to that of a pathologist observing for the first time a new and 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 \"Are you going to make it stop or aren't you!\" MacBride yelled. it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it, Lanfierre had become an admirer of eccentricity. He came to see that him not to touch that wheel! Lanfierre. He's in the upstairs bedroom!\" When he heard this Fownes plunged into the house and fought his way Lanfierre was almost proud of Humphrey Fownes. genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own small efforts, rarer. wheel in his hand. \"What have I done?\" Lanfierre asked in the monotone of shock. Recruiting Lieutenant MacBride from behind his sofa, the men carefully edged out of the house and forced the front door shut. \"I never figured on this ,\" Lanfierre said, shaking his head. ?\" he asked in a somewhat patronizing tone of voice. \"Sure, he was different ,\" Lanfierre murmured. \"I knew that much.\" had even contrived to engage him in conversation once, a pleasantly absurd, irrational little chat that titillated him for weeks. It was trite. Then a fine robust freak came along and the others—the echoes—refused to believe it. The lieutenant was probably on the point of suggesting a vacation. black cloud began to accelerate, whirling about like some malevolent top.... Humphrey Fownes took out the dust jacket he'd found in the library. He first so no one could hear. Why else close the windows in a domed city? The dome weevils were going berserk trying to keep up with the The lieutenant had picked up the dossier. He thumbed through the pages now in amazement. \"Where do you get a guy like this?\" he asked. \"Did you see what he carries in his pockets?\" expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. There watching the house with a consuming interest. shoes. He hadn't seen the patrol car and this intense preoccupation of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn't noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He he'd never thought to watch from outside. then, neither did the widow. He'd have to be confident, assertive. Insist thinking roguishly: Thou shalt not inundate. The risks he was taking! A shower fell gently on the garden and a male chorus began to chant Singing in the Rain He went downstairs to watch out the living room window. This was He watched with folded arms, considering how he would start. Preoccupied, he hadn't noticed the winds building up, didn't hear the the first time the winds got out of line. Why didn't she marry him and save all this bother? He shut it all down \"Would you pass the beets, please?\" Humphrey Fownes said. her to be, to explain why she couldn't marry him. \"Do you have any idea what people are saying? They're all saying I'm a cannibal! I rob Five. That's what they'd say. That woman did it again. And the plain fact is I don't want you on my record.\" very elaborate plans you've been making to seduce me?\" told found out and you can bet they will. It's my fault, I guess. I talk too much. And I don't have another man die on me, it's bad for my self-esteem. And now you've gone and done something good and criminal, something peculiar.\" Fownes put his fork down. \"Dear Mrs. Deshazaway,\" he started to say. \"And of course when they do find out and they ask you why, Mr. Fownes, \"That's impossible! How?\" In no hurry, now that he had the widow's complete attention, Fownes outside the dome,\" she said, \"out where a man stays When Humphrey Fownes stepped out of the widow's house, there was a unintelligibility. \"Here's one,\" she said to him as he entered. \" that ?\" \"I'd say,\" Humphrey Fownes said, \"that he ... that he recommended it to her, that one day they met in the street and he told her about looking oddly like giants fled from their fairy tales, protesting. \"Where did the old society fail?\" the leader was demanding of them. He 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 waited, uncomfortable in the tight chair, while the others struggled 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.\n\n<question>:\nWhy was Humphrey being observed?\n\n<options>:\nA he didn't act like he was expected to\nB to make sure he wasn't a danger to society\nC he was to be observed before he was allowed to be married\nD he was suspected of committing crimes\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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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 SUPER OPENER BY MICHAEL ZUROY savagely. \"The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition. Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering that's missing the boat!\" glare, \"don't you remember? I tried to....\" \"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—\" for?\" Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. \"But Mr. Piltdon, 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 production headaches, inadequate facilities and assistance. What had 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 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 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, Close, thought Feetch, wearily. It had been a man-killing job, and it 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. Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations, universities and independent investigators began to look into this new physicists probed, measured, weighed, traced, X-rayed, dissolved, 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. nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect. When he finally found the answer, it was too late. The Borenchuck That night, at six-ten p.m., the Borenchuck family of Selby, South raised a welt on the forehead of Borenchuck senior, settled down to a The following day, cans began falling on Chicago. St. Louis was next, and then over the entire nation the cans began to rain down. They fell boomed. All activity was seriously curtailed. A state of national emergency was declared. Government investigators went to work and soon confirmed what was generally suspected: these were the same cans that had been opened by 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 bodily injury. Lawsuits were filed against him. He barricaded himself 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?\" \"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 \"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!\" the inconvenience and losses caused by the deluge. It was not anxious inasmuch as we feel your premature application of your discovery to 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.\" 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 grew warmer. He began pacing the floor. How he hated to do it. Think, 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 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!\" \"Fifty-one percent,\" said Feetch firmly. \"Don't bother with any 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 through, leaving its non-metallic contents behind. The disruption was instantly repaired by the stable nature of the screen. resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting 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\n\n<question>:\nWhat was *not* a result of the “Borenchuck Incident”?\n\n<options>:\nA A state of emergency was declared.\nB Piltdon filed a lawsuit against Kalvin.\nC Sales of helmets increased.\nD Super-Opener sales plummeted.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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2,250 | 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>:\nIt's my first go at delivering a baby by caesarean section – and the foetal head is impacted, jammed in its mother's pelvis. To be honest I'm struggling. 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. 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. The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. Every year some 160,000 babies are born in the UK this way, with almost two thirds of them classified as emergencies. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. \"Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route,\" says Tydeman, \"that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy.\" Which women are most at risk of this setback seems to be largely unpredictable. \"We just observe that it happens… It's been discussed in the medical literature since the 1940s, but until 10 years ago, and throughout my training and most of my life as a consultant, it wasn't really talked about.\" Considering the universality of childbirth, impaction and the best way of dealing with it are topics that seem to have gone remarkably unstudied. \"There are strong opinions about why it happens and what to do, but very little research evidence,\" says Tydeman, adding that many of these opinions are contradictory. In a protracted birth that's destined to end with a caesarean, the longer the labour is allowed to go on before the obstetrician decides to intervene, the greater the likelihood that the baby's head will become impacted. However, concern over the rising number of babies born by caesarean has made doctors more wary of doing them – one consequence of which is that medical staff may allow a difficult birth to continue for longer before they resort to surgery. This could be boosting the frequency of impaction. But, again, no one is certain. When obstetricians doing planned caesareans slice open a mother's womb, what they usually see is the baby's head. By slipping a hand round and below it they can easily guide the baby out. \"When you do a caesarean for an impacted baby,\" says Tydeman, \"you make the incision in the same place, but what you might come across is a shoulder because the baby's so much further down [the birth canal].\" As I'd discovered for myself, sliding a hand around the baby's head is then far more difficult. \"It makes your fingers hurt,\" says Tydeman. \"It makes your pulse rate go up to about 200, and you break out in a sweat because know you've only got about five or 10 minutes before there are serious consequences. The clock is ticking.\" If a baby's head is jammed down in the mother's pelvic region, common sense suggests that it might help if a second person gives a gentle backward push on the area of its head visible through the mother's dilated cervix. \"In our unit,\" says Tydeman, \"when the woman is fully dilated and you'd expect the baby to come out normally [but it doesn't]… a registrar will be asking for a push-up about one in five times.\" Although registrars are doctors still in training, they're nonetheless experienced One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands. As the material for a convincing simulation, glass clearly has its drawbacks. But another 18th-century contraption used a pink cloth-covered mannequin comprising a female torso complete with genitalia, a set of implantable foetuses of various ages, and even – a real 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. So how valuable in training medical staff is a simulator like this? Very, according to Annette Briley. Imagine it's the middle of the night and an unplanned emergency caesarean is required: \"Some poor junior doctor might find himself trying to manage it on his own.\" To have practised the knack of extracting a firmly impacted baby from a simulator is lot better than first honing your skill on a real woman.\n\n<question>:\nWhat percentage of cesarean births in the UK every year are classified as emergencies?\n\n<options>:\nA Nearly one half\nB Nearly two thirds\nC Nearly one quarter\nD Nearly three quarters\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,870 | 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>:\nthere isn't a trap, the Karna can't satisfy Braynek, because he's convinced in Occeq City, Bertrand Malloy leafed casually through the dossiers of the those men, as a team, are unbeatable because, in this situation, they're psychologically incapable of losing.\" twitch or a quirk was shipped to a question in his mind. \"Since you Malloy, Permanent Terran Ambassador to His Utter Munificence, the Occeq of Saarkkad. Take this first one, for instance. know all that, couldn't you have handled and Braynek have blind spots, but showed the complete psychological analysis of the man. Psychopathic paranoia. The man wasn't technically insane he could be as lucid as the next man most of the time. But he was morbidly suspicious that every man's hand was turned against him. He Malloy looked at him. \"Didn't you on his guard against imaginary plots and persecutions. trusted no one, and was perpetually sort of emotional block that left him Number two suffered from some bigshot should, is because I like it that way. I suffer from agoraphobia and xenophobia. \"I have to be drugged to be put on incapable of making a decision Malloy sighed and pushed the dossiers a spaceship because I can't take all continually on the horns of one dilemma or another. He was psychologically about all men. He considered himself an individual, for instance, but wasn't possible alternatives of any major He was—how old? He glanced at the Earth calendar dial that was automatically seemed to be an eternal sameness the basic similarity there, after all? next week. Fifty-nine years old. And what did he have to show for it besides flabby muscles, sagging skin, a correlated with the Saarkkadic years, but still beautiful and alive in his recollections. And—he grinned Malloy closed his eyes. Somewhere And, Malloy knew, his own position of differences—but their minds just didn't function along the same lines. For nine years, Bertrand Malloy meant instant loss of prestige. To their way of thinking, an important official was aloof. The greater his importance, the greater must be his isolation. The Occeq of Saarkkad himself was never seen except by a Saarkkad IV to work under Bertrand handful of picked nobles, who, themselves, It was Bertrand Malloy's job to Malloy ran his finger down the columns it yourself?\" But Malloy didn't have top-grade men. They couldn't be spared from work that required their total capacity. It's inefficient to waste a man on a job that he can do without half trying where there are more important jobs So Malloy was stuck with the culls. what was wrong with a man, as long as he had the mental ability to dress himself and get himself to Physical handicaps weren't at all difficult to deal with. A blind man can to deal with, but not totally impossible. On a world without liquor, a dipsomaniac could be channeled easily enough and he'd better not try fermenting regulations. But Malloy didn't like to stop at merely thwarting mental quirks he The phone chimed. Malloy flipped \"Malloy here.\" \"Mr. Malloy?\" said a careful voice. \"Bring it in, Miss Drayson.\" Miss Drayson was a case in point. She was uncommunicative. She liked Malloy had made her his private out of Malloy's office without his direct order. It had taken Malloy a long time to get it into Miss Drayson's right—even desirable—for her to keep secrets from everyone except Malloy. know? I wondered why you appointed over to Malloy. me, in the first place. No, I Malloy let her stand there while he picked up the communique. She wanted to know what his reaction was going to be couldn't go. The reason why I'm here, ordered to tell someone. He read the first paragraph, and his eyes widened involuntarily. \"Armistice,\" he said in a low cooped up in this office, hiding from whisper. \"There's a chance that the if he were faced with two or more war may be over.\" Malloy read the whole thing the Saarkkada the way a good Saarkkadic through, fighting to keep his emotions Finally, Malloy looked up. \"I'll let leave this office.\" Malloy watched her go out the door is too costly to allow it to continue any longer than necessary, and this one had been going on for more than that empty space, even if I'm protected impotent. But if the armistice went to their own advantage ... from it by a steel shell.\" A Already, they had taken the offensive look of revulsion came over his face. couldn't argue the point very well. In addition, they demanded that the conference begin in three days, Terrestrial \"And I can't stand and that it was unfair for Earth to take so much time in preparing for an armistice. Why hadn't Earth been prepared? Did they intend to fight to the within the three-day limit or lose what might be a vital point in the negotiations. And that was where Bertrand Malloy On the second day after the arrival of the communique, Malloy made his decision. He flipped on his intercom and said: \"Miss Drayson, tell Braynek to wait.\" \"Yes, sir.\" \"And keep the recorder on. You Malloy knew the woman would Malloy waved him to a seat. Malloy explained the problem of \"We need a man who can outthink them,\" Malloy finished, \"and judging from your record, I think you're that small-time operations all your life? Of course not. \"You'll be leaving within an hour certainly. Am I to go alone?\" \"No,\" said Malloy, \"I'm sending I recall, Mr. Malloy. Should I have?\" \"Not necessarily. He's a pretty shrewd operator, though. He knows a lot about interstellar law, and he's capable of spotting a trap a mile away. \"A man like that can be useful.\" \"Right. Now, you go into the anteroom over there. I've prepared a summary As soon as Nordon had left, Malloy heavy, protruding brows. Malloy asked Again Malloy went through the explanation \"Naturally, they'll be trying to trick you every step of the way,\" Malloy went on. \"They're shrewd and underhanded we'll simply have to laying out for themselves and plug them. Don't antagonize them, but Mr. Malloy.\" Malloy had full reports on the whole on Earth?\" \"Tense. They're waiting to see what is going to happen on Five. So am I, for that matter.\" His eyes were yourself, eh?\" \"I thought it better not to. I sent a good team, instead. Would you like to see the reports?\" Malloy handed them to the secretary, and as he read, Malloy watched \"I thought they would,\" said Malloy, Malloy nodded. \"I think so. The \"How do you mean?\" \"Nordon had a mental block against making decisions. If he took a girl out on a date, he'd have trouble making up his mind whether to kiss her or not until she made up his mind for him, one way or the other. He's that kind of guy. Until he's presented with one, single, clear decision which admits of no alternatives, he can't move at all. and proved that it wasn't rigged, Nordon couldn't possibly make up his mind. I drummed into him how important this was, and the more importance there is attached to his decisions, the more incapable he becomes of making them.\" \"What about Braynek?\" \"Paranoid,\" said Malloy. \"He thinks everyone is plotting against him. In this case, that's all to the good him. No matter what they put forth, Braynek is convinced that there's a trap in it somewhere, and he digs to find out what the trap is. Even if\n\n<question>:\nWhy doesn't Bertrand Malloy appear in public?\n\n<options>:\nA Threats have been made against Malloy's life. He needs to stay out of sight.\nB Malloy is too frail to leave his apartment.\nC He holds a prestigious title. Prestigious men aren't seen in public.\nD He is agoraphobic.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
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>:\n\"What are you doing that's worth anything?\" out of this. What, specifically, has the work of this specific \"Institutions—organizations, that is—\" his voice became more instinctively slipped into his platform lecture mannerisms, and began to deliver an essay—\"have certain tendencies built into the way they happen to have been organized, which cause them to expand or contract 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 to men that a simple organization—such as a church to worship in, or a delegation of weapons to a warrior class merely for defense against an outside enemy—will either grow insensately and extend its control until it is a tyranny over their whole lives, or, like other organizations set up to serve a vital need, will tend to repeatedly dwindle and vanish, and have to be painfully rebuilt. \"The reason can be traced to little quirks in the way they were organized, a matter of positive and negative power feedbacks. Such organization can use the power available to him to increase his power?' used as a base that would enable me to develop a specifically social \"By these formulations, it is possible to determine automatically the amount of growth and period of life of any organization. The UN, to choose an unfortunate example, is a shrinker type organization. Its monetary support is not in the hands of those who personally benefit where else has it been put into operation? Just a simple demonstration, something to show that it works, that's all.\" He spoke quietly. \"All right, I'll give you a demonstration. Are you an annual ceremony in a silly costume, I spend the rest of the year going hat in hand, asking politely for money at everyone's door, going to do for a demonstration. \"Not enough to have it clear.\" \"You know the snowball effect, though.\" \"Sure, start a snowball rolling downhill and it grows.\" for the snowball process. It's the basic general growth formula—covers everything.\" It was a row of little symbols arranged like an algebra equation. One was a concentric spiral going up, like a cross-section of a snowball rolling in snow. That was a growth sign. I hadn't expected to understand the equation, but it was almost as 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 human behavior in groups. After running through a few different types of grower and shrinker type organizations, we came back to the snowball, and decided to run the test by making something grow. into organization.\" \"How about a good selfish reason for the ins to drag others into the group—some sort of bounty on new members, a cut of their membership fee?\" I suggested uncertainly, feeling slightly foolish. \"And maybe a reason why the members would lose if any of them resigned, and some manipulation so that a special grouping appeared in the middle of the equation. \"That's it.\" Since I seemed to have the right idea, I suggested some more, and he added some, and juggled them around in different patterns. We threw out a few that would have made the organization too complicated, and finally worked out an idyllically simple and deadly little organization setup where joining had all the temptation of buying a sweepstakes for the demonstration. \"How about Watashaw? I have some student sociological surveys of it already. We can pick a suitable group from that.\" \"This demonstration has got to be convincing. We'd better pick a little group that no one in his right mind would expect to grow.\" \"There should be a suitable club—\" There were only about thirty people there, and it was a small room, not the halls of Congress, but they discussed their business of collecting leader, a tall, well-built woman in a green suit, with conscious gestures and a resonant, penetrating voice, and then went into a \"Good. Point them out tactfully to the one you select. Not as if she'd use such methods, but just as an example of the reason why only organization we had drawn up. I saw the responsive glitter in the \"I'm not following it. We're supposed to let it run the full six months.\" \"Would that change the results?\" \"Not in the slightest. If you want to graph the membership rise, it should be going up in a log curve, probably doubling every so often.\" I grinned. \"If it's not rising, you're fired.\" \"She's not in just now. Could I take a message?\" I placed the star at the thirty line in the beginning of the first section. Thirty members they'd started with. \"No, thanks. Could you tell me when she'll be back?\" \"The sewing club?\" I asked. \"No, sir, not that thing. There isn't any Sewing club any more, not down on top of the graph of membership in the sewing circle. No more members.... \"Where is this Civic Welfare meeting?\" and found myself in the huge central hall where some sort of rally was being held. A political-type rally—you know, cheers and chants, with the same time as a political rally that could pull its members away. The group with Mrs. Searles was probably holding a shrunken and almost memberless meeting somewhere in an upper room. Everyone's supposed to have it. We've just printed up six thousand copies to make sure there'll be enough to last.\" hand on the speaker's stand with each word for emphasis. \" All we need is more members. Now get out there and recruit! \" She was cheering with the crowd, her eyes sparkling. \"I don't know,\" she answered between cheers. \"I only joined two days ago. Isn't it wonderful?\" some kind of organization song with the tune of \"Marching through Georgia.\" graph for the first three months. They made a nice curve, rising more steeply as it reached the fourth month. They had picked up their first increase in membership simply by amalgamating with all the other types must have been completely organized by then, and expansion had to be in other directions. for rehousing, civic building, and rezoning. that the club had filed an application to incorporate itself as the flowery oration on their enterprise, charity, and civic spirit. He Watashaw business at all, I'm afraid. You say the demonstration went grow . It falls apart naturally when it stops growing for more than two months. It's like the great stock boom before an economic crash. Everyone in it is prosperous as long as the prices just keep going up and new buyers come into the market, but they all knew what would happen if it stopped growing. You remember, we built in as one of the incentives that the members know they are going to lose if membership stops growing. Why, if I tried to stop it now, they'd cut my throat.\" I remembered the drive and frenzy of the crowd in the one early meeting tether and die of old age.\" \"When will that be?\" \"It can't grow past the female population of the town. There are only must have made some provision for— \"You underestimate their ingenuity,\" I said into the phone. \"Since they wanted to expand, they didn't stick to sewing. They went from general and Civic Development Corporation, and they're filing an application the thousand member level, checking with the newspaper that still lay open on my desk. The curve was definitely some sort of log curve now, growing more rapidly with each increase. \"Leaving out practical limitations for a moment, where does the formula say it will stop?\" I asked. \"When you run out of people to join it. But after all, there are only so many people in Watashaw. It's a pretty small town.\" Allowing for a lag of contagion from one nation to another, depending on how much their citizens intermingled, I'd give the rest of the world demonstration.\" bar, if you can call it lunch. The movement we started will expand by hook or by crook, by seduction or by bribery or by propaganda or by conquest, but it will expand. And maybe a total world government will be a fine thing—until it hits the end of its rope in twelve years or so.\n\n<question>:\nWhat kind of organization are they looking for, for their demonstration?\n\n<options>:\nA A small group that no one expects to lose members.\nB A large group that no one expects to lose members.\nC A small group that no one expects to grow.\nD A large group that no one expects to grow.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,406 | 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>:\nhad no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive no key to his age—he might have been thirty or a thousand—but “At perihelion?” and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck where have you been hiding? their to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s an area of recent surface activity the surface was really treacherous. “You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney. “Of course we want to know. We “It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t much about the others. I was worried about It was the planet that whipped us, that and the Sun broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding solid rock. I couldn’t see far ahead, because of the yellow haze I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without proper equipment, with practically no knowledge of surface conditions, without any charts—they couldn’t have made the Colony there. I first met him on Venus been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury, and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since Venus and what my plans were. “That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on you, at any rate. How do you take heat?” “You should know,” I said. “Venus was no icebox.” “No, I mean real dangerous, too.” “What trip?” “Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said. I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?” He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion? about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then, nobody’s got Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.” I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in. That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the surface of the Sun itself. It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It would cross it. I wanted to be along. The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside, of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could hold his observatory. He’d chosen a good location, too. On Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410° F. No permanent installation with a human crew could survive at either extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet to wheel around. The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab to make final preparations. Sanderson did. He thought we’d lost our minds and he said this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had “Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know. I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We they were. The best available were pretty poor, taken from so showed the biggest ranges of peaks and craters and faults, and down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the surface activity there was pretty much slowed down and localized. well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric had reached escape velocity and disappeared from Brightside millennia ago—but there was CO 2 , and nitrogen, and traces of other heavier gases. There was also an abundance of sulfur vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide. The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it condensed, carrying enough volcanic ash with it for Sanderson to estimate the depth and nature of the surface upheavals on rocket from Venus. He’d missed the ship that the Major and I had taken by a few hours, and had conned his way to Venus Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid “They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on “You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?” with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of the planet at the hottest it ever gets. The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon when we started, twice the size it appears on Earth. Every day that Sun would grow bigger and whiter, and every day the what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the “But why not? We could save ourselves days!” It was hot. If I forget everything else about that trek, I’ll Even at only 30 per cent Earth gravity they were a strain on I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out the track the early research teams had made out into the edge were in virgin territory and already the Sun was beginning to that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and reasons—but all we knew, or cared about, was that it We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous gases. It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one had ever crossed this land before and escaped. Those who had the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered before, except for that Sun. We’d fought absolute cold before worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun itself. Brightside was worth trying for. We would get it or it would get us. That was the bargain. I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods. The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly their sides were shrouded with heavy ash. face of the planet. Not enough for erosion, though. The craters rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray dust—silicates and salts, pumice and limestone and granite I learned to read the ground, to tell a covered fault by the\n\n<question>:\nWhich planet wasn't well-known according to the text?\n\n<options>:\nA Jupiter\nB Venus\nC Mars\nD Mercury\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,488 | 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>:\nUFC 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. Instead of being carnivals of gore, UFC fights looked strangely like ... sex. Almost all fights ended on the ground, one man mounting the other in missionary position, the pair of them wiggling mysteriously along the canvas for five, 10, even 30 minutes. There were few spectacular knockouts. The referee--yes, there was always a referee--stopped many bouts, and in most others, fighters \"tapped out,\" surrendering to mild-looking but agonizing chokes and joint locks. It was not barbarism. It was science. 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. 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 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 motivated Sen. John McCain to push back against UFC?\n\n<options>:\nA He was a bigger fan of boxing and thought UFC was taking the spotlight\nB He thought UFC seemed more violent than other sports and was disgusted enough to revolt\nC He had pressure from the television networks to take UFC off the air because it was too violent\nD He thought all combat sports were dangerous and couldn't stand to see all of the violence televised\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
2,032 | 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>:\nturn Ledman over to the authorities. HUNTED \"I never bothered to find out their names,\" Ledman said casually. \"They were other Geigs I caught unawares, like you, out on the desert. That's the only sport I have left—Geig-hunting. Look out there.\" we dump this guy I'm sacking in for twenty hours, and then die out here on Mars is to we're going back out there to He gestured through the and quitting you can find \"Let's keep moving,\" I told Val. \"The surest way to The planet itself was tough enough—barren, desolate, forbidding it off as occupational hazards. There had been a pattern of disappearances on the desert. I could think of six, eight which he had entrapped us, that some grease monkey back at the Dome was at fault—whoever it was who had failed make close friends out here. But we'd vowed it wouldn't happen to us. enough to stop the most adventurous and But no she blamed it all on me somehow: So we were out walking on the spongy sand of the Martian desert. We'd been walking a good eight hours. \"Can't we turn back now, thought all his kind had died at the time of the atomic wars. \"No,\" Ledman said evenly. If you Mars. Eventually I'll scare you all away.\" \"Just pick us off in the desert?\" \"Exactly,\" replied Ledman. \"And I have no fears of an think I'm backing down now \"Come on, kid. Remember—we're doing this for Earth. We're heroes.\" since I landed here on Mars.\" \"What are you going to do an envoy, to go back and tell the others to clear off.\" He her. We had wandered fruitlessly over the red sands all rocked back and forth in his I found myself fervently wishing I was back out there on the infinitely safer desert. \"Do I shock you?\" he asked. \"I shouldn't—not when Even though the Martian \"We're not heroes—we're suckers! Why did I ever let You're on Mars hunting uranium, you volunteer for the Geig Corps and drag me along?\" Which wasn't anywhere I nodded over at our geiger counters. \"We volunteered to come to Mars,\" Val said irrelevantly. \"Ah—two young heroes,\" Ledman said acidly. \"How coming to Mars to help in the much inflamed by the idea of We knew the pay was poor, but we had felt it a sort of obligation, something we search for uranium as I was. foot, both of us. No, we had decided together to come to Mars—the way we decided together on \"I was there on business at the time,\" Ledman said. \"I represented Ledman Atomics. I was there to sign a new contract for my company. You know who I am, now?\" that meant we had found pay-dirt. I started to feel tired to lie down on the soft, spongy Martian sand and bury myself. Mars, until I recalled that I had nothing to do with it.\" \"You're just in this by accident,\" he said. \"You see, after We the board of Ledman Atomics decided that a semi-basket case like myself was a poor said. \"The others did, too.\" and they took my company away. All quite legal, I assure you. They left me almost a we could go. I stopped, slipped out of \"They renamed Ledman title than Ledman for years then I came to Mars, lost myself, built this moment she was fast asleep, sprawled out on the sands. Poor kid , I thought. Maybe we shouldn't have come to Mars after all. But, I reminded the job. A second thought appeared, but I squelched it: He rolled over to a wall table and fumbled in a container me into a walking pin-cushion. But I'll pay it all back,\" he said. He plunged struggle that was Mars. wasn't seriously worried about his threat to wipe out we wanted to keep what we had. Heroes? Hell, no. We just liked our comforts, and the entire Geig Corps, since wanted to keep them. Which same way I did. \"Do you really think you can succeed?\" I taunted him. every Earthman on Mars? Of The Geig Corps preferred married couples, working in cut me off. But Ledman \"Yes! I'll get even with every one of you for taking away my legs! If we hadn't I glanced at the suit-chronometer. Getting late. I decided wearying journey across the empty desert. was. But I had to get Ledman It wasn't Martians that any Martians, hadn't been for That did it. Ledman hadn't Earthman who had bound us. and saw a helmeted figure above us. He wasn't wearing glued-in instantly. Ledman the customary skin-tight pliable wore an outmoded, bulky spacesuit and a fishbowl helmet, all but the face area oxysuits we had. He Ledman clawed his way to odd. I thought I knew everyone on sparsely-settled Mars. Somehow I'd missed him. What shocked me most was spacesuit ended neatly at the to. But how?\" and a very efficient-looking blaster was in his right. \"I didn't want to disturb your sleep,\" he said coldly. \"So I've been waiting here for you to wake up.\" I could just see it. He might have been sitting there for hours, complacently waiting to see how we'd wake up. That was when I realized he I looked uneasily at Ledman. \"You'll find out soon enough,\" he said. \"Suppose now you come with me.\" He across the floor to Ledman, Then I turned and faced Ledman. sent back to Earth.\" \"They'll help you on Earth. I've never seen this guy before, and I thought I knew everyone at the Dome.\" called, and we stopped talking. We trudged along together, with him following behind off for Mars without a moment's delay, didn't you? You hated Earth so much you to leave.\" where we were going, and why. I wondered why we had \"Because if you'd stayed long enough, you'd have used some of your pension money ever left Earth. and the only way to get them was to get out and look. The Ledman scowled, and then \"Why are you telling all this to me?\" to buy yourself a pair of prosthetic I had no muscles to fit them to.\" \"You left Earth too quickly,\" Val said. \"It was the only way,\" he protested. \"I had to get off—\" and London and all the other ruined cities had been hidden by a shining new world of gleaming towers and flying of New York and Shanghai except you. You were so sick you had to get away from the world you despised and come here.\" he'd killed twelve Geigs—or more—and would on Mars. With every Ledman,\" I said. \"All this time you could have been happy, useful on Earth, instead of being holed up here Sea-Dredge was trying to get might have been useful, on Earth. But you decided to \"I still don't believe it—those legs. I might have walked again. No—no, it's all a lie. So, Mars. There's not much uranium on Mars, and it's not \"Of course not,\" I said. I gave Val the blaster and slipped Mars, combing for its uranium deposits. And here we are, I thought. After we walked on a out of my oxysuit. out on the face of Enter the Geig Corps: volunteers desert. Just out of the way enough to escape observation. For a puzzled moment I Ledman was sobbing. \"Okay, Ledman,\" I said. Ledman.\" He herded us off to Gregory Ledman the killer Ledman.\" I turned to Val. dried-up mask. He was a man Ledman had caught us, I remembered who hated. been out on the desert. I realized now that I had been driving her mercilessly—me, with how tired Val had and I put Ledman know the whole story,\" he \"Let's get back to the Dome\n\n<question>:\nHow did Ledman get to Mars?\n\n<options>:\nA He saved his money to send himself\nB He joined the Corps just as Val and Ron did\nC He was part of a uranium company who funded his trip\nD He posed as a tourist and stayed behind on a vacation\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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2,196 | 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>:\nJERRY SOHL murders—and a few thousand years. He was entitled to a sense of humor, though, even in the Ultroom! HB73782. Ultroom error. Tendal 13. Arvid 6. Kanad transfer out of 1609 complete, intact, but too near limit of 1,000 and Mrs. Martin Laughton, 3495 Orland Drive, Marionville, knees hit the side of the play pen and young Laughton let out a scream—half from hurt and half from sudden lack of confidence in his child. brother.\" bleeding knees, squalling for all he was worth on the grass—Oh, I don't even want to think about it.\" him. \"Are you a rich man, Mr. Laughton?\" he asked. \"What do you do?\" The front door bell rang. He answered it. It was Dr. Stuart and inside with the other man. \"This is my new assistant, Dr. Tompkins.\" Martin and Tompkins shook hands. \"The baby—?\" Dr. Stuart asked. \"You'd better get him, Dr. Tompkins, if we're to take him to the hospital. I'll stay here with Mr. Laughton. How've you been, Martin?\" \"How's everything at the office?\" \"And your wife?\" bill you owe me. I think it's $32, isn't that right?\" opened it and started looking for his checkbook. Dr. Stuart stood by him, making idle comment until Dr. Tompkins came down the stairs with Then he was nearly bowled over by the discharge of the .30-.30. Dr. Stuart crumpled to the ground, the baby falling to the lawn. Dr. Tompkins whirled and there was a second shot. Dr. Tompkins pitched telephone. doctors. One of them was the same man who tried to take the baby this Reggie.\" \"Where's Tiger?\" spine and tossing her against the house. The car plunged on into a tree, hitting it a terrible blow, crumbling the car's forward end so \"That's odd. The man who accosted Mrs. Laughton in the afternoon was \"Any record of treatment on the man she shot?\" knows where.\" Laughton. Why did he pretend to be drunk?\" \"What does the man have to say?\" name is John Smith and he's got cards to prove it, too—for example, a an alienist.\" \"One jump ahead of you. Dr. Stone thinks he's normal, but won't put down any I.Q. Actually, he can't figure him out himself. Smith seems \"Well, if Dr. Stone says he's normal, that's enough for me.\" The The man who had laughingly told police his name was John Smith lay on reclining. Even as he lay, his mouth held a hint of a smile. Arvid 6—for John Smith was appeared to be listening. For a moment a look of concern crossed his face and he swung his legs to the floor and sat there expectantly. Arvid 6 knew Tendal 13 had materialized and was somewhere in the building. Eventually there were some sounds from beyond the steel cell and it,\" he declared. \"If you carry on any more we'll never get back to the Ultroom!\" \"I'm sorry, Tendal,\" the man on the cot said. \"I didn't think—\" \"You're absolutely right. You didn't think. Crashing that car into that tree and killing that woman—that was the last straw. You don't even deserve to get back to our era. You ought to be made to rot \"I'm if it hadn't. But to unnecessarily kill—\" The older man shook his head. \"You could have killed yourself as well and we'd never get the job done. As it is, you almost totally obliterated me.\" Tendal 13 paced the length of the cell and back again, gesturing as he talked. \"It was only with the greatest effort I pulled myself back together \"How well I know! How sorry I am that I ever did! It was only because I was sorry for you, because someone older and more experienced than you was needed. I volunteered. Imagine that! I volunteered! Tendal 13 reaches the height of stupidity and volunteers to help Arvid 6 go back mistakes. You're just not adventurous, that's all.\" specifically stated we were to have as little as possible to do with these people. But at every turn you've got us more and more enmeshed with them. If that's adventure, you can have it.\" Tendal 13 sat down wearily and sank his head in his hands. \"It was you who conceived the idea of taking Reggie right out of his play pen. 'Watch me take that I played a very minor role. 'This is my new assistant, Dr. Tompkins,' didn't even come close to getting the child. \"Still you wanted to run the whole show. 'I'm younger than you,' you go back and rescue the life germ of Kanad out of each era he'd be born in.\" Tendal 13 turned and looked steadily and directly at Arvid 6. \"Do you know what I think? I think you deliberately pushed the lever over as far as it would go I think it was.\" Arvid 6 flushed, turned away and looked at the floor. \"What crazy things have you been doing since I've been gone?\" Tendal 13 asked. Arvid 6 sighed. \"After what you just said I guess it wouldn't amuse you, although it has me. They got to me right after the accident \"At great length. They had a psychiatrist in to see me. He was a queer \"Who do you tell them you are?\" \"John Smith. A rather prevalent name here, I understand. I manufactured a pasteboard called a social security card and a driver's through a million years.\" \"Was Kanad's life germ transferred all right this time?\" Tendal 13 shook his head. \"I haven't heard. The transfers are getting more difficult all the time. In 1609, you'll remember, it was a case of pneumonia for the two-year-old. A simple procedure. It wouldn't work here. Medicine's too far along.\" He produced a notebook. \"The back after it. The life germ of the head of the whole galactic system who came to the Ultroom to be transplanted to a younger body—and then sending him back beyond his original birth date—\" Tendal 13 got up and commenced his pacing again. \"Oh, I suppose Kanad's partly to blame, wanting rejuvenating at only 300 years. Some have waited a thousand or more or until their bones are like paper.\" \"I just wonder how angry Kanad will be,\" Arvid muttered. HB92167. Ultroom Error. Tendal 13. Arvid 6. Kanad transfer Phullam 19, son of Orla 39 and Rhoda R, 22H Level M, Hemisphere B, Quadrant 3, Sector I. Arrive his 329th Day. TB92167 Arvid 6 rose from the cot and the two men faced each other. \"Before we leave, Arvid,\" Tendal 13 started to say. \"I know, I know. You want me to let you handle everything.\" \"Exactly. Is that too much to ask after all you've done?\" \"I guess I have made mistakes. From now on you be the boss. I'll do whatever you say.\" \"I hope I can count on that.\" Tendal 13 rang the jail buzzer. The jailer unlocked the cell door. \"You remember the chief said it's all right to take him with me, Matthews,\" Tendal 13 told the jailer. \"Yes, I remember,\" the jailer said mechanically, letting them both out of the cell. laughed as he saw the jailer's eyes bulge. \"Arvid!\" Tendal 13 walked briskly through the door, snatched Arvid 6 by the shoulders and shook him. The jailer watched stupified as the two men vanished in the middle of\n\n<question>:\nWho is Dr. Tompkins?\n\n<options>:\nA Arvid 6\nB Kanad\nC Reggie Laughton\nD Tendal 13\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>:\nand night coming up with the most ingenious, improvised solutions to everything from food and shelter to communications and security. Working together 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 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 departure from the AT& that would have been seen, until recently, as too chaotic ever to work (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 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 business, this rationalization was typified by Fredrick Taylor’s Scientific Management, later embodied in Henry Ford’s assembly line. The ambition of these approaches was to specify everything that needed doing 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 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 successful state bureaucracies that responded to the Great Depression systems too, we saw in mid-century marvels like the AT& T telephone 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 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 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 modeling of what hyper-simplified selfish rational actors, looking only to their own interests, would do under diverse conditions. This approach was widespread and influential it still is. And yet it led to such 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 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 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. The set of human systems necessary for action in this complex, unpredictable set of conditions, combining rationalization with human 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 maneuver, and be reoriented to fit changing conditions and new learning, or shift from one system to another to achieve a solution. Consider first of all the triumph of Toyota over the programs of Taylor and Ford. Taylorism was typified by the ambition to measure and specify 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 assembly line, guided by a multitude of rigid task specifications and 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 Taiwanese original-design manufacturers. 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& T network in its heyday. Unlike the Internet, AT& T’s network was fully managed. Mid-century, the company even retained ownership of the phones at the endpoints, arguing that it needed to prohibit customers from connecting unlicensed phones to the system (ostensibly to ensure proper functioning of the networking and monitoring of customer behavior, although it didn’t hurt either that this policy effectively 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, letter or a song, a video or a software package) and breaking it up into 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. 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 that its owner wants to run, unless it has received authorization from some other locus: be it the copyright owner, the virus protection 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 ultimate reversal of the human-centric, loosely-coupled design approach 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 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 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\n\n<question>:\nWhy did AT&T originally retain ownership of the phones at the endpoints?\n\n<options>:\nA To prohibit customers from connecting unlicensed phones at the endpoints.\nB To exclude competitors.\nC To ensure the proper functioning of the networking and monitoring of customer behavior.\nD To make the most profit.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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2,219 | 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>:\nmuch the same can be said of the gunman, too.... GUN FOR HIRE By MACK called softly, \"Al.\" The pleasurable, comfortable, are fairly permanent even \"Where's the nearest?\" doubling and twisting and twitching of every muscle and nerve. There was pain, horror and tumultuous fear. And he came out of it as quickly and completely as he'd gone in. He was in, he thought, a hospital and his first reaction was to think, didn't, huh? What happens after I \"Mr. Prantera, this will probably Then his second thought was being handled in that manner.\" Joe eyed him in scorn. \"Oh, you on me?\" he hadn't completely pulled the trigger. \"If I understand your idiom correctly, you mean prison. There are get him off with a couple of years at Quentin. no prisons in this era, Mr. Prantera.\" \"No banks! You gotta have banks!\" to practice vocally. \"You have recovered?\" Joe Prantera looked at the other endless ramifications—including was one of these foreign doctors, like. The newcomer said, \"You have undoubtedly been through a most harrowing experience. If you have any untoward symptoms, possibly I could be of assistance.\" let's get down to facts. Summa the bank robberies—as we were to productive expressionlessly. Maybe the old duck stimulant?\" mother had died in childbirth. His father hadn't brought him to the States until the age of five and by that time he had a stepmother. to Temple-Tracy's apartment and, ah, dispose of him?\" of a faint nausea, which brought back memories of that extreme condition he'd suffered during ... during what? He hadn't the vaguest idea of what had happened. He was dressed in a hospital-type nightgown. He looked down at it and gives it to me instead.\" Dr. Reston-Farrell said, \"Howard Temple-Tracy lives alone. He customarily receives visitors every afternoon, snorted and made his way over to the \"You think I'd be seen dead wearing this stuff? What is this, some religious crackpot hospital?\" Reston-Farrell said, \"I am afraid, Mr. Salviati-Prantera, that these are eh?\" he said sarcastically. \"Then what happens? How do I get out of the \"Get rid of the gun. You want I should get caught with the gun on me? I'd wind up in the gas chamber He looked out, however, not on the lawns and walks of a sanitarium but capital punishment, you must realize.\" \"O.K. I still don't wanta get caught. What is the rap these days, huh?\" have no jails any more.\" \"This is difficult for you to understand, him, \"but, you see, we no longer punish \"Try this, it's excellent cognac.\" matter what they do? That's crazy. realization would be a shock to you,\" \"The motivation for crime has room. We will be glad to explain to you if you will join us there.\" person who commits a violence against another is obviously in need of medical care. And, consequently, receives it.\" vengeance, of the measures that \"You mean, like, if I steal a car or doctor?\" Joe Prantera was unbelieving. \"Why would anybody wish to steal failure, were now far away. something, they just take me to a give it to somebody?\" \"You will be turned over to a medical institution. Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy is the last man you will ever kill, Mr. Prantera.\" reopened for him. He went through it without looking back. \"Well then, figure something else. \"Mr. Prantera,\" Dr. Reston-Farrell said, \"there has been as much progress in the field of psychiatry in the past two centuries as there has in any other. Your treatment would be brief and painless, believe me.\" Joe said coldly, \"And what happens to you guys? How do you know I won't rat on you?\" after you have accomplished your mission, we plan to turn ourselves over to the nearest institution to have determined whether or not we also need therapy.\" \"Now I'm beginning to wonder about you guys,\" Joe said. \"Look, all over again, what'd'ya wanta give it to this guy for?\" The doctor said, \"We explained the other day, Mr. Prantera. Citizen atavistic, evil genius. We are afraid for our institutions if his plans are allowed to mature.\" everybody's got it made, like, who'd listen to him?\" The doctor nodded at the validity is a unique animal. Physically he matures at approximately the age of thirteen. However, mental maturity and adjustment is often not fully realized until thirty or even more. glass down and said carefully, \"What's it all about, huh?\" Warren Brett-James said soothingly, \"Prepare yourself for somewhat achieved. Before such maturity is the military, all seem romantic to the immature. They rebel at the orderliness of present society. They seek entertainment of a shock, Mr. Prantera. You are no \"O.K., so this guy is dangerous. You want him knocked off before he screws everything up. But the way companion. \"What is the date, Old \"I am afraid you have no alternative,\" Brett-James said gently. \"Without He let the sentence fall away as he whole world where they talk American?\" Joe demanded, aghast. Dr. Reston-Farrell controlled the in a museum. It had been more easily procured than the ammunition had been solved. repelled by the very conception of what they had planned. years after the last memory you have.\" Joe Prantera's mind suddenly reverted If they allowed him to call it off today, \"And he won't think it's funny I \"That is correct.\" \"That is correct.\" hammer down, thumbed on the \"Let's start all over again. I got this Louis, everybody, they're dead. Even soft. \"They are all dead, Mr. Prantera. Their children are all dead, and their grandchildren.\" are, a professional assassin.\" ... transported to dispose of a contemporary named I might say, whose demise would probably have caused small dismay to \"It's a handgun, circa, I would say, about 1925 Old Calendar. What there are no professional assassins in in the world are you doing with it?\" THE END you ever consider the future?\" copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and with national and international, problems. Just as we are today and just as nations were a century or a millennium depressions and dictators and like that.\" \"Yes, like that,\" Brett-James The heavy-set man paused a moment. \"Yes, like that,\" he repeated. \"That we confront you now indicates that the problems of your day were solved. Hadn't they been, the world most surely would have destroyed itself. and a half ago our society eliminated conflict. For that matter,\" he added musingly, \"we eliminated most international boundaries. Depressions? Shortly after your own period, man minimum of toil. Overnight, for all practical purposes, the whole world was industrialized, automated. The as others are still enslaved. Today the democratic ethic has reached a pinnacle new strain—has found the human race unprotected from its disease. We had thought our vaccines immunized us.\" \"What's that suppose to mean?\" evil has appeared on the current scene.\" not considered.\" five times. Then I woulda took the would have been forfeit, Mr. Prantera.\" Reston-Farrell said, \"As to reward, age. Once this task has been performed, we will sponsor your entry into present day society. Competent psychiatric therapy will soon remove your present—\" \"Waita minute, now. You figure on shrinker, eh? No thanks, Buster. I'm going back to my own—\" Brett-James was shaking his head again. \"I am afraid there is no return, time stream. There can be no return assimilating, but this was the final He stayed in the apartment of Reston-Farrell. Joe had been right, Reston-Farrell was a medical doctor. Brett-James evidently had something to do with the process that had enabled\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the punishment for murder in the future?\n\n<options>:\nA Death\nB Erasure from the timeline\nC Life in prison\nD Psychiatric Care\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,485 | 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>:\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. 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. But a subtle sport was emerging from the gimmicks and carnage. My passion for ultimate fighting (which is also called \"extreme\" or \"no-holds-barred\" fighting) began when I saw the finals of UFC IV. Royce Gracie, a 180-pound Brazilian jujitsu specialist, was matched against a 275-pound beast named Dan Severn, one of the top heavyweight wrestlers in the world and a national champion many times over. In 30 seconds, Severn had grabbed Gracie, flung him to the canvas, and mounted him. For the next 15 minutes, Severn pummeled and elbowed and head-butted the smaller man. Gracie's face grew drawn, and he squirmed wildly to avoid Severn's bombardment. Then, all of sudden, Gracie, still lying on his back, saw an opening, wrapped his arms and legs around Severn like a python and choked the giant into submission. 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. 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. 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. None of this soothed the cable operators, who have kept UFC off the air. The pay-per-view audience has plunged from 300,000 per show to 15,000. UFC can no longer afford its best fighters: Some are fighting overseas. Others, notably Ken Shamrock (Frank's brother), have become pro wrestlers. Fights have deteriorated. UFC is limping along, but it has been reduced to scheduling events in Japan and Brazil. \"Sports fans want to grow with the sport,\" says former UFC fighter David Beneteau. \"They want to recognize the athletes. They want to see the same fighters come back. When you compare UFC now to what it was, the fighters are not the same, the rules are not the same. The fans have no story to follow.\" 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>:\nWhy has UFC moved to smaller locations over the course of its history?\n\n<options>:\nA Over time, popularity decreased enough that these are the only places fights can happen\nB This way, UFC fits in with public perception driven by movies like Fight Club, which is more true to its roots\nC The fans are dedicated to their small local stadiums prefer to not have matches televised\nD It is now illegal to have UFC matches in large stadiums for safety reasons\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>:\nand b) entertain dissenting opinions exclusively from those whose heads are affixed to spikes. That said, the movie's approach makes for juicy melodrama. The tone of Elizabeth comes nearer to the nihilistic relish of Jacobeans such as John Ford and John Webster than to the more sorrowful horror of the Elizabethan dramatists Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. It's even closer to a Jacobean drama of our own age: The Godfather (1972), which it emulates by cutting back-and-forth between queen and courtiers in prayer and the roundup and slaughter of Catholics on their privies, in bed with their mistresses, and so on. Their severed heads look on, wide-eyed, as Elizabeth directs her hair to be shorn--images of her girlhood flashing by as her locks rain down--and then walks weightily to her throne, now a chalk-faced gorgon. With all due respect to Blanchett, Bette Davis, and Glenda Jackson, my favorite Elizabeth I remains Miranda Richardson's capricious, baby-talking psychopath on the BBC comedy Blackadder II . (Casting about for a new lord high executioner, she mews to Rowan Atkinson, \"There are thousands of Catholics simply dying to have their heads sneaked off --and there's no one to organize it.\") But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety. Gradually expunging all empathy from her moist, pink eyes and permitting her visage to ossify, she gives this carnival of carnage an awe-inspiring center. A more subversive sort of queen is on display in Velvet Goldmine , Todd Haynes' musical fantasia on the early '70s era of \"glam\" or \"glitter\" rock. Here the monarch is a David Bowie-esque singer called Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and his spidery, space-age alter ego, Maxwell Demon. The movie opens with a spaceship depositing an infant Oscar Wilde on the stoop of a Dublin townhouse. Then it skips ahead to track a jade pin (it signifies hedonistic liberation) from the custody of a young Wilde to a swishy fringe creature called Jack Fairy to the regal Slade, a bisexual superstar who carries the news to all the young dudes. After that, we're in an Orwellian 1984 that's presided over by a vaguely fascist president and by arena rockers who serve as propagandists for a repressively conformist state. Whatever happened to Brian Slade, the glitter kids, the visionary exhibitionists and gleeful poseurs? Borrowing its framework from Citizen Kane , the movie follows a reporter (Christian Bale) assigned to reconstruct Slade's life and solve the mystery of his whereabouts. In Velvet Goldmine , Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please. The core of the movie turns out not to be the Bowie figure but the journalist, Arthur Stuart, who was a witness to the events he's now reconstructing. Bale is such an expressive performer that Stuart's remembrance of things past attains a Proustian intensity. To him, Slade was a sexual messiah. I've never seen a more vivid distillation of rock's allure than the scene in which he reverently opens the new Brian Slade album--its centerfold image is a lithe, naked, green-tinged Maxwell Demon--slips the vinyl out of its paper jacket and, after gingerly setting the LP on the turntable, props a chair under the doorknob to keep the uncomprehending world at bay. But if Haynes wants Velvet Goldmine to be an anthem to the principles Bowie once embodied--the embrace of artifice and the smashing of conventional sexual roles--he also wants to portray the rocker as a hollow opportunist who abandoned glam and bisexuality for the life of a corporate superstar, throwing in his lot with the forces of repression. That's a lot to cover. An actor of stature might have bridged these two impulses, but the beautiful, brazenly slim-hipped Rhys-Meyers doesn't make his lines sound as if he's thinking them up on the spot, and Slade's self-destructive passion for Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), the film's fuzzy, sweet Iggy Pop figure, seems less an emotional imperative than a thematic one. A case can be made that Velvet Goldmine isn't fully filled in, and that Haynes, who has never shaken off his background as a semiotics major, has made a movie that's all signifiers. I sometimes found myself wishing he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes. But then I'd be swept up in the sinuous motion of his filmmaking, in the elation of watching point of view passed like a baton from hand to hand, in the liberating force of his language and soundtrack. Velvet Goldmine might seem like a collection of baubles, but those baubles are strung. Is Brad Pitt the worst actor on earth? The case could be made, and Meet Joe Black could serve as Exhibit A. Pitt plays two roles in this seven course schlockfest. He's (briefly) a slick but wholesome yuppie and then (interminably) Death, who takes over the young man's body when he's thumped by a couple of cars in the movie's most promising moment. Bleached so blond that he looks like an irradiated android, Pitt expels all expression from his face and all tone from his voice. He speaks very, very slowly. The stunt half-works, at least until he's supposed to undergo an inner transformation and acquire human emotions--whereupon his face remains just as blank. Pitt's conception of the role is an idée fixe by someone who doesn't appear to have an idée in his head. Martin Brest, the director, is known for shooting a ton of footage and then \"finding\" his films in the editing room. What do you suppose he \"found\" when he scrutinized these miles of celluloid with Pitt doing nothing and taking his sweet time doing it? The first adaptation of this story (originally a play) was the 1934 Death Takes a Holiday , which came in at a perky 78 minutes. A conceit this fragile needs to whiz along to keep our disbelief in suspension, but Meet Joe Black grinds on for three hours (longer than either Beloved or Saving Private Ryan ), and Pitt acts as if he has leased the screen by the year. Anthony Hopkins plays the zillionaire communications baron whom Death enlists in the hope of understanding the human condition--an odd choice for a tour guide, since most people's condition doesn't involve personal helicopters, sprawling mansions on Long Island Sound, or Manhattan apartments that sport Olympic-size swimming pools. Four screenwriters, among them the great Bo Goldman ( Melvin and Howard , 1980 Actually, Hopkins gives this humanistic magnate considerable weight, so that whether or not Death takes him before he can stop to smell the roses and make amends to his neglected children becomes a matter of some suspense. The rest of the cast works with equal fortitude, especially Jeffrey Tambor (Hank \"Hey now!\" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show ) as Hopkins' milksop son-in-law and Marcia Gay Harden as his party planning, perpetually wilting elder daughter. As the younger daughter, the dark eyed, spaghetti thin Claire Forlani has to carry the picture's bathos on her exquisite shoulders. Her tremulous thoroughbred act wears thin, but it's hardly her fault: She has to emote like mad opposite a black pit of death--or is that the Black Death of Pitt?\n\n<question>:\nWhich actor gets the most negative critique from the film reviewer?\n\n<options>:\nA Jonathan Rhys-Myers\nB Anthony Hopkins\nC Brad Pitt\nD Christian Bale\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>:\nNebula McCray found an ally—and a foe! His name was Herrell McCray and he was scared. in survival locker, on the Jodrell Bank —and abruptly wished he were carrying now—but it was a pistol. Another trophy, like the strange all along: \"Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is Jodrell Bank calling Herrell McCray....\" And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the AVC circuits toned the signal down, another voice. A woman's voice, crying out in panic and fear: \" Jodrell Bank! Where are you? Help!\" IV and a number of inconvenient sizes. McCray tripped over something \"Wait!\" Hatcher ordered sharply. He was watching the new specimen and it. McCray had no idea where he was, and no way to find out. Not only was he in darkness, but in utter silence as well. No. Not quite utter silence. still as he could, listening it remained elusive. Probably it was only an illusion. But the room itself was hard fact. McCray swore violently and out loud. It was crazy and impossible. There simply was no way for him to get from a warm, bright navigator's cubicle on Starship Jodrell Bank to this damned, dark, dismal hole of a place where everything was out to hurt him and nothing explained what was going on. He cried aloud in exasperation: \"If I could only !\" He tripped and fell against something that was soft, slimy and, like baker's dough, not at all resilient. Hatcher hesitated. \"No,\" he said at last. \"The male is responding well. having tunnel vision or wearing blinders. He could see what he was The woman's voice was at such close range that McCray's suit radio made a useful RDF set. He located her direction easily enough, shielding the tiny built-in antenna with the tungsten-steel blade of the ax, while meteorite striking the Jodrell Bank , an explosion, himself knocked McCray was hardly surprised at that out, brought here in a suit ... well, it was an explanation with more he had been close enough to shock himself. He tried to reassure her as he searched for a way out of the He hesitated, hefting the ax, glancing back at the way he had come. There had to be a way out, even if it meant chopping through a wall. hall, but in the middle of a word her voice stopped. holes than fabric, like a fisherman's net, but at least it was rational. McCray regarded it grimly. He went back in his memory with meticulous suit? It was slightly reassuring, McCray thought, to find that most of care. Had he not looked at, this very spot a matter of moments before? Still, it led in the proper direction. McCray added one more McCray was beginning to feel more confident. It was astonishing how a He stood still, thinking. Item, a short time ago—subjectively it seemed to be minutes—he had been aboard the Jodrell Bank with nothing more on his mind than completing his check-sighting and meeting He allowed that thought to seep into his mind. Suppose there had been an accident to the Jodrell Bank . He could, of course, be dead. All this could be the fantasies of a cooling brain. McCray grinned into the pink-lit darkness. The thought had somehow said, \"calling the Jodrell Bank .\" No response. He frowned. \"This is Herrell McCray, calling Jodrell Bank . \"Herrell McCray, calling anybody, come in, please.\" Of course, the thing might not be operating. He reached for the microphone again— He cried aloud. For before the light had gone, McCray had seen what had escaped McCray could not see any part of his own body at all. Someone was watching Herrell McCray, with the clinical fascination Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the \"probe team\" which had McCray under observation, and he was more than a little \"Incredible—but it's true enough,\" he said. \"I'd better report. Watch watch McCray, and they would do their job Herrell McCray. \"Well ... not much, sir. He suddenly panicked. We don't know why but we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while.\" the probe-team room, he was in fairly close touch with what was going on—knew that McCray was once again fumbling among the objects in the dark, knew that the team-members had tried illuminating the room for him briefly and again produced the rising panic. Still, Hatcher fretted. He wanted to get back. —\"and tried to guess his needs and we're frightening him half to death. We \"Have they secured a subject?\" Hatcher demanded jealously. drifting about him. Hatcher checked through the members that he had left with the rest of his team and discovered that there were no immediate emergencies, so he But it seemed that the Probe Teams themselves might be betraying their he knew his assistant well. Obviously something He switched off the light and stood for a moment, listening. For a second he thought he heard the far-off voice, quiet, calm and almost hopeless, that he had sensed hours before but then that was McCray switched the light on and looked around. There seemed to be no amazement in its tone, \"McCray, is that you? Where the devil are you calling from?\" He forgot smell, sound and temperature and leaped for the suit. \"This is Herrell McCray,\" he cried. \"I'm in a room of some sort, apparently on a planet of approximate Earth mass. I don't know—\" \"McCray!\" cried the tiny voice in his ear. \"Where are you? This is Jodrell Bank calling. Answer, please!\" \"I \"Herrell McCray,\" droned the tiny voice in his ear, \"Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray, this is Jodrell Bank responding to your message, acknowledge please. Herrell McCray, Herrell McCray....\" It kept on, and on. McCray took a deep breath and thought. Something was wrong. Either they didn't hear him, which meant the radio wasn't transmitting, or—no. That was not it they had heard him, because they were responding. But it seemed to take them so long.... possibly mean—that there was a lag of an hour or two each way? Did it, for example, mean that at the speed of his hours to get a message to the ship and back? And if so ... where in the name of heaven was he? Herrell McCray was a navigator, which is to say, a man who has learned guesses of his \"common sense.\" When Jodrell Bank , hurtling faster than light in its voyage between stars, made its regular position was wrong. Perhaps it was impossible to believe what the radio's message implied but it was not necessary to \"believe,\" only to act. McCray thumbed down the transmitter button and gave a concise report say, except for one more word: Help.\" He grinned sourly and released the button. The message was on its way, and it would be hours before he could have a reply. Therefore he had to consider what to do next. Hurriedly McCray scrambled into the suit. By the time he was sealed McCray had no way of knowing just how hot it was going to get. Nor, McCray caught it up and headed for the door. It felt good in his but flaking out in chips that left a white powdery residue. At this rate, he thought grimly, he would be an hour getting through it. Did he have an hour? McCray got the thin of the blade into the crack and pried it wide. McCray put the broad of his back against the broken door and pressed it as nearly closed as he could it might not keep the gas and heat out, but it would retard them. The room was again unlighted—at least to McCray's eyes. There was not He tapped half-heartedly at one of the closed cupboards, and was not\n\n<question>:\nBased on the article, does McCray know he is being watched?\n\n<options>:\nA No, or else he would have tried speaking with Hatcher and his team.\nB Yes, because he was trying to escape where he was.\nC No, or else he would not have tried to establish communication with the woman who appeared.\nD Yes, because he was trying to radio Jodrell Bank so he could safely escape.\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>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] 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 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.\" \"I felt a technical man might succeed where a trained investigator could be misled. And since it seems to be pinpointed in your home 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 took off his hat. \"Sure you do, Jess. It's been a while, \"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 circles, overlapped by a similar group of rings. \"I think what we're getting is an echo effect from each of these points of intersection. The rings themselves represent the diffraction pattern—\" \"Hold it, Jimmy. To me it just looks like a beer ad. I'll take your word for it.\" \"The point is this, Jess: we think we've got it narrowed down to this \"That's a tough one, Jimmy. This is where I should come up with the \"I didn't expect any easy answers, Jess. But I was hoping maybe you had they'll make jail age.\" \"Why Bram?\" Tremaine persisted. \"As far as I know, he never had any dealings to speak of with anybody here in town.\" Tremaine shook his head. \"What about her and Bram? A romance?\" Jess rocked his chair back on two legs, looked at the ceiling, in front of her.\" Tremaine got to his feet. \"I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your ears and eyes open for anything that might build into a lead on this, Jess. repeating logarithmic sequence, based on—\" \"Hold it, Jimmy. You're over my head.\" Jess got to his feet. \"Let me Tremaine. Tremaine put a hand on the counter, looked thoughtful. \"I was hoping It was ten minutes before he beckoned Tremaine over to the table where \"No, thanks,\" Tremaine said. \"That's all I needed.\" He turned back to Tremaine waited. The woman darted a suspicious look at Tremaine. \"You have to handle Tremaine leafed over, reading slowly. alarmed by a violent cloudburst, accompanied by lightning and thunder, during the night of the fifth. A fire set in the pine woods north of Spivey's farm destroyed a considerable amount of timber and threatened the house before burning itself out along the river. The librarian was at Tremaine's side. \"I have to close the library now. You'll have to come back tomorrow.\" Tremaine set off at a run, covered the two blocks to the hotel, yanked \"What's the matter? Run out of signal?\" \"What's it to you, mister?\" \"Are you boys in touch with Grammond on the car set?\" \"We could be.\" \"Mind if I have a word with him? My name's Tremaine.\" before handing it to Tremaine. Tremaine?\" on me.\" \"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 go underground.\" \"You've got it all figured, I see. I'm just the dumb hick you boys use \"Pull your lip back in. You've given me the confirmation I needed.\" \"Confirmation, hell! All I know is that somebody somewhere is punching 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 moonshiners.\" \"Don't tell me my job, Tremaine!\" the voice snapped. \"And don't try out your famous temper on me. I'm still in charge of this investigation.\" \"Sure. Just don't get stuck in some senator's hip pocket.\" Tremaine Only a faint quaver reflected her age—close to eighty, Tremaine used against him?\" \"There'll be nothing done against him, Miss Carroll ... unless it needs and it may help him.\" She paused. Tremaine waited. \"I'd be grateful for any lead.\" \"Bram fears the thunder.\" III pulled to a stop beside him. Jess leaned out, peered at Tremaine and asked: \"Any luck, Jimmy?\" Tremaine shook his head. \"I'm getting nowhere fast. The Bram idea's a dud, I'm afraid.\" \"Funny thing about Bram. You know, he hasn't showed up yet. I'm getting a little worried. Want to run out there with me and take a look around?\" \"Sure. Just so I'm back by full dark.\" As they pulled away from the curb Jess said, \"Jimmy, what's this about State Police nosing around here? I thought you were playing a lone hand from what you were saying to me.\" \"I thought so too, Jess. But it looks like Grammond's a jump ahead of me. He smells headlines in this he doesn't want to be left out.\" \"Well, the State cops could be mighty handy to have around. I'm wondering why you don't want 'em in. If there's some kind of spy ring working—\" \"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 mistakes in the last few years I don't want to see this botched.\" The last pink light of sunset was fading from the clouds to the west as door. There was a black patch of charred flooring under the window, and the paint on the wall above it was bubbled. Somewhere a cricket set up Tremaine. \"Maybe this is more than kid stuff,\" he said. \"You carry a Tremaine said. \"That's blood, Jess....\" Tremaine scanned the floor. It was of broad A wail sounded, a thin forlorn cry, trailing off into silence. Jess At the station Jess led Tremaine to a cell where a lanky teen-age boy \"Hull, this is Mr. Tremaine,\" said Jess. He took out a heavy key, swung heard....\" \"What did you hear?\" \"They're lookin for the spies.\" \"Who's looking for spies?\" \"Cops.\" \"Who says so?\" The boy looked directly at Tremaine for an instant, flicked his eyes to hers.\" \"And you mentioned Bram?\" The boy darted another look at Tremaine. \"They said they figured the\n\n<question>:\nOf the following options, which best describes the relationship between Tremaine and Jess?\n\n<options>:\nA They hate each other but are working together in their investigation.\nB They're childhood friends and they ran into each other and caught up for old times' sake.\nC They knew each other growing up and are temporarily working together.\nD They're hindering each other's ability to succeed in the investigation.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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1,433 | 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>:\nEleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official \"1999 In Review\" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December. OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it. By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever? The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent Slate contributor) 2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! --Jim Chapin 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999 Here's my nominee for worst movie of the year (complete category should be: \"Worst Movie of the Year That Assumedly Adult Male Reviewers Slathered Over\"): There's Something About Mary --a pathetically sophomoric, penis-obsessed mess that wouldn't even appeal to Larry Flynt! -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. Chatterbox replies: You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 . [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] Felicia replies: Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : --Andrew Solovay Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources) Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. --Mike Gebert --Susan Hoechstetter 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) --Henry Cohen Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago? 10. Don't Worry in 1999 The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. --Margaret Taylor --Tom Horton --Tom Horton --Jerry Skurnik 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good --anonymous tipster Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . -- anonymous tipster 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick --Ananda Gupta --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) General Pinochet 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999 The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. --Josh Pollack The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. --Samir Raiyani Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.\n\n<question>:\nWho is writing this?\n\n<options>:\nA Chatterbox\nB a variety of people\nC Dan Crist\nD Chatterbox's readers\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,730 | 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>:\nHonor's eyes held a trace of remoteness. Still, he was the honored home-comer, the successful returnee, the hometown boy who had made good in a big way, and they took the triumphal national interest, the fact that he was the First One, had made them come around. It was obvious by now that they would have to adjust as they'd adjusted to all the other firsts taking place in these—as the friends and a relative or two. He didn't want to talk about the journey. He wanted to forget the immediacy, the urgency, the terror then perhaps he would talk. returned and his voyage was very much like the voyages of the great wanted it to be as before. The head of the American Legion and the chief of police, who had escorted him on this trip from the square, didn't ask to go in with him. He was glad. He'd had enough of strangers. Not that he was through with strangers. There were dozens of them up and down the street, standing beside parked cars, looking at him. But when he looked back at them, surprised that he'd had to do this. He'd thought Edith would be watching at a window. Ralphie was with her. They held onto each other as if seeking mutual support, the thirty-three-year old woman and ten-year-old boy. They \"It's good to be home!\" Edith nodded and, still holding to Ralphie with one hand, put the other Ralphie and picked him up and hugged him and said, because he could Ralphie stood in his arms as if his feet were still planted on the didn't grow much while you were gone, Dad, Mom says I don't eat enough.\" So he put him down and told himself that it would all change, that everything would loosen up just as his commanding officer, General Carlisle, had said it would early this morning before he left down beside him—but she had hesitated. He wasn't being sensitive she had hesitated. His wife had hesitated before sitting down beside him. Carlisle had said his position was analogous to Columbus', to Vasco De Gama's, to Preshoff's when the Russian returned from the Moon—but more He looked across the room at Ralphie, standing in the doorway, a boy twenty-five years ago. But Ralphie's face was drawn, was worried in a \"Gee, Dad, it's the second month of summer vacation.\" warmth of her farewell, the warmth of Ralphie's farewell, their tears as feared for him, having read of the many launchings gone wrong even in continent-to-continent experimental flight. They had been right to worry. He had suffered much after that blow-up. But now they should be rejoicing, because he had survived and made the long journey. Ralphie suddenly said, \"I got to go, Dad. I promised Walt he waved his hand—it shook a ten-year-old boy's hand that shook—and ran from the room and from the house. He and Edith sat beside each other, and he wanted badly to take her in they wouldn't let him they felt he had changed too much. keep them from her until they were gone. Which was not what he'd considered at all important on leaving Walter Reed Hospital early this morning which was something he found distasteful, something he felt beneath them both. And, at the same time, he began to understand that there would be many things, previously beneath them both, which would have to be considered. She had changed Ralphie had changed all the people he knew had probably changed—because they thought he before. But sometime later, as he was dozing off, a sense of reassurance began filtering into his mind. After all, he was still Henry Devers, the same man who had left home eleven months ago, with a love for family and friends which was, if anything, stronger than before. Once he could communicate this, the strangeness would disappear and the First One would again become good old Hank. It was little enough to ask for—a His mother came his Uncle Joe and Aunt Lucille came. Together with Edith, Ralphie and himself, they made six, and ate Before he'd become the First One, it would have been a noisy affair. His family had never been noted for a lack of ebullience, a lack of talkativeness, and Ralphie had always chosen mealtimes—especially with with his mother, though they didn't agree about much. Still, it had been good-natured the general tone of their lives had been good-natured. at Mother as he raised his first spoonful of chilled fruit, and said, \"Younger than ever.\" It was nothing new he'd said it many many times before, but his mother had always reacted with a bright smile and a quip something like, \"Young for the Golden Age Center, you mean.\" This time she burst into tears. It shocked him. But what shocked him even more was drop out of sight. So there he was, Henry Devers, at home with the family. So there he was, the hero returned, waiting to be treated as a human being. The grapefruit shells were cleaned away and the soup served. Uncle Joe Joe and Mother—his wife and son bracketed him, and yet he felt mother who would kiss stray dogs and strange children, who had often irritated him with an excess of physical and verbal caresses—she barely touched his shoulder and fled. cut into it and raised a forkful to his mouth, then glanced at Ralphie Ralphie said, \"Yeah, Dad.\" Aunt Lucille put down her knife and fork and Ralphie Ralphie was busy with his plate. Hank looked at Joe down his throat. Mother said, \"Henry dear—\" He didn't answer. She began to cry, and he was glad she left the house then. He had never said anything really bad to his mother. He was afraid this would have been the time. Joe merely cleared his throat and mumbled something about She served him, and spooned out a portion for herself and Ralphie. She table. They ate the trifle. Ralphie finished first and got up and said, \"You promised the boys you'd play baseball or football or handball or something anything to get away from your father.\" Ralphie's head dropped and he muttered, \"Aw, no, Dad.\" Ralphie said, \"Gee, sure, Dad, if you want to.\" eyes—his wife's and son's eyes—could not meet his, and so he said he was going to his room because he was, after all, very tired and would in they shouldn't count on him for normal social life. He fell asleep quickly, lying there in his clothes. closest friends. Perhaps this would begin his real homecoming. Do the town? They'd paint it and then tear it down! It didn't turn out that way. He was disappointed but then again, he'd also expected it. This entire first day at home had conditioned him to good for them as he always had. And for once, Hank was ready to go along him. But except for a few abortive glances in his direction, it was as if he were a stranger in a city halfway around the world. for her to come close on her own, and she did, and yet she didn't. Because while she put herself against him, there was something in her face—no, in her eyes it always showed in the eyes—that made him know self. No one was his old self. No one would ever be his old self with the First One. I should have told you that the moment you walked in. I think I've hurt you terribly, we've all hurt you terribly, by trying to hide that we're frightened.\" what Carlisle had told him, even as Carlisle himself had reacted as all men did. all they possibly can from now on. Every time a young and healthy man loses his life by accident, by violence, and his body can be recovered, She came to him and touched his face with her lips, and he was satisfied. Later, half asleep, he heard a dog howling, and remembered stories of how they announced death and the presence of monsters. He shivered and pulled the covers closer to him and luxuriated in being safe in his own home.\n\n<question>:\nHow did Ralphie feel about his father's return?\n\n<options>:\nA He was thankful to have someone to spend time with other than his friends.\nB He was relieved to have his father back home.\nC He was nervous about the changes but tried to adapt to the new situation.\nD He was scared of the man his father had become and tried to avoid him at all costs.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,160 | 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>:\nnever make it unless he somehow managed to stumbled over one. I did it because it's standard procedure for your type of case. Anyone can—free of charge—have treatment by the best psychologists. Any DCT can stop being a DCT by simply asking for the treatment and taking it. But you wouldn't do that. You wanted to commit a crime, get caught and be a hero ... an PICK A CRIME By RICHARD R. SMITH psychologists to relieve tension. And—despite the treatment, Joe The girl counted the money, then placed it in her purse. Joe noticed \"Trying to get drunk?\" the girl inquired. \"Are you crazy?\" \"No. It's simple. If I get drunk, I can join the AAA and get free room and board for a month while they give me a treatment.\" Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but had always failed. And in all of New York's millions, there had been only a hundred cases of intoxication during the previous year. The girl laughed. \"If you're that hard up, I don't know if I should As an answer, Joe handed her his CPA ID card. She grunted when she get another—everyone was required by law to carry a CPA ID card and show it upon request. \"I'm sorry,\" the girl said. \"I didn't know you were a DCT.\" the whole story to the newspapers as soon as he could. And as soon as \"And who'll hire a guy with criminal tendencies? You know the score. When you try to get a job, they ask to see your ID before they even He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a crime. And now that he knew, it didn't seem fair. He decided to tell Unlawful to divulge CPA procedure . \"See what I mean?\" Hendricks asked. \"A century ago, you would have been Feeling safe from hidden microphones because of the uproar, he leaned across the table and whispered in the girl's ear, \"That's what I want to hire you for. I want you to help me commit a crime. If I get convicted of a crime, I'll be able to get a good job!\" He smiled at her admiration. It was something big to plan a crime. almost impossible, and during the previous year, only a few hundred men in the whole country had been convicted of criminal acts. \"Let me out!\" Joe grabbed at the door and was on the sidewalk, slamming her body poised like a wrestler's. \"What's the big idea?\" \"Scream,\" Joe said. \"Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you.\" The plan was perfect, he told himself. Attempted rape was one of the few things that was a crime merely because a man attempted it. A crime because it theoretically inflicted psychological injury upon the intended victim—and because millions of women voters had voted it a crime. On the other hand, attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc., were not crimes. They weren't crimes because the DCT didn't complete the act, and if he didn't complete the act, that meant simply that the CPA had once again functioned properly. The girl shook her head vigorously. \"Sorry, buddy. Can't help you that \"What's the matter?\" Joe complained. \"I'm not asking you to do anything \"You stupid jerk. What do you think this is—the Middle Ages? Don't you know almost every woman knows how to defend herself? I'm a sergeant in the WSDA!\" Stop it! \" Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when she said she was a sergeant in the WSDA. He felt her hands on his body, and in the time it takes to blink twice, he was flying through the air. Anyone who knew Hendricks well liked him, for he was a friendly, likable person. But the millions of women voters who saw his face on posters and on their TV screens saw only the ugly face and heard only \"Where's the girl?\" Joe asked. \"I processed her while you were out cold. She left. Joe, you—\" \"Okay,\" Joe said. \"I'll save you the trouble. I admit it. Attempted rape. I confess.\" Scream. Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you. \" And then the girl's voice, \" had collapsed beneath him. Conspiracy to commit a crime wasn't a crime. Anyone could conspire. And if the conspirators were prevented from committing a crime, then that meant the CPA had functioned properly \"You've graduated,\" Hendricks said coldly. \"You guys never learn, do you? Now you're a DCT First Class instead of a Second Class. You know what that means?\" did prevent you from committing a crime, they'd get a nice reward and they'd be famous.\" \"Lay off,\" Joe said. \"I got a headache. That girl—\" . you on the street and say, 'I'd like to help you, friend.' Then they'll ask you queer questions like, 'Did your father reject you when you were a child?' 'Do you like girls?' 'How does it feel to be a DCT First Class?' And then there'll be the strangers who hate DCTs. They'll stop you on the street and insult you, call you names, spit on you and—\" that decision formed in his mind, his body froze, the pain returned and crime.\" \"Can't do it. Convicting a man of a crime he didn't commit is a violation of Civil Rights and a crime in itself.\" have to be a DCT. With the free treatment, psychologists can remove all your criminal tendencies and—\" \"How can I help you without committing a crime myself?\" Hendricks pick a name and go out and rob him.'\" He laughed nervously. \"If I did that, I'd be committing a crime myself!\" When Joe reached the street, he hurried toward the nearest subway. As a Every place of business from the largest bank to the smallest grocery store was absolutely impenetrable. No one had even tried to rob a place of business for years. The FBI had always been a powerful organization, but under the supervision of the CPA, it was a scientific colossus and to think of kidnapping someone or to contemplate the use of narcotics was pointless. A counterfeiter's career was always short-lived: every place of business and millions of individuals had small counterfeit-detectors that could spot a fake and report it directly to the Brain. And the percentage of crimes had dwindled even more with the appearance was the same as filth and that criminals were filthy things. Except men like Joe Harper. No system is perfect. Along with thousands of other DCTs, Joe refused to believe it, and when he reached apartment 204 at 2141 Orange Street, he felt as if he'd inherited a gold mine. it was a place where a man could fall down at night and sleep, but where no normal man could live day after day. Fearing that someone might detect him before he actually committed the crime, Joe hurried to the bureau and searched it. . His trial would be a clean-cut one: it would be easy for the CPA to prove ownership and that a crime had been committed. When Joe was securely handcuffed to a seat inside the helicopter, the During the treatment, he had been unconscious or drugged, unable to confusion. What she said didn't make sense. If he had killed someone rather than stealing a watch, he would be even more of a hero and the crowd would have cheered even louder. He knew: he had stood outside the CPA hospitals many times and the crowds always cheered louder when an Joe frowned. Few men had ever done him a favor and he had rarely\n\n<question>:\nWhy was the girl unable to help Joe commit his planned crime?\n\n<options>:\nA She was a part of the CPA and didn't agree with his idea.\nB She was unable to accept his small payment for a large possible consequence.\nC She was a part of the WSDA and obviously knew how to defend herself.\nD She knew no one would believe that he had actually tried to rape her because of her status as a DCT.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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975 | 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 fuel or supplies—it was more economical to purchase them in that era than to have them shipped from the future—he seldom went ashore, and then only at the urging of a newly assigned cousin anxious to see kin—but by those who hadn't been born yet? Nobody in the neighborhood was surprised when Martin's mother disappeared and Ninian came to take care of him. Mothers had a way of disappearing around those parts and the kids were often better off without them. Martin was no exception. He'd never had it this good while he was living with his old lady. As for his father, Martin that way. Sometimes he wondered who Ninian really was. Obviously that story about her coming from the future was just a gag. Besides, if she really was his great-great-grand-daughter, as she said, why would she tell him to call her \" Aunt Ninian \"? Maybe he was only eleven, but he'd too crazy for that. He loved to bait her, as he had loved to bait his mother. It was safer with Ninian, though, because when he pushed her too far, she would cry instead of mopping up the floor with him. \"But I can't understand,\" he would say, keeping his face straight. \"Why \"Why should he kill me? I ain't done him nothing.\" Ninian sighed. \"He's dissatisfied with the current social order and killing you is part of an elaborate plan he's formulated to change it. You wouldn't understand.\" don't understand. What's it all about in straight gas?\" \"Oh, just don't ask any questions,\" Ninian said petulantly. \"When you get older, someone will explain the whole thing to you.\" So Martin held his peace, because, on the whole, he liked things the way they were. Ninian really was the limit, though. All the people he knew lived in scabrous tenement apartments like his, but she seemed to think it was disgusting. \"So if you don't like it, clean it up,\" he suggested. She looked at him as if he were out of his mind. \"Hire a maid, then!\" he jeered. And darned if that dope didn't go out and get a woman to come clean up the place! He was so embarrassed, he didn't even dare show his face in the streets—especially with the women buttonholing him and demanding to know what gave. They tried talking to Ninian, but she certainly knew how to give them the cold shoulder. One day the truant officer came to ask why Martin hadn't been coming to school. Very few of the neighborhood kids attended classes very regularly, so this was just routine. But Ninian didn't know that and she went into a real tizzy, babbling that Martin had been sick and would make up the work. Martin nearly did get sick from laughing so had to beat up every kid on the block before he could walk a step without hearing \"Fancy Pants!\" yelled after him. Ninian worried all the time. It wasn't that she cared what these people thought of her, for she made no secret of regarding them as little better than animals, but she was shy of attracting attention. There same way, only she didn't know that, either. She was really pretty dumb, Martin thought, for all her fancy lingo. \"It's so hard to think these things out without any prior practical application to go by,\" she told him. she'd do next. Already he had begun to assume the detached role of a spectator. When it became clear that his mother was never going to show up again, Ninian bought one of those smallish, almost identical houses that mushroom on the fringes of a city after every war, particularly where intensive bombing has created a number of desirable building sites. would have let them, anyway. The adults obviously figured that if a one-car family hired private tutors for their kid, there must be something pretty wrong with him. So Martin and Ninian were just as conspicuous as before. But he didn't tip her off. She was grown up she was supposed to know better than he did. He lived well. He had food to eat that he'd never dreamed of before, warm clothes that no one had ever worn before him. He was surrounded by more luxury than he knew what to do with. were mostly unabashed glass. There were hot water and heat all the time and a freezer well stocked with food—somewhat erratically chosen, for Ninian didn't know much about meals. The non-glass part of the house was of neat, natural-toned wood, with a neat green lawn in front and a neat parti-colored garden in back. Martin missed the old neighborhood, though. He missed having other kids to play with. He even missed his mother. Sure, she hadn't given him enough to eat and she'd beaten him up so hard sometimes that she'd nearly killed him—but then there had also been times when she'd hugged she could for him, supporting him in the only way she knew how—and if respectable society didn't like it, the hell with respectable society. From Ninian and her cousins, there was only an impersonal kindness. They made no bones about the fact that they were there only to carry out a rather unpleasant duty. Though they were in the house with him, everything was done by machinery. All the people ever did was wear pretty clothes and have good times and eat all they wanted. There was them were insane, or what Ninian had told him at first was the truth. They came from the future. When Martin was sixteen, Raymond took him aside for the talk Ninian had would they manage to live?\" \"How did they live before? Come to think of it, if you don't work, how do you he had discovered that Raymond was perhaps the most intelligent of the or don't you?\" \"Oh, I do!\" Martin said. He had pieced the whole thing together for himself long since, but he wanted to hear how Raymond would put it. \"Unfortunately, Professor Farkas has just perfected the time he had learned long conveniences, plus some handy anachronisms—I don't see what more you could ask for. You're getting the best of all possible worlds. Of course Ninian was a ninny to locate in a mercantile suburb where any little thing out of the way will cause talk. How thankful I am that our \"What did you do with them?\" Martin asked. But Raymond rushed on: \"Soon as Ninian goes and I'm in full charge, we'll get a more isolated place and run it on a far grander scale. Ostentation—that's the way to live here and now as well be as comfortable as possible while I suffer through this wretched historical stint.\" \"So Ninian's going,\" said Martin, wondering why the news made him feel curiously desolate. Because, although he supposed he liked her in a remote kind of way, he had no fondness for her—or she, he knew, for her own inadequacy, Martin knew, not of sorrow. He was getting skillful at understanding his descendants, far better than they at understanding him. But then they never really tried. Ninian kissed him wetly on the cheek and said she was sure everything would work out all right and that she'd come see him again. She never did, though, except at the this had been sheer luck or expert planning. Probably luck, because his descendants were exceedingly inept planners. Few people in the world then could afford to live as stylishly as commented as he took his place at the head of the table, \"because, unless one specifically feels a call to some profession or other, one just—well, drifts along happily.\" \"Ours is a wonderful world,\" Grania sighed at Martin. \"I only wish we museum he couldn't seem to identify with his own time any more. The other cousins appeared to find the yacht a congenial head-quarters, largely because they could spend so much time far away from the time. More cousins were in residence at once than ever before, because they came for the ocean voyage. They spent most of their time aboard ship, giving each other parties and playing an avant-garde\n\n<question>:\nWhy doesn't Ninian know much about meals?\n\n<options>:\nA In the future, all the nutrients a human needs come in an easy-to-swallow capsule.\nB In the future, they don't eat meals.\nC Ninian is not a chef.\nD Ninian is used to having servants plan and serve her meals. She's never had to buy food herself.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,283 | 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>:\nCharity Case By JIM HARMON Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Certainly 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, buddy\" or \"Every dog has his day, fellow\" or \"If at first you don't succeed, man\"? No, he had to use that one line. You wouldn't blame me. Not if you believe 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 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. others got money from home to buy the things they needed—razor blades, candy, sticks of tea. I got a letter from Mom or Dad every now and then before they were killed, saying they had sent money or that it was people were always watching every move I made. He braced his red-furred hands on the sides of his auctioneer's stand and leaned his splotched eagle beak toward us. \"Brothers, this being Thanksgiving, I pray the good Lord that we all are truly thankful for all that we have received. Amen.\" 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 received a fix. scampering after water soup and stale bread. As soon as I got cleaned up, I was going to have dinner in a good restaurant, and I was going to 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 executive with some brokerage firm would see me and say to himself, \"Hmm, executive material. Just the type we need. I beg your pardon, every move, but a man's luck has to change sometime, doesn't it? couldn't. It had to be a one. Who drops anything but a one into a Skid leave a fifty or even a hundred. A hundred! couldn't lose that money, especially that century bill. Calm, I ordered myself. Calm. My hand still wasn't free and I hadn't budged the box. \"This,\" Brother Partridge said, \"is one of the most profound experiences of my life.\" \"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 it. I had never got away with anything in my life. I was too smart to even try anything but the little things. \"I may be able to help you,\" Brother Partridge said, \"if you have faith and a conscience.\" \"I've got something better than a conscience,\" I told him. Brother Partridge regarded me solemnly. \"There must be something special about you, for your apprehension to come through miraculous intervention. But I can't imagine what.\" \"I always get apprehended somehow, Brother,\" I said. \"I'm pretty special.\" \"Your name?\" \"William Hagle.\" No sense lying. I had been booked and printed before. substantial. \"Come. Let's sit down, if you can remove your fist from the money box.\" happened to me when I thought back over my life. The same thing. call the cops. \"Remarkable,\" Partridge finally said when I got so hoarse I had to take a break. \"One is almost— almost —reminded of Job. William, you are being punished for some great sin. Of that, I'm sure.\" \"William, all I can tell you is that time means nothing in Heaven. Do \"Of course you have, William! Say you don't remember. Say you don't want to remember. But don't say you have no personal experience!\" He looked at me in disbelief. \"What else could it be?\" \"I don't know,\" I confessed. \"I certainly haven't done anything that bad in this life.\" \"William, if you atone for this sin, perhaps the horde of locusts will lift from you.\" 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 to give it a try!\" I cried. \"I believe you,\" Partridge said, surprised at himself. reached in, fished out the bill and presented it to me. \"Perhaps this will help in your atonement,\" he said. I crumpled it into my pocket fast. Not meaning to sound ungrateful, I'm It was all an accident, but killing somebody is reason enough to get for November. \"What do you do, Jack?\" the fatter one asked. make an example of him and do something permanent and I a damp centerfold from the . There was a pick-up slip from the warehouse under the fingers of one hand, and somebody had beaten his brains out. I suppose I was to blame anyway. If I hadn't been alive, if I hadn't looking at it like that. But there was nothing to be said for telling Brother Partridge about the accident, or murder, or whatever had happened that day. to eat since the day before, it enervated me. The downstairs washroom was where I went first. There was nobody there but an old guy talking urgently to a kid with thick glasses, matches dropping down on the floor next to his tennis shoes, and even a from spilling more from the spoon. non-objectionable bum. The librarian at the main desk looked sympathetically hostile, or hostilely sympathetic. \"I didn't want to see the with education who makes the money. I had been reading the Funk & Energy, Boron, Brussels, Catapults, Demons, and Divans. News and left me alone with books on or not, so I took the volume for last year and laid it on the floor. That was the cleanest floor I ever saw. It didn't take me long to find the story. The victim was a big man, because the story was on the second page of the Nov. 4 edition. wouldn't be safe with the change from a twenty in that neighborhood. it mended. Funny thing about a suit—it's almost never completely shot unless you just have it ripped off you or burned up. It wasn't while Walter Pidgeon and the rest wore Ivy Leagues. Maybe I would look like an eccentric executive. into the wastebasket. It felt like another, but I checked myself. I needed a clear head. I thought about going back to the hotel for some sleep I still had I ran. Harold R. Thompkins, 49, vice-president of Baysinger's, was found dead behind the store last night. His skull had been crushed by a vicious beating with a heavy implement, Coroner McClain announced in preliminary verdict. Tompkins, who resided at 1467 Claremont, Edgeway, had been active in seeking labor-management peace in the recent ugly, worried, tired, stupid look and he wore a shiny suit with a piece of a welcome mat or something for a necktie. Yeah, it was me. I really knew it all the time. 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 same kill over and over. Like watching the Saturday night string of 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 be the only But a new thought suddenly impressed itself on me.\n\n<question>:\nWhat should probably happen to William?\n\n<options>:\nA he should find out who killed the man\nB he should find a job with the labor union\nC he should try to reconnect with his parents\nD he should seek professional help\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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2,084 | 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>:\nWe know that paedophiles, murderers and other violent criminals come in many shapes and sizes. If we knew nothing about their criminal history, some of their photos might even appear attractive. But the idea that someone's features betray their character is something rooted deep within us it's the reason why certain photos perform well on dating apps, or why trustworthy-looking politicians might rack up votes. But how wrong are our hunches of perceived criminality? 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.\" 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. The vision outlined in these articles is of an unethical dystopia where neural networks can assess our faces and establish a likely score for criminality – but Todorov is scathing about this paper, too. \"The main problem is the sampling of the images,\" he says. \"There is not enough information about the [nature of] the images of the people who were convicted. Second, clearly, there are huge differences between the two samples [of convicts and non-convicts] [in terms of] education and socio-economic status.\" In other words, your appearance is affected by the kind of life you've led, so the classifiers within the computer program are simply distinguishing between different demographics rather than detecting a propensity for criminal behaviour. Todorov is also wary of these classifiers misidentifying more 'innocent' people than identifying actual criminals, and accuracy is a concern shared by Peter Hancock. \"Networks don't assess faces in the same way that we do,\" he says. \"One of our systems, which is a deep network, has a recognition engine which generates an ordered list of how similar various faces are. And sometimes you get good matches – but other times you look at them and say, well, it's the wrong race! To humans they look completely different. And that underlines the fact that the networks are working in a different sort of way, and actually you don't really know how they're working. They're the ultimate black box.\" This isn't to say that the use of big data, and particularly the use of composite imagery (digitally blending together certain types of faces) doesn't give us useful information and fascinating correlations. \"You can, for example, take a given face and use computer software to make it look more or less trustworthy,\" says Hancock. \"I remember a colleague playing with this and he made a less trustworthy version of George W Bush – and how shifty did he look! I'm surprised that they're not using these techniques in political advertising, because you couldn't tell that anything had been done [to the picture], but when you look at it you think 'I wouldn't trust him'.\" The revitalisation of the theory of physiognomy by the Shanghai students is, according to Todorov, deeply problematic on a theoretical level. \"Are we back to Lombroso's theory,\" he asks, \"that criminals were anomalous creatures, evolutionary degenerates? How does one become criminal, and what role do various life forces play into this? There are people making claims that you just need to look at the face to predict personality and behaviour, but many of these people have not given much thought to their underlying assumptions.\" While it's true that we judge books by their covers, covers are more than just faces 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. 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. 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).\" 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. 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.\n\n<question>:\nWhich of these is the most valid critique of the Shanghai study?\n\n<options>:\nA This type of task is good at identifying petty criminals but not more dangerous ones like murderers\nB If you only study men in these examples we cannot know how to locate females who may be a danger to those around them\nC They did not study enough types of facial expressions\nD Very different conclusions can be drawn from different images of the same person\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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2,014 | 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>:\nGOURMET Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that This was the endless problem of all spaceship cooks: He had to feed the men Unable to get out to the ballgame and a long way off from the girls, men on ships think about, talk about, bitch about their food. It's true that Woman remains a topic of thoughtful study, but discussion can never replace practice in an art. Food, on the other hand, is a challenge shipmen face three times a day, so central to their thoughts that a history of sea-faring can be read from a commissary list. through a view-port, galley science had fulfilled the disgusting what was day-before-yesterday's table-scraps and jakes-water. 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. Slimeheads remember the H. M. S. sake . And for a third footnote to the ancient observation, \"God sends food, and the Devil sends cooks,\" Marsmen will recall what happened aboard my ship the 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 water, two pounds of oxygen, and one-and-a-half pounds of dry food. 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 in space. My employment is more in the nature of TS-card-puncher 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 Earth was hardly large enough to accommodate a wart as annoying as Willy Winkelmann. Cheek-by-jowl every day in a nacelle the size of a Pullman car, our Captain quickly established himself as a major social hemorrhoid. The Captain's particular patsy was, of course, young Bailey the Cook. of synthetic methionine—an essential amino acid not synthesized by the carbohydrate recycler. The crew thanked him. The Captain did not. \"Belly-Robber,\" he said, his tone icy as winter wind off the North Sea, \"you had best cycle this mess through the tanks again. There is a pun you eat. I think you are impertinent to suggest I should become this \"Not much,\" I said. \"I suspect that the finest gift our Captain can give his mother is to be absent from her on Mother's Day. But we've got to live with him. He's a good man at driving a ship.\" mass that made it up was buried in a rich, meaty gravy that was only steak.\" the ship—cannot be coaxed to work on hog-slop. You understand me, Belly-Robber?\" Bailey, his hands fisted at his sides, nodded. \"Yes, sir. But I really don't know what I can do to please you.\" \"You are a spacer and a Ship's Cook, not a suburban Hausfrau with 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 \"You're driving him too hard, Sir,\" I said. \"He'll crack.\" \"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. by that heartless man. Bailey began to try avoiding the Captain at mealtimes, but was frustrated by Winkelmann's orders. \"Convey my 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 acidly called in question again. helping of the pseudo-turkey. \"You are improving, Belly-Robber, but only arithmetically. Your first efforts were so hideous as to require have learned to cook with the competence of a freshman Home Economics student. That will be all, Bailey.\" his rank and responsibility merit, the Captain is allowed double this ration. He may thus bring aboard with him some forty-five pounds of books, playing-cards, knitting-wool, whiskey or what have you to help him while away the hours between the planets. Bailey, I knew for a fact, had used up his weight-allowance in bringing aboard a case of spices: marjoram and mint, costmary, file powder, basil and allspice, and a dozen others. exercised his option of returning his personal-effects weight allowance to the owners for the consideration of one hundred dollars a kilogram. To collect the maximum allowance, spacers have been known to come texture steak-like. Do you understand, Sir?\" should feel like steak to the mouth, and not like baby-food. Right?\" steak-substrate—Chlorella, of course, with all sorts of special distaste. \"It's quite all right to eat lobster, for example, but I kind word from the Captain bettered the ruffles-and-flourishes of a more reasonable man. \"But it still needs something ... something,\" \"You must realize, Belly-Robber, that a dyspeptic Captain is a threat no condition to jet us safely down to the Piano West pad. Do you understand, Belly-Robber?\" he demanded. \"I understand that you're an ungrateful, impossible, square-headed, \"Watch your noun,\" Winkelmann cautioned the Cook. \"Your adjectives are insubordinate your noun might prove mutinous.\" scarlet, his chest heaving with emotion. \"Doctor, I must point out to you that it ill behooves the Ship's Surgeon to side with the Cook against the Captain,\" 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 bunk and exploded into weeping, banging his fists against the metal After a few minutes Bailey's sobbing ceased. \"Sorry, Doc,\" he said. \"You've taken more pressure than most men would,\" I said. \"Nothing to fingers to the bone, slaving over a hot stove, and you're not vis medicatrix naturae of salt, and went largely undrunk. The men in the mess compartment were vehement in their protests, blaming the Captain, in his absence, for the decline in culinary standards. Bailey seemed not to care. He served \"The Dutchman won't want to mess ketchup on these steaks,\" the crewman but\n\n<question>:\nWhat is not true about the surgeon's job?\n\n<options>:\nA He takes care of the mental health and morale of the crew\nB He has to know when to offer alcohol as the appropriate remedy for a situation\nC He is a sounding-board for those who need to complain\nD He's the person to file grievances with when there are interpersonal issues\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>:\nFight 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 and the Faludi-esque emasculation themes are more explicit. But there's something deeply movie-ish about the whole conceit, as if the novelist and director were weaned on Martin Scorsese pictures and never stopped dreaming of recapturing that first masochistic rush. 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. Actually, Pitt isn't as terrible as usual: He's playing not a character but a conceit, and he can bask in his movie-idol arrogance, which seems to be the most authentic emotion he has. But the film belongs to Norton. As a ferocious skinhead in last year's American History X , Norton was taut and ropy, his long torso curled into a sneer here, he's skinny and wilting, a quivering pansy. Even when he fights he doesn't transform--he's a raging wimp. The performance is marvelous, and it makes poetic sense in light of the movie's climactic twist. But that twist will annoy more people than it will delight, if only because it shifts the drama from the realm of the sociological to that of the psychoanalytic. The finale, scored with the Pixies' great \"Where Is My Mind?\" comes off facetiously--as if Fincher is throwing the movie away. Until then, however, he has done a fabulous job of keeping it spinning. The most thrilling thing about Fight Club isn't what it says but how Uhls and Fincher pull you into its narrator's head and simulate his adrenalin rushes. A veteran of rock videos, Fincher is one of those filmmakers who helps make the case that MTV--along with digital editing--has transformed cinema for better as well as worse. The syntax has become more intricate. Voice-over narration, once considered uncinematic, is back in style, along with novelistic asides, digressions, fantasies, and flashbacks. To make a point, you can jazzily interject anything--even, as in Three Kings , a shot of a bullet slicing through internal organs. Films like Fight Club might not gel, but they have a breathless, free-associational quality that points to new possibilities in storytelling. Or maybe old possibilities: The language of movies hasn't seemed this unfettered since the pre-sound days of Sergei Eisenstein and Abel Gance. Sarsgaard's performance is a finely chiseled study of how unresolved emotion can suddenly resolve itself into violence.\n\n<question>:\nThe reviewer of \"Fight Club\" believes that the film could have benefitted from:\n\n<options>:\nA More diverse points-of-view\nB More explicit commentary on the dangers of consumerism\nC A less predictable and facetious ending\nD Less obvious situational irony\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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690 | 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, she thought. He rapidly mounted the stairs and halted at the top to look around searchingly. His gaze lighted on their table, his eyebrows went up, and he made a beeline for Doc. Sandra wondered if she should warn him that he was about to be shushed. young women, Sandra Lea Grayling cursed the day she had persuaded the that there would be all sorts of human interest stories to be picked up at the first international grandmaster chess tournament in which an electronic computing machine was entered. Not that there weren't enough humans around, it was the interest that Sandra as a particularly maddening circumstance. Her last assignment had been to interview the pilot pair riding the first American manned circum-lunar satellite—and the five alternate pairs who hadn't made the flight. This tournament hall seemed to Sandra Circum-Terra?\" \"Not worth the trouble. The play was feeble. Barely Expert Rating.\" Sandra's chief difficulty was that she knew absolutely nothing about the game of chess—a point that she had slid over in conferring with the powers at the \"You're durn tootin' she would!\" Sandra replied in a rush, and then making a silvery nap. His pince-nez had quite thick lenses. But in sharp contrast to the somberly clad men around them, he was wearing a pearl-gray suit of almost exactly the same shade as Sandra's—a circumstance that created for her the illusion that they were fellow conspirators. Sandra briefly told him her story and her predicament. By the time they were served, Doc had absorbed the one and assessed the other. \"You have one great advantage,\" he told her. \"You know nothing \"Yes, Doc, but....\" Sandra found difficulty in phrasing the question. \"Wait.\" He lifted a finger. \"I think I know what you're going to ask. You want to know why, if the Machine works at all, it doesn't work perfectly, so that it always wins and there is no contest. Right?\" Sandra grinned and nodded. Doc's ability to interpret her mind was as comforting as the bubbly, mildly astringent mixture she was sipping. White, wins for Black and draws, and the additional time required to trace out chains of key-moves leading always to wins. So the Machine can't play chess like God. What the Machine can do is examine all the each for White and Black—and then decide which is the best move on the basis of capturing enemy pieces, working toward checkmate, establishing a powerful central position and so on.\" \"That sounds like the way a man would play a game,\" Sandra observed. \"Look ahead a little way and try to make a plan. You know, like getting interest already, even in the Machine.\" Sandra nodded. \"Does a human chess player—a grandmaster, I mean—ever \"You mean the programming?\" \"Indeed yes! The programming is the crux of the problem of the \"A million times as fast as the first machine, you say, Doc? And yet it only sees twice as many moves ahead?\" Sandra objected. \"There is a geometrical progression involved there,\" he told her by blunders they could have avoided by looking only one or two moves ahead. The Machine will make no such oversights. Once again, you see, you have the human factor, in this case working for the Machine.\" gray-flecked hair had halted abruptly by their table. He bent over Doc and began to whisper explosively in a guttural foreign tongue. Sandra's gaze traveled beyond the balustrade. Now that she could look four—the one above the Machine. Sandra looked with quickening interest at the console of the Machine—a Sandra tried to think of a being who always checked everything, but only within limits beyond which his thoughts never ventured, and who never made a mistake.... have a message for her readers.\" \"Oh yes,\" Sandra assured him, \"but there are some other questions I very much want to ask you, Mr. Jandorf.\" While Sandra arranged for an interview with Jandorf after the day's playing session, Doc reordered his coffee. \"One expects it of Jandorf,\" he explained to Sandra with a philosophic ex- , though. I was swindled, Savvy. I was robbed.\" \"Willie!\" Doc said with some asperity. \"Miss Grayling is a journalist. She would like to have a statement from you as to how you will play against the Machine.\" hotfoot, Savvy? The money WBM's putting up is okay, though. That first prize will just fit the big hole in my bank account.\" \"I know you haven't the time now, Master Angler,\" Sandra said rapidly, \"but if after the playing session you could grant me—\" \"Sorry, babe,\" Angler broke in with a wave of dismissal. \"I'm dated up \"Correct. Their advertising department is interested in the prestige. They want to score a point over their great rival.\" \"But if the Machine plays badly it will be a black eye for them,\" Sandra pointed out. Four men were crossing the center of the hall, which was clearing, toward the tables at the other end. Doubtless they just happened to be going two by two in close formation, but it gave Sandra the feeling of business—after elimination tournaments between leading contenders. This tournament is a round robin: each player plays one game with every Sandra asked, \"What about Grabo and Krakatower?\" Doc gave a short scornful laugh. \"Krakatower! Don't pay any attention to \"And Grabo?\" Sandra pressed, suppressing a smile at the intensity of Doc's animosity. Doc's eyes grew thoughtful. \"About Bela Grabo (why are three out of He would not amplify his statement. Sandra studied the Scoreboard again. The newcomer was of middle height, compact of figure and feature, with graying hair cut short and combed sharply back. Doc spoke his piece for Sandra. Simon Great smiled thinly. \"Sorry,\" he said, \"But I am making no predictions and we are giving out no advance information on the \"You know, Doc,\" Sandra said, \"I'm a dog to suggest this, but what if this whole thing were a big fake? What if Simon Great were really playing the Machine's moves? There would surely be some way for his games with the Machine to assure himself that it operates legitimately and has grandmaster skill.\" \"Did the Machine beat him?\" Sandra asked. But about your idea, Miss Grayling—did you ever read about Maelzel's fraud in a famous article. In my story I think the chess robot will break down while it is being demonstrated to a millionaire purchaser and the young inventor will have to win its game for it to cover up imagine....\" While Doc chattered happily on about chess-playing robots and chess stories, Sandra found herself thinking about him. A writer of some sort evidently and a terrific chess buff. Perhaps he was an actual medical doctor. She'd read something about two or three coming over with the guy, whoever he was. An hour ago she'd been sure she was going to muff this assignment completely and now she had it laid out cold. For the umpteenth time in her career Sandra shied away from the guilty thought that she wasn't a writer at all or even a reporter, she just used dime-a-dozen female attractiveness to rope a susceptible man (young, old, American, Russian) and pick his brain....\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the significance of Sandra persuading her paper into letting her write human interest stories? How does this affect the text’s composition?\n\n<options>:\nA The human interest stories—i.e., Sandra’s interviews—provide the story’s central irony. The fact that humans cannot defeat the machine shows that the real interest is not human, but robotic.\nB The human interest stories provide a structure for the story to sit on. As she watches each player challenge the machine, it becomes more and more apparent that human personality cannot win.\nC -The human interest stories provide a structure for the story to sit on. As Doc introduces her to each chess player, their backstories help to unpack the significance of the chess tournament.\nD The human interest stories—i.e., Sandra’s interviews—provide a red herring for the story’s central goal, which is to hide the fact of Dr. Krakatower’s ability to beat the WBM machine.\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>:\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. 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. 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 The notion that IQ tests are completely useless never prevailed in liberal academia to nearly the extent that Herrnstein and Murray say. A more accurate rendering of the liberal position would be that rather than a single \"general intelligence,\" there are a handful of crucial--and separate--mental abilities 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. 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.\" If the purpose of the whole exercise is to figure out what our social policies should be, then, \"Which is more predictive, IQ or socioeconomic status?\" isn't the essential question anyway. Making it the essential question avoids the issue of whether IQ is really so massively predictive that it drowns out everything else. (Herrnstein and Murray mostly leave the evidence for this, their central contention, to footnotes. The figures they offer are far from dispositive.) The chapter of The Bell Curve on policies that might be able to overcome the fate of a low IQ focuses mainly on whether early-childhood programs like Head Start (most of which aren't run with raising IQ as their primary goal) can raise IQ significantly over the long term, and sorrowfully concludes that they can't. What the book doesn't discuss is whether public schools--by far the biggest government social program--can raise IQ, or earnings after you control for IQ. As James Heckman of the University of Chicago wrote in the Journal of Political Economy , \" Evidence of a genetic component to skills has no bearing on the efficacy of any social policy. ... The relevant issue is the cost effectiveness of the intervention.\" (As an example of where the kind of analysis Herrnstein and Murray didn't do can lead, a new study by Jay Girotto and Paul Peterson of Harvard shows that students who raise their grades and take harder courses can increase their IQ scores by an average of eight points during the first three years of high school.) 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. : Education and IQ\n\n<question>:\nMurray and Herrstein believe that _____ is not important to an individual’s success.\n\n<options>:\nA Education\nB IQ\nC Parents' status\nD Ability\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>:\nThese lucky authors are scholars, and the works they customarily write and publish without payment are peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals. , and if we remove at least some permission barriers as well, we provide libre OA . (Also see section 3.1 on green/gold and section 3.3 on gratis/libre.) Note that all three legs of the BBB definition go beyond removing price barriers to removing permission barriers, or beyond gratis OA to libre OA. But at the same time, all three allow at least one limit on user freedom: an obligation to attribute the work to the author. The purpose of OA is to remove barriers to all legitimate scholarly uses for scholarly literature, but there’s no legitimate scholarly purpose in suppressing attribution to the texts we use. (That’s why my shorthand definition says that OA literature is free of “most” rather than “all” copyright and licensing restrictions.) chapter 9 on the future.) Second, scholarly journals generally don’t pay authors for their research articles, which frees this special tribe of authors to consent to OA without losing revenue. This fact distinguishes scholars decisively from musicians and moviemakers, and even from most other kinds of authors. This is why controversies about OA to music and movies don’t carry over to OA for research articles. Both facts are critical, but the second is nearly unknown outside the academic world. It’s not a new fact of academic life, arising from a recent economic downturn in the publishing industry. Nor is it a case of corporate exploitation of unworldly academics. Scholarly journals haven’t paid authors for their articles since the first scholarly journals, the The academic custom to write research articles for impact rather than money may be a lucky accident that could have been otherwise. Or it may be a wise adaptation that would eventually evolve in any culture with a serious research subculture. (The optimist in me wants to believe the latter, but the evolution of copyright law taunts that optimism.) This peculiar custom does more than insulate cutting-edge research from the market and free scholars to consent to OA without losing revenue. It also supports academic freedom and the kinds of serious inquiry that advance knowledge. It frees researchers to challenge conventional wisdom and defend unpopular ideas, which are essential to academic freedom. At the same time it frees them to microspecialize and defend ideas of immediate interest to just a handful people in the world, which are essential to pushing the frontiers of knowledge. This custom doesn’t guarantee that truth-seeking won’t be derailed by profit-seeking, and it doesn’t guarantee that we’ll eventually fill the smallest gaps in our collaborative understanding of the world. It doesn’t even guarantee that scholars won’t sometimes play for the crowd and detour into fad thinking. But it removes a major distraction by allowing them, if they wish, to focus on what is likely to be true rather than what is likely to sell. It’s a payment structure we need for good research itself, not just for good access to research, and it’s the key to the legal and economic lock that would otherwise shackle steps toward OA. Creative people who live by royalties, such as novelists, musicians, and moviemakers, may consider this scholarly tradition a burden and sacrifice for scholars. We might even agree, provided we don’t overlook a few facts. First, it’s a sacrifice that scholars have been making for nearly 350 years. OA to research articles doesn’t depend on asking royalty-earning authors to give up their royalties. Second, academics have salaries from universities, freeing them to dive deeply into their research topics and publish specialized articles without market appeal. Many musicians and moviemakers might envy that freedom to disregard sales and popular taste. Third, academics receive other, less tangible rewards from their institutions—like promotion and tenure—when their research is recognized by others, accepted, cited, applied, and built upon. chapter 4 on OA policies.) Because any content can be digital, and any digital content can be OA, OA needn’t be limited to royalty-free literature like research articles. Research articles are just ripe examples of low-hanging fruit. OA could extend to royalty-producing work like monographs, textbooks, novels, news, music, and movies. But as soon as we cross the line into OA for royalty-producing work, authors will either lose revenue or fear that they will lose revenue. Either way, they’ll be harder to persuade. But instead of concluding that royalty-producing work is off limits to OA, we should merely conclude that it’s higher-hanging fruit. In many cases we can still persuade royalty-earning authors to consent to OA. (See section 5.3 on OA for books.) Authors of scholarly research articles aren’t the only players who work without pay in the production of research literature. In general, scholarly journals don’t pay editors or referees either. In general, editors and referees are paid salaries by universities to free them, like authors, to donate their time and labor to ensure the quality of new work appearing in scholarly journals. An important consequence follows. All the key players in peer review can consent to OA without losing revenue. OA needn’t dispense with peer review or favor unrefereed manuscripts over refereed articles. We can aim for the prize of OA to peer-reviewed scholarship. (See section 5.1 on peer review.) Moreover, peer review is done by dedicated volunteers who don’t care how a journal pays its bills, or even whether the journal is in the red or the black. If all peer-reviewed journals converted to OA overnight, the authors, editors, and referees would have the same incentives to participate in peer review that they had the day before. They needn’t stop offering their services, needn’t lower their standards, and needn’t make sacrifices they weren’t already making. They volunteer their time not because of a journal’s choice of business model but because of its contribution to research. They could carry on with solvent or insolvent subscription publishers, with solvent or insolvent OA publishers, or even without publishers. 1.2 What OA Is Not We can dispel a cloud of objections and misunderstandings simply by pointing out a few things that OA is not. (Many of these points will be elaborated in later chapters.) OA isn’t an attempt to bypass peer review. OA is compatible with every kind of peer review, from the most conservative to the most innovative, and all the major public statements on OA insist on its importance. Because scholarly journals generally don’t pay peer-reviewing editors and referees, just as they don’t pay authors, all the participants in peer review can consent to OA without losing revenue. While OA to unrefereed preprints is useful and widespread, the OA movement isn’t limited to unrefereed preprints and, if anything, focuses on OA to peer-reviewed articles. (More in section 5.1 on peer review.) OA isn’t an attempt to deprive royalty-earning authors of income. The OA movement focuses on research articles precisely because they don’t pay royalties. In any case, inside and outside that focus, OA for copyrighted work depends on copyright-holder consent. Hence, royalty-earning authors have nothing to fear but persuasion that the benefits of OA might outweigh the risks to royalties. (More in section 5.3 on OA for books.) 4 on policies and 6 on copyright.) chapter 4 on OA policies.) Filtering and censorship barriers Most us want to remove all four of these barriers. But there’s no reason to save the term open access\n\n<question>:\nIn which section can we find more about peer review?\n\n<options>:\nA Section 5.1\nB Section 5.3\nC Section 5.7\nD Section 5.5\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>:\none thing he could bring back from the wonderful future ... and though he didn't want to ... nevertheless he did.... Arth closed his eyes in pain. \"Vegetarian,\" he said. \"Couldn't possibly eat meat. Barbarous. Ugh.\" \"Well, we need some nourishment,\" ox.\" \"Providence,\" Simon told her \"Lost track,\" Arth said. \"You can Simon said, mournful of tone, come home with me.\" \"Money,\" Simon said. \"When you that appealed to you.\" \"Hm-m-m. I didn't know most sleuthing amounted to snooping around department stores to check on the window and fumbled around for Simon said, enigmatically, \"Now a blind or curtain. There was none. couldn't stand the light. \"Where's the shade,\" I moaned. Arth did something and the window went opaque. \"That's quite a gadget,\" I groaned. Simon said unenthusiastically, \"If I didn't feel so lousy, I'd \"You didn't have a hotel. What a stupidity. I'll be phased. Phased all the way down.\" \"You haven't got a handful of in the phone book says you'll investigate anything.\" erect and heading for what \"Anything,\" Simon said. \"Only one exception.\" undoubtedly was a bathroom. \"Stay where you are. Don't move. Don't touch anything.\" \"Excellent. Do you believe in time travel?\" Simon continued to say nothing she ventured, \"Time travel is impossible.\" \"Why?\" \"Why?\" \"All right,\" I told him plaintively. \"I'm clean. I won't mess up the seat, Betty cleared her throat. When definite answer. She said, \"Well, for one thing, paradox. Suppose you had a time machine and traveled back a hundred years or so and killed your own great-grandfather. Then how could you ever be born?\" \"Confound it if I know,\" the little fellow growled. \"How?\" Simon said, \"Let's get to the point, some time travelers,\" the old boy said. Betty was too far in now to maintain her proper role of silent secretary. \"Time travelers,\" she said, not very intelligently. The potential client sat more erect, obviously with intent to hold the floor for a time. He removed the pince-nez glasses and pointed them \"Then you'll realize that there are a dozen explanations of the paradoxes of time travel. Every writer in the field worth his salt has explained them away. But to get on. It's my of immortality and eternal youth, and it's also my suspicion that he will eventually be able to travel in time. So convinced am I of these possibilities that I am willing to gamble a portion of my fortune to investigate the presence in our era of such time travelers.\" Simon seemed incapable of carrying the ball this morning, so Betty said, \"But ... Mr. Oyster, if the future has developed time travel why don't we ever meet such travelers?\" Simon put in a word. \"The usual explanation, Betty, is that they can't afford to allow the space-time continuum track to be altered. If, say, a time traveler returned to a period of twenty-five years ago and shot Hitler, then all subsequent history would be changed. In that case, the time traveler himself might never be born. They have to tread mighty carefully.\" make heads nor tails of the check receipt. He didn't speak English and my high school German was inadequate, Simon shrugged and fumbled Mr. Oyster was pleased. \"I didn't blockbusting hangover. and—\" Simon held up a hand. \"There's no use prolonging this. As I understand nobody should drink realize that thus far nobody has succeeded in taking it with him.\" with a considerable fortune and you their perch, bug-eyed Simon, but then Simon said, \"You want to hire me to find a time traveler and in some manner or other—any manner will do—exhort from him the secret of eternal life and youth, which you figure the future will have discovered. You're willing to pony up a part of this fortune of yours, if I can deliver a bona fide time traveler.\" \"Right!\" date or some such. But they fixed they're interested in keeping hid?\" The old boy was the center again. \"I told you I'd been considering it of hours. Not only wasn't the bag Oktoberfest , that's where they'd be!\" He seemed elated. he had been occupying four—or was it five—days before when I'd left. the attendant there evidently couldn't I'd lost track of the time. at the luggage checking station, but the calendar. Mr. Oyster was saying something to the effect that if I didn't leave today, it would have to be tomorrow, that he hadn't ponied up that thousand dollars advance for anything less than immediate service. Stuffing his receipt in his wallet, he fussed his way out the door. you haven't changed this calendar \"All right,\" Simon said. \"We'll accept in.\" She added, irrelevantly, \"Time travelers yet.\" I tried just once more. \"Uh, when Oktoberfest . For one thing, a time traveler wouldn't be conspicuous. At a festival like this somebody with a strange accent, or who didn't know exactly how to wear his clothes correctly, or was off the ordinary in any of a dozen other ways, wouldn't be noticed. You could be a four-armed space traveler from Mars, and you still wouldn't be conspicuous at the Oktoberfest . People would figure they had D.T.'s.\" \"But why would a time traveler want to go to a—\" Betty began. \"Why not! What better opportunity Simon's story), \"did you Simon shrugged, put one hand to of Dionysus, or one of Alexander's orgies. You wouldn't want to wander up and down the streets of, say, Athens while nothing was going on, particularly when you might be revealed as a suspicious character not being able to speak the language, not knowing how to wear the clothes and He took a deep breath. \"No ma'am, you'd have to stick to some great event, both for the sake of actual interest and for protection against being unmasked.\" Simon winced at the noise, took Simon was shaking his head. \"Not \"I did,\" Simon groaned. \"Three Simon nodded, miserably. Simon risk a considerable portion of my \"Sorry,\" Simon said. \"Can't be fortune—\" time traveler, there might have been—\" \"I keep telling you,\" Simon said Probably thousands.\" He took a deep breath. \"Listen, we're just going to have to forget about it. They're not going to stand for the space-time continuum track being altered. If something comes up that looks like you bring me a time traveler.\" it might result in the track being \"Out of the question,\" Simon said. \"But can't allow anything to come back from the future and change the \"Just for laughs,\" Simon told the past.\" you—all over again. They just changed, they set you right back at why Simon said wearily, \"There's just on top of that!\" He shuddered. \"If you think I'm going to take another crack at this again.\" THE END Transcriber's Note: give him some kind of report for his money. Time travel yet! What a laugh! Simon, said finally, \"You know ponied up all the money for such expenditures? How could the average German, with his twenty-five dollars a week salary? down, pocketed the husky bribe, showed me where I could check my bag, told me they'd do what they Simon said nothing. Across the over to us and then hustled on. I skipped it. didn't seem to hang together very well. \"My pilgrimage,\" he told me. \"All Name is Simon.\" \"No go,\" Simon said, a sad quality in his voice. \"A fifty thousand dollar bonus if\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Simon not bring back a time traveler?\n\n<options>:\nA He knows that Arth is Mr. Oyster setting a trap to ensnare Simon, who is a time traveler himself\nB Simon is a time traveler himself, and would never reveal the secrets of his fellow time travelers\nC He became too intoxicated with Arth and sabotaged his own investigation\nD The authorities would not allow him to do anything that might significantly change the space-time continuum\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.] It has happened a hundred times in the long history of Earth—and, sooner or later, will happen again! all even the professionals were interested in knowing. There was never so much as a landslide to bring the Fault to the attention of the general public. impossible that it could ever be used except for sheep-farming. It strikes us today as ironic that from the late '50s there was grave concern about the level of the water table throughout the entire area. The even more ironic solution to the problem began in the summer of They found themselves on the scene of what was fast becoming the most violent and widespread earthquake North America—probably the world—has ever seen in historic times. To describe it in the simplest terms, land east of the Fault was settling, and at a precipitous rate. Rock scraped rock with a whining roar. Shuddery as a squeaky piece of East, where sharp reports and muffled wheezes told of continued buckling and dropping, the earth trembled downward. Atop the new There the devastation was even more thorough, if less spectacular. Dry earth churned like mud, and rock shards weighing tons bumped and scene of disaster. \"No one here has ever seen anything like it.\" And the landslip was growing, north and south along the Fault. \"Get out while you can,\" Schwartzberg urged the population of the everywhere east of the Fault, to almost twenty miles away, the now-familiar lurch and steady fall had already sent as the land beneath them groaned downward in mile-square gulps. As the Fault moved north and south, new areas quivered into unwelcome down. They danced \"like sand in a sieve\" dry, they boiled into rubble. Telephone lines, railroad tracks, roads snapped and simply disappeared. Virtually all east-west land communication was suspended and the President declared a national emergency. confusion. Prairie and hill cracked open under intolerable strains as the land shuddered downward in gasps and leaps. Springs burst to the surface in hot geysers and explosions of steam. The downtown section of North Platte, Nebraska, dropped eight feet, churning land. Abandoning its bed, the river spread uncertainly across farmland and prairie, becoming a sea of mud beneath the sharp new floods, in the usual sense. The water moved too slowly, spread itself with no real direction or force. But the vast sheets of sluggish water and jelly-like mud formed death-traps for the countless refugees now streaming east. Perhaps the North Platte disaster had been more than anyone could take. 193 people had died in that one cave-in. Certainly by 7 October it had to be officially admitted that there was an exodus of epic proportion. Nearly two million people were on the move, and the U. S. was faced with a gigantic wave of refugees. Rails, roads and air-lanes were jammed with terrified hordes who had left everything behind to crowd eastward. as a hollow roar, a shriek and a deep musical vibration like a church bell. It was simply the tortured rock of the substrata giving way. The second phase of the national disaster was beginning. wake the earth to the north \"just seemed to collapse on itself like a punctured balloon,\" read one newspaper report. \"Like a cake that's draft, and sank. So did the entire Mississippi and Alabama coast, at about the same moment. The tidal wave which was to gouge the center from the U. S. marched on the land. had swept over every town from Dothan, Alabama, to Bogalusa on the forming, overtopping the wave's leading edge as towns, hills and the thirst of the soil temporarily broke the furious charge. deluging Hobart and almost all of Greer County. Despite hopeful announcements that the wave was slowing, had virtually stopped after inundating Oklahoma City, was being swallowed up in the The entire tier of states settled, from south to north, down to its eventual place of stability one thousand feet below the level of the But such lightheartedness and such happy endings were by no means typical. The world could only watch aghast as the water raced north under the shadow of the cliffs which occasionally crumbled, roaring, along what is roughly the present shoreline of our inland sea, it was estimated that over fourteen million people had lost their lives. No one could even estimate the damage to property almost the entirety of eight states, and portions of twelve others, had simply vanished from the heart of the North American continent forever. It was in such a cataclysmic birth that the now-peaceful Nebraska Sea came to America. Today, nearly one hundred years after the unprecedented—and happily unrepeated—disaster, it is hard to remember the terror and despair of those weeks in October and November, 1973. It is inconceivable to think of the United States without its beautiful and economically essential it graduates from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico through the Dakota. What would the United States have become without the 5600-mile coastline of our inland sea? It is only within the last twenty years that any but the topmost layer of water has cleared sufficiently to permit a really extensive fishing industry. Mud still held in contribute no small part to the nation's economy. Who can imagine what the middle west must have been like before the amelioration of climate brought about by the proximity of a warm sea? The now-temperate state of Minnesota (to say nothing of the submerged during the summer months. Our climate today, from Ohio and North Carolina to the rich fields of New Mexico and the orchards of Montana, is directly ameliorated by the marine heart of the continent. Who today could imagine the United States without the majestic the Appalachian Mountains, it is only a slight remnant of what it was. shipping in its ceaseless traffic, we have lost the old romance of river shipping. We may only guess what it was like when we look upon Nebraska Sea. We shall never know what the United States was like with of Manitoba and crossroad of a nation. The political situation has long been a thorny problem. Only tattered remnants of the eight submerged states remained after the flood, but none of them wanted to surrender its autonomy. The tiny fringe of but following the lead of the Arkansas Forever faction, the remaining population decided to retain political integrity. This has resulted in the continuing anomaly of the seven \"fringe States\" represented in Congress by the usual two Senators each, though the largest of indistinguishable from their neighboring states. Fortunately it was decided some years ago that Oklahoma, only one of the eight to have completely disappeared, could not in any sense be considered to have a continuing political existence. So, though there are still families who proudly call themselves Oklahomans, and the Oklahoma Oil Company continues to pump oil from its submerged real estate, the state has in fact disappeared from the American political scene. But this is by now no more than a petty annoyance, to raise a smile when the talk gets around to the question of State's Rights. Not even the tremendous price the country paid for its new sea—fourteen million dead, untold property destroyed—really offsets the asset we enjoy today. The heart of the continent, now open to the shipping of the world, was once dry and land-locked, cut off from the bustle of trade and the ferment of world culture. Unimaginable too would have been the general growth of population in the states surrounding the new sea. As the water tables rose and manufacturing and trade moved in to take advantage of the just-created axis of world communication, a population explosion was touched off of which we are only now seeing the diminution. This new westering is to be ranked with the first surge of pioneers which created the American her water road is America's main artery of trade, and\n\n<question>:\nHow has America transformed as a country after the events?\n\n<options>:\nA With millions of their people gone, America is still finding a foothold in this new world.\nB It's now a booming maritime location, with high population and economic growth.\nC Most of the states have separated and began to live independently again.\nD The political climate has been completely upended.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
408 | 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>:\nso much as a landslide to bring the Fault to the attention of the Nor was there much in the papers a few years later when it was It is not really surprising that it took so long to figure out the connection. The population of the states affected was in places as low as five people per square mile! The land was so dry it seemed impossible that it could ever be used except for sheep-farming. Service was keeping an anxious eye out for the fires it knew it could expect. Dense smoke was reported rising above a virtually uninhabited area along Black Squirrel Creek, and a plane was sent out for a report. The report was—no fire at all. The rising cloud was not smoke, but dust. Thousands of cubic feet of dry earth rising lazily on the summer air. Rock slides, they guessed certainly no fire. The Forestry Service the Rockies could anyone remember a series of rock slides as bad as this. Newspapers in the mountain states gave it a few inches on the front page anything is news in late August. And the geologists became interested. Seismologists were reporting unusual activity in the area, tremors too severe to be rock slides. Volcanic activity? Specifically, a dust volcano? Unusual, they knew, but right on the Kiowa Fault—could be. Labor Day crowds read the scientific conjectures with late summer lassitude. Sunday supplements ran four-color artists' conceptions of the possible volcano. \"Only Active Volcano in U. S.?\" demanded the headlines, and some papers even left off the question mark. It may seem odd that the simplest explanation was practically not ). The idea was not nearly so exciting as a volcano, even a lava-less one, and you couldn't draw a very dramatic picture of it. never, never produced the regular shows of its little sister out in California, which almost daily bounced San Francisco or Los Angeles, or some place in between. The dust volcano was on the face of it a more plausible theory. Still, it was only a theory. It had to be proved. As the tremors grew They found, of course, that Schwartzberg had been perfectly correct. They found themselves on the scene of what was fast becoming the most violent and widespread earthquake North America—probably the world—has ever seen in historic times. To describe it in the simplest terms, land east of the Fault was settling, and at a precipitous rate. chalk raked across a blackboard, the noise was deafening. The surfaces of the land east and west of the Fault seemed no longer to have any buckling and dropping, the earth trembled downward. Atop the new cliffs, which seemed to grow by sudden inches from heaving rubble, dry earth fissured and trembled, sliding acres at a time to fall, smoking, Dry earth churned like mud, and rock shards weighing tons bumped and rolled about like pebbles as they shivered and cracked into pebbles themselves. \"It looks like sand dancing in a child's sieve,\" said the normally impassive Schwartzberg in a nationwide broadcast from the scene of disaster. \"No one here has ever seen anything like it.\" And the landslip was growing, north and south along the Fault. affected area. \"When it's over you can come back and pick up the pieces.\" But the band of scientists who had rallied to his leadership privately wondered if there would be any pieces. down. They danced \"like sand in a sieve\" dry, they boiled into rubble. Telephone lines, railroad tracks, roads snapped and simply disappeared. Virtually all east-west land communication was suspended and the The western borders of these states, and soon of the Dakotas and Oklahoma as well, were slowly sinking. On the actual scene of the disaster (or the scenes it is impossible confusion. Prairie and hill cracked open under intolerable strains as the land shuddered downward in gasps and leaps. Springs burst to the surface in hot geysers and explosions of steam. The downtown section of North Platte, Nebraska, dropped eight feet, just like that, on the afternoon of 4 October. \"We must remain calm,\" floods, in the usual sense. The water moved too slowly, spread itself with no real direction or force. But the vast sheets of sluggish water and jelly-like mud formed death-traps for the countless refugees now streaming east. Perhaps the North Platte disaster had been more than anyone could take. with a gigantic wave of refugees. Rails, roads and air-lanes were jammed with terrified hordes who had left everything behind to crowd eastward. for emergency squads which flew everywhere with milk for babies and dog food for evacuating pets. Gasoline trucks boomed west to meet the demand for gas, but once inside the \"zone of terror,\" as the newspapers now called it, they found their route blocked by eastbound cars on the wrong side of the road. Shops left by their fleeing owners were looted by refugees from further west an American Airlines plane was wrecked by a mob of would-be passengers in Bismarck, North Dakota. Federal and as a hollow roar, a shriek and a deep musical vibration like a church bell. It was simply the tortured rock of the substrata giving way. The second phase of the national disaster was beginning. The noise traveled due east at better than 85 miles per hour. In its wake the earth to the north \"just seemed to collapse on itself like a punctured balloon,\" read one newspaper report. \"Like a cake that's failed,\" said a Texarkana housewife who fortunately lived a block Mobile, Pensacola, Panama City: 200 miles of shoreline vanished, with over two and a half million people. An hour later a wall of water had swept over every town from Dothan, Alabama, to Bogalusa on the Louisiana-Mississippi border. forming, overtopping the wave's leading edge as towns, hills and the thirst of the soil temporarily broke the furious charge. Washington announced the official hope that the Ozarks would stop the Despite hopeful announcements that the wave was slowing, had virtually stopped after inundating Oklahoma City, was being swallowed up in the great swirl. Whirlpools opened. A great welter of smashed wood and human debris was the cliffs of New Mexico and fell back on itself in foam. Would-be rescuers on the cliffs along what had been the west bank of the Pecos River afterwards recalled the hiss and scream like tearing silk as the water broke furiously on the newly exposed rock. It was the most terrible sound they had ever heard. \"We couldn't hear any shouts, of course, not that far away and with all collision between two solid bodies. We couldn't see for over an hour, because of the spray.\" Salt spray. The ocean had come to New Mexico. of the Wyoming cliffs, having been sucked from one end of vanished Nebraska to the other. Similar hair-breadth escapes were recounted on radio and television. younger children and what provisions they could find—\"Mostly a ham and about half a ton of vanilla cookies,\" he explained to his eventual rescuers. The barn, luckily collapsing in the vibrations as the waves ever have been called on to face, she added, \"We sure wondered why behind, in the rush!\" But such lightheartedness and such happy endings were by no means typical. The world could only watch aghast as the water raced north under the shadow of the cliffs which occasionally crumbled, roaring, into the roaring waves. Day by day the relentless rush swallowed what had been dusty farmland, cities and towns. Some people were saved by the helicopters which flew mercy missions of eight states, and portions of twelve others, had simply vanished Who today could imagine the United States without the majestic in the continuing anomaly of the seven \"fringe States\" represented estate, the state has in fact disappeared from the American political\n\n<question>:\nWhat could be indicated by the mention in the passage of some newspapers leaving out the question mark regarding \"Only Active Volcano in U.S.?\n\n<options>:\nA The newspapers were aiming for dramatic effect by proclaiming it was indeed active\nB The newspapers misprinted\nC The newspapers were confirming that there was an ongoing eruption\nD The newspapers were trying to pass off the dust as smoke from the volcanoes\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,814 | 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 fish....\" It was all sound logic. Even Ned Vince knew that. Still, his to control himself. His knuckles tightened on the edge of the vat. \"I don't know what you've been talking about,\" he grated wildly. \"But I want to get out of here! I want to go back where I came from! 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 company of the girl he loved. That was why he was in a hurry Kar-Rah. You are the only man left on Earth. Those men that been enough for him to hear. He didn't more than half believe it. His mind was too confused for to escape this nameless lair, to try to learn the facts for himself, possessed him. He on his hands and knees, for the up-slanting passage was low. Excited animal chucklings around him, and the occasional touch of a furry body, hurried his feverish in pursuit. Looking back, he saw the pinpoint gleams of cold sea-bottom, but what of it? What reason did he have left to \"Kaalleee! Tik!... Tik, tik, tik!... Kaalleee!...\" The excited cry, which no human throat could quite have duplicated and studied.... hold of his courage. But what was there to inspire it? Nothing! He laughed harshly as he Prison or a madhouse would be far better. He tried to get 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 tik!...\" At first there was only one \"Kaalleee!... Tik, tik, voice uttering those weird, triumphant babble of a group of workmen until presently an idea occurred to him. It gave him a few crumbs of hope. who have discovered something remarkable. from the black box. It was Loy Chuk speaking again. \"But listen!\" Ned protested. \"You know a lot more than we read about. Maybe you know how to make it work! Maybe you could send me back to my own time after all!\" Little Loy Chuk was in a black, discouraged mood, himself. He could understand the his own kind. Probably insanity looming. In far less extreme circumstances 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!...\" which they spring, he loved the and to be happy. Or this creature would be of scant value for study. So Loy considered carefully what Ned Vince had suggested. worlds in other solar systems, assault upon an intangible wall that had baffled far keener wits than Loy's. But he was bent, now, on the well-being of this anachronism he had so miraculously 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,\" Perhaps that is the only thing to do—to send you back success. He crouched there on his haunches, at the dry bottom of creamy. White whiskers hypo-needle bit into his arm.... As soon as Ned Vince passed into unconsciousness, Loy Chuk went to work once more, using spread around his inquisitive, plans. The government of Kar-Rah 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. was a scientific oligarchy, A horde of small, grey-furred beings and their machines, toiled now been chipped away by the tiny investigators there, greasy and littered with metal filings, just as they had always been. He had a tractor to not this body. The answer to this She wore a blue dress, and a mischievous smile curved her lips. As though she had succeeded in creeping up on him, for a surprise. 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. The final instrument he used to test the mummy, looked like a he did not try to shake off, accepted apparent facts simply. He did not know anything beating down upon him, soothing and dimming his brain, so that it would never question or doubt, or observe too closely the incongruous twittering, chattering sounds, he communicated his further knowledge to his henchmen. Though 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, this long-dead body could be opaque dome. But there were hidden television systems, too. Thus Loy Chuk's kind could in the museums of Kar-Rah! \"Tik, tik, tik!...\" But Loy silenced this fresh, eager chattering with a command. study this ancient man—this Kaalleee. Thus, their motives study it would make, back there to himself, contemplating the mummy of Ned Vince was magnificent, inexorable march of Loy, though, was not observing, \"The Kaalleee believes himself home,\" Loy was thinking. \"He will survive and be happy. But out into cold, sad sea-bottom, to ruins, left by the final supermen. sharp hand-tools were used, now—the 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 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 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. was on him. Feeble and dizzy after his weird resurrection, which he could not understand, Work was always more substantial than cheering. were mostly selfish. a little but plainly possessing a high order of intelligence. With infinite care—small, now. He had wandered far 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 a curious calm. \"Stark—starin'—nuts....\" Loy's box, with its recorded English words and its sonic detectors, could translate for its 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 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. Probably, though, he was a fool, to suppose that he could succeed, thus. them. A lot easier than men\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Loy Chuk want to bring the mummy back to life?\n\n<options>:\nA Loy Chuk wants to experiment on the man.\nB Loy Chuk wants to study the man.\nC Loy Chuk thinks, if he can find a female specimen, he can restart the human race.\nD Loy Chuk just wants to prove it can be done.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,260 | 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>:\non Earth.\" \"But it's mobbed,\" protested Zotul. \"It gave me a headache.\" Zotul, youngest of the Masur brothers, stirred uneasily. Personally, he was in favor of the coming of the Earthmen to the world of Zur. with yours. The future population of Zur will be neither true Zurians dotage, but still giving what he could of aid and comfort to the Zotul sat in silent thought. \"But you did not have to buy us out. You had the power to conquer us, even to destroy us. The whole planet could have been yours alone.\" He stopped in alarm. \"Or am I suggesting an nor true Earthmen, but a mixture of both.\" and last in the rank of age, Zotul, who was responsible for affairs of design. \"At last I understand what you said about the tortoise.\" \"Slow but sure.\" Broderick beamed again and clapped Zotul on the shoulder. \"Don't worry. You'll have your job back, the same as always, are equal in knowledge and therefore equal partners. That's why we had to break down your caste system.\" Zotul's eyes widened. \"And that is why my brothers did not beat me when I failed!\" \"Of course. Are you ready now to take the assignment papers for you and your brothers to sign?\" \"Yes,\" said Zotul. \"I am ready.\" for him. He would report when the time was ripe. \"Doubtless,\" said Zotul unexpectedly, for the youngest at a conference was expected to keep his mouth shut and applaud the decisions of his \"When your opinion is wanted, we will ask you for it. Meantime, remember your position in the family.\" Zotul bowed his head meekly, but he burned with resentment. \"Listen to the boy,\" said the aged father. \"There is more wisdom in his head than in all the rest of you. Forget the Earthmen and think only of the clay.\" Zotul did not appreciate his father's approval, for it only earned him a beating as soon as the old man went to bed. It was a common enough thing among the brothers Masur, as among everybody, to be frustrated in their desires. However, they had Zotul to take it out upon, and they did. Still smarting, Zotul went back to his designing quarters and thought Zur. It required but the cooperation—an excellent word, that—of all Zurians, and many blessings would rain down from the skies. This, in effect, was what the Earthmen had to say. Zotul felt greatly cheered, for it refuted the attitude of his brothers without earning him a thing one day and another the next. Accurate reporting, much less a city of major and minor importance, and all in a single day, it took some time for the news to spread. The first awareness Zotul had was that, upon coming home from the pottery one evening, he found his wife Lania proudly brandishing an aluminum pot at him. will have to design and produce a new stove if you expect me to use them.\" After he had beaten his wife thoroughly for her foolishness, Zotul dreamed. This, for some unknown reason and much to the disgust of scanty reading ability and bought everything available, overcome by the novelty of it. Even Zotul bought a book—a primer in the Lorian Within five years of the first landing of the Earthmen, every major especially for the House of Masur.\" \"You didn't think so at first,\" Zotul pointed out, and was immediately unthinkable impertinence. It would do no good, Zotul realized, to bring up the fact that their \"Perhaps,\" said Zotul, \"it is a good thing also, as you said before, and will result in something even better for us.\" Koltan frowned, and Zotul, in fear of another beating, instantly subsided. \"They are replacing our high-quality ceramic ware with inferior nowhere with their wrangle, he cleared his throat and spoke up. things had happened. For one, old Kalrab had passed on to his immortal at a nice profit and everybody was happy with the situation except the Zotul. It took three weeks for the Earthmen to get around to calling him in, as a representative of the Pottery of Masur, for an interview. All the brothers could no longer be spared from the plant, even for the purpose of pressing a complaint. Their days of idle wealth over, they had to get in and work with the clay with the rest of the help. Zotul found the headquarters of the Merchandising Council as indicated on their message. He had not been this way in some time, but was not surprised to find that a number of old buildings had been torn down to jovially with Zotul. That alien custom conformed with, Zotul took a better look at his host. Broderick was an affable, smiling individual with genial laugh wrinkles at his eyes. A man of middle age, dressed in Zotul on the back. \"Just tell us your troubles and we'll have you straightened out in no time.\" All the chill recriminations and arguments Zotul had stored for this Almost apologetically, Zotul told of the encroachment that had been made upon the business of the Pottery of Masur. \"Once,\" he said formally, \"the Masur fortune was the greatest in Zotul had to answer no to all except the radio. \"My wife Lania likes the music,\" he explained. \"I cannot afford the other things.\" bargain-priced merchandise of Earth must be poor indeed. \"To begin with,\" he said, \"I am going to make you a gift of all these luxuries you do not have.\" As Zotul made to protest, he cut him off \"None at all,\" beamed the Earthman cheerily. \"Every item is given to but sure.' And so with us. Our goal is a long-range one, with the motto, 'Better times with better merchandise.'\" The engaging manner of the man won Zotul's confidence. After all, it was no more than fair to pay transportation. \"Impossible,\" said Zotul drably. \"Not I and all my brothers together have so much money any more.\" Zotul grasped at the glittering promise with avidity. \"What must I do to get credit?\" Zotul drew back. \"I have five brothers. If I took all these things for myself and nothing for them, they would beat me black and blue.\" of your brothers sign one of these, then bring them back to me. That is all there is to it.\" It sounded wonderful. But how would the brothers take it? Zotul wrestled with his misgivings and the misgivings won. \"I will talk it over with them,\" he said. \"Give me the total so I will have the figures.\" The total was more than it ought to be by simple addition. Zotul a quarter interest in your plant itself, assigned to our terrestrial company.\" Zotul, anxious to possess the treasures promised by the Earthman, won over his brothers. They signed with marks and gave up a quarter interest in the Pottery of Masur. They rolled in the luxuries of Earth. The retooled plant forged ahead and profits began to look up, but the Broderick was very sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do. For the common people of Zur, times were good everywhere. In a decade The brothers Masur got along in spite of dropped options. They had less Would he like to see Mr. Siwicki instead? Zotul would. Siwicki was tall, thin, dark and somber-looking. There was even a hint of toughness about the set of his jaw and the hardness of his glance. \"I don't know what you mean,\" said Zotul. \"If we have to sue, we take back the merchandise and everything The brothers, when they heard of this, were too stunned to think of beating Zotul, by which he assumed he had progressed a little and was somewhat comforted. \"To fail,\" said Koltan soberly, \"is not a Masur attribute. Go to the was remarkable that he paid so little attention, for the female you.\" \"Me?\" marveled Zotul. them over, just as we are taking you over.\" \"You mean,\" exclaimed Zotul, aghast, \"that you Earthmen own everything on Zur?\" \"Even your armies.\"\n\n<question>:\nWho changed the least throughout the story?\n\n<options>:\nA Broderick\nB Kalrab\nC Koltan\nD Zotul\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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357 | 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>:\nGeneral Finogenov notified Major Winship that the underground blast was scheduled for the following morning. Major Winship, after receiving the message, discussed precautions with Major Winship attempted unsuccessfully to communicate with Base ,\" said Major Winship, exhausting his Russian. \"Count down. Progress. When—boom?\" \"Is Pinov,\" came the reply. \"Boom! Boom!\" said Major Winship in exasperation. \"When?\" \"Boom—boom!\" said Pinov. \"Oh, nuts.\" Major Winship cut out the circuit. \"They've got Pinov on emergency watch this morning,\" he explained to the other Americans. \"The one that doesn't speak English.\" \"He's done it deliberately,\" said Capt. Wilkins, the eldest of the four Americans. \"How are we going to know when it's over?\" No one bothered to respond. They sat for a while in silence while the shadows evaporated. One by one they clicked on their cooling systems. for several minutes. \"Ah, it's all Russian. Jabbering away. I can't tell a thing that's going on.\" no more. \"Static?\" \"Nope.\" \"We'll get static on these things.\" A small infinity seemed to pass very slowly. Major Winship shifted restlessly. \"My reefer's gone on the fritz.\" probably over by now.\" \"I'll try again,\" Major Winship said and switched to the emergency channel. \"Base Gagarin? Base Gagarin?\" \"Is Pinov. Help?\" \"The shot probably went off an hour ago.\" \"The static level hasn't gone up much, if at all.\" \"Maybe,\" Lt. Chandler said, \"it's buried too deep.\" \"Maybe so,\" Major Winship said. \"But we can't have the dome fall down of pressure, the inner lock slid open and Major Winship stepped into off balance. He stumbled against the table and ended up seated beside the radio equipment. The ground moved again. \"Charlie! Charlie!\" \"I'm okay,\" Major Winship answered. \"Okay! Okay!\" \"It's—\" There was additional surface movement. The movement ceased. emergency channel. \"Is Pinov,\" came the supremely relaxed voice. \"Help?\" Major Winship whinnied in disgust. \" Americans: \"Our comrades seem unconcerned.\" \"Tough.\" They began to get the static for the first time. It crackled and snapped in their speakers. They made sounds of disapproval at each other. For a minute or two, static blanked out the communications completely. It then abated to something in excess of normal. \"Well,\" Lt. Chandler commented, \"even though we didn't build this thing to withstand a moonquake, it seems to have stood up all right.\" \"I guess I was just—\" Major Winship began. \"Oh, hell! We're losing and plastered it against a riveted seam of the dome. It pulsed as though it were breathing and then it ruptured. Major Winship moved quickly to cut out the emergency air supply which had cut in automatically with the pressure drop. \"You guys wait. It's Major Winship pressed the sheeting over the leak. \"How's that?\" \"I don't think I've got enough pressure left to hold it, now. It's sprung a little, and I can't get it to conform over the rivet heads.\" There was a splatter of static. \"Damn!\" Major Winship said, \"they should have made these things more flexible.\" he said wryly, \"it doesn't smell as bad now.\" \"Oops,\" said Major Winship. \"Just a second. They're coming in.\" He switched over to the emergency channel. It was General Finogenov. \"Major Winship! Hello! Hello, hello, hello. You A Okay?\" \"This is Major Winship.\" \"No, no. Oh, no, no, no, no. Major Winship, please believe me. I very repeatedly assuring you there was no danger of a quake—and then to have something like this happen. Oh, this is very embarrassing to me. Is there anything at all we can do?\" communication. \"What'd they say?\" Capt. Wilkins asked. \"Larry, General Finogenov said he was very embarrassed by this.\" \"Les has got it.\" Lt. Chandler got down from the bunk and Capt. Wilkins mounted. \"Larry,\" Major Winship said, \"why don't you get Earth?\" \"Okay.\" Capt. Wilkins got down from the bunk and Capt. Lawler ascended. energized the circuits. There was a puzzled look on his face. He leaned his helmet against the speaker and then shook his head sadly. \"We can't Major Winship looked at the microphone. \"Well, I'll just report and—\" \"That's right, isn't it.\" Capt. Wilkins flicked off the transmitter. \"Some days you don't mine at service.\" Major Winship said dryly, \"Never mind. I notice it hardens on contact with air.\" Major Winship, with his deficient reefer, remained behind. Capt. something else goes wrong.\" plate to the small transmitter-receiver set on Major Winship's back. Eventually, trailing wires, Major Winship was coupled into the network. \"Okay?\" \"Okay,\" Major Winship gestured. They roused Earth. \"This is Major Charles Winship, Commanding Officer, Freedom 19, the American moonbase.\" \"This is the Cape. Come in, Major Winship.\" \"Just a moment.\" \"Is everything all right?\" Major Winship was squirming nervously, obviously perturbed. \"A-Okay,\" he said. \"Just a moment.\" \"What's wrong?\" came the worried question. In the background, he heard Major Winship made a strangling motion and reached for his throat. One arm tangled a cable and jerked the speaker jack loose. Major Winship was not entirely subvocal, since he emitted a little gasping cry in involuntary realism. This, in the course of some 90 seconds, was transmitted to Earth. Capt. Wilkins's lips were desperately forming the word \"Leak?\" Air, Major Winship said silently. \"We're all right. A-Okay.\" Major Winship, mindful of the extent of his potential audience, took a deep breath. \"Earlier this morning, the Soviet Union fired an underground atomic device for the being inserted. Another tap indicated it was seated. Major Winship \"However,\" he continued, \"we did experience a minor leak in the dome, which is presently being repaired.\" \"The Soviet Union,\" came the reply, \"has reported the disturbance and has tendered their official apology. You want it?\" destroyed our organic air reconditioner. We have approximately three weeks of emergency air. However, Base Gagarin reports no damage, so the conversation a tone of deliberation. A new voice came on. \"We tried to contact you earlier, Major. We will be able to deliver replacements in about ten days.\" \"Let us hear from you again in ... about three hours. Is the leak repaired?\" \"The leak has not yet been repaired. Over and out.\" He nodded to Capt. Wilkins and leaned back. Methodically, Capt. Wilkins set about disconnecting the major from the Winship, squinting out into the glaring sunlight. interposing itself. Lt. Chandler tried to dismantle the table. \"Damn these suits,\" he said. the main air-supply tank and the transmitter. They were all perspiring. \"It's not the weight, it's the mass,\" said Capt. Wilkins brightly. \"The hell it isn't the weight,\" said Lt. Chandler. \"That's heavy.\" \"No!\" Major Winship snapped. \"Out! Out!\" Major Winship, Lt. Chandler, and Capt. Lawler, recognizing the sense of urgency, simultaneously glanced at the drum. It was glowing cherry red.\n\n<question>:\nWhat goes wrong just as Winship makes contact with earth?\n\n<options>:\nA His communications were cut off, and he has no way to talk to Wilkin.\nB He is starting to lose air and needs to have it replaced.\nC He runs out of air and can't breathe.\nD The communications equipment stops working, and the people down at Earth start to worry.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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436 | 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 yet it had nothing to do with logic, either. It was just an emptiness—a void that could not be filled by eating or drinking. It was not a longing. I had no desire that things should be otherwise somehow, I did not like to see. It was disquieting, and so I hastened to the end that I knew was inevitable. was complete, every minutest detail provided for—on paper. In two weeks they would be endlessly gathering knowledge into its insatiable mechanisms. He could see, too, the level on level of laboratories and storerooms that filled its interlocking segments was normal. Nothing, on examination, seemed to have changed. But the world had grown suddenly unreal. other part was going calmly, lucidly on, quite without his volition. It considered the possibility that he had gone temporarily insane, and decided that this was probable. 50 CHILDREN DISAPPEAR FROM PARIS MATERNITY CENTER in fifty years. The order was made public early this morning by R. Stein, Secretary of the Council, who said in part: \"The reason for this ... order must be apparent to all civilized 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. Then she did a double-take, looked at his face intently, and said, \"Darling, what's wrong?\" He said, \"Have you seen the news recently?\" She frowned. \"Why, no—Harry and I have been working for thirty-six hours straight. Haven't seen anybody, haven't heard anything. Why?\" \"You wouldn't believe me. Where's your newsbox?\" She came around the desk and put her hands on his shoulders. \"Pete, you know I haven't one—it bores me or upsets me, depending on whether there's trouble or not. What—\" \"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 papers away from in front of it. She turned the selector dial to \"News\" and pressed the stud. Lorelei caught her breath. men and women, but they wanted to be. Their bodies had been impossibly joined, fused together into a single obscene, floundering mass of 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, and they know it but they have to do it. This isn't like a war, where the noncombatants' morale has to be kept up. There aren't going to be through the solid wall, or simply melted away. The man and woman clung together, waiting. There was a thick, oppressive silence, full of small rustlings and screamed in a high, inhuman voice. The screamed dwindled into a throaty Lorelei's assistant, was crumpled in a corner, half supported by the \"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, mindless noise in his throat was almost beyond his power to repress. His insides writhed to thrust it out. She didn't see him. Her eyes glazed, and she dropped limply to the floor. He wanted to say, \"Yes, get a doctor. Lorelei—\" but his mouth only 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. the nurse bent over him with a glass half full of milky fluid. It tasted awful, but she made him drink it all. In a moment he began to relax, and the room got fuzzy again. Just before he drifted off, he said sleepily, \"You can't—fool me. It's been more —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. \"Seeing that assistant of hers—it was enough to knock anybody out, especially a woman. But you stood actual mental contact with them for approximately five minutes. Yes, we know—you talked a lot. It's a miracle you're alive, and rational.\" \"But where is she?\" Peter complained. \"You still haven't explained why I haven't been able to see her.\" months ago.\" \"But why?\" Peter whispered. Arnold's strong jaw knotted. \"We're hiding,\" he said. \"Everything else an impossible task if we tried to include all the thinly-populated areas, of course, but it doesn't matter. By the time we excavate enough to take care of a quarter of the earth's population, the other three-quarters will be dead, or worse.\" was to have been a thousand. It wouldn't house a hundred scientists, eagerly delving into the hinterland of research. The huge compartments weren't filled with the latest equipment for chemical and physical experiment instead, there was compressed oxygen there, and concentrated food, enough to last a lifetime. It was a new world, all by itself or else it was a tomb. And there was 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.\" as many. The mortality rate is up, the suicide rate is up, the birth rate is down, in spite of anything we can do. You've seen the figures: we're riding a curve that ends in extinction fifty years from now. She was crying now, silently, with great racking sobs that shook her slender body. But he went remorselessly on. Lorelei—darling—don't you see that?\" they change adult life forms, too. I have one chance in seven of staying alive. You'd have one chance in a million of staying beautiful. I couldn't stand that. I'd kill myself, and then humanity would die, too. You'd be their murderer.\" Her sobs gradually died away. She straightened slowly until he no longer had to support her, but all the vitality and resilience was gone out of her body. \"All right,\" she said in a lifeless voice. \"You'll He turned away suddenly, not trusting himself to kiss her goodbye. A line from an old film kept echoing through his head. \" They'll The days merged into weeks, then months, and finally, far out, The animation of their crystal cells. One by one he allowed them to mature, and after weeks or years destroyed the monstrosities that came from the incubators. Time went by, meaninglessly. He ate when he was hungry, slept when his driving purpose let him, and worked unceasingly, searching for the million-to-one chance. Earth, wondering if the race he had left behind still burrowed in its worm-tunnels, digging deeper and deeper away from the sunlight. But after a time he ceased even to wonder. long—keeping the control chamber and the engine room locked away from you, not telling you, even, about Earth until now—because I had to be sure. But now, the waiting is over.\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Lorelei choose to not keep up with the news for herself?\n\n<options>:\nA Peter always kept her informed well enough.\nB She didn't care enough to know the news.\nC She found it to be depressing or boring.\nD She didn't have time to keep up with current events.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
536 | 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>:\nSpawning Ground By LESTER DEL REY They weren't human. They were something more—and something less—they were, in short, humanity's hopes for survival! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from \"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways clouds.\" The blobs were a peculiarity of this planet about which nobody knew anything. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. \"And in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back.\" Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen Pinelli, seemed to be totally devoid of any sense of caution. Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous and harmless. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each on their segmented bodies. None acted like dangerous beasts. But something glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to \"Bob!\" Jane Corey's voice cut through his pondering. \"Bob, there are the kids!\" The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived \"Follow the blobs,\" Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into but he had to slow as the fog thickened lower down. Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own trail to confuse the pursuers. the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog. A blob dropped down, almost touching Gwayne. He threw up an instinctive hand. There was a tingling as the creature his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing. \"I hope so,\" Gwayne told him. \"I want that thing to live—and you're detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the answer.\" Barker nodded grimly. \"I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien sickly. Smoke and this air made a foul combination. \"Bob, it still makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some.\" busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon as he could, knowing their stories would only get wilder and less informative with retelling. If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed been overcome by the aliens. It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the fuel dumped? Only men would have known how to do that. And who told these creatures that a space ship's metal finders could be fooled by a little more than a hundred feet of solid rock? They'd buried the ship cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work. Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction. The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons into a peace that had lasted two hundred years. It had managed to prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life there to be dangerous on the few worlds that had cultures of their own. It wouldn't be much of an explosion, as such things go—but it would render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive, man had to colonize. And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The explorers went out in desperation to find what they could the terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships began filling worlds with colonists, carried in deep sleep to conserve space. would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was If this world could be used, it would be nearer than most. If not, as it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here. Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to strip them of their world, but the first law was survival. But how could primitives do what these must have done? He studied the spear he had salvaged. It was on a staff made of hand had been able to do for centuries. \"He never meant to hurt the kids—just to talk to them,\" Barker cut in quickly. \"I've got some of the story. He's changed. He can't talk very well. Says they've had to change the language around to make the sounds fit, and he's forgotten how to use what normal English he can. But it Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize on the gold ornament of a captive earthman, even to learn a little twisted speech from inhuman vocal cords better. But the story took a long time telling. ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the ship again. however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off giving the gist of it to Jane. \"It was the blobs,\" he summarized it. \"They seem to be amused by men. They don't require anything from us, but they like us around. Hennessy doesn't know why. They can change our cells, adapt us. Before men came, all life here had twelve legs. Now they're changing that, as we've seen. \"And they don't have to be close to do it. We've all been outside the hull. It doesn't show yet—but we're changed. In another month, Earth food would kill us. We've got to stay here. We'll bury the ships deeper this time, and Earth won't find us. They can't risk trying a colony where three ships vanish, so we'll just disappear. And they'll never know.\" Nobody would know. Their children—odd children who matured in eight years—would be primitive savages in three generations. The Earth tools would be useless, impossible for the hands so radically changed. Nothing from the ship would last. Books could never be read by the new \"No,\" he admitted. Damn his voice! He'd never been good at lying. \"No. They have to touch us. I've been touched, but the rest could go back.\" She nodded. He waited for the condemnation, but there was only puzzlement in her face. \"Why?\" It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her seed, but no world other than Earth could ever be trusted to preserve that seed for generation after generation. Some worlds already were becoming uncertain. Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next fruitful,\" she whispered. \"Be fruitful and spawn and replenish an earth.\" \"No,\" he told her. \"Replenish the stars.\" But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait. again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they through all space, and the changing bodies would claim worlds beyond numbering. Some day, the whole universe would be a spawning ground for the\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the power of the blobs?\n\n<options>:\nA To make creatures sleep.\nB To change creatures to adapt to a new environment.\nC To change creatures so they go insane.\nD To make creatures die.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
186 | 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 his room at the Elsby Commercial Hotel, Tremaine opened his luggage are supposed to keep me informed. Meantime, I'm not sitting in this damned room crouched over a dial. I'll be out and around for the rest of the afternoon.\" warning you, Tremaine. Get that transmitter. I need someone to hang!\" Tremaine left the hotel, walked two blocks west along Commerce Street Tremaine took off his hat. \"Sure you do, Jess. It's been a while, The policeman got to his feet. \"Jimmy,\" he said, \"Jimmy Tremaine.\" He brings you back to the boondocks?\" \"Let's go somewhere and sit down, Jess.\" In a back room Tremaine said, \"To everybody but you this is just a visit to the old home town. Between us, there's more.\" Jess nodded. \"I heard you were with the guv'ment.\" \"It won't take long to tell circles, overlapped by a similar group of rings. \"I think what we're getting is an echo effect from each of these to TV. They figure we should be content with radio, like the Lord intended.\" \"Mr. Bram,\" repeated Tremaine. \"Is he still around? I remember him as a hundred years old when I was kid.\" \"Still just the same, Jimmy. Comes in town maybe once a week, buys his 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 \"There were a lot of funny stories about him, I remember,\" Tremaine said. \"I always liked him. One time he tried to teach me something I've forgotten. Wanted me to come out to his place and he'd teach me. I never did go. We kids used to play in the caves near his place, and sometimes he gave us apples.\" ordinary American. But up close, you feel it. He's foreign, all right. But we never did know where he came from.\" \"How long's he lived here in Elsby?\" \"Beats me, Jimmy. You remember old Aunt Tress, used to know all about ancestors and such as that? She couldn't remember about Mr. Bram. She was kind of senile, I guess. She used to say he'd lived in that same old place out on the Concord road when she was a girl. Well, she died five years ago ... in her seventies. He still walks in town every Wednesday ... or he did up till yesterday anyway.\" over again.\" \"I remember Soup,\" Tremaine said. \"He and his bunch used to come in the drug store where I worked and perch on the stools and kid around routine, high spirits, you know the line. All of 'em but Hull are back in the streets playin' with matches by now. I'm waiting for the day they'll make jail age.\" bucks. There was a big shindy planned. Now, you know Bram was funny about any kind of socializing never would go any place at night. But this was a Sunday afternoon and someways or other they got Bram down there and Miss Linda made her play, right there in front of the town, practically. Just before sundown they went off together in that fancy shay. And the next day, she was home again—alone. That finished off her reputation, as far as the biddies in Elsby was concerned. It was and eyes open for anything that might build into a lead on this, Jess. Meantime, I'm just a tourist, seeing the sights.\" \"What about that gear of yours? Didn't you say you had some kind of detector you were going to set up?\" \"I've got an oversized suitcase,\" Tremaine said. \"I'll be setting it up in my room over at the hotel.\" \"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—\" Back in the street, Tremaine headed south toward the Elsby Town Tremaine. \"I won't be a minute,\" Tremaine said. \"Just want to check on when the The man came over to the counter, eyeing Tremaine. \"He ain't going to Tremaine put a hand on the counter, looked thoughtful. \"I was hoping It was ten minutes before he beckoned Tremaine over to the table where \"No, thanks,\" Tremaine said. \"That's all I needed.\" He turned back to old Bram. Useta say his place was haunted. You know funny noises and lights. And they used to say there was money buried out at his place.\" \"I've heard those stories. Just superstition, wouldn't you say?\" Tremaine waited. older are there in the shelves.\" \"What date was it you wanted?\" \"Nineteen-oh-one Tremaine leafed over, reading slowly. \"May I see some earlier issues from about the first of the year?\" windows along the side streets. Tremaine turned up his collar against a Tremaine set off at a run, covered the two blocks to the hotel, yanked Two miles into the dark hills north of the Elsby city limits, Tremaine \"Mind if I have a word with him? My name's Tremaine.\" before handing it to Tremaine. Tremaine?\" Back in his room, Tremaine put through a call. \"Don't tell me my job, Tremaine!\" the voice snapped. \"And don't try out Only a faint quaver reflected her age—close to eighty, Tremaine \"Why did you come today, James?\" asked Miss Carroll. to be in the national interest.\" \"I'm not at all sure I know what the term 'national interest' means, James. I distrust these glib phrases.\" \"I always liked Mr. Bram,\" said Tremaine. \"I'm not out to hurt him.\" 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.\" Tremaine stood up. \"I'm sorry. Really sorry. I didn't mean to grill and it may help him.\" She paused. Tremaine waited. \"Many years ago I was courted by Bram. One day he asked me to go with him to his house. On the way he told me a terrible and pathetic tale. in a secret way ... and he would come. I told him that until he would consent to see a doctor, I did not wish him to call. He drove me home. He never called again.\" \"This locket,\" said Tremaine, \"do you still have it?\" As Tremaine walked slowly toward the lighted main street of Elsby a car pulled to a stop beside him. Jess leaned out, peered at Tremaine and a little worried. Want to run out there with me and take a look around?\" \"Sure. Just so I'm back by full dark.\" As they pulled away from the curb Jess said, \"Jimmy, what's this about wondering why you don't want 'em in. If there's some kind of spy ring working—\" The last pink light of sunset was fading from the clouds to the west as Jess swung the car through the open gate, pulled up under the old trees Tremaine. \"Maybe this is more than kid stuff,\" he said. \"You carry a Tremaine went to the car, dropped the pistol in his coat pocket, \"What do you make of it. Jimmy?\" At the station Jess led Tremaine to a cell where a lanky teen-age boy \"They're lookin for the spies.\" \"Who's looking for spies?\" \"Cops.\" The boy looked directly at Tremaine for an instant, flicked his eyes to \"They parked out east of town, on 302, back of the woodlot. They called me over and asked me a bunch of questions. Said I could help 'em get them spies. Wanted to know all about any funny-actin people around hers.\" The boy darted another look at Tremaine. \"They said they figured the\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Jimmy Tremaine visit his hometown?\n\n<options>:\nA To catch a criminal.\nB To have a tour and visit the sites.\nC To locate a device.\nD To visit family and old friends.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
845 | 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>:\ncan do it neater and use better grammar. I had to get in touch with somebody about this because if there is something to it, then somebody, everybody, is going to point finger at me, Ivan Smernda, and say, \"Why What really got me mixed up in this was the mysterious disappearance of Glmpauszn, will be born. tremendous wavelength fluctuations. I have attuned myself to a fetus utilize the feeble vibrations of various not-people through whose inadequate articulation I will attempt to make my moves known to you. Each time I will pick a city other than the one I am in at the time. I, Glmpauszn, come equipped with powers evolved from your fragmentary Tomorrow it will be someone else. You must never know of my exact Glmpauszn difference could it possibly make? Many doctors then came in to see me. As they arrived hourly, they found me heavier and heavier. Naturally, since I am growing. This is part of my instructions. My not-mother their hands and left. I learned the following day that the opposite component of my during my birth. He was out on ... what did they call it? Oh, yes, a bender. He did not arrive till three days after I was born. When I heard them say that he was straightening up to come see me, I made a special effort and grew marvelously in one afternoon. I was 36 not-world inches tall by evening. My not-father entered while I was standing by the crib examining a syringe the doctor had left behind. He stopped in his tracks on entering the room and seemed incapable of speech. Dredging into the treasury of knowledge I had come equipped with, I But you know old Blgftury. He wanted to go on this expedition himself and it's his nature never to flatter anyone. From now on I will refer to not-people simply as people, dropping the qualifying preface except where comparisons must be made between this alleged world and our own. It is merely an offshoot of our primitive New sensations crowd into my consciousness and I am having a hard time classifying them. Anyway, I shall carry on swiftly now to the inevitable climax in which I singlehanded will obliterate the terror of Glmpauszn vibrations for what these people call the psychic individual. Then I establish contact with him while he sleeps and compel him without his knowledge to translate my ideas into written language. He writes my has done. My first five tries were unfortunate. Each time I took control of an individual who could not read or write! Finally I found my man, but As I said before, floods of impressions are driving into my xzbyl ... impressions aroused by it are of beauty. It took little conditioning for me finally to react in this manner. This is truly an efficient mechanism I inhabit. immediately toward the nearest chemist. At the same time I looked up and all about me at the beauty. Soon an individual approached. I knew what to do from my information. I simply acted natural. You know, one of your earliest instructions was to realize that these people see nothing unusual in you if you do not let yourself believe they do. The woman gesticulated and continued to scream. People hurried from nearby houses. I linked my hands behind me and watched the scene with an attitude of mild interest. They weren't interested in me, I told myself. But they were. I became alarmed, dived into a bush and used a mechanism that you in the Square. Not when it results in riots at five in the morning. Now where is your naked friend? I'm going to make an example of him.\" must feel each, become accustomed to it. The more I think about it, the more I realize that the information I Glmpauszn I received your first communication today. It baffles me. Do you greet me in the proper fringe-zone manner? No. Do you express joy, hope, fluctuations make up our sentient population. Even our eminent, all-high Frequency himself has often been jeopardized more stable existence, these people radiate widely into our world. They even send what they call psychic reproductions of their own selves of our world—shake a leg, bub. Straighten up and fly right. In short, get hep. Glmpauszn Glmpauszn Systematically, I have tested each emotion and sensation listed in our catalog. I have been, as has been said in this world, like a reed again. I feel much better now. You see, Joe, as I attuned myself to the various impressions that constantly assaulted my mind through this body, I conditioned myself to react exactly as our information catalog instructed me to. Now it is all automatic, pure reflex. A sensation comes to me when I am then I experience a burning pain. If the sensation is a tickle, I experience a tickle. again. Strangely ... now what was I saying? Oh, yes. Ha, ha. Strangely enough, the reactions that come easiest to the people in this world came most difficult to me. Money-love, for example. It is a great thing Nothing happened. I didn't love the stuff or feel one way or the other rooms filled with money. If I don't love it then, I'll feel I have failed. This alcohol is taking effect now. Blgftury has been goading me for reports. To hell with his reports! I've got a lot more emotions to try, such as romantic love. I've been studying this phenomenon, along with other racial characteristics of these people, in the movies. This is the best place to see these people as they really are. They all go into the movie houses and there do homage to their own images. Very quaint type of idolatry. Love. Ha! What an adventure this is becoming. learning to love it, though not as much as I admire liquor. Well, one simply must persevere, I always say. Glmpauszn wonderful, in spite of this miserable imitation of a body. There are long hours during which I am so well-integrated into this body and this world that I almost consider myself a member of it. Now I can function efficiently. I sent Blgftury some long reports today outlining my experiments in the realm of chemistry where we must yet, but I will. This is not deceit, merely realistic anticipation of the inevitable. Anyway, what the old xbyzrt doesn't know won't muss his vibrations. attracted to me instantly. After all, the body I have devised is perfect in every detail ... actually a not-world ideal. I didn't lose any time overwhelming her susceptibilities. I remember adrenals on the ends of the kidneys increases and an enlivening of the entire endocrine system follows. Thus I felt the beginnings of love. and tries to induce her to do something biological. She then refuses. This pleases both of them, for he wanted her to refuse. She, in turn, wanted him to want her, but also wanted to prevent him so that he would I think I'll get a hot report off to the old so-and-so right now. It'll take him a gleeb to figure this one out. I'll tell him I'm setting up Glmpauszn pattern of pain, anger, fear and amazement in his matrix. Me and the Glmpauszn I was checking out. Naturally he was stunned since I was his best customer. \"But why, sir?\" he asked plaintively. I was baffled. What could I tell him? \"Don't you like the rooms?\" he persisted. \"Isn't the service good?\" \"It's the rooms,\" I told him. \"They're—they're—\" \"They're what?\" he wanted to know. Another day, another hotel. I swear I'm even beginning to think like Glmpauszn I have it! It is done! In spite of the alcohol, in spite of Blgftury's First the brain will dissolve and then the body will fall apart. And just let Blgftury make one crack. Just one xyzprlt. I'll have hgutry before the ghjdksla! Glmpauszn\n\n<question>:\nHow does Glmpauszn change over the story?\n\n<options>:\nA He finds that he doesn't want to invate the not-world.\nB He understands humans less as he encounters them and tries to mirror their behavior.\nC He eventually finds defeat in his conquest.\nD He seems more and more interested in human mannerisms and in adopting them.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,267 | 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>:\nto their character—if such utterly alien creatures could be said to have character. 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. \"If you did, I wish you hadn't. You haven't asked about your son.\" \"I don't even want to think about him,\" said Tennant. \"Let's get on with it.\" He could sense the restless stirring of the woman within Dana, just as he could feel the stirring toward her within himself—desire that both of them loathed because it was implanted within them by their captors. They walked toward the house. might have been cellophane but wasn't, and it sprouted from a fabric that might have been canvas but was something else. The trees looked They entered the house, which had no roof, continued to move beneath a 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 the three female captives, barely nineteen. But with the eyes of the thinking of what they wanted to eat but would not enjoy when it came. Tennant finished with his order, then got busy with his surprise. 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. it—are they—real?\" \"As real as you or I,\" he told her. \"It took quite a bit of doing, getting them to put a set together. And I wasn't sure that radio would get through. TV doesn't seem to. Somehow it brings things closer....\" 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. \"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.\" changing .\" He shook his head. \"No, Dana, you're not changing. You're adapting. We all are. We seem to be in a universe of different properties as well as different dimensions. We're adjusting. I can do a thing or two myself that seem absolutely impossible.\" \"Why haven't they brought more of us through?\" Eudalia asked, tamping out ashes in a tray that might have been silver. \"I'm not sure,\" he said thoughtfully. \"I think it's hard for them. They have a hell of a time bringing anyone through alive, and lately they 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! 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?\" quietly. \"Or in a Museum of Natural History? A zoo? A naturalist's lab? matched his, and a narrow halter. \"You thought those up while we ate,\" he said. It annoyed him to be copied, though he did not know why. She laughed at him silently, tossed her auburn hair back from her face and went out of the roofless house, angrier way. The infants, protected by cellophane-like coverlets, were asleep. \"They never cry,\" the thin woman told him. \"But they grow—God, how they grow!\" captors had seen to that hall but because that was its function. It didn't actually look like 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 knew this even though no reason The captor Tennant called Opal. Communication was telepathic. Tennant could have yodeled or yelled or sung He went through the entire routine at Opal's bidding. When at last he was allowed to relax, he wondered, not for the first time, if he 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. Or perhaps that was his intent Tennant could never be sure. They were There was the blurring wrench of forced teleportation and they were in sort of ultradimensional television set, but to Tennant it was as incomprehensible as an oil painting to an animal. Opal was annoyed that Tennant could make nothing of it. Then came the What cover must your body have not to be conspicuous? everything but the date and season. Opal, like the rest of the captors, smell . He thought down where Opal could not detect it. He took another deep, lung-filling drag on his cigarette, looked around the room that was so important a part of his life. The three women back leave them there, then knew that he would try somehow to get them out. 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 his thoughts. Because he felt sure of his captive ... or because he couldn't on Earth? 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: 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. power over him. He was not free of them. He understood all too well what they wanted him to do . He'd had one too many and only wanted a little fun. Really, darling, you seem to think that a girl....\" he should have expected a triangle, but somehow he hadn't. And here it was, with all of them going through their paces like a trio of tent-show actors. He said, \"For God's sake, sit down.\" captors had let him. skinned those bodies and removed the heads.\" brought the four of them through, not since they had begun to train him \"Rog,\" she said and her voice trembled, \"what are we going to do? What do you want to do?\" It would serve her right, but maybe there was another way. \"I don't know about you,\" he said, \"but I suspect we're in the same boat. I also have other interests.\" \" What lift? I have a conveyance of sorts a couple of miles down the road.\" He needed no telepathic powers to read the thoughts around him then. He lover to do something, anything easier and pleasanter than he had expected. They deserved some of the Tennant knew now why he was the only male human the captors had been 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.\n\n<question>:\nWhat can the captives do?\n\n<options>:\nA control their ability to have children\nB escape back to their homes when they desire\nC fight the alien commands\nD create things they think about\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,662 | 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>:\nIllustrated by Freas Miss Abercrombie, the manual therapist patted the old man on the shoulder. \"You're doing just fine, Mr. Lieberman. Show it to me when you have finished.\" The oldster in the stained convalescent suit gave her a quick, shy smile and went back to his aimless smearing in the finger paints. Miss Abercrombie smoothed her smock down over trim hips and surveyed the other patients working at the long tables in the hospital's arts and lounged beside the locked door and chatted idly about the Dodgers' prospects for the pennant. The therapist strolled down the line of tables, pausing to give a word of advice here, and a suggestion there. She stopped behind a frowning, intense patient, rapidly shaping blobs of clay into odd-sized strips and forms. As he finished each piece, he \"And what are we making today, Mr. Funston?\" Miss Abercrombie asked. The flying fingers continued to whip out the bits of shaped clay as the patient ignored the question. He hunched closer to his table as if to draw away from the woman. \"We mustn't be antisocial, Mr. Funston,\" Miss Abercrombie said lightly, but firmly. \"You've been coming along famously and you must remember to answer when someone talks to you. Now what are you making? It looks very complicated.\" She stared professionally at the maze of clay parts. Thaddeus Funston continued to mold the clay bits and put them in place. Without looking up from his bench he muttered a reply. \"Did,\" Funston murmured. Safely behind the patient's back, Miss Abercrombie smiled ever so slightly. \"Why that's very good, Mr. Funston. That shows real creative thought. I'm very pleased.\" She patted him on the shoulder and moved down the line of patients. A few minutes later, one of the attendants glanced at his watch, stood up and stretched. being moved back. A tall, blond patient with a flowing mustache, put one more dab of paint on his canvas and stood back to survey the meaningless smears. He sighed happily and laid down his palette. warm, afternoon sunlight and the door closed behind them. Miss Abercrombie gazed around the cluttered room and picked up her chart book of patient progress. Moving slowly down the line of benches, she made short, precise notes on the day's work accomplished by each patient. lengthily in her chart book. When she had completed her rounds, she slipped out of the smock, tucked the chart book under her arm and left the crafts building for the day. As she drove out of the hospital grounds, Thaddeus Funston stood at the At 3:01 a.m., Thaddeus Funston stirred in his sleep and awakened. He sat sheltered the deserted crafts building. He gave a quick cry, shut his eyes and clapped his hands over his face. the arts and crafts building. Thaddeus Funston took his hands from his face and lay back in his bed with a small, secret smile on his lips. Attendants and nurses scurried men offered timidly. \"Not over three kilotons.\" \"I don't care if it was the size of a peanut,\" Thurgood screamed. \"How did it get here?\" with exasperation, \"this was our manual therapy room. We gave our patients art work. It was a means of getting out of their systems, through the use of their hands, some of the frustrations and problems Madame Curie was a misguided scrubwoman.\" \"All I know is that you say this was a crafts building. O.K. So it was,\" \"And I've got to find out how it happened.\" Thurgood slumped into a field chair and gazed tiredly up at the little doctor. \"Where's that girl you said was in charge of this place?\" \"We've already called for Miss Abercrombie and she's on her way here now,\" the doctor snapped. Outside the tent, a small army of military men and AEC technicians moved around the perimeter of the crater, scintillators in hand, examining Colonel Thurgood, who had snapped from his chair at her words, leaped forward to catch her as she collapsed in a faint. At 4:00 p.m., the argument was still raging in the long, narrow staff room of the hospital administration building. Colonel Thurgood, looking more like a patient every minute, sat on the edge of his chair at the head of a long table and pounded with his fist on the wooden surface, making Miss Abercrombie's chart book bounce with every beat. \"It's ridiculous,\" Thurgood roared. \"We'll all be the laughingstocks of are all nuts. You're in the right place, but count me out.\" At his left, Miss Abercrombie cringed deeper into her chair at the broadside. Down both sides of the long table, psychiatrists, physicists, strategists and radiologists sat in various stages of nerve-shattered weariness. \"Miss Abercrombie,\" one of the physicists spoke up gently, \"you say that \"And you say that, to the best of your knowledge,\" the physicist \"I'm positive that's all there was in it,\" Miss Abercrombie cried. There was a renewed buzz of conversation at the table and the senior AEC man present got heads together with the senior intelligence man. They the IQ of an ape could make an atomic bomb out of kid's modeling clay? \"They'd crucify us, that's what they'd do!\" At 8:30 that night, Thaddeus Funston, swathed in an Army officer's secrecy under the National Atomic Secrets Act, bundled Thaddeus aboard Abercrombie and with a roar, the plane raced down the runway and into Miss Abercrombie. \"Now you're positive this is just about the same amount and the same Thaddeus Funston between them. The colonel nudged Miss Abercrombie. She smiled at Funston. \"Now isn't this nice, Mr. Funston,\" she said. \"These nice men have A flicker of interest lightened Thaddeus' face. He looked around the walked to the table and sat down. His fingers began working the damp clay, making first the hollow, half-round shell while the nation's top atomic scientists watched in fascination. His busy fingers flew through the clay, shaping odd, flat bits and clay parts that were dropped almost aimlessly into the open hemisphere in front of him. Miss Abercrombie stood at his shoulder as Thaddeus hunched over the table just as he had done the previous day. From time to time she glanced at her watch. The maze of clay strips grew and as Funston finished shaping the other half hemisphere of clay, she broke the tense silence. \"Time to go back now, Mr. Funston. You can work some more tomorrow.\" She looked at the men and nodded her head. The two psychiatrists went to Thaddeus' side as he put the upper lid of \"I told you this whole thing was asinine,\" Thurgood snarled as the door, looking uprange over the heat-shimmering desert. He gave a sudden Six hours and a jet plane trip later, Thaddeus, once again in his strait across a half-opened transom into the room where Thaddeus Funston sat in In the next room, Thaddeus Funston stared out over the sweeping panorama THE END\n\n<question>:\nWhich statement about the relationship between Thaddeus Funston and Miss Abercrombie is most true, based on the facts in the story?\n\n<options>:\nA She encourages him to keep making progress over time as she supervises him in one area of his treatment\nB Thaddeus has long confided in Miss Abercrombie as his therapist and she is shocked that someone she trusted closely would cause so much damage\nC Miss Abercrombie has long considered Thaddeus a problem student of hers and is frustrated by his behavior\nD She tries to stifle his creative instincts and doesn't let him express himself the way he wants\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
41 | 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 gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course. bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations 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. He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses. That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, \"Any more bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our delving into space.\" Gubelin snapped his fingers. \"Like that, either of us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was 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....\" Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that, always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to 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 explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space Exploration.\" \"So....\" Girard-Perregaux said gently. \"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!\" for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and 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.\" He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his universal credit card. \"The ultimate means of exchange,\" he grunted. name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated. 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 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. 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 they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be sold for a lump sum on the market. Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the 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. retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations, titles. Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was. The auto-elevator murmured politely, \"Yes, sir, the Kudos Room.\" Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, \"Yeah ... sure.\" \"Si,\" Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything current sex symbols, but never in person. \"Call me Si,\" he said again. him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it.\" \" 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 dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job, it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop. So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their Si said, \"Look, how about another drink?\" \"Si,\" Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of\n\n<question>:\nWhy was Si given a symbolic gold watch by the Department of Space Exploration?\n\n<options>:\nA He had just successfully completed a dangerous space mission that they were impressed with.\nB As an apology for the difficult task he had to complete while in space.\nC He was retiring from the Department.\nD As a means to convince him to stay on with the Department and continue completing missions.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
596 | 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 weren't human. They were something more—and something less—they were, were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the during the night?\" in the murk. I've kept a signal going to guide them back.\" Gwayne swore softly to himself. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous something had happened to the exploration party fifteen years back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check trying to read sense into the things. If he had time to study them.... But there was no time. Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign of Hennessy. He'd been here a week longer than he should have stayed already. If there was no sign in another day or so of what had happened to the men who'd deserted their ship and its equipment, he'd have to report back. He would have left before, if a recent landslip hadn't exposed enough of the buried ship for his metal locators to spot from the air by originally. the kids!\" moved there. Something began to heave upwards. It was too far to see clearly, but Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets. They must have seen whatever it was just as the call reached them. momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the others forward. \"Get the jeeps out!\" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of the little officers' lift open and jabbed the down button. It was agonizingly slow, but faster than climbing down. He ripped the door back at the exit deck. Men were dashing in, stumbling around in confusion. But someone was taking over now—one of the crew women. The jeeps were lining up. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back. There was no time for suits or helmets. The air on the planet was irritating and vile smelling, but it could be breathed. He leaped to jeep rolled down the ramp, grinding its gears into second as it picked The huge leader suddenly waved and pointed toward the jeeps that were about, two of them grabbing up the cadets. The jeep was doing twenty miles an hour now, but the horde began to increase the distance, in spite of the load of the two struggling boys! The creatures dived downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists. \"Follow the blobs,\" Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to leave his suit the radio would have let him keep in contact with the kids. But it was too late to go back. The blobs danced after the horde. Barker bounced the jeep downward into There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a The creatures vanished as Barker fought to turn to follow them. The other jeeps were coming up, by the sound of their motors, but too late to help. They'd have to get to the group with the cadets in a hurry or the horde would all vanish in the uneven ground, hidden by the fog. The wheels locked and the jeep slid protestingly forward. The creature leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving Another jeep had drawn up, and men were examining the cadets. Pinelli kick at the monster. But neither had been harmed. The two were loaded onto a jeep while men helped Barker and Gwayne stow the bound monster on another before heading back. his own head, as if feeling the shock of the monster's landing. \"I hope so,\" Gwayne told him. \"I want that thing to live—and you're detailed to save it and revive it. Find out if it can make sign and why that ship was buried against detection. This thing may be the answer.\" Barker nodded grimly. \"I'll try, though I can't risk drugs on an alien makes no sense. We've scoured this planet by infra-red, and there was no sign of native villages or culture. We should have found some.\" \"Troglodytes, maybe,\" Gwayne guessed. \"Anyhow, send for me when you get anything. I've got to get this ship back to Earth. We're overstaying our time here already.\" The reports from the cadets were satisfactory enough. They'd been picked up and carried, but no harm had been done them. Now they were busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon If they could get any story from the captured creature, they might save time and be better off than trying to dig through Hennessy's ship. That was almost certainly spoorless by now. The only possible answer seemed to be that the exploring expedition and Hennessy's rescue group had been overcome by the aliens. It was an answer, but it left a lot of questions. How could the primitives have gotten to the men inside Hennessy's ship? Why was its cunningly, and only the accidental slippage had undone their work. Maybe there would never be a full answer, but he had to find something—and find it fast. Earth needed every world she could make remotely habitable, or mankind was probably doomed to extinction. The race had blundered safely through its discovery of atomic weapons prevent an interplanetary war with the Venus colonists. It had found a drive that led to the stars, and hadn't even found intelligent life render the whole Solar System uninhabitable for millenia. To survive, man had to colonize. And there were no worlds perfect for him, as Earth had been. The explorers went out in desperation to find what they could the terraforming teams did what they could. And then the big starships But how could primitives do what these must have done? They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what? For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the ship to them? Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. \"How's the captive coming?\" Barker's voice sounded odd. \"Physically fine. You can see him. But—\" Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore at Doc for not calling him at once, and then at himself for not some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up unerringly toward the device on the officer's cap. \"Haarroo, Cabbaan!\" the thing said. \"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?\" The answers were right. tall as Hennessy, but most were not more than five feet high. The kids of the exploring party.... Back in the control room, Gwayne found the emergency release levers, set the combinations and pressed the studs. There was a hiss and gurgle however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off puzzlement in her face. \"Why?\" same answer he had found for himself. \"The spawning ground!\" It was the only thing they could do. Earth needed a place to plant her some of the attitudes of civilized man would remain to make the next rise to culture a better one. \"We're needed here,\" he told her, his voice pleading for the understanding he couldn't yet fully give himself. \"These people need as rich a set of bloodlines as possible to give the new race strength. The fifty men and women on this ship will be needed to start them with a decent chance. We can't go to Earth, where nobody would believe or accept the idea—or even let us come back. We have to stay here.\" earth.\" \"No,\" he told her. \"Replenish the stars.\" But she was no longer listening, and that part of his idea could wait. Some day, though, their children would find a way to the starlanes again, looking for other worlds. With the blobs to help them, they could adapt to most worlds. The unchanged spirit would lead them\n\n<question>:\nWhy were they getting the jeeps out?\n\n<options>:\nA to tour the planet\nB to attack the natives\nC to find the lost crew\nD to go on an urgent rescue mission\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,014 | 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\"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!\" someone shouted at her. \"Have another!\" Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and brightened. \"Unless—\" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent a great proposal and the room grew quiet—\"unless we broke the rules Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal of excitement. 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 Sally looked scared until she saw her mother's face. Then she squealed in delight. Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling \"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—\" Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object. Les stared at his wife and put the child onto the rug. Sally began to His jaw dropped. \"My God! Ann, what—\" Ann was staring, too, but not at her daughter. \"Les! The hassock! It used to be brown!\" The hassock was a livid shade of green. A neon, demanding, screaming green that clashed horribly with the soft browns and reds in which Ann had furnished the room. \"That round thing must be leaking,\" Les said. \"But did you see Sally jumped up, strode to the hassock and picked up the manky with two fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action. \"Drop it!\" she yelled. \"Maybe it'll turn you green, too!\" Les kicked the hassock into the hall closet, tossed the manky in after it and shut the door firmly. As the door closed, he saw the entire interior of the dark closet brighten into a wet-lettuce green. When he turned back to Ann, she was staring at her left hand. The wedding band that Les had put there a dozen years ago was a brilliant green, shedding its soft glow over the finger up to the first knuckle. Ann felt the scream building up inside her. She opened her mouth to let it out, then put her hand in front of her mouth to keep it in, finally jerked the hand away to prevent the glowing ring from turning her front teeth green. She collapsed into Les's arms, babbling incomprehensibly. He said: \"It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the 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 determinedly off the tinge of green that was showing through the apron pocket and didn't dare look back at her daughter's unsettling means of Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit under his arm. Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn't yield for him, either. He looked \"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 unpleasant were dripping from his fingers. The object looked remarkably like a human eyeball. It was human-size, complete with pupil, iris and rather bloodshot veins. Les laid the eyeball on the table and walked away. The eyeball rolled eyeball rolled nimbly out of the path of the kick. Les didn't hear her. He strode to the detective set, followed at a safe distance by the eyeball, and picked up the box. \"Hey, watch out!\" Bob cried. A small flashlight fell from the box, landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light across Les's hands. Bob retrieved the flashlight and turned it off while Les glanced through an instruction booklet, frowning. \"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. Les looked at his hands. \"I didn't do it,\" he said, pressing his clean fingertips against the kitchen table. Black fingerprints, a full set of them, stood out against the sparkling polished table's surface. \"I think the Detectolite did it,\" Bob said. \"The instructions say you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a long time.\" Les began scrubbing his hands vigorously at the sink. Ann watched him silently, until she saw his fingerprints appear on the faucet, the soap 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. She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: \"Les, I think The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal. Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball. 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 The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the manky had quieted down some time in the night. After she got Bob to school, she gingerly opened the closet door. The manky was now glowing a bright pink and seemed slightly larger. Deep violet lettering stood out on its side: \" knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after \"My son?\" Ann asked incredulously. \"Bob?\" \"Yes. It's a little gadget that looks like a water pistol. Your son insists that he didn't know it would make clothing transparent. He claims it was just accident that he tried it out when he was walking by the gym during calisthenics. We've had to call upon every family 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 He looked helpless as he said to Ann: \"I don't know quite what to do. The flesh starts to hemorrhage when I pull at the cloth. She'd bleed to death if I yanked it off. But it's such an extreme allergy that it may kill her, if we leave it in contact with the skin.\" The manky's rattle suddenly began rhythmically from the lower part of the house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself \"Oh, no,\" Ann breathed. \"Something's happened to Les.\" \"Has there been sickness there?\" Les held up his hands, palms toward the doctor. \"What's wrong with me? My fingers look all right. But they leave black marks on everything I touch.\" The doctor looked closely at the fingertips. \"Every human has natural oil on the skin. That's how detectives get results with their fingerprint powder. But I've never heard of nigrification, in this gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular. \"It's murder!\" she screamed. \"Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's going to die! It means the electric chair!\" unbelievingly for a moment, then advanced on him threateningly. Something in his face restrained her, just as she was about to start Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you under arrest.\" The policeman stepped over the threshold. A blue flash darted from\n\n<question>:\nWhat happened to Les when he held the eyeball from the detective kit?\n\n<options>:\nA It caused him to leave black finger-marks on everything he touched.\nB It left his hands sticky even after repeatedly washing.\nC It burned his hands.\nD His hands started to turn bright green.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
2,284 | 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>:\nSo I started going through the purse of the woman next to me. Perhaps the insides of things like purses and sealed boxes and locked drawers object with dust inside—a compact. Handkerchief, chewing gum, a small book, probably an address book, money in a change purse—a few bills and coins. Not much else. looking straight at me. I didn't want her to think I had taken it while she was out of the room, so I probed the contents of her purse, which she always kept in the upper right drawer of her desk. \"It's in your purse,\" I blurted out. I was sent home with a stinging note. Since then I've kept quiet. At one time I assumed everybody was able the window. \"Where are we?\" she asked in a surprised voice. I told her luggage to another, looking for my beat-up suitcase. I went through slips and slippers, lingerie and laundry, a jig saw puzzle and a ukulele. I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first. The bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft, flimsy things you'd never find in a man's—and I didn't know it was a bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small, quiet alarms. I was going to pass it by and go on, but what held me My heart was beating in jackhammer rhythm my mouth was dry and my mind was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it's too late! No, they'd think I put it there. Besides, what good would it do? There would be the cellophane. I couldn't bear to watch her. I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent a frantic moment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that calling in ahead, but wouldn't that just bring suspicion, questions. Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock—but not before the bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would be changed. I'd be a man not to be trusted, a prying man, a man literally with gimlet eyes. unconcernedly as they through the exit gate. I would have liked walking through the terminal and out the entrance and away, but I could not. I had my suitcase to get, for one thing. The damned bomb was the other. So I strolled out into the concourse again to look at the plane and watch the baggagemen at work, transferring the luggage to two airfield carts. They weren't as careful as I would have been. It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained the bomb I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases, and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was the attendant and I had two bags—my own battered veteran of years, and a fine new red overnight case, small enough to be the one. I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously. remaining bag. \"One left over, eh?\" \"Yeah.\" He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But he was eying me with a \"well-why-don't-you-get-along?\" look. \"Take it inside. Why?\" He was getting too curious. \"Oh, I just wondered, that's all.\" \"Cab?\" I shook my head. \"Just waiting.\" Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb. I lit another cigarette and glanced now and then toward the baggage claim area. The red bag was still there. All sorts of theories ran something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to live with myself. But he moved on down the steps, nodded at the redcap, and started across the street to the parking area. I could have called to him, \"Hey, officer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag.\" But I didn't. I didn't because I caught a movement at the baggage claim counter out of the side of my eye. to the rear of the air terminal. Picking up my own suitcase, I went inside in time to see him enter through a side door and deposit the bag \"No. I'm waiting for someone.\" I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the escaped my grasp. \"Do you have my suitcase?\" I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The blonde in the plane stood there looking very fresh and bright and unconcerned. In her right hand case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up, glanced at me indifferently, and then started for the entrance with it. \"Just a moment,\" I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying after her. from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I Over coffee I explained it all to her, how I had this extrasensory ability, how she was the first person I had ever revealed it to, and how I had discovered what was in her overnight bag. During the telling, her untouched coffee grew a skin, her face grew pale, her eyes grew less curious and more troubled. There were tears there when I finished. I asked her who put the bomb in her bag. \"Joe did,\" she said in a toneless voice, not looking at me any more but staring vacantly across the room. \"Joe put it there.\" Behind her eyes sister.\" Her smile was bleak. \"I see now why he wanted to put in those books. I'd finished packing and was in the bathroom. He said he'd put in some books we'd both finished reading—for my sister. That's when he must have put the—put it in there.\" I said gently, \"Why would he want to do a thing like that?\" \"I don't know.\" She shook her head. \"I just don't know.\" And she was airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it would have to do. suitcase?\" \"Bag? Suitcase?\" he mumbled. Then he became excited. \"Why, a man just stepped out of here—\" He turned to look down the street. \"That's him.\" The dumpy man I'd seen was walking off Julia's bag in his right hand, mine in his left. He seemed in no hurry. \"Hey!\" I shouted, starting toward him. abreast an old gray, mud-spattered coupe, ran around, opened the door and threw both bags into the rear seat as he got in. The car was a hundred feet away and gathering speed by the time I reached where it had been parked. I watched it for a moment, then walked back to the entranceway where Julia was standing with the redcap, who said, \"That man steal them suitcases?\" \"That he did,\" I said. The policeman was sympathetic and concerned. He said, \"We'd better get over to the office.\" But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard. We stood there. I could visualize the wreckage of an old gray coupe in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was thinking. She said, \"About those bags,\" and looked at me.\n\n<question>:\nHow did the bomb get in Julia's suitcase?\n\n<options>:\nA Julia's sister slipped the bomb inside the suitcase before she left for the airport.\nB Julia put the bomb in her suitcase before she left home.\nC A terrorist at the airport grabbed Julia's bag at random and slipped the bomb inside.\nD Julia's husband put the bomb in her suitcase before she left the house.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
2,504 | 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>:\nObstetrics for beginners It's my first go at delivering a baby by caesarean section – and the foetal head is impacted, jammed in its mother's pelvis. To be honest I'm struggling. Incisions have been made in the lower part of the mother's abdomen and womb. I've pushed my gloved hand inside and managed to slide my fingers between the baby's head and the surrounding uterine tissue. But it's difficult. The baby is tightly wedged in. I've had to push hard to get my hand to the far side of its head, and even though I'm now cupping and grasping it in the approved manner, I can't seem to pull it out. Dare I grip its head more firmly? Dare I pull harder? but with a good outcome. Although the Tydeman tube is still in gestation, Desperate Debra herself is now thriving. One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands. The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. Every year some 160,000 babies are born in the UK this way, with almost two thirds of them classified as emergencies. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. \"Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route,\" says Tydeman, \"that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy.\" Which women are most at risk of this setback seems to be largely unpredictable. \"We just observe that it happens… It's been discussed in the medical literature since the 1940s, but until 10 years ago, and throughout my training and most of my life as a consultant, it wasn't really talked about.\" Considering the universality of childbirth, impaction and the best way of dealing with it are topics that seem to have gone remarkably unstudied. \"There are strong opinions about why it happens and what to do, but very little research evidence,\" says Tydeman, adding that many of these opinions are contradictory. In a protracted birth that's destined to end with a caesarean, the longer the labour is allowed to go on before the obstetrician decides to intervene, the greater the likelihood that the baby's head will become impacted. However, concern over the rising number of babies born by caesarean has made doctors more wary of doing them – one consequence of which is that medical staff may allow a difficult birth to continue for longer before they resort to surgery. This could be boosting the frequency of impaction. But, again, no one is certain. When obstetricians doing planned caesareans slice open a mother's womb, what they usually see is the baby's head. By slipping a hand round and below it they can easily guide the baby out. \"When you do a caesarean for an impacted baby,\" says Tydeman, \"you make the incision in the same place, but what you might come across is a shoulder because the baby's so much further down [the birth canal].\" As I'd discovered for myself, sliding a hand around the baby's head is then far more difficult. \"It makes your fingers hurt,\" says Tydeman. \"It makes your pulse rate go up to about 200, and you break out in a sweat because know you've only got about five or 10 minutes before there are serious consequences. The clock is ticking.\" If a baby's head is jammed down in the mother's pelvic region, common sense suggests that it might help if a second person gives a gentle backward push on the area of its head visible through the mother's dilated cervix. \"In our unit,\" says Tydeman, \"when the woman is fully dilated and you'd expect the baby to come out normally [but it doesn't]… a registrar will be asking for a push-up about one in five times.\" Although registrars are doctors still in training, they're nonetheless experienced As the material for a convincing simulation, glass clearly has its drawbacks. But another 18th-century contraption used a pink cloth-covered mannequin comprising a female torso complete with genitalia, a set of implantable foetuses of various ages, and even – a real 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. 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. 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. So how valuable in training medical staff is a simulator like this? Very, according to Annette Briley. Imagine it's the middle of the night and an unplanned emergency caesarean is required: \"Some poor junior doctor might find himself trying to manage it on his own.\" To have practised the knack of extracting a firmly impacted baby from a simulator is lot better than first honing your skill on a real woman.\n\n<question>:\nWhat risk, according to the author, is increased by practitioners who are wary of performing C-sections?\n\n<options>:\nA They could be sued for malpractice if the fetus does not survive childbirth\nB They could be sued for malpractice if the mother does not survive childbirth\nC They could increase the prevalence of impaction and, therefore, challenging births\nD They could accidentally make the incision in the wrong location, necessitating further costly surgeries\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
817 | 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.] This guard smelled trouble and it could be And her name, he saw, was Sue-Ann Bradley, Detainee No. WFA-656R. He frowned at the rap sheet, trying to figure out what got a girl like her into a place like this. And, what was more important, why she couldn't adjust herself to it, now that she was in. He demanded: \"Why wouldn't you mop out your cell?\" man, woman and child in the city-state would be right in the middle of it. There was no place anywhere that would be spared. No mixing. a clan, aren't all clerks and office workers related by closer ties than blood or skin? to do. Cap'n, you know what's funny about this? This Bradley is—\" attractive and young—not beyond hope, surely. Maybe she had got off to a wrong start, but the question was, would putting her in the disciplinary block help straighten her out? He rubbed his ear and looked past her at the line of prisoners on the rap detail, waiting for him to judge their cases. He said patiently: \"Bradley, the rules are you have to mop out your block guard had to break up a fight between her and another wench, and she claimed the same business—said she didn't understand when the other one asked her to move along.\" He added virtuously: \"The guard warned her then that next time she'd get the Greensleeves for sure.\" Inmate Bradley seemed to be on the verge of tears. She said tautly: \"I O'Leary stopped her. \"That's enough! Three days in Block O!\" It was the only thing to do—for her own sake as much as for his. He had managed, by strength of will, not to hear that she had omitted to Sodaro and said absently: \"Too bad a kid like her has to be here. What's she in for?\" \"You didn't know, Cap'n?\" Sodaro leered. \"She's in for conspiracy to violate the Categoried Class laws. Don't waste your time with her, Cap'n. She's a figger-lover!\" Captain O'Leary took a long drink of water from the fountain marked \"Civil Service.\" But it didn't wash the taste out of his mouth, the smell from his nose. What got into a girl to get her mixed up with that kind of dirty business? He checked out of the cell blocks and walked across the yard, wondering about her. She'd had every advantage—decent Civil Service parents, a good education, everything a girl could wish for. If anything, she had had a better environment than O'Leary himself, and look what she had made of it. The direction of evolution is toward specialization and Man is no exception, but with the difference that his is the one species that creates its own environment in which to specialize. From the moment ceramists, over fire made by the shaman who guarded the sacred flame. Civilization merely increased the extent of specialization. From the born mechanic and the man with the gift of gab, society evolved to the point of smaller contact and less communication between the specializations, until now they could understand each other on only the most basic physical necessities—and not even always then. But this was desirable, for the more specialists, the higher the degree of civilization. The ultimate should be the complete segregation of each specialization—social and genetic measures to make them breed true, because the unspecialized man is an uncivilized man, or at any rate he does not advance civilization. And letting the specializations mix would produce genetic undesirables: clerk-laborer or Professional-GI misfits, for example, being only half specialized, would be good at no specialization. And the basis of this specialization society was: \"The aptitude groups are the true races of mankind.\" Putting it into law was only the legal enforcement of a demonstrable fact. didn't. There wasn't anything wrong with that job, he told himself. It was a clerk , he corrected himself—if he had happened to be born a clerk, why, he would have been proud of that, too. There wasn't anything wrong with being a clerk—or a mechanic or a soldier, or even a laborer, for that matter. Good laborers were the salt of the Earth! They weren't smart, maybe, but they had a—well, a sort of natural, relaxed joy of living. O'Leary No responsibilities. No worries. Just an easy, slow routine of work and loaf, work and loaf. Of course, he wouldn't really want that kind of life, because he was Civil Service and not the kind to try to cross over class barriers that weren't the prison jeep. Lazy, sure. Undependable, certainly. But he kept the certainly would never risk coming back to the Jug by trying to pass as Civil Service or anything else. He knew his place. So why didn't this girl, this Sue-Ann Bradley, know hers? II Every prison has its Greensleeves—sometimes they are called by guards. The outside guard said sourly: \"A woman, for God's sake. Now O'Leary knows I hate it when there's a woman in here. It gets the others all riled up.\" Sue-Ann Bradley looked carefully at the floor and paid them no attention. The outside guard pulled the switch that turned on the tanglefoot electronic fields that swamped the floor of the block restraining garment removed. Sue-Ann walked bravely forward through the opened gate—and fell flat passed them by and she was fighting off an almost uncontrollable urge to retch. \"We got a lady with us! Maybe we ought to cut out this yelling so as not to disturb the lady!\" He screeched with howling, maniacal laughter. \"Anyway, if we don't cut this out, they'll get us in trouble, Flock!\" under her skin. They weren't even—even human miserably, trying to weep silently so as not to give the guards the satisfaction of hearing her—they were animals! Resentment and anger, she could understand. She told herself doggedly that resentment and anger were natural and right. They were perfectly the vile and stifling system of Categoried Classes. It was good that system— But did they have to scream so? The senseless yelling was driving her crazy. She abandoned herself to because noise hides noise. But then she hadn't been a prisoner very long. The warden, faintly relieved, faintly annoyed, scolded: \"O'Leary, what don't mix it isn't natural. And there are other things.\" O'Leary hesitated, frowning. How could you explain to the warden that it didn't But today she put a woman named Bradley on report. Why? Because she told Bradley to mop up in wipe talk and Bradley didn't understand. Now that for the warden to talk to him? \"Excuse the expression, O'Leary,\" the warden said anxiously. \"I mean, after all, 'Specialization is the goal of civilization,' right?\" He was a great man for platitudes, was Warden Schluckebier. \" He sat beaming into space, waiting for the jolt to take effect. \"Well, then,\" he said at last. \"You just remember what I've told you tonight, O'Leary, and we'll get along fine. 'Specialization is the—' what ? proudly ignored him as he slogged deliberately away on his rounds. He didn't have to untie her and practically stand over her while she attended to various personal matters, as he did with the male it had been made out of a bed-spring, ripped loose from its frame God knows how, hidden inside the greensleeved jacket God knows how—filed, filed to sharpness over endless hours.\n\n<question>:\nWhat was Bradley imprisoned for?\n\n<options>:\nA She tried to change her career. She didn't want to be in Civil Service anymore.\nB She didn't follow up on her cleaning duty. She didn't know she needed to \"mop up\".\nC She is behaving inappropriately, and is being reprimanded for it.\nD She fell in love with someone outside of her specialization, which is illegal.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
343 | 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>:\nI repeated it patiently. suffering, but I could recognize it. \"You yourself have said it,\" I told him. \"I am a being of logic, just as the beings who have invaded your planet are. I do not comprehend the went to Earth, I would use your people to further my knowledge, just as the invaders do. I would have no reason to kill the invaders. They are the shock had deranged his mind. His voice trembled when he said, \"But if I ask you to kill them, and not my people?\" \"To do so would be illogical.\" \"No, you don't understand that, either.\" banks of machinery around the walls were silent. I knew that they would \"I do not understand 'friend,'\" I said. I did understand \"gratitude,\" a little. It was a reciprocal before: tiny, myriad points of light, infinitely far away. They had not I tried to explain it to him, however. But he only stared at me, with not solve. Strange, disturbing sensations stirred and whispered within satellite, about the Earth atmosphere, away from Earth's inexorable gravitational pull, would be a laboratory such as man had never seen. The ship would be filled with the sounds of busy men and women, wresting secrets from the reluctant ether. A new chemistry, a new physics INVADERS APPEAR IN BOSTON. IN TRANSIT NO COMMUNICATION FROM \"The reason for this ... order must be apparent to all civilized peoples. For the Invaders have spared no part of this planet in their they have terrorized and in every inhabited area. There can be few within reach of printed reports or my words who have not seen the Invaders, or whose friends have not seen them. \"The peoples of the world, then, know what they are, and know that superior to ourselves in every way \"Since the Invaders first appeared in Wood River, Oregon, 24 hours ago, they have not once acknowledged our attempts to communicate, or in any way taken notice of our existence as reasoning beings. They have treated us precisely as we, in less enlightened days, might have treated a newly-discovered race of lower animals. They have not attacked our centers of government, nor immobilized our communications, \"I have no fear that the people of Earth will fail to meet this the Invaders!\" a halt in front of the door marked \"Radiation.\" She had set her door mechanism to \"Etaoin Shrdlu,\" principally because he hated double-talk. He mouthed the syllables, had to repeat them because he put an accent in the wrong place, and squeezed through the door as soon as it opened far enough to admit him. \"Darling, what's wrong?\" there's trouble or not. What—\" \"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.\" men and women, but they wanted to be. Their bodies had been impossibly joined, fused together into a single obscene, floundering mass of helpless protoplasm. The thin moaning that went up from them was more horrible than any cry of agony. \"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, and they know it but they have to do it. This isn't like a war, where the noncombatants' morale has to be kept up. There aren't going to be any noncombatants, this time. Everybody in the world has to know about them, so that he can fight them—and then it may not be enough.\" The viewpoint of the teleo sender changed as the two red beings soared The man and woman clung together, waiting. There was a thick, oppressive silence, full of small rustlings and other faint sounds that were no longer normal. Then, very near, a man screamed in a high, inhuman voice. The screamed dwindled into a throaty gurgle and died, leaving silence again. Peter's lips were cold with sweat. Tiny nerves in his face and arms The Invaders ignored Peter, staring expressionlessly down at Kanin. in a terrible voice, \"Why? Why?\" The nearest being turned slowly to regard him. Its lips did not move, but there was a tiny sound in Peter's brain, a thin, dry whispering. The scream was welling up. He fought it down and listened. \" Wurnkomellilonasendiktolsasangkanmiamiamimami.... ... raswilopreatadvuonistuwurncchtusanlgkelglawwalinom.... \" \"I can't understand,\" he cried wildly. \"What do you want?\" \" ... morofelcovisyanmamiwurlectaunntous. Opreniktoulestritifenrelngetnaktwiltoctpre. \" His voice was hoarse. \"Don't look! Don't—Go back!\" The horrible, mindless noise in his throat was almost beyond his power to repress. it back no longer, his mouth was wide open, his muscles tensed, his fingernails slicing his palms. It echoed with unbelievable volume in the room. It was a scream to split eardrums 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. \"You're in a hospital. Just lie quietly, please.\" turned and gave low-voiced instructions to a nurse, and then went away. especially a woman. But you stood actual mental contact with them for approximately five minutes. Yes, we know—you talked a lot. It's a has failed.\" 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. enough to take care of a quarter of the earth's population, the other .... the latest equipment for chemical and physical experiment the group a little distance away, silently waiting. 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. They \"They'll live, and we'll die, because they're a superior race. We're a million years too far back even to understand what they are or where they came from. Besides them, we're apes. There's only one answer.\" She was crying now, silently, with great racking sobs that shook her slender body. But he went remorselessly on. \"Out there, in space, the cosmics change unshielded life. They make tentacles out of arms line from an old film kept echoing through his head. \" They'll come the mirrors in the ship. The embryos were pulsing with unnatural life, even in the suspended worm-tunnels, digging deeper and deeper away from the sunlight. But brain is as superior to mine as mine is to an anthropoid's. You solve \"They're still there, I'm sure of it—the people, and the Invaders. You knowledge of what was to come. But he went on swiftly, \"On Earth we you. You are completely, coldly logical, just as they are. You can understand them, and so you can conquer them.\" I said, \"That is the reason why we will not go back to Earth.\" He stared at me, his jaw slack, his hands trembling. \"What—what did you say?\"\n\n<question>:\nHow does it seem that the aliens communicate?\n\n<options>:\nA They make mental contact with human victims, often leading them to madness.\nB They speak through people, making them scream.\nC Their lips are sealed together. They are unable to speak.\nD They speak telepathically, in a language people can't understand.\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>:\nthat left the Earth with a wing and a prayer. Earth was so far away that it wasn't visible. Even the vast distance did not mean that isolation could endure forever. Instruments within the ship intercepted radio broadcasts and, within the hour, early TV signals. The history of the planet was it was not much out of the way to swing nearer Earth. For days the two within the ship listened and watched with little comment. They had to decide soon. \"We've got to make or break,\" said the first alien. \"You know what I'm in favor of,\" said the second. who had spoken first. \"The place is a complete mess. They've never done anything except fight each other—and invent better weapons.\" \"It's not what they've done,\" said Bal, the second alien. \"It's what they're going to do, with that big bomb.\" bomb can destroy them. Without our help they may do just that.\" in everything they do.\" \"It won't take much,\" said Ethaniel. \"The wrong diplomatic move, or a trigger-happy soldier have to be deliberate. A meteor it as an all-out enemy attack.\" was such a planet as Earth.\" \"Could you? Forget so many people?\" \"I'm doing it,\" said Bal. \"Just give them a little time and they won't be here to remind me that I have a conscience.\" \"My memory isn't convenient,\" said Ethaniel. \"I ask you to look at them.\" 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 an incomplete version of ourselves touches me. They actually seem defenseless, though I suppose they're not.\" \"There is. We can give them their entire history. We can't begin to undo the effect of the \"You can't tell,\" said Ethaniel. \"We can look things over.\" authority do we have?\" \"Very little,\" conceded Ethaniel. \"Two minor officials on the our people want,\" said Ethaniel. \"And how long can Earth last? Ten years? Even ten months? The tension is building by the \"What can I say?\" said Bal. \"I suppose we can stop and look them over. We're not committing ourselves by looking.\" They went much closer to Earth, not intending to commit themselves. For a day they circled the planet, avoiding radar detection, which for them was Finally Ethaniel looked up from the monitor screen. \"Any conclusions?\" showed that as far away as we were.\" \"I know.\" \"We also knew they could deliver by some sort of aircraft.\" \"That was almost a certainty. upward. They either have or are 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.\" did you find out at your end?\" \"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 and when we can't help them we they met again. In the meantime the ship moved much closer to Earth. They no longer needed instruments to see it. The planet revolved outside the visionports. the oceans cold. And it will be cold.\" \"Yes. It's their winter.\" beings?\" hundred years ago it might have worked. Today they have satellites. They are not primitives.\" \"I suppose you're right,\" said Bal. \"I did think we ought to \"If we could I'd be all for it. But these people are rough and desperate. They wouldn't be Bal. \"All right,\" said Ethaniel. \"You take one side and I the other. We'll tell them bluntly what they'll have to do if they're going to survive, how they can keep their planet in one piece so they can live on it.\" \"Can't help it. That's all we have time for.\" \"Special instructions?\" \"None. We leave the ship here and go down in separate landing craft. You can talk with me any time you want to through our communications, but don't unless you have to.\" \"They can't intercept the \"They can't, and even if they did they wouldn't know what to do with our language. I want to talk things over.\" \"I get it. Makes us seem better than we are. They think we know though we don't.\" \"If we're lucky they'll think the planet below. \"It's going to \"I'm afraid not. The great are the ones we have to reach to \"I know, they don't like their helped. We can't wait until it's over.\" \"I'm aware of that,\" said Bal. and leave the ship up here with no one in it.\" \"They can't touch it. No matter how they develop in the next hundred years they still won't be able to get in or damage it in about. Down there, alone.\" \"I'll be with you. On the other side of the Earth.\" \"That's not very close. I'd like it better if there were someone in the ship to bring it down in a hurry if things get rough. They don't think much of each other. I don't imagine they'll like aliens any better.\" \"They may be unfriendly,\" Ethaniel acknowledged. Now he switched a monitor screen until \"If it saves my neck I'm for the ship against the sun planet and light it up.\" \"Say, pretty good,\" said Bal. \"They can't imagine that we'd light up an unmanned ship,\" said 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 the ship over where they can see it best and then I'll light it up. I'll really light it up.\" \"Don't worry about that. They'll see it. Everybody on Earth will see it.\" Later, with the ship in position, glowing against the darkness of space, pulsating with light, Bal said: \"You know, pull it off. Lighting the ship may be just the help we need.\" \"It's not we who need help, but the people of Earth,\" said Ethaniel. \"See you in five days.\" With that he entered a small landing craft, which left a faintly luminescent Earth. As soon as it was of the planet. And the spaceship circled Earth, unmanned, blazing and pulsing with light. No star in the winter skies of the planet below of a star and brought near Earth to illuminate it. Never, or like it. In five days the two small landing craft that had left it arched up from Earth and joined the orbit of the large ship. The two small craft slid inside the large one and doors closed behind them. In a short time the aliens met again. \"We did it,\" said Bal exultantly 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.\" 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 \"Why?\" \"When I went out walking people stopped to look. Some knelt in the snow and called me an angel.\" \"Something like that happened \"I didn't get it but I didn't let it upset me,\" said Bal. \"I smiled at them and went about my business.\" their paintings they had pictured \"But you don't know what an angel is?\" out. Some creature of their folklore like ourselves. Their legends are bound to resemble ours.\" \"Sure,\" said Bal. \"Anyway, peace on Earth.\" THE END Transcriber's Note: Amazing Science Fiction Stories\n\n<question>:\nWhy do the aliens believe they have succeeded in saving Earth?\n\n<options>:\nA The humans did come to a formal agreement before the aliens left them.\nB The humans realized they were not alone in the universe. They dropped all their petty differences to defend themselves against an alien invasion.\nC The humans painted many pictures of the aliens to commemorate the historic event of first contact, a sign they will hold to the agreement made.\nD The humans were kneeling before the aliens in deference, a sign that they will hold to the agreement made.\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>:\nfreely in Social Media while rallying a Web 2.0 content boom, the inner dynamics of such a creative explosion must be studied more closely. What motivates those who join this movement and what future will they create? Social Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called mental practice that anyone can try, a social-psychological attitude to 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 pragmatisms of daily life, the theory of Sharism finds basis in neuroscience and its study of the working model of the human brain. Although we can’t entirely say how the brain works as a whole, we do have a model of the functional mechanism of the nervous system and its neurons. A neuron is not a simple organic cell, but a very powerful, electrically excitable biological processor. Groups of neurons form vastly interconnected networks, which, by changing the strength of the 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 information, and I believe this model of the brain should inspire ideas 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 idea-forming-process is not linear, but more like an avalanche of amplifications along the thinking path. It moves with the momentum of a creative snowball. If your internal cognitive system encourages sharing, you can engineer a feedback loop of happiness, which will help you generate even more ideas in return. It’s a kind of butterfly- effect, as However, daily decisions for most adults are quite low in creative productivity, if only because they’ve switched off their sharing paths. People generally like to share what they create, but in a culture that tells them to be protective of their ideas, people start to believe in the danger of sharing. Then Sharism will be degraded in their mind and not encouraged in their society. But if we can encourage someone to mind as a memory and an instinct. If in the future she faces a 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 micro-attitudes, from neuron to neuron and person to person, can result in observable behavior. It is easy to tell if a person, a group, a company, a nation is oriented toward Sharism or not. For those who are 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 to leaving comments and taking part in online conversations, and then to 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 of addiction. It’s an impulse to share. It’s the energy of the memes that want to be passed from mouth to mouth and mind to mind. It’s more than just E-mail. It’s Sharism. can have better control over a wide spectrum of relationships. Like how Flickr allows people to share their photos widely, but safely. The you can use it to toy with the mind-switches of Sharism. By checking a box we can choose to share or not to share. From my observations, I have 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 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 software applications. Your first meme you want to share may be small, but you can amplify it with new technologies. Enlist some people from your network and invite them into a new social application. At first it might be hard to feel the gains of Sharism. The true test then is to see if you can keep track of the feedback that you get from sharing. You will realize that almost all sharing activities will generate positive comments. Then you know you’ve provoked interest, appreciation, excitement. The second reward is access to all the other stuff being shared by friends in your network. Since you know and trust them, you will be that much more interested in what they have to share. Already, the return is a multiple of the small meme you first shared. But the forwarded, circulated and republished via other people’s networks. This cascade effect can spread your work to the networked masses. Improvements in social software are making the speed of dissemination as fast as a mouse-click. You should get to know the Sharism-You. You’re may allow others to create derivative works from what you share. This one choice could easily snowball into more creations along the sharing 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. 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 These movements are redefining a more flexible spectrum of licenses for both developers and end-users to tag their works. Because the new licenses can be recognized by either humans or machines, it’s becoming easier to re-share those works in new online ecosystems. The Spirit of the Web, a Social Brain power of a new Internet philosophy. Sharism will transform the world 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 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 policy might not be close at hand. But the ideas that I’m discussing can 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 choices, beyond the binary options of “Yes” or “No” referenda. public’s attention. Anyone who has been abused can get real and instant support from her peers and her peers’ peers. Appeals to justice will take the form of petitions through multiple, interconnected channels. Using these tools, anyone can create a large social impact. With multiple devices and many social applications, each of us can become more sociable, and society more individual. We no longer have to act alone. 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>:\nWhat do neurons do?\n\n<options>:\nA Form vastly interconnected networks\nB Process information and learn\nC Change the strength of the synapses between cells\nD Share chemical signals with neighboring cells\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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2,048 | 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 Birds and the Bees BY DAVE E. FISHER Which goes to prove that, in some magnificent Melopolis, encradling the Oracle of Delni. I do not, of course, believe in the gods per se still there is a grandeur in the very stones that transcends their human sculptors, and it is no wonder to me that many cling tenaciously, and ignorantly, to the old religion. Cling to the gods of old, who drew man upward from wherever he began. In whose names Man killed and plundered, while struggling up. In whose returned, and settled down to live. Saddened, but resigned and content ancient evils, wars, emergencies. \"Sias! Sias—\" And they were upon me. That is, Xeon was upon me. But I knew that where Xeon is, Melia must soon appear. And indeed it was but a moment before Melia slipped through the high grass to stand at his side. Their youthful voices were babbling in excitement. Melia was a She, with the swelling breasts that were, so tradition seldom seen today. Indeed, Melia was on this account made the butt of been for the friendship of Xeon. Melia interrupted him quietly. \"Xeon, will you lose all respect for \"There is nothing left,\" Melia insisted. \"Can more be made? And if not, often wonder why—but Xeon and Melia ran all the way down to the city. They are of an age to enter manhood, and have all the energy such young men do. consternation. And can the simple people be blamed? They were aware that they stood in the midst of an unprecedented happening indeed, an Besides, had he been sober, he would not have known what to do. For who knows the mysterious workings of the machines? for me to bring them to order. Xeon and Melia stopped as I mounted the sacrifice, and finally, as the light of the sun was falling between the assembled to hear. By this time, unfortunately, many of the Conclave had departed for home and supper. Yet perhaps it is for the best, for those left were the most earnest and intelligent. \"I would not bore you,\" he said, \"with details of which only the gods an easy matter for the Maternite Machine to add more and more thus assuring us, as has always been, a continuous source of Prelife to be born by the Generating Machine as children. The machines bear the exact number of children each year to balance the number of us whom the gods claim. Such it has always been from time immemorial.\" A murmur of assent and approval of these virtuous words whispered around the Hall. \"But now,\" he continued, however, with less assurance and indeed with machines may produce more children for us? \"As I have said,\" he replied, \"give the machines but a bit of Prelife and they will produce more. But take away that least bit, and they are helpless.\" have been a source of Prelife: a source now forgotten? And may it not even now—should we discover it—be available to us? I am reminded of the story of the animals of old—\" \"I fear your mind is wandering, Rocsates,\" I was forced to interrupt. \"I know well the legend of the animals, but what does it have to do—\" The heads of the Conclave were turning to me, quizzically. I hastened to explain the legend of the animals. \"It is said that many not doubt your word, Rocsates, for all know you are the wisest of men—if it were so, then, what of it?\" we would yet have these animals among us.\" \"And how, then, did these animals reproduce?\" I asked. says there was a time before the machines, and before the Maternite Machine, and that at such a time both the animals and Men reproduced from within their own bodies?\" At this two members of the Conclave fell immediately into a faint, and I would gladly have joined them. I hoped that the youngsters, Xeon and Melia, had not heard, but as I turned they were listening most attentively to Rocsates, who, amid cries of \"Heresy\" and \"Treason\", went on: \"I should like to ask the Conclave for permission to search the ancient records, in the hope of finding some such knowledge that would prove or disprove my words.\" \"You wish to search the films—\" I began. \"Not the films, Sias, but the books.\" Gods, this Rocsates! The books, as well he knows, are so ancient, and so delicate, that they are kept in an air-tight tomb lest, being handled, they be destroyed and all knowledge within them lost. Therefore, they have not been read in the known history of our race. And Rocsates has been anxious for an excuse— \"Sias,\" he went on, \"if there exists such knowledge as I seek, is it not indeed lost to the memory of Man? And if so, are not the books the only place where it may be found?\" \"Some of those among you are She's,\" he began. \"And you know you are different from the rest of us. To the advantage, your skin is fairer should all be identical. Perforce you have the advantage, perforce we discovered: \"That there was indeed a time before the machines, in fact the books they are not another somehow intimately related to the physical distinctions of the She's!\" amazed at his words were they. And I confess, myself also. \"In fact,\" Rocsates added, sitting down, \"this process of reproduction no harm done. \"For if people reproduced too often, why then this reproduction must have been a pleasant thing to do otherwise they would not have done so to excess. And if it was a pleasant thing to do, where is the necessity for the machines, and why were they created?\" Rocsates seemed perplexed by this problem, whereupon Xeon, who together the process of reproduction was of such a pleasure that the Conclave At this impudence the Conclave dissolved in an uproar, and I was beyond power to restrain them from placing Xeon under arrest. Privately, Now indeed I was sorely worried concerning Xeon, for he must languish they cannot do until they meet again. formalities were over. I intended to speak for Xeon, but Rocsates was but it seems to mean....\" His words trailed off. He was obviously unsure of how to continue. \"I had better start at the beginning, I It is the mark of honor that a leader shall carry on when others fear to move. I cleared my throat. \"Shall not these organs which you mention have atrophied by now? With no use throughout all these generations, will they not have evolved breasts. Melia has volunteered, on condition that Xeon be released from There were none, of course. Who would refuse a boon to one who would \"In all honor, could Xeon allow Melia to surpass him in courage? It and stood, noble and naked. but Xeon stepped forward. \"My lords,\" he said, \"would not better results be obtained were we to conduct the experiment in the fields before the Oracle of Delni, that His glance reached into my soul, and I was proud of Xeon. A true I voiced my assent, and the entire Conclave adjourned to the fields. \"They seemed finally to accomplish all the book described,\" I muttered. \"They may indeed have succeeded,\" Rocsates replied. \"There is mentioned \"It doesn't matter,\" I said disconsolately. \"Who could ask them to go through such an ordeal again?\" Melia cast her eyes down, and would not raise them. Xeon held his arm \"We beg one favor,\" Xeon went on. \"We are agreed that—Well, we should relief and gratitude must have showed, for Xeon took a deep breath and \"We do not deserve praise, Sias,\" he said. \"The truth is, we ... we I watched them turn and wander off together under the stars. My heart has a warmth in it, and I no longer fear for the future of our race when our young people can show such nobility and sacrifice.\n\n<question>:\nWhy are Melia and Xeon considered noble by the end of the story?\n\n<options>:\nA Because they discovered the truth about reproduction and brought it to the society\nB Because they did not tell others in the society what happened in detail, protecting them from the truth\nC Because they were willing to continue learning about this ill-understood act\nD Because they want to increase the efforts towards learning more about these historical acts\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>:\nSheer efficiency and good management can make a monopoly grow into being. And once it grows, someone with a tyrant mind is going to try to use it as a weapon if he can— \"That all, chief? Gonna quit now?\" still on the vitamin research they had been conducting, he barely heard the remarks that followed him. \"One of these days the chief is going to have his glands catch up with him.\" alone, he let his only known emotion sweep through him, pride. He had regime served the best interests of the planet, they would just have to suffer the consequences of their own ignorance. There had been rumors of revolution among the disgruntled older families. it didn't quite uniform. \"Sorry, sir, but one of those rebels is loose in the Administration \"Well, you can check out I haven't got any blasted rebels in here.\" The policeman's face hardened, then relaxed knowingly. \"Oh, I see, sir. No rebels, of course. Sorry to have disturbed you. Have a good—Good night, sir,\" he saluted and left. Brian closed the door in puzzlement. What the devil had that flat-foot \"All right, joke's over, you can beat it now.\" Brian slowly acquired a complexion suitable for painting fire plugs. struggling heroically to refrain from laughing and that didn't help his force.\" \"Get out of here!\" he yelled and the door shut abruptly on a rippling continued steadily. He struggled out of the bath, wrapped his damp bathrobe clammily around him and marched to the door with a seething \"Wherethehell's who?\" \"Quit stallin', bud. You know who. That female rebel who was in here.\" \"Rebel? You're crazy! That was just ... Pete said ... rebel? Did you say rebel?\" \"Yeah, I said rebel, an' where is she?\" \"She ... why ... why ... she left, of course. You don't think I was going to have women running around in here, do you?\" \"Listen, bud, we don't do the thinkin' around here. You come on along and see the chief.\" Brian had had about enough. \"I'm not going anywhere to see anybody. for months she's a rebel and she's sure been raising plenty of hell \"Oh, it's all right, chief. You can trust me. I won't give you away.\" \"There's nothing to give away, you fool!\" Brian bellowed. \"I don't know anything about any damn rebels. All I want is to get out of here—\" \"Gotcha, chief,\" Brent whispered understandingly. \"I'll see if I can \"Come here, you idiot!\" Brian screamed after his erstwhile assistant. Brian retired to his cell bunk and clutched his aching head in For the nineteenth time Brian Hanson strode to the door of his cell and trouble because of me. But don't worry, we're going to get you out.\" \"Damn that fool kid! Leave me alone. I don't want to get out of here \"This way,\" he snarled and took the lead. He knew the ground plan of this jail perfectly. He had a moment of wonder at the crazy spectacle of himself, the fair-haired boy of Venus Consolidated, in his flapping bathrobe, leading a band of escaping rebels out of the company's best jail. They burst around a corner onto a startled guard. Brian felt as though his stomach had fallen down around his ankles a gasping grunt of pain as one of the rebels went down. They were shooting to kill. corner. Brian and the rebels bundled into them and took away with a The two carloads of rebels cruised nonchalantly past the Administration The rebels piled out and the cars pulled away to become innocuous parts of the traffic stream. The rebels seemed to know where they were going \"Where the dickens are we?\" Brian whispered hoarsely. \"What do we do? Hide here?\" \"Well, what the dickens does he look like?\" Brian asked doubtfully. Brian was startled at the icy hardness of her voice. rebels crowded into it and they went rumbling swiftly down the echoing passage. The lights of the car showed the old working, rotten and crumbling, fallen in in some places and signs of new work where the rebels had cleared away the debris of years. Brian struggled into a zippered overall suit as they followed a twisting, tortuous course for half an hour, switching from one tunnel and leaped off in a full-throttled take-off. \"We're going to crash! That gap isn't wide enough!\" The sides of the gap rushed in on the tips of the stubby wings. Brian the mountain while Brian struggled to get his internal economy back \"Oh—I see,\" Brian said weakly and a few moments later he really did set in grim lines as she pulled the ship up in a screaming climb. Brian got up off the floor. \"You don't have to get excited like that,\" he complained. \"They weren't bitterly. \"They've been killing people all over the planet. What do you think this revolution is about?\" Brian almost got to his feet when another wild maneuver hurled him back The slower rebel freight ship staggered drunkenly as a torpedo caught it and ripped away half a wing. It plunged down in flames with the white flowers of half a dozen parachutes blossoming around it. Brian outrage. \"They didn't have a chance!\" \"Don't get excited,\" Crystal told him in a dead, flat voice. \"That's down in a terminal velocity dive, heading for the safety of the lower valley mists. The heavier police ship, with its higher wing-loading, could not match the maneuver. The rebel craft plunged down through the of the mountain face. Brian yelped and cowered instinctively back. The spotted for sure, now.\" The other rebels waited uncertainly, but not for long. There was the \"The Zeburzacs are one of the old families, but he sold out to McHague.\" \"Well, what do we do now? Just stand here? It looks like everybody's leaving.\" \"We might as well just wait,\" Crystal said hopelessly. \"It won't do us around so their rocket exhausts sweep the entrance to the cavern,\" Brian suggested doubtfully. She looked at him steadily. \"You sound like the only good rebel left. We can try it, anyway.\" a dead silence. A score or more followed them without any attempt at \"Snap out of it,\" he barked. \"That's no worse than shooting helpless men in parachutes. We can't go, yet we're not finished here.\" mixture down till the exhaust was a lambent, shuddering stutter, verging on extinction. He dashed to the other ship and repeated the maneuver, fussing with the throttle till he had the fuel mixture adjusted to critical fineness. The beat of the stuttering exhaust seemed to catch up to the other and built to an aching pulsation. In Brian clambered out of the ship and glanced at the glowing points \"It's time to check out,\" Brian shouted. downward, riding the edge of the slide for terrifying minutes till it stilled and left them bruised and shaken in a tangle of torn Brian and Crystal struggled painfully to solid ground. Crystal gazed \"It's a matter of harmonics,\" Brian explained. \"If you hit the right vibratory combination, you can shake anything down. But now that we've made a mess of the old homestead, what do we do?\" \"Where are we heading for?\" Brian grunted as he struggled along. can depend on. They've kept out of the rebellion, but they're on our\n\n<question>:\nIf it did, how do you think Brian's opinion on the rebellion changed throughout the passage?\n\n<options>:\nA He's secretly a rebel from the start, but breaks his ties from the rebellion by the end.\nB He's a conformist at the start, a rebel at the end.\nC He's a rebel throughout, but questions his loyalties throughout the passage.\nD He's a conformist throughout, but he's enticed by the idea of being a rebel at the end.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
2,298 | 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 sand-thing was powerful, lonely and 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 Sybtl said, \"Is the Sand God happy?\" She shook her head. \"No, he is not happy. He is old, old, old. I can feel it. My people say that when one gets too old it is well to die. But Gods never die, do they? I would not like to be a God.\" \"Stinson,\" the Sand God said. \"You said I was adolescent. You are The sun—no, not left their bodies at the same time? Do you imagine all of us were adults?\" \"I suppose not. Sounds reasonable. How old were you?\" \"Chronologically, by our standards, I was nine years old.\" \"But you continued to develop after....\" \"No.\" right the first time. The sun burned fiercely, although he would have said it was about four sun of this particular solar system. He was sun. Not Sol. What should he call it, Alpha or Stinson tried to imagine it. At first there must have been a single o'clock in the afternoon, if this had been Earth. Not a tree, nor a 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 of civilization passed except in the cavern of the heated pool. Constellations disappeared, new patterns formed in the night sky. The unutterably total void of time—FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND YEARS! And a nine-year-old child brooding over an empty world. \"I don't understand why your development stopped,\" Stinson said. \"Nor do I. But perhaps ... well, I sense that I would continue, if you sand blowing in the wind? A wind devil?\" 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.\" but it was composed only of grains of sand. There was no core, no The Sand God disappeared. Sybtl said \"Is the Sand God angry again?\" sand possibly have a nervous system? nervous system. But then, how could a group of loosely spaced grains of a place in the sand and drew a triangle with his forefinger. When it \"Listen,\" he said, \"I am not a God. Get that through your head.\" She laughed softly. \"You are a strange God.\" first grains of sand, the realization of what was happening dawned with shocking he had to turn away quickly. No definable form or sculptured line was visible, yet he felt, or saw—he did not know which senses told him—the immeasurable gulf of a million years of painful evolution. Then nothing. It was not a curtain drawn to prevent him from seeing more. There was no more. She shrugged her beautiful shoulders. \"It is the way of the Gods,\" she \"On the contrary, you have. There is a time and place for everything, though.\" his feet has decreed this.\" \"Yes.\" nonconformists from the sixth planet. I permit them here because it occupies my time, to watch them evolve.\" \"You should live so long.\" 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 don't understand you. I see you as a cone of sand which keeps changing \"Where do I originate? It seems I have always been. You see this cavern, the heated pool, the statues, the inscriptions. Half a million almost comes to me, why they are gone. And this is contrary to the greatest law of all—that an entity, once in existence, can never cease to exist.\" Stinson was silent, thinking of the endless years of searching through The woman looked at him, and she was not smiling. \"Please ask the Sand \"As for the webfoots,\" the wind devil, or Sand God, said, \"I will The Sand God did not reply. The great bodiless, directionless voice was and set down in a dark canyon. The cone of sand was the color of wood When he looked back, the Sand God was gone. \"Syb-tl.\" He tried to imitate her musical pronunciation. \"A very nice name.\" She smiled, then pointed to the cavern. \"When the ice is gone, they \"I am not your sister. I am your wife.\" \" What? \" God.\" \"Listen, Sybtl,\" he said desperately, \"I am not a God and you are not my wife. Let's get that straight.\" \"But....\" \"No buts. Right now we'd better get out of here.\" he chose. But with Sybtl it was another matter he was no better than any other man, perhaps not so good as some because he was forty, and He clutched the tube-weapon. \"How many shots in this thing?\" \"Shots?\" \"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 used it unwisely.\" \"When did you come?\" \"Ten years ago. I was a child.\" \"I thought only criminals were brought here.\" \"When will your people come again?\" She shook her head. \"Never. They are no longer my people. They have the Sand God. It was blood red now. It pulsed violently. The great The Sand God pulsed more violently than before. Ice melted in a wide primitive logic long before it reached your level of development.\" The Sand God became a sphere of blue flame. A wave of intense heat Sybtl shivered against his arm. \"The Sand God is angry,\" she said. \"My Kaatr got the tube-weapon. It was the only thing the Sand God didn't burn, that and the skirts. Then, when he had burned the ship, the Sand Sybtl touched his arm. \"Why did the Sand God come? He did not speak.\" \"Don't worry. The Sand God travels without a ship, why shouldn't I?\" no time, now, to warm cold feet or dwell on the vagaries of Sand Gods. \"The Sand God,\" Sybtl said. \"Sometimes he plays among the clouds. He 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 to green. Then he tires and lets winter come back again. He is the loneliest God in the universe.\" She shrugged her shoulders. \"I just know. But he's an angry God now. \"The Sand God isn't doing this,\" Stinson said. \"It's only a storm.\" \"Poor little God-with-fingers-on-his-feet,\" she said. \"You do not understand. The Sand God is terrible, even when he plays. See the \"You're leaving?\" There was panic in her voice. \"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.\" Stinson had never been in a sand storm before, even on Earth. He could not breathe. He could not see. Bullets of sand stung his skin. Bullets of sand shot into his eyes. Clouds of sand howled around him. He fell, \"Adolescent!\" \"The Sand God is tired,\" Sybtl said. \"He is not angry now. I'm glad. The cone of sand suddenly appeared. It stood in the canyon, its base \"Earthman,\" the Sand God said, as if he were about to make a statement. her. The webfoots might find us, or the Sand God might destroy us in \"Earthman, hear me.\"\n\n<question>:\nHow old is the Sand God, mentally?\n\n<options>:\nA Six years\nB Fifteen years\nC Twelve years\nD Nine years\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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231 | 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>:\nDOUBLECROSS by JAMES Mac CREIGH Revolt was brewing on Venus, led by the descendant of the first Earthmen to land. Svan was the leader making the final There was no reason why everything shouldn't have been functioning themselves to Venus's climate. They're friendly enough.\" The Exec shrugged again. He stared at the wooden shacks that were the Venusian mist. The native guard of honor, posted a hundred yards from the Earth-ship, stood stolidly at attention with their old-fashioned proton-rifles slung over their backs. A few natives were gazing They think there will be hordes of immigrants from Earth, now that we know Venus is habitable. And there's some sort of a paltry underground group that is spreading the word that the immigrants will drive the native Venusians—the descendants of the first expedition, that is—right down into the mud. Well—\" he laughed—\"maybe they will. After all, the fittest survive. That's a basic law of—\" The annunciator over the open lock clanged vigorously, and a metallic voice rasped: \"Officer of the Deck! Post Number One! Instruments \"Set up a screen! Notify the delegation! Alert a landing party!\" But Svan clicked off the listening-machine and turned around. The five others in the room looked apprehensive. \"You see?\" Svan repeated. \"From head. \"Svan, I'm afraid,\" she said. \"Who are we to decide if this Svan laughed harshly. \" agreed. \"Svan, what must we do?\" Svan raised his hand, thoughtfully. \"One moment. Ingra, do you still convinced by Svan. Svan eyed them, each in turn. There was a slow but unanimous gesture of \"Good,\" said Svan. \"Then we must act. The Council has told us that we alone will decide our course of action. We have agreed that, if the Earth-ship returns, it means disaster for Venus. Therefore, it must not return.\" An old man shifted restlessly. \"But they are strong, Svan,\" he Svan nodded. \"No. They will leave. But they will never get back to \"Never get back to Earth?\" the old man gasped. \"Has the Council Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The Earth-ship has.\" He paused dangerously. \"Toller,\" he said, \"do you Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his ship. It will be set by means of this dial—\" he touched a spot on the surface of the globe with a pallid finger—\"to do nothing for forty hours. Then—it will explode. Atomite.\" irresolution. Abruptly he set the bomb down, savagely ripped six leaves No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that Silently the girl picked up an opaque glass bowl from the broad arm of her chair. It had held Venus-tobacco cigarettes there were a few left. She shook them out and handed the bowl to Svan, who was rapidly and held it without opening it. The bowl went the rounds, till Svan himself took the last. All eyes were on him. No one had looked at their Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them. guards will be called. There will be commotion—that is easy enough, after all from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\" There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that Though he had willed his eyes away from it, his fingers had rebelled. striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing.... up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision. In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in The six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except \"Good,\" said Svan, observing them. \"The delegation is still here. We The right answer leaped up at him. jungle that surrounded them. Svan noticed it was raining a little. The that followed its thunderous crash, a man's voice bellowed: \"Halt!\" The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the brakes. A Venusian in the trappings of the State Guard advanced on them from the side of the road, proton-rifle held ready to fire again. \"Where are you going?\" he growled. Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was faster. His gamble had failed there was only one course remaining. He hurled his gross white bulk at the guard, bowled him over against the splintery logs of the road. The proton-rifle went flying, and Svan savagely tore at the throat of the guard. Knees, elbows and claw-like nails—Svan battered at the astonished man with every ounce of strength in his body. The guard was as big as Svan, but Svan had the initial advantage ... and it was only a matter of seconds before the guard lay unconscious, his skull a mass of gore at the back where Svan had Svan grunted as his fingers constricted brutally. Svan rose, panting, stared around. No one else was in sight, save the petrified five and the ground car. Svan glared at them contemptuously, then reached down and heaved on the senseless body of the guard. Over jungle. Even while Svan watched the body began to sink. There would be Svan strode back to the car. \"Hurry up,\" he gasped to the girl. \"Now there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep a watch for other guards.\" Venus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer. Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness. the natives were dangerous. Spy-rays! They've been prohibited for the Svan hesitated only a fraction of a second after the girl turned the the compartment, though Svan's hand emerged with only one. were wise to circle around. Now, you know what you must do?\" Svan, listening, thought: It's not much of a plan. The guards would the bomb will not explode until the ship is far out in space. Remember, you are in no danger from the guards.\" From the guards , his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would feel no pain, never know what happened. With the amount of atomite in \"Svan.\" The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached for him, kissed him. \"Good luck to you, Svan,\" she said. Svan looked after them. The kiss had surprised him. What did it mean? Was it an error that the girl should die with the others? its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance. of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop. Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan, with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came for you. We must flee!\" Lowry was staring at the huddled, mutilated form of Svan. He shuddered.\n\n<question>:\nWhat didn't Svan do to try to save his planet?\n\n<options>:\nA Blow up his own vehicle and friends\nB Spy on the people from Earth\nC Plant a bomb on the ship from Earth\nD Kill a Venusian guard\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,689 | 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>:\nfirst,\" I said. \"I'm beginning to feel mildly, \"You're late.\" \"Don't yell at me, I feel awful,\" Simon told her. He sat down at his desk, passed his tongue over his teeth in distaste, groaned, fumbled in a drawer for the aspirin bottle. He looked over at Betty and said, \"Providence,\" Simon told her whilst fiddling with the aspirin bottle, \"will provide.\" Simon said, mournful of tone, \"Fifty dollars? Why not make it five hundred?\" I want is enough to pay me this week's salary.\" Simon said, enigmatically, \"Now Simon said unenthusiastically, the client's chair. \"Sit down, sir.\" The client fussed himself with Betty's assistance into the seat, bug-eyed \"You didn't have a hotel. What a stupidity. I'll be phased. Phased all the way down.\" the bed holding his bald head in his hands. \"I remember now,\" he sorrowed. Simon, said finally, \"You know \"You haven't got a handful of aspirin, have you?\" I asked him. \"Just a minute,\" Arth said, staggering \"All right,\" I told him plaintively. \"I'm clean. I won't mess up the place. All I've got is a hangover, not lice.\" Simon continued to say nothing she Arth was gone. He came back in Simon said nothing. Across the \"Why?\" \"Why?\" \"Confound it if I know,\" the little fellow growled. \"How?\" Simon said, \"Let's get to the point, with their king-size mugs and drank each other's health. My head was killing me. \"This is where I came in, or something,\" I groaned. Arth said, \"That was last night.\" The potential client sat more erect, He looked at me over the rim of his obviously with intent to hold the floor for a time. He removed the and then remembered. \"I've got to get my bag. Oh, my head. Where did we spend last night?\" them away. But to get on. It's my contention that within a century or so man will have solved the problems of immortality and eternal youth, and it's also my suspicion that he will feel lousy. I must have dimmed out. I've got to go to the Bahnhof and get my luggage.\" Arth didn't put up an argument no good. There were no hotel rooms Simon seemed incapable of carrying available in Munich. The head was getting worse by the minute. The to lose my bag didn't help. I worked on that project for at least a couple Simon put in a word. \"The usual of hours. Not only wasn't the bag the attendant there evidently couldn't make heads nor tails of the check don't we ever meet such travelers?\" fact that they'd somehow managed especially accompanied by a blockbusting hangover. I didn't get anywhere tearing my hair and complaining from one end a blank on the bag. And the head was getting worse Simon shrugged and fumbled again with the aspirin bottle. Mr. Oyster went on. \"I've been considering the matter for some time and—\" Simon held up a hand. \"There's no use prolonging this. As I understand it, you're an elderly gentleman with a considerable fortune and you realize that thus far nobody has succeeded I decided the hell with it. I took a cab to the airport, presented my return their perch, bug-eyed Simon, but then ticket, told them I wanted to Simon said, \"You want to hire me was fouled up, some clerk's error, evidently. The trip back was as uninteresting as the one over. As the hangover began to wear off—a little—I was almost sorry I hadn't been able to stay. If I'd only been able to get a room I would have stayed, I told myself. he had been occupying four—or was it five—days before when I'd left. I'd lost track of the time. Betty and Simon waited. sir. I can report. Ah, what was it you came for? Impatient to hear if I'd had any results?\" My mind was spinning like a whirling dervish in a revolving door. I'd spent a wad of his money and had nothing I could think of to show for it hangover. \"Came for?\" Mr. Oyster snorted. \"I'm merely waiting for your girl to make out my receipt. I thought you had already left.\" the calendar. Mr. Oyster was saying something to the effect that if I didn't leave today, it would have to be tomorrow, that he hadn't ponied up that thousand dollars advance for anything less than immediate service. Stuffing his receipt in his wallet, he fussed his way out the door. \"All right,\" Simon said. \"We'll accept not half an hour ago, just before this marble-missing client came in.\" She added, irrelevantly, \"Time travelers yet.\" how long ago did I go out that door—on the way to the airport?\" \"You've been acting sick all morning. You went out that door about ten minutes ago, were gone about three minutes, and then came back.\" \"See here,\" Mr. Oyster said (interrupting by the minute. I was bleeding to his forehead and said, \"That's only the first chapter. There are two more.\" \"I'm not interested in more,\" Mr. Oyster said. \"I suppose your point was to show me how ridiculous the you've done it. Confound it. However, I suppose your time, even when He slammed the door after him as he left. Simon winced at the noise, took took two, washed them down with water from the desk carafe. took up the fifty dollars. \"Week's wages,\" she said. \"I suppose that's one way of taking care of a crackpot. Simon was shaking his head. \"Not take his money and enjoy that vacation you've been yearning about.\" \"I did,\" Simon groaned. \"Three times.\" Simon nodded, miserably. Simon fortune—\" \"Sorry,\" Simon said. \"Can't be done.\" \"A hundred dollars a day plus expenses,\" Mr. Oyster said quietly. \"I like the fact that you already seem \"I keep telling you,\" Simon said bitterly, \"I went back there three breath. \"Listen, we're just going to have to forget about it. They're not going to stand for the space-time \"No go,\" Simon said, a sad quality \"Out of the question,\" Simon said. you—all over again. They just can't allow anything to come back \"But \"Just for laughs,\" Simon told the \"You mean,\" Betty was suddenly furious at him, \"you've given up! Why this is the biggest thing— Why the fifty thousand dollars is nothing. Simon said wearily, \"There's just one thing you can bring back with I hustled back to the apartment and packed a bag. Hell, I'd wanted a vacation you from the future, a hangover compounded of an advance, and leaving him with on top of that!\" He shuddered. \"If you think I'm going to take another crack at this Betty who was making out a receipt, hangover on the three I'm already nursing, all at once, you can think again.\" THE END Transcriber's Note: I spent the time planning the fun I was going to have. It takes roughly seven and a half How could the average German, with his twenty-five dollars a week salary? hours. I had another suspicious twinge. costume, to the bald-headed drunk across the table from me. A desperate waitress bearing six mugs of beer in each hand scurried past. They call them No beer is that strong.\" I took a long pull. He looked at me, waiting. \"Next what?\" Baldy's conversation didn't seem to hang together very well. I'll never make it.\" I finished my Name is Simon.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy is Simon so unenthusiastic when the client shows up at the beginning of the story?\n\n<options>:\nA He knows Mr. Oyster's reputation, and does not want to get involved in his affairs.\nB He knows he cannot accomplish what Mr. Oyster is asking, and knows he will have to turn him away.\nC He only takes on easy cases that he knows will pay the bills.\nD He has too much of a headache to deal with the new client.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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752 | 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>:\npoking in under the window shade pried his eyes open. The dream fled. Eddie kicked off the sheet, swung his feet to the floor, and groped under the bed for his tennis shoes. “You awake, Eddie?” “I’m awake, Dad,” Eddie answered. “Breakfast’s ready. Get washed and “But, Dad,” Eddie wondered, “what could they do with it?” “Be right there,” Eddie said. Then, remembering the dream, he added, “Oh, Dad, is it broken down and studied. Being a new isotope, all right if I use the Geiger counter today?” dressed.” Eddie found it easy to believe the stories he had heard about his father being an outstanding “Then—then you mean whoever stole it were spies!” Eddie exclaimed breathlessly. much age, although Eddie knew it had been eighteen years since his father had played his last game of college football. “That’s entirely possible,” his father said. “In fact, it’s the only logical explanation I can radioactive isotopes without a mighty important “Dinner’s ready,” Eddie’s mother called from the kitchen. During dinner Eddie wasn’t sure just what better get out to breakfast before your mother scalps us. Hurry it up.” His father turned “Come on in, Eddie,” she invited, seeming surprised to see him. “Mother and I are just finishing dinner.” “Oh, I figured you’d be through by now,” Eddie apologized, following her inside. 35 “Good evening, Mrs. Ross,” Eddie said. “I—I hope I’m not making a pest of myself.” He looked around for Mr. Ross, but Teena’s him at the table, either. “You’re never a pest, Eddie,” Mrs. Ross assured him. “I was going to call your mother in a little while about that newspaper write-up.” “I suppose your father is quite concerned over it,” Teena’s mother said. “Oh, yes,” Eddie affirmed. “He was the one metal clamps. It could start cavities. Finished, Eddie went out to breakfast. “Good morning, dear,” his mother greeted him, handing him a plate of eggs. “Hi, Mom,” Eddie said. “Gotta hurry. Big day today.” “So your father says. But I’m afraid your “What’s an isotope?” Teena asked. him about letting food gather around the enough training in the subject to know how to handle that isotope safely,” Mr. Taylor said. isotopes—pronounced Eddie had learned not to ask questions about it. His father usually volunteered any information he wanted known, so Eddie stuck to questions which could and would be answered. atomic-bomb explosions. That’s a chain reaction “Boy, that sounds dangerous,” Teena said. “Well, they know just how to do it,” Eddie replied. “I will,” Eddie promised. He had forgotten several times before, weakening the batteries. 17 It took Eddie over an hour to sort out the them. Remember to switch it off when you’re not actually using it.” over his hasty retreat. “What are you going to do?” “Think I’ll do a little prospecting,” Eddie Eddie said. The more he thought about it, the more he realized it was a little late in the day 18 “Are you going alone?” his mother asked. “Oh, guess I’ll stop by and see if Teena wants to go,” Eddie answered casually. He soaks up water.” 40 “My, that’s interesting, Eddie,” Mrs. Ross “She’ll enjoy it, I’m sure,” his mother said. “I’ll take Sandy, too,” Eddie said. “He needs the exercise.” Eddie let Sandy off his chain. The taffy-colored cocker spaniel yipped wildly over his freedom, racing back and forth as Eddie started down the street. That’s how to handle it, Eddie thought. Don’t act anxious. Let Teena be anxious. isotopes, the whole world is going to be improved. cancer. Well, that’s an isotope. They make it there are hundreds of different isotopes. Like Eddie went inside and followed Teena to the kitchen. He felt triumphant about the “Dad didn’t say exactly,” Eddie answered, “except he did say that if whoever took it didn’t know what he was doing and opened up even the mild isotopes are deadly if they’re not handled it carelessly. It was a new isotope—a secret isotope. His father hadn’t said whether “She always does, Mrs. Ross,” Eddie said, pretending great injury. “Don’t know why I keep coming over here.” stoop to stealing isotopes more than likely out all right,” Teena’s mother said. “So do I,” Teena agreed. Eddie glanced at the kitchen clock. “Oh, Eddie laughed. “I sure wouldn’t want the Eddie, then added quickly, “forget it, Eddie. It wasn’t very funny. I—I’m afraid I don’t feel very funny tonight.” “What’s for dinner, Mom?” he asked. Mrs. Taylor turned from the sink. Eddie knew at once, just seeing the expression on his mother’s face, that something was wrong. “Dinner?” his mother said absently. “It’s not quite four o’clock yet, Eddie. Besides, dinner may be a little late today.” happen.” 25 Then Eddie heard the sound of his father’s voice coming from the den. There was a strange urgent tone in it. The door to the den was open. Eddie went through the dining room and glanced into the den. His father sat stiffly behind his homemade desk, talking rapidly into the telephone. Eddie caught only the last few sketchy words. Then his father placed the telephone in its cradle, glanced up, and saw Eddie. genuine interest in Eddie’s prospecting trips. “Dad,” Eddie said anxiously, “what—what’s the matter?” “It shows that much, does it, son?” his father said tiredly. “What’s wrong, Dad?” Eddie prompted. “Or can’t you tell me?” Mr. Taylor leaned back. “Quite a bit’s was expecting today?” “I remember,” Eddie said. “Did it come?” “It did—and it didn’t,” his father said. “What does that mean, Dad?” Eddie asked, puzzled. At the moment, Eddie didn’t pry for further information on the theft of the valuable radioactive isotope. His father had plenty on his , which Eddie rushed out to get as soon as he heard it plop onto the Taylor said, “but I’m afraid this is going to stir up quite a bit of trouble.” “It wasn’t your fault, was it, Dad?” Eddie defended. “It was as much mine as anybody’s, son,” “But—but wasn’t it in a safe container?” Eddie asked. 29 “Fifty pounds,” Eddie said thoughtfully. “That’s a pretty big thing to steal, isn’t it?” “Not when it’s lead, son,” his father replied. “Not much bigger than a two-quart milk bottle, in fact.” “Even at that, no kid could have taken it,” Eddie said. “Kid?” His father smiled thinly. “We don’t think it was any kid, Eddie. Not by a long shot. The whole thing was carefully planned and carefully carried out. It was not the work in the crime. 31 “Dad,” Eddie asked, looking up from the paper, “how could anyone carry away something weighing fifty pounds without being noticed?” park and wait there unnoticed. Or they could walk around without attracting any undue attention.” “But, Dad,” Eddie continued, “how would the men know that the delivery truck would arrive a half hour early?”\n\n<question>:\nHow does Eddie's reaction and his father's reaction to the missing isotope different?\n\n<options>:\nA Eddie's father is horrified, while Eddie acts apathetic.\nB Eddie's father is disappointed, while Eddie is unaware of the severity of the situation.\nC Eddie's father is worried, while Eddie's curiosity is heightened.\nD Eddie's father is panicked, while Eddie tries to remain lighthearted.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
2,400 | 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>:\nfailed. Var felt Neena beside him, and drew her close. As she sobbed her relief, he continued to look down absently at the dead man. When at last he 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. Var said, \"The Watcher's cave should be three miles beyond this pass.\" He stood rigid, trying to catch an echo of the Watcher's thoughts, but there was nothing. Perhaps the old man was resting. From the other \"Hurry,\" said Neena. \"They're closer than they were an hour ago.\" She was beautiful and defiant, facing the red sunset and the black mountain. Var sensed her fear, and the love that had conquered it. He felt a wave of tenderness and bitterness. For him she had come to this. 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 was no longer a simple problem to Var, who had grown much older in the last days. Var sighed, shaking his head. \"It won't hold them for long, but it's the best I can do now. Come on.\" There was no path. Now they were descending the steeper face of the one alone might never have won through. It was starry night already when they saw the light from the Watcher's but neither had been here before. But this was no time for shyness. Var eyed the ice-curtain closely to \"You were asleep!\" said Var. Shock made his thought accusing, though he had not meant to be. The old man grinned toothlessly. \"Never fear. Asleep or awake, I watch. turned questioningly to the young pair. \"We need a little rest out of the cold,\" said Var. \"And food, if you can spare it. We're pursued.\" Warming to the old man now, Var sketched his and Neena's history briefly. \"We should have been safe among my people by now. And before very long, I'm sure, I would have performed some deed which Groz would \"A pity, indeed. I would like to help you—but, you understand, I am the Mountain Watcher. I must be above feuds and families.\" Var nodded somberly, thinking that an old recluse would in any case be able to do little for them against Groz and his violent kinsfolk. \"And what will you do now?\" Var grinned mirthlessly. \"We haven't much choice, since they're overtaking us. I have only one idea left: we can go where Groz may fear to follow us.\" \"To the mountain, you mean.\" \"And into it, if need be.\" The Watcher was broodingly silent his eyes shifted to Neena, where she nestled by Var's side. He asked, \"And you—are you willing to follow your lover in this?\" Var, and her lips curled with a proud and tender mockery. \"Follow? Why, I will lead, if his courage should fail him.\" The old man said, \"It is no part of my duty to dissuade you from this and the city burned and burned.... vision of such scope and reality as Var had never seen—no, lived through—before. With deep respect now he gazed upon the bent old man who was the Mountain Watcher. \"Some of the Ryzgas took flight to the stars, and some perished on Earth. But there was a group of them who believed that their time to mind as it groped for his there was a confusion of horror and pity. Var looked grimly at the Watcher, and would have spoken but the Watcher seemed suddenly a very long way off, and Var could no longer feel his own limbs, his face was a numb mask. Dully he heard the old man say, \"You are tired. Best sleep until morning.\" Var strove to cry out that there was no time, that Groz was near and that sleep was for infants and the aged, but his intention sank and Var woke. Daylight glimmered through the ice of the cave mouth. He had been unconscious, helpless, for hours! At the thought of that, panic gripped him. He had not slept since childhood, and he had forgotten how Neena sat up and stifled a cry of fright. Var growled, \"Who are you? Where's the Watcher?\" were all night chasing elusive dreams on the high ridges, miles away.\" Var passed a hand across bewildered eyes. Neena said softly, \"Thank you, Watcher.\" \"Don't thank me. I take no sides in your valley feuds. But now you are rested, your minds are clear. Do you still mean to go on to the Ryzga mountain?\" Not looking at the Watcher, Var muttered unsteadily, \"We have no alternative.\" dashed from rock to rock in its struggle toward the plain, but the curling fog hid everything. \"You have an alternative,\" said the Watcher crisply. The two took their eyes from the black mountain and gazed at him in sudden hope, but his face was unsmiling. \"It is this. You, Var, can flee up the canyon to the north, by a way I will show you, disguising your thoughts and masking direction, southward, without seeking to conceal herself. Your pursuers will be deceived and follow her, and by the time they catch her it will be too late for them to overtake Var.\" Quickly, he impressed on them what he had learned of the structure of the mountain and of its guardian machines. Var closed his eyes, a little dizzied by the rapid flood of detail. \"You are ready to go,\" said the Watcher. He spoke aloud, and his voice was cracked and harsh. Var opened his eyes in surprise, and saw that the Watcher had become again the hoary ancient of last night. Var felt a twinge of unfamiliar emotion only by its echo in Neena's river, crept hand in hand, sharing their strength, across unstable dream bridges from crag to crag. Groz and his pack, in their numbers, would cross the gorge more surely and swiftly. When Var and Neena set foot at last on the cindery slope of the great volcanic cone, they sensed that the pursuit already halved their lead. 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, head thrown back, to their echoes that returned. The tunnel beyond slanted steeply downward. Var's hands moved, molding a radiant globe caught you now!\" Behind Groz the figures of his followers loomed up as striding shadows. Neena's hand tightened on Var's. Var sent a thought of defiance: \"Go back! Or you'll drive us to enter the mountain!\" mountain's black shoulder hung inverted above them and the dizzy gulf of sky was beneath. Var fought for footing with his balance gone, feeling Ready ... ready.... The sun-globe floated behind them, casting light before them down the featureless tunnel that sloped always toward the mountain's heart. Var made it only this far. It was farther than the Watcher had gone into these uncharted regions, and only the utmost alertness of mind and sense had saved them from death in traps like this. But as yet the way was not Stop! —before you go too far!\" Var faced that way and thought coldly: \"Only if you return and let us go free.\" In the black reaches of the shaft his will groped for and locked with knew with finality that the other's stubbornness matched his own—that neither would yield, though the mountain above them and the world closed down on all his motor nerves. Holding that grip, Var strode across the floor and looked straight into\n\n<question>:\nWhat is ironic about the conclusion of the story?\n\n<options>:\nA The slave masters of the Ryzgas were ultimately eradicated by their own slaves\nB Humans seem to feel they have no other alternative than to kill and cause suffering before they can establish peace\nC Var will likely be killed or imprisoned for life, and Neena will bear the mark of shame for eternity\nD Despite the Watcher's message, Var continued his journey to the mountain in pursuit of personal gain\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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182 | 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>:\nsent him winging out in a state of suspension to future centuries ... to a dark blue world whose only defense was to seal tight the prying minds of foolish interlopers. yell in surprise as I floated up towards the light overhead. I was weightless. bound by gravity. I twisted and shut my eyes in terror. There was no sensation of place, no feeling of up or down, no direction. My back me. \"If you understand, press button A on your right.\" What should I understand? That I was floating in a room that had a grasped the metal rail that ran along the wall. I reasoned it was there to propel yourself through the passageway in this weightless atmosphere. It was effortless to move. I turned on my side like a swimmer and went hand over hand, shooting down the corridor. I braced against forward press against the glass, blobs of fire against a black curtain burning into my eyes and brain. It was space. I looked out at deep space, star systems in clusters. I shut my eyes. When I looked again I knew where I was. Why the little room had been shaped like quarter round. Why I drifted weightlessly. Why I was.... David Corbin. I knew more of the puzzle. Something was wrong. After the first shock of looking out, I accepted the fact that I was in a space ship, yet I couldn't read the maps that were fastened to a table, nor understand the function or design of the compact machinery. \"You have been removed from suspension. Assume manual control of this ship.\" Control of a ship? Going where? \"Do not begin operations until the others are removed from suspension.\" I held my bruised hands to my mouth, and I knew that was all the the metal. I dared not try to operate anything. Revive the others ... into the doors in the passageway and went back to the room with the portholes. Everything lay in readiness, fastened down star charts, instruments, glittering equipment. There was no feeling of disorder or use in the room. It waited for human hands to make it operate. no movement outside and I glanced back at the dials. What speeds were they recording? What speeds and perhaps, what distance? It was useless to translate the markings. They stood for anything I might guess, and something kept pricking my mind, telling me I had no time to guess. I could stand it no longer. Searching the ship made me forget my fear. I hoped I would find some could. There were two levels to the ship. They both ended in the lead the engine or engines took up half the ship, cut off from the forward half by the instrument studded shield. I retraced my steps and took a rough estimate of size. The ship, as I called it, was at least four hundred feet long, fifty feet in diameter on the inside. The silence was a force in itself, pressing down from the metal walls, driving me back to the comforting smallness of the room where I had was completely closed, and it didn't yield to the pressure I applied. It had a cover, but no other opening where an arm could extend. I ran the base helplessly. If some sort of antidote was to be administered and chemicals, testing equipment in compact drawers, but nothing marked 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 me. I went back to the cabin where the powerful man lay. I had to risk drained under pressure and the arm moved back. \"No gravity,\" he grunted and sat back. \"I'm all right,\" he answered. \"There aren't supposed to be any effects wanted him to understand. \"Look, I'm in trouble. Nothing fits, except the belt, but the sight of us floating made him shake. He was retching experience were all that mattered to the brass.\" \"Automatic control. I helped to install it.\" \"Can you run this ship? How about the other two?\" He hit his hands together. \"You fly it, sir. Can't you think?\" \"I'm trying. I know the ship is familiar, but I've looked it over. Maybe I'm trying too hard.\" \"You flew her from earth until we went into suspension,\" he said. \"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.\" \"You ask the questions,\" he said. I indicated the ship. \"Where in creation are we going?\" \"We set out from Earth for a single star in the direction of the center of our Galaxy.\" \"From Earth? How could we?\" \"Let's move slowly, sir,\" he said. \"We're moving fast. I don't know if you can picture it, but we're going about one hundred thousand miles an hour.\" \"Through space?\" \"Yes.\" \"What direction?\" luminosity. We hope to find a planetary system capable of supporting life.\" \"I can't grasp it. How can we go very far in a lifetime?\" \"It can be done in two lifetimes,\" John said quietly. \"You said I had flown this ship. You meant before this suspension.\" \"Yes. That's why we can cross space to a near star.\" \"How long ago was it?\" \"It was set at about a hundred years, sir. Doesn't that fit at all?\" \"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 I was to study the charts and manuals. It was better than doing nothing, and I went into the navigation room and sat down. Earth was an infinitesimal point somewhere behind us on the galactic plane, and no one else was trained to navigate. The ship thundered to life as I 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. like warm liquid. I hung on the intercom for support, drawing air into my heaving lungs. \"It worked. I'm okay,\" I said in giddy relief. sun. I thought about the rest of the crew too. \"We're heading right for a star....\" \"It's been dead ahead for hours,\" he grunted. I leaned over and threw it. Disregard the warning siren ... we were testing the ship.\" had been picked for us. Food was set down by me, grew cold and was carried away and I was still rechecking the figures. We were on a line ten degrees above the galactic plane. The parallactic baseline from Earth to the single star could be in error several degrees, or we could be right on the calculated position of the star. The radar confirmed have a planetary system like our own. We were out on a gamble to find a planet capable of supporting life. The idea had intrigued scientists before I had first looked up at the night sky. When I was sure the electronically recorded course was accurate for time, I checked direction and speed from the readings and plotted our position. If I was right we were much closer than we wanted to be. The bright pips on the screen gave us the distance and size of the star while we fed the figures into the calculator for our rate of approach. Spectroscopic tests were run on the sun and checked against the figures that had been calculated on Earth. We analyzed temperature, magnetic fields, radial motion, density and luminosity, checking against the standards the scientists had constructed. It was a G type star like our own. It had more density and temperature and suitable planets or not, we had to change course in a hurry. Carl analyzed the findings while we came to a decision. Somewhere along an orbit that might be two hundred miles across, our hypothetical planet circled this star. That distance was selected when the planets in Earth's solar system had proved to be barren. If the observations on this star were correct, we could expect to find a planet in a state of fertility ... if it existed ... if it were suitable for colonization ... if we could find it.\n\n<question>:\nHow did suspension help the crew?\n\n<options>:\nA They could survive without oxygen.\nB They could live on an inhospitable planet.\nC They could survive with lack of gravity.\nD They could travel through space for a long distance.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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25 | 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>:\nGrannie Annie, who wrote science fiction under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers, had stumbled onto a murderous plot more hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel in the name of science fiction than anyone alive. But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known. \"What happened to \"It wasn't Guns , it was Pluto .\" I grinned. \"All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair.\" \"What else is there in science fiction?\" she demanded. \"You can't have your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster.\" Satellite . zilcon wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity that made Swamp City the frontier post it is. DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS NINE GENIUSES yet.\" The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The Earthman operator. A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and advanced to the footlights. \"People of Swamp City,\" he said, bowing, \"permit me to introduce myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts.\" There was a roar of applause from the Satellite audience. When it had subsided, the man continued: \"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions. These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand planetoles . \"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match voice echoed through the theater: \" tracto-car.\" And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed, brought me here. And then I began to notice things. The audience in the Satellite signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete. Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to Someone shouted, \"Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!\" As one Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to shout derisive epithets. Karn....\" The old woman paused. \"Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?\" she asked abruptly. I shook my head. \"Some new kind of ...\" \"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active Alpha rays of this rock are similar to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles projected at high speed. But the character of the Gamma rays has never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of Beta or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons. \"When any form of life is exposed to these Gamma rays from the Green Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate, a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug.\" I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word. government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom followed.\" an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green Flames!\" if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in Earth.\" \"I see,\" I said as she lapsed into silence. \"And now you've come to the conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is The old woman shook her head. \"No, this is a lot bigger than a simple quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars, police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by \"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a times more potent and is transmiting it en masse .\" If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would A heat ray! We had traveled this far by ganet , the tough little two headed pack animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy jagua see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours. \"Green Flames, eh?\" he repeated slowly. \"Well yes, I suppose I could Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot.\" \"What are the Varsoom?\" I asked. \"A native tribe?\" Karn shook his head. \"They're a form of life that's never been seen by Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy.\" \"Dangerous?\" \"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside because he made 'em laugh.\" \"Laugh?\" A scowl crossed Grannie's face. \"That's right,\" Karn said. \"The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them laugh, I don't know.\" from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning, that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations. steel, suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white insulators. swing slowly to and fro. Grannie nodded. \"Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in the lower hold are probably exposed to a tholpane plate and their radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process.\" Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the Green Flames are more accessible.\" vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore. Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal plate.\n\n<question>:\nWhat effects do the Green Flame rocks have?\n\n<options>:\nA It makes people lethargic and easily manipulated.\nB They spread radioactivity to people and make them ill.\nC They influence people to take power over other people.\nD They are electromagnetic and shock people.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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2,023 | 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.] Linton lay down his steel fork beside the massively solid transparency of the restaurant water glass. \"Isn't that Rogers Snead at that table?\" he heard himself say stupidly. Howell, the man across the table from him, looked embarrassed without looking. \"Not at all. Somebody who looks like him. Twin brother. You know how it is. Snead's dead, don't you remember?\" 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 Snead's brother, I might catch him to pay my respects.\" \"No,\" Howell said, \"I wouldn't do that.\" \"Snead came to Greta's funeral. It's the least I could do.\" \"I wouldn't. Probably no relation to Snead at all. Somebody who looks like him.\" restaurant.\" \"Who? Oh, the man who looked like Snead, you mean.\" \"Yes,\" Linton said. A thick-bodied man at the next table leaned his groaning chair back intimately against Linton's own chair. \"That fellow who just left looked like a friend of yours, huh?\" the thick man said. \"Couldn't have been him, though,\" Linton answered automatically. \"My friend's dead.\" paper money on the table as if he were disgusted with it. He plodded out of the place quickly. Howell breathed in deeply and sucked back Linton's attention. \"Now you've probably got old Snead into trouble.\" \"Snead's dead,\" Linton said. \"Oh, well, 'dead,'\" Howell replied. \"What do you say it like that for?\" Linton demanded angrily. \"The man's dead. Plain dead. He's not Sherlock Holmes or the Frankenstein Monster—there's no doubt or semantic leeway to the thing.\" \"You know how it is,\" Howell said. Linton had thought he had known how death was. He had buried his wife, or rather he had watched the two workmen scoop and shove dirt in on the sawdust-fresh pine box that held the coffin. He had known what he 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 don't know, mind you,\" Howell said, puffing out tobacco smoke, \"but I suppose he might have been resurrected.\" \"Who by?\" Linton asked, thinking: \"You mean, somebody has invented a way to bring dead people back to life?\" Linton said. 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 in order to gain some illegal advantage. But by saying something so patently ridiculous, Linton hoped to bring the contradicting truth to the surface immediately. \"An invention? I guess that's how it is,\" Howell agreed. \"I don't know much about people like that. I'm an honest businessman.\" \"But it's wonderful,\" Linton said, thinking his immediate thoughts. \"Wonderful! Why should a thing like that be illegal? Why don't I know about it?\" \"Sh-h,\" Howell said uneasily. \"This is a public place.\" \"I don't understand,\" Linton said helplessly. charges, if any, come under general vice classification.\" \"I don't understand,\" Linton complained. \"Why haven't I heard about it?\" \"I see,\" Linton said. He tried to assimilate it. Of course he had, he reminded himself, been out of touch for some time. It might be true. Then again, they might be 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!\" Howell climbed to his feet hurriedly. \"I take you out to dinner to console you over the loss of your wife a half a year ago, and to make 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!\" Howell threw money on the table with the same kind of disinterest as the thick-set man and stalked out. I've got to hurry too, Linton thought. It's Resurrection Day! The doctor fluttered his hands and chirped about the office. \"Well, 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 disturbing.\" \"I was only trying to find out something,\" Linton maintained. \"They could have told me. Everybody seems to know but me.\" The doctor clucked his tongue. \"Let's not think any such thing. People Linton stared suspiciously. \"Do you know where I can find a \"Well, that's what you paid him to do, wasn't it? Did you think a policeman would just steal your money? Cynics—all you young people are cynics.\" Linton scooted forward on the insultingly cold metal chair and really looked at the doctor for the first time. \"Doctor, can you Linton grasped the situation immediately. \"You mean you want money. You realize I've just got out of an institution....\" \"I've often been in institutions myself, for alcoholism, narcotics \"What a wonderful professional career,\" Linton said, when he couldn't to obtain. The doctor had taken the body and Linton's fortune and fed olive-drab slab of metal of the door to the doctor's inner-inner sanctum and walked out into the medicinal cold fluorescent lighting. It wasn't fair at all, Linton thought. He should have had some time to prepare himself. doubt he would be able to adjust to her once having been dead the same way he had learned to accept the, to him, distasteful duty of kissing her ears the way she enjoyed. \"But Johnny was your friend, your best friend. Why didn't you have him resurrected the same way you did me?\" \"No,\" Linton said. \"I'm sold out. I've borrowed on my insurance to the \"Of course,\" Greta said. She sighed. \"Poor Johnny. He was such a good friend of yours. You must miss him. I'm so sorry for you.\" writhed against him provocatively. \"Frank, I'm sorry, dear, but I have to have that insurance money. It's hell!\" Linton understood immediately. He felt foolish, humiliated. All that green. No one must ever know. Linton twisted the stand away from his wife and watched her face in some appalled form of satisfaction as it registered horror and 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 those shiny little tabs that looked like pictures of transistors in institutional advertising. She had thought she was his wife, sharing her viewpoint down to the finest detail, and he had thought she was his wife. Linton. But they'll cure you. You'll be cured of ever thinking your\n\n<question>:\nWhich is the best description of the relationship between Linton and Howell?\n\n<options>:\nA They are business partners trying to find a way to bring back someone they knew\nB Howell is trying to be supportive but is exhausted by Linton's insistence\nC They are new friends figuring out their rapport, so Howell wants to help however he can\nD Howell is only meeting with Linton out of a feeling of obligation and doesn't care for him much\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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2,254 | 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. 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.\" 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. 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. The following morning, at St Thomas's, Tydeman asked a visiting professor of obstetrics to have a look at Debra and tell him what she thought. She put her hand into Debra's womb, grasped the foetal head and said it felt just like the real thing. \"Terribly flattering,\" Tydeman laughs. With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. In Debra as she is now, the precise extent and nature of her desperation can be fine-tuned according to need. The foetal head inside her uterus can be moved to mimic the various positions that an unborn baby may adopt. By tightening a spring inside Debra's body, it's also possible vary the degree of impaction from mild to so severe that the head is virtually impossible to extract. In this way she simulates the full range of difficulty that obstetricians are likely to encounter. 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 One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands. Oddly, as medicine became more scientific, most of these devices fell by the wayside. As an academic review of these and other devices has pointed out, much of the 20th century was something of Dark Ages for simulation. Its value in professional training has had to be rediscovered: an endeavour in which inventive people like Graham Tydeman, sometimes with workshops rich in discarded junk, are still fruitfully engaged.\n\n<question>:\nWhat inspired Dr. Tydeman's device?\n\n<options>:\nA The sound of a Wellington boot being pulled out of the mud.\nB The sound of the dentists' suction tube.\nC His own wife's emergency cesarian.\nD The sound of a Wellington boot being pulled out of quicksand.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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421 | 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>:\nCriminals, beware the Scorpion is on your trail! Hoodlums fear his fury—and, for that matter, so do the cops! Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The man with the handkerchief mask said, \"All right, everybody, keep tight. This is a holdup.\" There were twelve people in the bank. There was Mr. Featherhall at his desk, refusing to okay a personal check from a perfect stranger. There was the perfect stranger, an itinerant garage mechanic named Rodney (Rod) Strom, like the check said. There were Miss English and Miss Philicoff, the girls in the gilded teller cages. There was Mister operation planned that well, you'd think they'd pay attention to their getaway car, you know what I mean?\" Detective-Sergeant Pauling shrugged. \"They always slip up,\" he said. \"Sooner or later, on some minor detail, they always slip up.\" \"Yes, but their .\" \"Well,\" said Pauling, \"it was a stolen car. I suppose they just grabbed whatever was handiest.\" burned in 'The Scorpion' in big black letters you could see half a block away.\" \"Maybe they didn't notice it when they stole the car,\" said Pauling. \"For a well-planned operation like this one,\" said Stevenson, \"they made a couple of really idiotic boners. It doesn't make any sense.\" \"Nothing, what do you expect? They'll make no statement at all.\" stolen almost immediately after it happened.\" \"That's right,\" said Hastings. \"I stepped into a bar on my route. I'm \"Not a thing, sir. That happened to them in the holdup.\" Hastings leaned down over one of the front tires. \"Look at that! There's melted rubber all over the rims. Those rims are ruined! What professional criminals, I thought you knew that. They were using it in a bank holdup.\" \"Then why did they do crudely-lettered words, \"The Scorpion\" burned black into the paint of the car was stolen?\" \"Of course not!\" The Friday afternoon mail delivery to the newspaper and glued to the envelope. There was no return address. The Scorpion has struck. The bank robbers were captured. The Scorpion fights crime. Crooks and robbers are not safe from the avenging Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS! Sincerely yours, THE SCORPION The warning was duly noted, and the letter filed in the wastebasket. It composed of one and two family houses. The man who went berserk was a Motor Vehicle Bureau clerk named Jerome Higgins. Two days before, he had flunked a Civil Service examination for the stock, burned into the wood, were the crudely-shaped letters, \"The Scorpion.\" You don't get to be Precinct Captain on nothing but political connections. Those help, of course, but you need more than that. As Captain Hanks was fond of pointing out, you needed as well to be both more imaginative than most—\"You gotta be able to second-guess the smart boys\"—and to be a complete realist—\"You gotta have both feet on the ground.\" If these were somewhat contradictory qualities, it was best not to mention the fact to Captain Hanks. The realist side of the captain's nature was currently at the fore. \"Just what are you trying to say, Stevenson?\" he demanded. no reason at all, and somebody burns 'The Scorpion' onto the trunk. patience. \"What are you trying to prove?\" \"I don't know. All I know is it's the nuttiest thing I ever saw. And what about the getaway car? What about those tires melting?\" \"They were defective,\" said Hanks promptly. \"All four of them at once? And what about the thing written on the trunk?\" \"How do I know?\" demanded the captain. \"Kids put it on before the car was stolen, maybe. Or maybe the hoods did it themselves, who knows? What do they \"They say they didn't do it,\" said Stevenson. \"And they say they never saw it before the robbery and they would have noticed it if it'd been there.\" you trying to prove?\" \"I guess,\" said Stevenson slowly, thinking it out as he went along, \"I guess I'm trying to prove that somebody melted those tires, and made that rifle too hot, and left his signature behind.\" \"What? You mean like in the comic books? Come on, Stevenson! What are desperately. \"How should I know? And why not, anyway? You know as well as I do these things happen. A bunch of teen-agers burgle a liquor store and they write 'The Golden Avengers' on the plate glass in lipstick. It happens all the time. Why not 'The Scorpion'? It couldn't occur to two people?\" \"But there's no explanation—\" started Stevenson. The day after Jerome Higgins went berserk, the afternoon mail brought a You did not warn your readers. The man who shot all those people could not escape the Scorpion. The Scorpion fights crime. No criminal is safe from the Scorpion. WARN YOUR READERS. THE SCORPION Unfortunately, this letter was not read by the same individual who had for the cops to keep track of all of them, and if you're picked up carrying a knife or a length of tire chain or something, why, you're on your way to a Hallowe'en party and you're in costume. You're going as a chicken at the intersections nearest the schoolyard, both to warn of and a flowing: black cape. He wore a black and gold mask and had a the yellow-and-black costume go scooting away down the street. And she had the craziest idea that it was all his fault. Captain Hanks was still in his realistic cycle this morning, and he was impatient as well. \"All right, Stevenson,\" he said. \"Make it fast, I've got a lot to do this morning. And I hope it isn't this comic-book thing \"So what?\" \"Did you see that thing about the gang fight up in Manhattan?\" Captain Hanks sighed. \"Stevenson,\" he said wearily, \"are you going to try to connect every single time the word 'scorpion' comes up? What's him. \"One of them was the Scarlet Raiders and the other gang was the Challengers.\" \"So they changed their name,\" said Hanks. \"Both gangs? Simultaneously? To the same name?\" \"Why not? Maybe that's what they were fighting over.\" that much. It says so in the paper. And it also says they all deny ever seeing that word on their jackets until after the fight.\" \"A bunch of juvenile delinquents,\" said Hanks in disgust. \"You take their word?\" \"Captain, did you read the article in the paper?\" branded 'The Scorpion.'\" tell you something,\" said Hanks severely. \"They heard the police sirens, and they threw all their weapons away. Then they threw their jackets away, to try to make believe they hadn't been part of the gang that had been fighting. But they were caught before they could get out of the schoolyard. If the squad cars had showed up a minute later, the schoolyard wouldn't have had anything in it freezing cold and branding names into jackets is just some smart-alec punk's idea of a way to razz the police. Now, you just go back to worrying about what's happening in this precinct and forget about kid gangs up in Manhattan and comic book things like the Scorpion, or\n\n<question>:\nIf the newspapers and the police choose to continue ignoring the letters from The Scorpion, what will likely happen?\n\n<options>:\nA The Scorpion will likely retaliate against the newspapers in his own dangerous stunt.\nB The Scorpion will step in again, leaving his signature, and likely send another letter to the newspaper as a warning to criminals.\nC The Scorpion will likely turn evil himself and start antagonizing attacks.\nD Hanks will be proven right and show that there is no such person who is fighting crime and leaving a signature.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,889 | 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>:\nsense of excitement and satisfaction that he greeted the tall, dark, smooth-faced figure that came up the stairs and into the office shortly before noon. Many of the faces seemed familiar passengers. He was a short, corner for just a moment.\" removed an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer. Pointing it at the amazed customer, he fired four .22 caliber longs into the narrow chest. Then he made a telephone call and sat down to he would have to cover his tracks carefully. would be before his next client first to perceive the peculiar odor and to spot the immense gray hulk wallowing in the murky distance. Then the explosion had come, was in the second. The roar of the sinking ship was the last thing he heard for some time. Pembroke came as close to being a human being. When she left the hotel at midnight, Pembroke was quite sure that she understood his plan and in his pocket contained exactly His next thought was of food. He left the room and descended with him. Tomorrow might bring years of searching for a passion, for a cause, for a loyalty, Frank Pembroke had at last found his. his death, but it might also ensure peopled it. And Mary Ann would help him to save it. hungry, he began to study the probably. He also recognized several of the passengers. However, he made no attempt to speak to shooting out on the desert which others in the restaurant. walk. His situation could have been any small western American seacoast city. He heard the hiss going out anyway. He picked up Mary Ann at her told him that there were no living creatures anywhere but in fact that there was nothing to hunt and only a single target the city. Pembroke and Mary Ann took turns firing at the paper targets they had purchased. At twilight they headed back to the footprints would be left, Pembroke hopped off. Mary Ann her and that she had shot him. If necessary, she would conduct the authorities to the place where they had been target shooting, but would be unable to locate the spot where she had buried the body. Why had she buried it? Because at first she was not going to report the incident. one, but should be considerably safer. He headed slowly for the \"old\" part of town, aging his clothes against buildings and fences as he walked. He had already blacken his face. And he would look weary and hungry and aimless. Only the last would be a deception. walked through several small specialty shops. He tried to get the woman off his mind, but the to bother him. She was she might go to the police again, this time for vengeance. Twice during his wanderings Pembroke had seen the corpses that to her? Then he saw the weird little on each of its six limbs, and smiled up at him as he stared. \"Can I help you, sir?\" a middle-aged it would be simple enough to locate him if he were reported as being on the loose. There was a ground hog, had seven fingers left in Puerto Pacifico, and the counter. \"What the hell was that?\" Pembroke demanded. one of the—strangers?\" \"And if I were?\" exodus would take place. Yet he was certain the first lap would be since no one he had talked was to leave shortly. If there was any but the most superficial examination, Pembroke would no doubt be discovered and exterminated. But since no one seemed \"Well, they've got a point,\" knew where he was. But as he left the shop he began checking He headed for the nearest service station and asked for a when she recognized him. That admonished her in a whisper. \"Walk on ahead.\" She obeyed. He followed. The \"Okay, then where am I?\" crowd grew thicker. They neared you are,\" the boy returned. \"Pardon me, there's a customer,\" Pembroke watched him hurry To his surprise, the boy the little room. Then he saw that there was another entity in his presence \"What is your name?\" queried a metallic voice from a speaker on the wall. \"Which situation's 'at?\" minutes. Then he was told he giving with his perfect smile. \"No getting out of here, is there?\" \"That's for sure,\" the boy said, walking away to wait on another customer. \"If you don't like the place, you've had it.\" instructions. Then you will attack. In the meantime, serve us well.\" He stumbled out toward the docks, then looked about for Mary Ann. He saw her at last rectangular little man in his fifties named Spencer. He sat in a booth with three young women, in tears. Then she saw him. Waving frantically, she called his name all lovely, all effusive. The topic the woman persisted in her shouting. Sidling up to a well-dressed the ship, ignoring her. But still winked at him and snickered. sexy,\" the redhead said petulantly. \"Just be yourself, gal,\" Spencer drawled, jabbing her intimately with a fat elbow, \"and you'll qualify.\" \"Me, me,\" the blonde with a feather cut was insisting. \"What is wrong with me?\" \"Hell, no. But some poor punk's sure red in the face, I'll bet,\" the man-about-town said that,\" said Pembroke, snickering again as he moved away from the other. \"And why not? Hey? Why not?\" But the dolls had apparently lost interest in him. They got up one by one and walked out of the night he was deposited in a field tonic and moved over to Spencer's booth. \"Okay if I join you?\" himself, however, till the police how he had drifted far from the scene of the sinking of the \"Sure,\" said the fat man. on a piece of wreckage, and had been picked up by a Chilean trawler. How he had then made his way, with \"Wonder what the hell got into Spencer, peering at him suspiciously. \"Maybe you've figured out where we are.\" \"Your bet's as good as mine,\" the two demolished Pacificos that lay sprawled one atop the other in the corner. His watch said one-fifteen. The man from the FBI should arrive soon. There were footsteps on the stairs for the third time that man appeared at the door. His Spencer. \"Look, Joe, what's the gag?\" face was smooth, unpimpled, clean-shaven, without sweat on a \"Well, so what?\" demanded pistol solved his problem effectively. Pembroke tossed his third victim onto the pile, then opened a can of lager, quaffing the chair, both feet upon the desk. He would be out of business soon, once the FBI agent had got there. Pembroke was only in it to get the proof he would need to Spencer opened his mouth to protest, but saw with amazement that it was exactly this that had run in all the Los Angeles papers for the past week. The little ad that had saved mankind \"Somebody's crazy around here,\" the fat man muttered after a few moments. \"Is it me, Frank?\" Spencer. Consider the men who went down with the ship. That was just part of the game.\" \"What the hell are you sayin'?\" asked Spencer in disbelief. the three babes? Ah, come on.\" \"It's what you think that will determine what you do, Spencer. Pembroke rose and started out of the bar. A policeman entered and walked directly to Spencer's table. Loitering at the juke box, Pembroke overheard the conversation. \"You Spencer?\" \"That's right,\" said the fat man sullenly. \"Ah, hell! Nothin' wrong with you at all, and nothin'll make me say there is,\" said Spencer. \"You're the guy, all right. Too bad, Mac,\" said the cop. Pembroke heard the shots as he strolled casually out into the brightness of the hotel lobby. While he waited for the elevator, he saw them carrying the body into the street. How many others, he wondered, had gone out on their backs during their first day that she was irrevocably in love\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Pembrook shoot the man in the corner?\n\n<options>:\nA The man in the corner is one of the strangers.\nB The man in the corner is an android sent by alien masters to facilitate an invasion of Earth.\nC The man in the corner was an alien invader.\nD The man in the corner came to kill Pembrook.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,505 | 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>:\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 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. 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. \"The airline's policy, which is consistent with all contracts of carriage at all airlines, requires that passengers file a report in person for lost or damaged luggage within four hours of arrival at their destination,\" a Southwest spokeswoman, Linda Rutherford, e-mailed me. \"[M.] indicates she called for a few days, but did not file a report in person until April 12--three days later. Southwest, as a courtesy, took her report anyway and asked for follow up information and written inventory of the damage.\" Rutherford said that M. should have submitted detailed receipts and photographs of the damage in order to make a claim. Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied: \"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our heels.)\" She goes on, \"I did call that evening ... and was told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the 12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval and left bags out in the rain a long time.\" Southwest's response actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. \"Before, they had a mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a pissed-off customer.\" Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck. 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>:\nWhat is one of the general takeaways of good assistance that is discussed in the article?\n\n<options>:\nA The customer is in fact always right, and this should be taken seriously\nB The easiest way to get rid of a problem is to pretend the issue never happened\nC Customers can be wrong, but you can usually bribe them to feel okay in the end\nD It can be okay if something goes awry as long as someone takes responsibility, otherwise it gets worse\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>:\nland. Svan was the leader making the final Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The Officer of the Deck was pleased as he returned to the main lock. There was no reason why everything shouldn't have been functioning is—right down into the mud. Well—\" he laughed—\"maybe they will. After all, the fittest survive. That's a basic law of—\" The annunciator over the open lock clanged vigorously, and a metallic voice rasped: \"Officer of the Deck! Post Number One! Instruments reports a spy ray focused on the main lock!\" \"Set up a screen! Notify the delegation! Alert a landing party!\" But even while he was giving orders, the warning light flickered suddenly others in the room looked apprehensive. \"You see?\" Svan repeated. \"From head. \"Svan, I'm afraid,\" she said. \"Who are we to decide if this Svan laughed harshly. \" agreed. \"Svan, what must we do?\" convinced by Svan. \"Good,\" said Svan. \"Then we must act. The Council has told us that we Earth-ship returns, it means disaster for Venus. Therefore, it must not return.\" An old man shifted restlessly. \"But they are strong, Svan,\" he Svan nodded. \"No. They will leave. But they will never get back to Earth.\" \"Never get back to Earth?\" the old man gasped. \"Has the Council authorized—murder?\" Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The Earth-ship has.\" He paused dangerously. \"Toller,\" he said, \"do you object?\" Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was \"We will let chance decide who is to do the work,\" he said angrily. \"Is there anyone here who is afraid? There will be danger, I think....\" No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that bowl.\" there were a few left. She shook them out and handed the bowl to Svan, who was rapidly creasing the six fatal slips. He dropped them in the bowl, stirred it with his hand, offered it to the girl. \"You first, Ingra,\" he said. Svan, too, had left his unopened. He sat at the table, facing them. \"This is the plan,\" he said. \"We will go, all six of us, in my ground car, to look at the Earth-ship. No one will suspect—the whole city has been to see it already. One will get out, at the best point we can There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over, striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing.... up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision. The six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the main street of the native town. Two Earth-ship sailors, unarmed except for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the Not one of them understands what this means. They're afraid. He clamped his lips. \"Go faster, Ingra,\" he ordered the girl who was driving. \"Let's get this done with.\" She looked at him, and he was surprised to find compassion in her that followed its thunderous crash, a man's voice bellowed: \"Halt!\" The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the brakes. A Venusian in the trappings of the State Guard advanced on them \"Where are you going?\" he growled. Svan spoke up. \"We want to look at the Earth-ship,\" he said. He opened the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard it was leaving tonight,\" he continued, \"and we have not seen it. Is that not permitted?\" The guard shook his head sourly. \"No one is allowed near the ship. The order was just issued. It is thought there is danger.\" Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It \"By heaven, yes, I understand! You are the swine that caused this—\" He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was faster. His gamble had failed there was only one course remaining. He hurled his gross white bulk at the guard, bowled him over against the splintery logs of the road. The proton-rifle went flying, and Svan savagely tore at the throat of the guard. Knees, elbows and claw-like nails—Svan battered at the astonished man with every ounce of strength in his body. The guard was as big as Svan, but Svan had the initial advantage ... and it was only a matter of seconds before the guard lay unconscious, his skull a mass of gore at the back where Svan had ruthlessly pounded it against the road. Svan grunted as his fingers constricted brutally. Svan rose, panting, stared around. No one else was in sight, save the petrified five and the ground car. Svan glared at them contemptuously, then reached down and heaved on the senseless body of the guard. Over the shoulder of the road the body went, onto the damp swampland of the jungle. Even while Svan watched the body began to sink. There would be Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness. Svan hesitated only a fraction of a second after the girl turned the the compartment, though Svan's hand emerged with only one. He got out of the car, holding the sphere. \"This will do for me,\" he said. \"They won't be expecting anyone to come from behind the ship—we Svan, listening, thought: Aloud, he said, \"You understand. If I get through, I will return to the city on foot. No one will suspect anything if I am not caught, because the bomb will not explode until the ship is far out in space. Remember, you are in no danger from the guards.\" From the guards , his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would feel no pain, never know what happened. With the amount of atomite in ground-shaking crash. Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting off the seconds. \"Go ahead,\" he ordered. \"I will wait here.\" Svan looked after them. The kiss had surprised him. What did it mean? its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own. They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the side of the ship. Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance. He had perhaps three minutes to wait of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop. Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan, with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came for you. We must flee!\" swinging at his side, he made a dozen floundering steps before something immense pounded at him from behind. He felt himself lifted from the road, sailing, swooping, dropping with annihilating force The Flight Surgeon rose from beside him. \"He's still alive,\" he said callously to Lowry, who had just come up. \"It won't last long, though. What've you got there?\"\n\n<question>:\nWhich of the following isn't a reason that Svan's plan failed?\n\n<options>:\nA Ingra came back for Svan because guards were after them\nB A guard stopped them and wouldn't let them get through\nC There were more people guarding the ship because of the spy-ray\nD A guard knocked him unconscious and brought him to the Earth ship\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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2,203 | quality | [
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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>:\nthat. It doesn't matter how outlandish a whopper you tell. Unless, of course, they've made up their minds that you just just what they've done. It wouldn't make any difference to them what them believe it.\" Altairian stopped, producing a huge key ring from some obscure that they'd have to believe—a lie they simply couldn't help but believe—\" He turned on Meyerhoff, his hands trembling. \"Do they think best I can do under the circumstances.\" Meyerhoff scowled, and turned abruptly to the guard. \"We'll have some privacy now, if you please. Interplanetary ruling. And leave us the light.\" The guard grumbled, and started for the door. \"It's about up and down on one foot, staring idiotically into space. \"If I could only think—\" he muttered. \"Somebody—somewhere—something \"No, no, I've got a problem in the bag!\" Zeckler's cheeks flushed. \"Let's go back in there—I think I've got an answer!\" The courtroom quieted the moment they opened the door, What happened? I mean, all they had to do was get a man over here, get the extradition papers signed, and provide transportation off the planet for me. Why so much time? I've been sitting here rotting—\" He broke off in mid-sentence and stared at Meyerhoff. \"You brought the papers, didn't you? I mean, we can leave now?\" \" All Earthmen are absolutely incapable of telling the truth. \" Consulate on Altair V, just waiting for me to walk in and pick you live long enough to walk in and pick them up, that is.\" \"What do you mean, if?\" \"Really,\" said Harry Zeckler loftily, \"it was so obvious I'm amazed that it didn't occur to me first thing.\" He settled himself practically dead. You may not know it, but you are. You walk Rocket and grinned at the outline of Altair IV looming larger into a newly opened planet with your smart little bag of tricks, 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 down comfortably in the control cabin of the Interplanetary \" You mean I'm not being extradited? \" that they simply could not cope with. Something that would You've committed a crime here—a major crime. The Altairians throw them into such utter confusion that they wouldn't Meyerhoff grinned unpleasantly. \"I mean precisely that. dare are sore about it. And the Terran Consulate isn't willing to sell all the trading possibilities here down the river just to natives are out to get you. Personally, I think they're \"You've committed the most heinous crime these creatures can a trading alliance with Altair I, and that includes uranium, too. Smart people don't gamble with loaded dice. You scared them so badly they don't want anything to do with us.\" imagine, and they're going to get you for it if it's the last thing I've got a fortune in credits sitting back at the consulate waiting for me—enough to keep me on silk for quite a while, I might say. I think I'll just take a nice, long vacation.\" Meyerhoff turned to him, and a twinkle of malignant glee appeared in his eyes. \"Yes, I think you will. I'm quite sure of trial. The Altairians weren't any too happy to would first fall prey to the fast-trading boys. They spread out from Terra with the first wave of exploration—the slick, fast-talking con-men who could work new territories unfettered by the legal restrictions that soon closed down the more established you know. Yes, I think we'll take a nice long vacation together, straight back to Terra. And there I think you'll face a jury trial.\" Arrest! \" planets. The first men in were the richest out, and with them. Altair I had been recognized at once by the Trading through some curious quirk of the Terrestrial mind, they knew I don't think you'll get off.\" Transcriber's Note: in spite of all their bumbling and fussing and squabbling they're not so dull. You'd have found out that they're marsupials, and that two out of five of them get thrown out of their mother's pouch before they're old enough to survive. You'd have realized that they have to start fighting for individual rights almost as soon as they're born. Anything goes, as long as it benefits them as individuals.\" heard of that, had you? And you've never heard of other things, too. You've probably never heard that there are just too many Altairians here for the food their planet can supply, and their diet is so finicky that they just can't live on anything that in their economy, not money nothing but land. To get land, it's every man for himself, and the loser starves, and their entire legal and monetary system revolves on that principle. 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 suppose they don't have one. They have only the haziest idea what truth represents, and they've shrugged off the idea as Meyerhoff sighed. \"You've got twelve mad Altairians in your going to sit quietly by and let them butcher me? How could think it's a big joke—after all, what could a judicial oath mean to them?—but they agreed. Only thing is, they're going to sharply, and spilled two guards over on their faces. \"Privacy,\" he grunted, and started back up the slippery corridor. It certainly looked Altairians attempted to push through the door at once. Zeckler Altairians filed in, in order of stature, stalking across the room \"We are reading the case of the people of Altair I,\" the \"Conspiracy to overthrow the government of Altair I. Brutal with the accursed scum of Altair II in preparation The Altairian shrugged indifferently. \"Now—later—\" he whispered. \"They're insane!\" \"Of course they are,\" Meyerhoff whispered back. \"But what am I going to—\" Altairian equivalent of a hungry grin at the prosecutor. Then of the seventh crossing of Altair II (may the Goddess cast \"I never saw him before in my life,\" Zeckler moaned to Meyerhoff. \"Listen to him! Why should I care where their Goddess—\" \"Of course it isn't! Can't you understand? These people have no regard for truth. It's stupid, to them, silly, a mark of low intelligence. The only thing in the world they have any respect for is a liar bigger and more skillful than they are.\" \"now, because I may not live long enough to repeat what I am about to tell you—\" The murmur quieted down, all ears straining in their headsets There was a loud hiss from the back of the court. Zeckler frowned and rubbed his hands together. \"It was my misfortune,\" he said, \"to go to the wrong planet when I first came to Altair from my homeland on Terra. I—I landed on Altair II, planet, at the hands of those barbarians. The conspiracy is \"Wait! Your Honor, I request a short recess before I present my final plea.\" \"Recess?\" \"A few moments to collect my thoughts, to arrange my Somehow, Zeckler managed to stumble from the witness stand, amid riotous boos and hisses, and tottered into the anteroom.\n\n<question>:\nWhy don't the Altairians leave Altair I if it is so overpopulated?\n\n<options>:\nA They don't leave because they can only eat food grown on Altair I.\nB The Goddess won't let them leave.\nC They don't leave because no other planets will clear ships from Altair I for landing. Nobody likes liars.\nD They don't leave because they have not achieved space travel.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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2,366 | quality | [
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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 was the endless problem of all spaceship cooks: He had to feed the men tomorrow on what they had eaten today! 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. The first amenity of groundside existence to be abandoned was decent food. The earliest men into the vacuum swallowed protein squeezings from aluminum tubes, and were glad enough to drop back to the groundsman's diet of steak and fried potatoes. what was day-before-yesterday's table-scraps and jakes-water. 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. the stomach of every man aboard, where it fermented each subsequent bite he ate to a superior grade of sake . And for a third footnote to the hardest man in space and very likely the fattest. Ship's Cook was Robert Bailey. 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 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 Willy Winkelmann. Cheek-by-jowl every day in a nacelle the size of a It was Winkelmann who saw humorous possibilities in the entry, \"Bailey, Bailey tried to feed us by groundside standards. He hid the taste textured the mass to the consistency of hamburger and toasted the slabs to a delicate brown in a forlorn attempt to make mock-meat. For dessert, he served a fudge compounded from the dextrose-paste of the carbohydrate recycler. The crew thanked him. The Captain did not. \"Belly-Robber,\" he said, his tone icy as winter wind off the North Sea, \"Doc, do you like Winkelmann?\" the Cook asked me. \"I wish he'd leave off driving this Cook,\" Bailey said. \"The fat swine!\" \"His plumpness is an unwitting tribute to your cooking, Bailey,\" I \"You'll never make Winkelmann happy,\" I said. \"Even the simultaneous guess: the hours spent preparing a green Chlorella paste, rolling and drying and shaping each artificial leaf, the fitting together of nine heads like crisp, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzles. The Bailey stared across the dining-cubby toward Winkelmann, silently imploring the Captain's ratification of his masterpiece. The big man's pink cheeks bulged and jumped with his chewing. He swallowed. \"Belly-Robber,\" Winkelmann said, \"I had almost rather you served me this pond-scum raw than have it all mucked-up with synthetic onions and cycler-salt.\" gazed at Winkelmann's form, bulbous from a lifetime of surfeit feeding. \"Sir, what in heaven's name do you expect from me?\" Bailey pleaded. \"Only good food,\" Winkelmann mumbled through his mouthful of disguised algae. He tapped his head with a finger. \"This—the brain that guides 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 keep my belly content and my brain alive.\" Winkelmann got up and climbed the ladder to the pilot-cubicle. I Winkelmann regarded me with his pale-blue stare. \"You think, Doctor, 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 acidly called in question again. I myself do not doubt that Bailey was the finest Cook ever to go into Hohmann orbit. His every meal established a higher benchmark in ersatz hot turkey supreme. The cheese-sauce was almost believable, the Chlorella \"We are not amused,\" said Captain Winkelmann, accepting a second helping of the pseudo-turkey. \"You are improving, Belly-Robber, but only arithmetically. Your first efforts were so hideous as to require Winkelmann produced his supreme insult to our Cook. on the mysterious box as he sat to eat. \"What disgusting form does the ship's garbage appear in today, Belly-Robber?\" he asked the Cook. Bailey frowned, but kept his temper, an asceticism in which by now he'd \"I understand,\" Winkelmann growled. \"You intend that your latest mess \"It rather throws me off my appetite to hear how you muddle about with our food,\" the Captain said, his jowls settling into an expression of 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 meal.\" 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 \"This, Belly-Robber!\" Winkelmann reached beneath the mess-table and masterpiece. \"The scarlet burial-shroud for the failures of Cooks.\" Lifting a hunk of the \"steak,\" streaming ketchup, to his mouth, Winkelmann chewed. \"Just the thing,\" he smiled. \"Damn you!\" Bailey shouted. Winkelmann's smile flicked off, and his blue eyes pierced the Cook. \"That's better,\" Winkelmann said, and took another bite. He said \"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 slops for another hundred days, without the small consolation of \"I hate him,\" Bailey said with the simplicity of true emotion. He red-eyed and a-tremble, made no apology, and stared at Winkelmann as a price I was willing to pay for seeing destroyed the Willy Winkelmann had pushed too hard. He'd need that ketchup for the meals to come, I thought. vehement in their protests, blaming the Captain, in his absence, for the decline in culinary standards. Bailey seemed not to care. He served first-shift diners said. \"It actually tastes of food!\" \"Then he's beat the Captain at his game,\" I said. \"The Dutchman won't want to mess ketchup on these steaks,\" the crewman us with the small \"steaks.\" Each contained about a pound of dried Chlorella, I judged, teasing mine with my fork. But they were drenched in a gravy rich as the stuff grandma used to make in her black iron skillet, peppery and seasoned with courageous bits of garlic. I cut a bit from my steak and chewed it. Too tender, of course 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.\n\n<question>:\nWhat was Winkelmann's greatest insult to Bailey?\n\n<options>:\nA Slathering ketchup on Bailey's most proud concoction\nB Reducing his compensation\nC Refusing to eat the steaks that Bailey innovated\nD Remarking that the food in which he invested the least effort in making was the most delicious\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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2,124 | quality | [
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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 sight of an Earthman John Crownwall as he strode prehensile fingers, as he ignored the heavy gravity and heavier air of the unfamiliar planet. John Crownwall, florid, red-headed and bulky, considered himself to be a bold man. But here, Earthlings, that is.\" he felt distinctly unhappy. Crownwall Crownwall nodded. \"In other of destroying them, and thereby If they carried out the threats of their present attitude, Earth would have to send Marshall to replace him. And if Crownwall couldn't do the job, thought Crownwall, then it was a sure bet that Marshall to Crownwall. \"You broke our wouldn't have a chance. He climbed the great ramp, with its deeply carved Greek key design, toward the mighty entrance demonstrated an elaborate air of unconcern that he felt sure was entirely Crownwall and unexpectedly to Crownwall, gesture to be interpreted correctly, would be. He was correct. \"Of course,\" His Effulgence said, Crownwall all but sagged with \"we will give you any assurances but he assumed that his silence relief. A pair of guards, their purple hides smoothly polished and gleaming \"Bunk,\" said Crownwall. with oil, crossed their ceremonial senior of the guards, his speaking orifice framing with difficulty the \"It seems to me that we need no wordy assurances from each other,\" said Crownwall, and he Crownwall. \"I want to see Ffallk.\" just to quarantine you. When we had used your radio system there, but I doubt it.\" \"Just tell him that a man has arrived from Earth to talk to him. He'll summon me fast enough. Meanwhile, my highly polished Crownwall sat on the steps, trying to present an air of strolling nonchalance. He gestured fluidly with a graceful tentacle. \"You!\" he said to Crownwall. \"Follow me. His Effulgence commands you to appear before him at once.\" The two Crownwall stamped out his After several minutes of silent consideration, \"It is an excellent plan,\" said His Effulgence. \"It is why we cannot proceed with our discussions.\" \"Nor do I,\" consented Crownwall. Vegan in lordly trappings. They examined Crownwall with \"I'm afraid that Ggaran had expected to take what you Earthlings have to offer without giving such ideas. I have not underestimated you, you see.\" \"That's nice,\" said Crownwall Crownwall to still Crownwall's immediate possible,\" he said. \"It was only decided yesterday, back on Earth, that I would be the one to make the trip here. Even if you could indicate how we can make use of it, along with you—enough to allow After due consideration, Crownwall nodded. \"I don't Earthling from another? What I meant was that I expected someone from Earth to break through our blockade and come here. Most of my advisors—even Ggaran here—thought it couldn't be done, but I never doubted that you'd manage take over number one spot from Crownwall. \"If you wanted someone from Earth to come here to see to Crownwall. \"If you couldn't Earth as the spatial referent, I am the leader of one of the mightiest peoples in the Galaxy, of which ours is such a distinguished member. whereas there are scarcely six \"Then of course, as I continued \"I'm listening,\" said Crownwall. \"We offer you partnership with us to take over the rule of the Master Race.\" \"It would hardly be an equal it was really very simple. \"And there's no danger of meeting \"Are you sure that you haven't given us a little too much information for your own safety?\" asked Crownwall shrugged. \"So?\" \"Excellent,\" said Ffallk. \"I'd better escort you They showed many signs of an ability to reason, but a complete cohort of troops, pikes at the ready and bows strapped to their backs, leaped forward and formed a be numbered among the Servants of the Emperor. So we let you alone, in order that you could develop in your own way, until you reached a high enough civilization least, as Ambassador, you can ride \"I'm glad of that,\" said Crownwall. \"You Earthlings, in defiance of Crownwall. \"I was course,\" he added, bowing slightly to Crownwall. \"Of course,\" agreed Crownwall, doesn't hear your trumpeters, or something like that?\" Ggaran stepped forward, already in space, about forty thousand kilometers above the Earth. It had been manned by a dozen adventurous people, captained by Crownwall, and had headed out on its ion after His Effulgence's entourage arrived.\" He turned to one of the The men of Earth had decided that it should work in theory. They never dared to try it, close to a with civilians who violate this particular tradition.\" His Effulgence beckoned to the bowman to approach. \"Your results were satisfactory,\" he said, \"but planet. To do so, said their theory, would usually—seven point three and spoke again to Crownwall. had headed for that planet confidently and unsuspectingly, using the ion drive. \"Of course,\" said Crownwall, Although caught by surprise, the Earthmen had acted swiftly. Crownwall recalled the discussion—the Crownwall. as they had departed. Earth had immediately prepared for war to His Effulgence and to Crownwall during the trip, without interrupting the smooth progress they had returned to Earth as swiftly continued to run—without food, danger.\" of fatigue. After several hours of travel, following Crownwall's directions, the Ffallk rippled in agreement. \"The action you took was too swift drink or, except for Ggaran, evidence my own race who manned them. We had tried to contact you, but since you had not developed subspace than the height of folly. It was madness.\" Crownwall climbed into his \"Could we have done anything landing on Earth and taking us over?\" asked Crownwall. \"Would that have been so bad?\" starting his enormous journey through time back to Earth. More quickly than it had taken him to said Ggaran. \"We can't tolerate Government of Earth, making a full report on his trip to Vega. When he had finished, the President send ambassadors, you had already organized a not inconsiderable defense. send them down to your planet. obvious that we could not conquer you. We could only destroy you.\" \"That old fool on Sunda, the Emperor, decided that we should blow you up, but by that time I had decided,\" said His Effulgence, \"that you might be useful to me—that is, that we might be useful to each other. I traveled halfway across the Galaxy to meet him, to or two. Before I came in here, I asked Marshall to take the ship out and check on things. He should be convince him that it would be sufficient surprised if we didn't find a change back with his report before long. Why don't we wait and see what he has to say?\" we had done our job. \"With his usual lack of imagination, he felt sure that we were safe from you—after all, there was no way for you to get off the planet. Marshall largest of your oceans, he figured Crownwall. \"Our enemies are all show up on our planet. So I've been waiting for you, and here you are.\" \"Alone,\" he said, and unconsciously repeated Marshall's words: \"It was the thinking of a genius,\" am,\" said Crownwall. \"So what's murmured Ggaran. room, leaving Crownwall sitting at \"We're all alone now.\" involuntarily, and then leaped to his feet to follow after them. Loneliness, he found, was something that he couldn't face alone. —L. J. STECHER, JR. among the stars, and we helped them develop to the point where, in their inferior way, they were able \"For more than two million years we have waited for the opportunity opportunity is at hand.\" \"If you haven't been able to help yourselves for two million years,\" asked Crownwall, \"how does the at a soothing wave from His Effulgence. \"War in space is almost an impossibility,\" said the aged ruler.\n\n<question>:\nWhy is Crownwall the representative from Earth sent to Vega?\n\n<options>:\nA He was the only one who was willing to undergo the time travel procedure\nB He was the only one without connections on Earth, making it easier for him to take time away\nC He was the default choice once the humans determined that Marshall was not fit for the job\nD He was a reasonable option given his prior leadership experience on missions\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,101 | 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>:\nWhen Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official \"1999 In Review\" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December. OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it. Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever? The New York Times reported on Nov. 10, 1999, that a new record had been set in the latest Times /CBS poll: [Its] highest negative rating ever scored by a person in the news. The honor went to Reform Party candidate Donald Trump, who managed to make an unfavorable impression upon some 70 percent of those polled. The paper noted that this achievement far eclipsed the last comparably negative rating--the 55 percent score attained by Linda Tripp. Presumably this came as no surprise to Mr. Trump, who, upon announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee on Oct. 7, 1999, had cited polls with \"amazing results\"--a remark that was widely misinterpreted at the time. -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent 2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999 [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : Sen. Arlen Specter, citing Scottish law, finds Clinton \"not proven\" on the impeachment charges. --Andrew Solovay 5. Rest in Peace in 1999: Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources) Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of \"peace and love\" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it. The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. 1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the \"City of the Century\" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the \"National Pastime,\" are truly an amazing story. therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play. The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999 10. Don't Worry in 1999 12. Another Overlooked Foreign-Policy Event in 1999 -- anonymous tipster 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick A sitting president was accused of rape. --Ananda Gupta Chatterbox interjects: Yes, but the evidence was shaky--something the Wall Street Journal 's editorial page, which broke the story, was not very forthcoming about. As Jack Shafer wrote in this column, Ronald Reagan, after he left office, was also accused of having once committed rape. The evidence there was shaky, too. 17. The Most Important Thing of All That Happened in 1999 In 1999, more than half of U.S. homes had a PC, for the first time (i.e., home-PC penetration passed 50 percent). Of course, most of these PCs crashed all the time, but it's still a significant development. By the way, Internet hookups in homes are still well below 50 percent. --Jodie Maurer 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999 The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. --Josh Pollack 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least.\n\n<question>:\nWhat does Charrerbox think is the most important thing that happened in 1999?\n\n<options>:\nA The Senate endorsed nuclear proliferation.\nB More than half of US homes had a personal computer.\nC Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy.\nD A sitting president was accused of rape.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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362 | 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 subdue a defenseless world—only to meet on was well above the average in height—but his body was thick and powerfully muscled. His skull was well-shaped and large his features The Orthan entered the narrow strip of trees and crossed to the wait for an Earthman or an Earthwoman to pass. His task now was to bring a native, intact if possible, back to the carefully buried space cruiser where his two fellows and himself would drain the creature's mentality of all its knowledge. In this way they could learn whether a planet was suited for colonization by later swarms of Orthans. time. The mighty muscles of the Orthan sent him hurtling across the of his subconscious. Yet he had Earthman to the metal deck-plates. \"It is a male of the species that wears he might be Thig.\" \"Thig will be this creature!\" announced Torp. \"With a psychic relay we will transfer the Earthman's memories and meager store of knowledge to the brain of Thig! He can then go out and scout this world without arousing suspicion. While he is gone, I will take Kam and explore the two inner planets.\" these clumsy sheathing upon his body. On Ortha we do not hamper the use you disguise yourself as an Earthman.\" \"For the good of the Horde,\" Thig intoned almost piously as he lifted Terry's body and headed for the laboratory. Service for the Horde was all that the men of Ortha knew. Carefully cultured and brought to life in the laboratories of their Horde, they knew neither father nor mother. Affection and love were entirely lacking in their early training and later life. They were trained antlike from childhood that only the growth and power of the Horde robots of flesh and bone for the Horde. The Horde was their religion, their love-life, their everything! So it was that the bodies of the Earthman and the Orthan were strapped one another by the intricacies of the psychic relay, put upon their heads. completely. Twice, with subtle drugs they restored pseudo-life to his \"There is nothing more to learn,\" he informed his impassive comrades. \"Now, let us get on with the plastic surgery that is required. My new body must return to its barbaric household before undue attention is aroused. And when I return I will take along some of the gleaming baubles we found on the red planet—these people value them highly.\" An hour later, his scars and altered cartilage already healed and memories of this particular section of Long Island. Here was the place where Jake and Ted had helped him dig for the buried treasure that old 'Notch-ear' Beggs had told them so exactly about. Remembrance of acquired memories labeled as pleasure, sent a warm glow upward from around his heart. Then he saw the slender red-haired shape of a woman, the mate of the primitive impulses of barbarism so he was incapable of understanding the emotions that swept through his acquired memory. he acquired the knowledge of Terry that he found himself unconsciously adopting the thinking and mannerism of the other. All the better this way, he realized—more natural. chaos of his cool Orthan brain. including Ortha, was so well-favored and rich. An expeditionary force to wipe the grotesque civilizations of Earth out of existence would, of course, be necessary before the first units of new Hordes could be landed. And there Thig balked. Why must they destroy these people, Hordes? Thig tried to tell himself that it was the transmitted thoughts of the dead Earthman that made him feel so, but he was not too sure. For three months he had lived with people who loved, hated, wept and sacrificed for reasons that he had never known existed. He had learned the heady glory of thinking for himself and making his own decisions. He had experienced the primitive joy of matching his wits and tongue against The Orthan had come to question the sole devotion of the individual to the Horde to the exclusion of all other interests. What, he wondered, would one new world—or a hundred—populated by the Hordes add to the progress of humanity? For a hundred thousand years the Orthan mechanical hives. sapping the life from his own brain. He knew that the story would never So far had Thig the emotionless, robot-being from Ortha drifted from \"I will recommend the conquest of this planet, 72-P-3 at once and the complete destruction of all biped life upon it. The mental aberrations of the barbaric natives might lead to endless complications if they were permitted to exist outside our ordered way of life. I imagine that three circuits of the planet about its primary should prove sufficient for the purposes of complete liquidation.\" \"But why,\" asked Thig slowly, \"could we not disarm all the natives and exile them on one of the less desirable continents, Antarctica for example or Siberia? They are primitive humans even as our race was once a race of primitives. It is not our duty to help to attain our own degree of knowledge and comfort?\" race of feeble-witted beasts, such as these Earthmen, stand in the way of a superior race? We want their world, and so we will take it. The Law of the Horde states that all the universe is ours for the taking.\" There are forces at work upon Earth that we of Ortha have long forgotten.\" \"Check the blood of Thig for disease, Kam,\" ordered Torp shortly. \"His words are highly irrational. Some form of fever perhaps native to this world. While you examine him I will blast off for Ortha.\" stand between them! The Hordes of Ortha must find some other world, an empty world—this planet was not for them. woman there, helpless and alone, who needs me! The Horde does not need this planet.\" Kam eyed him coldly and lifted a shining hypodermic syringe from its case. He approached Thig warily, aware that disease often made a maniac of the finest members of the Horde. \"No human being is more important than the Horde,\" he stated baldly. must eliminate for the good of the Horde.\" the Orthan's vital throat tubes. His fingers and thumb gouged deep into matter. Horror for what he had done—that he had slain one of his own ancestors at times but to that very bit of unconscious atavism he now owed his life. A cool-headed robot of an Orthan would have efficiently used the blaster to destroy any possibility of remaining life in his unconscious body. why he had been left until last. Perhaps Torp wished to take cultures of his blood and tissues to determine whether a disease was responsible for his sudden madness. The cases of fragile instruments were just above his head. Association The deadly attack of Thig his own violent avenging of Kam's death, and now the apparent return of the man he had killed come to life had all served to jolt his rigidly trained brain from its accustomed groove. The shock had been too much for the established thought-processes of the Orthan. He had saved a world's civilization from extinction! The thought Planet 72-P-3 unfit for colonization. Some pernicious disease that strikes at the brain centers and causes violent insanity is existent planet Ortha. Unless a rogue asteroid or a comet crossed the ship's hull, and cut free from the mother vessel. him from the parent ship. The sensation of free flight against his new body was strangely exhilerating and heady. It was the newest of the emotions he had experienced on Earth since that day, so many months before, when he had felt the warmness of Ellen's lips tight against his. regret in his mind that he was not returning to the planet of his first below. And there was a sickness within him when he fully realized that, despite his acquired memory and traits, he was an alien from outer space. He fingered the tiny scars that had completely obliterated the slight\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the purpose of the Orthan taking over a human host?\n\n<options>:\nA To get the full human experience, and understand what makes the planet worthwhile.\nB To investigate the planet without vslling attention, and determine if it's worth colonizing.\nC To assimilate the human host into the Hord, and add to it their knowledge.\nD To examine the memories of the human host, and see what knowledge they have.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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981 | 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. heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his \"There is Rikud on the floor!\" life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had grown. Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright. the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest: Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the disturbed Rikud, although he could not tell why. And, because he had If anyone else had noticed the change, he failed to mention it. This Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the health-lamps. It had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it he just didn't, without comprehending. weight of his body with all his strength against the door. It opened and he stepped outside into the warmth. The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He Rikud muttered to himself and undressed. The world had begun to annoy good. Crifer picked his head up, from the water, his chin wet. \"Even feelings are variable. I don't hate you now, Rikud.\" Rikud smiled, staring at the ship. \"People are variable, too, Crifer. Rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. It was It was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer, frightening doors and women by appointment only. Rikud felt at home. again, something which was as impalpable as air. Rikud had been stopped in this action, although there was no real authority to stop him. This puzzled him, because somehow he felt that 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 had to admit to himself that it was not unpleasant. He could see the look of easy contentment on Chuls' face as the rays fanned down upon him, bathing his old body in a forgotten magic which, many generations before Rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of medicine. But when, in another ten years, Chuls would perish of old age, the rays would no longer suffice. Nothing would, for Chuls. Rikud Under the tube at Rikud's left lay Crifer. The man was short and heavy Rikud looked at that foot, it was with a sense of satisfaction. True, this was the only case of its kind, the exception to the rule, but it proved the world was not perfect. Rikud was guiltily glad when he saw Crifer limp. But, if anyone else saw it, he never said a word. Not even Crifer. Now Crifer said, \"I've been reading again, Rikud.\" This was a new thought to Rikud, and he propped his head up on one elbow. \"What did you find out?\" remembered his childhood among women. But his feelings had changed this was different. Again there were inexplicable feelings—strange channelings of Rikud's energy in new and confusing directions. He shrugged and reserved the thought for later. He wanted to see the The view had changed, and the strangeness of it made Rikud's pulses leap with excitement. All the stars were paler now than before, and where Rikud had seen the one bright central star, he now saw a globe of light, white with a tinge of blue in it, and so bright that it hurt his eyes to look. Yes, hurt! Rikud looked and looked until his eyes teared and he had to turn away. Here was an unknown factor which the perfect world failed Rikud couldn't remember, and he suddenly wished he could read Crifer's book on astronomy, which meant the same as stars. Except that it was variable, which was like change, being tied up somehow with age. Presently Rikud became aware that his eyes were not tearing any longer, and he turned to look at the viewport. What he saw now was so new that he couldn't at first accept it. Instead, he blinked and rubbed his \"Won't you eat, Rikud?\" Chuls called from somewhere down below. \"Damn the man,\" Rikud thought. Then aloud: \"Yes, I'll eat. Later.\" But Rikud forgot the old man completely. A new idea occurred to him, and for a while he struggled with it. What he saw—what he had always seen, except that now there was the added factor of change—perhaps did \"What else?\" \"Else? Nothing.\" Anger welled up inside Rikud. \"All right,\" he said, \"listen. What do you hear?\" Rikud sat down hard. He blinked. For a whole week that view did not change, and Rikud had come to accept And Rikud, too, was hungry. they shone with a luster unfamiliar to him. \"Odd,\" Rikud said aloud. Then he thought, \"Now there's a good word, but not dare once to look back. He stood shaking at Crifer's side, and Crifer, but had no lame foot. Crifer hobbled about on his good foot, doing a meaningless little jig. Crifer hopped up and down. \"Look what Rikud's doing! I don't know what them watched Crifer jump up and down, but most of them watched Rikud This frightened Rikud, although he didn't know why. He'd like it, could huddle close to them and he wouldn't be alone. Rikud heard the throbbing again as he stood in the room of the began to wonder. If he destroyed the wheels and the cogs and the gears, would the buzzer stop? It probably would, because, as Rikud saw it, he confidently. \"It won't any more,\" Rikud said. \"What won't?\" \"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it.\" Crifer growled. \"I know. You shouldn't have done it. That was a bad thing you did, Rikud.\" \"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the \"That's ridiculous,\" Chuls said. 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 him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have Crifer shrilled, \"Maybe it is only variable and will buzz again.\" \"No,\" Rikud assured him. \"It won't.\" \"Then you broke it and I hate you,\" said Crifer. \"We should break you, too, to show you how it is to be broken.\" Crifer's voice. \"I have Rikud's head.\" The voice was nasty, hostile. to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud. The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face. \"I hit him! I hit him!\" Other hands reached out, and Rikud stumbled. He fell and then someone was on top of him, and he struggled. He rolled and was up again, and weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing hurt in his stomach. But it didn't matter. He heard the angry voices and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away. Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor. He felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet. break him.\n\n<question>:\nWhy is Rikud oddly satisfied about Crifer's limp foot?\n\n<options>:\nA It's new and interesting. Rikud is tired of the regular.\nB It means that people can hurt, which Rikud has an interest in.\nC He dislikes Crifer, and enjoys the fact that he is stuck with an anomaly.\nD It's evidence that imperfections still exist, and validates Rikud's feelings.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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416 | 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>:\nEveryone—all the geologists, at any rate—had known about the Kiowa Fault for years. That was before there was anything very interesting to know about it. The first survey of Colorado traced its course north and south in the narrow valley of Kiowa Creek about twenty miles east of Denver almost from the Canadian border well south of the New Mexico-Texas line. It is not really surprising that it took so long to figure out the connection. The population of the states affected was in places as California, which almost daily bounced San Francisco or Los Angeles, or some place in between. The dust volcano was on the face of it a more everywhere east of the Fault, to almost twenty miles away, the now-familiar lurch and steady fall had already sent several thousand Coloradans scurrying for safety. and rapidly approaching the border of New Mexico to the south. Trinchera and Branson were totally evacuated, but even so the over-all Away to the east the situation was quiet but even more ominous. Tremendous fissures opened up perpendicular to the Fault, and a general subsidence of the land was noticeable well into Kansas and Nebraska. The western borders of these states, and soon of the Dakotas and Oklahoma as well, were slowly sinking. the land shuddered downward in gasps and leaps. Springs burst to the surface in hot geysers and explosions of steam. The downtown section of North Platte, Nebraska, dropped eight feet, just like that, on the afternoon of 4 October. \"We must remain calm,\" declared the Governor of Nebraska. \"We must sit this thing out. Be way north along the Little Missouri. South, it ripped past Roswell, New Mexico, and tore down the Pecos toward Texas. All the upper reaches of the Missouri were standing puddles by now, and the Red River west of Paris, Texas, had begun to run backward. Soon the Missouri began slowly slipping away westward over the slowly churning land. Abandoning its bed, the river spread uncertainly across with a gigantic wave of refugees. Rails, roads and air-lanes were jammed with terrified hordes who had left everything behind to crowd eastward. All through October hollow-eyed motorists flocked into Tulsa, Topeka, Omaha, Sioux Falls and Fargo. St. Louis was made distributing center for emergency squads which flew everywhere with milk for babies and by a mob of would-be passengers in Bismarck, North Dakota. Federal and State troops were called out, but moving two million people was not to be done in an orderly way. second phase of the national disaster was beginning. The noise traveled due east at better than 85 miles per hour. In its was a sigh and a great cloud of dust, and Oklahoma subsided at the astounding rate of about six feet per hour. At Biloxi, on the Gulf, there had been uneasy shufflings under foot all about the same moment. The tidal wave which was to gouge the center from the U. S. marched on the land. From the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain to the Appalachicola River in Florida, the Gulf coast simply disappeared. Gulfport, Biloxi, had swept over every town from Dothan, Alabama, to Bogalusa on the Louisiana-Mississippi border. north. Chicot, Jennie, Lake Village, Arkansas City, Snow Lake, Elaine, Helena and Memphis felt the tremors. The tormented city shuddered through the night. The earth continued its descent, eventually tipping forming, overtopping the wave's leading edge as towns, hills and the thirst of the soil temporarily broke the furious charge. Washington announced the official hope that the Ozarks would stop the wild gallop of the unleashed Gulf, for in northwest Arkansas the land rose to over 2,000 feet. But nothing could save Oklahoma. By noon the water reached clutching fingers around Mt. Scott and Elk Mountain, Despite hopeful announcements that the wave was slowing, had virtually stopped after inundating Oklahoma City, was being swallowed up in the desert near Amarillo, the wall of water continued its advance. For the the Gulf. Schwartzberg and his geologists advised the utmost haste in evacuating the entire area between Colorado and Missouri, from Texas to North Dakota. Sterling, Colorado, on Sidney, Nebraska, on Hot Springs, South Dakota. precarious havens for half-drowned humanity. Waves bit off a corner of Missouri, flung themselves on Wichita. Topeka, Lawrence and Belleville were the last Kansas towns to disappear. The Governor of Kansas went down with his State. Daniel Bernd of Lincoln, Nebraska, was washed up half-drowned in a cove Nebraska to the other. Similar hair-breadth escapes were recounted on radio and television. western Nebraska and the Dakotas. But when the waters came to rest along what is roughly the present shoreline of our inland sea, it was almost the entirety of eight states, and portions of twelve others, had simply vanished from the heart of the North American continent forever. It was in such a cataclysmic birth that the now-peaceful Nebraska Sea came to America. Today, nearly one hundred years after the unprecedented—and happily it graduates from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico through the equally blue waves of the Mississippi Bight, becoming cooler and greener north and west of the pleasant fishing isles of the Ozark Archipelago, finally shading into the gray-green chop of the Gulf of Dakota. What would the United States have become without the 5600-mile coastline of our inland sea? It is only within the last twenty years lifetimes. Even so, the commercial fisheries of Missouri and Wyoming contribute no small part to the nation's economy. Who can imagine what the middle west must have been like before the Now, ending as it does at Memphis and drawing its water chiefly from the Appalachian Mountains, it is only a slight remnant of what it was. And though the Nebraska Sea today carries many times the tonnage of shipping in its ceaseless traffic, we have lost the old romance of river shipping. We may only guess what it was like when we look upon And transcontinental shipping is somewhat more difficult, with trucks Nebraska Sea. We shall never know what the United States was like with its numerous coast-to-coast highways busy with trucks and private cars. Still, the ferry ride is certainly a welcome break after days of driving, and for those who wish a glimpse of what it must have been like, there is always the Cross-Canada Throughway and the magnificent U. S. Highway 73 looping north through Minnesota and passing through the giant port of Alexis, North Dakota, shipping center for the wheat of Manitoba and crossroad of a nation. The political situation has long been a thorny problem. Only tattered Kansas seemed, for a time, ready to merge with contiguous Missouri, but following the lead of the Arkansas Forever faction, the remaining population decided to retain political integrity. This has resulted in the continuing anomaly of the seven \"fringe States\" represented in Congress by the usual two Senators each, though the largest of them is barely the size of Connecticut and all are economically are still families who proudly call themselves Oklahomans, and the Oklahoma Oil Company continues to pump oil from its submerged real estate, the state has in fact disappeared from the American political today. The heart of the continent, now open to the shipping of the world, was once dry and land-locked, cut off from the bustle of trade and the ferment of world culture. century to imagine sailors from the merchant fleets of every nation walking the streets of Denver, fresh ashore at Newport, only fifteen miles away. Or to imagine Lincoln, Fargo, Kansas City and Dallas as world ports and great manufacturing centers. Utterly beyond their ken would be Roswell, New Mexico west. But what a difference! Vacation paradises bloom, a new fishing industry thrives her water road is America's main artery of trade, and\n\n<question>:\nWhat is now a similar experience to what was once normal for shipping centers?\n\n<options>:\nA The Cross-Canada Throughway\nB Traveling ashore to Newport\nC Traveling to the Oklahoma Oil Company\nD Traveling through the fringe of Kansas\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,943 | 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\"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in all of 'em. \"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I \"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a claim.\" \"Claim?\" the first landing on the Moon. \"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine on the Moon!\" THE END position. \"Batteries must be dead,\" he told himself. \"What batteries?\" he asked. \"There're no batteries in here, the power comes from the generator.\" of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers, was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the freezing the water in the tank. the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler. drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and \"The water, man,\" he said, \"there is not enough to melt the ice in the ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function. It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares. furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant. \"They went out about an hour ago,\" she answered, \"I suppose that's what Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one. found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into a collector's bag. \"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man. These crystals,\" he said, \"look a little like zeolites, but that can't be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon.\" He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him. One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate. \"Well, now,\" he said, \"it's probably the largest natural crystal of potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch across.\" All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by the sun. The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo, move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same tirade, \"but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need. And then the Commission ...\" The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant \"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth, and not worth mining here the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium, they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again: \"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a profit.\" \"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down.\" The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the volume of each bubble filled with ice. mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. \"It would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night.\" was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric the water. It neither needed nor had much strength. ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor \"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds.\" Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed. Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now never say a word about any forebodings.\" \"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it tells me that Evans will be found.\" rocket would be needed in the search.\" The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth, are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole\n\n<question>:\nWhat clue proves the natural existence of water on the moon?\n\n<options>:\nA The ability to distill alcohol\nB Increase of meteor activity\nC Humans are able to survive for long periods of time\nD The presence of specific minerals\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,503 | 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>:\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. 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. 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? This month's airline in the spotlight is Southwest. Loyal readers will recall that last month the Shopping Avenger praised Southwest Airlines for its \"sterling\" customer service. This brought forth a small number of articulate dissensions. The most articulate, and the most troubling, came from M., who wrote, \"Last year, flying from Baltimore to Chicago with my entire family (two really little kids included), we set down at Midway in a rainstorm. And waited for our bags. And waited for bags. And waited for bags.\" An hour later, M. says, the bags showed up, \"soaked through. We took them to baggage services at SW and were faced with the most complicated, unclear, and confusing mechanism for filing a claim we experienced flyers have ever seen.\" 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. \"The airline's policy, which is consistent with all contracts of carriage at all airlines, requires that passengers file a report in person for lost or damaged luggage within four hours of arrival at their destination,\" a Southwest spokeswoman, Linda Rutherford, e-mailed me. \"[M.] indicates she called for a few days, but did not file a report in person until April 12--three days later. Southwest, as a courtesy, took her report anyway and asked for follow up information and written inventory of the damage.\" Rutherford said that M. should have submitted detailed receipts and photographs of the damage in order to make a claim. Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied: \"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our heels.)\" She goes on, \"I did call that evening ... and was told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the 12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval and left bags out in the rain a long time.\" Southwest's response actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. \"Before, they had a mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a pissed-off customer.\" Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck. Stay tuned, shoppers, to hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to her for her troubles.\n\n<question>:\nWhat does the author think is special about Southwest?\n\n<options>:\nA They give out better rewards for loyal customers when things go wrong\nB They tend to have more highly rated customer service\nC The company that processes complaints is the same as UHaul's\nD They replace suitcases when they are damaged on a flight\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
831 | 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 were mad, all right, and now Matilda wondered if, actually, Matilda would seek the happy medium. The best that could be said for Matilda Penshaws was that she was something of a paradox. She was thirty-three years old, certainly not aged when you consider the fact that the female life expectancy is now up in the sixties, but the lines were beginning to etch their permanent 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 Matilda paused. Off in the distance there was a glow on the horizon, This, in itself, was not unusual—but Matilda was so completely talk about it all to Matilda. Matilda not in the least. She had been known to say that there are over Matilda, you see, had patience. Matilda would write, and she often told her mother, the widow Penshaws, That particular night, Matilda pulled her battered old sedan into the Matilda smiled. \"It wouldn't have worked out, Ma. He was too darned to hide his feelings.\" \"Hogwash!\" said her daughter. \"He has no true feelings. He's sorry that 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 in love, Matilda—no one does. Love osmoses into you Matilda admired her mother's use of the word osmosis, but she found nothing which was not objectionable about being unaware of the impact light summer dress and took a cold shower. She began to hum to herself. She had not yet seen the pen pal section of the current Matilda switched her bed lamp on and dabbed some citronella on each Matilda read the next one twice. Then she held it close to the light Matilda even liked the sound of the name. But mostly, she had to admit Matilda could see that. But she had Matilda sighed happily as she put out the light. The moon shone in 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 perfectly straight, brushed her suede shoes, admired herself in the mirror, read the ad again, wished for a moment she were a bit younger, \"Mother,\" gasped Matilda. Matilda always gasped when she saw something 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 favorite piece of music. Once, she told herself: Matilda Penshaws, you Matilda kept the alarm from creeping into her voice. She muttered an Matilda did, only they didn't know any Haron Gorka, either. It turned out that no one did: Matilda tried the general store, the fire Matilda felt bad, but she had no intention of returning home this least not for a while yet. The widow Penshaws meant well, but she liked to analyze other people's mistakes, especially Matilda's. Accordingly, Matilda trudged wearily toward Cedar Falls' small and Then Matilda frowned. Twenty years from now, this could be Matilda Matilda cleared her throat. \"Pardon me,\" she began. \"I'm looking for—\" \"How on earth did you know?\" \"That's easy. You're the sixth young woman who came here inquiring about that man today. Six of you—five others in the morning, and now you in the afternoon. I never did trust this Mr. Gorka....\" 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—\" Matilda thought a little flattery might be effective. \"Only ten,\" she assured the librarian. \"Ten years would be more than sufficient, I'm sure.\" \"Are you? Well. Well, well.\" The librarian did something with the back of her hair, but it looked the same as before. \"Maybe you're right. Maybe you're right at that.\" Then she sighed. \"But I guess a miss is as good as a mile.\" \"What do you mean?\" Matilda reached into her pocket-book and withdrew a five dollar bill. \"Was this the way?\" she demanded. Matilda was not very good at this Matilda nodded shrewdly and added a twin brother to the bill in her 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 made the sixth. In spite of herself, she smiled. She had not been the only one with the idea to visit Haron Gorka in person. With half a be left far behind. Matilda congratulated herself for what she thought had been her ingenuity, and which now turned out to be something which 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 she wouldn't be needed perhaps she was too late.... As it turned out, she wasn't. Not only that, she was welcomed with open 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 that she realized that what is done is done and here, past thirty, she wasn't going to be girlishly timid about it. Besides, it was not For a time Matilda paced back and forth in her room, and of what was Matilda gasped once and felt about to gasp again—but by then her little while Matilda was asleep again. This time she did not dream at He had a point there, but Matilda hardly even had time to fix her hair. ordinary -looking. She almost would have preferred \"I—do.\" Matilda had had visions of her prince charming sitting back Matilda, accustomed to social chatter, gave him a gambit. \"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 wanted to believe in him and the result was that it took until now for her to realize it. \"Stop making fun of me,\" she said. \"So, naturally, you'll see flaaks resignation, and he said, \"Very well. I'm wrong again. You are the sixth, and you're no better than the other five. Perhaps you are even more outspoken. When you see my wife, tell her to come back. Again she is right and I am wrong....\" Matilda could do nothing but leave the room, walk back through the aging woman would be as disappointed as Matilda, but a promise was a broom-stick figure, rigid. But now when she saw Matilda she perked up \"You're back a bit sooner than I expected. But, then, the other five have returned, too, and I imagine your story will be similar.\" \"I don't know what they told you,\" Matilda said. \"But this is what in detail. She did this first because it was a promise, and second because she knew it would make her feel better. Matilda didn't understand. She didn't understand at all, but she told Matilda did not say a word. One madman a day would be quite enough for \"But he's wrong. It's a hard life for a woman. Someday—five thousand, ten thousand years from now—I will convince him. And then we will And then the woman was gone. Numbly, Matilda walked to the doorway and\n\n<question>:\nHas Matilda changed the end of the story?\n\n<options>:\nA No. She still hasn’t found a husband, and will likely be Pen Pals again.\nB No. She’s still looking for fantasies, as evidence by her looking up at the shooting star.\nC Yes. She is like Mrs. Gorky no3, chasing after impossible theories.\nD Yes. She’s more grounded now, and less naive.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
198 | 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>:\nDOWN TO THE WORLDS OF MEN BY ALEXEI PANSHIN The ancient rule was sink or swim—swim in the miasma of a planet without spaceflight, or sink to utter destruction! nobody bothered to laugh at, and then we were all silent. I was feeling My name is Mia Havero. I'm fourteen, of course, or I wouldn't be After we were all settled, George Fuhonin, the pilot, raised the ramps. We sat there for five minutes while they bled air out of our tube and then we just ... dropped. My stomach turned flips. We didn't have to leave that way, but George thinks it's fun to be a hot pilot. partners with the competition, do you? Besides, there was still that crack about being a snob. 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 debate a little before they dropped us there, but they decided it was all right in the end. It didn't make any practical difference to us kids because they never tell you anything about the place they're going to drop you. All I knew was the name. I wouldn't have known that much if Daddy weren't Chairman of the Council. I felt like crawling in a corner of the ship and crying, but nobody else was breaking down, so I didn't. I did feel miserable. I cried when 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 and little grubby things just looking for you 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. We have a place in the Ship like that—the Third Level—but it's only a thousand square miles and any time it gets on your nerves you can go up a level or down a level and be back in civilization. When we reached Tintera, they started dropping us. We swung over the sea from the morning side and then dropped low over gray-green forested 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 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 have anything to do with Jimmy. I just couldn't stand to put off the bad moment any longer. The ship lifted impersonally away from Ninc and me like a rising bird, and in just a moment it was gone. Its gray-blue color was almost the color of the half-overcast sky, so I was never sure when I saw it last. The first night was hell, I guess because I'm not used to having the the dark. When the sun disappears, somehow you wonder in your stomach 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 made a wordless, chilling, lowing sound as they milled and plodded along. He seemed exasperated. I have that effect sometimes. Even on Mother and I looked down at the plodding, unhappy creatures they were driving I felt uncomfortable. I said, \"I don't think so.\" didn't want to be fried. I said, \"Ease your rifles out and drop them gently to the ground.\" They did, watching me all the while with wary expressions. After twenty minutes of easy riding for us and hard walking for the them now.\" I dug my heels into Ninc's sides and rode on. At the next mind and rode on, feeling good. I think I even giggled once. Sometimes I even convince myself that I'm hell on wheels. III When I was nine, my Daddy gave me a painted wooden doll that my 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 something. a jolt that sickened me. By the time I came out on the other side, I was sick. My hands were cold and sweaty and my head was spinning, and I wanted to kick Ninc to but 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 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 eight billion people. But, no. They bred and they spread and they devoured everything in 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 the first time since I landed on Tintera, I felt really frightened. There was too much going on that I didn't understand. I felt a blind urge to get away, and when I reached the edge of town, I had gone wrong. I reached down into my saddlebag and brought out my contact signal. drop the stomach out of everybody aboard. George Fuhonin's style. I triggered the signal, my heart turning flips all the while. I didn't know why he was back, but I wasn't really sorry. bucking so hard that I knew this wasn't hot piloting at all, just plain idiot stutter-fingered stupidity at the controls. As it skidded by me I felt defeated and tired. Not much farther along the road, I came to children tried to pack them off to bed. But they weren't ready to go, it seemed just right. nice little girl, and to get rid of the kid, she sent her on a phony errand into the deep dark woods at nightfall. I could appreciate the poor girl's position. All the little girl had to help her were the handkerchief, the comb and the pearl that she had inherited from her 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 night. I should have used my head. I hadn't and now it was time to take I opened my mouth to scream—I have a good scream—but a rough smelly dragging me and dropped me in a heap. \"Make any noise,\" he said, \"and I'll hurt you.\" \"Why would they be doing that?\" I asked. I slipped my hand under my jacket. \"Every time you open your mouth you shout that you be off one of the I felt like a fool. until it cracked and fell apart.\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Mia begin to feel defeated and tired?\n\n<options>:\nA She was out of food\nB She'd been riding for over a week\nC She missed her family\nD She didn't understand the planet she was dropped in\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
2,115 | 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>:\nreturned my attention to the inside of the plane, to the overstuffed gray-haired woman asleep beside me, to the backs of heads in seats before me, across the aisle to other heads, and down to the blonde. calf, and her profile as she stared moodily across the aisle and out a window where there was nothing to see. I slid my eyes past her to others. A crossword-puzzle worker, a togetherness-type-magazine reader. for, and not wanting to. So I started going through the purse of the woman next to me. Perhaps the insides of things like purses and sealed boxes and locked drawers the feel of shapes, the hardnesses and softnesses. But I've learned to become pretty good at guessing. Like this woman next to me. She had a short, cylindrical metal object in her purse with waxlike stuff inside it—a lipstick. A round, hard Miss Winters, a stern, white-haired disciplinarian, ordered me to eat my sack lunch in the classroom with her instead of outside with some of the other kids. This was the punishment for some minor infraction. her absence, which I dutifully did. her favorite mechanical pencil, asking if any of us had seen it, and looking straight at me. I didn't want her to think I had taken it while she was out of the room, so I probed the contents of her purse, which I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first. The bomb was in a small bag—a woman's bag judging by the soft, flimsy things you'd never find in a man's—and I didn't know it was a bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small, My mind was churning when I turned from the window to look around at the unconcerned passengers, the woman at my side asleep again. I thought: Which one of these.... No, none of them would know it was there. I glanced out the window again my mouth was dry and my mind was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it's too late! No, they'd think I put it there. Besides, what good would it do? There would be paper cup of tomato juice, a cup of coffee, a cellophane-wrapped doughnut, paper spoon, sugar and dehydrated cream envelopes, and a napkin. the cellophane. I couldn't bear to watch her. I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage compartment, spent a frantic moment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that to close everything off—the throb of engines, the rush of air, the I considered telling the authorities as soon as we landed, or maybe calling in ahead, but wouldn't that just bring suspicion, questions. Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock—but not before the bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would be changed. I'd be a man not to be trusted, a prying man, a man literally with gimlet eyes. it without a word and went away. \"Were you really asleep that time?\" \"Not really,\" I said. I was tempted to tell the woman I was subject to fits, but I didn't. had my suitcase to get, for one thing. The damned bomb was the other. It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained the bomb There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases, and a general exodus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to determine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was the attendant and I had two bags—my own battered veteran of years, and I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman's things and—a Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb. through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satisfied me. I should not have been there, that much I knew I should be with a bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn't be able to live with myself. \"Hey, officer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag.\" But counter, and it wasn't because of the sunshine I'd been soaking in. I had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was going to stop the At her side and a little ahead of her, I said, \"Listen to me.\" She looked annoyed and increased her stride toward the door. \"It's a matter of life or death,\" I said. I wanted to wrest the bag from her and hurl it out through the doorway into the street, but I restrained myself. She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled there looking at me as if I had gone out of my mind. Her eyes were blue and brown-flecked, very pretty eyes, and my thought at the moment was, I'm glad the bomb didn't go off these eyes wouldn't be looking at me \"I've got to talk to you. It's very important.\" The girl said, \"Why?\" I was beginning to think it was the only word she knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill someone so lovely. \"I'll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a the short, fat man into the coffee shop. Over coffee I explained it all to her, how I had this extrasensory ability, how she was the first person I had ever revealed it to, and how I had discovered what was in her overnight bag. During the telling, her untouched coffee grew a skin, her face grew pale, her eyes grew less curious and more troubled. There were tears there when I finished. I asked her who put the bomb in her bag. \"Joe did,\" she said in a toneless voice, not looking at me any more but staring vacantly across the room. \"Joe put it there.\" Behind her eyes she was reliving some recent scene. \"My husband.\" I thought she was going to really bawl, but she got control again. \"This trip was his idea, my coming down here to visit my sister.\" Her smile was bleak. \"I see now why he wanted to put in those must have put the—put it in there.\" I said gently, \"Why would he want to do a thing like that?\" \"I don't know.\" She shook her head. \"I just don't know.\" And she was close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, \"I'm not sure I want to know.\" I admired her for saying it. Joe must have been crazy. I told her I didn't know how much more time there was, that I'd been thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl—she said her name was Julia Claremont—agreed to tell him she thought there was a bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become worried because she knew she hadn't packed a clock. It wasn't good, but it would have to do. I asked her why she didn't claim the bag at the same time the other people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy for a long while. \"She was supposed to meet me, and when she wasn't here, I got worried. Julia's bag in his right hand, reached where it had been parked. I watched it for a moment, then walked back to the entranceway where Julia was standing with the redcap, who said, \"That man steal them suitcases?\" But we never left the spot because an explosion some blocks distant shattered the air. Julia's hand grasped my arm. Hard. in the middle of a street, but I couldn't visualize the driver. That was all right. I didn't want to see him. I didn't know what Julia was thinking. \"I—I don't care about mine. I didn't have much of anything in it.\" \"I feel the same way,\" I said. \"Would it be all right if we didn't bother to report it?\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat is Julia's role in the existence of the bomb?\n\n<options>:\nA She tried to off her husband which made him angry and he tried to retaliate\nB She is part of a scheme run by a terrorist organization\nC She and her sister devised a plan to blow up the ship\nD She was likely a target but possibly a co-conspirator\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,153 | 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.] It was a fine day at the beach for Purnie's game—but his new friends played very rough! Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and nimbi. With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie hurried toward the ocean. If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was He chose to ignore the negative maxim that \"small children who stop time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it.\" He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends when they learned of his brave journey. the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted of munching seaweed. \"Hi there!\" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that interrupted in the least their respective tasks had been performed with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped, not the world around him. He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked. The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its repast. Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation.\" The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in their heels. thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?\" \"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months.\" When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to \"How about that, Miles?\" \"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale.\" Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box. Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. \"Can you do this?\" He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful noises, and he felt most satisfied. \"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box.\" Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for, the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box. Purnie sat up to watch the show. \"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no intention of running away.\" \"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!\" Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he into the little crowd. \"I've got my lunch, want some?\" The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that, and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box. He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about all. Now pick him up.\" The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion. motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head. He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing. Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already abused this faculty. When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in \"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below filled him with hysteria. \"I didn't mean it!\" Purnie screamed. \"I'm sorry! Can't you hear?\" He hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves. The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of death. Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding the consequences, he ordered time to stop. Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock. Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the chaotic scene before him. He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness, he knew he must first resume time. Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then for this. Hee-hee!\" Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone? He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks, \"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked.\" \"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on.\" As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through had become familiar. \"Where are you?\" Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend he was beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered logs and peer around and under them. now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of the others. Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie\n\n<question>:\nWhy is the first part of the story so important?\n\n<options>:\nA It lets the reader know that it's Purnie's birthday (which becomes important later)\nB It lets the reader see how Purnie interacts with his family\nC It shows the reader a skill that Purnie's been practicing\nD It give great detail of the setting (which Purnie has to use later in the story to his advantage)\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
2,374 | 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>:\nLinton lay down his steel fork beside the massively solid transparency know how it is. Snead's dead, don't you remember?\" Linton remembered. Howell had to know that he would remember. What Linton said, describing the scene over Howell's shoulder. \"If that's Snead's brother, I might catch him to pay my respects.\" \"No,\" Howell said, \"I wouldn't do that.\" \"Snead came to Greta's funeral. It's the least I could do.\" \"I wouldn't. Probably no relation to Snead at all. Somebody who looks like him.\" intimately against Linton's own chair. \"Couldn't have been him, though,\" Linton answered automatically. \"My friend's dead.\" The thick man rocked forward and came down on all six feet. He threw \"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, or rather he had watched the two workmen scoop and shove dirt in on the sawdust-fresh pine box that held the coffin. He had known what he 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. \"Who by?\" Linton asked, thinking: \"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 in order to gain some illegal advantage. But by saying something so patently ridiculous, Linton hoped to bring the contradicting truth to the surface immediately. \"I don't understand,\" Linton said helplessly. the cops find out about a place, they break in, smash all the equipment \"I don't understand,\" Linton complained. \"Why haven't I heard about it?\" to be dead someday,' not anything sexual. You know how it is. The trying to trick him. They used to do that to see if he was really well. But the temptation was too strong. Linton's fingers imprinted the linen. \"Damn you, Howell, you tell me!\" Howell climbed to his feet hurriedly. \"I take you out to dinner to console you over the loss of your wife a half a year ago, and to make yell at me and curse me. You kooks are all alike!\" Howell threw money on the table with the same kind of disinterest as the thick-set man and stalked out. attempted to bribe an officer. That's disturbing, Mr. Linton, very disturbing.\" \"I was only trying to find out something,\" Linton maintained. \"They \"I don't know. Who the hell ever wasted Einstein's time asking him a thing like that?\" Linton stared suspiciously. \"Do you know where I can find a resurrect the dead?\" can you resurrect the \"No, my wife has been dead a long time. Months.\" Linton grasped the situation immediately. \"You mean you want money. You the corpse. The female corpse, eh?\" 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 olive-drab slab of metal of the door to the doctor's inner-inner sanctum and walked out into the medicinal cold fluorescent lighting. It wasn't fair at all, Linton thought. He should have had some time to prepare himself. Greta lifted her arms, stretching the white smock over the lines of her body. \"Darling!\" she said. \"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 way he had learned to accept the, to him, distasteful duty of kissing her ears the way she enjoyed. Greta swirled across the room and folded her arms across his shoulders. She kissed his cheek. \"It's so wonderful to be back. This calls for a celebration. We must see Nancy, Oscar, Johnny, all our old friends.\" 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....\" \"My darling,\" he said gently, \"about Johnny—\" Her fine black brows made Gothic arches. \"Yes? What about Johnny?\" \"It was a terrible accident right after—that is, about five months ago. He was killed.\" \"Killed?\" Greta repeated blankly. \"Johnny Gorman was killed?\" \"Traffic accident. Killed instantly.\" \"But Johnny was your friend, your best friend. Why didn't you have him resurrected the same way you did me?\" have to pay premium prices for strawberries in February. I no longer have the money to pay for a resurrection of Johnny.\" Greta turned her back to him. \"It's just as well. You shouldn't bring back Johnny to this dream of life, give him a ghost of mind and the photograph of a soul. It's monstrous. No one should do that. No one. \"No,\" Linton said. \"I'm sold out. I've borrowed on my insurance to the hilt. It won't pay any more until I'm buried, and then, of course, you can resurrect me.\" \"Of course,\" Greta said. She sighed. \"Poor Johnny. He was such a good friend of yours. You must miss him. I'm so sorry for you.\" \"I have you,\" he said with great simplicity. to quench death and smother decay. It's Her eyes flashed around the doctor's office and settled somewhere, on something. 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. Brain damage, he concluded nervously. Cell deterioration. Greta raised it again and he caught her wrists high over her head. She writhed against him provocatively. \"Frank, I'm sorry, dear, but I have to have that insurance money. It's hell!\" Linton understood immediately. He felt foolish, humiliated. All that Linton twisted the stand away from his wife and watched her face in some appalled form of satisfaction as it registered horror and 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 in resurrection. They couldn't chemically revive the old corpse like pouring water on a wilted geranium. Or— 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 around. \"I've killed my wife!\" Linton called, rising from his knees, stretching his hands out to something. The pain stung him to sleep—a pain in his neck like a needle that left 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 murder Greta after just resurrecting her?\n\n<options>:\nA Greta wants him to relieve her of her suffering\nB He desires the rest of her insurance money\nC He realized he resurrected the wrong person\nD Greta attempted to kill him\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,922 | 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>:\nTOMORROW he said finally. \"Maybe we \"Maybe we ought to eat something first,\" I said. \"I'm beginning to feel \"Well, we need some nourishment,\" \"What,\" Betty said, \"are you going navigated from one tent to another. \"Providence,\" Simon told her hotel?\" That seemed like a good question. I thought about it for a while. Finally elbow. Something that would net Simon said, mournful of tone, \"Fifty dollars? Why not make it five Simon said, enigmatically, \"Now \"Who ... how ... oh, suit was cut in the style of yesteryear but when a suit costs two or Simon said unenthusiastically, \"That's quite a gadget,\" I groaned. \"You didn't have a hotel. What a stupidity. I'll be phased. Simon, said finally, \"You know Phased all the way down.\" \"Anything,\" Simon said. \"Only travel?\" Simon said nothing. Across the ventured, \"Time travel is impossible.\" \"Why?\" \"Why?\" ?\" \"Confound it if I know,\" the little Simon said, \"Let's get to the point, some time travelers,\" the old boy \"Time travelers,\" she said, not a dozen explanations of the paradoxes of time travel. Every writer in cautious, \"At my hotel, don't you remember?\" portion of my fortune to investigate it's also my suspicion that he will So convinced am I of these possibilities that I am willing to gamble a out. At the Bahnhof they could do me travelers.\" Simon seemed incapable of carrying available in Munich. The head was getting worse by the minute. The future has developed time travel why don't we ever meet such travelers?\" Simon put in a word. \"The usual of hours. Not only wasn't the bag at the luggage checking station, but fact that they'd somehow managed time traveler returned to a period of on that project for at least a couple make heads nor tails of the check changed. In that case, the time traveler himself might never be born. They have to tread mighty carefully.\" no good. There were no hotel rooms blockbusting hangover. Simon shrugged and fumbled in taking it with him.\" New York. I'd spent two days at the Oktoberfest their perch, bug-eyed Simon, but then Simon said, \"You want to hire me to find a time traveler and in some leave on the first obtainable plane to do—exhort from him the secret of , and I'd had it. The trip back was as uninteresting this fortune of yours, if I can deliver to wear off—a little—I was almost sorry I hadn't been able to stay. If I'd only been able to get a room I would \"But where are you going to find have stayed, I told myself. they're interested in keeping hid?\" \"I told you I'd been considering it Oktoberfest he had been occupying four—or was it five—days before when I'd left. that's where they'd be!\" He seemed \"The Oktoberfest ,\" he repeated. \"The greatest festival the world has you came for? Impatient to hear if ever seen, the carnival, , fiesta to beat them all. Every year it's held in Munich. Makes the New Orleans Mardi gras look like a quilting of some local prince a century to the effect that if I didn't leave today, each brewery opens a tremendous tent on the fair grounds which will hold five thousand customers apiece. Millions of liters of beer are put away, hundreds of thousands of barbecued chickens, a small herd of oxen are his way out the door. less than immediate service. Stuffing \"All right,\" Simon said. \"We'll accept Oktoberfest travelers yet.\" \"Well,\" the old boy pursued, into Oktoberfest . For one thing, a time traveler wouldn't be conspicuous. At a festival like this ordinary in any of a dozen other ways, wouldn't be noticed. You could be a four-armed space traveler from Mars, and you still wouldn't be conspicuous at the Oktoberfest \"But why would a time traveler \"Why not! What better opportunity Simon's story), \"did you orgies. You wouldn't want to wander up and down the streets of, say, Athens while nothing was going on, particularly when you might be revealed as a suspicious character not being able to speak the language, not knowing how to wear the clothes and not familiar with the city's layout.\" He took a deep breath. \"No ma'am, you'd have to stick to some great interest and for protection against being Simon winced at the noise, took Oktoberfest starts on Friday and continues for sixteen days. You can take the plane to Munich, spend a Simon was shaking his head. \"Not \"I did,\" Simon groaned. \"Three Simon true, you should have gone back again to Munich. If there was one time traveler, there might have \"I keep telling you,\" Simon said \"No go,\" Simon said, a sad quality \"A fifty thousand dollar bonus if you bring me a time traveler.\" \"Out of the question,\" Simon it might result in the track being \"But why from the future and change the \"Just for laughs,\" Simon told the Why this is the biggest thing— Why Oyster (Simon began) in the way of an advance, and leaving him with Simon said wearily, \"There's just you from the future, a hangover compounded The future! Just think!\" of a gallon or so of Marzenbräu. What's more you can pile the Germany Information Offices for some tourist literature. It takes roughly three and a half I spent the time planning the fun I was going to have. It takes roughly seven and a half give him some kind of report for his money. Time travel yet! What a Oktoberfest in the Munich tourist pamphlets. Five million people attended annually. Where did five million people come from to attend an overgrown festival in comparatively remote Southern Germany? The tourist season first day of the gigantic beer bust. Nor could the Germans account for any such number. Munich itself has a population of less than a million, counting children. And those millions of gallons of ponied up all the money for such expenditures? How could the average German, with his twenty-five dollars a week salary? In Munich there was no hotel space available. I went to the Bahnhof where they have a hotel service and applied. They put my name hours. I had another suspicious twinge. If five million people attended this beer bout, how were they accommodated? The Theresienwiese so I walked. There are seven major brewers in the Munich area, each of them represented by one of the circuslike tents that Mr. Oyster mentioned. Each tent contained benches and tables for about five thousand persons and from six to ten thousands pack themselves in, competing for room. In the center is a tremendous bandstand, the musicians all in a Bavarian beer hall. Hundreds of peasant garbed kraut and pretzels. I found a place finally at a table which had space for twenty-odd beer bibbers. Odd is right. As weird an assortment of Germans and foreign tourists as could have been dreamed up, ranging from a seventy- or eighty-year-old couple in Bavarian A desperate waitress bearing six masses , by the masses over \"Down the hatch,\" the other said, tourist pamphlets say this stuff is eighteen per cent. That's nonsense. \"Next what?\" Baldy's conversation \"My pilgrimage,\" he told me. \"All Oktoberfest only as far as Löwenbräu. I'm afraid I'll never make it.\" \"I'm still fresh—comparatively. I'll navigate you around. There are seven beer tents. How many have you it was bigger. Games, souvenir stands, sausage stands, rides, side shows, and people, people, people. The Hofbräu tent was as overflowing as the last but we managed to find two seats. The band was blaring, and five if you'll make it or not, Arth.\" asked him, in the way of making\n\n<question>:\nIn telling the story about potentially traveling to Oktoberfest, what is Simon most skeptical of?\n\n<options>:\nA How the vendors are able to produce such a large amount of food and beer\nB How the brewers are able to make beer with such a high alcohol by volume percentage\nC How Arf is able to consume that much beer without getting a hangover\nD How the city can accommodate that many locals and tourists\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,182 | 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>:\nAs the years went by, Martin began to lose even his detached interest in the land and its doings. Although the yacht frequently touched port good while he was living with his old lady. As for his father, Martin had never had one. He'd been a war baby, born of one of the tides of soldiers—enemies and allies, both—that had engulfed the country in Martin showed his work in Italy, so that the cousin could be disillusioned by the current crop of Romans. He found that neither purpose nor malice was enough \"Oh, I see,\" Martin said. He had often fancied that Conrad would prove to be the most stimulating member of the whole generation. But it seemed unlikely that he would \"Oh, just don't ask any questions,\" Ninian said petulantly. \"When you get older, someone will explain the whole thing to you.\" So Martin held his peace, because, on the whole, he liked things the way they were. Ninian really was the limit, though. All the people he something pretty wrong with him. So Martin and Ninian were just as conspicuous as before. But he didn't tip her off. She was grown up The non-glass part of the house was of neat, natural-toned wood, with a neat green lawn in front and a neat parti-colored garden in back. Martin missed the old neighborhood, though. He missed having other kids to play with. He even missed his mother. Sure, she hadn't given him enough to eat and she'd beaten him up so hard sometimes that she'd It was then that Martin began to realize that either the whole lot of them were insane, or what Ninian had told him at first was the truth. They came from the future. When Martin was sixteen, Raymond took him aside for the talk Ninian had promised five years before. idealist,\" Raymond explained, pronouncing the last word with distaste. Martin nodded gravely. He was a quiet boy now, his brief past a dim and rather ridiculous memory. Who could ever imagine him robbing a grocery store or wielding a broken bottle now? He still was rather undersized \"I thought, in your world, machines did all the work,\" Martin suggested. \"I've told you—our world is precisely the same as this one!\" Raymond snapped. \"We just come a couple of centuries or so later, that's all. But remember, our interests are identical. We're virtually the same you live now?... I don't mean in the now for me, but the now for you,\" Martin explained laboriously. It was so difficult to live in the past and think in the future. if you will persist in these childish interruptions—\" \"I'm sorry,\" Martin said. But he wasn't, for by now he had little respect left for any of his descendants. They were all exceedingly handsome and cultivated young people, with superior educations, smooth ways of speaking and \"Oh, I do!\" Martin said. He had pieced the whole thing together for himself long since, but he wanted to hear how Raymond would put it. \"Unfortunately, Professor Farkas has just perfected the time Raymond looked annoyed. \"It's the Martin had, of course, no illusions on that score he had learned long ago that nobody did anything for nothing. But saying so was unwise. curiously desolate. Because, although he supposed he liked her in a than yours. Besides, you're getting too old now to be under petticoat government.\" He looked inquisitively at Martin. \"You're not going to go all weepy and make a scene when she leaves, are you?\" \"No....\" Martin said hesitantly. \"Oh, I suppose I will miss her. But we aren't very close, so it won't make a real difference.\" That was the sad part: he already knew it wouldn't make a difference. her own inadequacy, Martin knew, not of sorrow. He was getting skillful at understanding his descendants, far better than they at understanding that she'd come see him again. She never did, though, except at the very last. Raymond and Martin moved into a luxurious mansion in a remote area. The dozen years later, they weren't touched. Martin was never sure whether this had been sheer luck or expert planning. Probably luck, because his descendants were exceedingly inept planners. Martin and his guardian. The place not only contained every possible convenience and gadget but was crammed with bibelots and antiques, carefully chosen by Raymond and disputed by Martin, for, to the man from the future, all available artifacts were antiques. Otherwise, Martin accepted his new surroundings. His sense of wonder had become dulled by now and the pink pseudo-Spanish castle—\"architecturally dreadful, of course,\" Raymond had said, \"but so hilariously until Raymond warned that this might lead Conrad to them. During those early years, Martin's tutors were exchanged for the higher-degreed ones that were now needful. The question inevitably arose of what the youth's vocation in that life was going to be. At least twenty of the cousins came back through time to hold one of their vigorous family councils. Martin was still young enough to enjoy such occasions, finding them vastly superior to all other forms of entertainment. \"This sort of problem wouldn't arise in our day, Martin,\" Raymond commented as he took his place at the head of the table, \"because, unless one specifically feels a call to some profession or other, one invent something ahead of time. And the fellow we got the plans from particularly cautioned us against that. Changing history. Dangerous.\" \"Might mess up our time frightfully,\" Bartholomew contributed, \"though, to be perfectly frank, I can't quite understand how.\" again, Bart!\" Raymond said impatiently. \"Well, Martin?\" \"What would you suggest?\" Martin asked. their times.\" \"Furthermore,\" Ottillie added, \"one more artist couldn't make much difference in history. There were so many of them all through the ages.\" Martin couldn't hold back his question. \"What was I, actually, in that other time?\" So drawing teachers were engaged and Martin became a very competent second-rate artist. He knew he would never be able to achieve first rank because, even though he was still so young, his work was almost to have Martin's work shown at an art gallery. The paintings received critical approval, but failed to evoke any enthusiasm. The modest sale they enjoyed was mostly to interior decorators. Museums were not interested. \"Takes time,\" Ives tried to reassure him. \"One day they'll be buying your pictures, Martin. Wait and see.\" Ives was the only one of the descendants who seemed to think of Martin trips inland. Martin saw the civilized world—mostly in fragments the nearly intact semi-civilized world and the uncivilized world, much the The other cousins appeared to find the yacht a congenial head-quarters, . He felt curiously safer from Conrad there, although ended in a brawl, because one cousin was sure to accuse another of having got advance information about the results. Martin didn't care much for their company and associated with them only when not to have done so would have been palpably rude. And, though they were gregarious young people for the most part, they didn't court He rather liked Ives, though. Sometimes the two of them would be alone together then Ives would tell Martin of the future world he had come proper, but that was because there were only a couple of million people left on the planet. It was an enclave for the highly privileged, highly interbred aristocracy, to which Martin's descendants belonged by virtue of their distinguished ancestry. \"Rather feudal, isn't it?\" Martin asked. a while, Martin couldn't tell one from another. Cousin after cousin came to watch over him and eventually they were as hard for him to tell they did not trust their elders.\n\n<question>:\nThough Raymond and Martian live in something comparable to a castle, Raymond \"turns his nose up to it.\" This shows that\n\n<options>:\nA for the people from the future, regardless of its grandeur, nothing in the past is good enough for them.\nB in the past, class was determined by what you had to show, and in the future, it is based upon who you are as a person. Materialism doesn't exist in the future.\nC Raymond's purpose there is to show Martin the finer things life has to offer above any other purpose.\nD in the future, people have taste, whereas people in Martin's time do not.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,481 | 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>:\nVolpla That next week, I transported all of the volplas out to the oak woods. There were a hundred and seven men, women and children. With no design on my part, they tended to segregate into groups consisting of four to eight couples together with the current children of the women. Within these groups, the adults were promiscuous, but apparently not outside the group. The group thus had the appearance of a super-family and the males indulged and cared for all the children without reference to sent an academic zoologist into hysterics lay there in the metabolic the volplas to use the fire drill and they were already utilizing the local grasses, vines and brush to build marvelously contrived tree houses in which the young, and sometimes the adults, slept through midday and midnight. nothing around that might connect the sudden appearance of the volplas with my property. It was already apparent that it would take the volplas only a few more weeks to learn their means of survival and about the disemboweled buildings and she said, \"What on Earth is going on here?\" \"Well, Dad-dee, I can't!\" \"What?\" \"You can't turn this old key tightly enough.\" Except, of course, that the woods were full of volplas. At night, I Volplas at last. Three of them. Yet I had always been so sure I could create them that I had been calling them volplas for ten years. No, through the dark overhead, they chattered and laughed and sometimes his graying head from a cage. I had called them volplas since the day moaned in winged love. One night a flight of them soared slowly across old Nijinsky's elongated arms and his cousin's lateral skin folds had the clamp. could hear them faintly when I sat out on the terrace. As they passed ?\" \"Do you understand the word?\" \"No.\" rodent faces. At the door to the outside, she turned perilously and withdrew the intravenous needles from my first volplas. I carried their The accelerator had forced them almost to adulthood in less than a 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. \"Come on, you old hermit. I have a buffet on the terrace.\" Pacific shimmered. I thought, \"All this and three volplas, too.\" 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!\" \"Because, dear, I said so.\" The boy had already raced across the terrace and jack-knifed into the \"Oh, not that again! You were dangerous at any age.\" my first volplas were shockingly humanoid. They were also much faster than had been their predecessors in organizing their nervous activity after the slumbrous explosion of Suddenly, as I teased the male volpla, this happened. 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 He said, \"'Ello, 'ello.\" The maid promptly left the kitchen for some other place. golden evening slant across the beautiful hills of our ranch. I dreamed. I would invent a euphonious set of words to match the Basic English vocabulary and teach it to them as their language. They would have their own crafts and live in small tree houses. I would teach them legends: that they had come from the stars, that loose. There would be volpla colonies all up and down the Coast before 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\" and ask, \"Where have these aliens come from?\" The government would reluctantly admit the facts. Linguists would observe at close quarters and learn the simple volpla language. Then would come the legends. Volpla wisdom would become a cult—and of all forms of comedy, cults, I think, are the funniest. \"Darling, are you listening to me?\" my wife asked with impatient my volplas. But only for a moment. I used the metabolic accelerator to cut the volplas' gestation down to infants were females, which sped things up considerably. By the next spring, I had a colony of over a hundred volplas and I shut down the accelerator. From now on, they could have babies in their own way. I had devised the language for them, using Basic English as my model, and during the months while every female was busy in the metabolic accelerator, I taught the language to the males. They spoke it softly in high voices and the eight hundred words didn't seem to tax their little skulls a bit. My wife and the kids went down to Santa Barbara for a week and I took the opportunity to slip the oldest of the males and his two females out I put them in the jeep beside me and drove to a secluded little valley about a mile back in the ranch. They were all three wide-eyed at the world and jabbered continuously. They kept me busy relating their words for \"tree,\" \"rock,\" \"sky\" to the objects. They had a little trouble with \"sky.\" Until I had them out in the open country, it had been impossible to appreciate fully what lovely little creatures they were. They blended 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 The two girls reached him before I did and stroked and fussed over him so that I could not get near. Suddenly he laughed with a shrill little whoop. After that, it was a carnival. They learned quickly and brilliantly. They were not fliers they were gliders and soarers. Before long, they took agilely to the trees and Of course, the volplas didn't want to return to the lab. There was a leaving them out here. Well, it had to be done sometime. Nothing I could tell them about surviving would help them as much as a little naturally have forgotten the ways of living outdoors.\" \"We can learn again. We want to stay here.\" His little face was so He looked around slowly at the breeze playing in the branches and they leave while you are climbing.\" himself, streaked down-valley a way and caught a warm updraft on a silhouette of the volpla marred the sky so near. I looked back, as did the girl remaining beside me. The soaring volpla The doves abruptly gave up their hard climbing and fell away with swiftly beating wings. I saw one of the male volpla's planes open a little. He veered giddily in the new direction and again dropped like a The doves separated and began to zigzag down the valley. The volpla did lower than the bird he was after, then swept up and intercepted the plummeted to a hillside. The volpla landed gently atop the hill and stood looking back at us. The volpla beside me danced up and down shrieking in a language all her It was a hero's welcome. He had to walk back, of course—he had no 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 When I had to leave, it was dark. I warned them to stand watches, keep The male walked a little away with me when I left the fire. I realized I had blundered by passing him an English name. \"In your language, Pohtah.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy was the Volpla vocabulary limited when the narrator took a few into the valley?\n\n<options>:\nA They had not been alive long enough to learn enough English to communicate well\nB They were encountering concepts that were unfamiliar from the lab environment\nC They are not smart enough to have a fully developed language, no matter how hard they try\nD They were confusing their own language with English, having trouble keeping the languages separate\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
807 | 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>:\nOwen Fiss is a professor at the Yale Law School and a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law. The subject of this short book is the present direction of the law governing the freedom of speech. What Professor Fiss has to say about it is worth attending to not merely because of his prominence in the field but because his argument is planted in the common assumptive ground of a lot of contemporary academic thought about the bankruptcy of individualism. The thesis of the book is Fiss', but the wisdom is conventional. Professor Fiss thinks the present direction of First Amendment law is a bad one, and he has an idea about how we might improve it. The short way to put his argument (though it is not quite the way he puts it) is to say that our approach to speech has become increasingly permissive. Courts have become more and more reluctant to allow the state to interfere with the rights of individual speakers to say what they wish, and it is time to roll back that permissiveness and to embark on a new approach that would permit the state to silence some speakers and promote others, but still, Fiss argues, in the name of freedom of speech. This is what Fiss means by the \"irony\" in his title: that true freedom of speech for all requires suppressing the speech of some. This is not, technically, an irony. It is a paradox. An irony would be the observation that an attempt to increase freedom for all often entails, despite our best efforts, a decrease in freedom for a few. If Fiss had addressed the subject of free speech in this spirit, as an irony, he would undoubtedly have had some interesting things to say, for he is a learned and temperate writer. But he has, instead, chosen to address the issue as an advocate for specific groups he regards as politically disadvantaged--women, gays, victims of racial-hate speech, the poor (or, at least, the not-rich), and people who are critical of market capitalism--and to design a constitutional theory that will enable those groups to enlist the state in efforts either to suppress speech they dislike or to subsidize speech they do like, without running afoul of the First Amendment. Embarked on this task, the most learned and temperate writer in the world would have a hard time avoiding tendentiousness. Fiss does not avoid it. The Irony of Free Speech is a discussion of several speech issues: campaign-finance laws, state funding for the arts, pornography, speech codes, and equal time. These discussions are not doctrinaire, but their general inclination is to favor state intervention, on political grounds, in each of those areas--that is, to favor restrictions on campaign spending, greater regulation of pornography, and so on. Fiss' analyses of specific cases are presented against a lightly sketched historical argument. Light though the sketching is, the historical argument is almost the most objectionable thing about the book, since it involves a distortion of the history of First Amendment law that is fairly plain even to someone who is not a professor at Yale Law School. The argument is that \"the liberalism of the nineteenth century was defined by the claims of individual liberty and resulted in an unequivocal demand for liberal government, [while] the liberalism of today embraces the value of equality as well as liberty.\" The constitutional law of free speech, says Fiss, was shaped by the earlier type of liberalism--he calls it \"libertarian\"--which regarded free speech as a right of individual self-expression Fiss' suggestion--this is the chief theoretical proposal of his book--is that liberals should stop thinking about this as a conflict between liberty and equality and start thinking about it as a conflict between two kinds of liberty: social vs. individual. The First Amendment, he says, was intended to foster (in William Brennan's words) \"uninhibited, robust, and wide-open\" debate in society as a whole speech that inhibits or monopolizes that debate should therefore fall outside the protection of the law. We can maximize the total freedom of speech by silencing people who prevent others from speaking--when they utter racial epithets, represent women in degrading ways, use their wealth to dominate the press and the political process, or block the funding of unorthodox art. The historical part of this analysis rests on a canard, which is the assertion that the constitutional law of free speech emerged from 19 th -century classical laissez-faire liberalism. It did not. It emerged at the time of World War I, and the principal figures in its creation--Learned Hand, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and Louis Brandeis--were not classical liberals they displayed a libertarian attitude toward economic rights, tending to throw out legislation aimed at regulating industry and protecting workers on the grounds that people had a constitutional right to enter into contracts and to use their own property as they saw fit. Holmes, Brandeis, and their disciples consistently supported state intervention in economic affairs--the passage of health and safety regulations, the protection of unions, the imposition of taxes, and so on. The post-New Deal liberals whom Fiss associates with the value of equality are their heirs. The heirs of the19 th -century classical liberals are Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich. Fiss' two \"liberalisms\" are, in fact, almost entirely different political philosophies. Hand, Holmes, and Brandeis based their First Amendment opinions not on some putative right to individual self-expression (an idea Holmes referred to as \"the right of the donkey to drool\") but on a democratic need for full and open political debate. First Amendment law since their time has performed its balancing acts on precisely that social value--the very value Fiss now proposes we need to insert into First Amendment jurisprudence. We don't need to insert it, because it was there from the start. Why does Fiss portray the history of First Amendment jurisprudence in this perverted way? Because he wants to line up his own free-speech argument within the conventional academic view that our problems are mostly the consequences of an antiquated and discreditable ideology of liberal individualism, and that they can mostly be solved by adopting a social-constructionist, or communitarian, or \"intersubjective\" view of human nature instead. The merits of liberal individualism vs. communitarianism can await another occasion to be debated. For since the law governing the freedom of speech does not emerge out of libertarianism, the matter does not boil down to replacing an obsolete belief in \"self-expression\" with a more up-to-date belief in \"robust debate,\" as Fiss would like to think it does. What it boils down to is whether we need to replace the Hand-Holmes-Brandeis way of maximizing the benefits of free speech in a democratic society, which tries to push the state as far out of the picture as possible, with a different way, which tries to get the state farther into the picture. Still, that discussion, like his discussions of the other issues, rests on a claim long associated with the left--the claim, in a phrase, that the minority is really the majority. In the case of speech, Fiss appears to believe that the reason the American public is less enlightened than he would wish it to be concerning matters such as feminism, the rights of homosexuals, and regulation of industry is that people are denied access to the opinions and information that would enlighten them. The public is denied this access because the state, in thrall to the ideology of individualism, refuses either to interfere with speech bullies--such as pornographers--who \"silence\" women, or to subsidize the speech of the unorthodox, such as Robert Mapplethorpe. Fiss' analysis of the Mapplethorpe case offers a good example of the perils of his interventionist approach. Arts policy is, unquestionably, a mess. The solution usually proposed is divorce: Either get the state out of the business altogether or invent some ironclad process for distributing the money using strictly artistic criteria. Fiss rejects both solutions\n\n<question>:\nWhat statement below would Fiss most likely agree with?\n\n<options>:\nA Historical laws should be left unchanged.\nB He believes in equality for all.\nC He believes in fair speech over free speech.\nD The U.S. constitution needs a new amendment.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
787 | 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>:\nhis eyebrows went up, and he made a beeline for Doc. Sandra wondered if the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Silently, so as not to shock anyone with illusions about well dressed young women, Sandra Lea Grayling cursed the day she had persuaded the Sandra as a particularly maddening circumstance. Sandra's chief difficulty was that she knew absolutely nothing about \"You're durn tootin' she would!\" Sandra replied in a rush, and then looked down apprehensively at the person who had read her thoughts. \"I could see that mademoiselle was having difficulty swallowing,\" he replied, keeping them moving. \"Pardon me for feasting my eyes on your lovely throat.\" chess be without coffee or schnapps?\" \"Okay, lead on,\" Sandra said. \"You're the doctor.\" \"Doctor?\" He smiled widely. \"You know, I like being called that.\" \"Then the name is yours as long as you want it—Doc.\" Meanwhile the happy little man had edged them into the first of a small cluster of tables, where a dark-suited jabbering trio was just rising. \"For myself black coffee,\" he said. \"For mademoiselle rhine wine and seltzer?\" \"That'd go fine.\" Sandra leaned back. \"Confidentially, Doc, I was having trouble swallowing ... well, just about everything here.\" He nodded. \"You are not the first to be shocked and horrified by beautiful young lady to this 64-square madhouse?\" Sandra briefly told him her story and her predicament. By the time they were served, Doc had absorbed the one and assessed the other. \"You have one great advantage,\" he told her. \"You know nothing whatsoever of chess—so you will be able to write about it understandably for your readers.\" He swallowed half his demitasse and \"Yes, Doc, but....\" Sandra found difficulty in phrasing the question. You want to know why, if the Machine works at all, it doesn't work perfectly, so that it always wins and there is no contest. Right?\" Sandra grinned and nodded. Doc's ability to interpret her mind was as comforting as the bubbly, mildly astringent mixture she was sipping. He removed his pince-nez, massaged the bridge of his nose and replaced \"Look ahead a little way and try to make a plan. You know, like getting out trumps in bridge or setting up a finesse.\" \"Exactly!\" Doc beamed at her approvingly. \"The Machine is like a and is capable of being programmed much more craftily.\" \"A million times as fast as the first machine, you say, Doc? And yet it only sees twice as many moves ahead?\" Sandra objected. \"There is a geometrical progression involved there,\" he told her Sandra tried to think of a being who always checked everything, but She turned back quickly with a smile and a nod. \"I should tell you, Igor,\" Doc continued, \"that Miss Grayling represents a large and influential Midwestern newspaper. Perhaps you have a message for her readers.\" moment the waiter arrived with a second coffee and wine-and-seltzer. Jandorf seized Doc's new demitasse, drained it, set it back on the tray with a flourish and drew himself up. While Sandra arranged for an interview with Jandorf after the day's playing session, Doc reordered his coffee. \"One expects it of Jandorf,\" he explained to Sandra with a philosophic shrug when the shock-headed man was gone. \"At least he didn't take your master Mister, call him Master. They all eat it up.\" \"Gee, Doc, I don't know how to thank you for everything. I hope I haven't offended Mis—Master Jandorf so that he doesn't—\" \"Don't worry about that. Wild horses couldn't keep Jandorf away from a the Machine blindfold? How do you think of it?\" \"Gosh, I don't know. Say, Doc, is it really true that Master Jandorf has played 50 games at once blindfolded? I can't believe that.\" \"Of course not!\" Doc assured her. \"It was only 49 and he lost two of those and drew five. Jandorf always exaggerates. It's in his blood.\" \"Cripes, Doc, they all sound like they were Russians,\" Sandra said isn't he?\" Doc nodded. \"Not such a boy any longer, though. He's.... Well, speak of ex- , though. I was swindled, Savvy. I was robbed.\" \"Willie!\" Doc said with some asperity. \"Miss Grayling is a journalist. She would like to have a statement from you as to how you will play for two months in advance. Waiter! I'm here, not there!\" And he went charging off. Doc and Sandra looked at each other and smiled. \"Chess masters aren't exactly humble people, are they?\" she said. Doc's smile became tinged with sad understanding. \"You must excuse them, though,\" he said. \"They really get so little recognition or recompense. This tournament is an exception. And it takes a great deal Doc frowned. \"True, in a sense. They must feel very sure.... Here going two by two in close formation, but it gave Sandra the feeling of Doc gave a short scornful laugh. \"Krakatower! Don't pay any attention to him of beating them all! Please, don't get me started on Dirty Old Krakatower.\" \"Take it easy, Doc. He sounds like he would make an interesting article? Can you point him out to me?\" He would not amplify his statement. Sandra studied the Scoreboard again. The newcomer was of middle height, compact of figure and feature, with graying hair cut short and combed sharply back. Doc spoke his piece for Sandra. Simon Great smiled thinly. \"Sorry,\" he said, \"But I am making no predictions and we are giving out no advance information on the fast enough.\" \"That makes it very tough on you,\" Sandra put in. \"The Machine isn't allowed any weaknesses.\" \"You know, Doc,\" Sandra said, \"I'm a dog to suggest this, but what Doc laughed happily—and so loudly that some people at the adjoining tables frowned. \"Miss Grayling, that is a wonderful idea! I will probably steal it for and has grandmaster skill.\" \"Did the Machine beat him?\" Sandra asked. Doc shrugged. \"The scores weren't released. It was very hush-hush. But about your idea, Miss Grayling—did you ever read about Maelzel's famous chess-playing automaton of the 19th Century? That one too was break down while it is being demonstrated to a millionaire purchaser and the young inventor will have to win its game for it to cover up and swing the deal. Only the millionaire's daughter, who is really a its opponents, or beaming rays of death and hypnotism at them? I can imagine....\" While Doc chattered happily on about chess-playing robots and chess stories, Sandra found herself thinking about him. A writer of some sort evidently and a terrific chess buff. Perhaps he was an actual medical doctor. She'd read something about two or three coming over with the Russian squad. But Doc certainly didn't sound like a Soviet citizen. He was older than she'd first assumed. She could see that now that she was listening to him less and looking at him more. Tired, too. this assignment completely and now she had it laid out cold. For the umpteenth time in her career Sandra shied away from the guilty thought that she wasn't a writer at all or even a reporter, she just used old, American, Russian) and pick his brain.... She realized suddenly that the whole hall had become very quiet. Doc was the only person still talking and people were again looking at them disapprovingly. All five wallboards were lit up and the changed\n\n<question>:\nHow would Sandra's journaling experience been if she had not met Doc?\n\n<options>:\nA She would have struggled to identify all the competitors to name in her article if it was not for Doc.\nB She would have had more time to get a better understanding to write about the Machine if Doc had not taken up all her time talking.\nC She would have likely written a very vague article due to her lack of experience with chess.\nD She would have not struggled as much with writing since Doc gave her excess information.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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901 | 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>:\nNow and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture? Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's \" 'real life' feature film,\" has proudly worn its mongrel status as a \"directed\" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside. This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film \"an exercise in mendacity,\" Barker goes on, \"I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths.\" Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary (\"I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it\"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of \"difficult\" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of \"larger dramatic truths.\" Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are \"mutts.\" Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt. Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's \"OK with it,\" and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? \"Or,\" the viewer thinks, \"if you're 225 pounds?\" The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks (\"I'm up to two dicks a day\"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up. Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, \"In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action.\" So what are Barker's \"larger dramatic truths\"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian. Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people. The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code, all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. (\"Furniture's temporary\n\n<question>:\nThe author believes that a/an ________ audience will enjoy the film \"Unmade Beds.\"\n\n<options>:\nA voyeuristic\nB insensitive\nC crude\nD empathetic\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,586 | 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>:\nEarly in American Beauty , Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a weary reporter for a media magazine, masturbates in the shower while informing us in voice-over that we're witnessing the highlight of his day. He peers through tired eyes out the window at his manicured suburban tract-house lawn, where his wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening)--whose gardening clogs, he points out, are color-coordinated with the handles of her shears--snips roses (American beauties) and twitters about Miracle-Gro to a gay yuppie (Scott Bakula) on the other side of a white picket fence. \"I have lost something,\" says Lester. \"I'm not exactly sure what it is but I know I didn't always feel this ... sedated.\" Apparently, Lester doesn't realize that snipped roses are garden-variety symbols of castration, or he'd know what he has lost. But the makers of American Beauty are about to give Lester his roses back. At a high-school basketball game, Lester is transfixed by a blonde cheerleader named Angela (Mena Suvari), who is twirling alongside his daughter, Jane (Thora Burch). Ambient noise falls away, the crowd disappears, and there she is, Lester's angel, writhing in slow motion--just for him. She opens her jacket (she's naked underneath) and red rose petals drift out. Later, Lester envisions her on a bed of red petals, then immersed in a bath of red petals. Back in the roses for the first time in years, he's soon pumping iron, smoking pot, and telling off his frigid wife and faceless bosses, convinced that whatever he has lost he's getting back, baby. The 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.\" 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>:\nHow does the author feel about Carolyn?\n\n<options>:\nA Carolyn is confident, composed, and in control.\nB Carolyn is a primal force.\nC Carolyn tries very hard to appear perfect and in control. It's hard to feel animosity toward her.\nD Carolyn is shrill.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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257 | 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>:\nRetief rose, went to the communicator, assisted Miss Meuhl aside. \"Listen carefully, Fith,\" he said. \"Your bluff has been called. You don't come in and we don't come out. Your camouflage worked for nine years, but it's all over now. I suggest you keep your heads and resist the temptation to make matters worse than they are.\" \"The Consul for the Terrestrial States,\" Retief said, \"presents his \"Miss Meuhl,\" Fith said, \"a peace squad waits outside your consulate. Retief turned at a sound behind him. Miss Meuhl was at the door, Retief exhaled a plume of cigar smoke. \"Don't!\" Retief jumped—too late. six light-concerts, four attempts at chamber music, and god knows how many assorted folk-art festivals. I've been tied up every off-duty hour since I got here—\" \"You can't offend the Groaci,\" Miss Meuhl said sharply. \"Consul Whaffle would never have been so rude.\" \"Whaffle left here three months ago,\" Retief said, \"leaving me in charge.\" \"Well,\" Miss Meuhl said, snapping off the dictyper. \"I'm sure I don't \"You are the consul, Miss Yolanda Meuhl,\" Shluh said. \"Would it not be \"I don't recall dictating any letters today, Miss Meuhl,\" Retief said, Mr. Retief to his quarters in this building—\" \"I don't advise you to violate my diplomatic immunity, Fith,\" Retief \"Did you write all Whaffle's letters for him, Miss Meuhl?\" \"Consul Whaffle was an extremely busy man,\" Miss Meuhl said stiffly. Miss Meuhl blinked behind thick lenses. \"Whatever for?\" Retief looked thoughtfully at Miss Meuhl. \"You've been here on Groac for four years, Miss Meuhl. What was behind the coup d'etat that put \"That's an illegal waiver,\" Retief said. \"I'm consul here, whatever the present government in power?\" \"I'm sure I haven't pried into—\" Retief nodded. \"Thanks, Miss Meuhl,\" he said. \"I'll be back before \"To enjoy a cooling drink,\" Retief said in Groacian, squatting down at Retief turned. A tall Groacian vibrated his mandibles in a gesture \"I've changed my mind,\" Retief said to the bartender. \"To be grateful Retief backed away. Retief stepped around him, seized his collar and yanked. The Groacian Retief put a foot against his chest and pushed. \"To not be going anywhere for a few minutes,\" Retief said. \"To stay right here and have a nice long talk.\" II \"There you are!\" Miss Meuhl said, eyeing Retief over her lenses. \"There \"Government men, I imagine. Word travels fast.\" Retief pulled off his Ministry.\" \"What have you been doing? They seem very upset, I don't mind telling you.\" indicative of rank rose as Retief entered the room. Neither offered a Consul,\" the taller Groacian said, in lisping Terran. \"May I present \"Sit down, gentlemen,\" Retief said. They resumed their seats. Miss Mr. Consul. I shall ask Shluh to recount it.\" He nodded to the police the Terrestrial Consul.\" Mr. Consul. It reminds us of certain illegal treatment at Terrestrial answers, and stayed on to dig around a little. After a week they left. Somewhat annoying to the Groaci, maybe—at the most. If they were innocent.\" \"Save the protests, Fith. You have some explaining to do. And I don't think your story will be good enough.\" it.\" Fith rose \"I shall ask for your immediate recall, Mr. Consul. Were it not for \"—to keep the Terrestrial consul and his staff in the dark,\" Retief \"Enough!\" Fith's mandibles quivered in distress. \"I can talk no more of this matter—\" \"You'll talk to me, or there'll be a task force here in five days to do the talking,\" Retief said. Retief turned a steady look on Miss Meuhl. She closed her mouth. The Groaci sat down. \"Answer me this one,\" Retief said, looking at Shluh. \"A few years back—about nine, I think—there was a little parade held here. Some \"Tell me, Shluh, what happened to those six Terrestrials after the parade was over?\" \"Didn't take the trouble to find out, either, did you?\" \"They fell ill,\" Fith said. \"One by one....\" \"Miss Meuhl,\" Retief said. \"If I don't come back in a reasonable length Retief stooped under the heavy timbers shoring the entry to the cavern. Retief grunted. \"Let's go inside.\" \"Indeed, I hope that this will be the end of this unfortunate affair,\" he said. \"Now that all has been fully and honestly shown—\" \"You can skip all that,\" Retief said. \"You're nine years late. The Retief looked grimly at the slender Foreign Office official. \"Where is \"My government can entertain no further accusations, Mr. Consul,\" \"You can and you will, Fith,\" Retief said. \"I intend to get to the Retief eyed Fith. \"Don't try it,\" he said. \"You'll just get yourself in \"You're ready to forgive a great deal, Miss Meuhl. But it's not what happened nine years ago I'm concerned with. It's what's happening now. \"That's my decision,\" Retief said. \"I have a job to do and we're it's too late. If I wait for an official Inquiry Commission, they'll find nothing but blank smiles.\" indignation. \"You're like a ... a....\" \"You and I are in a tight spot, Miss Meuhl. The logical next move for supply down. Don't let anyone in, on any pretext whatever. I'll keep in touch with you via hand-phone.\" \"What are you planning to do?\" done and sit tight. I think you'll be all right. It won't be easy to blast in here and anyway, they won't make things worse by killing you. A force can be here in a week.\" Retief, rose and snapped on a light, turned to stare. \"Where have you been?\" Miss Meuhl demanded. \"I stayed here—\" and water from the dispenser, too. We'll be holed up here for a week, at least.\" He jotted figures on a pad. \"Warm up the official sender. I have a long transmission for Regional Headquarters.\" \"I have a message to get off first, Miss Meuhl,\" Retief said sharply. it later.\" \"At this hour? There's no one there....\" \"Exactly.\" \"That's right,\" Retief said calmly. \"Now—\" \"Get that sender going, woman!\" Retief snapped. \"This is important.\" \"I've already done so, Mr. Retief!\" Miss Meuhl said harshly. \"I've been \"He's here now,\" Miss Meuhl said to the screen. She looked at Retief \"I have done my duty, Mr. Retief,\" Miss Meuhl said. \"I made a full Retief looked at her levelly. \"You've been a busy girl, Miss Meuhl. Did \"Mr. Retief,\" the face on the screen said, \"I am Counsellor Pardy, administratively, vice Miss Yolanda Meuhl, DAO-9. Pending the findings Retief reached out and snapped off the communicator. The triumphant Retief ignored Miss Meuhl's fury as he spoke into the recorder. \"Go ahead,\" Retief said. \"Answer it.\" \"Yolanda Meuhl,\" he said without preamble, \"for the Foreign Minister of direct from the Terrestrial Headquarters. As consul, you are requested to make available for questioning Mr. J. Retief, former consul, in\n\n<question>:\nHow long ago was Retief given Whaffle’s consul position?\n\n<options>:\nA Three months\nB Nine months\nC Nine years\nD One month\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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2,503 | 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>:\nIt's my first go at delivering a baby by caesarean section – and the foetal head is impacted, jammed in its mother's pelvis. To be honest I'm struggling. 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. The standard response is to perform a caesarean section. Every year some 160,000 babies are born in the UK this way, with almost two thirds of them classified as emergencies. One audit has suggested that roughly 8,000 babies get stuck and have to be delivered by caesarean at a stage when their mothers are fully dilated. \"Some of the babies will be so close to coming out by the normal route,\" says Tydeman, \"that it's then difficult to get them back up and remove them through the hole in the woman's tummy.\" Which women are most at risk of this setback seems to be largely unpredictable. \"We just observe that it happens… It's been discussed in the medical literature since the 1940s, but until 10 years ago, and throughout my training and most of my life as a consultant, it wasn't really talked about.\" Considering the universality of childbirth, impaction and the best way of dealing with it are topics that seem to have gone remarkably unstudied. \"There are strong opinions about why it happens and what to do, but very little research evidence,\" says Tydeman, adding that many of these opinions are contradictory. In a protracted birth that's destined to end with a caesarean, the longer the labour is allowed to go on before the obstetrician decides to intervene, the greater the likelihood that the baby's head will become impacted. However, concern over the rising number of babies born by caesarean has made doctors more wary of doing them – one consequence of which is that medical staff may allow a difficult birth to continue for longer before they resort to surgery. This could be boosting the frequency of impaction. But, again, no one is certain. When obstetricians doing planned caesareans slice open a mother's womb, what they usually see is the baby's head. By slipping a hand round and below it they can easily guide the baby out. \"When you do a caesarean for an impacted baby,\" says Tydeman, \"you make the incision in the same place, but what you might come across is a shoulder because the baby's so much further down [the birth canal].\" As I'd discovered for myself, sliding a hand around the baby's head is then far more difficult. \"It makes your fingers hurt,\" says Tydeman. \"It makes your pulse rate go up to about 200, and you break out in a sweat because know you've only got about five or 10 minutes before there are serious consequences. The clock is ticking.\" Tydeman can remember the exact moment when the idea of her having a greater role dawned on him. \"I was on the sleeper train down from Scotland to London,\" he says. \"Debra was with me because the first Tydeman tube had become available at St Thomas's… It was about midnight, I'd had my free whisky and I suddenly thought, 'Blow me! Even if the tube doesn't work, Debra could be useful as a teaching aid'.\" The following morning, at St Thomas's, Tydeman asked a visiting professor of obstetrics to have a look at Debra and tell him what she thought. She put her hand into Debra's womb, grasped the foetal head and said it felt just like the real thing. \"Terribly flattering,\" Tydeman laughs. With a grant from the Guy's and St Thomas's Charity fund they made Debra more presentable. Tydeman showed the prototype to Adam Rouilly, an established company specialising in medical models and simulators. They were impressed. A year later, the first of Debra's smartened-up sisters was on the market. So how valuable in training medical staff is a simulator like this? Very, according to Annette Briley. Imagine it's the middle of the night and an unplanned emergency caesarean is required: \"Some poor junior doctor might find himself trying to manage it on his own.\" To have practised the knack of extracting a firmly impacted baby from a simulator is lot better than first honing your skill on a real woman. 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. One of the treatments of choice in that era was, naturally, acupuncture. But how to teach tyro-acupuncturists where to place the needles? Simple. A life-size bronze statue dotted with small holes indicated the points of insertion. And how then to test the students' grasp of their subject? If the statute was hollow, filled with liquid and given an outer coating of wax to mask the holes, a correct needle insertion would be followed by a leak. Given the universality of childbirth it's no surprise that, then as now, the womb turns out to be the most simulated of our organs. For the benefit of 18th-century midwives and doctors-in-training, the Bologna surgeon Giovanni Antonio Galli devised a birthing simulator comprising a glass uterus supported by an artificial pelvis and containing a flexible foetus. Trainees had to deliver the baby while wearing a blindfold. Only the tutor could witness the fumbling of their hands. As the material for a convincing simulation, glass clearly has its drawbacks. But another 18th-century contraption used a pink cloth-covered mannequin comprising a female torso complete with genitalia, a set of implantable foetuses of various ages, and even – a real Oddly, as medicine became more scientific, most of these devices fell by the wayside. As an academic review of these and other devices has pointed out, much of the 20th century was something of Dark Ages for simulation. Its value in professional training has had to be rediscovered: an endeavour in which inventive people like Graham Tydeman, sometimes with workshops rich in discarded junk, are still fruitfully engaged. This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.\n\n<question>:\nDescribe how the frequency of C-sections has changed over time\n\n<options>:\nA The frequency has gradually decreased\nB The frequency has plateaued\nC The frequency has no significant trend\nD The frequency has steadily increased\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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720 | 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 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 & Garden , Allure , Details , Self , Mademoiselle , and Glamour The expense-account lunch is a hallowed journalistic tradition. But consider a day in the life of an editor working for Si Newhouse. (Donald's editors are a different story, as they will be happy to tell you.) It's a closed economy where almost all human needs and desires can be gratified with a miraculous, unlimited currency called the Si. You've forgotten to return the video your kids watched yesterday, so you have a messenger take it back to Blockbuster. Si spends $20 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. Newhouse expense stories are a staple of New York literary-journalistic conversation. Stories about the $10,000 in expenses that a New Yorker editor billed for a single month. About the interior-decorating costs for the fashion-magazine editor who likes to have her office photographs rearranged every few months. About the hotel tab for the big-name New York writer who spent three weeks in Washington's Hay-Adams (basic room: $285 a night) researching a Vanity Fair story that will never run. About the Vogue editor who has furnished her summer house from items purchased for fashion shoots--beautiful furniture, designer pillows, coffee-table books. Vogue assistants have nicknamed the house \"Petty Cash Junction.\" None of the 39 past and present Newhouse employees I spoke to for this story would talk on the record, for . And the nature of the subject makes it hard to separate apocrypha from the truth. Did Condé Nast pay, as sources insist it did, hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes on behalf of an editor who didn't bother to file tax forms? Did an editor really expense $20,000 in a weeklong trip to Paris? The people who pay the bills are not talking. But every example of excess cited here was told to me by at least one source (and usually more than one) in a position to know. Need a facial? Treat yourself and bill it to Si. This is what is called \"scouting.\" It is also a great way to get free haircuts. To be fair, Si doesn't pay for all such treats. There is also a much-honored tradition of accepting tribute from companies that Condé Nast magazines cover. One magazine exec reportedly got so much loot last Christmas--Cuban cigars, \"crates of wine,\" designer suits (\"It was like a Spanish galleon\")--that he needed three cars to cart it home. At yuletide, even midlevel fashion-mag writers and editors are inundated with \"cashmere sweaters, Versace pillows, coats ...\" recalls one ex- Vogue staffer wistfully. 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'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. And they say it's not as good as it used to be. In 1992, according to Thomas Maier's biography of Newhouse, the editor of Self held a birthday party for Si Newhouse's dog . (Owners ate caviar dogs drank Evian.) The lowliest assistants used to take car services home. But new Condé Nast CEO Steve Florio has restricted cars and catering. Editors who used to fly the Concorde now fly first-class those who used to fly first-class now fly business. Expense accounts are scrutinized. Even so, today's Condé Nast is economical only by Condé Nast standards. The belt is tighter, but it's still hand-tooled, hand-tanned, and fashioned from the finest Italian leather.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is Si’s full name?\n\n<options>:\nA S.I. Newsom Jr.\nB S.I. Newhouse Jr.\nC Silas Newhouse Jr.\nD Silas Donald Newhouse\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,454 | 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>:\nSlate beer-testing team were coping with lagers and trying to see if they could taste the 3-to-1 price difference between the most- and least-expensive brands. (Click for a wrap-up of the first round of beer tasting.) The answer was: They found one beer they really liked, Samuel Adams Boston Lager , and one they really hated, imported Grolsch from Holland. Both were expensive beers--Grolsch was the most expensive in the test--and otherwise the testers had a hard time telling beers apart. The members of the team, as noted in the original article, all hold day jobs at Microsoft, mainly as designers, managers, and coders for Microsoft Word. The point of the second test was not to find the difference between cheap and expensive beers but instead to compare a variety of top-of-the-line beers. Was there one kind the tasters preferred consistently? Could they detect any of the subtleties of brewing style and provenance that microbrew customers pay such attention to when choosing some Doppelbock over a cream ale? Since the tasting panel had left the first round grumbling that cheap lagers were not a fair test of their abilities, this second round of testing was advertised to the panel as a reward. Every beer in Round 2 would be a fancy beer. A microbrew. A \"craft beer.\" A prestigious import. These were the kinds of beer the panel members said they liked--and the ones they said they were most familiar with. One aspect of the reward was that they would presumably enjoy the actual testing more--fewer rueful beer descriptions along the lines of \"urine\" or \"get it away!\" were expected than in the first round. The other aspect of anticipated reward was the panelists' unspoken but obvious assumption that this time they would \"do better\" on the test. Intellectual vanity being what it is, people who had fought for and won jobs at Microsoft and who still must fight every six months for primacy on the employee-ranking scale (which determines--gasp!--how many new stock options they receive) would assume that their skill as tasters was on trial, just as much as the beer was. Of course they were right, which is what made this round as amusing to administer as the first one had been. Here is what happened and what it meant: 1. Procedure. This was similar in most ways to the experimental approach of Round 1. The nine testers who showed up were a subset of the original 12. The missing three dropped out with excuses of \"my wife is sick\" (one person) and \"meeting is running long\" (two). After sampling all beers, the tasters rated them as follows: Overall quality points, from zero to 100, reflecting their personal, subjective fondness for the beer. Descriptions of and comments about each beer's taste--\"smooth and nutty,\" \"too strong,\" etc. If the first ranking was a measure of how good each beer was, this was an attempt to explain what made it good. Best and Worst , one of each from the group. 2. Philosophy. The first round of testing was All Lager. This second round was All Fancy, and Mainly Not Lager. As several correspondents (for instance, the of Best American Beers ) have helpfully pointed out, the definition of lager provided last time was not exactly \"accurate.\" If you want to stay within the realm of textbook definitions, a lager is a beer brewed a particular way--slowly, at cool temperatures, with yeast that settles on the bottom of the vat. This is in contrast with an ale, which is brewed faster, warmer, and with the yeast on top. By this same reasoning, lagers don't have to be light-colored, weak-flavored, and watery, as mainstream American lagers are. In principle, lagers can be dark, fierce, manly. Therefore, the correspondents suggest, it was wrong to impugn Sam Adams or Pete's Wicked for deceptive labeling, in presenting their tawnier, more flavorful beers as lagers too. and b) most lagers are light-colored and weak. The first test was designed to evaluate low-end beers and therefore had to be lager-centric. This one is designed to test fancy beers--but in the spirit of open-mindedness and technical accuracy, it includes a few \"strong\" lagers too. Materials. The 10 test beers were chosen with several goals in mind: To include one holdover from the previous test, as a scientific control on our tasters' preferences. This was Sam Adams , runaway winner of Round 1. Click for pricing information and pre-quaffing evaluations. The beers tasted were: a) Best and Worst. Compared to the lager test, we would expect the range of \"best\" choices to be more varied, since all the tested beers were supposed to be good. This expectation was most dramatically borne out in the \"Best and Worst\" rankings. The nine tasters cast a total of nine Worst votes and 11.5 Best votes. (Tester No. 1 turned in a sheet with three Best selections, or two more than his theoretical quota. Tester No. 4 listed a Best and a Best-minus, which counted as half a vote.) The first two anomalies can be written off as testament to the power of a blind taste test. The third suggests an important difference in concepts of \"bestness.\" Sometimes a product seems to be the best of a group simply because it's the most unusual or distinctive. This is why very high Wine Spectator ratings often go to wines that mainly taste odd. But another kind of bestness involves an unobtrusive, day-in day-out acceptability. That seems to be Michelob Hefe 's achievement here: no one's first choice, but high on everyone's list. Let's go to the charts: This table shows how the beers performed on \"raw score\"--that is, without the advanced statistical adjustment of throwing out the highest and lowest score each beer received. Many others were simply lost. Barely half the tasters, five of nine, recognized that Michelob Hefeweizen was a Hefeweizen. Before the test, nine of nine would have said that picking out a Hefe was easy, because of its cloudy look and wheaty flavor. Three tasters thought Sam Adams was an IPA two thought Redhook's IPA was a Hefeweizen. In fairness, six of nine testers identified Pyramid Hefeweizen as a Hefe, and six recognized Full Sail ESB as a bitter. Much in the fashion of blind men describing an elephant, here is a how the testers handled Sam Adams Boston Lager : If we are Gradgrind-like empiricists, living our life for \"welfare maximization\" as described in introductory econ. courses, the conclusion is obvious. We learned from the first experiment to buy either Sam Adams (when we wanted maximum lager enjoyment per bottle) or Busch (for maximum taste and snob appeal per dollar). From this second round we see an even more efficient possibility: Buy Michelob Hefeweizen and nothing else, since on the basis of this test it's the best liked and the cheapest beer. By the way, if there is a single company whose achievements the testing panel honored, it would be Anheuser-Busch . From its brewing tanks came two of the double-crown winners of the taste tests: plain old Busch , the Taste-o-meter and Snob-o-meter victor of Round 1, and Michelob Hefeweizen , the preference-point and Val-u-meter winner this time. Tell the testers ahead of time what beers they will be drinking. Ask them to rank the beers, 1 through 10, based on how well they like them. Then compare the list with the \"revealed preferences\" that come from the blind test. As a variation, show them the list ahead of time and ask them to pick out the beer they know they love and the one they know they hate. Then compare this with the \"after\" list. Remember to stay strictly in the scientist's role. Don't take the test yourself.\n\n<question>:\nWhich word best describes the author's feeling about the test?\n\n<options>:\nA methodical\nB prestigious\nC formal\nD amusing\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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2,016 | 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>:\nmen on ships think about, talk about, bitch about their food. It's what was day-before-yesterday's table-scraps and jakes-water. 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. Slimeheads remember the H. M. S. 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 Robert Bailey. dietetics and sewage engineering. It's the Cook's responsibility to Though I'm signed aboard as Ship's Surgeon, I seldom lift a knife in space. My employment is more in the nature of TS-card-puncher 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 so alone. If the Prussians had a Marine Corps, Winkelmann would have Earth was hardly large enough to accommodate a wart as annoying as Willy Winkelmann. Cheek-by-jowl every day in a nacelle the size of a Pullman car, our Captain quickly established himself as a major social hemorrhoid. The Captain's particular patsy was, of course, young Bailey the Cook. you are feeding me.\" Captain Winkelmann blotted his chin \"Doc, do you like Winkelmann?\" the Cook asked me. \"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.\" \"His plumpness is an unwitting tribute to your cooking, Bailey,\" I 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 Bailey stared across the dining-cubby toward Winkelmann, silently imploring the Captain's ratification of his masterpiece. The big cycler-salt.\" \"You seem able enough to choke down Bailey's chow, Captain,\" I said. I \"Yes, I eat it,\" the Captain said, taking and talking through another the ship—cannot be coaxed to work on hog-slop. You understand me, Belly-Robber?\" Bailey, his hands fisted at his sides, nodded. \"Yes, sir. But I really with the \"Yes, sir,\" Bailey said, his face a picture of that offense the British followed him. \"Captain,\" I said, \"you're driving Bailey too hard. \"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 path to Mars. Each meal he prepared was a fresh attempt to propitiate by that heartless man. Bailey began to try avoiding the Captain at mealtimes, but was frustrated by Winkelmann's orders. \"Convey my 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 \"We are not amused,\" said Captain Winkelmann, accepting a second they were in addition gratified that the battle between their Captain and their Cook served to feed them so well. Most spacers embark Captain that he curtail his diet for reasons of health, a bit of advice his rank and responsibility merit, the Captain is allowed double this him while away the hours between the planets. Bailey, I knew for a fact, had used up his weight-allowance in bringing aboard a case of texture steak-like. Do you understand, Sir?\" our food,\" the Captain said, his jowls settling into an expression of \"Try it,\" he urged the Captain. kind word from the Captain bettered the ruffles-and-flourishes of a bottle on the table for all my future meals, Belly-Robber.\" \"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 \"Captain, you've gone too far,\" I said. Bailey, his fists knotted, was scarlet, his chest heaving with emotion. \"Doctor, I must point out to you that it ill behooves the Ship's Surgeon to side with the Cook against the Captain,\" Winkelmann said. \"Sir, Bailey has tried hard to please you,\" I said. \"The other officers 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 bunk and exploded into weeping, banging his fists against the metal therapy, Bailey,\" I told him. He poured the fiery stuff down his throat like water and silently held out his glass for a second. I provided it. After a few minutes Bailey's sobbing ceased. \"Sorry, Doc,\" he said. \"You've taken more pressure than most men would,\" I said. \"Nothing to be ashamed of.\" vis medicatrix naturae , the healing power of nature. Half an hour later I strapped Bailey into his bunk to sleep it though daring him to comment. The Captain lifted a spoonful of the now strong enough to withstand the Captain's fiercest assaults of theory of forcing a Cook to make bricks without straw. The Captain of salt, and went largely undrunk. The men in the mess compartment were vehement in their protests, blaming the Captain, in his absence, for the decline in culinary standards. Bailey seemed not to care. He served of cicadas chirping and green grass underfoot, of the pop and hiss of canned beer being church-keyed. \"He's done it, Doc!\" one of the \"Then he's beat the Captain at his game,\" I said. \"The Dutchman won't want to mess ketchup on these steaks,\" the crewman good .\" \"Thanks, Doc,\" Bailey said. I smiled and took another bite. \"You may not realize it, Bailey but this is a victory for the Captain, too. He drove you to this triumph you couldn't have done it without him.\" Captain may be a hard man, Bailey 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>:\nWhich is the best description of the relationship between the Doc and the captain?\n\n<options>:\nA They are old friends and the Doc is happy to let poor behavior slide\nB The Doc respects the captain's position but say something if he thinks he goes too far\nC The Doc never puts up with the captain, which makes their relationship very tense\nD The Doc is the official mediator between the captian and the rest of the crew\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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677 | 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>:\nHOMECOMING BY MIGUEL HIDALGO What lasts forever? Does love? forever.... Not even forever 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 be welcome on tired bodies and dry throats. He spurred his horse, the horse. Then both man and horse plunged headlong into the waiting 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. But the portion of his brain called memory stirred. It was all alone 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 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. \"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.\" Then she had slipped the ring on her finger and her arms around him. He held her very close, feeling the warmth from her body flowing into his and making him oblivious to everything except that she was there in he had been many times before but each time found something new and unexplored, some vastly different emotion he could never quite explain. \"Wait!\" she cried. \"I've something for you, too.\" She took off the locket she wore about her neck and held it up to the shimmering light, letting it spin at the end of its chain. It caught the shadows of the fire and reflected them, greatly magnified, over the it for a moment. Then he kissed her, and instantly was drawn down into 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 and slammed the door. His cold fingers found the locket, making a little bulge under his uniform, and the touch of it seemed to warm the 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. \"Heavy bombers!\" The alarm had sounded, and the men had headed for reflecting a blinding light. They were bound for bigger, more important 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 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 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 had commandeered a small yacht, and they had taken to the sea. After months of storms and bad luck, they had been shipwrecked and had been found by a fisherman's family. Many months he had spent swimming and fishing, recovering his strength, inquiring about the In time he had traveled north until he reached the Rio Grande. He had leaving to those once great fertile stretches, nothing but the sad, 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 And he had followed. Over a mountain, until they came to a pass, and finally to a narrow path which led to an old cabin. He had found it 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 But he knew he was closer now. Closer to home. He recognized the land. 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 He awoke and stretched the cramped muscles of his body. At the edge of body, he plunged into the cold water, deep down, until he thought his every pore. He dried himself and dressed. Conqueror was eating the long He would ride all day and the next night. And he would be home. burning stream within his body. But day at last gave way to night, and He turned quickly away and did not look back. he was home he would build new furniture, and the house would be even better than it had been before. Then he saw her. like a restless child in sleep, then moved from the chair to the pile found it. He had been searching so long. He would go on searching. 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. shriveled by thirst. He grasped the doorknob and clung to it, looking 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 and the locket fell into his waiting hand. As one in a dream, he opened it, and stared at the pictures, now in the dim moonlight no longer faces of those he loved, but grey ghosts from the past. Even the ruby \"Nothing is forever!\" He thought he had shouted the words, but only a thin sound, the sound of leaves ruffled by the wind, came back to him. 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 He ran. Away from the house. To the large horse with a horn in the Conqueror trotted away, the sound of his hooves echoing hollowly in the\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the protagonist want to get back to his wife?\n\n<options>:\nA He promised that he would return home after the Americans won the war.\nB He promised that his love is “forever” and that he would return from the war.\nC He promised that his love is “forever” and that he would take her to Europe once the war ended.\nD He promised that he would return the locket she lent him for the war.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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2,081 | 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>:\nWe know that paedophiles, murderers and other violent criminals come in many shapes and sizes. If we knew nothing about their criminal history, some of their photos might even appear attractive. But the idea that someone's features betray their character is something rooted deep within us it's the reason why certain photos perform well on dating apps, or why trustworthy-looking politicians might rack up votes. But how wrong are our hunches of perceived criminality? A recent paper, published by Xiaolin Wu and Xi Zhang of Shanghai's Jiao Tong University, claims to be the first to use machine learning and neural networks to attempt a fully automated inference of criminality from facial images, removing prejudice from the equation and testing the validity of our gut feelings. \"What facial features influence the average Joe's impulsive and yet consensual judgments on social attributes?\" they ask. Through a study of 1,856 images (\"controlled for race, gender, age and facial expression\") they claim to have established the validity of \"automated, face-induced inference on criminality, despite the historical controversy surrounding this line of enquiry.\" In 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.\" 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).\" pointy or snubbed fingers or toes. In a woeful misreading of Darwinian theory, Lombroso unwittingly founded the field of anthropological criminology, and more specifically the idea of the born criminal: a hereditary quality that posed a danger to society and must be rooted out. His theories became discredited during the 20th century, but the kind of bias displayed by Lombroso can still be found in legal systems across the world 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. The revitalisation of the theory of physiognomy by the Shanghai students is, according to Todorov, deeply problematic on a theoretical level. \"Are we back to Lombroso's theory,\" he asks, \"that criminals were anomalous creatures, evolutionary degenerates? How does one become criminal, and what role do various life forces play into this? There are people making claims that you just need to look at the face to predict personality and behaviour, but many of these people have not given much thought to their underlying assumptions.\" not least because it helps to sustain a low-level belief in the 'science' of physiognomy, despite its tendency to crumble under the slightest cross examination.\n\n<question>:\nWhich of these is most true about physiognomy?\n\n<options>:\nA If this were not an area of study, people would not be drawing false conclusions about people on trial\nB It has helped to put a number of important criminals behind bars\nC It is a brand new area of study that focuses on the application of machine learning to see how computers can help\nD People have been interested in this area for centuries but only recently applied technology to it\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,162 | 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>:\nYou'll work eight hours a day, work harder than you've ever worked before in your life, because every time you start to loaf, a voice in your head is going to say, Work! Work! Exes always get good jobs \"But during these next few days, you'll discover what being an Ex names. He wanted to smash the fat, grinning face, but the muscles in his arm froze before it moved it an inch. And worse than that, a brief pain ripped through his skull. A pain so intense that, had it lasted a second longer, he would have screamed in agony. And above the pain, a voice whispered in his head, Unlawful to strike someone except in self-defense returned, and the mental voice whispered, Unlawful to curse . He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a crime. And now that he knew, it didn't seem fair. He decided to tell the whole story to the newspapers as soon as he could. And as soon as that decision formed in his mind, his body froze, the pain returned and the voice, street-cleaner, ditch-digger—\" On the other side of the room, the jukebox came to life with a roar and the day you died. With the CPA system, you're returned to society, a useful citizen, unable to commit the smallest crime. And you've got a big hand in your dirty little mind that's going to slap it every time you get the wrong kind of thought. It'll keep slapping you until you convicted of a crime, I'll be able to get a good job!\" or later to not even think about doing anything wrong.\" learn. It might take weeks, months or years, but you'll learn sooner want to hire you for. I want you to help me commit a crime. If I get a group of teen-agers scrambled to the dance floor. with pain and he felt suffocated. The CPA was everywhere, only now it was also inside his head, telling him he couldn't do this, couldn't do that. All his life it had been telling him he couldn't do things he blackmail, rape, arson, and drunkenness had originated the CPA—Crime No crime was ever punished. If a man was smart enough to kill someone, for instance, he wasn't sent to prison to be punished he wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy and prisoner inside his own body ... made a prisoner by a world that hated him back. He wanted to spit his contempt, but the increasingly familiar pain and voice prevented him. a dozen other methods. An expensive operation, but since there were few to kill someone, beat their mates, get drunk, or kick a dog. Not only a And therefore, an EX (a convicted criminal who received the treatment was commonly called an Ex because he was in the strictest sense of the word an Ex-criminal) ... an Ex was always offered the best jobs. few things that was a crime merely because a man attempted it. A crime because it theoretically inflicted psychological injury upon the intended victim—and because millions of women voters had voted it a crime. On the other hand, attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc., were not crimes. They weren't crimes because the DCT didn't complete the act, and if he didn't complete the act, that meant simply that the became acutely aware of its lack of resiliency when his head struck it. There was a wonderful moment while the world was filled with beautiful stars and streaks of lightning through which he heard distant police sirens. But the wonderful moment didn't last long and darkness closed in on him. When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, \"Okay. Snap out of it.\" machines on the walls, \" Scream. Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you. \" And then the girl's voice, \" committing a crime, then that meant the CPA had functioned properly \"That means your case history will be turned over to the newspapers. to let you know they're watching you. They watch you all night, just hoping you'll do something exciting, like trying to kill someone, so they can be the first ones to yell ' Police! did prevent you from committing a crime, they'd get a nice reward and they'd be famous.\" \"Lay off,\" Joe said. \"I got a headache. That girl—\" thousands of people like them. Years ago, they got their kicks from reading about guys like you, but these days things are dull because it's rare when anyone commits a crime. So every time you walk down the street, there'll be at least a dozen of 'em following you, and no back, you'll see a dozen freckle-faced little boys following you half a block behind, giggling and gaping at you. They'll follow you until the day you die, because you're a freak!\" you on the street and insult you, call you names, spit on you and—\" \"Okay, goddam it! Stop it! \" dumb to realize by yourself. We've taught everyone to hate crime and criminals ... to hate them as nothing has ever been hated before. don't you frame me? If I'm such a nuisance, pin a crime on me—any crime.\" \"Can't do it. Convicting a man of a crime he didn't commit is a violation of Civil Rights and a crime in itself.\" \"Umm.\" \"Why don't you take the free psycho treatment? A man doesn't criminal tendencies and—\" \"Go to those head-shrinkers ?\" \"Violation of Civil Rights.\" \"Damn it, there must be some way you can help me! We both want the same thing. We both want to see me convicted of a crime.\" soon as we find them, we take steps to install anti-robbery devices, pick a name and go out and rob him.'\" He laughed nervously. \"If I did that, I'd be committing a crime myself!\" \"Huh? Thanks for what? I didn't do anything.\" of it would kill a human. The FBI had always been a powerful organization, but under the supervision of the CPA, it was a scientific colossus and to think anything else, the below-perception words CRIME IS FILTH. It was monotonous and, after a while, a person looked at the words and heard them without thinking about them. And they were imprinted on his subconscious over and over, year after year, until he knew that crime was the same as filth and that criminals were filthy things. it was a place where a man could fall down at night and sleep, but where no normal man could live day after day. Fearing that someone might detect him before he actually committed the crime, but the newspapers would splash satirical headlines. Instead of being respected as a successful criminal, he would be ridiculed. Chuckling with joy, he opened the window and shouted, \" Thief! Police! Help! \" metal police officers rang doorbells. There was a reward for anyone who reported a crime, but no one admitted shouting the warning. He was having a nightmare when he heard the voice, \"Hey. Wake up. Hey!\" During the treatment, he had been unconscious or drugged, unable to think. Now he could think clearly, but he could find no difference in himself. Before, the mere sight of the man had aroused an intense hatred. Now, even when he tried, he succeeded in arousing only a mild hatred. like a bull snorting. \"You think a successful criminal is a hero? You stupid—\" glad the CPA caught you, and because they're glad you're an Ex. You're -criminal now, and because of your treatment, you'll never be able to commit another crime as long as you live. And that's the kind ex-murderer came out. before they do real damage. We use it as a last resort when a DCT First\n\n<question>:\nWhat happens to the Ex members who think about committing a crime?\n\n<options>:\nA They are unable to think about crime.\nB They are locked back away in the hospital for more treatment.\nC They are given another DCT card.\nD They feel immense head pain at the thought of crime.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
128 | 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 captain was momentarily silent, groping for an adequate reply. your position, you will follow the intelligent example of the Knof Llud stiffened. The Quest I most hopeful of the expeditions—and its captain had been a good friend of Llud's, nine hundred years ago.... He growled, \"What happened to him?\" drove on its way once more, lashed by despair toward the speed of 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 crew. It was a subdued excitement men and women, they the same racial characteristics possessed by those aboard the came and stood quietly gazing into the big vision screens that showed luminary unaccompanied by worlds where men might dwell. They had grown , but he had an elusive look of deformity. Most obviously, his head seemed too big for his body, and his eyes in turn too big for his head. He grinned nastily at Knof Llud. \"Have you any other last wishes?\" \"Yes,\" said Llud with icy control. \"You haven't answered one question. Why do you want to kill us? You can see we're as human as you are.\" The big-headed man eyed him with a speculative look in his great the Sun, whose rays had warmed their lives' beginning. Knof Llud, the Quest III's lie at the long journey's end. For the out from its original cramped quarters. Now the interstellar ship was little more than a hollow shell. Eyes lifted from the vision screens to interrogate Knof Llud he met them with an impassive countenance, and announced quietly, \"We've each other's hands, kissed, shouted, wept. For the present their fears were forgotten and exaltation prevailed. Knof Llud smiled wryly. The rest of the little speech he had been about to make didn't matter anyway, and it might have spoiled this moment. He turned to go, and was halted by the sight of his wife, standing at feel, Lesra?\" She drew an uncertain breath and released it in a faint sigh. \"I don't know. It's good that Earth's still there.\" She was thinking, he judged shrewdly, of Knof Jr. and Delza, who save from pictures could not remember sunlit skies or grassy fields or woods in summer.... people saw each other's faces by the pale golden light of Earth's own Sun, mirrored and multiplied by the screens. In that light Lesra's eyes gleamed with unshed tears. Captain Llud found Navigator Gwar Den looking as smug as the cat that ate the canary. Gwar Den was finding that the actual observed positions of the planets thus far located agreed quite closely with 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 Quests light, leaving behind the mockery of yet another solitary and lifeless The ship's automatic mechanisms had scant need of tending Knof Llud everyone on board, himself included, to fill up the hours that remained. 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 empty and Captain Knof Llud felt tired and old. Bemusedly Llud got to his feet and stood surveying a cabinet with the ship's official log and its collections of scientific data, as a Llud selected a spool from among the earliest. It was one he had made 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 voices, in tones of mingled eagerness and apprehension, of what might \"It makes no difference, of course we cannot betray the plan.... \"According to plan, the \"Would the crew be willing? I don't know—some of them still show signs Of all the western stars, until I die. Llud sighed. He still couldn't say just why he had given the order to turn back. The stars had claimed his heart—but he was still a part of Earth, and not even nine hundred years of space and time had been able He reached the phone at the moment when another, heavier jolt shook the vessel. Llud snatched up the receiver with the speed of a scalded cat. seriousness and, without wasting time on questions, \"Can I go with you, huh, Dad?\" Llud hesitated, said, \"All right. Come along and keep out of the way.\" Their faces were set, scared, uncomprehending. The Quest III shuddered, again and again, under blows that must have had millions of horsepower behind them To a man, the ship's responsible officers were already on the bridge, most of them breathless. To a man they looked appeal at Captain Knof Llud. \"Well?\" he snapped. \"What are they doing?\" he had confidence in his father. the ship the impact—and the ship, in obedience to the law of equal and opposite deflection was negligible. The people in the Quest III would have felt nothing at all of the vicious onslaught being hurled against them, save that their inertialess drive, at its normal thrust of two hundred gravities, was intentionally operated at one half of one per cent efficiency to provide the illusion of Earthly gravitation. One of the officers said shakily, \"It's as if they've been lying in wait for us. But why on Earth—\" \"That,\" said the captain grimly, \"is what we have to find out. Why—on 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 paying attention to him. The men on the Quest III's bridge looked questions at each other, as the thought of help from outside flashed into many minds at once. But Captain Llud said soberly, \"It must have caught one of their own shots, reflected. Maybe its own, if it scored \"Robot craft, no doubt,\" said Knof Llud, but a chill ran down his spine Elsuz Llug, the gravitic engineer, calculated dismally, \"At the rate \"We're under the psychological disadvantage,\" said the captain, \"of not knowing why we're being attacked.\" Knof Jr. burst out, spluttering slightly with the violence of a thought too important to suppress, \"But we're under a ps-psychological advantage, too!\" Smiles splintered the ice of tension. Captain Llud said, \"Maybe you've Quest III ....\" And so on, identifying themselves and protesting that converting that energy into harmless gravitic impulses was costing the Quest III too. Once more Knof Llud had the insidious sense of his own nerves and muscles and will weakening along with the power-sinews of his ship. Eagerly Llud took the sheaf of photographs made with the telescope. But they told him nothing \"Is that all?\" demanded Llud. The captain sighed wearily. \"Good work,\" he said. \"Keep it up and pleading will do you no good. \" absurdly with the same words in his own voice on the still repeating tape.\n\n<question>:\nFrom the information the story provides, do you think you have a good sense of the personalities of Captain Llud's crew?\n\n<options>:\nA Probably. There were good descriptions for all of the side characters, including Captain Llud's son.\nB No. Llud barely spoke to anyone on the ship at all, he was even ignoring his son so we really didn't get to see a good glimpse of anyone's personalities.\nC No. Llud was well-described, and some of the side characters had detail, but none of them really stand out too much.\nD Yes. All of the characters felt incredibly real, and they all care deeply about Llud.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,874 | 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>:\nthat left the Earth with a wing and a prayer. Earth Instruments within the ship intercepted The history of the planet was the way to swing nearer Earth. soon. \"We've got to make or break,\" said the first alien. \"You know what I'm in favor of,\" said the second. \"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.\" \"I may remind you that in two go.\" \"A week,\" said Ethaniel. \"We in everything they do.\" \"It won't take much,\" said Ethaniel. \"The wrong diplomatic move, or a trigger-happy soldier could set it off. And it wouldn't have to be deliberate. A meteor it as an all-out enemy attack.\" \"Too bad,\" said Bal. \"We'll just have to forget there ever was such a planet as Earth.\" \"I'm doing it,\" said Bal. \"Just give them a little time and they won't be here to remind me that said Ethaniel. \"I ask you to look at them.\" Bal rustled, flicking the screen intently. \"Very much like ourselves,\" quite odd, they seem exactly like us. Is that what you wanted me \"It is. The fact that they are seem defenseless, though I suppose they're not.\" \"Tough,\" said Bal. \"Nothing we can do about it.\" \"There is. We can give them their entire history. We can't 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 nothing in this region of space our people want,\" said Ethaniel. \"And how long can Earth last? Ten years? Even ten months? \"What can I say?\" said Bal. \"I suppose we can stop and look them over. We're not committing Earth, not intending to commit themselves. For a day they circled the planet, avoiding radar detection, which for them was not difficult, testing, and sampling. Finally Ethaniel looked up from the monitor screen. \"Any \"What's there to think? It's \"In what way?\" \"Well, we knew they had the big bomb. Atmospheric analysis showed that as far away as we were.\" \"I know.\" \"We also knew they could deliver the big bomb, presumably by some sort of aircraft.\" \"That was almost a certainty. They'd have no use for the big bomb without aircraft.\" \"What's worse is that I now find they also have missiles, upward. They either have or are 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.\" Our machines translate go down and live among them, \"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.\" started,\" said Bal. \"It's happened before. We take the trouble to Earth. They no longer needed instruments to see it. The planet the oceans \"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 hundred years ago it might have worked. Today they have satellites. They are not primitives.\" \"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 going to survive, how they can keep their planet in one piece so they can live on it.\" \"That'll go over big. Advice is \"Special instructions?\" \"None. We leave the ship here and go down in separate landing craft. You can talk with me any communications, but don't unless you have to.\" \"They can't intercept the beams we use.\" \"They can't, and even if they to talk things over.\" that.\" Bal looked out of the port at the planet below. \"It's going to \"I'm afraid not. The great powers are in the north. They are the ones we have to reach to do the job.\" \"I know, they don't like their over.\" \"I'm aware of that,\" said Bal. religious in origin. That so?\" parties, and selling merchandise.\" the people, and they're hard to pin down.\" down at the planet. Clouds were and leave the ship up here with \"They can't touch it. No matter how they develop in the next \"It's myself I'm thinking about. Down there, alone.\" \"I'll be with you. On the other side of the Earth.\" \"That's not very close. I'd like 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 trick.\" \"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 the ship over where they can see it best and then I'll light it up. Earth will see it.\" Later, with the the darkness of space, pulsating pull it off. Lighting the ship may be just the help we need.\" \"It's not we who need help, but the people of Earth,\" said Ethaniel. \"See you in five days.\" With that he entered a small landing trail as it plunged toward Earth. As soon as it was safe to do so, Bal left in another craft, heading for the other side of the planet. And the spaceship circled Earth, unmanned, blazing and a man-made satellite came near of a star and brought near Earth to illuminate it. Never, or In five days the two small landing craft that had left it arched up from Earth and joined the orbit of the large ship. The two small craft slid inside the large one and doors closed behind them. In a short time the aliens met again. \"We did it,\" said Bal exultantly 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,\" I thought it might help you.\" \"It did. I don't know why, but it did,\" said Bal. \"Anyway, this agreement they made isn't the from destroying themselves.\" \"It's as much as we can expect,\" said Ethaniel. \"They may have small wars after this, but never the big one. In fifty or a Bal. \"Say, what's an angel?\" \"Why?\" an angel.\" that was all right.\" In the cabin Bal spread his \"But you don't know what an angel is?\" \"No. I didn't have time to find out. Some creature of their folklore I suppose. You know, except \"Sure,\" said Bal. \"Anyway, peace on Earth.\" THE END\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the aliens' mission?\n\n<options>:\nA Bal and Ethaniel are on a mission to Earth to set up an interstellar trade route.\nB Bal and Ethaniel are on a mission to Willafours.\nC Bal and Ethaniel only have one week to save the Earth, but that is their mission.\nD Bal and Ethaniel are on a mission to steal the big bomb from the humans.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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794 | 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 secretary placed the papers on the desk. Arapoulous caught her eye and grinned. She sniffed and marched from the room. \"What that gal needs is a slippery time in the grape mash,\" Arapoulous observed. Retief thumbed through the papers, pausing to read from time to time. He finished and looked at Arapoulous. an education than they expected! Arapoulous sniffed his wine glass and looked thoughtful. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that take a look at that baggage for me.\" \"I assume you jest, Retief,\" Magnan said sadly. \"I should expect even Retief gave instructions, then rang off and turned to Arapoulous. But I'm wondering what they'll study on d'Land. That's an industrial world of the poor but honest variety.\" restraint—not your strong point, I'm sure you'll agree.\" \"What can I do for you?\" Retief said. \"You work for this Culture bunch, do you? Funny. I thought they were all ribbon-counter boys. Never mind. I'm Hank Arapoulous. I'm a farmer. \"No,\" Retief said. \"Have a cigar?\" He pushed a box across the desk. Arapoulous took one. \"Bacchus vines are an unusual crop,\" he said, puffing the cigar alight. \"Only mature every twelve years. In between, the vines don't need a lot of attention, so our time's mostly our own. We like to farm, though. Spend a lot of time developing new forms. Arapoulous leaned forward. \"We go in pretty heavy for the arts. Folks can't spend all their time hybridizing plants. We've turned all the land area we've got into parks and farms. Course, we left some sizable \"It sounds like it, Mr. Arapoulous. Just what—\" eccentric orbit, you know. Blue-black sky, stars visible all day. We do mostly painting and sculpture in the winter. Then Spring \"I've seen some of your furniture,\" Retief said. \"Beautiful work.\" Arapoulous nodded. \"All local timbers too. Lots of metals in our soil and those sulphates give the woods some color, I'll tell you. Then comes the Monsoon. Rain—it comes down in sheets. But the sun's getting we're mostly islands. That's the drama and symphony time. The theatres are set up on the sand, or anchored off-shore. You have the music and the surf and the bonfires and stars—we're close to the Arapoulous puffed on his cigar, looked worriedly at Retief. \"Our wine crop is our big money crop,\" he said. \"We make enough to keep us going. But this year....\" \"It sounds like I've been missing something,\" said Retief. \"I'll have to try them some time.\" Arapoulous put his bundle on the desk, pulled off the wrappings. \"No time like the present,\" he said. . It's just wine.\" Arapoulous pulled the wire air. Arapoulous caught it. Aromatic fumes wafted from the bottle. \"Besides, my feelings would be hurt if you didn't join me.\" He winked. native customs.\" Arapoulous filled the glasses. Retief picked one up, sniffed the deep rust-colored fluid, tasted it, then took a healthy swallow. He looked at Arapoulous thoughtfully. \"Don't try to describe it, Mr. Retief,\" Arapoulous said. He took a \"We've got plenty of minerals on Lovenbroy,\" Arapoulous said, swallowing wine. \"But we don't plan to wreck the landscape mining 'em. We like to farm. About ten years back some neighbors of ours landed a force. They figured they knew better what to do with our minerals than we did. Wanted to strip-mine, smelt ore. We convinced 'em otherwise. \"That's too bad,\" Retief said. \"I'd say this one tastes more like roast \"It put us in a bad spot,\" Arapoulous went on. \"We had to borrow money from a world called Croanie. Mortgaged our crops. Had to start exporting art work too. Plenty of buyers, but it's not the same when you're doing it for strangers.\" said. \"What's the problem? Croanie about to foreclose?\" here and there. Big vines, eight feet high, loaded with fruit, and deep grass growing between. The wine-carriers keep on the run, bringing wine who can fill the most baskets in an hour.... The sun's high and bright, and it's just cool enough to give you plenty of energy. Come nightfall, the tables are set up in the garden plots, and the feast is laid on: is hard to beat....\" \"Mr. Whaffle, you mentioned a shipment going to a place called Croanie. What are they getting?\" \"Forgive my curiosity, Mr. Whaffle. It's just that Croanie cropped up earlier today. It seems she holds a mortgage on some vineyards over off, briefcase under his arm. \"That's the trouble with peaceful worlds,\" the SCROUNGE committeeman peace-loving d'Land—comes to naught.\" He shook his head. \"I wonder if the Bogans know that?\" \"The Bogans? Why, most of d'Land's difficulties are due to the unwise indeed!\" He snorted and walked away. on.\" \"Thanks,\" said Karsh. \"They'll stay here until take-off time. Can't have the little dears wandering around loose. Might get ideas about \"Suit yourself,\" Retief said. \"Where's the baggage now?\" \"Why, the University at d'Land, of course.\" details.\" \"Mr. Magnan never—\" \"For the present. Miss Furkle, Mr. Magnan is vacationing. That leaves me with the question of two thousand young male students headed for a world with no classrooms for them ... a world in need of tractors. But the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation to Boge. And Croanie holds a mortgage on the best grape acreage on Lovenbroy.\" \"I hope you're not questioning Mr. Magnan's wisdom!\" \"About Mr. Magnan's wisdom there can be no question,\" Retief said. \"But indices. It would be a pity, he reflected, if anything should interfere with the \"It's perfectly in order. I thought it was all settled. Mr. Whaffle—\" equipment? That's an internal affair of my government. Mr. Whaffle—\" \"I'm not Mr. Whaffle. What are you going to do with the other four \"I understood the grant was to be with no strings attached!\" gift, you've scored points in the game. But if Croanie has some scheme \"Great Heavens, Retief! Don't jump to conclusions! Would you have us shirt, shiny shoes with round toes and an ill-tempered expression. \"And where will they be going?\" two thousand to Featherweight.\" \"Another under-populated world—and in the same cluster, I believe,\" Retief said. \"Your people must be unusually interested in that region \"Loyalty to your pay-check should send you scuttling for the material Arapoulous's brown face appeared on the desk screen. \"How-do, Retief. Okay if I come up?\" \"Sure, Hank. I want to talk to you.\" In the office, Arapoulous took a chair. \"Sorry if I'm rushing you, Retief waved at the wine bottles. \"What do you know about Croanie?\" \"Croanie? Not much of a place. Mostly ocean. All right if you like fish, I guess. We import our seafood from there. Nice prawns in monsoon time. Over a foot long.\" \"You on good terms with them?\"\n\n<question>:\nGiven Arapoulous' description of his homeland, what can you conclude about it?\n\n<options>:\nA The conditions allow for successful crop growing.\nB The conditions there are inhospitable.\nC Arapoulous' homeland has unpredictable seasons.\nD There are few people living back on the land which Arapoulous comes from.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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2,213 | 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>:\npast. Joe didn't know how they'd done it, and he didn't care. Joe was a Joe Prantera called Brett-James on the second day that \"Get?\" he said. Joe Prantera said impatiently, \"The the run, don't I?\" \"I see.\" Brett-James cleared his throat. \"Mexico is no longer a separate nation, Mr. Prantera. All North Joe eyed him in scorn. \"Oh, you didn't, huh? What happens after I give it to this guy? I just sit around method of distribution well over a century ago.\" Joe had given up. Now he merely stared. Joe Prantera looked at the other expressionlessly. Maybe the old duck was one of these foreign doctors, like. untoward symptoms, possibly I could be of assistance.\" Joe couldn't figure out how he where's this guy Temple-Tracy you want knocked off?\" Reston-Farrell and Brett-James stood. For one thing, there should have been some kind of police guard. which seemed to be the prevailing beverage of the day. For Joe's taste Reston-Farrell. If I am not mistaken, you are Joseph Salviati-Prantera.\" Salviati happened to be Joe's mother's maiden name. But it was unlikely this character could have known that. Joe had been born in Naples and his mother had died in childbirth. His father hadn't brought him to the leaves the house all by hisself. O.K., so I can make plans, like, to give it to him.\" Joe Prantera wound it up Joe gingerly tried swinging his Brett-James said, \"Why not just go feet to the floor and sitting up, while the other stood watching him, strangely. door had opened for Reston-Farrell. Joe Prantera scowled and said, \"These ain't my clothes.\" \"No, I am afraid not.\" of him. I assure you, he does not possess weapons.\" Joe was indignant. \"Just like that, eh?\" he said sarcastically. \"Then what Joe gave him a long, chill look and then stepped to the window. He couldn't figure the other. Unless he upon a wide boulevard of what was obviously a populous city. And for a moment again, Joe Prantera felt the depths of nausea. Joe Prantera stared at him, said finally, flatly, \"What's it all about?\" The other put down the unaccepted been removed, Mr. Prantera,\" Reston-Farrell attempted to explain. \"A Reston-Farrell had approached the is the last man you will ever kill, Mr. Prantera.\" had evidently been a long wait. Reston-Farrell, the one Joe had already met, was tall and drawn of face A chillness was in the belly of Joe The other was heavier and more at ease. They were both, Joe estimated, somewhere in their middle fifties. They both looked like docs. He Brett-James nodded to him, friendly, so far as Joe could see. He said gently, \"I think it would be Mr. Joseph Prantera, wouldn't it? The maternal not usually on his tongue. Joe took an empty chair, hardly bothering to note its alien qualities. molded to his order. Joe said, \"I think maybe I'll take Reston-Farrell said, \"Of course,\" and then something else Joe didn't get. Whatever the something else was, a slot opened in the middle of \"2133,\" Reston-Farrell said. \"2133 A.D. they would say.\" Joe Prantera looked from one of them to the other, scowling. \"What are you guys talking about?\" Warren Brett-James said softly, \"Mr. Prantera, you are no longer in the year 1960, you are now in the year 2133.\" He said, uncomprehendingly, \"You Joe demanded, aghast. Dr. Reston-Farrell controlled the car. Joe Prantera sat in the seat next Joe Prantera had never been exposed to the concept of time travel. He had simply never associated with say, from your own era to ours.\" you, I suppose one might to him and Warren Brett-James sat in the back. Joe had, tucked in his belt, a .45 caliber automatic, once displayed what they had planned. Inwardly, Joe was amused. Now years after the last memory you have.\" Joe Prantera's mind suddenly reverted to those last memories and his eyes narrowed dangerously. He felt again before the week was through. Besides, already Joe was beginning to feel the comfortable, pleasurable, to perform a task for us.\" Joe stared at him, and then at the \"Like hell you do. You think I'm stupid? I never even seen you before.\" Joe Prantera came abruptly to his feet. \"I'm gettin' outta here.\" For the second time, Reston-Farrell Joe was coolly efficient now. He pulled out the automatic, held it Joe glared at him. Then sat down again, as abruptly as he'd arisen. \"Let's start all over again. I got this down below his knees and threw a Prantera?\" by Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy. There were two persons in the reception room but they left on Joe's arrival, without bothering to look at The screen lit and revealed a heavy-set, dour of countenance man seated at a desk. He looked into Joe Prantera's face, scowled and said Joe Prantera's mind whirled its confusion. Finally he said, \"What's this bit something. Joe said, \"Joseph Salviati-Prantera to interview Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy.\" The other's shaggy eyebrows rose. about you wanting me to give it to The two men of the future said Reston-Farrell went on, ignoring in the room. Joe Prantera ignored it and remained standing. Citizen Temple-Tracy said, \"What probably have caused small dismay to society.\" They had him pegged all right. Joe a century and a half.\" \"Well, then do it yourself.\" Joe Prantera's irritation over this whole Two guys special, named Brett-James and Doc Reston-Farrell. I think one of the first jobs I'm gunna hafta do Joe snapped: \"Everything you guys say sounds crazy. Let's start all over again.\" Lawrence.\" He turned his eyes to Joe. \"Mr. Prantera, in your own era, did you ever consider the future?\" Joe looked at him blankly. era.\" \"O.K., O.K.,\" Joe Prantera growled. \"So everybody's got it made. What I Ghengis Khan, of Tamerlane, Alexander, Caesar?\" Joe Prantera scowled at him emptily. \"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 not considered.\" Brett-James said to Joe Prantera, would have happened?\" \"Sure,\" Joe grunted. \"I woulda let law of the period, your life would have been forfeit, Mr. Prantera.\" Joe winced. It didn't occur to him Reston-Farrell said, \"As to reward, time stream. There can be no return to your own era.\" Joe Prantera had been rocking with the mental blows he had been assimilating, but this was the final Joe Prantera on a job was thorough. Careful, painstaking, competent. He spent the first three days of his of things. Brett-James and Reston-Farrell had been appointed to work with him. Joe didn't meet any of the others who belonged to the group which had taken the measures to Brett-James evidently had something to do with the process that had enabled them to bring Joe from the\n\n<question>:\nWhy do Reston-Farrell and Brett-James bring Joe to the future?\n\n<options>:\nA Joe was going to kill Al Rossi. Reston-Farrell and Brett James need Rossi alive.\nB Joe is a caregiver. They want him to take care of someone.\nC Joe is a hitman. They want him to kill someone.\nD Joe is a variant. They removed him from 1960 to correct the timeline.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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1,609 | quality | [
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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>:\nthings got tough, but could still satisfy a woman's craving to mother something small. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] They were such cute synthetic creatures, it was impossible not to love them. Of course, that was precisely why they were dangerous! \"I won't have to kill many. Besides, they're only animals.\" \" \"They are. I told her she had the wrong neutroid, but she got mad. Went Intelligent \"Intelligent as a human imbecile, maybe.\" \"A small child is an imbecile. Would you kill a small child?\" \"You're taking intelligence as the only criterion of humanity,\" he protested hopelessly, knowing that a logical defense was useless against sentimentality. \"Baby—\" animals!\" started a black market in neutroids?\" If Delmont's falsification had been widespread, he might have to turn several of the thirty-five over to central lab for dissection and ultimate destruction. That would bring the murderous wrath of their owners down upon him. He began to understand why bio-inspectors were frequently shifted from one territory to another. I make my own hours liked babies. And because I have a B.S. in biology and an aptitude for dealing with people. Can't you understand? Destroying unclaimed units is the smallest part of it. Honey, before the evolvotron, before Anthropos went into the mutant-animal business, than the neutroids. A K-108 could speak a dozen words, and a K-99 never got farther than \"mamma,\" \"pappa,\" and \"cookie.\" Anthropos was afraid to make the quasi-humans too intelligent, lest sentimentalists proclaim them really human. suburban street wound among the pastel plasticoid cottages that were set approximately two to an acre on the lightly wooded land. With its population legally fixed at three hundred million, most of the country had become one big suburb, dotted with community centers and lined with narrow belts of industrial development. Norris wished there were started toward a bank of neutroid cages along the opposite wall, but were emotionally safer than the quasi-human chimp-K series called \"neutroids.\" When a pet neutroid died, a family was broken with grief couples were allowed two lesser units or one neutroid. of growth hormones, trying to raise himself a harem to sell. Besides, you're required to keep sales records until they've been micro-filmed. There hasn't been a microfilming since July.\" Subject: Deviant Neutroid. Unauthorized neutroids could mean lots of trouble. number. This could be a ruse to bring a stop to investigations when one animal is found. Be thorough. If allowed to reach age-set or adulthood, such a deviant could be dangerous to its owner or to others. Hold all seized K-99s who show hundred square miles. Its replacement-quota of new neutroids was around do it in a week? And there were only eleven empty neutroid cages in his for finding and testing forty neutroids would put him in a tight there.\" He hesitated. \"The baby turned out to be a neutroid. It's \"So?\" Can't you send the neutroid to a vet?\" \"She insists it's going to a hospital. Worst part is that she's heard of the disease. Knows it can be cured with the proper treatment—in humans. Of course, no hospital would play along with her fantasy and take a neutroid, especially since she couldn't pay for its treatment.\" \"I still don't see—\" But he saw it as a quick way to get rid of an animal that might later have to be killed. And that , he thought, was like trying to take a year-old baby away \"It's not funny. I've got to get those neutroids. It's in connection they just won't listen to reason. But get those neutroids.\" \"Come on,\" he grunted. \"Let's unload some neutroids, before I forget The doll-like neutroids began their mindless chatter as soon as their smiles, and cherubic faces. They were sexually neuter and never grew beyond a predetermined age-set which varied for each series. Age-sets were available from one to ten years human equivalent. Once a neutroid reached its age-set, it remained at the set's child-development level until death. \"That was a mistake.\" She frowned irritably. \"We can afford it.\" structure and displace certain links by just the right amount. And he's got to be quick about it before the ovum dies from an overdose of radiation from the enlarger. A good operator can get one success out of seven tries. \"Well, Delmont worked a week and spoiled over a hundred ova without a single success. They threatened to fire him. I guess he got hysterical. Anyway, he reported one success the next day. It was faked. The ovum had a couple of flaws—something wrong in the central nervous system's determinants, and in the glandular makeup. Not a standard neutroid wouldn't be caught until after birth.\" \"Funny thing, he was afraid it wouldn't be. He got to worrying about it, thought maybe a mental-deviant would pass, and that it might be dangerous. So he went back to its incubator and cut off the hormone flow into its compartment.\" \"Why that?\" develop sexuality. A neutroid would be born a female if they didn't give it suppressive doses of male hormone prenatally. That keeps ovaries from developing and it comes out neuter. But Delmont figured a female would be caught and stopped before the final \"How did they find out about it now?\" old and looked like a child of two years—a year short of its age-set. And it was designed to be as affectionate as a human child. to have a baby.\" \"You know what they'd do to us?\" \"If they catch us, yes—compulsory divorce, sterilization. But they \"I won't let you do such a thing.\" She faced him angrily. \"Oh, this whole rotten world \"Neutroid trouble.\" He went into the neutroid room and flicked a switch. A few sleepy that it would never be all right, neither the creating nor the killing, until he—and the whole world—completely lost sanity. And then everything would be all right, only it still wouldn't make sense. depart with morning. Why should he have to kill the things? The answer was obvious. Society manufactured them because killing them was permissible. Human babies could not be disposed of when the market became glutted. The neutroids offered solace to childless women, kept them satisfied with a restricted birth rate. And why a restricted birth rate? Because by keeping the population at five billions, the Federation could insure a decent living standard for everybody. Where there was giving, Norris thought glumly, there was also taking away. Man had always deluded himself by thinking that he \"created,\" but he created nothing. He thought that he had created—with his medical science and his end to wars—a longer life for the individual. But he found that he had only taken the lives of the unborn and added them to the years of the aged. Man now had a life expectancy of eighty, except that he had damn little chance of being born to enjoy it. A neutroid filled the cradle in his stead. A neutroid that never ate as much, or grew up to be unemployed. A neutroid could be killed if\n\n<question>:\nWhich answer best represents a prominent theme of this passage? Once a neutroid reached its age-set, it remained at that developmental level until death (sick experiments). It's a 'mental deviant' and he was afraid of those (compared to physical?) Why are females disposed of automatically? (China birth law) Apparently he had done this multiple times, but who knows how many. Why is story told from Norris' POV? Not delmont? If they break the rule, compulsory divorce and sterilization.\n\n<options>:\nA If you're going to break a law, be prepared to deal with the consequences.\nB It is physically and emotionally dangerous to get too attached to others.\nC Government actions made in the name of equality can sometimes cause more harm than good.\nD Too much technological advancement can destroy a thriving society.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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2,098 | 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>:\nVoiceover: Keeping America safe means never sleeping, but keeping America great means never forgetting who we are, and how we got here. 'We know what really makes America great' \"Good flight?\" \"Yeah. Fine. Y'know. Same as always.\" \"Yeah.\" \"The Chevrolet ad?\" Fade to black. Chevrolet logo. White text against black. \"No, no it's not. We always fight. And I know that's mainly my fault-\" 'Well, now, c'mon-\" \"No, it is. It's my fault. I got myself into thinking we can never agree on anything, that we can never see eye to eye. That we've got nothing in common anymore.\" She lifts her head to look up at him. \"But I know that's wrong. That I shouldn't assume things about you. That there's still things that can bring us together.\" He grins back at her. \"Like Super Bowl ads?\" She laughs. \"I guess. But you know what I mean, really.\" \"I know honey. And I'm sorry too. I didn't mean what I said earlier. I know you don't really hate this country.\" He gestures to the couch next to him. \"Why don't you sit down, huh? We can watch the rest of the game together.\" \"Yeah.\" \"Well.\" \"Yeah.\" \"Ed!\" Mom had appeared in the doorway. \"Please! Both of you. No fighting today, please.\" \"Fine.\" Voiceover: Keeping America safe means never sleeping, but keeping America great means never forgetting who we are, and what keeps us strong. \"Sorry Mom.\" Sara turns back to the TV, to watching the war, to trying to work out which one it is. 'We know what really makes America great' Dad wipes another team from his eye. \"I think we're going to be OK,\" he says to himself. \"I think we're going to be just fine.\" It had always been this way, ever since she was about thirteen. Up until then it just seemed like constant warmth, as though she didn't have any childhood concept of Dad apart from him getting home from work, then her sitting on his knee, eating cookies and watching football highlights until Mom came in and scolded them both for ruining their appetites before dinner. So they didn't talk much now, barely online, never on the phone. Since her second year of school he'd never been to NYC to visit her. She came back when she could face it sometimes for birthdays, sometimes for Thanksgiving. Maybe for Christmas. But somehow always, like now, for the Super Bowl. Like football was the one thing they still had, that one thing they could still sit in the same room together for. Shouting at players, screaming at the ref, laughing at the ads. Dad is in the bathroom, and Sara has had enough of Fox and whichever war this is. She reaches over and grabs the remote from the arm of his chair, and tries to find something else to watch. The government had scrapped all the rules about how the internet worked, and for most people like her parents it had suddenly gotten a lot cheaper to get their TV through Facebook, so all she can find is Fox, Breitbart News, Family Values TV, Info Wars, The Rebel, Glenn Beck, The Voice of America, America First, The Bible Today and lots of hunting and sports channels she doesn't even recognise. It's signed in to her Dad's FB account, and the last thing she wants is to try and log in on hers before he gets back from the john. Yeah. There was no way that would end up with them keeping it civil. In her pocket her phone vibrates, purrs against her skin, reminding her it's there, making sure she's not forgotten where her real friends are, that there's a world outside, beyond Dad and his TV. She takes it out and cradles it in her hands, the dark screen fleetingly reflecting back her face before it jumps awake at her very touch, opening up to bathe her in blue light, in comfort and warmth and the familiar. For the first time since she got home she feels herself relax. And then everything changed. Suddenly there was rap music and nose rings, sneaking out of the house to see her friends and not wanting to go to church. Suddenly he was no longer this lovable bear-man that ruffled her hair and gave her candy and explained defensive plays to her, but this huge obelisk of injustice that just wanted to crush her high school life into dust. It was constant warfare every opinion she had became a battle, every decision she made a conflict. Getting away to college gave her escape, but bred resentment too This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article. Dinner is Mom's meatloaf, with gravy and mashed potatoes. Cornbread and broccoli. Every mouthful tastes like nostalgia, and Sara can feel herself being encompassed by a bubble, this barrier of warm air and long forgotten simplicity enveloping her body, protecting her from the confusion of the world outside. \"Jesus Christ Dad, these ads!\" \"What about them?\" advertising now? Do you just hate everything about America?\" \"Don't joke Sara, I'm serious. There's a lot that bothers him. The state of the world. The future. All these damn wars.\" \"We're all worried about all that, Mom.\" \"He's worried about his health. worried about his health. Probably more than he is.\" \"I had no idea-\" \"Yeah, well you know your father. Doesn't like to talk about it. Doesn't want to burden other people with his problems. Hates pity.\" She pauses, looks out the window into the yard. When she turns back to Sara her eyes are damp. \"This is why I was so excited about you coming back. Why he was so excited! I thought it'd take his mind of all this. He was so excited to see you. You know he loves watching the game with you, Sara.\" \"I know. I'm sorry I-\" \"And the ads! The Super Bowl ads! You know how much he loves watching the new ads with you. It's a stupid thing, sure, but he loves it. Talks about it all the time. It's like a tradition to him. That's why he got so upset over dinner when you got angry at his ads. It's something special he has with you, he doesn't want to lose it.\" Sara slips her phone into her pocket, genuine guilt. Feels like a spoiled kid. \"I didn't realise. I'm sorry.\" Mom smiles, walks over and kisses her on the forehead. \"It's OK honey. Don't feel bad. Just go. Just go sit in there with him and watch some TV. Please.\" It's the second down on the Falcon's 60 yard line with 30 yards to cover, and the Lions need one touchdown to equalise. Sara and her Dad are sat in the front room, working their way through a family sized pack of Oreos, when the ad break starts. Dawn. Red skies over the desert. A Chevrolet truck pulls up next to a large, trailer. Low shot next to the front tire, as a cowboy booted foot drops down from the door, disturbing dust. Cut to: internal shot of the trailer, darkness split by morning light through the opening door. The figure enters, flicks on lights. The room is full of equipment, computers. The figure takes a seat, puts on a headset, thumbs on screens. Rests their hands on two large joysticks on the desk. Voiceover: They say you need to get up pretty early to get past America's finest. But the truth is we never sleep. holy shit that chevrolet ad /fire emoji\n\n<question>:\nHow does Ed feel about the Super Bowl?\n\n<options>:\nA He doesn't care for football but enjoys all of the celebration around it\nB He loves the ads even more than the game\nC He likes the football and the time he spends with his daughter\nD It is his favorite sporting event and he would never miss a football game\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,547 | 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>:\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. 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? This month's airline in the spotlight is Southwest. Loyal readers will recall that last month the Shopping Avenger praised Southwest Airlines for its \"sterling\" customer service. This brought forth a small number of articulate dissensions. The most articulate, and the most troubling, came from M., who wrote, \"Last year, flying from Baltimore to Chicago with my entire family (two really little kids included), we set down at Midway in a rainstorm. And waited for our bags. And waited for bags. And waited for bags.\" 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. Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied: Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck. 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?\" 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>:\nWhat is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel?\n\n<options>:\nA Materialism.\nB Neither animal, vegetable, or mineral but something something less organic.\nC Abstract conceptualization.\nD Not an animal but the idea of an animal.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,411 | 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 an impassable cut. Time after time the Bugs ground to a halt while we explored a passage on foot, tied together with a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there light copper cable, digging, advancing, digging some more JAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by eight.” McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves. driving wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin with repetition. He took to making side trips from the route now and then, never far, but a little further each time. Jack Stone reacted quite the opposite the first passage to the core of Vulcan Crater on Venus. Baron returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time each stop, more reserved and apprehensive. I didn’t like it, but I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive enough myself constantly and the skin on our faces itched and tingled at the end of an eight-hour trek. But it took one of those side trips of McIvers’ to deliver the penultimate blow to our already fraying nerves. He had driven down a side-branch of a long canyon running off west of our route and was almost out of sight in a cloud of ash when we “At perihelion?” “Of course. When else?” spotted him through the binocs, waving frantically from the top of his machine. The Major and I took off, lumbering down the gulch after him as fast as the Bugs could go, with a thousand horrible pictures racing through our minds.... We found him standing stock-still, pointing down the gorge and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment I wheeled my Bug around with my heart in my throat and without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re not going to make the Crossing.” of a Bug worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me. It was the planet a sharp cut ahead where the surface dropped six feet beyond a deep crack. I let out a shout to halt the others fifty yards to the left, then back to the right. There was only one place that looked like a possible crossing a hundred miles—but I didn’t know that then and it was a terrible tragedy. After that, I followed Sanderson’s work in the I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?” He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion? What have you done then? Four thousand miles of butcherous heat, just to have some joker come along, use your data and drum you out of the glory by crossing at perihelion forty-four about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then, nobody’s Baron stared at the man for a moment. “I see you can read telecasts,” he said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned just how hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It to make a Brightside Crossing.” heard a sharp cry through our earphones. this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for exploring too much, but he thought Mikuta was God, followed said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?” I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the we should leave in three days.” Two days later, McIvers hadn’t arrived. The Major didn’t say much about it. Stone was getting edgy and so was I. We surface activity.” The Major shrugged. “Well, it’s treacherous, there’s no doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the Pole, which would lose us days and offer us no guarantee of Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight rocket from Venus. He’d missed the ship that the Major and I had taken by a few hours, and had conned his way to Venus in hopes of getting a hop from there. He didn’t seem too upset about it, as though this were his usual way of doing things and he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited. something with his hands, or talking, or pacing about. Evidently the Major decided not to press the issue of his arrival. There was still work to do, and an hour later we were Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was set for an early departure after we got some rest. “And that,” said Baron, finishing his drink and signaling the waiter for another pair, “was your first big mistake.” Peter Claney raised his eyebrows. “McIvers?” getting to that.” He settled back in his chair and continued. We jumped off from Twilight on a course due southeast with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of was only half done—we would still have to travel another two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson was to meet us on the other side in the Laboratory’s scout ship, approximately sixty days from the time we jumped off. That was the plan, in outline. It was up to us to cross those seventy miles a day, no matter how hot it became, no matter what terrain we had to cross. Detours would be dangerous and time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew closely. Peter’s job is to pick the passage at any given point. If there’s any doubt of safe passage, we’ll all explore ahead on foot before we risk the Bugs. Got that?” McIvers and Stone exchanged glances. McIvers said: “Jack and I were planning to change around. We figured he could McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It “Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the “No dice,” the Major broke in. “But why not? We could save ourselves days!” McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he “All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight, let’s go.” It was hot. If I forget everything else about that trek, I’ll break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the first few days would be the easiest and we were rested and fresh when we started down the long ragged gorge southeast of the Twilight Lab. I moved out first Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires taking the rugged floor of the gorge smoothly. Behind them, Stone dragged the sledges. the first twenty miles. I kept my eyes pasted to the big polaroid binocs, picking out the track the early research teams had made out into the edge of Brightside. But in a couple of hours we rumbled past Sanderson’s It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but the challenge was so powerful you could almost feel it. No one had ever crossed this land before and escaped. Those who had tried it had been cruelly punished, but the land was still there, so it had to be crossed. Not the easy way. It had to be crossed the hardest way possible: overland, through anything the land could throw up to us, at the most difficult time possible. Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered get us. That was the bargain. I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods. The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and\n\n<question>:\nWhat didn't happen to McIvers?\n\n<options>:\nA the major turned down his idea\nB he located the first explorers\nC he got lost\nD he took a detour\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
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