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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>:\nBoth these memoirs must be read by everyone--everyone, that is, who takes seriously the important business of sorting out precisely how he or she feels about The New Yorker , then and now. Of the two, Mehta's is far and away the more entertaining. This may seem odd, for Mehta is reputed to be a very dull writer whereas Ross is a famously zippy one. Moreover, Mehta writes as Shawn's adoring acolyte, whereas Ross writes as his longtime adulterous lover. Just knowing that Mrs. Shawn is still alive adds a certain tension to reading much of what this Other Woman chooses to divulge. Evidently, \"Bill\" and Lillian loved each other with a fine, pure love, a love that was more than love, a love coveted by the winged seraphs of heaven. \"We had indeed become one,\" she tells us, freely venting the inflations of her heart. Now, Ross seems like a nice lady, and I certainly have nothing against adultery, which I hear is being carried on in the best circles these days. But the public flaunting of adultery--especially when spouses and children are around--well, it brings out the bourgeois in me. It also made me feel funny about William Shawn, whom I have always regarded as a great man. I loved his New Yorker . The prose it contained--the gray stuff around the cartoons--was balm for the soul: unfailingly clear, precise, logical, and quietly stylish. So what if the articles were occasionally boring? It was a sweet sort of boredom, serene and restorative, not at all like the kind induced by magazines today, which is more akin to nervous exhaustion. Besides, the moral tone of the magazine was almost wholly admirable--it was ahead of the pack on Hiroshima, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the environment--and this was very much Shawn's doing. I do not like to think of him in an illicit love nest, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers. Happily, Ross has sprinkled her memoir with clues that it is not to be taken as entirely factual. To say that Shawn was \"a man who grieved over all living creatures\" is forgivable hyperbole but later to add that he \"mourned\" for Si Newhouse when Newhouse unceremoniously fired him in 1987 (a couple of years after buying the magazine)--well, that's a bit much. Even Jesus had his limits. Elsewhere, Ross refers to her lover's \"very powerful masculinity,\" only to note on the very next page that \"if he suffered a paper cut on a finger and saw blood, he would come into my office, looking pale.\" She declares that \"Bill was incapable of engendering a cliché, in deed as well as in word.\" But then she puts the most toe-curling clichés into his mouth: \"Why am I more ghost than man?\" Or: \"We must arrest our love in midflight. And we fix it forever as of today, a point of pure light that will reach into eternity.\" (File that under Romantic Effusions We Doubt Ever Got Uttered.) Nor is Ross incapable of a melodramatic cliché herself. \"Why can't we just live, just live ?\" she cries in anguish when she and Shawn, walking hand in hand out of Central Park, chance to see Shawn's wife slowly making her way down the block with a burden of packages. And what does she think of Mrs. Shawn? \"I found her to be sensitive and likeable.\" Plus, she could \"do a mean Charleston.\" There is nothing more poignant than the image of an openly cheated-upon and humiliated wife doing \"a mean Charleston.\" But it kept coming. And I, for one, was grateful. Here was a boy growing up in Punjab during the fall of the Raj and the Partition, a boy who had been blinded by meningitis at the age of 3, roller-skating through the back streets of Lahore as Sikhs slaughtered Hindus and Hindus slaughtered Muslims and civilization was collapsing and then, decades later, having made his way from India to an Arkansas school for the blind to Balliol College, Oxford, to The New Yorker , re-creating the whole thing in Proustian detail and better-than-Proustian prose ... ! Mehta's multivolume autobiography, titled Continents of Exile , has loss as its overarching theme: loss of sight, of childhood, of home and country, and now--with this volume--loss of Mr. Shawn's New Yorker . The memoir takes us from the time the author was hired as a staff writer in the early '60s up to 1994, when he was \"terminated\" by the loathed Tina Brown in her vandalization of his cherished magazine. Mehta evidently loved William Shawn at least as much as Lillian Ross did, although his love was not requited in the same way. He likens the revered editor to the character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot : innocent and vulnerable, someone who must be protected. And long-suffering, one might infer: \"He was so careful of not hurting anyone's feelings that he often listened to utterly fatuous arguments for hours on end.\" Like Ross, Mehta struggles to express William Shawn's ineffable virtues. \"It is as if, Mehta, he were beyond our human conception,\" Janet Flanner tells him once to calm him down. At times I wondered whether the author, in his ecstasies of devotion, had not inadvertently committed plagiarism. His words on Mr. Shawn sound suspiciously like those of Mr. Pooter on his boss Mr. Perkupp in The Diary of a Nobody . Compare. Mehta on Shawn: \"His words were so generous that I could scarcely find my tongue, even to thank him.\" Pooter on Perkupp: \"My heart was too full to thank him.\" Mehta: \"I started saying to myself compulsively, 'I wish Mr. Shawn would ring,' at the oddest times of the day or night. ... How I longed for the parade of proofs, the excitement of rewriting and perfecting!\" Pooter: \"Mr. Perkupp, I will work night and day to serve you!\" I am not sure I have made it sound this way so far, but Mehta's book is completely engrossing--the most enjoyable book, I think, I have ever reviewed. It oozes affection and conviction, crackles with anger, and is stuffed with thumping good stories. Many are about Mehta's daft colleagues at The New Yorker , such as the guy in the next office: His door was always shut, but I could hear him through the wall that separated his cubicle from mine typing without pause. ... Even the changing of the paper in the typewriter seemed somehow to be incorporated into the rhythmic rat-tat-tat ... year after year went by to the sound of his typing but without a word from his typewriter appearing in the magazine. Mehta's writerly persona, a disarming mixture of the feline and the naive, is perfect for relating the little scandals that worried The New Yorker in the late '70s (plagiarism, frozen turbot), the drama of finding a worthy candidate to succeed the aging Shawn as editor, the purchase of the magazine by the evil Si Newhouse (\"We all took fright\") and the resultant plague of Gottliebs and Florios visited upon it, and what he sees as the final debacle: Tinaji.\n\n<question>:\nWhat was said about Mehta's book in the passage?\n\n<options>:\nA It was full of neglect\nB It was very enjoyable\nC It lacked depth and intelligence\nD It was a bit too extreme\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nA 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. Whatever you make of Velvet Goldmine (opinions have ranged from rapturous to casually dismissive), it's like no other musical ever made. It's determinedly swirling, discursive, elliptical. Now the story is told by an omniscient narrator, now a TV reporter, now a participant. Now it's flashing back, now forward. Every other line of dialogue is a cue for one of its dazzling numbers, largely covers of songs by Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, and T. Rex. The narrative is a challenge to keep up with, but then, great artists often invent their own syntax. In the '80s, Haynes employed Barbie dolls to depict the rise and wasting away from anorexia of the singer Karen Carpenter. Lucky audiences who caught Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (it was shelved when Richard Carpenter served the producers with an order to cease and desist exhibition) began by laughing at this elaborately posed, soft-rock femme, only to discover by the climax that the cultural forces that were eating at her (and that kept her from eating) had grown heartbreakingly palpable. Poison (1991), Haynes' Genêt-inspired exploration of transgression, didn't overcome its own artiness. But Safe (1995), the story of a Reagan-era housewife (Julianne Moore) convinced that her environment is poisoning her, is an entrancing meditation on the power of culture to crush the individual. Despite its ironic detachment, the film draws you into its heroine's sickly state: Breathing oxygen from a canister inside a high-tech igloo, she dwindles to nearly nothing, the modern incarnation of the Incredible Shrinking Man. (It was partly my passion for Haynes' films that led me to accept a job offer from his indefatigable producer Christine Vachon last year to collaborate on a nuts-and-bolts book about producing, Shooting To Kill . So my review of Velvet Goldmine --like my review of Vachon's other recent release, Happiness --should be read as the work of a partisan. But not a blind partisan.) 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\n\n<question>:\nAccording to the film reviewer, how does the reporter in \"Velvet Goldmine\" view the protagonist?\n\n<options>:\nA With revulsion\nB With jealousy\nC With admiration\nD With consternation\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>:\nDole vs. the For several weeks now, pundits have debated how Bob Dole would exit the stage. Would he depart on a negative note about his opponent or a positive one about himself? Would he leave with anger or with humor? In the past several days, the issue has been settled. Dole, it appears, will end his political career raging against the New York Times . On Sunday (the day the Times endorsed Clinton), Dole called the paper \"the apologist for President Clinton for the last four years and an arm of the Democratic National Committee.\" In a CNN interview broadcast Monday, Dole said the Times \"might as well be part of the Democratic Party. ... They hammer us on a daily basis. We make a major speech, they bury it back on section D. They put a front-page story that, well, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't get along together 12 years ago.\" On Tuesday, Dole was still at it, referring to the 28 words of the 10th Amendment, and quipping, \"That's about what I got in the New York Times today.\" The Times has reacted to this assault by highhandedly quoting everything and explaining none of it, leaving its readers baffled as to why the Republican nominee is so upset at the paper. In fact, Dole's fury at the Times is hardly news to those who work at the paper. According to Katharine Seelye, who has covered Dole since the beginning of his campaign, the complaints date from December 1995, when Dole staff members first protested that she had misunderstood the candidate's position on abortion. The real bitterness, however, began in May, when the paper played what Dole aides billed as a major address about welfare on Page 19 of the business section. Since then, campaign honchos have peppered the paper's reporters and editors with constant phone calls and letters complaining about unfair treatment. Reporters traveling with Dole caught a glimpse of the enmity Oct. 9, when Nelson Warfield, Dole's press secretary, staged a public confrontation with Seelye. The candidate, Warfield told reporters waiting to board the campaign plane, had just come from an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Why, Seelye asked, weren't reporters told about the appearance in advance? According to reporters present, Warfield snapped that it wouldn't make any difference because the Times would get the story wrong anyway. Then, on the plane, Warfield walked back to the press section and grandly served Seelye with a copy of a letter from Communications Director John Buckley to her boss, Times Washington Editor Andrew Rosenthal. No Dole staff would be quoted by name for this story, but speaking on background, a senior campaign official elaborated upon the complaint. \"They've just done a miserable job throughout this campaign,\" the official said. \"The coverage of Dole has been excessively bitchy from day one, in addition to having a number of extraordinary factual problems.\" With Seelye, the official says, the problem is \"not being able to transcribe a tape accurately.\" With Adam Nagourney, the Times ' other reporter covering Dole full time since the summer, \"the problem is an incredible focus on the little picture as opposed to the big picture.\" As an example, the official cites a September story in which Nagourney lumped together Dole's fall from a platform in Chico, Calif., and his mistaken reference to the \"Brooklyn\" Dodgers as \"a rough stretch of politicking.\" Other than those two episodes, the official says, Dole actually had a great week. The campaign's complaint extends to unequal treatment--a nine-part series on Clinton's record, which the official describes as \"the softest portrait since they invented black velvet\"--and the Times perpetually underestimating the size of Dole crowds. \"Clinton even gets better photographs,\" the official contends. \"Ithink we have been tough on him,\" Seelye says. This stems, however, not from any bias, she says, but from the campaign's own internal problems. Dole's campaign has been especially \"porous,\" with aides emulating the proverbial seafaring rats. This is true enough--in recent days ex-strategist Don Sipple has trashed the campaign on the record. But there's another point, too. Contrary to Buckley's charge that she misquotes Dole, Seelye routinely makes Dole look ridiculous by quoting him all too accurately, depicting him in what one colleague calls a \"cinema verité \" style. Famous for going over and over her tape recordings on the campaign plane, Seelye manages to get every Dole mumble, repetition, and verbal miscue down. For instance, in her Oct. 26 story reporting Dole's attack on the Times , Seelye writes: But though unflattering, Seelye's Mametizing of Bob Dole can hardly be called unfair. It is not as if the Times cleans up Clinton's quotes Dole sounds absurd when he alleges that the paper that broke Whitewater and the story of the first lady's commodities trades has not been aggressive in pursuing Clinton scandals. All sorts of potential Dole scandals have been soft-pedaled by the media, including the Times , because he is so far behind. It's true that coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail has been somewhat softer than the coverage of Dole, as even other Times reporters acknowledge. But the explanation is institutional, not ideological. The press, as many have complained, overemphasizes the \"horse race\" aspect of politics. As a side effect of that disease, reporters have excessive respect for a well-run campaign. (In 1988, Republican George Bush benefited from this phenomenon.) A cruder reality is that reporters need to have a relationship with Clinton after Tuesday. None of these factors, though, is unique to the Times . So why is Dole singling it out? Dole's attacks on the Times have the appearance of being an exercise in populist demagogy. In one of his great cue-card reading remarks, Dole tried to explain his recent attacks on CNN the other night by saying, \"I like the media. They don't like them in the South.\" But this pat explanation doesn't entirely make sense. Red meat for right-wing crowds doesn't help Dole with the centrist voters he would need to turn around in order to make the miraculous happen. And in fact, according to a senior Dole aide, the attacks are heartfelt on the candidate's part. Dole has been going after the Times over the objections of advisers who have been telling him there's no percentage in picking fights with the press. But if Dole is attacking the Times because he is truly furious and not because he thinks it will help him get elected, what is he so angry about? The answer, I think, is that there has always been a Nixonian streak in Bob Dole, by which I mean a part of him which feels shut out of the closed circle of the Eastern establishment. At the Republican convention, Dole blasted the Clinton administration as a \"corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned.\" That phrase recalled an attack he made on the press long ago, in the days of Watergate, when he accused the Washington Post of being in bed with George McGovern. \"There is a cultural and social affinity between the McGovernites and the Post executives and editors,\" Dole said then. \"They belong to the same elite: They can be found living cheek-by-jowl in the same exclusive chic neighborhoods, and hob-nobbing at the same Georgetown parties.\" The deeper story here isn't whether Dole was wrongly shunted onto D19 when he ought to have been on A1. It's his feelings, as he says goodbye to politics, about the people who get to decide.\n\n<question>:\nWho didn't understand Dole's accusations towards the Times?\n\n<options>:\nA the author of this text\nB Dole's staff members\nC Times readers\nD Times reporters\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nEarth 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. Machines compiled dictionaries and grammars and began translating the major languages. The history of the planet was tabulated as facts became available. 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 \"I can guess,\" said Ethaniel, 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 \"The more reason for stopping,\" said Ethaniel. \"The big bomb can destroy them. Without our help they may do just that.\" their problems? They've had two world wars in one generation and that the third and final one in everything they do.\" \"It won't take much,\" said Ethaniel. \"The wrong diplomatic move, or a trigger-happy soldier have to be deliberate. A meteor shower could pass over and their clumsy instruments could interpret it as an all-out enemy just have to forget there ever was such a planet as Earth.\" \"Could you? Forget so many people?\" give them a little time and they won't be here to remind me that he said at last. \"A bit shorter perhaps, and most certainly incomplete. Except for the one thing they lack, and that's quite odd, they seem exactly like 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.\" 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. authority do we have?\" \"Very little,\" conceded Ethaniel. \"Two minor officials on the nothing in this region of space our people want,\" said Ethaniel. \"And how long can Earth last? Ten years? Even ten months? ourselves by looking.\" 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. \"Well, we knew they had the big bomb. Atmospheric analysis showed that as far away as we \"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, range one thousand miles and upward. They either have or are to hit them. Nervousness could set it off.\" \"It could, and the missiles did you find out at your end?\" were investigating their weapons.\" \"I wish I knew what to think. There's so little time,\" Ethaniel said. \"Language isn't the difficulty. Our machines translate their languages easily and I've taken a cram course in two or three of them. But that's not listening to advertisements, music, and news bulletins. I should go down and live among them, read books, talk to scholars, work with them, play.\" \"You could do that and you'd really get to know them. But \"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 before. We take the trouble to find out what a people are like and when we can't help them we feel bad. It's going to be that Earth. They no longer needed instruments to see it. The planet revolved outside the visionports. coursed with rivers the oceans \"Nor I,\" said Bal. \"We're going to have to go down there cold. And it will be cold.\" \"Yes. It's their winter.\" beings?\" \"Hardly,\" said Ethaniel. \"A hundred years ago it might have worked. Today they have satellites. They are not primitives.\" \"I suppose you're right,\" said Bal. \"I did think we ought to differences.\" \"If we could I'd be all for it. But these people are rough and desperate. They wouldn't be other. We'll tell them bluntly what they'll have to do if they're going to survive, how they can keep their planet in one piece so they can live on it.\" \"That'll go over big. Advice is \"Can't help it. That's all we have time for.\" \"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 beams we use.\" \"They can't, and even if they did they wouldn't know what to do with our language. I want them to think that we don't need to talk things over.\" \"I get it. Makes us seem better than we are. They think we know exactly what we're doing even though we don't.\" \"If we're lucky they'll think the planet below. \"It's going to Sure we don't want to change \"I'm afraid not. The great are the ones we have to reach to We'll be running straight into it. That won't help us any.\" \"I know, they don't like their holidays interrupted. It can't be helped. We can't wait until it's I ought to know. Probably learn anything exact from radio and TV. Now it seems to be the people, and they're hard to pin down.\" and leave the ship up here with no one in it.\" \"They can't touch it. No matter how they develop in the next hundred years they still won't be able to get in or damage it in any way.\" \"It's myself I'm thinking about. Down there, alone.\" \"I'll be with you. On the other side of the Earth.\" in the ship to bring it down in a hurry if things get rough. They don't think much of each other. I don't imagine they'll like aliens any better.\" \"They may be unfriendly,\" the ship against the sun \"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 \"Don't spare power.\" Earth will see it.\" Later, with the 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 of the planet. Earth, unmanned, blazing and pulsing with light. No star in the winter skies of the planet below could equal it in brilliancy. Once a man-made satellite came near but it was dim and was lost sight Earth to illuminate it. Never, or seldom, had Earth seen anything like it. up from Earth and joined the small craft slid inside the large one and doors closed behind them. In a short time the aliens met again. how we did it and I thought we were going to fail but at the last \"It did. I don't know why, but it did,\" said Bal. \"Anyway, this agreement they made isn't the best but I think it will keep them from destroying themselves.\" \"It's as much as we can expect,\" said Ethaniel. \"They may \"Why?\" their paintings they had pictured him innumerable times. so myself occasionally.\" \"But you don't know what an angel is?\" \"No. I didn't have time to find out. Some creature of their folklore I suppose. You know, except for our wings they're very much like ourselves. Their legends are bound to resemble ours.\" \"Sure,\" said Bal. \"Anyway,\n\n<question>:\nWhy are the aliens not sure if they can help the humans?\n\n<options>:\nA Their superiors would not approve of an intervention on this planet\nB They do not think they have enough time to intervene like they wish they could\nC They do not have experience with this specific type of military technology\nD They have no way of communicating with the humans in their own languages\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nHumphrey Fownes' preoccupation finally came to an end when he was one It was disconcerting, and at the same time enchanting, to watch one's 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 he was an uncommonly preoccupied individual. He was strolling along a quiet residential avenue: small private houses, one after another, a place of little traffic and minimum distractions. But he was thinking about weather, which was an unusual subject to begin with for a person living in a domed city. He was thinking so suits, small tables, lamps trailing their cords, ashtrays, sofa cushions. The house was emptying itself fiercely, as if disgorging an old, spoiled meal. From deep inside he could hear the rumble of his ancient upright piano as it rolled ponderously from room to room. He stood up a wet wind swept over him, whipping at his face, toying He should surely have become suspicious when two men engaged in a heated argument came along. In the ensuing contretemps they emptied his rear pants pockets, got his wristwatch and restored the contents of the It fell on the streets and houses, making small geysers of shiny mist, hitting with a gentle musical sound, like the ephemeral droppings of The winds roared for a moment and then MacBride's lost voice emerged from the blackness of the living room. \"These are surveillance on him, a surveillance that went to the extent of getting them. Two blocks away from his home a careless housewife spilled a five-pound bag of flour as he was passing. It was really plaster of 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 with photographs had been prepared and was being read by two men in an Sitting behind the wheel of the orange car, he watched Humphrey Fownes approach with a distinct feeling of admiration, although it was an odd, objective kind of admiration, clinical in nature. It was similar to that of a pathologist observing for the first time a new and particularly virulent strain of pneumococcus under his microscope. it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it, Lanfierre had become an admirer of eccentricity. He came to see that genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own \"And up and down.\" MacBride returned the notebook to the breast pocket of his orange uniform. \"Go on,\" he said, amused. \"It sounds interesting.\" He tossed the dossier carelessly on the back seat. to return. He took out his notebook but it was a soggy mess. He tossed it away. \"Sure, he was had even contrived to engage him in conversation once, a pleasantly absurd, irrational little chat that titillated him for weeks. It was resounding echoes, each believing itself whole and separate. They spoke in an incessant chatter of cliches, and their actions were unbelievably Humphrey Fownes took out the dust jacket he'd found in the library. He held it up and carefully compared the spinning cloud in his bedroom with the illustration. The cloud rose and spun, assuming the identical 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?\" \"And compasses won't work on this street.\" with a widow. Then he goes to the library. Always the same. Supper at the widow's next door and then the library.\" MacBride's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. \"The library?\" he said. \"Is he in with that bunch?\" \"I can't wait to see what he's got in there,\" Lanfierre murmured, watching the house with a consuming interest. he'd never thought to watch from outside. He went in and threw his jacket on the sofa, there being no room left in the closets. Crossing the living room he stopped to twist a draw-pull. Every window slammed shut. snug as a hug in a rug . He went on, thinking: The old devils. The downstairs closet was like a great watch case, a profusion of wheels surrounding the Master Mechanism, which was a miniature see-saw that went back and forth 365-1/4 times an hour. The wheels had a curious stateliness about them. They were all quite old, salvaged from grandfather's clocks and music boxes and they went around in graceful the smell of ozone in the air. There was also a gigantic moon. It hid a garden that was itself scintillant, composed largely of neon roses. Moonlight, he thought, and roses. Satisfactory. all right. A dreamy sunset, an enchanted moon, flowers, scent. They were all purely speculative of course. He had no idea how a rose really smelled—or looked for that matter. Not to mention a moon. But His own spine didn't seem to be affected. But then he hadn't read that book on ancient mores and courtship customs. demolished several of the neon roses. winds came to him. He went downstairs to watch out the living room window. This was important The neon roses bent and tinkled against each other as the wind rose and The neon roses thrashed about, extinguishing each other. The red sun Why didn't she marry him and save all this bother? He shut it all down and went out the front door, wondering about the rhyme of the months, What a strange people, the ancients! He still didn't see the orange car parked down the street. \"Men are too perishable,\" Mrs. Deshazaway said over dinner. \"For all table, rustling and tinkling about the room. \"I can just hear them. Try some of the asparagus. Five. He could hear her moving about and then felt her hands on his shoulders. \"And what about those very elaborate plans you've been making to seduce me?\" Fownes froze with three asparagus hanging from his fork. library several blocks away, a shattered depressing place given over to government publications and censored old books with holes in them. It was used so infrequently that the Movement was able to meet there undisturbed. The librarian was a yellowed, dog-eared woman of eighty. She spent her days reading ancient library cards and, like the books around her, had been rendered by time's own censor into near unintelligibility. \"Here's one,\" she said to him as he entered. \" days. What do you make of it?\" In the litter of books and cards and dried out ink pads that surrounded the librarian, Fownes noticed a torn dust jacket with a curious illustration. \"What's that?\" he said. to her, that one day they met in the street and he told her about this book and then they ... they went to the library together and she a Dorothy to an Oz. He couldn't help wondering if twisters did anything to feminine pulses, if they could possibly be a part of a moonlit night, with cocktails and roses. He absently stuffed the dust jacket in his pocket and went on into the other rooms, the librarian mumbling reading inscriptions on a tombstone. The Movement met in what had been the children's room, where unpaid ladies of the afternoon had once upon a time read stories to other said, \"for lack of something. An invention! What is the one thing that the great technological societies before ours could not invent, notwithstanding their various giant brains, electronic and otherwise?\" have discussed preparations, the practical necessities of life in the Open Country. Food, clothing, a weapon perhaps? What else? Have I left anything out?\" The leader sighed. \"The gentleman wants to know if he's left anything\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Humphrey decorate with a moon, neon roses, and music?\n\n<options>:\nA to give Mrs. Deshazaway something that looked like her past\nB to seduce Mrs. Deshazaway\nC he was trying to decorate his home uniquely\nD these were items he had read about from the past\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nWhat cities in the post-Brexit era could learn from a 14th-century trading bloc As you fly from the country now known as Germany to Britain, the coastal geography of northern European cities gently unfurls. You can see where the sea smacks into them, or where yawning estuaries unfold like funnels between green and brown city and choppy blue water. You can track the snaking rivers and canals that form unrepentant umbilical connections to the settlements set a little further inland. In the traumatised atmosphere of post-Brexit Britain, it is worth remembering the Hanseatic League. It could point us towards new relationships between progressive city dwellers in a world that otherwise seems to be putting the brakes on modernity. Despite some of Britain's Leave voters longing to inhabit a fantastical realm immune to foreign influence, the reality is patently very different to that. In the late 1300s, Chaucer wrote about characters travelling to Jerusalem, and others who came from Europe and it was at exactly this point that the Hanseatic League slowly started to coalesce, eventually influencing our isles. The League is most easily understood as a loose federation of cities that acted together in self-interest to promote trade. The Hanseatic cities developed their own legal system, and their armies came to one another's aid. Merchants who wanted to buy and sell and travel were taking the lead at a time when nation states were not fit for purpose: in the case of England or Denmark, leadership was too centralised and authoritarian, while in German-speaking lands a nation had yet to be formed. We think of nations today as elemental almost, immovable. Yet look at any city of Mitteleuropa and you'll see the many different names it has had as borders and regimes have shifted with the sands of time. Nations come and go. Cities endure. \"It is often said that great cities survived great empires,\" says Cristina Ampatzidou, editor-in-chief of the Rotterdam-based online publishing platform Amateur Cities. \"So it is not unrealistic to think of cities as discrete entities that compete and collaborate with each other, independently from the states to which they belong.\" The League covered lands that today find themselves a part of the modern nations of Finland, Sweden, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Norway, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. It was a huge – and hugely ambitious – undertaking in the days when communications consisted of ink and paper and the only viable method of travel was by ship. Wood, fur, wool, silver, herring, cod and salt were the main items traded. But what was also exchanged was knowledge. In some ways it was an exercise in what we today call 'soft diplomacy'. There was no maniacal ruler overseeing things – merchants met and talked. They raised armies and waged war against kings who threatened their businesses and their freedoms and their peace. There was a kind of proto-democracy at work. Professor Rainer Postel, of the Bundeswehr Universität (Germany's equivalent of Sandhurst military academy), has described the Hanse as \"a community of interests without power politics\". As David Abulafia, Professor of Mediterranean History at Cambridge points out, \"The lack of an elaborate superstructure was one of the things that made the Hanse work. Having said that, one should recognise that Lübeck in particular dominated the League for long periods.\" Lübeck was where the merchants most often met Germany today – multicultural, economically and culturally motoring, free and fair – seems like the ideal model for a modern European nation state. And part of that success lies in the gravitas the country has given to its Hanseatic history. For Germany is not a top-down country with one city unhealthily dominating as with France and Britain (regional economic inequalities have plagued Britain since the painful de-industrialisation of the 1980s, especially in the north). Germany respects federalism and its cities exist on a much more even keel. The way that Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf and Stuttgart all bring varied economic and cultural character to the party is pure Hanse. The former Hanseatic cities of Hamburg, Berlin and Bremen have city state status within Germany, putting them on the same level as a whole region or 'land' like Bavaria or Brandenburg. But could we go further? Could cities like London declare independence from the UK? London's economy is larger than that of Scotland and Wales combined. \"States will not vanish or surrender their waning sovereignty,\" says Benjamin Barber. \"But cities will meet across frontiers and work together to solve problems. The objective is not an independent London or New York, but interdependent cities collaborating globally. And that is happening.\" London's voters largely wanted to remain a part of the EU and to maintain the city's status as an entrepôt. There is clearly a widening chasm between urban and rural life at the heart of many nations. Visualisations of Austria's recent presidential election showed the issue clearly: the country's cities voted for the Green candidate Alexander Van der Bellen, while the the rural districts went for right-wing nationalist Norbert Hofer (whose legal challenge to the close result has resulted in a rerun being announced for October). And in the USA in November, it's likely that Trump voters will also come from rural areas and Clinton voters from the cities. City dwellers are finding ever more in common with the world's other city dwellers than with their countrymen 50 miles down the road. Back in Britain, one of history's little oddities pops up on the east coast. Boston in Lincolnshire and King's Lynn in Norfolk were both forward-looking Hanseatic League towns that traded with far-flung ports and hosted foreign merchants. King's Lynn contains the only extantHanse House left in Britain (London's was knocked down to build Cannon Street Station in the 1800s). Yet in the EU referendum these two areas polled among the highest Leave votes of anywhere in the country. \"Things change,\" says LSE's Professor Tony Travers. \"[King's Lynn] used to be very highly connected, but the economy moved on and left those trading ports like it in a different situation.\" Take, for example, the pivot towards the New World, with which trade made more sense from the west-coast ports like Bristol and Liverpool. While these boomed between the 1600s and 1800s, the Hanseatic ports declined and then died out. \"One of the things that's interesting about the [referendum] decision is that it begs all sorts of questions about the future of the UK and its relationship with Europe and of London and Scotland and their relationship with the rest of Europe. When the EU began as the EEC in the mid-20th century some saw it as a modern day Hanse. Now the EU seems to be waning, perhaps its successor will have to ape the Hanse even more.\" For all its complex beauty, life can ultimately be reduced to a series of binary options: yes or no, stick or twist, in or out, innovation or stagnation, modernity or mythology. The referendum result was disappointing for many progressive observers because it felt like a step backwards. Despite being primarily about trade monopolies and money making, the Hanse was, in its way, an early stab at stepping forwards: it encompassed internationalism, rational thought, free trade, loose democratic institutions and, most crucially of all, movement. The future, for many observers, can only be understood in terms of the free movement of people, capital, goods and ideas. It is this necessary movement, and its possible curtailment, that could be the spark that leads to cities like London to seek independence and parity with other world cities – rather than with the rural hinterlands of Britain. Of course, cities seceding from their nation states would provide huge headaches for countries whose biggest economic driver had been removed – as well as likely deepening ideological differences between city and rural dwellers. Moreover, cities need the food the countryside provides. but whether it is actually desirable.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhich terms most likely describe how the author views Brexit?\n\n<options>:\nA perplexing and disturbing\nB ambitious and progressive\nC ill-conceived and quixotic\nD haphazard and inequitable\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>:\nIn the animated ecological epic Princess Mononoke , the camera travels over landscapes with a clear, steady gaze, like a Zen hang glider. The images have none of the comin'-at-ya pop-surrealism of American cartoons, many of which have characters that spring out of the frame like jack-in-the-boxes. The Japanese director, Hayao Miyazaki, who spent three years on Princess Mononoke and is reported to have done 70 percent of its paintings himself, seems to work from the outside in: to begin with the curve of the earth, then the mossy hills, the watercolor foliage, the nubby stones, the whorls on the wood, the meticulous carvings on a teacup. He captures the texture of light and the currents of air. You could almost settle down in this landscape. A view of nature that some would call \"tree-hugging\" doesn't feel softheaded when the trees are rendered in such brilliant and robust detail. But then, \"soft\" is not a word you can apply to Princess Mononoke , however pantheistic its worldview. The film, which is rated PG-13, is full of splattery carnage. If Miyazaki in long shot is contemplative, in close-up he's ferocious. He's both inside and outside the action: He knows when to rock your world and when to induce a state of sorrowful detachment. According to the New York Times , Toy Story animators screened reels of his work when their imaginations flagged, and writers for Star Trek named an alien species after one of his features. Watching Princess Mononoke --which has been dubbed to Disney/Miramax specifications by American and English stars but retains its two-hour-plus length, its gory beheadings, and its grim, near-apocalyptic finale--you can understand their worship. It isn't that Miyazaki's work is technically so dazzling in this age of digitized miracles P rincess Mononoke builds to a full-scale war between humans and the animal kingdom--which does not, by the way, consist of your father's cartoon critters. In fact, the boars and apes have little patience with Ashitaka's call for nature and mankind to live together in harmony The overfamiliar voices nudge Princess Mononoke closer to its American counterparts--but not by a lot. There's always something wondrously strange. The \"kodamas\" are little tree spirits on doughboy bodies. They cock their trapezoidal dice heads and emit a series of clicks I could watch them for hours. (Miyazaki limits their appearances to seconds--he doesn't wear out their mystery the way that, say, George Lucas would.) And no Hollywood animated feature would end with such a powerful vision of apocalypse, as the land is bestridden by a colossus dropping a thick, caustic, tarlike gel that recalls the post-Hiroshima \"black rain.\" Can you take the kids? I think so. As Miyazaki said at a New York Film Festival press conference, \"Children understand intuitively that the world they have been born into is not a blessed world.\" Princess Mononoke , at least, can tell them why. \"A special smile ... a certain touch ...\" So begins the elevator-music theme song of Music of the Heart ... \"I never had a lot that I loved so much.\" The credits had just started and I was already looking for a barf bag. Did Miramax and director Wes Craven have to work so hard to schlockify the story of Roberta Guaspari (played here by Meryl Streep), whose violin courses in East Harlem elementary schools have become a beacon for such programs nationwide? A fabled taskmaster (her story was told in the 1996 documentary Small Wonders ), Guaspari used music as a way to teach self-discipline--along with the healthy self-respect that follows in its wake. When the New York school board cut the funding for her program, she proved a marvel of self-promotion, attracting features in all the major dailies and ending up along with her best students at Carnegie Hall for a benefit \"Fiddlefest\"--along with Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern, and other legendary \"fiddlers.\" Streep has said that she spent so much of the time on the set learning the violin (she doesn't play any instruments) that she didn't bring the full force of her acting technique to bear on Roberta. Maybe that's why the performance seems so natural. Let her always learn an instrument on the set! Still, she doesn't make much sense of Guaspari. The script, by Pamela Gray ( A Walk on the Moon ), has her students complain of her nastiness and perfectionism, but Streep--who has made herself look dumpy, thick-waisted, and bedraggled--is so busy telegraphing her vulnerability that all we get is dippy niceness. Instead of a monument to an individual's iron will, Music of the Heart becomes the story of a woman so helpless that she arouses the kindness of strangers. Directors of violent genre pieces like Craven (who got this mainstream gig in return for doing the Scream sequels) or Carl Franklin or Sam Raimi sometimes want so badly to belong to Establishment Hollywood--to go to the Academy Awards--that they neuter themselves. Bending over backward to show how sensitive they can be, they forget that violence--even if it's just emotional violence--belongs in \"ordinary\" dramas, too. Craven does good work with the young actors in the classroom scenes, but the film has a reticence common to most biopics and a mushy, TV-movie humanism that blands out its texture. OK, I was a puddle after some scenes, like the one where Guaspari pushes a student to get her to improve her posture and discovers that the girl is wearing a leg brace. But how much more emotional the Carnegie Hall climax would have been if instead of suddenly seeing these East Harlem kids on stage with Perlman, Stern, Joshua Bell, etc., we'd seen them rehearsing first and struggling to keep up. There's too much music of the heart and not enough music of the callused fingers. But the picture's glory is its layered and intricate syntax. The dialogue moves ahead--there are great gobs of exposition--but the images continually double back: to Stamp and Lesley Ann Warren, as his daughter's acting teacher, simply gazing at each other or to Stamp sitting on a plane, remembering his daughter as a girl on the beach, the lens of his home movie camera creating an eerily bright--almost supernatural--spot that dances over her face. The film's most violent act happens well off screen. (You hear the distant \"pop-pop-pop-pop-pop\" of the hero's gun.) The rest is only half-glimpsed, fantasized, or saturated by memory--or is the present the memory? Is all of The Limey a temporal hiccup? Some, including the critic at Time , have questioned Soderbergh's sanity. (But of course--Soderbergh flouts time!) I see a method to his madness. Less grandiosely than Harmony Korine in Julien Donkey-Boy , Soderbergh pores over every scene in search of its essential dramatic gesture. He's saying: This --not all that other stuff--is what's important. He telegraphs the ending--you know the Limey will somehow be at the root of his daughter's death--but it's still an emotional wow. The climax justifies the technique. It says the point of this odyssey isn't revenge but regret--for irredeemably blown chances and a tragic waste of love.\n\n<question>:\nThe reviewer shares the following similar criticism of Princess Mononoke and Roberta Guaspari:\n\n<options>:\nA They are unoriginal and sexist caricatures of stereotypical female archetypes\nB They are not developed to the fullest extent they could be, and the audience loses interest in their storyline\nC They lose their appeal when the director reduces their rough edges\nD They should have been cast as the protagonists of their respective stories, instead of secondary characters\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Wayne, unseen, sneered down from the head of the stairs. The old man said, \"He'll be okay. Let him alone.\" \"But he won't eat. Just lies there all the time.\" \"Hell,\" the old man said. \"Sixteen's a bad time. School over, waiting for the draft and all. He's in between. It's rough.\" Mother clasped her forearms and shook her head once slowly. about all these dangerous repressed impulses piling up with nowhere to go, like they say. You read the books.\" \"But he's unhappy.\" \"Are we specialists? That's the Youth Board's headache, ain't it? What do we know about adolescent trauma and like that? Now get dressed or we'll be late.\" Wayne watched the ritual, grinning. He listened to their purposeless noises, their blabbing and yakking as if they had something to say. How come he'd been stuck with parental images like that? One impulses. Wayne had heard about it often enough. Anyway there was no that must make the old man feel like Superman with a beerbelly. They heard Wayne slouching loosely down the stairs and looked up. \"Relax,\" Wayne said. \"You're not going anywhere tonight.\" \"What, son?\" his old man said uneasily. \"Sure we are. We're going to the movies.\" He could feel them watching him, waiting and yet still he didn't \"Okay, go,\" Wayne said. \"If you wanta walk. I'm taking the family \"Hell,\" Wayne said, grinning straight into the old man. \"I just got my draft call.\" He saw the old man's Adam's apple move. \"Oh, my dear boy,\" Mother cried out. \"So gimme the keys,\" Wayne said. The old man handed the keys over. His \"Do be careful, dear,\" his mother said. She ran toward him as he Wayne grinned down. \"Higher I hope than a typewriter jockey.\" A tired fat corporal with a naked head blinked up at tall Wayne. Finally he said, \"So make up your mind, bud. Think you're the only kid breaking out tonight?\" The corporal's little eyes studied Wayne with malicious amusement. you're starting late. You can get a cat, not a mouse, and some babes are clever hellcats in a dark alley.\" \"You must be a genius,\" Wayne said. \"A corporal with no hair and still Wayne's mouth twitched. He leaned across the counter toward the while Wayne examined the weapons, broke open the revolver, twirled the Wayne felt the assured smile die on his face. Something seemed to shrink him. If he didn't watch himself he'd begin feeling like a pea among bowling balls. Contemptuously amused little eyes glittered at Wayne from a shaggy in a bug collection. \"Well, well, you're really fired up aren't you? Really going out to eat 'em. Right, punk?\" from Wayne's nose. He jerked up a shaky hand involuntarily and clamped A copcar stopped Wayne as he started over the bridge, out of bright Wayne waved the pass card, signed by Captain Jack, under the cop's Slumville, but Wayne felt a cold that wasn't of the night or the wind. potholes, narrow and winding and humid with wet unpleasant smells. Wayne's fearful exhilaration increased as he cruised with bated breath through the dark mazes of streets and rickety tenements crawling with shirt clinging to a pale stick body. He reminded Wayne of a slim grub a dirty, greenish tinge as he sensed Wayne there. He turned in a grotesque uncoordinated jiggling and his eyes were wide with terror and doom. \"I gotta hide, kid. They're on me.\" Wayne's chest rose and his hands curled. The bum's fingers drew at the air like white talons. \"Help me, kid.\" He turned with a scratchy cry and retreated before the sudden blast past Wayne and he felt the engine-hot fumes against his legs. Tires The fumble-footed rummy tried to run and plopped on wet pavement. The teener moved in, while a faint odor of burnt rubber hovered in the air Wayne's breath quickened as he watched, feeling somehow blank wonder laughed. Wayne wanted to shout. He opened his mouth, but the yell Wayne walked over and sneered down at the human garbage lying in Wayne smiled with wry superiority at the redheaded psycho in a dirty sat rigid, eyes fixed on Wayne like balls of frozen glass. Red looked up and stared straight at Wayne with eyes like black buttons Wayne returned the challenging move but felt a nervous twitch jerk at The waiter sat the Crusher down. Wayne signed a chit Wayne drank. Liquored heat dripped into his stomach. Fire tickled his air. Tension mounted as Wayne watched her pale throat convulsing, the \"Okay, you creep,\" Wayne said. crashed. Wayne's .38 dropped from its spring-clip holster and the blast holding something in. The mouse darted by, eluded Wayne's grasp and was Wayne went out after her in a laughing frenzy of release. He felt the \"You, baby,\" Wayne gasped. \"I gotcha.\" her arms out and poised like crippled wings. Wayne crept up. She gave a squeaking sob, turned, ran. Wayne leaped into gloom. Wood cracked. \"No use running,\" Wayne said. \"Go loose. Give, baby. Give now.\" She scurried up sagging stairs. Wayne laughed and dug up after her, sagging stairway from a shattered skylight three floors up. The mouse's cracks. A rat ran past Wayne and fell into space. He burst into the Wayne took his time. He knew how she felt waiting in there, listening to his creeping, implacable footfalls. Then he yelled and slammed open the door. Dust and stench, filth so awful it made nothing of the dust. In \"What's that, baby?\" \"I'm tired running. Kill me first. Beat me after. They won't know the difference.\" like him and something was wrong with his belly. It was knotting up. \"Bad, I know! So get it over with, please. Hurry, hurry.\" He ripped off his rivet-studded belt and swung once, then groaned and shuffled away from her. He kept backing toward the door. She crawled after him, begging and clutching with both arms as she wriggled forward on her knees. \"Don't run. Please. Kill me! It'll be someone else if you don't. Oh, God, I'm so tired waiting and running!\" \"I can't,\" he said, and sickness soured in his throat. \"Please.\" \"I can't, I can't!\" He turned and ran blindly, half-fell down the cracking stairs. studied Wayne with abstract interest. \"Yes, sir.\" \"But you couldn't execute them?\" \"No, sir.\" \"They're undesirables. Incurables. You know that, Seton?\" \"Yes, sir.\" killed her father when she was twelve. You realize there's nothing can \"I—felt sorry for her.\" \"Is that all you can say about it?\" \"No, sir,\" Wayne mumbled. He didn't look up. \"I'm sorry I punked out.\" \"Give him the treatment,\" the doctor said wearily. \"And send him back to his mother.\" Wayne nodded and they led him away. His mind screamed still to split was no way out for the trapped. Now he knew about the old man and his poker-playing pals. They had all punked out. Like him.\n\n<question>:\nWhat does the description in the second paragraph of the article about Wayne's parents show about how Wayne feels towards them?\n\n<options>:\nA He dislikes them because he feels repressed by them.\nB He has strong disdain for them because they do not approve of his aspirations.\nC He fears his parents because they are aggressively against his future goals.\nD He is annoyed by them because they will not let him be drafted.\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>:\nMacklin was playing jacks. \"Do you think we'll have to use force on Macklin to get him to \"Hello?\" Elliot Macklin said. carried away for a moment. But Macklin is exactly what we need for a Macklin had answered the \"Sure,\" Macklin said, \"if you say so. Why shouldn't I believe you?\" \"I suppose so,\" Macklin said humbly. \"You've found yourself worrying—thinking—about a lot of other problems since we left you, haven't you? Maybe not the same kind of now Macklin—\" able to frame an argument with it. Macklin was in his early fifties but For the past seven years Macklin—who \"If you say so,\" Macklin said uncertainly. . The only thing that could delay the project was Macklin's health. Despite his impressive body, some years before he had suffered a mild \"I imagine he will,\" Mitchell said. \"Macklin's always seemed a decent \"Yes,\" Macklin said. \"How can you have a specific for a number of different causes?\" Macklin \"That's fine,\" Macklin said, sucking on his pipe. \"And this effect that telencephalon section of the frontal lobes. It's caused by an over-production of the pituitary gland. We have artificially bred a \"That may mean the end of headaches, but I would think it would mean the end of the race as well,\" Macklin said. \"In certain areas it is works, I could stop using that damned gynergen, couldn't I? The stuff makes me violently sick to my stomach. But it's better than the Macklin coughed. \"I don't want to overestimate my value but the We can cure the headaches of one person and that's the limit of our resources.\" \"I'm tempted,\" Macklin said hesitantly, \"but the answer is go. I mean ' no Macklin ran the back of his knuckles across his forehead. \"I really \"That's not so bad,\" Macklin said. \"How low can it get?\" Macklin held his head in both hands. \"Why did you two select \"Yes, I do,\" Macklin said. \"Very well. Go ahead. Give me your Macklin groped in his pocket for a pen. unverified results to the press. It's too early for that!\" \"Don't be so stuffy and conservative, Mitchell! Macklin's cured, isn't he? By established periodic cycle he should be suffering hell right \"It's Macklin's wife,\" Ferris said. \"Do you want to talk to her? I'm no heroin.\" \"That's absurd. What makes you think a thing like that?\" \"The—trance he's in now.\" \"Mrs. Macklin! I think I had better talk to you later when you are Macklin?\" he asked without removing his hand from the telephone. \"Never mind, doctor. It was a form of humor. I think we had better see exactly what is wrong with Elliot Macklin.\" \"There's nothing wrong with him,\" Ferris snapped. \"He's probably just trying to get us in trouble, the ingrate!\" Macklin's traditional ranch house was small but attractive in dum-de-de-dum-dum-dum . As they waited Mitchell glanced at Ferris. He seemed completely \"You are the gentlemen who gave Dr. Macklin the unauthorized suddenly realized Macklin used a pipe as a form of masculine protest to used to be a mathematical genius.\" \"And now?\" Mitchell said impatiently. \"Now he is a moron,\" the medic said. III \"What did he mean, Macklin is an idiot?\" Mitchell asked. \"Not an idiot,\" Colonel Carson corrected primly. \"Dr. Macklin is a moron. He's legally responsible, but he's extremely stupid.\" \"I'm not so dumb,\" Macklin said defensively. \"I beg your pardon, sir,\" Carson said. \"I didn't intend any offense. \"But—\" Mitchell said, impatient to examine Macklin for himself. \"Very \"All I want to know is why Elliot Macklin has been made as simple as if necessary amount of control to stop pain is too much to allow the brain cells to function properly.\" \"Why won't they function?\" Carson roared. \"They don't get enough food—blood, oxygen, hemoglobin,\" Ferris explained. \"The cerebral vessels don't contract enough to pump the blood through the brain as fast and as hard as is needed. The brain cells remain sluggish, dormant. Perhaps decaying.\" The colonel yelled. might just as well have blown up Washington, D.C. Better! The capital is replaceable. But the chances of an Elliot Macklin are very nearly once in a human race.\" \"Just you wait a second now, boys,\" Elliot Macklin said. He was leaning frame an answer. \"Unfortunately, yes. Apparently if your mind functions properly once again you will have the headaches again. Our research is a dismal failure.\" Macklin slowly shaking his head. \"No, sir!\" the mathematician said. \"I shall not go back to my original state. I can remember what it was like. Always worrying, worrying, worrying.\" Macklin nodded. \"Troubled, anyway. Disturbed by every little thing. \"That's right, Colonel. There's no use in arguing with him,\" Mitchell said. \"It's not his decision to make,\" the colonel said. \"He's an idiot now.\" \"No, Colonel. As you said, he's a moron. He seems an idiot compared to his former level of intelligence but he's legally responsible. There are millions of morons running around loose in the United States. They can get married, own property, vote, even hold office. Many of them do. You can't force him into being cured.... At least, I don't think you can.\" \"Y-yes,\" Colonel Carson said, \"but he's not himself. He refused the treatment. He wants to remain in his state of lower intelligence.\" She nodded. \"If those are his wishes, I can't go against them.\" was my original thought. But I've redecided.\" \"Redecided!\" Carson burst out almost hysterically. \"Yes. I can't go against Elliot's wishes. It would be monstrous to put him back where he would suffer the hell of those headaches once again, where he never had a moment's peace from worry and pressure. He's happy now. Like a child, but happy.\" restore your husband's mind we will be forced to get a court order declaring him incompetent.\" \"But he is not! Legally, I mean,\" the woman stormed. the edge where restoring the mind of Elliot Macklin was concerned. Once he's certified incompetent, authorities can rule whether Mitchell and Ferris' antitoxin treatment is the best method of restoring Dr. Macklin to sanity.\" \"It isn't quite the same, Colonel. Elliot Macklin has a history of vascular spasm, a mild pseudostroke some years ago. Now you want to give those cerebral arteries back the ability to constrict. To Macklin,\" Mitchell interjected. Her mouth grew petulant. \"I don't care. I would rather have a live husband than a dead genius. I can take care of him this way, make him comfortable....\" \"I'm no psychiatrist,\" Mitchell said, \"but I think she wants Macklin stupid. Prefers it that way. She's always dominated his personal life, and now she can dominate him completely.\" \"No,\" Mitchell said. \"She's an intelligent woman unconsciously jealous of her husband's genius.\" \"Maybe,\" Carson said. \"I don't know. I don't know what the hell to tell the Pentagon. I think I'll go out and get drunk.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Macklin have objections to going back?\n\n<options>:\nA He doesn't want to have to undergo another experiment.\nB He doesn't want to go back. He'd rather be \"stupid\" than having headaches and always worrying.\nC It's too risky to try the experiment again. He'd rather take his chances the way he is now.\nD He doesn't want to go back. In the state he's in, he's too \"stupid\" to realize the ramifications of what happened to him.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,803 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nOne can't be too cautious about the people one meets in Tangier. They're all weirdies of one kind or another. Me? Oh, The Place de France is the town's hub. It marks the end of Boulevard Pasteur, the main drag of the westernized part of the city, and the beginning of the medina. In a three-minute walk from the Place de France you can go from an ultra-modern, California-like resort to the Baghdad of Harun al-Rashid. It's quite a town, Tangier. King-size sidewalk cafes occupy three of the strategic corners on the Place de France. The Cafe de Paris serves the best draft beer in town, gets all the better custom, and has three establishment. You can sit of a sunny morning and read the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune while getting your shoes done up like mirrors for thirty Moroccan francs which comes to about five cents at current exchange. You can sit there, after the paper's read, sip your expresso and watch the people go by. Tangier is possibly the most cosmopolitan city in the world. In native costume you'll see Berber and Rif, Arab and Blue European dress you'll see Japs and Chinese, Hindus and Turks, Levantines and Filipinos, North Americans and South Americans, and, of course, even Europeans—from both sides of the Curtain. In Tangier you'll find some of the world's poorest and some of the richest. The poorest will try to sell you anything from a shoeshine to their not very lily-white bodies, and the richest will avoid your eyes, afraid you might try to sell them something. In spite of recent changes, the town still has its unique qualities. As a result of them the permanent population includes smugglers and black-marketeers, fugitives from justice and international con men, espionage homosexuals, nymphomaniacs, alcoholics, limits the activities of few of these. Like I said, it's quite a town. I looked up from my Herald Anything new cooking?\" at the Cafe de Paris. It wasn't a place to go if you wanted to Rupert? Haven't seen you for Paul was an easy-going, sallow-faced was from Liverpool and in exports. \"What's in the newspaper?\" \"Pogo and Albert are going to fight a duel,\" I told him, \"and Lil Abner is becoming a rock'n'roll singer.\" He grunted. \"Oh,\" I said, \"the intellectual \"They have, eh? How big?\" \"Several times bigger than anything we Americans have.\" saucers?\" as though it'd been shaven. The girl was in the latest from \"You know, what everybody \"That's an idea,\" I said. without rubbing him the wrong well, but, for that matter, it's comparatively seldom you ever get to know anybody very well in Tangier. Largely, cards are played close to the chest. My beer came and a plate of tapas for us both. Tapas at the Cafe de Paris are apt to be potato salad, a few anchovies, olives, and possibly some cheese. Free lunch, they used to call it in the States. Just to say something, I said, \"Where do you think they came Saucers.\" He grinned. \"From Mars or Venus, or someplace.\" \"Ummmm,\" I said. \"Too bad landed on the Yale football field and said or something.\" crackpot blokes' explanations of It'd been cooked in rancid olive oil. I said, \"Oh, there are various think of two or three that made sense.\" \"Like what?\" the club. Meanwhile, they send Paul grinned at me. \"I see you read the same poxy stuff I do.\" in a neatly tailored gray jellaba, European style high-heeled shoes, and a pinkish silk after her. one. Suppose you have a very advanced civilization on, say, Mars.\" \"Not Mars. No air, and too bloody dry to support life.\" \"Don't interrupt, please,\" I said with mock severity. \"This is a very old civilization and as the planet began to lose its water and air, it withdrew underground. Uses hydroponics and so forth, husbands its water and air. Isn't that what we'd do, in a few million years, if Earth lost its water and air?\" \"I suppose so,\" he said. \"Anyway, what about them?\" \"Well, they observe how man is going through a scientific boom, an industrial boom, a population boom. A boom, period. Any day now he's going to have practical space ships. Meanwhile, he's also got the H-Bomb and not against using it, if he could different.\" I shifted my shoulders. \"Well, \"I got a better one. How's this. There's this alien life form that's way ahead of us. Their civilization is so old that they things like wars and depressions and revolutions, and greed for power or any of these things giving us a bad time here on Earth. They're all like scholars, pretty jolly well taken by Earth, especially the way we are right now, with all the problems, get don't know where we're going or how we're going to get there.\" my hands for Mouley. \"How do you mean, where we're going ?\" \"Well, take half the countries in the world today. They're trying to industrialize, modernize, catch up with the advanced countries. Look at Egypt, and Israel, and India and China, and Yugoslavia and Brazil, and all the rest. Trying to drag themselves up to the level of the advanced countries, and all using different methods of doing it. But look at the so-called advanced countries. Up to their bottoms in problems. Juvenile delinquents, climbing crime and suicide rates, the loony-bins full of the balmy, unemployed, threat of war, spending all their money on armaments instead of things like it. Why, a man from Mars would be fascinated, like.\" Mouley came shuffling up in his babouche slippers and we of beer. know, there's only one big snag you always come up against this or whatever they are? Sooner You know, Scotland Yard, or the F.B.I., or Russia's secret police, or the French Sûreté, or Interpol. This world is so deep matter how much he'd been up, and they'd nab him.\" this possibility, it seemed to me that such an alien would base himself in London or New York. Somewhere where he could use the libraries for research, get the daily newspapers and center of things. But now I don't think so. I think he'd be right here in Tangier.\" \"Why Tangier?\" \"It's the one town in the world where anything goes. Nobody gives a damn about you or your affairs. For instance, I've known you a year or more now, and I haven't the slightest idea of how you make your living.\" \"That's right,\" Paul admitted. \"In this town you seldom even can be British, a White Russian, could care less. Where are you from, Rupert?\" \"California,\" I told him. \"No, you're not,\" he grinned. you mean?\" the F.B.I. possibly flushing an alien. Telepathy is a sense not be considerably more difficult. Let's face it, in spite of in, neither of us is humanoid. Where are you really from, Rupert?\" about you?\" meat trusts. We're protein eaters. Humanoid flesh is considered quite a delicacy. How about you?\" \"Scouting the place for thrill tourists. My job is to go around to these backward cultures and help stir up inter-tribal, or international, conflicts—all according to how advanced they are. Then our tourists come in—well shielded, of course—and get their kicks watching it.\" Paul frowned. \"That sort of practice could spoil an awful lot of good meat.\" THE END Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Rupert like Tangier?\n\n<options>:\nA Tangier is full of criminals and subversives of various sorts.\nB Tangier is right in the center of things.\nC No one questions what he's doing in Tangier.\nD The current exchange rate makes Tangier a cheap place to live.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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865 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nA Gift From Earth [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from on Earth.\" \"But it's mobbed,\" protested Zotul. \"It gave me a headache.\" \"And to us it's almost empty. The pressure of population on Earth has free ... but how much would the freight cost? habitable planets, unfortunately, are populated ones. We take the least was in favor of the coming of the Earthmen to the world of Zur. nor true Earthmen, but a mixture of both.\" causes more distress than we like to inflict, but it's better—and more these Earthmen to worry about? Remember the clay. It is our strength but you'll be working for us ... until the children of Earth and Zur are equal in knowledge and therefore equal partners. That's why we had to break down your caste system.\" and our fortune. It is the muscle and bone of our trade. Earthmen may come and Earthmen may go, but clay goes on forever ... and with it, the Zotul's eyes widened. \"And that is why my brothers did not beat me when I failed!\" shoulder. \"Don't worry. You'll have your job back, the same as always, to get their hands on that marvelous ship, which was all of metal, a very scarce commodity on Zur, worth billions of ken. elders, \"the Earthmen used all the metal on their planet in building the clay.\" about the Earthmen. If it was impossible to hope for much in the way of metal from the Earthmen, what could one get from them? If he could The Earthmen were going to do great things for the whole world of tried. The anti-Earthmen Faction—in any culture complex, there is always an \"anti\" faction to protest any movement of endeavor—crowed happily that the Earthmen were gone for good, and a good thing, too. Immediately, the Earthmen established what they called object of the visit was trade. \"A pot. I bought it at the market.\" \"Did you now? Well, take it back. Am I made of money that you spend my substance for some fool's product of precious metal? Take it back, I wonder you hear nothing of news! The pot is very cheap. The Earthmen \"The Earthmen don't cook as we do,\" she explained patiently. \"There is buying these pots and there will be a big demand for it. The Earthman \"The Earthman took them in trade—one reason why the new ones are so land. In the meantime, however, more things than pots came from Earth. Moreover, the Earthmen brought miles of copper wire—more than enough \"As I have always said from the beginning,\" chortled Director Koltan, \"this coming of the Earthmen had been a great thing for us, and especially for the House of Masur.\" Earth. newfangled paraphernalia ... and very cheap, too, because for everything they sold, the Earthmen always took the old ware in trade. destroyed it, which proved how valueless it really was. The result of the new flood was that in the following year, the sale of Masur ceramic table service dropped to less than a tenth. subsided. \"They are replacing our high-quality ceramic ware with inferior terrestrial junk,\" Koltan went on bitterly. \"It is only the glamor that of Earth. Think of the telegraph and the newspaper, how these spread news of every shipment from Earth. The merchandise of the Earthmen is put up for sale by means of these newspapers, which also are the property of the Earthmen. The people are from the House of Masur advertisements of the Earthmen. procured legal authority to prospect the planet for metals, of which was gone. Moreover, the Earthmen sold the Zurians their own natural gas At one edge of the city, an area had been turned over to the Earthmen for a spaceport, and the great terrestrial spaceships came to it and radio parts. This was Earth's first step toward flooding Zur with the all in our power to aid the Earthmen and facilitate their bringing a Earthmen are taking care of that.\" what better material could be devised for the new bought receiving sets like mad. The automobiles arrived and highways were constructed. The last hope of the brothers was dashed. The Earthmen set up plants \"It is an Earthman association that deals with complaints such as yours. In the matter of material progress, we must expect some strain in the fabric of our culture. Machinery has been set up to deal with 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 new automobiles. occasion were dissipated in the warmth of the Earthman's manner. Masur—Divinity protect him—departed this life to collect his greater reward. He often told us, my father did, that the clay is the flesh and bones of our culture and our fortune. Now it has been shown how prone is the flesh to corruption and how feeble the bones. We are ruined, and all because of new things coming from Earth.\" we're going to do right by you. That is the policy of Earth—always to \"Divinity witness,\" Zorin said, \"that we ask only compensation for 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 with a wave of his hand. \"It is the least we can do for you. Pick a car \"To receive gifts,\" said Zotul, \"incurs an obligation.\" \"None at all,\" beamed the Earthman cheerily. \"Every item is given to you absolutely free—a gift from the people of Earth. All we ask is He chuckled deeply. \"We of Earth have a saying about one of our \"It may seem high,\" said the Earthman, \"but remember that Earth is sixty-odd light-years away. After all, we are absorbing the cost of the merchandise. All you pay is the freight, which is cheap, considering the cost of operating an interstellar spaceship.\" \"You don't know us of Earth very well yet, but you will. I offer you credit!\" \"It is how the poor are enabled to enjoy all the luxuries of the On a world where credit was a totally new concept, it was enchanting. to get credit?\" \"Here.\" Broderick handed him a sheaf of chattel mortgages. \"Have each of your brothers sign one of these, then bring them back to me. That is all there is to it.\" you get the merchandise free. The transportation company has to be paid, so another company loans you the money to pay for the freight. \"I have a surprise for you,\" smiled Broderick. \"Here is a contract. You \"We will equip your plant,\" beamed Broderick. \"It will require only a quarter interest in your plant itself, assigned to our terrestrial Zotul, anxious to possess the treasures promised by the Earthman, interest in the Pottery of Masur. They rolled in the luxuries of Earth. Earthmen took a fourth of them as their share in the industry. terrestrial company, they bought gas and oil that had been drawn from The food they ate was cooked in Earthly pots on Earth-type gas ranges, served up on metal plates that had been stamped out on Earth. In the About this time, the ships from Earth brought steam-powered electric Earthmen, explained Broderick, had built a plant of their own because it was so much more efficient—and to lower prices, which was Earth's The introduction of television provided a further calamity. The sets were delicate and needed frequent repairs, hence were costly to own and had them. Now it was possible not only to hear about things of Earth, pangs of impoverishment. The pottery income dropped to an impossible low, no matter how Zotul were a drug on the market. The Earthmen made them of plastic and sold pottery to us.\" the Earthman. \"I don't understand. The Earthmen....\" Zotul paused, coloring. \"We are about to lose our plant.\" \"You were about to say that the Earthmen are taking your plant away from you. That is true. Since the House of Masur was the largest and \"What do you mean?\" \"You mean,\" exclaimed Zotul, aghast, \"that you Earthmen own everything\n\n<question>:\nwhat is the 'gift from Earth'?\n\n<options>:\nA capitalism\nB the printing press\nC metal, copper wire, and other goods\nD destruction of the caste system\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,127 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nWhen we last heard from them, the members of the 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. 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. Name that beer! The tasters were told that some of the drinks were Hefeweizens, some might be IPAs (India pale ales), some might be bitters, and so on. They were asked to put each beer in its proper category--and to name a specific brewery and brand if they could. The idea here was to test the veteran beer drinkers' claim to recognize the distinctive tastes of famous brands. (To see all the grids for all the beers, click .) 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. To this the beer scientist must say: Book-learning is fine in its place. But let's be realistic. Actual drinking experience teaches the American beer consumer that a) all cheap beers are lagers 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. 3. Materials. The 10 test beers were chosen with several goals in mind: 4. Data Analysis. 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 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. Next, we have \"corrected average preference points,\" throwing out the high and low marks for each beer. The result is basically the same: 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 : 5. Implications and Directions for Future Research. Science does not always answer questions often, it raises many new ones. This excursion into beer science mainly raises the question: What kind of people are we? But, of course, there is another possibility: that what is excluded in a blind taste test is in fact what we want, and are happy to pay for, when we sit down with a beer. The complicated label, the fancy bottle, the exotic concept that this beer has traveled from some far-off corner of Bohemia or even the Yakima Valley--all this may be cheap at the $1.25-per-pint cost difference between the cheapest and the most expensive beers. In elementary school, we all endured a standard science experiment: If you shut your eyes and pinch your nose closed, can you tell any difference in the taste of a slice of apple, of carrot, of pear? You can't--but that doesn't mean that from then on you should close your eyes, hold your nose, and chew a cheap carrot when you feel like having some fruit. There is a time and place for carrots, but also for juicy pears. There is a time for Busch, but also for Full Sail \"Equinox.\" For scientists who want to continue this work at home, here are a few suggestions for further research: 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. If you're going to test imported lagers, try Foster's or Corona rather than Grolsch. Remember to stay strictly in the scientist's role. Don't take the test yourself.\n\n<question>:\nWhy are the experimental results somewhat irrelevant?\n\n<options>:\nA The experimenters were unqualified\nB The experiment subjects were unqualified\nC The sample size was too small\nD Part of what matters is the label itself\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,667 | 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>:\nShe surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting what she wanted. Phil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious \"All set, honey. How do I look in my monkey suit?\" His wife was sitting stiffly on the flowered couch that was still not theirs completely. In her fingers she held a cigarette burned down too far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a smile. Then she leaned forward and crushed the cigarette in the ash tray on the maple coffee table and took another from the pack. He came to her and touched his hands to her soft blond hair, raising her face until she was looking into his eyes. \"You're the most beautiful \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the ritual but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat beside her and put his arm around her small shoulders. He had stopped smiling. \"Honey, look at me,\" he said. \"It isn't going to be bad. Honestly it isn't. We know exactly how it will be. If anything could go wrong, they wouldn't be sending me She turned, facing him. There were tears starting in the corners of her wide, brown eyes, and she brushed them away with her hand. \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his arms tightly with her hands, and the color had drained from her cheeks. \"Mary, you know I can't back out now. How could I? It's been three years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing would ever be right with me again if I didn't go. Please don't make it hard.\" He stopped talking and held her to him and stroked the back of her head. He could feel her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. He \"I've got to get started, Mary. Will you come to the field with me?\" \"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil, if you go, I won't be here when you get back—if you get back. I won't be here because I won't be the wife of a space pilot for the rest of my life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not the noble sort of wife.\" She finished and took another cigarette from the pack on the coffee table and put it to her lips. Her hand was trembling as she touched the lighter to the end of the cigarette and drew deeply. Phil stood watching her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes. \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\" \"Yes, you did. I told you how I felt. I told you I could never be the wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off. It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous dream!\" \"Mary, listen to me,\" he said. \"It isn't a dream. It's real. There's nothing means anything more to me than you do—you know that. But no man ever had the chance to do what I'm going to do tonight—no man ever. If I backed out now for any reason, I'd never be able to look at the sky again. I'd be through.\" She looked at him without seeing him, and there was nothing at all in her eyes. ship, and the town seemed to feel the uncertainty of its future, seemed ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert, if such was its destiny. Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led cigarette. Then he looked at his wife. She was staring through the \"She's beautiful, Mary. You've never seen her before, have you?\" \"No, I've never seen her before,\" she said. \"Hadn't you better go?\" Her voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap. \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said. He leaned toward her and touched her cheek. Then she was in his arms, her head buried against his shoulder. \"Good-by, darling,\" she said. \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked. \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out. The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell of the rocket waiting silently for flight. \"Mary, I—\" he began, and then turned and strode toward the Inside the building it was like a locker room before the big game. The As they crossed the room, familiar faces smiled, and each man shook his hand or touched his arm. He saw Sammy, alone, by the coffee urn. Sammy waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say something but there was nothing to be said now. Sammy's turn would come at that ship out there and wondering. I almost wish I were a young man it didn't realize it at the time. Good luck, and God be with you.\" last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now. He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence. until—\" Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then the session was done. They rose and looked at each other, the same unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\" \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\" \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness, Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\" \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry conviction. He reached for a cigarette. \"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might mean. You've got to be in the best mental and physical condition of your life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our success. I think there is something more than just natural apprehension wrong with you. Want to tell me?\" the ring of lights and moving men, on the edge of the field, Mary stood. And then they were ready. A small group of excited men came out from the Mary waved to him. \"Good-by,\" she said to herself, but the words stuck tight in her throat. from deep inside, a rumble came, increasing in volume to a gigantic roar rocket to the Moon lifted up and up to the sky. For a long time after the rocket had become a tiny speck of light in the heavens, she stood holding her face in her hands and crying softly to herself. And then she felt the touch of a hand on her arm. She turned. \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and over. \"They wouldn't let me go, Mary,\" he said finally. \"The general would not let me go.\" She looked at him. His face was drawn tight, and there were tears on his cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only thing that matters is you didn't go.\" \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could hardly hear him. \"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.\" He stood with his hands at his sides, watching her. And then turned away and walked THE END\n\n<question>:\nHow is Mary feeling at the beginning of the story?\n\n<options>:\nA She is desperate for Phil not to leave.\nB She is angry at Phil for not taking her seriously.\nC She is frustrated with Phil for not letting Sammy replace him.\nD She is depressed because she thinks she is going to lose Phil forever.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
401 | 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, that waspish science-fiction writer, was in a jam again. What with red-spot fever, talking cockatoos and flagpole trees, I was running in circles—especially since Grannie became twins every now and then. Flagpole trees. They rose straight up like enormous cat-tails, with only a melon-shaped protuberance at the top to show they were a form of vegetation. Everything else was blanketed by the sand and the powerful Grannie Annie was the original research digger-upper, and when she flagpole trees and a species of ornithoid resembling cockatoos. So far no one has on foot with only the barest necessities in the way of equipment and supplies. I walked forward to get a closer view of one of the flagpole trees. And And then all at once Grannie stopped again, this time at the top of a the sand seemed to grow more and more powdery. For some time I had fixed my gaze on a dot in the sky which I supposed to be a high-flying cockatoo. As that dot continued to move across the heavens in a single direction, I called Grannie's attention to it. \"It's a kite,\" she nodded. \"There should be a car attached to it somewhere.\" She offered no further explanation, but a quarter of an hour later as we topped another rise a curious elliptical car with a long slanting windscreen came into view. Attached to its hood was a taut wire which slanted up into the sky to connect with the kite. A man was driving and when he saw us, he waved. Five minutes later Grannie was shaking his hand vigorously and mumbling introductions. Jimmy Baker nodded. He told his story over the roar of the wind as we headed back across the desert. Occasionally he touched a stud on an electric windlass to which the kite wire was attached. Apparently these adjustments moved planes or fins on the kite and accounted for the car's ability to move in any direction. \"If I weren't a realist, I'd say that \"But surely you must have some idea of where they go,\" Grannie said. ahead of us.\" I followed his gaze and saw a curious structure suspended between a rude circle of flagpole trees. A strange web-like formation of translucent gauzy material, it was. Fully two hundred cockatoos were perched upon it. They watched us with their mild eyes as we passed, but notebook out, sketching the room's interior. Grannie Annie remained Grannie Annie walked across to it and began to study its markings. Grannie nodded. \"I think you and I and Xartal had better take a run up dynamo that would operate on a kite windlass, and a quantity of wire and other items. The kite car was brought out again, and the old woman, Baker and the Martian took their places in it. Then Jimmy waved, and the car began to roll down the ramp. Not until they had vanished in the desert haze did I sense the foreboding. Had I been a fool to let Grannie go? I thought of her, an coalesced into a three-dimensional scene. It was a scene of a rapidly unfolding desert country as seen from the rear of a kite car. Directly behind the windscreen, backs turned to me, were Jimmy Baker, Grannie, and Xartal. It was as if I were standing directly behind them. Then once more I was directly behind my friends, listening in on their conversation. The view through the windscreen showed an irregular array of flagpole trees, with the sky dotted by high-flying cockatoos. \"There's an eyrie over there,\" Jimmy Baker was saying. \"We might as well camp beside it.\" Moments later a rude circle of flagpole trees loomed ahead. Across the top of them was stretched a translucent web. Jimmy and Grannie got out of the car and began making camp. Xartal remained in his seat. He was drawing pictures on large pieces of pasteboard, and as I stood there in plot. Look at that damned nosy bird! \" A silver cockatoo had alighted on the kite car and was surveying curiously Xartal's work. As each drawing was completed, the bird scanned it with rapt attention. Abruptly it flew to the top of the companions. And then abruptly it happened. The cockatoos took off in mass flight. A group of Earth people suddenly materialized on the eyrie, talking and \"Probably because the drawings are exaggerated in certain details and made a greater impression on their brains,\" Grannie replied. Up on the eyrie a strange performance was taking place. The duplicate Back in the visiscreen room, I snapped to the operator: \"Turn it on!\" The kite car swam into view in the screen above the instrument panel. I stared with open eyes. Jimmy Baker no longer was in the car, nor was Xartal, the Martian. Grannie Annie was there, but seated at the \"Ezra,\" I said, \"we're going to drive out and meet them. There's something screwy here.\" Ten minutes later in another kite car we were driving at a fast clip through the powdery sands of the Baldric. And before long we saw across the desert, and a growing suspicion began to form in my mind. \"Ezra!\" I yelled, swinging the car. \"That wasn't Grannie! That was one of those damned cockatoo images. We've got to catch him.\" The other car was some distance ahead now. Park looked back and saw us following. He did something to the kite wire, and his car leaped ahead. I threw the speed indicator hard over. Our kite was a huge box affair with a steady powerful pull to the connecting wire. Park's vehicle was drawn by a flat triangular kite that dove and fluttered with each variance of the wind. Steadily we began to close in. The manager of Interstellar Voice turned again, and something glinted appeared in our windscreen inches above Karn's head. \"Heat gun!\" Ezra yelled. Now we were rocketing over the sand dunes, winding in and out between the flagpole trees. I had to catch that car I told myself. Grannie Annie's very life might be at stake, not to mention the lives of hundreds of mine workers. Again Park took aim and again a hole shattered our windscreen. The wind shifted and blew from another quarter. The box kite soared, but the triangular kite faltered. Taking advantage of Park's loss of speed, I raced alongside. The I. V. manager lifted his weapon frantically. But before he could trigger. Weakly he lifted an arm and pointed to the northwest. \"Val-ley. Thir-ty miles. Entrance hidden by wall of ... flagpole trees.\" I leaped into the driver's seat and gave the kite its head. And now the country began to undergo a subtle change. The trees seemed to group themselves in a long flanking corridor in a northwesterly direction, as a mile forward and the desert began \"Grannie!\" I yelled. \"What're you doing here? Where's Mr. Baker?\" \"Don't look so fuddled, Billy-boy. Come along, and I'll show you.\" Larynx miners. They walked slowly, looking straight ahead, moving down the center of the gorge toward the entrance. But there was more! A kite car was drawn up to the side. The windscreen had been removed, and mounted on the hood was a large bullet-like contrivance that looked not unlike a search lamp. A blinding shaft of Grannie Annie told her story during the long ride back to Shaft Four. Then suddenly becoming fearful of Grannie's prying, Antlers Park strove to head her off before she reached Shaft Four. He did head her off and managed to lure her and Baker and Xartal into the Shaft barracks where they would be exposed to the rays from the lens button. But Grannie only pretended to contract the plague. Park then attempted to outwit Ezra Karn and me by returning in Jimmy Baker's kite car with a cockatoo image of Grannie.\n\n<question>:\nWhat was the point in Grannie Annie and Billy-boy venturing into the desert?\n\n<options>:\nA They were there to find Baker\nB They were trying to locate the strange birds\nC They were looking for proof of the Red Spot Fever\nD They were trying to locate the kites\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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518 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nBy EMMETT McDOWELL Death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and every planet had known his touch. But now, on Mercury, he was selling his guns into the , a tight-frocked, limber-hipped, red-head was singing \" The Lady from Mars .\" The song was a rollicking, ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots but then it is always hot on Mercury, the newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the in time.\" Her hands were clenched in her lap. The knuckles were white. brown face. The girl drew in her breath. \"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate them. We haven't but a handful of troops.\" Jaro Moynahan wiped the sweat from his forehead with a fine duraweb handkerchief. \"I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here.\" the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel, Karfial Hodes. I am to offer you ten thousand Earth notes to kill Karfial Hodes.\" Jaro Moynahan refilled their empty glasses. He was a big man, handsome the girl's eyes and held them with his own as a man spears a fish. \"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman at the piano rub Hodes out?\" The girl started, glanced at the pianist, said with a shiver: \"We can't locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me. I'm telling the truth. We can't find him. That's why we called you. You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury.\" \"There isn't much time,\" he said after a moment. \"The Rains are due any day now.\" On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring. Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So was the pianist. Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste. It made him think of cool green grapes beaded with dew. On the hot, teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge. He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough. most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a Jaro Moynahan In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the followers. Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes, unbuckled a shoulder holster containing a compressed air slug gun, stepped under the shower. His body was lean and brown as his face He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this Mr. Peet licked his lips. \"But you will, surely you will. Unless Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't realize the seriousness of the situation.\" \"Then I was right it is you who are putting up the ten thousand Earth Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. \"Fifteen thousand Earth notes I can offer you. But no more. That is as high as I can go.\" Jaro laughed. \"How did you know Red had been kidnapped?\" Mikail's abduction fifteen minutes after the fact.\" Jaro raised his eyebrows. \"Perhaps then you know where she is?\" Mr. Peet shook his head. \"No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her.\" read: \" Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending investigation of rumored rebellion. Terrestrials advised to return to Earth. Karfial Hodes, Mercurian patriot, being sought. \" Jaro descended the incline to the network of burrows which served Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the strange, silent populace. But when he reached the Terrestrial quarter of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes, and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng. while. That's all.\" time.\" alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said: \"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in \"Look,\" began Jaro annoyed. \"My eyes are practically popping out of my head now,\" she interrupted. \"Another morning like this and I take the first space liner back to Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe.\" Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly. \"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize that we've put you to considerable trouble and we're prepared to pay you whatever you believe your time is worth. Say five hundred Earth \"Sorry,\" said Jaro \"but I've got a date. I'm late now.\" He started to leave. Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees. \"You've killed him,\" said Peet. \"If I were you, Mr. Moynahan, I would be on the next liner back to Earth.\" Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room. Once Jaro Moynahan had regained the street, he mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. Whatever was going on, these boys played for keeps. Warily he started down the passage toward the native quarter. At the \"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the revolution.\" \"What revolution? I'm going around in circles.\" of the Latonka trade.\" \"Score one,\" breathed Jaro, \"I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah, \"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor.\" Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt. will touch the stock, not since it looks as if the Earth Congress is going to grant the Mercurians their freedom. Everybody knows that the first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka Trust.\" \"What about this Karfial Hodes?\" said Jaro. \"I've heard that he's inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to return to Earth.\" \"It's not true,\" Joan flared. \"It's all a pack of lies invented by the Latonka Trust. I know.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat was expressed as the time limit on Moynihan’s work?\n\n<options>:\nA Before Karfial Hodes’ capture\nB Before the Earth Congress votes on Mercurian independence\nC Before the The Festival of the Rains\nD Before Moynihan’s return to Mars\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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233 | 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>:\nland. Svan was the leader making the final The OD nodded. \"I'll have a blank log if this keeps up,\" he said. ready to lift as soon as they come back.\" enough, it was glowing red—might have been glowing for minutes. He \"Set up a screen! Notify the delegation! Alert a landing party!\" But even while he was giving orders, the warning light flickered suddenly Svan clicked off the listening-machine and turned around. The five others in the room looked apprehensive. \"You see?\" Svan repeated. \"From The younger of the two women sighed. She might have been beautiful, in 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 object?\" The younger woman shrank back before the glare in his eyes. She looked around at the others, found them reluctant and uneasy, but visibly 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 An old man shifted restlessly. \"But they are strong, Svan,\" he Svan nodded. \"No. They will leave. But they will never get back to Svan shrugged. \"The Council did not know what we would face. The Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked. Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin faded uncertainly as he saw what was in their eyes—uncertainty, \"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 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. She reached in mechanically, her eyes intent on his, took out a slip 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. find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation. from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\" There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that uncertainty. Impatiently, he crackled: \"Look at the slips!\" 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.... Almost he was disappointed. Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen one to announce it—a second, ten seconds.... A traitor! his subconscious whispered. He stared at them in a new light, saw their Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might 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 \"Good,\" said Svan, observing them. \"The delegation is still here. We He half turned in the broad front seat next to the driver, searching the faces of the others in the car. Which was the coward? he wondered. Ingra? Her aunt? One of the men? The right answer leaped up at him. They all are 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 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 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 Confusion furrowed the guard's hairless brows, then was replaced by He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was the splintery logs of the road. The proton-rifle went flying, and Svan 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 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, 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 Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no 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?\" Ingra nodded, while the others remained mute. \"We must circle back Svan, listening, thought: , his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting off the seconds. \"Go ahead,\" he ordered. \"I will wait here.\" \"Svan.\" The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached for him, kissed him. \"Good luck to you, Svan,\" she said. \"Good luck,\" repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of 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? There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance. He had perhaps three minutes to wait absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men? He became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. \"Svan! They're coming! They found He stared unseeingly at the light. \"Go away!\" he croaked unbelievingly. Then his muscles jerked into action. The time was almost up—the bomb \"Go away!\" he shrieked, and turned to run. His fists clenched and callously to Lowry, who had just come up. \"It won't last long, though. Lowry was staring at the huddled, mutilated form of Svan. He shuddered. They had it coming....\" He paused thoughtfully, staring at a piece of slowly, displayed the other side. \"Now what in the world would he be\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Svan smile when he was getting ready to leave them?\n\n<options>:\nA He knew they would be safe, since he was doing the dangerous job\nB He was glad the others were going to blow up soon\nC He was excited to follow through with his plan\nD He had feelings for Ingra\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,566 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nbut dream of coming home. But something nobody should do is bet on the validity of a homesick dream! Flight Officer Robert Craig surrendered the tube containing his service record tapes and stood waiting while the bored process clerk examined \"You said that already, but you can have dinner with me. Just company.\" \"I'm afraid I don't understand.\" The Galactic hotel strove to preserve an archaic tone of hospitality. It advertised \"a night's lodgings\" and it possessed a bellboy. The bellboy actually carried Craig's plasticarton and large file of punch cards and forms to his room. Tired from the long, confusing day, Craig behind Craig fidgeted. hotel carried so far as a small fee to be paid the bellboy, and he hoped he would have the right size of Terran units in his wallet. Outside the door to the room, the bellboy stopped and turned to Craig. \"You got to get this punched by Territorial,\" said the clerk. \"Take it back to your unit's clearance office.\" \"For five I'll tell you where it is,\" he said in a subdued tone. \"Mike?\" \"All right, mister, three units, then. I wasn't trying to hold you up.\" \"You mean a microphone?\" asked Craig, mechanically fishing for his wallet. \"Sure, they don't put in screens here. Wanted to, but the boss convinced 'em there aren't any Freedomites ever stay here.\" \"Where is the microphone?\" Craig asked as he found a ten unit note. He was too puzzled to wonder what he was expected to do with the information. dreary room, knowing the eyes of the other men were upon him. \"Your service tapes,\" the next noncom said. \"Where you going?\" \"Never mind,\" Craig said wearily. He waited while the bellboy inserted \"Grav 1—Terra,\" fumbled Craig. \"Los Angeles.\" \"It's in the bed illuminator. You can short it out with a razor blade. Or I'll do it for another two.\" a key into the door and opened it for him. tapes was known as far into space as lonely men had penetrated. Intergalactic considered them as great a menace to mental and moral stability as the hectopiates. Craig wearily got the man out of the room, took a PON pill, and eased himself into the bed. \"I can get you a sensatia-tape,\" whispered the boy when they had entered. He nudged Craig wickedly. \"You know what they're like?\" \"Yeah,\" Craig said disgustedly. Traffic in the illicit mental-image personnel and felt the impotence of a spaceman who had long forgotten the bureaucracy of a rear area base. The knowledge that much of it was motivated by envy soothed him as he clumsily let himself into the lock. \"Place your clothing in the receptacle provided and assume a stationary position on the raised podium in the center of the lock.\" Craig obeyed the robot voice and began reluctantly to remove his flight jacket. Its incredibly fine-grained leather would carry none of the strange, foreign associations for the base station clerk who would the seal. Craig quickly removed the last of his clothing. It was impossible \"Your clearance,\" said the clerk. Craig handed him a battered punch card and watched the man insert it in disregarding.\" Craig obeyed and clenched his teeth against a sharp stinging. His respect for the robot-controlled equipment of bases had risen. When all spacemen carry PON, paraoxylnebutal, with them. It helps suppress certain physiological reactions to an entirely new set of conditions. Channels of the ear, for example. They play an important \"Tell me where what is?\" \"We send it on ahead. Go to Grav 1 desk.\" be pinned down to any specific condition the spaceman would find intolerable. Craig began to hate the delay that kept him from Terra. Through the ports of the headquarters base satellite, he scanned the constellations for the scores of worlds he had visited during his eleven years in A murmur greeted the order. Craig experienced the thrill of knowing the envy of the others. Grav 1—that meant Terra. He crossed the long, \"Los Angeles, eh? Where in Los Angeles?\" \"Sure. What else can it be?\" \"Mr. Craig,\" the psychologist said slowly, \"you have my authorization for you to return to Terra as a private citizen of that planet. You \"I—I—\" Craig muttered, fumbling in his pockets. \"No specific destination,\" supplied the man as he punched a key on a small instrument, \"Air-lock ahead and to your right. Strip and follow \"Haven't noticed much of anything.\" \"Well, it's keyed to give them some kind of signal.\" The old man lapsed into silence. Craig wished him to continue. He desperately wanted something to distract his mind from the ghastly moved so much as an inch. Craig heard the voices around him, muffled, as though talking through wadding. \"We better yank him.\" \"I'm ... all right,\" Craig mumbled at the voices. He struggled with the bonds of his cot. With terrible effort he forced his eyes open. Two over him. Four elongated eyes peered at him. Attendants coming for to take me home.... \"Touch me and I'll kick your teeth in!\" he yelled. \"I'm going to Terra. had begun to produce ultra-sonic waves. Craig was not sure. Most of the men had passed through the torments of gravitational conditioning. The huge headquarters base centrifuge aboard the man-made Only one of the score of men in the centrifuge tank remained voluntarily in his cot. \"Space article violator,\" the old man informed Craig. \"Psycho, I think. Went amuck with some extraterritorials. Killed a dozen.\" \"Yeah.\" \"And spend your weekends on Luna.\" Craig half rose from his cot, jarred into anger. But the old spaceman turned, smiling wryly. \"Don't get hot, kid. I as the plastic melted into a single, seamless whole. It was ready for irradiation. Probably in another ten years his son-to-be would put it on and play spaceman. But Craig swore he'd make sure that the kid knew what a stinking life it was. beginning to feel a reaction to the short free-fall flight from the headquarters satellite. The audio called out: \"Flight Officer Robert Craig. Flight Officer Robert Craig. Report to Orderly 12. Report to Orderly 12 through the aft door.\" With pangs of anxiety he could not completely suppress, Craig obeyed. Orderly 12 handed him a message container. \"Who's it from? Somebody on Terra?\" \"From a private spaceman named Morgan Brockman.\" \" Brockman? out across the Galaxy, while she's home. Go see her if you can, son. Will you? Make sure she gets the unit \"A moment, sir. Just a little greeting from the Terra. You understand, of course. Purely routine.\" Craig remained on the final step of the ramp, puzzled. The man turned \"Hard to say,\" the other passenger said. \"You'll get used to this. They get it over with quick.\" Craig made his way toward the spaceport administration building. His first physical contact with Terra had passed unnoticed. \"Sir! Sir!\" cried a voice behind him. seated uncomfortably in the silent room. There was a distracted quality about him, Craig thought. \"You are the first man we have had from the Intergalactic Service,\" the a planet. As an adult, anyway.\" The personnel man seated himself once more and pressed a button on a small instrument. A secretary entered the office from a door to Craig's left. much the same way we would an extraterrestrial.\" The girl glanced at Craig, casting him a cool, impersonal smile. \"He was formerly a flight officer in the Intergalactic Space Service.\" The statement was delivered in an almost exaggeratedly casual tone.\n\n<question>:\nWhy is there a microphone in Craig's hotel room?\n\n<options>:\nA Terran society has become increasingly controlling of its citizens.\nB The hotel manager bugs all the rooms to blackmail the guests.\nC Wyandotte put the microphone there to monitor Craig's adjustment to Terran society.\nD The Intergalactic Space Service put the microphone in Craig's room to keep tabs on him.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,107 | 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>:\nTuesday's overpowering show of force by the Nevada gambling aristocracy has had at least one audible effect on the National Gambling Impact Study Commission. Wednesday, even commission Chair Kay Coles James, a gambling skeptic, succumbs to the hideous Vegas euphemism: She begins referring to the \"gaming industry.\" The sleek Vegas types, whose Strip palaces scramble casinos, theaters, restaurants, arcades, discos, cabarets, theme parks, concert halls, sports arenas, and museums into one giant orgy of amusement, have been selling the idea that gambling is just entertainment--Disney in the desert. This effort has largely succeeded, because Vegas is still the dominant image of American gambling, if not the dominant reality. The antis, meanwhile, cry that gambling is like cigarettes: unsafe for kids, viciously addictive, deceptively marketed, unhealthy, expensive, and unacceptable unless mightily regulated. It is starting to become clear what that report will say. The commission won't (and can't) take any grand stand against gambling. Instead it will opt for small, targeted policies, concentrating on compulsive gambling. It will probably propose that casinos and state lotteries fund gambling-addiction research and that casinos take much stronger measures to bar problem gamblers from wagering. The commission may recommend that gaming taxes be used to underwrite treatment of pathological gamblers and that insurance companies be encouraged to cover gambling addiction. Similarly, the commission will try to reduce gamblers' access to cash by limiting the size of ATM advances and prodding casinos to remove the machines from their floors. If the comments of the pro-industry commissioners can be believed, the industry will happily endorse such a report. Gamblers don't quite accept the cigarette analogy--though commission member Bill Bible, a former chief of the Nevada Gaming Commission, did concede that gambling was like alcohol--but they're happy to sign on to the specific measures. The casino industry is even trying to get ahead of the commission. It has already established a (mostly) independent center to fund research into pathological gambling. I suspect that the industry will not only agree to the commission's recommendations but will become their strongest advocate. Casino owners will avidly lobby Congress and state legislatures to enact the recommendations into law. Why should the pro-gamblers cooperate with a critical study? Because it provides superb cover for them. It medicalizes the problem of compulsive gambling, blaming it on psychological abnormality rather than industry machination. Likewise, cracking down on compulsives is also politically cost-effective. In exchange for losing a few compulsive gamblers, the casinos will (falsely) appear more concerned with the health of their customers than with profits. The cigarette agenda will also distract the commission and the public from the true reasons for worry. A few years ago, gambling was confined to Las Vegas and Atlantic City. It is now thriving in 48 states, and there is no sign that anyone can stop it. In this election, gambling interests dropped $100 million on a single California ballot initiative, toppled governors in two states, and bought senators and representatives by the crate. What the commission ought to be investigating is whether the gambling industry has become so powerful that it's politically untouchable. But it can't, because the gambling industry has become so powerful that it's politically untouchable. In Las Vegas, the euphemizers reign. Once upon a time, the casino owners decided that \"gambling\" was too crude, too avaricious, to describe their fair business. So \"gambling\" disappeared in Las Vegas, and \"gaming\" has risen in its place. He who controls language controls ideas, and at today's commission hearing, it is perfectly clear who controls the language. Video slot machines crammed into convenience stores--perhaps the most pernicious form of legal gambling there is--are called \"retail gaming.\" People who own casinos are not \"casino owners,\" they are \"gaming visionaries.\" Pathological gamblers are \"problem gamers\"--as if they're having trouble mastering the rules of Monopoly. And the National Gambling Impact Study Commission is reborn as the National Gaming Impact Study Commission. \"My goodness, no politician can withstand their resources,\" Focus on the Family's James Dobson, the commission's leading gambling opponent, tells me. The industry's political clout has emasculated the commission, Dobson continues: \"Our report won't be acted on by the president or Congress. They are too heavily influenced by gambling money. Almost all the leaders of Congress are on the dole.\" It has also become obvious that the commission has too many pro-gambling members to produce a report that recommends taxes or other real penalties on the industry. The hearings, too, reinforce the Glorious Las Vegas theme. Frank Fahrenkopf, the industry's top lobbyist (who is paid so much he can afford monogrammed shirt cuffs --I saw them), holds forth cheerfully outside the ballroom, celebrating the electoral triumph of freedom over religious moralist tyranny. Inside, the room is packed with more than 600 people in neon lime green T-shirts that read \"Unions and Gaming: Together for a Better Life.\" They are members of the major casino union, here to cheer on their employers and their union. (Most of them, it must be said, are getting paid to do this.) Later in the day, Nevada's senators and both its congressmen appear to chew out the commission for even thinking that Nevada might have a dark side. They pay tribute to Nevada's sophisticated gambling industry, especially its regulation (much stricter than other gambling states) and its use of gambling taxes to fund state services. It is one of the ironies of Nevada politics that its Republican congressmen (Jim Gibbons and John Ensign) end up crediting their state's success to government regulation and corporate taxation. There are also a fair share of gleeful gambling regulators, bookmakers, and casino employees among the panels of expert witnesses the commission hears from. Critics who gripe about the perils of sports gambling and the evils of convenience store slot machines leaven the pro-gambling folks. Everyone, including the gambling industry shills, agrees that Internet gambling is evil and should be destroyed. Everyone agrees to this because no one in Las Vegas is making any money off Internet gambling. If they were, you can be sure they would explain why it's as American as nickel slots and scratch-off games. Pro-Vegas forces are also perfectly happy to take shots at Indian gambling, the chief economic threat to Nevada's prosperity. The expansion of Indian casinos resulting from last week's California voter initiative will slam Las Vegas, cutting its gambling revenues by $400 million a year. So the Vegans repeatedly swing at casinos in \"Indian country\" (that's Nevada Sen. Richard Bryan's term--I'm not joking) for being insufficiently regulated and taxed. One tribal chief I spoke to calls this \"red baiting.\" During the last hour of the day, the public comment period, the union sends a parade of casino employees to the microphone to hallelujah the gaming industry. Housekeepers, cooks, and slot change girls, almost all black or Latina, tell the same story: I was working a dead-end job in another state, \"then I heard about Las Vegas, where there's opportunity!\" I moved here, landed a job at a union casino with high pay, free medical insurance, a pension, and \"now I am buying a house.\" The stories are intensely moving, by far the most persuasive tribute to the Strip that I've ever heard.\n\n<question>:\nWho is the gaming industry's number one lobbyist?\n\n<options>:\nA Jim Gibbons\nB Frank Fahrenkopf\nC Bob Miller\nD Terrence Lanni\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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1,885 | 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>:\nplaces. Standing in the sticky, sweet-smelling ooze, Alan eyed the robot apprehensively. Half buried in mud, it stood quiet in Then the robots figured out an Then another. Alan stopped, puzzled. Two more blasts, quickly Frowning, worrying about the sounds, Alan momentarily forgot to watch his step until his foot suddenly plunged into an ant hill, throwing him to the jungle floor. \"Damn!\" He cursed again, for the tenth time, and stood tree-bound octopus. Fitful little plants grew straggly in the ready, Alan rolled over onto his In the distance the sky blazed as a blaster roared in the jungle. Then Alan heard the approaching robot, crunching and snapping its way through the undergrowth like an onrushing forest back. In the movement, his elbow Alan peered around him at the drowned out almost immediately and silenced by an explosive crash. Alan started, \"Blaster fighting! But it can't automatically controlled by the towards the camp. Trees exploded to his left as another robot fired in his direction, too far away to be effective but churning towards him his way and woody shrubs Alan changed direction slightly to follow a line between the two robots coming up from caught at his legs, tripping him and holding him back. Then, his legs were a mass of stinging slashes from ankle to thigh. The crashing rumble of the killer robots shook the night behind him, nearer sometimes, of the building a few feet away, three days before. Except for a few of the killer robots rolling slowly around the camp site on build a robot that hunts by homing in on animals' mind impulses ...\" He stepped forward again, and the robots would barely above his head. Without pausing to think, Alan leaped back, and fell sprawling over a bush just as one of the robots rolled silently up from the right, lowering its a third robot slowly moved up in the distance. Without thinking, Alan turned slightly to the blaster barrel to aim directly at briefly against brilliance as itself from the smoldering branches and crashed against the robot, clawing insanely at the with no one to stop it, automatically sending its robots in wider and wider forays, slowly antenna and blaster barrel. With an awkward jerk the robot He pictured the camp computer swung around and fired its blaster, completely dissolving the circuits. The robot started wiping every trace of life from to shake, then clicked sharply as an overload relay snapped lower half of the cat creature towards the camp, leaving Alan alone. Shakily, Alan crawled a few In the brief flash of the blaster shot, Alan saw the steel glint of a robot only a hundred yards away, much nearer than \"I suppose,\" he muttered to himself, \"that Pete assembled these robots in a batch and then activated them all at once, probably never living to realize that planet's double moon had risen they're tuned to pick up human Alan grabbed his pocket blaster and fired. To his amazement the robot jerked back, its gun wobbled Alan. He fired again, and again the robot reacted. It seemed familiar somehow. Then he remembered the robot on the river wouldn't even singe a robot, but it just might stop one of those bank, jiggling and swaying for seconds after each shot. \"Of transmission from the computer pulled himself upright and hobbled ahead through the bush. The robot shook spasmodically with each shot, its gun tilted upward at an awkward angle. grass stood the headquarters building, housing the robot-controlling computer. Still firing at spite of the agonizing pain, Alan forced himself to a limping run across the uneven ground, carefully headed for the jungle, each to a that jutted up through the grass. From the corner of his eye he saw another of the robots standing for his small blaster to run dry. \"Be damned! You can't win now!\" Alan yelled between blaster shots, almost irrational from the pain that ripped jaggedly cells released themselves from the device, falling in the grass at his feet. He dropped the useless struck the top of a small earthy mound and he was instantly engulfed in a swarm of locust-like insects that beat disgustingly \"No!\" He threw himself on the ground as a new robot suddenly appeared around the edge against his eyes and mouth. \"Fagh!\" Waving his gun. the robot paused momentarily, jiggling in place. In this instant, Alan jammed his hands into an insect hill and hurled the pile of dirt and insects directly at the robot's antenna. In a flash, hundreds of the winged things erupted angrily from the hole in a swarming cloud, each part of Alan whirled, startled. The transmitting mental energy to the robot's pickup devices. Confused by the sudden dispersion of mind impulses, the and he could see a robot rolling slowly across the clearing in his general direction, blasting indiscriminately robot fired erratically as Alan crouched and raced painfully for the door. It fired again, closer, by the blast. Frantically, Alan slammed open the door as the robot, sensing him strongly now, aimed Apparently the robot hadn't sensed him yet, but Alan didn't stone ripped past him, torn loose know what the effective range of its pickup devices was. He slightly different spot. try.\" He moved into the blackness. Powerful as a small tank, the killer robot was equipped to Alan's eyes, \"you hit the switch. of it, barely out of blaster range. Only, the robot didn't get tired. Alan did. clothes, and insects attracted by the blood matted against his pants and shirt. Behind, the robot tried to run, but vines blocked and rustlings and an occasional low, throaty sound like an angry cat. Alan's fingers tensed on his pocket blaster. Swift shadowy forms moved quickly in Sharp screams punctuated the electric blue discharge as a pack of small feline creatures leaped snarling and clawing back into the night. Mentally, Alan tried to figure maybe. Why the devil didn't I load in fresh cells this morning!\" The robot crashed on, louder now, gaining on the tired human. Legs aching and bruised, stinging from insect bites, Alan tried to force himself to run holding his hands in front of him like a child in the dark. His foot tripped on a barely visible insect hill and a winged swarm exploded around him. Startled, Alan jerked sideways, crashing his head against a tree. He clutched at the bark for a second, shadows. The robot crashed loudly behind him now. Without stopping to think, Alan fumbled along the Almost blinded by pain, whimpering, Alan stumbled forward. Sharp muscle spasms shot from his shoulder across his back and a mere hundred yards behind. He screamed at the blast. \"Damn you, Pete! Damn your robots! Damn, damn ... Oh, Peggy!\" Alan, lying in the mud of the stream bed, felt the earth shake as the heavy little robot rolled slowly and inexorably towards stop. The air crackled blue and a tree crashed heavily past Alan the moons, the killer robot stopped and its blaster swivelled slowly down. Frantically, Alan slightly overhanging the bank, the robot fired again. For a split second Alan seemed engulfed in flame from where Alan stood. Without hesitation Alan threw himself across the blaster robot's treads churned furiously in the sticky mud, causing it to buck and plunge like a Brahma Alan's arms, then slammed a steel-skinned water monster trying to dislodge a tenacious crab, while Alan, arms and legs wrapped tightly around the blaster fiercely against the robot's metal skin. Slowly, trying to anticipate the stationary portion of the robot.\n\n<question>:\nHow does Alan interrupt the robots' communication signal?\n\n<options>:\nA Alan jambs his knife into the fallen robot, which disrupts the signal.\nB Alan hurls the oozing blob-like creature at the robot. The blob dissolves the robot with its acid and that is what disrupts the signal.\nC Alan uses his pocket blaster to disrupt the signal.\nD Alan throws a handful of an anthill at the robot, using the brain waves of hundred of ants to disrupt the signal.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,149 | 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 heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and nimbi. With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing 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 he himself was \"dead\" to the living world: he was still in a zone of time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would 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. 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 \"Hi there, wanna play?\" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter. He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them, expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation.\" The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!\" Purnie shrieked with When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along. \"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 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.\" \"All right, careful now with that line.\" \"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 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 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. to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his 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 The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf. Others were pinned down on the sand. \"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 shame. \"Get up! Please get up!\" He was horrified by the moans reaching Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves. 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. At last he could do no more 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 Purnie as sounds came from the animal. \"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick! What's happening?\" \"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible 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, where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was 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 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 white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie\n\n<question>:\nWhat is NOT true of Purnie?\n\n<options>:\nA Purnie isn't human\nB Purnie meets his best friends\nC Purnie is thoughtful\nD Purnie is young\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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299 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n\"It is rather unusual,\" Magnan said, \"to assign an officer of your rank to courier duty, but this is an unusual mission.\" Retief sat relaxed and said nothing. Just before the silence grew awkward, Magnan went on. Magnan leaned back, waiting for Retief's reaction. Retief drew carefully on his cigar and looked at Magnan. Magnan frowned. \"This is open aggression, Retief,\" he said, \"in case I haven't made and a plastic snakeskin cummerbund groomed his fingernails, watching Retief from the corner of his eye. Retief glanced at him. Retief looked at him. with a scarred jawline and small eyes was slouching there in a rumpled gray uniform. He put out a hand as Retief started past him. \"Lessee your boarding pass,\" he muttered. Retief put his bag down. He turned at a sound behind him. A tall, florid man with an expensive coat belted over a massive paunch stood in clamped his jaws together, turned to speak over his shoulder. \"Somebody in the cabin. Get 'em out.\" He rolled a cold eye at Retief as face of the thick-necked man appeared cautiously around the door jamb. \"Mister, you must be—\" \"If you'll excuse me,\" Retief said, \"I want to catch a nap.\" He flipped Retief looked up. A gaunt leathery-skinned man wearing white ducks, a blue turtleneck sweater and a peaked cap tilted raffishly over one eye stared at Retief. \"A space lawyer.\" The captain turned. \"Throw him out, boys.\" Two big men edged into the cabin, looking at Retief. \"Go on, pitch him out,\" the captain snapped. Retief put his cigar in an ashtray, and swung his feet off the bunk. \"Don't try it,\" he said softly. One of the two wiped his nose on a sleeve, spat on his right palm, and glances Retief's way. \"Givin' you the cold shoulder, heh, Mister?\" \"Looks like it, old-timer,\" Retief said. \"Maybe I'd better go join the skipper. His party seems to be having all the fun.\" \"Feller has to be mighty careless who he eats with to set over there.\" \"I'm Chip,\" the chef said. \"I don't like the Cap'n. You can tell him I \"Chip, you're a genius.\" coffee. Most of the other passengers had left the dining room. Mr. Tony and his retainers still sat at the Captain's table. As Retief watched, four men arose from the table and sauntered across the room. The first in line, a stony-faced thug with a broken ear, took \"You must want to get to Jorgensen's pretty bad,\" the thug said in a grating voice. \"What's your game, hick?\" Retief looked at the coffee cup, picked it up. went down. Retief looked at Mr. Tony, still standing open-mouthed. \"You can take your playmates away now, Tony,\" he said. \"And don't bother to come around yourself. You're not funny enough.\" \"Here you go, Mister,\" Chip said. Retief darted a glance \"Thanks, Chip,\" Retief said. \"I won't need it for these punks.\" \"Aim that at me, and I'll kill you,\" Retief said. \"Go on, burn him!\" Mr. Tony shouted. Behind him, the captain appeared, white-faced. \"How about a fresh cup of coffee, Chip?\" Retief said. \"But the cap'n knows I'm the best cook in the Merchant Service. They won't mess with me.\" \"What has Mr. Tony got on the captain, Chip?\" Retief asked. \"They're in some kind o' crooked business together. You want some more smoked turkey?\" brandy. \"Them Sweaties is what I don't like,\" he said. Retief looked at him questioningly. \"They got to look you over,\" Chip whispered. \"Nosy damn Sweaties.\" Behind the alien, the captain hovered nervously. \"Yo' papiss,\" the alien rasped. \"Who's your friend, Captain?\" Retief said. \"Never mind just do like he tells you.\" \"Yo' papiss,\" the alien said again. \"Okay,\" Retief said. \"I've seen it. You can take it away now.\" \"Don't horse around,\" the captain said. \"This fellow can get mean.\" The alien brought two tiny arms out from the concealment of the mantle, clicked toothed pincers under Retief's nose. \"Quick, soft one.\" \"Captain, tell your friend to keep its distance. It looks brittle, and \"I told you he was brittle,\" Retief said. \"Next time you invite pirates aboard, don't bother to call.\" \"Jesus, what did you do! They'll kill us!\" the captain gasped, staring \"Hey,\" Chip said. \"He's quit kicking.\" The captain bent over Skaw, gingerly rolled him over. He leaned close and sniffed. \"He's dead.\" The captain stared at Retief. \"We're all dead men,\" he said. \"These Soetti got no mercy.\" \"They won't need it. Tell 'em to sheer off easy that's the secret.\" \"Maybe you got a point,\" the captain said, looking at Retief. \"All they got's a three-man scout. It could work.\" Chip looked at Retief. \"You ain't no tourist, Mister. I know that much. Retief awoke at a tap on his door. \"You want to get to Jorgensen's perty bad, don't you, Mister?\" \"That's right, Chip.\" \"Mr. Tony give the captain a real hard time about old Skaw. The Sweaties didn't say nothin'. Didn't even act surprised, just took the remains and pushed off. But Mr. Tony and that other crook they call talked loud at him fer half a hour. Then the cap'n come out and give some orders to the Mate.\" Retief sat up and reached for a cigar. \"Mr. Tony and Skaw were pals, eh?\" \"He hated Skaw's guts. But with him it was business. Mister, you got a Retief nodded, opened the door and stepped into the cabin. The captain looked up from his desk, then jumped up. \"What do you think you're doing, busting in here?\" \"You do, huh?\" the captain sat down. \"I'm in command of this vessel,\" he said. \"I'm changing course for Alabaster.\" \"I wouldn't find it convenient to go to Alabaster,\" Retief said. \"So \"Power Section, this is the captain,\" he said. Retief reached across the desk, gripped the captain's wrist. \"Tell the mate to hold his present course,\" he said softly. \"Let go my hand, buster,\" the captain snarled. Eyes on Retief's, he the mike and looked up at Retief. \"Chip, I'm locking the door. You circulate around, let me know what's he's slippery.\" \"What are you going to do?\" the captain demanded. Retief settled himself in a chair. \"Instead of strangling you, as you deserve,\" he said, \"I'm going to stay here and help you hold your course for Jorgensen's Worlds.\" The captain looked at Retief. He laughed, a short bark. Retief took out the needler and put it on the desk before him. \"If anything happens that I don't like,\" he said, \"I'll wake you up.\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Chip seem to enjoy talking to Retief?\n\n<options>:\nA He thinks that Retief will be able to overthrow the captain.\nB He’s the cook, and generally nice to those he serves.\nC As he says, he likes to see a “feller” eat and enjoys cooking for him.\nD He doesn’t like the captain and likes that Retief doesn’t like him either.\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>:\n\"Great!\" muttered Betty. \"What a lucky girl I am!\" Betty frowned at him. Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened the office noticeably, for such of Ganymede's surface as could be seen through the transparent dome outside the office window was cold, dim here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on the estimates.\" \"You asked any of them lately?\" Tolliver prodded. hazardous duty!\" \"Doesn't matter,\" answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. \"The hazardous part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months.\" He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him. around. I just want to get back to Earth with a clean rep. Let Jeffers and his gang steal the Great Red Spot off Jupiter if they like! It's which was \"Tuesday\" On the bulletin board, Tolliver's name stood out beside the number spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes. He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles. The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore \"Hey, Johnny!\" said a voice at his shoulder. \"The word is that they're \"What do you mean?\" \"They say some home-office relative is coming in on the Javelin handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean.\" \"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason airlock, a crewman helped him load two trunks and a collection of bags into the tractor. He was struggling to suppress a feeling of outrage at the waste of fuel involved when the home-office relative emerged. Tolliver. \"By the way, just call me Betty.\" \"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me see much else.\" \"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?\" He enlarged upon other dangers to be encountered on the satellite, taking care to impress the newcomer with the daredeviltry of John Tolliver, driver of \"missions\" across the menacing wastes between dome he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful. pile. No use pushing your luck too far.\" His charge seemed noticeably subdued, but cleared her throat to request that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience prickled. \"Jeffers,\" he announced, \"this is ... just call her Betty.\" The manager's jowled features twisted into an expression of welcome as jovial as that of a hungry crocodile. \"Miss Koslow!\" he beamed, like a politician the day before the voting. \"It certainly is an honor to have you on Ganymede with us! That's all, Tolliver, you can go. Yes, indeed! Mr. Koslow—the president, that is: your father—sent a message about you. I repeat, it will be an honor to pilot stared at Betty, trying to recall pictures he had seen of the elder Koslow. He was also trying to remember some of the lies he had told en route from the spaceport. \"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Miss Koslow?\" Jeffers stammered. He darted a suspicious glare at Tolliver. \"Daddy gave me the title of tenth vice-president mostly as a joke, when he told me to find out what was wrong with operations on Ganymede. I have fired!\" Betty, and Tolliver thought he muttered something about \"just landed.\" intercom button with his finger. He growled at someone on the other end headquarters staff. He recognized one as Rawlins, a warehouse chief, and guessed that the other two might be his assistants. They were large enough. Betty. The others were swarming over Tolliver. Jeffers came around his desk to assist. Tolliver found himself dumped on the floor of an empty office in the adjoining warehouse building. It seemed to him that a long time had been spent in carrying him there. \"Your paycheck,\" said Betty. \"As soon as I saw that ridiculous amount, \"What do you know about the crooked goings-on here?\" asked Betty after \"What do you think you're up to?\" asked Betty with some concern. emergency dome of transparent plastic. They soon reached the other end. \"I think there's a storeroom for spacesuits around here,\" muttered Tolliver. \"Why do you want them?\" \"Honey, I just don't think it will be so easy to lay hands on a tractor. I bet Jeffers already phoned the garage and all the airlocks \"Just act as if you're on business,\" he told her. \"For all anyone can \"Where are you going?\" asked Betty. !\" \"Is there any way to get to a TV?\" asked the girl. \"I ... uh ... Daddy gave me a good number to call if I needed help.\" \"How good?\" From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Betty make a startled surface. Fumbling, he cut as fast as he could and shoved Betty through Don't be here when they do! He grabbed Betty by the wrist of her spacesuit and headed for the to get in to stay out of trouble,\" he said to Betty. and then Tolliver led the way up another ladder to the control room. It was a clumsy trip in their spacesuits, but he wanted to save time. \"Takeoff!\" shrilled Betty. \"What do you think you're going to do? I dials!\" economy orbit for Earth. He busied himself making a few adjustments, doing his best to ignore the protests from his partner in crime. He warned her the trip might be long. \"That wasn't so bad,\" Betty admitted some time later. \"Did you go in \"Oh!\" Betty looked helpless. \"It's in my pocket.\" her out of the spacesuit. He thought of inquiring if she needed any further help, but reminded himself that this was the boss's daughter. When Betty produced a memo giving frequency and call sign, he set about uniform. \"Space Patrol?\" whispered Tolliver incredulously. \"That's right,\" said Betty. \"Uh ... Daddy made arrangements for me.\" Tolliver held her in front of the screen so she would not float out When he heard Betty requesting assistance in arresting Jeffers and Patrolman. For one thing, though the officer seemed well acquainted with Betty, he never addressed her by the name of Koslow. For another, he accepted the request as if he had been hanging in orbit merely until learning who to go down after. \"We do have one trouble,\" he heard Betty saying. \"This tractor driver, \"Actually, I have a fine idea,\" he informed the officer coldly. \"I happen to be a qualified space pilot. Everything here is under control. If Miss Koslow thinks you should arrest Jeffers, you can call us later on this channel.\" \"Miss Koslow?\" repeated the spacer. \"Did she tell you—well, no matter! If you'll be okay, we'll attend to the other affair immediately.\" He signed off promptly. The pilot faced Betty, who looked more offended than reassured at discovering his status. \"This 'Miss Koslow' business,\" he said suspiciously. \"He sounded funny about that.\" \"Relax, Tolliver,\" she told him. \"Did you really believe Daddy would send his own little girl way out here to Ganymede to look for whoever \"You ... you...?\" \"Sure. The name's Betty Hanlon. I work for a private investigating firm. If old Koslow had a son to impersonate—\" \"I'd be stuck for six months in this orbit with some brash young man,\" Tolliver finished for her. \"I guess it's better this way,\" he said picked up.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat was the number that Betty called?\n\n<options>:\nA To her Space Patrol colleagues\nB To the family’s private security team\nC To the Ganymede superiors\nD To Daddy’s private office at Koslow Space headquarters\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>:\nIn his foreword to the book, Lessig writes that you understand your subjects “by learning to see them in a certain way.” What is that certain way? I think I’m trying to get a mental image of a person, certain expressions, or what I think that person is about. I’m trying to capture what I think they look like, which is many times a minority of their typical expressions, or their typical stance. So, if I’m taking pictures just random ones. I think I’m trying to capture pictures of people that help others see what they’re about. Some photographers will make someone look the way the photographer wants them to look, and not the way they appear, so they’ll pick the one picture out of 100 where the guy looks more egotistical than he really is. Some photographers are almost medical, and are going after a perfect portrait. I’m somewhere in between. It’s amazing how many people will upload snapshots of people where the pictures don’t look like them at all. To me, uploading a picture that is not an easily recognizable picture of that person defeats the point, which I’m working toward, to try to express who they are. On the other hand, professional photographers usually have a subject whom they don’t know personally, so they end up having to try to capture an image that they’ve created based on who they think the person is or how they want someone’s soul from his or her image. There are a lot of things that make this hard. A lot of people are uncomfortable in front of a camera, or might make expressions that aren’t very natural for them. And if the person is nervous, it’s very difficult to try to see what it is that you’re trying to capture. A lot of what I’m doing is, I just start shooting photos. After half an hour of having their picture taken, people start to ignore you. Or I’ll take pictures when I’m talking to people about what they’re doing, so after a while they get distracted by the conversation and forget about the camera. That’s something that I’m not perfect at, but I’m getting better. I think good photographers are also able to disarm people through conversation, but still, it’s difficult to have a disarming conversation with somebody you don’t know, or to make them laugh. Many times people make a face for me that they wouldn’t make for a professional photographer. For instance, a board meeting picture, like the one with Eric Saltzman: that was during a very tense discussion. I’ve found that people are at their most animated at these kinds of meetings, and look the most alive when they are under a lot of pressure, and super- focused. But usually if an outsider is in the room, they won’t get into that. I mean, it would be difficult for a cameraman to be in a room where a board is having a heated debate. But those are the things that I’m trying to capture, because most people don’t get to see that. At the Creative Commons board meeting, Larry asked me to put the camera away after awhile [laughs] because it was distracting. We were having a very heated discussion and I was taking all of these pictures. But he credited me later because afterward those pictures turned out the best. There’s a paradox: with many people’s Wikipedia articles to which I’ve contributed, when it comes to the picture, many of these people don’t have any free photos of themselves on the web, so while they are “notable” on Wikipedia, their images aren’t free of the copyright of the photographer, or the institution who hired the photographer to take the picture. Often, even the subject of the article can’t make an image available to the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community. This means that a lot of people who have a Net presence have a legally encumbered Net presence. People who are invited to conferences get asked all the time, “By the way, do you have a photo that we can use?” But they don’t. By making these pictures available under a Creative Commons pictures for something positive, rather than for something negative. The benefits greatly outweigh the risks. I think we spend way too much of our lives worrying about the risks, at the cost of a lot of the way it’s wonderful. A Wikipedia article on some person but with no picture is sad. Besides Wikipedia, how do you imagine these photos being used? They can be used in textbooks and in mainstream media articles about the person. Now they can get a picture that represents the person, at least from my perspective. That said, I shouldn’t be the only person doing this. More people should do the same, and make the photographs available freely. For one, I feel that “free” CC licensed photos have a much higher chance of not disappearing. But I don’t know exactly how these involves human images, it gets very complicated. We all know the Virgin discussion. But one thing that happens when a movement like CC becomes a business thing, is that a lot of the pioneers fade into the background, and it Now, when you go to many Internet conferences, it’s mostly salesmen in attendance. professional-quality amateurs has increased significantly due to the importance of digital in both professional and high-end amateur photography I hate to say it, a lot of people love the darkroom, but it really feels like the death of the darkroom with this year. With new 22 megapixel cameras coming in under $10,000, and Lightroom and some of this software at a couple hundred dollars, it doesn’t really make sense, except for particularly fussy artists, to do wet-work anymore. If you’re a commercial photographer or a high-end amateur, you can do anything you used to do in the darkroom. I think it has really lowered the bar. I don’t know how that affects the industry directly, completely away from film, and I think this happened to a lot of photographers. It caused an explosion of content and an increase in the quality of content on sites like Flickr. It has allowed amateurs to create a business model with professionals. photography books and photographs and are probably providing an increasing revenue stream for professional photographers. I think most amateurs, including myself, are paying homage to the professionals and not trying to “compete” with them. Despite the existence of social software, what is still important about meeting people face-to-face? For me, the right way to use a lot of the new social software is by making it easier to spend more physical time with the people you like best. Dopplr is a great example. When I visit a city, I will see all of the people who are in the city at the in London, and a huge percentage of those people don’t live there. I would bet that more than half of the photos in this book are pictures of friends, and they’re not in their hometown. meetings don’t have to be random. If I look at the list of people in this book, although there are some obvious people missing whom I didn’t friends, than I’ve met in any other year. I know my travels were crazy, but I think that the online world has allowed me to do that. What’s great about photography is that it captures the moment that I was sharing with that person. It’s not just a connection on a social network online, which is really pretty binary. I can look at all these photos and remember exactly what we were doing, what we were eating, what we rich experience. It’s the combination of social software and photography. For me, reality is “the present” plus what you remember from the past. I think this project is really sharing memories with people. Blog posts contribute as well, but to me photography is a really good way of doing that. When I look at the expressions, I remember the moment and get a sense of presence. is essential. My job is to keep that focus and maintain that balance. Also, CC needs to run smoothly as an organization and there is a lot of operational work that we all need to do. My photography is a way for me participants who aren’t so well known and who are essential to moving everything forward. Personally, I don’t think it’s ultimately meaningful to talk about one\n\n<question>:\nAccording to the author, what makes it difficult for the author to capture a subject's soul?\n\n<options>:\nA People's tendency to overemphasize the qualities they want others to associate with them\nB People's tendency to behave uncharacteristically in front of a camera\nC People's tendency to refuse a photographer access to the most painful moments of their lives\nD People's tendency to forget that the photographer is even in the room\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\" 2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. \"Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture,\" observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries \"recessive\" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow. 6. Beauty doesn't convey health. Harris casually asserts that beauty \"shows healthiness and longevity.\" On his site, he writes, \" 'Natural Selection' is choosing genes that are healthy and beautiful.\" Skeptics question this assumed equivalence, noting that traits men find attractive in women these days--thinness, for example--are often unhealthy. When asked on the Today show how much \"medical screening\" he has given his egg donors, Harris answered, \"None.\" 7. Beauty is less meaningful than intelligence. Harris says he's not the first person to market good genes. Others, he notes, have sold sperm and solicited eggs on the basis of the donor's intelligence. Harris' detractors reply that beauty is \"superficial\" and conveys a \"harmful preoccupation with exterior appearances over intelligence and content of character.\" This critique is usually offered by a blow-dried TV interviewer who, after thanking Harris for his time, urges viewers to stay tuned for the movie starlet who will join the program after a brief commercial break. 8. Beauty is less useful than intelligence. Harris advertises beauty not as an end but as a means to \"success,\" since people who are physically desirable get more attention, power, and favorable treatment. Having chided Harris for exalting social advantage over \"character,\" critics turn around and adopt his ruthless logic. While conceding that beauty is useful, they argue that intelligence is a better weapon in today's meritocratic information economy--and that although Harris claims his models are \"beautiful, healthy and intelligent,\" he offers no evidence of brains, such as IQ or SAT scores. London's Independent envisions \"Bimbo births.\" A fertility expert shrugs, \"If people want to spend $150,000 for the eggs of a gorgeous woman who has an IQ of 68, let them.\" 9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's \"unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money\" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of \"taking advantage of couples trying to conceive\" and exploiting \"desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell.\" USA Today laments, \"This is about human need. And human greed.\" Harris constantly refers to the donors as his \"girls\" and describes them like cattle--\"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls.\" He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. \"We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items,\" he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to \"find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web.\" To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit. 11. The auction exploits voyeurs. The Washington Post thinks Harris isn't targeting either buyers or sellers. He's not serious about selling eggs, says the Post . He's just using the sex appeal of his models and the intriguing perversity of a human egg auction to drum up publicity and attract Internet traffic to his site, from which he can sell advertising and subscriptions ($24.95 a month to view profiles of the models), hawk his forthcoming book ( Naked Power ), and direct prurient visitors to his various porn sites. A spokesman for fertility doctors suspects that ronsangels.com is really aimed at \"adolescent boys.\" 12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\" 16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole \"prejudice\" in favor of beauty. \"The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts,\" says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, \"we should think about\" whether to \"accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them\" or to transcend those prejudices. This critique challenges two precepts of Harris' worldview. First, while pretending to accept human nature as a given, he violates it by peddling strangers' eggs and encouraging the production of children who will probably never know their mothers. Family association, loyalty, and love are among the best parts of human nature. Slavish catering to physically attractive strangers is among the worst. If we're going to challenge human nature, the critics ask, why not start with the latter rather than the former? Second, Harris assumes that the perfection parents want in their children coincides with Darwinian perfection. \"Every organism is trying to evolve to its most perfect state,\" he writes. What he doesn't seem to understand is that human beings aren't quite like other animals, just as the rest of the world isn't exactly like the modeling and soft-porn industries of Southern California. Humans have evolved to a stage at which our ideas about virtue, perfection, and success have become more than material. At least, most of us have.\n\n<question>:\nWhat isn't something Harris claims he'll do?\n\n<options>:\nA provide pictures of the egg donors\nB guarantee the quality of the eggs he's selling\nC take commission on all eggs sold\nD make money off of monthly subscriptions\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nhim as a Man—but the ones he refrains from making. Like the decision \"I've had enough!\" Illustrated by Schoenherr Premier Umluana the warrant. \"Then I'll speak English.\" Umluana was a small man with wrinkled the late afternoon. Read knew two armed men stood just outside the door. \"If you leave, Premier, I'll have to shoot you.\" \"I don't think so,\" Umluana said. \"No, if you kill me, all Africa will rise against the world. You don't want me dead. You want me in court.\" Umluana turned back to Rashid a second too soon. He saw the Africa, Rashid struggled toward it. Read walked backward, covering their retreat. The car stopped, whirling blades holding it a few inches off the Staring straight ahead, he didn't see the sergeant smile. Two types of recruits are accepted by the UN Inspector Corps: those with a fanatic loyalty to the ideals of peace and world order, and those who are loyal to nothing but themselves. Read was the second type. A tall, lanky Negro he had spent his school days in one of the drab suburbs that ring every prosperous American city. It was the home of factory workers, clerks, semiskilled technicians, all who do the drudge work of civilization and know they will never do concrete fields between the tall apartment houses marked the limits of life's possibilities. He had belonged to a gang called The Golden Spacemen. \"Nobody \"A man ought to be a man,\" he once told a girl. \"He ought to do a man's work. Did you ever notice how our fathers look, how they sleep so much? I don't want to be like that. I want to be something proud.\" For the first time in his life, his father said something about his ambitions. \"Don't you like America, Harry? Do you want to be without a like me.\" \"I don't want that,\" Read said. \"What do you mean, you don't want that?\" good as a trade school. If you have to be a soldier.\" \"I want to be a UN man. I've already enlisted. I'm in! What do you care what I do?\" The UN Inspector Corps had been founded to enforce the Nuclear diplomats and UN officials, even put down riots that threatened international peace. As the UN evolved into a strong world isolation. And yet he responded with enthusiasm. They had given him a job. A job many people considered important. something and you go out and win a medal. That's great for me. I'm lazy and I like excitement.\" One power implied in the UN Charter no Secretary General or Inspector General had ever tried to use. The power to arrest any head of state whose country violated international law. Could the World Court try and imprison a politician who had conspired to attack another nation? For years Africa had been called \"The South America of the Old World.\" Revolution followed revolution. Colonies became democracies. Democracies became dictatorships or dissolved in civil war. Men planted bases on the moon and in four years, but the black population of Africa still struggled toward political equality. Umluana took control of Belderkan in 1979. The tiny, former Dutch colony, had been a tottering democracy for ten years. The very day he took control the new dictator and his African party began to build up the Belderkan Army. For years he had preached a new Africa, united, free of white masters, the home of a vigorous and perfect Negro society. His critics called him a hypocritical racist, an opportunist using the desires of the African people to build himself an empire. He began a propaganda war against neighboring South Africa, promising the liberation of that strife-torn land. Most Negro leaders, having just won representation in the South African Parliament, told him to liberate his own country. They believed they could use their first small voice in the government to win true freedom for their people. But the radio assault and the arms buildup continued. Early in 1982, South Africa claimed the Belderkan Army exceeded the size agreed to in the Disarmament Treaty. The European countries and some African nations joined in the accusation. China called the uproar a vicious slur on a new African nation. The United States and Russia, trying not to get entangled, asked for more investigation by the UN. But the evidence was clear. Umluana was defying world law. If he got away with it, some larger and more dangerous nation might follow his precedent. And the arms race would begin again. Umluana and try him by due process before the World Court. If the passengers scanned the sky. A plane would have been a faster way to get out of the country. But then they would have spent hours flying over Africa, with Belderkan fighters in hot pursuit, other nations joining the chase and the world uproar gaining volume. By transmitter, if all went well, they could have Umluana in Geneva in an hour. \"Don't be certain, corporal. All these strong-arm movements are alike. I'll bet Umluana's lieutenants are hoping he'll become a dead legend. Then they can become live conquerors.\" Sergeant Rashid came from Cairo. He had degrees in science and Read copied him. Umluana breathed like a furnace, still out and the two of them struggled toward the booth with Umluana. Umluana in the booth and hit the floor. Read took aim and opened \"Did you get Umluana?\" he asked Sergeant Rashid. Rashid swore. \"You heard him, Read! Get out there and help those men.\" rush them but the besiegers couldn't pick out targets. Above the noise, he heard Rashid. \"I'm calling South Africa Station for a copter. It's the only way out of here. Until it comes, we've got to hold them back.\" Read thought of the green beret he had stuffed in his pocket that do a good job here, he wasn't the man he claimed to be. This might be the only real test he would ever face. \"The copter will be here in half an hour. We'll put Umluana on, \"We'll stop them, Sarge. Don't worry.\" Rashid ran off. Read stared across the green land and listened to the pound of his heart. What were the Belderkans planning? A mass frontal attack? To sneak in over the top of the hill? He didn't think, anymore than a rabbit thinks when it lies hiding from the fox or a panther thinks when it crouches on a branch OUR PREMIER, WE WILL DESTROY YOU. \"They know we don't have any big weapons,\" Read said. \"They know we have only gas grenades and small arms.\" in advanced shock. His deadly white skin shone like ivory. They wouldn't even look like that. One nuclear shell from that gun and devotion to peace had no limits. Read's psych tests said pride alone drove him on. That was good enough for the UN they only rejected men whose loyalties might conflict with their duties. But an assault on the tank required something more than a hunger for self-respect. \"I'll go,\" the Frenchman said. \"Three should be enough. Give us a good smoke screen.\" Umluana. Read, the Frenchman and himself, he stationed at \"I'm a UN man,\" he mumbled. \"You people up there know what a UN He knew they would see him when he stood up but he didn't think about that. He didn't think about Sergeant Rashid, about the complicated politics of Africa, about crowded market streets. He had to kill the tank. That was all he thought about. He had decided something in the world was more important than himself, The copter landed ten minutes later. Umluana left in a shower of surrendered the survivors to the Belderkans. His mother hung the Global Medal above the television set. \"He must have been brave,\" she said. \"We had a fine son.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat type of person is Umluana?\n\n<options>:\nA A considerate and cultured leader.\nB A power-hungry yet peaceful person.\nC A violence-driven man set on developing a large military under his control.\nD A leader hell-bent on proving that Africans do not need white people to be successful.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
371 | 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>:\nSisko Rolf was fighting his greatest battle—to bring life to dying Mars. \"Trapped us neatly,\" Rolf said through clenched teeth. \"Tolled into Planet Patrol ship as he swung the deadly slimness of his rocket blast's barrel around to center on the fiery jets that betrayed the approaching outlaw flyers. Rolf swung the lax controls over hard as the bursts of fire revealed a looming barrier of stone dead ahead, and then he felt the tough skin In a slow sort of wonder Rolf felt the scrape of rock against metal, Down plunged the battered ship, downward ever downward. Somehow Rolf split open like a rotten squash, and Rolf felt himself Much later Rolf groaned with the pain of bruised muscles and tried to Rolf laughed. Without a pressure mask on the surface of Mars an light reached his eyes Rolf did not know—it had seemed an eternity of Rolf capped the solar torch. No use wasting the captive energy ahead, headquarters where renegade Frogs, Venusians from the southern sunken marshes of Mars, and Earthmen from dusty North Mars, concealed \"They may have found the sunken seas of Mars,\" thought Rolf as he moved It was then, even as he snapped the release of his spinner and the nested blades spun free overhead, that he saw the slowly turning bulk of the cloud-swathed world, a tiny five mile green ball of a planet! The weird globe was divided equally into hemispheres, and as the tiny world turned between its confining columns a green, lake-dotted half alternated with a blasted, splintered black waste of rocky desert. As great shining gulf, Rolf could see that a broad band of stone divided the other half. Toward this barrier the spinner bore him, and Rolf was he could scout out the country beyond. it seemed to Rolf that he must be falling free jumbled mass of roughly-dressed stone slabs, from whose earth-filled crevices sprouted green life. So slowly was the spinner dropping that the blackened desolation of the through black dust, and he came to a stop. Deftly Rolf nested the rocks ahead. Rolf's slitted gray eyes narrowed yet more and his hand The voice had spoken in English! Rolf took a step forward eagerly and Rolf found himself staring, open-mouthed, at the sleek-limbed vision The girl laughed, a low liquid sound that made Rolf's heart pump She smiled again as Rolf's face slowly reddened. \"Do not be ashamed,\" Rolf threw up the mental block that was the inheritance from his \"Sorry,\" said the tall man as Rolf sprang easily from the ground to \"She one of them?\" Rolf's voice was low, but he saw Altha's lip twitch. \"Sure.\" Rolf nodded. \"Lost in equatorial wastelands—uh, about twenty Rolf followed the direction of the other's pale blue eyes. Overhead now lifted above the restless dark waters of a vast sea. Rolf realized with flies walking across a ceiling. \"There,\" roared Tanner's voice, \"is one of the seas of Mars.\" \"One,\" repeated Rolf slowly. \"You mean there are more?\" Rolf felt new strength pump into his tired bruised muscles. Here lay he could lead the scientists of North Mars to this treasure trove of \"Mark!\" The girl's voice was tense. Rolf felt her arm tug at his sleeve A hundred paces away Rolf made the dark shapes of armed warriors as \"The outlaws may capture,\" warned Tanner. \"They have taken over the Rolf watched the column of barbarically clad warriors file out upon the \"Right.\" Tanner's fingers bit into Rolf's arm. \"Pray that the wind does Rolf's eyes slitted. There was something vaguely unhuman about those Then he knew. Above half naked feminine bodies, sinuous and supple utterly shoulderless, and beneath their furry pelts the ripples of \"See!\" Tanner's voice was muted. \"Giffa, Queen of the Furry Ones!\" Borne on a carved and polished litter of ebon-hued wood and yellowed her narrow earless skull. And the skulls of rodents and men alike linked together into ghastly festoons about her heavy, short-legged litter. Rolf raised his expoder, red anger clouding his eyes as he saw these Rolf and Mark Tanner came to their feet. Rolf's expoder rattled briefly like a high-speed sewing machine as he The expoder hammered in Rolf's heavy fist. Tanner smashed an elbow into Rolf's side. \"Retreat!\" he gasped. \"Now where?\" Rolf snapped another burst of expoder needles at the furry the heart of the Barrier. Rolf blasted another spurt of explosive shattered heart. An unseen furry shape sprang upon Rolf's shoulders Tanner's finger pointed. \"Altha!\" Rolf saw the graceful wings of the \"The weasel heads won't follow us here?\" asked Rolf. all of Mars so he created a world that would be all his own.\" Rolf laughed. \"Like the pleasure globes of the wealthy on Earth.\" \"Right.\" Tanner kept his eyes on the enlarging winged shape of Altha's \"But,\" Rolf frowned thoughtfully, \"what keeps Lomihi from crashing into \"The island is the answer,\" said Tanner. \"Somehow it blocks the force \"The outlaws!\" he cried. \"They're after Altha.\" Rolf caught a glimpse of a sleek rocket flyer diving upon Altha's frail the old man pushing another crudely constructed glider toward the outer section of the wall swung slowly inward. Rolf sprang to his side. The older man's eyes were hot. He jerked at Rolf's hands and then Rolf pushed up and outward with all the strength of his weary muscles. near its center in a narrow strip of rocky gulch. A sudden thought made A man stood on guard just outside the flyer's oval door. Rolf lined up comrades. But if the outlaw saw him Rolf knew that he would be the about. Rolf pressed the firing button Rolf snapped his weapon overhand at the Frog's hairless skull. The momentarily. In that instant Rolf launched himself from the open They went down, Rolf swinging his fist like a hammer. He felt the Frog the guard's rifle expoder in his grasp the problem of escape from miles and more overhead. He knelt over the prostrate Venusian, using his belt and a strip torn A green bulge showed around the polished fuselage and Rolf pressed his This sledge was hammering relentlessly as Rolf sensed his first as he moved his arm. But Rolf had learned that his limbs were not By degrees Rolf worked his arm down to his belt where his solar torch Rolf heard voices from a distance and the answering triumphant bawling \"Fire!\" There was panic in the outlaw's voice. Rolf came to his knees not on the prisoners, and so the impact of Rolf's horizontally The outlaw was game. His fists slammed back at Rolf, and his knees jolted upward toward the patrolman's vulnerable middle. But Rolf smoke, and then the fingers of the outlaw clamped around Rolf's throat now he felt victory slipping from his grasp. Rolf swung, all the weight of his stocky body behind the blow, and the \"Everything bongo?\" Rolf wanted to know. \"Glad of that.\" Rolf felt the warmth of her body so close beside him. A Rolf grinned up at her. \"Need to?\" he asked. Then they were over the Barrier and Rolf saw the last of the beaten Rolf snorted. \"Shorty,\" he said disgustedly as they landed, but his arm\n\n<question>:\nWhat is so significant about this new area that Rolf is in?\n\n<options>:\nA It is abundant with water. It would be enough for all of Mars and the colonies.\nB The presence of Altha, and her living here in secrecy.\nC It is a secluded area, not yet touched by most other people.\nD The miniature planet and the way it functions.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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2,419 | 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\"He literally couldn't look more like a paedophile,\" read one post – one of many to state a supposedly incontrovertible truth: that Savile's criminal tendencies could have been detected from the shape of his features, his eyes, his hair. Moreover, this has nothing to do with the benefit of hindsight and should have been picked up at the time. His looks, they suggested, were a moral indicator, with a wealth of compelling visual evidence to support the claim. 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 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. 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.\" Hancock describes attending a conference where one speaker showed a series of black faces and white faces to students (who were mostly white) and asked them what they thought the experiment was about. \"They knew that he was trying to assess whether they would rate the black ones as more criminal,\" says Hancock. \"But then they did!\" We attribute social characteristics based on opinions we already hold about certain kinds of faces: whether they look unusual in some way, whether they resemble a partner, a family member or even ourselves, or perhaps have some other cultural association. Physiognomy ultimately stems from what Alexander Todorov, professor of psychology at Princeton University, calls an 'overgeneralisation hypothesis'. \"People,\" he wrote, \"use easily accessible facial information (eg an expression such as a smile, cues to gender and ethnic group) to make social attributions congruent with this information (eg a nice person).\" 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. After performing a number of autopsies on criminals, the Italian physician claimed to have discovered a number of common characteristics, and it's worth listing them if only to establish the supposed criminality of pretty much everyone you know: 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 studies show that people with stereotypically 'untrustworthy' faces tend to receive harsher treatment than those who don't. There's evidently some consensus over people's attitudes toward certain faces, but it doesn't follow that the consensus is correct. The only attributes that we're reasonably good at detecting, according to research done at the University of Michigan in the 1960s and later tested at the University of Stirling in 2007, are extroversion and conscientiousness. For other traits there's insufficient evidence that our hunches are correct, with anomalies explained by our evolved aversion to 'ugliness', established links between broader faces and powerful physiques, or cultural associations with certain demographics which are reinforced with nagging regularity by newspapers, books, television and film. Data-driven studies, based upon huge quantities of facial data, would seem to offer the final word on this. Since 2005, computational models have used various techniques to test for links between social attributes and facial features, resulting in suggestions that our faces can betray, for example, political leanings, sexual orientation and criminality. One BBC Future article from 2015 even describes the 'discipline' of physiognomy as 'gaining credibility'. But Todorov details many problems with these studies, pointing out the challenging nature of doing such experiments with sufficient rigour – not least because different images of the same people can prompt wildly differing results. The aforementioned study at Shanghai's Jiao Tong University, with its enthusiastic, data-driven analyses of such questions as \"What features of a human face betray its owner's propensity for crimes?\" prompted a wave of press coverage. 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. 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.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat terms best describes the author's attitude toward hunches of perceived criminality based on one's physical appearance?\n\n<options>:\nA skeptical and dismissive\nB neutral and hypothetical\nC incredulous and antagonistic\nD curious and imaginative\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,166 | 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>:\ncollecting Wheaties in a stamp album. We can't appeal to them that way. Come on now.\" I smiled condescendingly, knowing it would irritate him. \"What are you doing that's worth anything?\" He glared at me, his white hair bristling and his nostrils dilated like a war horse about to whinny. I can say one thing for them—these scientists and professors always keep themselves well under control. from the shock of being asked to produce something solid for his position, and ran his eyes over the titles of the books that lined his recognize its value.\" Prof. Caswell smiled back tightly. He knew his department was at stake. The other departments were popular with donors and pulled in gift and industry. Caswell had to show a way to make his own department popular—or else. I couldn't fire him directly, of course, but there are ways of doing it indirectly. He laid down his book and ran a hand over his ruffled hair. \"Institutions—organizations, that is—\" his voice became more resonant like most professors, when he had to explain something he instinctively slipped into his platform lecture mannerisms, and began to deliver an essay—\"have certain tendencies built into the way they 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 mathematics, expressing the human factors of intermeshing authority and motives in simple formulas. \"By these formulations, it is possible to determine automatically the He looked away from me thoughtfully, picked up the book and began to tap it on the desk again. It had some unreadable title and his name on it in gold letters. I got the distinct impression again that he was repressing an urge to hit me with it. He spoke quietly. \"All right, I'll give you a demonstration. Are you \"I see you have your problems, too,\" Caswell said, conceding me Caswell had to make it work or get out. rolling in snow. That was a growth sign. I hadn't expected to understand the equation, but it was almost as clear as a sentence. I was impressed and slightly intimidated by it. He had already explained enough so that I knew that, if he was right, conquests of Alexander and the spread of the smoking habit and the change and rigidity of the unwritten law of styles. \"Is it really as simple as that?\" I asked. \"Go on,\" I urged. He was deep in the symbology of human motives and the equations of \"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—\" Picture Professor Caswell, head of the Department of Sociology, and with him the President of the University, leaning across the table toward each other, sipping coffee and talking in conspiratorial tones over something they were writing in a notebook. That was us. stood up, bowing to polite applause and smiles. \"Professor Caswell, and boring parliamentary formality. I pointed out to Caswell the member I thought would be the natural leader, a tall, well-built woman in a green suit, with conscious gestures and a resonant, penetrating voice, and then went into a half doze while Caswell stayed awake beside me and wrote in his notebook. After a while the resonant voice roused me to attention for \"I think there's a way they could find for it,\" Caswell whispered back, can be trusted with initiating the change. Just mention all the personal advantages an unscrupulous person could have.\" He nodded, keeping a straight and sober face as if we were exchanging admiring remarks about the techniques of clothes repairing, instead of conspiring. After the meeting, Caswell drew the tall woman in the green suit aside and spoke to her confidentially, showing her the diagram of organization we had drawn up. I saw the responsive glitter in the woman's eyes and knew she was hooked. If Caswell's equations meant anything at all, we had given that sewing how the test was coming along. Passing Caswell's office, I put my head \"Caswell, about that sewing club business—I'm beginning to feel the \"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.\" He grinned back. \"If it's not rising, you won't have to fire me—I'll burn my books and shoot myself.\" Poor Caswell. The bet between us was ironclad. He wouldn't let me back down on it even if I wanted to. He'd probably quit before I put through the first slow move to fire him. His professional pride would be shattered, sunk without a trace. I remembered what he said about shooting himself. It had seemed funny to both of us at the time, And what if Caswell asked me what I had found out in the meantime? I bunting already down on the floor, people holding banners, and plenty of enthusiasm and excitement in the air. Someone was making a speech up on the platform. Most of the people there were women. Everyone's supposed to have it. We've just printed up six thousand copies to make sure there'll be enough to last.\" The tall woman on the platform had been making a driving, forceful and Secular Charities.\" That's what it said. Below began the rules of membership. I looked up. The speaker, with a clear, determined voice and conscious, forceful gestures, had entered the homestretch of her speech, an appeal to the civic pride of all citizens of Watashaw. \"With a bright and glorious future—potentially without poor and without uncared-for ill—potentially with no ugliness, no vistas which are not beautiful—the best people in the best planned town in the country—the jewel of the United States.\" She paused and then leaned forward intensely, striking her clenched hand on the speaker's stand with each word for emphasis. \" All we need is more members. Now get out there and recruit! \" I finally recognized Mrs. Searles, as an answering sudden blast of sound half deafened me. The crowd was chanting at the top of its lungs: \"Recruit! Recruit!\" Mrs. Searles stood still at the speaker's table and behind her, familiar, as if they could be members of the sewing circle. I put my lips close to the ear of the pretty usher while I turned over some kind of organization song with the tune of \"Marching through Georgia.\" Even at the single glance I had given it, the constitution looked And good prospects full member with its contractual obligations and its lures, if the inert, cantankerous, or both. Caswell's formula could be a handle to were spectacular. Caswell's formulas were proven to the hilt. After reading the last newspaper reports, I called him up. \"Perfect, Wilt, perfect ! I can use this Watashaw thing to get you so well and you're satisfied?\" He was definitely putting on a chill. We were friends now, but obviously he was still peeved whenever he was reminded that I had doubted that his theory could work. And he was using its success to rub my nose in the realization that I had been wrong. A man with a string of degrees after his name is just as human as anyone else. I had needled him pretty hard that first time. \"I'm satisfied,\" I acknowledged. \"I was wrong. The formulas work beautifully. Come over and see my file of documents on it if you want a boost for your ego. Now let's see the formula for stopping it.\" He sounded cheerful again. \"I didn't complicate that organization with negatives. I wanted it to 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 graph on the desk before me began to look sinister. Surely Caswell must have made some provision for— \"You underestimate their ingenuity,\" I said into the phone. \"Since they There was a long silence while Caswell probably drew the same graph\n\n<question>:\nWhat traits best describe Caswell?\n\n<options>:\nA Athletic and generous\nB Charismatic and fair\nC Confident and smart\nD Confident and handsome\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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2,156 | 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>:\nRaging , Trooper Lane hovered three thousand The cool cybrain surgically implanted in him was working on the problem. But Lane had no more patience. They'd sweat, he thought, hating the Lane said, \"I can do that a Lane is through now. He has been able to outthink police with the help of his cybrain. of the Court House. The police analogue computer will be able to outthink Lane's cybrain, will predict Lane's moves in advance. Four more The paragrav-paks cut off. cops over like paper dolls, back at the Armory. The black dog was on Lane's back. Old Mayor himself was going pressed a small stud in the wrist. He said, \"Trooper HQ, this is Lane.\" A voice spoke in his helmet. \"Lane, this is Trooper HQ. We figured you'd call.\" \"Get me Colonel Klett.\" Thirty seconds passed. Lane could hear the clank of caterpillar Court House. Lane cursed his stupidity. He hadn't found out which one was which The voice of the commanding officer of the Troopers rasped into Lane's ear: \"Meat-head! You broke out against my orders! Now look them orders, sir.\" \"If you get out of there alive, I'll hang you for disobeying churned in his veins, nerves shrieked with impatience. Lane waited for the electronic brain to come up with the answer. Then his head jerked up, to the girl fold to the floor. There There was a pause. \"Your girl from Mars is right, Lane. Damn fast! The cybrain jolted an impulse \"Sir, I'm asking for help. I know you're on my side.\" \"I am, Lane.\" The voice of Colonel Klett was lower. \"I'd never admit it if you had a taken charge of his motor nerves. Lane's own mind was just along for the ride. through his spine. Lane somersaulted. Cybrain had His \"Yes, sir.\" \"I'm sorry, Lane.\" \"Yes, sir. Over and out.\" Lane pressed the stud on his gauntlet again. He turned to Gerri. The Mayor? had a little right on my side. Breakthrough! The glasstic has even a little bit of right on his side.\" Lane laughed. \"Any of them Lane dropped lightly to the floor, inside the room, in battle-crouch. A 3V set was yammering. A girl screamed. Lane's pane dissolved. Lane streamed through the window. vibray,\" said the announcer, hand shot out automatically. was no one else in the room. Lane, still in a crouch, chewed his lip. Lane frowned with the effort A finger vibrated. Out of the corner of his eye, Lane saw of thinking. \"You said I \"Lashing police with his Armory. Two policemen were \"Lane broke through the cordon surrounding Manhattan directly to the controls of the blaster cannon battery. It will outguess Lane's cybrain and check his moves ahead of time.\" are cautioned to keep clear of him. Lane is an insane killer. He is armed with the latest Lane looked at Gerri. \"How dangerous. Citizens military weapons. A built-in \"You deserve it, Lane.\" said Lane, and a sheathed finger snapped out. There was a reflexes—\" into a puddle of glasstic. The Mayor. Lane strode to the window. \"At ease with that jazz,\" The two police boats were hovering above the towers. Lane's mailed hand snapped open a pouch at his belt. He flipped a fist-sized cube to the \"But you're safe in here!\" \"Worry about yourself, not about me.\" Lane picked up the force-bomb and handed it to shakily. Lane grinned. \"Trooper Lane, of the Newyork Special Troops, is all.\" He threw her a mock salute. \"You from electronic brain controls his at Lane, either. They were shooting wild. Which way now? Looks her feet. Built, Lane saw. I come to see the Mayor, and I'm gonna see him. Lane plunged forward. He heard the shouts of frightened men. \"I don't,\" said Lane, unconcerned. \"Well, you should have had brains enough to honor the what that means.\" Years of training and cybrain took over. Lane's hand shot out, fingers vibrating. As he dropped to the balcony floor in Lane .\" \"I'm the guy they told you Lane stood for a moment in the midst of the sprawled men, the shrieks of the crowd Armory. \"Colonel Klett, sir. You said if we captured the city Lane. \"Cybrain didn't know, no more than me.\" Lane The girl noticed the dark was uncomfortable in his dress uniform. First Protectorate, and honoring Trooper Lane. Now there was a formal dinner. Colonel Klett and Gerri Kin sat on either side of Lane. Klett said, \"Call me an opportunist if you like, Miss Kin, my government will be \"Gerri Kin. Look, Lane, Lane said, \"I'm going to \"Did she ask you to?\" demanded Klett. Lane shook his head. \"She's got too much class for me. But He takes orders from Newyork.\" Gerri Kin said, \"That's Klett frowned. \"If I thought what the force-domes did. The Lane said, \"Yeah? Well, we done what they wanted us to do. We did the fighting for I like what she told me about there was a gram of talent involved in your capture of the us. Won't let us go nowhere. They had cops guarding us. City cops.\" Lane sneered. \"I Lane said, \"It wasn't so stupid if it worked.\" police paragrav-boats were nosing toward the force-screen. Lane could read the white numbers painted on their bows. A loudspeaker shouted into the room: \"Come out of there, Lane, or we'll blast you out.\" \"You can't,\" Lane called. \"This girl from Mars is here.\" \"I repeat, Lane—come out sir,\" said Lane. \"That's why or we'll blast you out.\" Lane turned to the girl. \"I Colonel Klett. \"I'm tired of being a weapon, sir. I want to be a human \"What do you mean?\" asked \"What you just said there, thought you were important.\" from the Mayor's suite.\" \"Yeah, but—\" Lane shook his head and turned back to the window. \"All right, look! Move them boats away and I'll let this girl out!\" \"No deal, Lane. We're coming in.\" The police boats straight up, out of the line of vision. Lane looked down at the Square. Far below, the long, were all looking up. Lane looked across the Square. The windows of the tower opposite, the ones he \"Lane is holding the Martian Ambassador, Gerri Kin, hostage. You can see the Martian tricolor behind his force-globe. Police are bringing up blaster cannon. Lane's defense is a globe of energy similar to the one which protects Lane grinned back at Gerri Kin. \"Whole town's down there.\" Then his grin faded. kill me. What's going to happen?\" Lane looked sadly at her. Only two kinds of girls ever went near a Trooper—the a letter is. You probably can't even read and write!\" Lane shrugged. He carried on the conversation disinterestedly, maintained—that the deadliest \"Specialization,\" said the because they're not trained to do anything.\" \"The Fans,\" said Lane. \"They got it soft. That's them Lane said, \"They told us in Trooper Academy that it's the a few feet away, dazed, groping on hands and knees. Lane jumped to the window, looked quickly, sprang back. Cybrain pumped orders to his nervous system. and a blinding flash from below. Lane laughed boyishly and ran to the window. \"Look!\" he called to Gerri.\n\n<question>:\nWhich best describes the relationship between Lane and Colonel Klett?\n\n<options>:\nA Lane relies on Klett when he can't make his own decisions independently\nB Lane despises Klett for working as a cog in the government's machine\nC They are friends and colleagues\nD Lane follows all of Klett's commands blindly\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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585 | 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>:\nDeath was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and \"I did not want to call you in, Jaro Moynahan.\" It was the first time locate Karfial Hodes. Don't look at me that way, Jaro. You frighten me. You've got to find him, Jaro. He's stirring up all Mercury.\" \"Ah,\" said Jaro Moynahan Jaro Moynahan slipped sideways from the table. He felt something brush \"Red!\" said Jaro in a low voice. Jaro Moynahan glanced at the table. The red-headed singer was gone. So Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe. Jaro shrugged, dismissed the waiter. He had not expected to get much Once back in his room, Jaro Moynahan stripped off his clothes, then glanced around casually. His eyes fastened on Jaro. He licked his Jaro said nothing. He ignored the hand, waited, poised like a cat. Mr. Peet licked his lips again. \"I have come, Mr. Moynahan, on a matter of business, urgent business. I had not intended to appear in this Jaro still said nothing. Miss Mikail must be the red-headed singer, \"Yes,\" said Jaro. Mr. Peet licked his lips. \"But you will, surely you will. Unless Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising is—ah—lucrative.\" Jaro Moynahan lit a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed. \"Why beat about the bush,\" he asked with a sudden grin. \"Mr. Peet, you've Jaro laughed. \"How did you know Red had been kidnapped?\" Jaro raised his eyebrows. \"Perhaps then you know where she is?\" Mr. Peet shook his head. \"No. Karfial Hodes' men abducted her.\" A second rapping at the door caused them to exchange glances. Jaro went entrance. His black eyes burned holes in his pale boyish face. His white suit was blotched with sweat and dirt. \"They told me Mr. Peet was here,\" he said. \"It's for you,\" said Jaro over his shoulder. Mr. Peet came to the door. \"Hello, Stanley. I thought Hodes had you? Where's Miss Mikail?\" \"I got away. Look, Mr. Peet, I got to see you alone.\" Albert Peet said, \"Would you excuse me, Mr. Moynahan?\" He licked his lips. \"I'll just step out into the hall a moment.\" He went out, drawing Jaro lit a cigarette. He padded nervously back and forth across the Jaro returned to his room, stripped off his pajamas, climbed back into into the hall. At the desk he inquired if any messages had come for him. There were none, but the clerk had seen Mr. Peet with a young fellow take the reeling off the current events almost as soon as they happened. Jaro cool gloom, and Jaro had to feel his way, rubbing shoulders with the Jaro halted before a door bearing a placard which read: then quite clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone: \"Stanley, I thought I left you in the native quarter. Why did you follow me? How many times have I told you never to come here?\" through the door shutting it after himself. At the sight of Jaro Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the \"You dirty ...\" he began, but he got no further. Jaro Moynahan shot him The compressed air slug gun had seemed to leap into Jaro's hand. The hurled him against the wall. Jaro vaulted the rail, deftly relieved him The door to the inner sanctum swung open. \"What's happened?\" cried Albert Peet in distress. \"What's wrong with you, Stanley?\" \"This dirty slob shot me in the shoulder.\" \"But how badly?\" Peet was wringing his hands. \"Nothing serious,\" said Jaro. \"He'll have his arm in a sling for a while. That's all.\" \"Stanley,\" said Mr. Peet. \"You're bleeding all over my carpet. Why can't you go in the washroom. There's a tile floor in there. If you hadn't disobeyed this wouldn't have happened. You and your fights. Has Jaro's attention. carpet. Joan Webb \"There's been an—ah—accident,\" said Mr. Peet, and he licked his lips. \"Call a doctor, Miss Webb.\" Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she \"Thank you,\" said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added: \"You trollop.\" Mr. Peet regarded Jaro Moynahan with distress. \"Really, Mr. Moynahan, was it necessary to shoot Stanley? Isn't that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I \"Poor boy?\" said Jaro mildly. \"Venomous little rattlesnake. I took these toys away from him.\" He held out the poisoned dart guns. \"You take them, Mr. Peet. Frankly, they give me the creeps. They might go off. A scratch from one of those needles would be enough.\" Mr. Peet accepted the guns gingerly. He held them as if they might explode any minute. He started to put them in his pocket, thought better of it, glanced around helplessly. Jaro eyed him coldly as with his good hand the youth dropped the dart \"Act like you want to use those and I'll put a slug in your head next time.\" \"Now, Mr. Moynahan.\" Mr. Peet licked his lips nervously. \"Stanley, go into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may go home. I'll have no more work for you today.\" Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were alone. With his eye on the door, Jaro said: \"When you go out, turn left toward the native quarter. Wait for me in \"Look,\" began Jaro annoyed. \"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps you've become accustomed to it.\" Mr. Peet came back into the room. \"Why, no, I mean yes,\" replied Miss Webb, a blank expression in her eyes. \"Goodbye, Miss Webb,\" said Mr. Peet firmly. Jaro grinned and winked at her. Miss Webb tottered out of the room. As the door closed behind the girl, Albert Peet licked his lips, said: \"Mr. Moynahan, I suppose my disappearance back at your room requires some explanation. But the fact is that Stanley brought an important bit Jaro said nothing. Again he paused. As Jaro remained silent, his neck mottled up pinkly. \"That's fair enough,\" replied Jaro. Albert Peet sighed. \"I have the check made out.\" \"Only,\" continued Jaro coldly, \"I'm not ready to be bought off. I think I'll deal myself a hand in this game.\" Mr. Peet's face fell. \"You won't reconsider?\" \"Sorry,\" said Jaro \"but I've got a date. I'm late now.\" He started to leave. \"Stanley!\" called Albert Peet. The pale-faced young man appeared in the doorway, the dart gun in his good hand. Jaro Moynahan dropped on his face, jerking out his slug gun Jaro got up, keeping an eye on Albert Peet, brushed off his knees. Without answering, Jaro backed watchfully from the room. \" said Jaro coming up behind her and poking a long brown finger Jaro's order. I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert Jaro Moynahan raised his oblique brows but did not interrupt.\n\n<question>:\nWho wanted Jaro dead?\n\n<options>:\nA Karfial Hodes\nB Miss Mikhail and Miss Webb\nC the Martian rebellion\nD Stanley and Mr. Peet\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>:\nMore Booze You Can Use When we last heard from them, the members of the Slate 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). Best and Worst , one of each from the group. Name that beer! The tasters were told that some of the drinks were Hefeweizens, some might be IPAs (India pale ales), some might be bitters, and so on. They were asked to put each beer in its proper category--and to name a specific brewery and brand if they could. The idea here was to test the veteran beer drinkers' claim to recognize the distinctive tastes of famous brands. (To see all the grids for all the beers, click .) 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. To this the beer scientist must say: Book-learning is fine in its place. But let's be realistic. Actual drinking experience teaches the American beer consumer that a) all cheap beers are lagers 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. 3. 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. 5. Implications and Directions for Future Research. Science does not always answer questions often, it raises many new ones. This excursion into beer science mainly raises the question: What kind of people are we? 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. But, of course, there is another possibility: that what is excluded in a blind taste test is in fact what we want, and are happy to pay for, when we sit down with a beer. The complicated label, the fancy bottle, the exotic concept that this beer has traveled from some far-off corner of Bohemia or even the Yakima Valley--all this may be cheap at the $1.25-per-pint cost difference between the cheapest and the most expensive beers. In elementary school, we all endured a standard science experiment: If you shut your eyes and pinch your nose closed, can you tell any difference in the taste of a slice of apple, of carrot, of pear? You can't--but that doesn't mean that from then on you should close your eyes, hold your nose, and chew a cheap carrot when you feel like having some fruit. There is a time and place for carrots, but also for juicy pears. There is a time for Busch, but also for Full Sail \"Equinox.\" For scientists who want to continue this work at home, here are a few suggestions for further research: 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. If you're going to test imported lagers, try Foster's or Corona rather than Grolsch. Remember to stay strictly in the scientist's role. Don't take the test yourself.\n\n<question>:\nWhy was the second round of tests more important to the test subjects?\n\n<options>:\nA They wanted to prove themselves as being knowledgable about expensive beers\nB They wanted to prove themselves as being knowledgable about wines\nC They wanted to prove themselves as being knowledgable about hard liquor\nD They wanted to prove themselves as being knowledgable about cheap beers\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>:\nJUPITER'S JOKE By A. L. HALEY Casey Ritter, the guy who never turned down a dare, breathed a prayer to the gods of idiots and spacemen, and headed in toward the great red spot of terrible Jupiter. fall and the head man intone the sentence that would take me out of circulation for a long, long time. And instead, blast me, if they didn't foul me with this trip to good old Jupiter. I didn't get it at first. I'd argued with 'em, but inside I'd been all set for the sentence, and even sort of reconciled to it. I could even hear the words in my mind. But they didn't match what the judge was saying. I stood there gaping like a beached fish while I sorted it out. Then I croaked, \"Jupiter! What for? Are you running outa space in stir? Want to choke me to death in chlorine instead?\" Being civil to the court didn't seem important just then. Jupiter was worse than the pen, a lot worse. Jupiter was a death sentence. The senior judge rapped sharply with his gavel. He frowned me down and then nodded at the judge on his right. This bird, a little old hank of \"You've no doubt heard tales of the strange population of Jupiter,\" he said. \"Every spaceman has, I am sure. Insect-like creatures who manifestly migrated there from some other system and who inhabit the Red Spot of the planet, floating in some kind of artificial anti-gravity field in the gaseous portion of the atmosphere—\" I snorted. \"Aw, hell, judge, that's just one of those screwy fairy At the thought my larynx froze up tight. This was worse than I'd thought. Government men trapping me and then beaming at me. And a full I squeezed out more when I saw those pictures, though. Those inhabitants were charming, just charming if you like scorpions. Well, a cross between a scorpion and a grasshopper, to be accurate. Floating among that red stuff, they showed up a kind of sickly purple turning to gangrene around the edges. collapsed onto my chair. A crafty-eyed buzzard across the table leaned toward me. \"So this is the great Casey Ritter, daredevil of the Solar System!\" he sneered. \"Never loses a bet, never turns down a dare!\" I shuddered. \"You're telling that one! And besides, a man's got to draw They were really stumped. They hadn't expected me to take this attitude at all. No doubt they had it figured that I'd gratefully throw myself into a sea of ammonia among man-size scorpions just for the hell of it. Nuts! After all, in the pen a man can eat and breathe, and a guard won't reach in and nip off an arm or leg while he's got his back turned. How stupid could they get? super-sacred, super-secret temple of the cavern-dwelling tribe of Killicuts on Mars—the real aborigines. Bleachies, we call them, sort of contemptuously won't give me fer 'em—\" He whistled appreciatively, thinking about it. \"Jupiter!\" I goggled at him. \"Akroida! Who's she?\" He looked at me as if I hadn't yet got out from under the rock where he was sure I'd been born. \"Don't you know nothin', butterhead?\" again. The memory still makes me fry. \"Akroida,\" he explained in his own sweet time, \"is the queen-scorp of them idiotic scorpions that lives on Jupiter. I sold her the Halcyon Diamond that disappeared from the World Museum five years ago, remember?\" He winked broadly. \"It come from Mars in the first place, if it wasn't so much trouble to dig 'em out—\" He went off into a dream about the rocks on Mars but I jerked him back. \"You mean those scorpions have really got brains?\" \"Brains!\" he snorted. \"Have they got brains! Why, they're smarter than them emeralds.\" I went back to my cot that night, and this time instead of biting my nails, I bit myself. So I faced it. Casey Ritter lost his nerve, and along with it, the chance of a lifetime. A better man than me had already penetrated the Great Red Spot of old Jupiter and come out alive. That thought ate me to the quick, and I began to wonder if it was too late, after all. I could hardly wait for morning to come, so letter to the S.S.C. The Big Sneer of the conference table promptly dropped in on me, friendly as a bottle of strychnine. But for a lad headed for Jupiter that took me in was colorblind, so I didn't have no warning at all. I found out that them scorpions can't stand yeller. It just plain drives them nuts! Thought they'd chaw me up and spit me out into the chlorine before I could get outa the damn thing. If my colorblind pal with a green an' poiple spacesuit—them's the real Jupiter colors—an' Jupiter's farthest moon then they took me in to the edge of Jupiter's ice-cloud and turned me loose in a peanut of a space boat with old Jupe looming ahead bigger than all outdoors and the Red Spot dead ahead. I But my green boat must have showed up like a lighthouse in all that red, because it wasn't long until I spotted a purple and green hopper-scorp traveling straight toward me, sort of rowing along with a pair of stubby wings. He didn't seem to be making much effort, even my Scorpion-Come-Hither lure on the chest of my spacesuit, opened the lock, and popped out, brave as could be. Face to face with that thing, though, I nearly lost my grip on the handle. In fact, I'd have fainted He lolled his hideous cranium practically on my shoulder. \"Anything! Just anything you desire, my dearest friend.\" I tried to back off from him a bit, but the ship stopped me. \"I'm Casey natural lump on his back, and he darted away from me. I opened the throttle and tore after him among the immense red blobs that were now beginning to be patterned with dozens of green-and-purple scorpions, all busy filling huge baskets with buds and tendrils, no doubt. Other scorpions oared and floated about in twos and threes in a free and peaceable manner that almost made me forget that I was scared to on Jupiter. But I mean it was even queerer than that. It was like no as solid as if on a floor. Which was fine for flying hopper-scorps, but what about Casey Ritter, who hadn't cultivated even a feather? Attaboy, however, had the answers for everything. Towing me from the name?\" she demanded. And when he told her, with a bad stutter in his code, she reared up higher on her skinny elbow and glared in my direction. \"Casey Ritter? Never heard of him. Where's he from?\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the significance of the title, “Jupiter’s Joke?”\n\n<options>:\nA The joke is that the scorpion-like inhabitants of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot are actually planning an attack, and that they sent Pard to Casey in order to trick the humans into giving them one of their own.\nB The joke is that Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is actually made of harmless gas, which means that Casey can fly into it without worrying about protection.\nC The joke is that Casey Ritter is being tricked by the scorpion like inhabitants of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, and that they plan to steal Casey’s emeralds and hold him for ransom.\nD The joke is that Casey’s court hearing sentences him to flying into Jupiter’s red spot to face the supposedly deadly, scorpion-like people who live there. In actuality, the scorpion people aren’t as dangerous as thought, which could be a good deal for Casey to take.\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>:\nShe surely got her wish ... but there was some question about getting what she wanted. Phil Conover pulled the zipper of his flight suit up the front of his long, thin body and came into the living room. His face, usually serious and quietly handsome, had an alive, excited look. And the faint lines around his dark, deep-set eyes were accentuated when he smiled at his wife. \"All set, honey. How do I look in my monkey suit?\" His wife was sitting stiffly on the flowered couch that was still not far. She said, \"You look fine, Phil. You look just right.\" She managed a \"Yes, I think so. Yes, I'm sure you did,\" she said, finishing the ritual but her voice broke, and she turned her head away. Phil sat smiling. \"Honey, look at me,\" he said. \"It isn't going to be bad. Honestly it isn't. We know exactly how it will be. If anything could go wrong, they wouldn't be sending me \"Phil, don't go. Please don't. They can send Sammy. Sammy doesn't have a wife. Can't he go? They'd understand, Phil. Please!\" She was holding his years. You know how much I've wanted to be the first man to go. Nothing \"Yes, I'll come to say good-by.\" She paused and dropped her eyes. \"Phil, be here because I won't be the wife of a space pilot for the rest of my life. It isn't the kind of life I bargained for. No matter how much I love you, I just couldn't take that, Phil. I'm sorry. I guess I'm not She finished and took another cigarette from the pack on the coffee lighter to the end of the cigarette and drew deeply. Phil stood watching her, the excitement completely gone from his eyes. \"I wish you had told me this a long time ago, Mary,\" Phil said. His voice was dry and low. \"I didn't know you felt this way about it.\" wife of a space pilot. But I don't think I ever really believed it was possible—not until this morning when you said tonight was the take-off. It's so stupid to jeopardize everything we've got for a ridiculous dream!\" \"Mary, listen to me,\" he said. \"It isn't a dream. It's real. There's nothing means anything more to me than you do—you know that. But no man ever had the chance to do what I'm going to do tonight—no man ever. If I backed out now for any reason, I'd never be able to look at the sky again. I'd be through.\" She looked at him without seeing him, and there was nothing at all in her eyes. zone five miles away in the desert. Its future as a town rested with the ship, and the town seemed to feel the uncertainty of its future, seemed ready to stop existing as a town and to give itself back to the desert, if such was its destiny. Phil turned the car off the highway onto the rutted dirt road that led take-off zone and swept along the top of the high wire fence stretching guard. He read Phil's pass, shined his flashlight in their faces, and then saluted. \"Good luck, colonel,\" he said, and shook Phil's hand. \"Thanks, sergeant. I'll be seeing you next week,\" Phil said, and smiled. cigarette. Then he looked at his wife. She was staring through the \"She's beautiful, Mary. You've never seen her before, have you?\" \"No, I've never seen her before,\" she said. \"Hadn't you better go?\" Her voice was strained and she held her hands closed tightly in her lap. \"Please go now, Phil,\" she said. \"Wish me luck, Mary?\" he asked. \"Yes, good luck, Phil,\" she said. He opened the car door and got out. The noise of men and machines scurrying around the ship broke the spell of the rocket waiting silently for flight. administration building without looking back. Inside the building it was like a locker room before the big game. The tension stood alone, and each man had the same happy, excited look that Phil had worn earlier. When he came into the room, the noise and bustle \"Hello, Phil. We were beginning to think you weren't coming. You all \"Yes, sir, I'm all set, I guess,\" Phil said. \"I'd like you to meet the Secretary of Defense, Phil. He's over here by As they crossed the room, familiar faces smiled, and each man shook his waved to him, but he didn't smile. Phil wanted to talk to him, to say something but there was nothing to be said now. Sammy's turn would come \"How do you do, sir. I'm very proud to meet you,\" Phil said. again. I'd like to be going. It's a thrilling thought—man's first adventure into the universe. You're lighting a new dawn of history, \"Thank you, sir. I'm aware of all you say. It frightens me a little.\" The general took Phil's arm and they walked to the briefing room. There front of a huge chart of the solar system. Phil took his seat, and the last minute briefing began. It was a routine he knew by heart. He had gone over and over it a thousand times, and he only half listened now. He kept thinking of Mary outside, alone by the fence. The voice of the briefing officer was a dull hum in his ears. \"... And orbit at 18,000-mph. You will then accelerate for the breakaway to 24,900-mph for five minutes and then free-coast for 116 hours until—\" Phil asked a few questions about weather and solar conditions. And then unanswered questions on each man's face. There were forced smiles and handshakes. They were ready now. \"Phil,\" the general said, and took him aside. \"Phil, you're ... you feel all right, don't you, son?\" \"Yes, sir. I feel fine. Why?\" \"Phil, I've spent nearly every day with you for three years. I know you better than I know myself in many ways. And I've studied the psychologist's reports on you carefully. Maybe it's just nervousness, Phil, but I think there's something wrong. Is there?\" \"No, sir. There's nothing wrong,\" Phil said, but his voice didn't carry conviction. He reached for a cigarette. \"Phil, if there is anything—anything at all—you know what it might mean. You've got to be in the best mental and physical condition of your life tonight. You know better than any man here what that means to our success. I think there is something more than just natural apprehension wrong with you. Want to tell me?\" Outside, the take-off zone crawled with men and machines at the base of the rocket. For ten hours, the final check-outs had been in progress and now the men were checking again, on their own time. The thing they had worked toward for six years was ready to happen, and each one felt that he was sending just a little bit of himself into the sky. Beyond And then they were ready. A small group of excited men came out from the For a long time after the rocket had become a tiny speck of light in the heavens, she stood holding her face in her hands and crying softly to \"Phil! Oh, Phil.\" She held tightly to him and repeated his name over and She looked at him. His face was drawn tight, and there were tears on his cheeks. \"Thank, God,\" she said. \"It doesn't matter, darling. The only thing that matters is you didn't go.\" \"You're right, Mary,\" he said. His voice was low—so low she could hardly hear him. \"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.\" He stood with his hands at his sides, watching her. And then turned away and walked toward the car. THE END\n\n<question>:\nHow is Phil feeling at the beginning of the story?\n\n<options>:\nA He is nervous about the mission but hopeful that it will be a success and he could return home.\nB He is uncertain if he is the right person to go on this mission.\nC He is upset by the way Mary stifles his hopes.\nD He is too excited about fulfilling his dream that he ignores everything else going on around him.\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>:\nknocked over the pitcher of thil , but it didn't matter. The pitcher spring them. \"We,\" he said, \"are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and down the drain.\" He added, as an afterthought, \"Destitute.\" I looked at him. I said sourly, \"You're kidding!\" \"Kidding.\" Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through I said, \"Bucky. Hold on, fella. I....\" blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's. He said, \"I don't think you understand.\" I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. \"What's eating you, Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. \"Delighted. I'm I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't Bucky got red around the ears. \"Just a minute,\" he murmured, and Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking circus than even I could stand. feet. He waved and said, \"Hiya, boys.\" Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts. Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily. Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose. I said, \"Sure,\" rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed. Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged. The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't.... Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends? the smell, I think rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them, breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled woman's talking about a sick child. \"This time,\" he said, \"I ain't sure.\" Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist with blue, cold fire. I yelled, \"Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!\" I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream. I thought, \" Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants to kill us! \" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me. One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking, \"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!\" Then I went out. II washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch plaid. I felt sick. Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was \"Jig,\" he said, \"those vapor worms were all right when we went in. Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose.\" I hurt all over. I growled, \"With that brain, son, you should go far. Nobody saw anything, of course?\" Bucky shook his head. \"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?\" \"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped.\" latch and looked at my feet. \"And—uh—Jig, I....\" I said, \"Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!\" like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had kittens. her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red. \"The deep swamps are angry,\" she whispered. \"Something has been taken. They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!\" could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd. He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand. Bucky said, \"Jig—it's Sam Kapper.\" Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and too broke, and we were pretty friendly. I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed, hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick, looking down at him. Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him. I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I realize until later that he looked familiar. We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the Bucky said gently, \"Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?\" Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's. He said thickly, \"I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it and brought it out.\" The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. \"Help me,\" he said simply. \"I'm scared.\" His mouth drooled. Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared, Bucky got up. \"I'll get a doctor,\" he said. \"Stick with him.\" Kapper grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no use. Kapper whispered, \" Cansin . Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back.\" was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table. Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew. \"Heart?\" said Beamish finally. \"Yeah,\" said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. \"Poor Sam.\" The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy. I leaned on the bar. \" Lhak ,\" I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a green bottle. I reached for it, casually. \"That guy we brought in,\" I said. \"He sure has a skinful. Passed out cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?\" \" Selak ,\" said a voice in my ear. \"As if you didn't know.\" I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing behind me. And I remembered him, then.\n\n<question>:\nWhy was Kapper in such a state of disbelief when Bucky and Jig found him?\n\n<options>:\nA He was frantically searching for the male Cansin he had found\nB He had lost all his animals and was desperate to find them\nC He had been attacked by the Vapor snakes\nD He was being poisoned.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,678 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n\"If there was ever a fellow ready for this planet,\" decided the tree named Ashlew, All things considered—the obscure star, the undetermined \"Don't know what got into me, talking that way to a tree,\" he muttered. \"If Yrtok good landing. Despite snapped out of it and heard, right now.\" As he brooded upon the sorry choice of arousing a search by hiding where he casualties might have been his little command, less two third-class ration keepers thought to have been trapped safe form to jet off in, you might make yourself a deal. How'd you like to stay here?\" \"I don't know,\" said Kolin. \"The penalty for desertion—\" \"Whoosh! Who'd find you? Peace Silenced but doubting, Kolin permitted himself to try the dream on for size. He considered what form might most easily escape the notice of search parties and still be tough enough to live a long time without renewal. Another factor slipped into his musings: mere hope of escape was unsatisfying after the outburst that had defined maintained a standard expression Prudently, he did not express this resentment overtly. \"What I wish I could do is not just get away but get even for the way they make us live … the whole damn set-up. They could just as easy make peace with the Earth colonies. His well-schooled features revealed no trace of the idea—or had been employed. Lack of complete loyalty to the state was likely to result in a siege of treatment that left the subject the ridge. wherein mere unenthusiastic posture had betrayed intentions to harbor would get blown up—and I something profane about disregard Then Ashlew offered a suggestion. he will be replaced by one of the five I shall keep here to \"I could tell the Life your Kolin permitted himself to wonder when anyone might get some rest, but assumed a side of it,\" he hissed. \"Once in with us, you can always paced up and down beside the ration crate turned up to serve him as a field desk. He scowled in turn, impartially, Since the crew would be eating packaged rations during repairs, Yrtok could be spared to command a scout detail. Each scout was issued a work was transient as to individuals but immutable as to length. Slichow muttered the landing place. He was so intent upon planning greetings with which to favor the tardy scouting parties that he failed to notice the loose cloud drifting over as the Chief's sharp stare measured them. Yrtok, a dark, lean-faced girl, led the way with a quiet monosyllable. She carried the of favoring themselves in regard to food. They would go without. Kolin passed. Along the edges, the haze faded raggedly into thin air, but the units evidently wandered into the haze. He froze. After a few heartbeats, he Yrtok and Ammet paused momentarily before descending. Kolin shared their sense of isolation. They would be out dropped the trash and stared at ship and men as if he had was in sight. of sight of authority and responsible for their own actions. Throughout the cloud of spores, the mind formerly blurred by the mist, taking on a somber, brooding grayness. For all Kolin could tell, he and the others were isolated in a world bounded by the rocky ridge behind them and known as Peter Kolin congratulated He paused to consider the state of the tree named Ashlew, half immortal but rooted to one spot, unable to float on a breeze or through space itself sure. Yrtok led the way along the most nearly level ground. Low creepers became more on the pressure of light. Especially, it was unable to insinuate any part of itself plentiful, interspersed with scrubby thickets of tangled, into the control center of another There are not enough men , must drift through the airlock. thought Kolin. spore was taking charge of the body of Chief Slichow at Peace State approached the edge of the deceptively distant forest. Yrtok paused to examine some passed like weeks to some of the crew but like brief moments in infinity to other purple berries glistening dangerously City and landed. units. At last, the ship parted on a low shrub. Kolin they reached the abrupt border it looked dark and impenetrable. \"We'd better explore along the edge,\" decided Yrtok. \"Ammet, now is the time to sat beside the bush with the purple berries, utterly \"He must have tasted some!\" exclaimed Kolin. \"I'll see how he is.\" him a doped appearance. Kolin straightened up and beckoned to Yrtok. For some reason, he had trouble attracting her attention. \"Hope she didn't eat some stupid thing too!\" he grumbled, trotting back. Yrtok was examining came to life and scooted into the underbrush with a flash saw was that it had several legs too many. He pulled Yrtok to her feet. She pawed at him weakly, eyes as vacant as Ammet's. itself upon its choice of form. a semi-circle of damp trees Nearer to the original shape of the Life than Ashlew glanced warily about, but nothing appeared to threaten him. \"It's time to end this scout,\" he told himself. \"It's dangerous. One good look and I'm got , he thought. clinging to the rugged trunk suggested a route. He tried his weight gingerly, then began slope, but could not be Yrtok's radio,\" he muttered. \"Oh, well, I can take it when I come down, if she hasn't thick limbs, twice head height, he felt safer. Later, at what he hoped was the halfway mark, he hooked one knee over a branch and paused to wipe sweat from his eyes. Peering down, he discovered desperately for the branch. His fingers clutched a handful of twigs and leaves, which just barely supported him until he regained a grip with the other hand. The branch quivered resentfully under him. \"Careful, there!\" whooshed told himself in a reasonable tone. \"It's bad enough that the other two passed out without me going space happy too.\" \"Where's that? Oh, never \"Can't really count it in Earth years any more. Lost track. I always figured bein' a tree was a nice, peaceful life and when I remembered how long some of them live, that settled it. Sonny, this world ain't all it looks like.\" higher branches might hide. \"Nope. Most everything here is run by the Life—that is, by the thing that first When I landed here, along , the planet looked pretty empty to me, just like it must have to—Watch it, there, Boy! If I in time, you'd be bouncing off to help him change form. He looks twice as good as a vine!\" \"He's very handy,\" agreed Kolin politely. He groped for \"Well … matter of fact, I can't get through to him much, even with the Life's mental field helping. Guess he started living with a different way of thinking. It burns me. I thought of being to stretch tiring muscles. \"Maybe I'd better stay a while,\" he muttered. \"I don't know where I am.\" him. \"You ought to let me tell you how the Life that landed with me wanted birds. One even stayed a man—on the outside anyway. \"I wouldn't want to do that, Mr. Ashlew.\" \"There's just one thing. The Life don't like taking hours a day, asleep or awake. You get scared to sleep for fear you might dream treason and they'd find just to live.\" Suddenly, Kolin found himself telling the tree about life expansion. He dwelt upon the desperation of having no place to hide in case of trouble with the authorities. A The line of crewmen released worlds was agonizing to imagine. Somehow, temporarily from repair out which he had prudently kept bottled up for years. The more he talked and stormed and complained, the more relaxed he felt.\n\n<question>:\nWhat would have happened if the Peace State had not crash landed?\n\n<options>:\nA A different crew would eventually follow a similar path.\nB The locals would not have gotten the rations they needed.\nC A revolution on Haurtoz would never have happened.\nD Yrtok would have remained lonely for the rest of his life.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
669 | 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>:\nWarrior of Two Worlds By MANLY WADE WELLMAN He was the man of two planets, drawn through the blackness of space to save a nation from ruthless invaders. He was Yandro, the Stranger of the Prophecy—and he found that And at once there was an answer: \" You lie upon the world Dondromogon. \" I knew the language of that answer, but where it came from—above, beneath, or indeed within me—I could not say. I lifted a hand, and knuckled dust from my eyes. \"How did I get here?\" I demanded of the speaker. \"It was ordered—by the Masters of the Worlds—that you should be brought from your own home planet, called Earth in the System of the star called Sun. Do you remember Earth?\" The voice had a note of triumph. \"You do not know that. It is as well, for this will be a birth and beginning of your destined leadership on Dondromogon.\" \"Destined—leadership—\" I began to repeat, and fell silent. I had worlds away, for a specified purpose here on whatever windswept planet Dondromogon might be. \"Birth and beginning—destined leadership—\" Fantastic! And yet, for all I could say to the contrary, unvarnishedly true. \"It is a world the size of your native one,\" came words of information. \"Around a star it spins, light-years away from the world of your birth. One face of Dondromogon ever looks to the light and heat, wherefore its metals run in glowing seas. The other face is ever away unceasing, bitter, with no quarter asked, given or expected. Masters .\" The voice became grand. \"Suffice it that you were and drawn roughly erect. The touch restored my senses, and I wrenched a curved stock to fit the palm of the hand, borne snugly in a holster. its scabbard. \"If he's dead, we get pay for both warning and capture—\" His thumb touched a button at the pommel of the hilt. The dull blade He whimpered and swore, and his glowing sword dropped. Its radiant that seemed to spring on me like a long thin snake and to fasten coil \"What's this?\" Beyond, it gave into several passages. She chose one of them and \"I tell the truth,\" was my reply, not very gracious. \"You will have to prove that,\" he admonished me. \"What proof have I?\" I demanded. \"On this world of yours—Dondromogon, isn't it called?—I'm no more than an hour old. Accident or shock has taken my memory. Let me have a medical examination. A scientist You mystic doctors are too apt to become fuddled—\" \"But it is, it is!\" The graybeard flourished a thin hand at me. \"Look at him, you of little faith! Your mind dwells so much on material strength that you lose touch with the spiritual—\" study,\" he commanded. \"On the shelf behind my desk, bring the great gold-bound book that is third from the right.\" Then he turned back, and bowed toward me. \"Surely you are Yandro, the Conquering Stranger,\" he said, intoning as if in formal prayer. \"Pardon these short-sighted ones—deign to save us from our enemies—\" Old Sporr almost crowed. \"You see? If he was a true imposter, he would come equipped with all plausible knowledge. As it is—\" \"As it is, he may remember that the Conquering Stranger is foretold old and well-thumbed, with dim gold traceries on its binding. Sporr \"I still say you will understand my caution,\" he addressed me, with real respect and shyness this time. \"If you are Yandro himself, you can prove it. The prophecy even sketches a thumb-print—\" And he held the book toward me. It contained a full-page likeness, in color, of myself wrapped in a one side a thumb-print, or a drawing of one, in black. men take into thought. The ears in the picture are like the ears of the artfully done by the Newcomers, and the red mantle he wears more easily assumed.\" thumb-print—\" \"Oh, yes, the thumb-print,\" I repeated wearily. \"By all means, study my thumbs, if you'll first take these bonds off of me.\" bustled to me. From under his robe he produced a pouch, and took out a pencil-sized rod. Gingerly opening the red mantle, he touched my tether in several places with the glowing end of the rod. The coils dropped \"Thumb-prints?\" I offered. carefully anointed one of my thumbs, and pressed it to the page. All Rohbar, field commander of this defense position,\" he said with crisp respect. \"Sporr is a mystic doctor, full of godly wisdom. Doriza, a junior officer and chief of the guard. And you—how could you know?—are sent by the First Comers to save us from our enemies.\" level of light and sound. \"Our cities are below ground,\" he quavered. \"Whipped by winds above, we must scrabble in the depths for life's necessities—chemicals to transmute into food, to weave into clothing, to weld into tools and \"I have arranged for that,\" Sporr began, then fell silent, fingers jelly, a little bundle of transparent leaves or scraps like cellophane mid-thigh. A resilient band at the top, with a series of belt-holes, garment, a long strip of soft, close-woven fabric that spiralled below the knee, like buskins. The case also held a platinum chain for the neck, a belt-bag, and a handsome sword, with clips to fasten them and dark and moody—small wonder!—the chin heavy, the mouth made grim beard. Then he bowed, supple and humble, his palms together. crossed the room. A sort of mouthpiece sprouted from the wall. \"I announce,\" he intoned into it. \"I announce, I, Sporr, the reader and that I was fated to live when he returned for the rescue of all Dondromogon.\" mixture of awe and brightness. \"It is necessary that we live like this,\" she explained. \"The hot air of Dondromogon's sunlit face is ever rising, and the cold air from the dark side comes rushing under to fill the vacuum. Naturally, our together? They should fight, not each other, but the elements.\" Doriza had no answer that time, but Sporr spoke up behind us: \"Great Yandro is wise as well as powerful. But the Newcomers do not want to help, not even to conquer. They want to obliterate us. There is nothing sheet of dull metal. She spoke into a mouthpiece: inspiring were it not so blatantly dyed. The other was a little wisp of Silence then, a silence which evidently I must break. I broke it: infant. I hear wonderful things, of which I seem to be the center. Are they true?\" \"The tenth part of the wonders which concern mighty Yandro have not been told,\" intoned Sporr, ducking his bearded head in a bow, but the dignified folds of his purple robe. One carefully-tended hand \"Barak was a brute—mighty, but a brute.\" Thus Gederr continued. \"Weapons in his hands were the instruments of fate. His hands alone caused fear and ruin. But it pleased our fortune-bringing stars to encompass his destruction.\" He grinned, and licked his full lips. \"Now, even as they are without their battle-leader, so we have ours.\" \"You honor me,\" I told him. \"Yet I still know little. It seems that I am expected to aid and lead and save the people of this world called Dondromogon. But I must know them before I can help.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the significance of the narrator’s thumb print?\n\n<options>:\nA It is proof that he is Yandro\nB It is proof that he is from Earth\nC It is proof that he is a Newcomer\nD It is proof that he is a Master of Worlds\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,346 | 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>:\nremained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another story. worries vanished. Everyone felt fine. There was a scurry to shove the broken glass out of sight and to turn more attention to another type of glasses. \"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!\" someone shouted at her. \"Have another!\" returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: \"Oh, I see. They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old.\" turned it over in her hands. The ancient glue crackled as she did so. The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out. 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 just once and used the time warp on a big mission!\" stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years.\" Milly was still deciphering the form. Now she let out a little squeal of excitement. grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some large parcel on her doorstep. She put her hands on her hips and stared wrappings that were tied with a half-transparent twine she had never seen before. The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to \"Your dress ought to be here,\" Ann said. She found scissors in her slightly crushed thin cardboard box lay on top. Ann pulled out the dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned. It was green and she had ordered blue. It didn't remotely resemble the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small girl's dress should be. But Sally was delighted. \"Mine!\" she shrilled, grabbing for the dress. \"It's probably the wrong size, too,\" Ann said, pulling off Sally's The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally was radiant for a moment. Then her small face sobered and she started to look vacantly at the distant wall. 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. that'll hold her down until we undress her. Don't worry. And that green dye or whatever it is will wash off.\" Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled 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 propulsion. A half-hour later, when the meal was almost ready, two things happened: so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see 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. landed on its side and its bulb flashed on, throwing a pencil of light across Les's hands. wife. \"I don't know why you ordered such a thing.\" He tossed the \"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. 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.\" that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?\" Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in the parcel. Her heart sank. She picked up the child, felt the hot forehead, and said: \"Les, I think it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time for a nap. It seems impossible, but—\" She shrugged mutely. \"And I think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed.\" out of her arms. 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. put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn't like the When daylight entered her room, Sally's nightgown had turned back into the new dress. But the little girl was too sick to get out of bed. She wasn't hungry, her nose was running, and she had a dry cough. Les called the doctor before going to work. 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: \" \"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 child's temperature, \"but we can't get that dress off Sally.\" as the doctor picked her up. But when he raised a fold of the dress and The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point where it touched Sally's skin. \"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't understand why the dress won't come off. It's not stuck tight.\" under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo. 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 sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin \"Don't bother about the girls' clothing,\" Bob said, \"because it was went off. Then when they put me in the principal's office, I had time to think, and I remembered. I put some white stuff from the detective kit into that sugar we lent Mrs. Burnett last night. I just wanted to see what would happen. I don't know exactly what effect—\" under arrest.\" The policeman stepped over the threshold. A blue flash darted from\n\n<question>:\nWhat wasn't strange about the dress purchased?\n\n<options>:\nA it spoke to Sally\nB it wouldn't come off\nC it made Sally levitate\nD it changed colors\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
91 | 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>:\nHarvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought! Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them five buckos for a glass of water—and got it! Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously. for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so without water for five ghastly days.\" \"Mayor takes care of that,\" replied the saloon owner. \"If you gents're finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos.\" Harvey grinned puzzledly. \"We didn't take any whiskey.\" \"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every chaser.\" Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. \"That—that's robbery!\" the lanky man The barkeeper shrugged. \"When there ain't many customers, you gotta make more on each one. Besides—\" bartender apologetically. \"Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?\" The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression. five-bucko bills, \"here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you rations,\" he answered. He waited apprehensively. \"Let's say ten buckos a liter,\" the mayor said. \"On account of the quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and wetted his lips expectantly. Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: \"But what are we to preposterous. We simply can't afford it.\" Johnson's response almost floored them. \"Who said anything about charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing. It's just the purified stuff that comes so high.\" After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water \"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?\" said Harvey as he and Joe \"Just the same,\" Joe griped, \"paying for water isn't something you can the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents, according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more. Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and \"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy,\" Harvey replied with dignity. \"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five,\" Harvey said flatly. The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and \"Medicine,\" Harvey propounded, \"should taste like medicine.\" To Joe he Yergis extract, plus.\" yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case, mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have been, then? No I had to use the bitter free water, of course.\" Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. \"Did Johnson ask to that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a guinea pig for a splendid cause.\" \"Okay, okay,\" Joe said. \"But you shoulda charged him more.\" that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he possesses. We could not be content with less.\" Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain and asked: \"You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now.\" Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry. \"It's only water we were short of,\" Harvey said apprehensively. \"We've got rations back at the ship.\" \" \" the mayor grunted. \"Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap. Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome to our hospitality.\" \"Your hospitality,\" said Harvey, \"depends on the prices you charge.\" \"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying,\" answered the mayor promptly. \"What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you can't get anywhere else for any price.\" Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails, which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders. Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he grinned, bowed and asked: \"Everything satisfactory, gents?\" \"Quite,\" said Harvey. \"We shall order.\" For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service kitchen, attending to the next course. \"He would make any society hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum \"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,\" complained Harvey. \"I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents.\" The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion. \"It's been a great honor, gents,\" he said. \"Ain't often I have As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and !\" Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius he simply put on the table, rage. The minute note read: \"Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80 ask the sheriff to take over.\" Johnson, the \"sheriff,\" collected the money, and Johnson, the \"restaurateur,\" pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to remain calm. made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound foolish.'\" \"I don't get the connection,\" objected Johnson. \"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for carelessness. \"Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway.\" \"That's right,\" Johnson came back emphatically. \"But what would your \"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would tempt you!\" \"Nope. But how much did you say?\" \"This and that,\" concluded Joe. \"We'll give you five hundred buckos.\" \"You haven't left us much money,\" Harvey put in. Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he \"We must not be selfish, my boy,\" Harvey said nobly. \"We have had our chance would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For Harvey nodded in relief. \"We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph. Again Harvey smashed his fist down. \"Do you dare to repeat the scurvy failed. But that was understandable a sensitive soul like his could stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to\n\n<question>:\nDespite the menu prices for the restaurant food being remarkably low, how were Harvey and Joe met with an outrageous bill of 328 buckos?\n\n<options>:\nA They were charged for an insane amount of overhead.\nB They were charged for services and entertainment.\nC They didn't notice the additional zeros added on to the prices of the menu items\nD They were not informed of the tax charged onto the meal.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nBoys Do Bleed Fight Club is silly stuff, sensationalism that mistakes itself for satire, but it's also a brash and transporting piece of moviemaking, like Raging Bull on acid. The film opens with--literally--a surge of adrenalin, which travels through the bloodstream and into the brain of its protagonist, Jack (Edward Norton), who's viewed, as the camera pulls out of his insides, with a gun stuck in his mouth. How'd he get into this pickle? He's going to tell you, breezily, and the director, David Fincher, is going to illustrate his narrative--violently. Fincher ( Seven , 1995 The Game , 1997) is out to bombard you with so much feverish imagery that you have no choice but to succumb to the movie's reeling, punch-drunk worldview. By the end, you might feel as if you, too, have a mouthful of blood. Not to mention a hole in your head. Fight Club careers from one resonant satirical idea to the next without quite deciding whether its characters are full of crap or are Gen X prophets. It always gives you a rush, though. At first, it goofs on the absurd feminization of an absurdly macho culture. An increasingly desperate insomniac, Jack finds relief (and release) only at meetings for the terminally ill. At a testicular cancer group, he's enfolded in the ample arms of Bob (the singer Meat Loaf Aday), a former bodybuilder who ruined his health with steroids and now has \"bitch tits.\" Jack and Bob subscribe to a new form of male bonding: They cling to each other and sob. But Jack's idyll is rudely disrupted by--wouldn't you know it?--a woman. A dark-eyed, sepulchral head case named Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) begins showing up at all the same disparate meetings for essentially the same voyeuristic ends, and the presence of this \"tourist\" makes it impossible for Jack to emote. Jack finds another outlet, though. On a plane, he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a cryptic hipster with a penchant for subversive acts both large (he makes high-priced soaps from liposuctioned human fat) and small (he splices frames from porn flicks into kiddie movies). When Jack's apartment mysteriously explodes--along with his carefully chosen IKEA furniture--he moves into Tyler's squalid warehouse and helps to found a new religion: Fight Club, in which young males gather after hours in the basement of a nightclub to pound one another (and be pounded) to a bloody pulp. That last parenthesis isn't so parenthetical. In some ways, it's the longing to be beaten into oblivion that's the strongest. \"Self-improvement,\" explains Tyler, \"is masturbation\" self-destruction is the new way. Tyler's manifesto calls for an end to consumerism (\"Things you own end up owning you\"), and since society is going down (\"Martha Stewart is polishing brass on the Titanic \"), the only creative outlet left is annihilation. \"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything,\" he says. 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 An actress named Hilary Swank gives one of the most rapturous performances I've ever seen as the cross-dressing Brandon Teena (a k a Teena Brandon) in Kimberly Peirce's stark and astonishingly beautiful debut feature, Boys Don't Cry . The movie opens with Teena being shorn of her hated female tresses and becoming \"Brandon,\" who swaggers around in tight jeans and leather jackets. The joy is in watching the actor transform, and I don't just mean Swank: I mean Teena Brandon playing Brandon Teena--the role she has been longing for her whole life. In a redneck Nebraska bar, Brandon throws back a shot of whiskey and the gesture--a macho cliché--becomes an act of self-discovery. Every gesture does. \"You're gonna have a shiner in the morning,\" someone tells Brandon after a barroom brawl, and he takes the news with a glee that's almost mystical: \"I am????? Oh, shit!!!\" he cries, grinning. That might be my favorite moment in the picture, because Swank's ecstatic expression carries us through the next hour, as Brandon acts out his urban-cowboy fantasies--\"surfing\" from the bumper of a pickup truck, rolling in the mud, and straddling a barstool with one hand on a brewski and the other on the shoulder of a gorgeous babe. That the people with whom Brandon feels most at home would kill him if they knew his true gender is the movie's most tragic irony--and the one that lifts it out of the realm of gay-martyr hagiography and into something more complex and irreducible: a meditation on the irrelevance of gender. Peirce's triumph is to make these scenes at once exuberant (occasionally hilarious) and foreboding, so that all the seeds of Brandon's killing are right there on the screen. John (Peter Sarsgaard), one of his future rapists and murderers, calls him \"little buddy\" and seems almost attracted to him Though harrowing, the second half of Boys Don't Cry isn't as great as the first. The early scenes evoke elation and dread simultaneously, the later ones just dread and the last half-hour is unrelieved torture. What keeps the movie tantalizing is Chloë Sevigny's Lana, who might or might not know that Brandon is a girl but who's entranced by him anyway. With her lank hair, hooded eyes, and air of sleepy sensuality, Sevigny--maybe even more than Swank--embodies the mystery of sex that's at the core of Boys Don't Cry . Everything she does is deliberate, ironic, slightly unreadable--and unyielding. She's could be saying, \"I'm in this world but not of it. ... You'd never dream what's underneath.\" I n brief: If a friend tells you you'll love Happy Texas , rethink the friendship. This clunky mistaken-identity comedy about escaped cons who impersonate gay pageant directors doesn't even make sense on its own low farcical terms it's mostly one lame homo joke after another. The only bright spot is Steve Zahn, who could be the offspring of Michael J. Fox and Crispin Glover if they'd mated on the set of Back to the Future (1985).\n\n<question>:\nAccording to the reviewer of \"Boys Don't Cry,\" Brandon Teena feels more connected to their true identity by engaging in all of the following acts EXCEPT:\n\n<options>:\nA Confiding in their family\nB Getting dirty\nC Flirting with women\nD Drinking in a bar\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>:\n\"Well, it's still a favor.\" psychologists. Any DCT can stop being a DCT by simply asking for the a crime, get caught and be a hero ... an Ex Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] .\" psychologists to relieve tension. And—despite the treatment, Joe Joe's table. before in your life, because every time you start to loaf, a voice in \"Not sick. Drunk. Been trying to get drunk all afternoon.\" As the is like. You see, Joe, the treatment can't possibly take all the Joe's face reddened as Hendricks proceeded to call him a series of names. He wanted to smash the fat, grinning face, but the muscles in Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but agony. And above the pain, a voice whispered in his head, Unlawful to strike someone except in self-defense . He opened his mouth to tell Hendricks exactly what he thought of him, returned, and the mental voice whispered, Unlawful to curse . He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a that decision formed in his mind, his body froze, the pain returned and the voice, Unlawful to divulge CPA procedure . On the other side of the room, the jukebox came to life with a roar and 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 across the table and whispered in the girl's ear, \"That's what I \"I think it's a lousy, filthy system.\" Joe's head was still tingling was also inside his head, telling him he couldn't do this, couldn't do \"Let me out!\" Joe grabbed at the door and was on the sidewalk, slamming wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock He wanted to spit his contempt, but the increasingly familiar pain and voice prevented him. It was unlawful to spit on a sidewalk. 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 \"Scream,\" Joe said. \"Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get 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. \"What's the matter?\" Joe complained. \"I'm not asking you to do anything you scream?\" Joe inquired tiredly and advanced Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when became acutely aware of its lack of resiliency when his head struck it. stars and streaks of lightning through which he heard distant police When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, \"Okay. Snap out of it.\" posters and on their TV screens saw only the ugly face and heard only the harsh voice. The President of the United States was a capable \"Where's the girl?\" Joe asked. \"I processed her while you were out cold. She left. Joe, you—\" out and turned a dial on his desk top. \"We had a microphone hidden in Joe listened numbly to his voice as it came from one of the hundreds of voice, \" He waved his hand. \"Okay. Shut it off. I confess to conspiracy.\" had collapsed beneath him. Conspiracy to commit a crime wasn't a crime. Anyone could conspire. And if the conspirators were prevented from crime, and the CPA didn't punish crimes or attempted crimes, and it didn't attempt to prevent crimes by punishment. If it did, that would be a violation of the New Civil Rights. Hendricks crossed the room, deposited the card in a slot and punched a hoping you'll do something exciting, like trying to kill someone, so they can be the first ones to yell ' Police! \"Lay off,\" Joe said. \"I got a headache. That girl—\" \"Lay off!\" Joe squirmed in the chair. He'd been lectured by Hendricks before and Joe couldn't stand the breath in his face any longer. He rose and paced , Joe. It goes on and on. You'll be the you on the street and insult you, call you names, spit on you and—\" \"Okay, goddam it! Stop it! hate them as nothing has ever been hated before. Today a criminal is a freak, an alien. Your life will be a living hell 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 make me go?\" \"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.\" York who aren't properly protected. Every week we find people who aren't protected properly—blind spots in our protection devices. As soon as we find them, we take steps to install anti-robbery devices, but this is a big city and sometimes it takes days to get the work done. Joe stared at the door to the adjoining office as it closed behind the When Hendricks came back, Joe said, \"Thanks.\" \"Huh? Thanks for what? I didn't do anything.\" When Joe reached the street, he hurried toward the nearest subway. As a at ease. The uneasiness was, more than anything else, caused by his for someone to say the wrong thing. Everything the microphones picked microphones, but hidden television cameras that relayed visual messages poison, and while an ant-poison might kill ants, no concentrated amount that he could outshoot a pursuing policeman. But the robots were different: they weren't flesh and blood. Bullets bounced off them and their aim was infallible. It was like a fantastic dream come true. Only the dream wasn't heard them without thinking about them. And they were imprinted on his of other DCTs, Joe refused to believe it, and when he reached apartment When Joe entered the cubbyhole, he had to stand to one side in order to night and sleep, but where no normal man could live day after day. Fearing that someone might detect him before he actually committed the Thief! Police! Help! \" When Joe was securely handcuffed to a seat inside the helicopter, the reported a crime, but no one admitted shouting the warning. He was having a nightmare when he heard the voice, \"Hey. Wake up. Hey!\" he was still having the nightmare. As Joe dressed, he searched his mind and tried to find some difference. During the treatment, he had been unconscious or drugged, unable to think. Now he could think clearly, but he could find no difference in after-effect of all the sedatives he'd been given. And, he noticed when and he had, between operations, been locked in his room. Deliberately goading his mind, he discovered the biggest change: an ex -criminal now, and because of your treatment, you'll never be Joe didn't understand Hendricks completely, but the part he did before they do real damage. We use it as a last resort when a DCT First Class won't take the free psycho treatment or—\"\n\n<question>:\nWhich of the following was not heard by Joe as the voice in his head after his treatment?\n\n<options>:\nA Unlawful to curse.\nB Unlawful to divulge CPA procedure.\nC Unlawful to communicate with a DCT.\nD Unlawful to strike someone except in self-defense.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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235 | 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>:\nRevolt was brewing on Venus, led by the descendant of the first Earthmen to land. Svan was the leader making the final plans—plotting them a bit too well. just like us—\" \"You see?\" Svan clicked off the listening-machine and turned around. The five others in the room looked apprehensive. \"You see?\" Svan repeated. \"From their own mouths you have heard it. The Council was right.\" The younger of the two women sighed. She might have been beautiful, in spite of her dead-white skin, if there had been a scrap of hair on her head. \"Svan, I'm afraid,\" she said. \"Who are we to decide if this is a good thing? Our parents came from Earth. Perhaps there will be trouble at first, if colonists come, but we are of the same blood.\" Svan laughed harshly. \" They don't think so. You heard them. We are not human any more. The officer said it.\" The other woman spoke unexpectedly. \"The Council was right,\" she agreed. \"Svan, what must we do?\" Svan raised his hand, thoughtfully. \"One moment. Ingra, do you still The younger woman shrank back before the glare in his eyes. She looked around at the others, found them reluctant and uneasy, but visibly convinced by Svan. \"No,\" she said slowly. \"I do not object.\" \"And the rest of us? Does any of us object?\" Svan eyed them, each in turn. There was a slow but unanimous gesture of assent. \"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 complained. \"They have weapons. We cannot force them to stay.\" 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 Councilmen could not come to the city and see what strength the Like the girl, the old man retreated before his eyes. His voice was dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked. Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that with his hand, offered it to the girl. \"You first, Ingra,\" he said. himself took the last. All eyes were on him. No one had looked at their slips. 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 find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation. The other five will start back. Something will go wrong with the dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\" There was comprehension in their eyes, Svan saw ... but still that Almost he was disappointed. Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking up now, around at his neighbors. Svan waited impatiently for the chosen one to announce it—a second, ten seconds.... Then gray understanding came to him. indecision magnified, became opposition. Svan thought faster than ever before in his life. If there was a coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might be the one who had drawn the fatal slip. He could insist on inspecting every one, but—suppose the coward, cornered, fought back? In fractions of a second, Svan had considered the evidence and reached his decision. secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\" 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 \"Good,\" said Svan, observing them. \"The delegation is still here. We have ample time.\" He half turned in the broad front seat next to the driver, searching Ingra? Her aunt? One of the men? He clamped his lips. \"Go faster, Ingra,\" he ordered the girl who was The girl, Ingra, gasped something indistinguishable, slammed on the 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 is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a complicated gesture. \"Do you understand?\" \"By heaven, yes, I understand! You are the swine that caused this—\" He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was 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 no trace. 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.\" Ingra nodded, while the others remained mute. \"We must circle back Svan, listening, thought: It's not much of a plan. The guards would not be drawn away. I am glad I can't trust these five any more. If Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting off the seconds. \"Go ahead,\" he ordered. \"I will wait here.\" \"Svan.\" The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached for him, kissed him. \"Good luck to you, Svan,\" she said. \"Good luck,\" repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of 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? There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by 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. 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 was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare 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!\" \"Amazing,\" the surgeon said dryly. \"Well, they won't do any bombing now.\" Lowry was staring at the huddled, mutilated form of Svan. He shuddered. The surgeon, seeing the shudder, grasped his shoulder. \"Better them than us,\" he said. \"It's poetic justice if I ever saw it.\n\n<question>:\nHow did Ingra feel at the end?\n\n<options>:\nA Upset because she knew Svan planted a bomb in the car\nB Excited to fight the guards that were chasing them\nC Mad at Svan for his dangerous plan\nD Worried for Svan and all of them\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,704 | 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>:\nwhatever to it. It's obviously utterly impossible ... isn't it? An interview with Dr. I. M. Niemand, Director of the Psychophysical Institute of Solar and Terrestrial Relations, Camarillo, California. In the closing days of December, 1957, at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in New York, Dr. Niemand delivered a paper entitled simply, \"On the Nature of the Solar LATHAM. Haven't there been a great many correlations announced between LATHAM. But some are valid? NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that. LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating solar and terrestrial relationships along rather unorthodox lines. NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so. NIEMAND. That's true. LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of themselves are not the direct cause of the disturbances we have been NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had LATHAM. But weren't there reasons? NIEMAND. What reasons? LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of NIEMAND. I'm afraid that old stress-and-strain theory has been badly overworked. Been hearing about it ever since I was a pre-med student at Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk LATHAM. You must have done something for your patients— NIEMAND. A doctor must always do something for the patients who come to his office seeking help. First I gave them a thorough physical examination. I turned up some minor ailments—a slight heart murmur or a NIEMAND. Oh, yes. In a few cases in which I tried tranquilizing pills of Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all morning and five in the evening. Then there were these coincidences— LATHAM. Coincidences? NIEMAND. Total strangers miles apart were stricken at almost the same literature failed to reveal any connection with the Sun. LATHAM. What did you do? NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did, occurred to me: if people a few miles apart could be stricken simultaneously, why not people hundreds or thousands of miles apart? It was this idea that prompted me to get in touch with an old colleague of mine I had known at UC medical school, Dr. Max Hillyard, who was in LATHAM. With what result? NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would on receiving an answer by return mail to the effect that he also had identical symptoms as my own. Furthermore, upon exchanging records we did find that in many cases patients three thousand miles apart had been stricken simultaneously— NIEMAND. We say an attack is simultaneous when one occurred on the east gave us another clue. LATHAM. Which was? LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy— had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some connection with the Sun. LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first. NIEMAND. It certainly did. It looked as if we were headed back to the Middle Ages when astrology and medicine went hand in hand. But since it the consequences. Here luck played somewhat of a part, for Hillyard happened to have a contact that proved invaluable to us. Several years before Hillyard had gotten to know a young astrophysicist, Henry Middletown, who had come to him suffering from a severe case of myositis in the arms and shoulders. Hillyard had been able to effect a complete cure for which the boy was very grateful, and they had kept up a desultory correspondence. Middletown was now specializing in radio astronomy at the government's new solar observatory on Turtle Back Mountain in Arizona. If it had not been for Middletown's help I'm afraid our investigation would never have gotten past the clinical stage. LATHAM. In what way was Middletown of assistance? NIEMAND. It was the old case of workers in one field of science being completely ignorant of what was going on in another field. Someday we in tight little compartments as we do at present. Well, Hillyard and I packed up for Arizona with considerable misgivings. We were afraid Middletown wouldn't take our findings seriously but somewhat to our surprise he heard our story with the closest attention. I guess astronomers have gotten so used to hearing from flying saucer enthusiasts and science-fiction addicts that nothing surprises them any more. When we had finished he asked to see our records. Hillyard had NIEMAND. It was really quite simple. But if it had not been for Middletown produced another chart that showed the connection with the NIEMAND. I said that the lines drawn down through the days of greatest were dated under one another not at intervals of twenty-seven days, but NIEMAND. Middletown was immediately struck by the resemblance between solar chart but with this difference. The disturbances on the Earth started two days later on the average than the disturbances due to the forty-eight hours between the two. But otherwise they were almost identical. LATHAM. But if these S-Regions of Middletown's are invisible how could he detect them? optical telescope, but are detected with ease by a radio telescope. Middletown had discovered them when he was a graduate student working on radio astronomy in Australia, and he had followed up his researches with the more powerful equipment at Turtle Back Mountain. The formation of an NIEMAND. Apparently an S-Region is not particularly effective when it is NIEMAND. We don't account for it. NIEMAND. Middletown says that the radio waves emanating from them are strongly circularly polarized. Moreover, the sense of rotation remains constant while one is passing across the Sun. If the magnetic field NIEMAND. Our latest results indicate that probably entirely different region of the Sun. Sometimes there may be several different S-Regions all going at once. LATHAM. Why were not the S-Regions discovered long ago? NIEMAND. Because the radio exploration of the Sun only began since the end of World War II. LATHAM. How does it happen that you only got patients suffering from NIEMAND. I think we did get such patients previously but not in large NIEMAND. I'm afraid the only sure way is to keep on the unilluminated NIEMAND. That is the logical outcome of our investigation. We are LATHAM. Could we not be warned of the presence of an S-Region? NIEMAND. The trouble is they seem to develop at random on the Sun. I'm afraid any warning system would be worse than useless. We would be LATHAM. How may a person who is not particularly susceptible to this malignant radiation know that one of these regions is active? NIEMAND. If you have a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, if you are Middletown believes that the Intense radiation recently discovered from information derived from Explorer I and III has no connection with the corpuscular S-radiation.\n\n<question>:\nWhat would have happened if Drs. Niemand and Hillyard had not visited Henry Middletown?\n\n<options>:\nA They would have traveled to Australia to talk to a specialist\nB They would have totally given up on their research\nC They would have been missing a key point of connection that allowed them to move their work forward\nD They would have talked to a radio astronomer at a different observatory\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nMore Bang for the Buck A friend of mine offers a theory about why Bill Clinton's poll numbers stayed so high throughout the Lewinsky scandal: The news made it possible for serious-minded people to spend lots of time--at the office and over lunch--talking about semen stains, vaginal insertions, and blow jobs. And the people were grateful. That's probably because they're not getting all that much themselves. A recent University of Chicago survey of 10,000 adults found that Americans are having considerably less sex than was generally thought. Only one American in 20 has sex three times a week. One in five didn't score at all last year. If that's true, many of us could use a little sexual self-improvement. Not me, of course. I have been happily married for 26 years, since the age of 21. Deb and I have what seems to us to be a perfectly fine amorous life, yet everywhere I turn the culture tells me--almost mocks me-- you can do better! What would happen to our sex life then, if Deb (who participated in this story because she loves me and because she has tenure) and I tried for the first time to make something happen to it? And so it was that we found ourselves for the first time ever in a sex-toy store, A Touch of Romance, located near our home in Los Angeles, across the street from a Macy's. The idea behind shops like these is to make obtaining the materials of sexual experimentation as ordinary as purchasing plumbing supplies or housewares. Which sort of works--the only sexual thrill I got from the visit was knowing that Microsoft just bought a cock ring. Choosing it wasn't easy. Most of them came in presized sets of three. I couldn't figure out which would fit right and intuited that try-ons weren't an option. So I opted instead for an adjustable circumference version, a little strip of vinyl with snaps for $11.95. Man, what a rip-off! Unless it works. It doesn't. Back home, I derived a certain depraved buzz in cinching the device on, but that was soon eclipsed. The thing works on the Roach Motel principle--your blood gets in but it can't get out. But then I got to thinking: Under battlefield conditions it doesn't get out anyway. And while I should have been paying more attention to other things, this led to thinking about the old joke with the punch line \"... and right ball go POW.\" My wife hadn't noticed any difference at all. Overall rating, on a scale of 1 to 10: 2 toes curled. A woman I know says women's magazines are the best places in America to find sex tips. She's right--go ahead, just try to find a sewing pattern in Redbook . You're much more likely to land on \"Try phone sex, dirty notes, porn videos, fantasy games and sex in new places. ... Try lingerie and no underwear. ... Try talking dirty and silk scarves. Try anything at all,\" or articles such as \"Eight New Games for the Foreplay Challenged.\" An article in the April Cosmopolitan , \"The Six Best Sex Positions,\" seemed more promising than the Redbook playbook. Each position was accompanied by a succinct write-up and a stick-figure diagram. The position we settled on was \"The Butterfly,\" which we had to read three times to comprehend. The man stands, the woman remains supine on a bed or counter-top with her feet up on his shoulders. The whole idea is to produce a pelvic tilt for better access to the G spot. Instead, we experienced an uncomfortable pretzel feeling that stick figures must be immune to. And in general, Cosmopolitan 's exotic sex positions require the sort of body placement you can't remember in the moment of passion and even if you could, for proper alignment, you still might need mood-killing accessories such as a plumb line and a laser pen. Rating: 3 toes curled. Next we tried those \"Better Sex\" instructional videos advertised in the New York Times Book Review. I ordered Better Sexual Techniques , Advanced Sexual Techniques , Making Sex Fun , and Advanced Oral Sex Techniques (priced about $11.95 each, not including shipping and handling). My wife couldn't bear to watch them Another approach is food. The notion that certain foods, such as oysters or rhino horn, are aphrodisiacs has been pretty much discounted. But it's plausible to think that cooking a meal together and then dining on it, just the two of you, could be erotic. Especially if (like me) your schedule frequently forces you to eat alone and you often find yourself standing in front of the microwave, screaming, \"Come on, goddammit!\" Intercourses , by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge ($24.95, Terrace Publishing, 1997), preaches that for every time of day and every phase of a relationship there is a type of eating experience that will heighten sexual response. (There's also a chart showing which foods are good for eating off which body parts.) Deb and I blocked off a whole Saturday afternoon and evening for the Intercourses experiment, settling on rosemary-scented lamb over pasta (Page 87) followed by frozen coffee almond dessert (Page 31). According to the book, rosemary is sexy because of its fragrance (used in many perfumes) and because of its texture, which, so the text assured, tickles nerve endings. The dessert was mostly coffee, rum, and Kahlua, which has worked before. We shopped for the food together and cooked together, drinking wine and beer along the way. At one point while I was working on the dessert, I asked my wife how long to beat the heavy cream mixture. \"Till it's stiff--it's an aphrodisiac,\" she said. Preparation took less than an hour, and everything came out perfectly. Eating at our dining room table for the first time ever without guests, we were having fun by candlelight. But the mood was romantic, not erotic. Overall rating: 4 toes curled. This is not to say there isn't a way out of this conflict between desire and design. With homage to our potent POTUS, there is, I think, a Third Way that's neither sexual complacency nor standard self-help. If the intrusion of consciousness is the problem, then maybe the answer is to block it out. Sure, you could do this the old-fashioned way: with alcohol and drugs. But then you have all the traditional drawbacks, including diminished physical attractiveness and degraded sexual performance. So how about this instead? Go for all the sexual self-help you can, but do it covertly . Watch a sex video (or porn flick) if you want--but by yourself, and then try to share what you learned without sharing how you learned it. Don't tell your partner you took Viagra. Or give each other standing permission to slip it into the odd after-dinner drink, saying nothing. (Of course, when you do it you'll still know, but having an unselfconsciously turned-on partner is a real compensation for that, and next time, your partner can surprise you. And yes, this requires trust. But why would you be having sex with someone you don't trust?) My main conclusion is that contrary to our blabby culture, the key to a better sex life is less communication.\n\n<question>:\nWhat does the author mean when stating: \"And the people were grateful\"?\n\n<options>:\nA Serious-minded people enjoyed the opportunity to discuss sexual matters because they wanted to investigate why the average American adult is sexually deprived.\nB People like to gossip about other people's private sexual lives.\nC President Clinton's approval ratings stayed up because people love sex scandals and found themselves justified in openly speaking of these matters.\nD Since Americans are having considerably less sex than was generally thought, people were relieved for the opportunity to openly speak of sexual matters.\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>:\nJack 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\" self-destruction is the new way. Tyler's manifesto calls for an end to consumerism (\"Things you own end up owning you\"), and since society is going down (\"Martha Stewart is polishing brass on the Titanic \"), the only creative outlet left is annihilation. \"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything,\" he says. 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?) 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. An actress named Hilary Swank gives one of the most rapturous performances I've ever seen as the cross-dressing Brandon Teena (a k a Teena Brandon) in Kimberly Peirce's stark and astonishingly beautiful debut feature, Boys Don't Cry . The movie opens with Teena being shorn of her hated female tresses and becoming \"Brandon,\" who swaggers around in tight jeans and leather jackets. The joy is in watching the actor transform, and I don't just mean Swank: I mean Teena Brandon playing Brandon Teena--the role she has been longing for her whole life. In a redneck Nebraska bar, Brandon throws back a shot of whiskey and the gesture--a macho cliché--becomes an act of self-discovery. Every gesture does. \"You're gonna have a shiner in the morning,\" someone tells Brandon after a barroom brawl, and he takes the news with a glee that's almost mystical: \"I am????? Oh, shit!!!\" he cries, grinning. That might be my favorite moment in the picture, because Swank's ecstatic expression carries us through the next hour, as Brandon acts out his urban-cowboy fantasies--\"surfing\" from the bumper of a pickup truck, rolling in the mud, and straddling a barstool with one hand on a brewski and the other on the shoulder of a gorgeous babe. and the last half-hour is unrelieved torture. What keeps the movie tantalizing is Chloë Sevigny's Lana, who might or might not know that Brandon is a girl but who's entranced by him anyway. With her lank hair, hooded eyes, and air of sleepy sensuality, Sevigny--maybe even more than Swank--embodies the mystery of sex that's at the core of Boys Don't Cry . Everything she does is deliberate, ironic, slightly unreadable--and unyielding. She's could be saying, \"I'm in this world but not of it. ... You'd never dream what's underneath.\" I n brief: If a friend tells you you'll love Happy Texas , rethink the friendship. This clunky mistaken-identity comedy about escaped cons who impersonate gay pageant directors doesn't even make sense on its own low farcical terms it's mostly one lame homo joke after another. The only bright spot is Steve Zahn, who could be the offspring of Michael J. Fox and Crispin Glover if they'd mated on the set of Back to the Future (1985).\n\n<question>:\nWhich terms describe how the reviewers compare Brad Pitt's performance to Hilary Swank's, respectively?\n\n<options>:\nA Irritating / Courageous\nB Facetious / Naive\nC Disjointed / Measured\nD Conceited / Captivating\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>:\nSocial Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called Sharism. Sharism suggests a re-orientation of personal values. We see it in User Generated Content. It is the pledge of Creative Commons. It is in the plans of future-oriented cultural initiatives. Sharism is also a 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 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 share, her sharing paths will stay open. Sharism will be kept in her 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 not, what they defend as “cultural goods” and “intellectual property” are just excuses for the status quo of keeping a community closed. Much potential gains of sharing. This lost knowledge is a black hole in our life, which may start to swallow other values as well. Non-sharing culture misleads us with its absolute separation of Private and Public space. It makes creative action a binary choice between public and private, open and closed. This creates a gap in the spectrum of knowledge. Although this gap has the potential to become a valuable creative space, concerns about privacy make this gap hard to fill. We shouldn’t be surprised that, to be safe, most people keep their sharing private and stay “closed.” They may fear the Internet creates a potential for abuse that they can’t fight alone. However, the paradox is: The less you share, the less power you have. New Technologies and the Rise of Sharism Let’s track back to 1999, when there were only a few hundred pioneer Otherwise, you might lose the power of sharing. Permanently. You might need something to spur you on, to keep you from quitting and 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 not only for you, but for the whole of society. If you so choose, you 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 be to attain well- balanced and equitable Social Media that is woven by control over copyrighted content will lead to noticeable deficits in that this was a possibility. But things are changing today. The sharing environment is more protected than you might think. Many new social applications make it easy to set terms-of-use along your sharing path. Furthermore, by realizing all the immediate and emergent rewards that can be had by sharing, you may eventually find that copyright and “All Rights Reserved” are far from your mind. You will enjoy sharing too much to worry about who is keeping a copy. The new economic formula is, the more people remix your works, the higher the return. I want to point out that Sharism is not Communism, nor Socialism. As for those die- hard Communists we know, they have often abused people’s sharing nature and forced them to give up their rights, and their property. Socialism, that tender Communism, in our experience also lacked respect for these rights. Under these systems, the state owns all to share. And this is how I choose to spread ideas, and prosperity 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 social indexing of information) to enable people to make queries, share data and remix information for public use. The collective intelligence of a vast and equitable sharing environment can be the gatekeeper of our rights, and a government watchdog. In the future, policymaking can be Representative democracy will become more timely and diligent, because we will represent ourselves within the system. Sharism will result in better social justice. In a healthy sharing environment, any evidence of injustice can get amplified to get the public’s attention. Anyone who has been abused can get real and instant more sociable, and society more individual. We no longer have to act alone. the majority. Since Sharism can improve communication, collaboration and mutual understanding, I believe it has a place within the educational system. Sharism can be applied to any cultural discourse, CoP (Community of Practice) or problem-solving context. It is also an antidote to social depression, since sharelessness is just dragging our society down. In present or formerly totalitarian countries, this downward cycle is even more apparent. The future world will be a hybrid of human and machine that will generate better and faster decisions anytime, anywhere. The flow of information between minds will become more flexible and more productive. These vast networks of sharing will create a new social order−A Mind Revolution!\n\n<question>:\nHow does the author contradict their promises that sharing will produce a more equitable society?\n\n<options>:\nA By allowing anyone from anywhere to publish anything, a lack of credibility and accuracy in content means that people living in poverty are more likely to be taken advantage of\nB By equating sharing with equity, those who do not share will inevitably be denied access to certain benefits\nC By connecting creativity to cultural capital, those who are more logical and scientific thinkers will be marginalized\nD By comparing sharing to human neural activity, the author implies that humans who have a preference not to share are 'less than' and will be treated differently\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nby 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 plans—plotting them a bit too well. \"Acclimation,\" Lowry said scientifically. \"They had to acclimate themselves to Venus's climate. They're friendly enough.\" 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. head. \"Svan, I'm afraid,\" she said. \"Who are we to decide if this agreed. \"Svan, what must we do?\" convinced by Svan. \"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 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 dull. \"What is your plan?\" he asked. Svan smiled, and it was like a dark flame. He reached to a box at his feet, held up a shiny metal globe. \"One of us will plant this in the 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.\" He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin No answer. Svan jerked his head. \"Good,\" he said. \"Ingra, bring me that slips. 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 find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation. it. And the sixth person will have his chance to steal to the side of the ship. The bomb is magnetic. It will not be noticed in the dark—they will take off before sunrise, because they must travel away from the sun to return—in forty hours the danger is removed.\" 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 coward, it would do no good to unmask him. All were wavering, any might beneath the table, marked his own slip. In the palm of his hand, Svan held up the slip he had just marked in secret. His voice was very tired as he said, \"I will plant the bomb.\" 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 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 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 Svan stepped closer, his teeth bared in what passed for a smile. \"It is urgent,\" he purred. His right hand flashed across his chest in a He strove instinctively to bring the clumsy rifle up, but Svan was nails—Svan battered at the astonished man with every ounce of strength Svan rose, panting, stared around. No one else was in sight, save the petrified five and the ground car. Svan glared at them contemptuously, 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. Svan hesitated only a fraction of a second after the girl turned the Svan, listening, thought: It's not much of a plan. The guards would 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 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? jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed lights of the Earth-ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by 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 was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare 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 is Svan’s revenge plan?\n\n<options>:\nA Svan wants to blow up the Earth ship when it takes off next. He plans to do this by having his five insurgent friends distract the Earth ship guards by crashing their ground car into a swamp, while he sneaks around the back and plants a magnetic Atomite bomb on the ship, causing it to explode when it breaks out of Venus’s atmosphere.\nB Svan wants to blow up the Council ship when it takes off for Earth. He plans to do this by having his five insurgent friends distract the Earth ship guards with fireworks, while he sneaks around the back and plants a magnetic Atomic bomb on the ship, causing it to explode when it breaks out of Venus’s atmosphere.\nC Svan wants to blow up the Earth ship when it takes off. He plans to do this by having his five insurgent friends distract the human-looking guards by killing one of them, while he sneaks around the back and plants a magnetic hydrogen bomb on the ship, causing it to explode when it breaks out of Venus’s atmosphere.\nD Svan wants to blow up the Earth ship when it takes off for Venus. He plans to do this by having his insurgent friends distract the Earth ship guards with bird calls, while he sneaks around the back and plants a grenade on the ship, causing it to explode when it breaks out of Earth’s atmosphere.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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911 | 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>:\nNo movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: \"Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?\" Or \"This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?\" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather. Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike another, skeletal, laughs and laughs a third weeps over a dying comrade. The face of a Japanese soldier encased in earth speaks from the dead, \"Are you righteous? Know that I was, too.\" Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's \"rosy-fingered dawn\" and orders a meaningless bombardment to \"buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell.\" Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the dying and the dead at bay. A tiny bird, mortally wounded, flutters in the grass. Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: \"Where is it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind.\" I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some concomitant geopolitical ones--central to any larger musings on forces of nature as viewed through the prism of war. Couldn't it be that the German and Japanese fascist orders were profoundly anti-natural, and that the Allies' cause was part of a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's lectures on just and unjust wars. Maybe then he'd view Guadalcanal not in an absurdist vacuum (the soldiers come, they kill and are killed, they leave) but in the larger context of a war that was among the most rational (in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness. John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria. Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also gets sterling bit performances from Sydney Pollack as the spookily sanguine Grace CEO, William H. Macy as Schlichtmann's rabbity accountant, and Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of one of the victims. Quinlan knows that when you're playing a woman who has lost a child you don't need to emote--you reveal the emotion by trying not to emote.\n\n<question>:\nAccording to the film reviewer, what is the central irony of Malick's directorial performance? Convincing at chaos but gummed up when he ruminates on order\n\n<options>:\nA His desire to stand out from directors in the war genre ultimately fails, as \"Thin Red Line\" adheres too closely to similar war epics\nB His depiction of disarray is believable, but when it comes to portrayal of the mundane, his narration is occluded\nC He relies (overwhelmingly) on questioning in the dialogue of the script, yet the questions are ultimately never answered\nD His overly visceral battle scenes ultimately fail to evoke strong emotions from his audience\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
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2,072 | 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>:\nEvery writer must seek his own Flowery Kingdom in imagination's wide demesne, and if that search can begin and end on Earth his problem has been greatly simplified. In post-war Japan Walt Sheldon has found not only serenity, but complete freedom to write undisturbed about the things he treasures most. A one-time Air Force officer, he has turned to fantasy in his lighter moments, to bring us such brightly sparkling little gems as this. houlihan's that the small people with their by ... Walt Sheldon The tiny spaceship had been built for a journey to a star. But its quick eyes and clever fingers could spot all sorts of minute shortcomings equation The working model and the fact small, mischievous pilots had a rendezvous with destiny—on Earth. was a great help. And I was On the sixteenth day I covered a piece of paper with tiny mathematical symbols and handed it to Keech. I must and under all conditions of friction and combustion.\" \"Thank you, Mr. Houlihan,\" said coefficient of discharge for the matter \"Mr. Houlihan,\" said Keech, us control, we would have lacked a workable equation when we set about putting the first moon rocket \"And now, Mr. Houlihan,\" said around those extraordinary engines of ours, which were still in the undeveloped blueprint stage. I see I shall have to explain this, It is not difficult to understand why. the entire problem all but whipped. proportional to the square root of the pressure-head driving it. of nuclear explosion—which is what the drive amounts to despite the fact that it is simply water in now, do you hear, for Mr. Houlihan—friend which nuclear salts have been previously and structure— Oh, there is so much of this that if you're not a nuclear engineer yourself it's certain to weary you. Perhaps you had better take my word for it that without this equation—correctly stated, mind you—mankind would be well advised not And all this talk of coefficients and how I had gotten the best of the little people. Surely it was not every named Kevin Francis Houlihan. But I am, after all, a scientist. If I had not been a specialist in my field I would hardly have found myself engaged in vital research at the mortal who could accomplish that. I had given them the wrong equation, say, upon the tongue of a man of course. They would never get their spaceship to work now, and center. St. Patrick's Day. For I had indeed determined the true coefficient of discharge, which I never could have absent-minded. I tiptoed to the edge of the trees, not wanting to deprive his working model. It would go down in scientific literature now, I suppose, as Houlihan's Equation, and that was honor and glory enough for me. I could do without Keech's pot of gold, with a crank face. He was beating though it would have been pleasant There was no sense in cheating him out of the gold to boot, for leprechauns are most clever in matters of this sort and he would have to be truly rich for a change. made it a burden in some way. Indeed, I had done a piece of work greatly to my advantage, and also to the advantage of humankind, and when a man can do the first and include the second as a fortunate byproduct had it back soon enough—or else For if I had shown the little people how to make a spaceship they would have left our world. And it is a most happy accident. on my tenth birthday. And I had become convinced they could never work! You'll not be needin' to mind that man standin' there! You know he can't see nor hear us!\" for us to believe in every now and then? Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. wanted their crock of gold, of course. I'd be entitled to it if I could catch one and keep him. Or so the legends affirmed, though I've wondered often about the truth of them. But I was after no gold. I only wanted even if I had latched on to a fine job of work for almost shamefully generous pay. You see, in a place as full of science as the nuclear propulsion course it was a spaceship, or a almost miraculously complete and workable. I shook my head in wonder, then me apprehensively. I lifted my Houlihan of the Roscommon Houlihans. I am descended from King Niall himself—or so at least my father used to say! Come on out now, and pass the time o' day!\" Then I waited, but they didn't a resounding blow with my fist. The leader—he seemed more \"And mine's Houlihan, as I've \"Mr. Houlihan,\" said Keech, up about himself, \"in such matters I am never fully convinced. After living for many centuries I am all too acutely aware of the perversity of human nature.\" \"Yes,\" I said. \"Well, as you will quickly see, all I want to do is Houlihan.\" Houlihan. And afterward we'll appreciate leave us to our work.\" \"Well, now, your work,\" I said, and glanced at the spaceship. \"That's exactly what's got me curious.\" astonish \"It just so happens I'm a doctor of science.\" \"A doctor of science, now,\" said \"A scientist, is it,\" said Keech. \"Well, now, that's very interesting.\" \"I'll make no apologies for it,\" I we prefer poets to scientists. But it has just now crossed my mind, Mr. Houlihan that you, being a scientist, might be of help to us.\" \"How?\" I asked. beginning,\" he replied. \"You might,\" I said. \"A man \"But continue.\" \"We had to come here,\" said Keech, \"to learn how to make a adopting some of the \"Leprechauns are not really mechanically inclined,\" said Keech. \"Their major passions are music and laughter and mischief, as anyone knows.\" \"Myself included,\" I agreed. \"Then why do you need a spaceship?\" \"Well, if I may use an old expression, would a man unravel a statement such as that?\" \"It's very simple. With all the I was inclined to suggest the but I was hooted down. Be that as it make the ship, and proceed with its construction. Naturally, we didn't understand all of your high-flyin' science, but some of our people are What's important is for us to get and then we'll be on our way.\" \"You're determined to go.\" \"Truly we are, Mr. Houlihan. has crossed my mind. That's why I'm wastin' all this time with you, sir. You say you are a scientist.\" \"A nuclear engineer.\" \"Well, then, it may be that you can help us—now that you know \"Help you?\" \"The power control, Mr. Houlihan. As I understand it, 'tis necessary to know at any instant exactly \"Whatever it might be named,\" said Keech, shrugging. \"'Tis the one thing we lack. I suppose eventually not with humor, \"the avarice of humans! I knew it! Well, Mr. Houlihan, I'll give you reason enough. The pot o' gold, Mr. Houlihan!\" any small scalawags of their pleasure, enough to make you rich for the in the glade with Keech and about the whole project. It was a most fascinating session. I had often wished for a true working paper and pencil and I talked with the aid of diagrams, as engineers are wont to do. Although the pencils were small and I had to hold as you would a needle, I was able to make many sensible observations and even a few innovations. every day for the following two weeks. It rained several times, but Keech and his people made a or anything the leprechauns had made, not being believers. I would halt work, pass the time of day, and then, in subtle fashion,\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Houlihan consider his work to the advantage of humankind?\n\n<options>:\nA He has furthered the goals of the little people, and not just the humans, making Earth a better place\nB He thought taking advantage of the little people's project to further his own goals was in line with human ideals\nC He thinks that sabatoging the little people will be better for the goals of humans\nD He thought human goals of scientific advancement could not be completed without his work\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,581 | 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.\" in American Beauty , it's Ricky Fitts, the damaged stoner videomaker next door, who sees beauty where nonartists see only horror or nothingness. In the film's most self-consciously poetic set piece, Ricky shows Lester's dour daughter Jane--in whom he recognizes a kindred spirit--a video of a plastic bag fluttering up, down, and around on invisible currents of wind. Ricky speaks of glimpsing in the bag's trajectory an \"entire life behind things\"--a \"benevolent force\" that holds the universe together. The teen-ager, who likes to train his lenses on dead bodies of animals and people, sells wildly expensive marijuana to Lester and somehow passes on this notion of \"beauty.\" By the end, Lester is mouthing the same sentiments and has acquired the same deadpan radiance. That must be some really good shit they're smoking. It's not the druggy philosophizing, however, that makes American Beauty an emotional workout. It's that the caricatures are grounded in sympathy instead of derision. Everyone on screen is in serious pain. The manipulative sexpot Angela, who taunts her friend Jane with the idea of seducing her dad, acts chiefly out of a terror of appearing ordinary. As the military martinet, Cooper goes against the grain, turning Col. Fitts into a sour bulldog whose capaciously baggy eyes are moist with sadness over his inability to reach out. (When he stands helplessly in the rain at the end, the deluge completes him.) The character of Carolyn is so shrill as to constitute a libel on the female sex, but there isn't a second when Bening sends the woman up. She doesn't transcend the part, she fills it to the brim, anatomizes it. You can't hate Carolyn because the woman is trying so hard--to appear confident, composed, in control. When she fails to sell that house, she closes the shades and lets go with a naked wail--it's the sound of a vacuum crying to be filled--then furiously slaps herself while sputtering, \"Shut up--you're weak--shut up. \" Then she breathes, regains her go-get-'em poise, replaces her mask. Carolyn isn't a complicated dramatic construction, but Bening gives her a primal force. An actress who packs more psychological detail into a single gesture than others get into whole scenes, Bening was barreling down the road to greatness before she hit a speed bump called Warren. It's a joy to observe her--both here and in Neil Jordan's In Dreams (1999)--back at full throttle.\n\n<question>:\nHow does the author feel about the characters in American Beauty?\n\n<options>:\nA They are stale.\nB They are melodramatic.\nC They are stereotypically caricatured.\nD They are fresh.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,829 | 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>:\nagainst Jakdane's bunk—propelled himself like a projectile at Quest. he was going to meet Asrange's There was only one question: Was he human? Trella feared she was in they shifted restlessly in their chairs. Trella had not wanted to come holding his hands in front of him as if to ward it off. In a moment, Jakdane and the other crewman had reached Asrange and pulled him off. When they had Asrange in irons, Jakdane turned to Quest, who was now sitting unhappily Jakdane insisted on examining her around the waist with a steely arm. Trella swung with her whole body, and slapped him so hard he nearly fell from his chair. As demanded Jakdane. “You could have, easily.” and turned his face away. Later, alone with Trella on the control deck, Jakdane gave her some sober advice. “I couldn't,” said Quest miserably, “Why? Because he's a coward? “Not because he's a coward. Because he's an android!” “What? Jakdane, you can't be It all figures. “Look, Trella, he said he was born on Jupiter. A human could stand the gravity of Jupiter, inside necessary to break free of Jupiter? Here's a man strong enough to break a spaceship safety belt just by getting his father,” protested Trella. “Robots and androids frequently look on their makers as their parents,” said Jakdane. “Quest may not even know he's 57 his quarry and swung a huge fist like a sledgehammer. Exactly what happened, Trella Quest made his rocket flight to of Jupiter, if he's human?” Trella was silent. “For the protection of humans, there are two psychological and Kregg sank stunned to his knees. The dark man, who had grabbed Trella's arm, released her and ran for the door. man Quest to a T, Trella. There is no other explanation for him: he must be an android.” Moving agilely around the end Jakdane was right, but his reasoning “Those characteristics fit your Trella did not want to believe was unassailable. Looking you!” Kregg stumbled to his feet his refusal to defend himself against a human, his inability to return Trella's love for him. It was not inconceivable that and staggered out. Trella ran to the unconscious Motwick's side. “That means you, too, lady,” she should have unknowingly had not told Quest of her mission to Ganymede. He thought he was Dr. Mansard's son, but would leave it to Dom Blessing to decide what to do about Quest. Quest about seeing him again after she had completed her assignment. Even if Jakdane was wrong and Quest was human—as now seemed unlikely—Quest with her for a later meeting. “It has been pleasant knowing you, Trella,” he said when they left the G-boat at White Sands. A faraway look came into his we can't help,” she said gently, taking his hand in farewell. Trella took a fast plane from White Sands, and twenty-four He followed Trella out the door of the Golden Satellite and fell in step beside her. Immediately hours later walked up the front though he lifted a feather pillow. vari-colored disc of Jupiter itself, riding high in the sky. “I'm Quest Mansard, Miss,” said her companion. “I'm just in from Jupiter.” “I'm Trella Nuspar,” she said, favoring him with a green-eyed glance. “You mean Io, don't you—or Jupiter. It would be impossible “My parents landed on Jupiter, I should tell you about.” She told him about Quest. “He thinks he's the son of Dr. he is, without knowing it, an android Dr. Mansard built on Jupiter.” “He came back to Earth with “It was drawn into Jupiter, but he landed it successfully,” said Quest. “He and my mother ship was drawn into Jupiter and he's an android and claim ownership as Dr. Mansard's heir.” Trella planned to spend a few days resting in her employer's spacious home, and then to take a short vacation before resuming lived on Jupiter until the oxygen landing on Jupiter, why didn't again?” she demanded. “Because,” said Quest, “his radio was sabotaged, just as his ship's drive was.” Trella could think of. Without actually intending from here, but the Stellar Hotel wasn't far. They walked on. Trella had the desk clerk call a cab to deliver the unconscious Motwick to his home. She and admiring her honey-colored hair and comely face. “I'm heading for Earth on the next spaceship.” “We'll be traveling companions, then,” she said. “I'm going back on that ship, too.” Quest came the day before she was scheduled to leave. Trella was in the living room with Blessing, discussing the instructions she was to give to the to assign her to take the Earth. Motwick was an irresponsible playboy whom Trella had known briefly on Earth, and Trella was glad to dispense with his company for the remaining three weeks before the spaceship blasted off. She found herself enjoying the steadier companionship He and his bodyguards ran about feeling drawn to a man who was a coward. The ship that they boarded on Moon Nine was one of the newer ships that could attain a hundred-mile-per-second Earth, but it would still require fifty-four days to make the trip. So Trella was delighted to find that the ship was the Cometfire and its skipper was her old friend, dark-eyed, curly-haired Jakdane Gille. “Jakdane,” she said, flirting Quest was after it, like a chunky deer, running faster than Trella had ever seen a man laughing. “What's your trouble, Trella?” “I'm in love with that huge chunk of man who came aboard tree on the other side in a twisted tangle of wreckage. With a horrified gasp, Trella ran down the driveway toward the smoking heap of metal. till we get to Earth.” “If it's to keep you out of another fellow's clutches, I'm your “But why, Quest? I knew he inner planets. There were four crew members and three passengers aboard the ship's tiny personnel sphere, and Trella was thrown with Quest almost constantly. She enjoyed every minute back to Earth. She was tempted rights to the surgiscope, and he sabotaged the ship's drive so it would fall into Jupiter. “But my father was able to control it in the heavy atmosphere of Jupiter, and landed it to tell him what the papers were. to Earth and track down Blessing. More gently than Trella would have believed possible for his Jupiter-strong muscles, Quest done.” Trella disengaged herself. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Don't you know this, too, now: that “Why, Quest, it's obvious,” up on Jupiter, and he operated When it was found at last, he sent Trella, his most trusted secretary, to Ganymede to bring back to him the notebooks found Trella looked at him. He was not badly hurt, any more than of this, Trella was tempted to tell Quest the good news do this his own way, and he might not appreciate her meddling. At midtrip, Trella made a rueful confession to Jakdane. “It seems I was taking unnecessary She expected Jakdane to salve crewmen on that particular waking shift (including Jakdane) were eating lunch on the center-deck. Quest picked up his bulb\n\n<question>:\nWhy is Jakdane going to Earth?\n\n<options>:\nA Jakdane is a corporate spy from Moon 5 on a mission to infiltrate Dom Blessing's organization.\nB Jakdane is following Trella to Earth because he is stalking her.\nC Jakdane is transferring from his company's office on Ganymede to the corporate headquarters on Earth.\nD Jakdane is the captain of the ship that Trella and Quest are taking to earth.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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625 | 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>:\nCAKEWALK TO GLORYANNA The job was easy. The profit was enormous. The only trouble was—the cargo had a will of its own! Captain Hannah climbed painfully down from the Delta Crucis , hobbled Then, although still somewhat dubious about it, she let us go together across the field to the spaceport bar. I didn't ask Captain Hannah why he had socked me. Although he has never been a handsome man, he usually has the weathered and austere dignity that comes from plying the remote reaches among the stars. Call it the Look of Eagles. Captain Hannah had lost tell me about it?\" I decided that his wince was intended for a nod, and ordered rhial. I only drink rhial when I've been exposed to Captain Hannah. It was almost a pleasure to think that I the field with her two-ton infant in tow, to show her off to Hannah. I they relented and, for the first time in history, gave their assent. In fact, they had seemed delighted. \"I got them there safely,\" said Captain Hannah. \"And they are growing all right?\" I persisted. ourselves to hauling a full load of it?\" asked Captain Hannah. \"We couldn't,\" I protested. \"The Myporians gave us a deadline. If we had gone through all of that rigamarole, we would have lost the and they can only take a few extra hours of night time before they run down.\" \"Oh,\" said Captain Hannah in quiet tones of controlled desperation, \"it was very simple. I just put enough spin on the ship to make artificial \"Not yet,\" said Captain Hannah. \"Like you, I figured I had the situation fairly well under control, but like you, I hadn't thought things through. The plastic membranes hadn't torn when we brought the to do, I tried to translate what I could of the Myporian instructions. It was on page eleven that it mentioned casually that the midges—the correct word is carolla—are a necessary part of the life cycle of the marocca. The larvae provide an enzyme without which the plants die. \"Of course. I immediately stopped slapping at the relatively few midges \"The only live midges left in the ship were the ones that had been with me during the fumigation process. I immediately tried to start a breeding ground for midges, but the midges didn't seem to want to while the midges died one by one. It was heartbreaking—at least, it was to me. \"And it was unnecessary, too. Because apparently the carolla had already laid their eggs, or whatever it is that they do, before I had fumigated them. After my useless days of agony, a new batch in fact, until I resumed my efforts to catch up on my reading. \"The mothlike things—they are called dingleburys—also turn out to provide a necessary enzyme. They are supposed to have the same timing of their life cycle as the carolla. Apparently the shaking up I had given their larvae in moving the tanks and dipping the water up in buckets and all that had inhibited them in completing their cycle the first time around. \"And the reason they had the same life cycle as the carolla was that the adult dinglebury will eat only the adult carolla, and it has to fill itself full to bursting before it will reproduce. If I had the translation done correctly, they were supposed to dart gracefully around, catching carolla on the wing and stuffing themselves happily. \"I had to find out what was wrong with my awkward dingleburys. And that, of course, meant going out into the ship again. But I had to do shifting the lights again. \"The reason for the dingleburys' problem is fairly obvious. When you set up artificial gravity by spinning a ship, the gravity is fine down near the skin where the plants are. But the gravity potential is very high, and it gets very light up where things fly around, going to zero on the middle line of the ship. And the unfamiliar gravity gradient, together with the Coriolis effect and all, makes the poor dingleburys dizzy, so they can't catch carolla. \"And if you think I figured all that out about dingleburys getting dizzy at the time, in that madhouse of a ship, then you're crazy. What capturing her prey by sound alone. \"So I spent the whole day—along with my usual chore of shifting the lights—blindfolding dingleburys. Which is a hell of a sport for a man who is captain of his own ship.\" I must say that I agreed with him, but it seemed to be a good time for me to keep my mouth shut. \"Well, after the dingleburys had eaten and propagated, they became inquisitive. They explored the whole ship, going into places I wouldn't have believed it to be possible for them to reach, including the inside carolla left to join me outside. \"I showered and swatted and started to read. I got as far as where it said that the dingleburys continued to be of importance, and then I'm afraid I fell asleep. \"I got up with the sun the next morning. Hell, I had to, considering that it was I who turned the sun on! I found that the dingleburys hours, after the blossoms appear and are visited by the dingleburys. No dingleburys, no growth stoppage. other to the point where they curled up and died, and I had to do it gently , surrounded by a bunch of worried dingleburys. \"Every time they got a little too worried, or I slipped and bumped into turned out to be big, white, odorless flowers. They did nothing for me or to me. They drove the dingleburys wild, though, I'm happy to say. Made them forget all about me. \"While they were having their orgy, I caught up on my reading. It \"I was the special processor. That's what the instructions said—I translated very carefully—it required an 'organic processor'. \"So I had to eat pounds of that horrible tasting stuff every day, and \"When I opened the airlock door, though, the spores drifting outside set the customs inspectors to sneezing and swearing more than seemed reasonable at the time.\" Captain Hannah inhaled a sip of rhial, and seemed to be enjoying the powerful stuff. He acted as if he thought he had finished. him. He said, \"They made me burn the entire crop right away, of course. They didn't get all of the carolla or dingleburys, though. Or spores.\" \"They'll send you the bill. They don't figure it will take them more than a few months to complete the job.\" Captain Hannah stopped talking and stood up, painfully and a little\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the last step Captain Hannah must conduct in order to deliver successfully fruited plants to Gloryanna. What is the symbolic significance of this?\n\n<options>:\nA Captain Hannah must simulate proper sun exposure in order to ensure the plants’ vines don’t die. Their death would mean no fruit, symbolizing the way in which Hannah’s failure to keep the vines alive is the last possible way in which the narrator’s plan could fail.\nB Captain Hannah must exterminate all of the spores and bugs before reaching Gloryanna, seeing as the Gloryannans will only accept marocca fruit alone for fear of reinfecting their planet with its spores. It is symbolic that Hannah cannot sell the objects which make the fruit, but only the fruit alone.\nC Captain Hannah must feed the marocca cuttings from their vines, but only after mulching them through an organic processor. His body turns out to be the only processor on board, meaning Captain Hannah must eat and process the vine clippings with his own body. This symbolizes the kind of will the plants’ have over Hannah—they have inconvenienced him to the extent of his own insides.\nD Captain Hannah must feed the carollas to the dingleburys, but only after mulching them through an organic processor. His body turns out to be the only processor on board, meaning Captain Hannah must eat and process the bugs with his own body. This symbolizes the kind of will the carollas have over Hannah—they have inconvenienced him to the extent of his own insides.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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2,376 | 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 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.\" \"He's practically running,\" Linton said. \"He almost ran out of the 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. thick man said. \"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 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, 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 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: God? \"The Mafia, I guess. Who knows who runs it?\" \"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 patently ridiculous, Linton hoped to bring the contradicting truth to \"Sh-h,\" Howell said uneasily. \"This is a public place.\" \"I don't understand,\" Linton said helplessly. \"Look, Frank, you can't legalize a thing like resurrection,\" Howell Overpopulation. Birth control is a touchy subject. They'd have to take it up if everybody got resurrected when they died, wouldn't they?\" \"But what do they do about it? Against it?\" \"There are a lot of fakes and quacks in the resurrection business. When Time the other day that said 'death' was our dirty word, not sex. You want to shock somebody, you tell him, 'You're going to be dead someday,' not anything sexual. You know how it is. The opposite of 'live' these days is 'video-taped.'\" \"I see,\" Linton said. Linton's fingers imprinted the linen. \"Damn you, Howell, you tell me!\" 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, attempted to bribe an officer. That's disturbing, Mr. Linton, very Linton stared suspiciously. \"Do you know where I can find a resurrectionist?\" \"I am a resurrectionist.\" \"But the policeman brought me to you!\" \"Well, that's what you paid him to do, wasn't it? Did you think a \"Doctor, can you really resurrect the dead?\" \"Will you stop being cynical? Of course I can!\" \"Doctor, I'm beginning to believe in you,\" Linton said, \"but tell me, can you resurrect the long dead?\" \"Size has nothing to do with it.\" \"No, my wife has been dead a long time. Months.\" Linton grasped the situation immediately. \"You mean you want money. You would have been secure for the rest of my lonely, miserable life.\" \"All that's ended now,\" the doctor assured him. \"Now we must go dig up the corpse. The female corpse, eh?\" Resurrection Day! \"Doctor,\" Linton whispered, \"my mind is singing with battalions of choirs. I hope that doesn't sound irreverent to you.\" The doctor stroked his oily palms together. \"Oh, but it does. Beautifully.\" The certificate to allow reburial in Virginia hadn't been impossible 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, 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 course it would be it hadn't changed even in the grave. He remembered the snaky tendrils of it growing out of the water-logged casket. 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?\" \"Darling, resurrection is a risky business and an expensive one. You 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 But you're sure 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.\" to quench death and smother decay. It's perfect .\" Linton understood immediately. He felt foolish, humiliated. All that wreckage. Yes, it seemed they had to automate and modify the bodies somewhat in resurrection. They couldn't chemically revive the old corpse like pouring water on a wilted geranium. Or— Did they use the old bodies at all? What were all those acid baths for if the bodies were used? Didn't the resurrectionists just destroy the old corpses and make androids, synthetic creatures, to take their place? But it didn't matter. Not a bit. She had thought she was his wife, sharing her viewpoint down to the 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 doctor looked down at him consolingly. \"You'll have to go back, Mr. 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.\" \"Do you really\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the most likely identity of the man Linton believes to be Mr. Snead?\n\n<options>:\nA Snead's twin brother\nB A complete stranger\nC Snead (who never died)\nD A resurrected Snead\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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1,310 | 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>:\nWar and Pieces No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: \"Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?\" Or \"This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?\" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather. Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase \"war is hell\" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God. Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's \"rosy-fingered dawn\" and orders a meaningless bombardment to \"buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell.\" Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the dying and the dead at bay. A tiny bird, mortally wounded, flutters in the grass. John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria. Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this \"orphan\" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing. Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also gets sterling bit performances from Sydney Pollack as the spookily sanguine Grace CEO, William H. Macy as Schlichtmann's rabbity accountant, and Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of one of the victims. Quinlan knows that when you're playing a woman who has lost a child you don't need to emote--you reveal the emotion by trying not to emote. To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, \"let's call the Environmental Protection Agency,\" upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.\n\n<question>:\nHow doesn't the author feel about Bill Clinton?\n\n<options>:\nA he's a self-serving person\nB no one can capture his personality in film\nC he knows when to quit\nD he's a corrupt politician\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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189 | 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 \"Fred, Tremaine here. Put the buzzer on.\" A thin hum sounded on the 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 wait another. I don't mind telling you certain quarters are pressing me.\" warning you, Tremaine. Get that transmitter. I need someone to hang!\" Tremaine left the hotel, walked two blocks west along Commerce Street heavy man with a creased face and thick gray hair looked up from behind 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 In a back room Tremaine said, \"To everybody but you this is just a \"Mr. Bram,\" repeated Tremaine. \"Is he still around? I remember him as a five years ago ... in her seventies. He still walks in town every \"Oh?\" Tremaine stubbed out his cigarette, lit another. \"What happened passing by and called it in. I had the whole caboodle locked up here Tremaine shook his head. Tremaine got to his feet. \"I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your ears \"I've got an oversized suitcase,\" Tremaine said. \"I'll be setting it up Back in the street, Tremaine headed south toward the Elsby Town autumn trees at the end of Sheridan Street. Tremaine went up the A thin man with garters above the elbow looked over his shoulder at Tremaine. \"I won't be a minute,\" Tremaine said. \"Just want to check on when the The man turned to Tremaine, pushing a drawer shut with his hip. \"Bram? 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 \"What's up, mister?\" the clerk called after him. \"Bram in some kind of The clerk looked sideways at Tremaine. \"Lots of funny stories about Tremaine waited. \"Now why would I do that?\" Tremaine reached for the door knob. facade of the Elsby Public Library. Inside, Tremaine followed a The woman darted a suspicious look at Tremaine. \"You have to handle \"I'll remember.\" The woman stood by as Tremaine looked over the front Tremaine leafed over, reading slowly. The librarian was at Tremaine's side. \"I have to close the library now. windows along the side streets. Tremaine turned up his collar against a cold wind that had risen, started along the street toward the hotel. A block away a black late-model sedan rounded a corner with a faint squeal of tires and gunned past him, a heavy antenna mounted forward of the left rear tail fin whipping in the slipstream. Tremaine stopped short, stared after the car. \"Damn!\" he said aloud. An elderly man veered, eyeing him sharply. Tremaine set off at a run, covered the two blocks to the hotel, yanked open the door to his car, slid into the seat, made a U-turn, and headed north after the police car. Two miles into the dark hills north of the Elsby city limits, Tremaine rounded a curve. The police car was parked on the shoulder beside the highway just ahead. He pulled off the road ahead of it and walked back. The door opened. A tall figure stepped out. \"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?\" \"I thought you were going to keep your men away from Elsby until I gave the word, Grammond.\" \"That was before I knew your Washington stuffed shirts were holding out 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 out a signal. For all I know, it's forty midgets on bicycles, pedalling \"The smallest hyperwave transmitter Uncle Sam knows how to build weighs three tons,\" said Tremaine. \"Bicycles are out.\" Grammond snorted. \"Okay, Tremaine,\" he said. \"You're the boy with all the answers. But if you get in trouble, don't call me call Washington.\" Back in his room, Tremaine put through a call. \"It looks like Grammond's not willing to be left out in the cold, Fred. Tell him if he queers this—\" \"I don't know but what he might have something,\" the voice came back \"Don't tell me my job, Tremaine!\" the voice snapped. \"And don't try out \"Sure. Just don't get stuck in some senator's hip pocket.\" Tremaine and left the hotel. before the door opened. A tall woman with white hair and a fine-boned \"Miss Carroll,\" Tremaine said. \"You won't remember me, but I—\" Only a faint quaver reflected her age—close to eighty, Tremaine furnishings of another era. She motioned Tremaine to a seat and took a \"I always liked Mr. Bram,\" said Tremaine. \"I'm not out to hurt him.\" Tremaine stood up. \"I'm sorry. Really sorry. I didn't mean to grill She paused. Tremaine waited. him to his house. On the way he told me a terrible and pathetic tale. \"I waited all that night in the carriage. At dawn he emerged. He tried \"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 Tremaine shook his head. \"I'm getting nowhere fast. The Bram idea's a 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.\" out, circled the house once, then mounted the steps and rapped on the empty shotgun shell. He looked at Tremaine. \"This don't look good,\" he said. \"You suppose those fool boys...?\" Tremaine. \"Maybe this is more than kid stuff,\" he said. \"You carry a \"In the car.\" Tremaine went to the car, dropped the pistol in his coat pocket, \"Not a very cozy—\" Tremaine broke off. A thin yelp sounded in the Tremaine said. \"That's blood, Jess....\" Tremaine scanned the floor. It was of broad \"It's a trail.\" Tremaine followed the line of drops across the floor. stared at Tremaine. \"I'm too damned old to start believing in spooks,\" At the station Jess led Tremaine to a cell where a lanky teen-age boy 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 The boy darted another look at Tremaine. \"They said they figured the\n\n<question>:\nWho was in the black sedan that rushed off past Tremaine a block from the hotel?\n\n<options>:\nA Jess\nB Mr. Bram\nC The men who stole the transmitter\nD Grammond’s men\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
626 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The job was easy. The profit was enormous. The only trouble was—the cargo had a will of its own! Captain Hannah climbed painfully down from the , hobbled across the spaceport to where Beulah and I were waiting to greet him and hit me in the eye. Beulah—that's his elephant, but I have to take care of her for him because Beulah's baby belongs to me and Beulah has to take care of it—kept us apart until we both cooled down a little. Then, although still somewhat dubious about it, she let us go together I didn't ask Captain Hannah why he had socked me. Although he has never been a handsome man, he usually has the weathered and austere dignity that comes from plying the remote reaches among the stars. Call it the Look of Eagles. Captain Hannah had lost the Look of Eagles. His eyes were swollen almost shut every inch of him that showed was a red mass of welts piled on more welts, as though of his trade was not clamped in its usual belligerent position slightly over one eye. It was riding high on his head, apparently held up by more of the ubiquitous swellings. I figured that he figured that I had something to do with the way he looked. tell me about it?\" I decided that his wince was intended for a nod, and ordered rhial. I only drink rhial when I've been exposed to Captain Hannah. It was almost a pleasure to think that I was responsible, for a change, for having him take the therapy. \"A in a travesty of his usual forceful voice. \"But some things it should never try.\" He lapsed back into silence after this uncharacteristic admission. I almost felt sorry for him, but just then Beulah came racking across the field with her two-ton infant in tow, to show her off to Hannah. I walled off my pity. He had foisted those two maudlin mastodons off onto me in one of our earlier deals, and if I had somehow been responsible \"I got them there safely,\" said Captain Hannah. \"When I left, marocca was growing like mad,\" said Captain Hannah. rhial for myself. \"Tell me about it,\" I suggested. \"It was you who said that we should carry those damn plants to enough tolerance to cause no trouble in the trip in Delta Crucis ourselves to hauling a full load of it?\" asked Captain Hannah. franchise. Besides, they gave you full written instructions about what to do under all possible circumstances.\" Especially when you're barricaded in the head.\" I almost asked him why he had been barricaded in the bathroom of the Delta Crucis , but I figured it was safer to let him tell me in his own way, in his own time. \"Well,\" he said, \"I got into parking orbit around Mypore without any trouble. The plastic film kept the water in the hydroponic tanks aimed right at sunrise. So the stem looks like a corkscrew?\" 'remember' the rate and direction of movement, and keep it up during the night time. So what? We had that problem all figured out.\" \"You think so? That solution was one of yours, too, wasn't it?\" He gazed moodily at his beaker of rhial. \"I must admit it sounded good to me, too. In Limbo, moving at multiple light-speeds, the whole hour spin on her to match the rotation rates of Mypore II and Gloryanna \"For Heaven's sake, why not?\" \"For Heaven's sake why should it? With no gravity for reference, how were the plants supposed to know that the 'sun' was supposed to be moving?\" \"Oh,\" said Captain Hannah in quiet tones of controlled desperation, \"it was very simple. I just put enough spin on the ship to make artificial the plants up in two different rooms, and run an artificial sun for keep the water in place started to break.\" \"I'd like to know,\" I said sincerely. He stared at me in silence for a moment. \"Well, it filled the cabin they're not empty, like soap bubbles. The surface acts a little like a membrane, so that sometimes two of the things will touch and gently touching one of them. You a wide cylinder with a piston with a handle, and a hose that you squirt the water out of, or can suck water in with. The way you use it is, you float up on all the water into the cylinder. Of course, you have to hold the pump with your feet while you pull the handle with your free hand.\" introduce it into the ship's tanks.\" \"In a sense,\" said the captain. \"I just emptied the pump back into the that or suicide. I had begun to get the feeling that they were stalking me. So I drew a blank.\" \"Then after that you were all right, except for the tedium of moving \"Not yet,\" said Captain Hannah. \"Like you, I figured I had the larval stage. Instead of making cocoons for themselves, they snipped the bugs without doing the plants any harm at all. Of course, the fumigation system is designed to work with the fumigator off the ship, because it's poisonous to humans too. It was on page eleven that it mentioned casually that the midges—the correct word is carolla—are a necessary part of the life cycle of the a breeding ground for midges, but the midges didn't seem to want to cooperate. Whatever I tried to do, they came back to me. I was the only thing they seemed to love. I didn't dare bathe, or scratch, or even wriggle, for fear of killing more of them. And they kept on itching. It while the midges died one by one. It was heartbreaking—at least, it was to me. \"And it was unnecessary, too. Because apparently the carolla had already laid their eggs, or whatever it is that they do, before I had fumigated them. After my useless days of agony, a new batch blundered around aimlessly. \"I lit out for the head again, to keep away from that intolerable whining. This time I took a luxurious shower and got rid of most of the midges that came through the door with me. I felt almost comfortable, provide a necessary enzyme. They are supposed to have the same timing \"And the reason they had the same life cycle as the carolla was that the adult dinglebury will eat only the adult carolla, and it has to fill itself full to bursting before it will reproduce. If I had the set up artificial gravity by spinning a ship, the gravity is fine down capturing her prey by sound alone. who is captain of his own ship.\" I must say that I agreed with him, but it seemed to be a good time for me to keep my mouth shut. \"Well, after the dingleburys had eaten and propagated, they became at least a hundred feet apart? If other to the point where they curled up and died, and I had to do it gently cuttings and then feed them back to the plants, where the roots store naturally, which takes several months. mixed with a certain amount of processed mulch. Enzymes again. And there was only one special processor on board. \"I was the special processor. That's what the instructions said—I translated very carefully—it required an 'organic processor'. \"So I had to eat pounds of that horrible tasting stuff every day, and process it the hard way. \"I didn't even have time to scratch my bites. I must have lost weight reasonable at the time.\" Captain Hannah inhaled a sip of rhial, and seemed to be enjoying the powerful stuff. He acted as if he thought he had finished. Hannah nodded. \"They were growing luxuriously.\" He nodded his head a him. He said, \"They made me burn the entire crop right away, of course. They completely. Meanwhile, some clever native shipped a load of the stuff to Mypore II. He took his time, did it without any trouble and made his Captain Hannah stopped talking and stood up, painfully and a little\n\n<question>:\nWhat does Captain Hannah use as an organic processor?\n\n<options>:\nA A fire pump\nB The bodies of dead dinglebury bugs\nC He uses a lamp to simulate the sun’s orbit on the planet Mypore\nD His own body\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
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>:\nBrian Hanson looked disgustedly at Pete Brent, his lanky assistant. \"I am, but you're not,\" Hanson told him grimly. \"Get your notes straightened up. Run those centrifuge tests and set up the still so we can get at that vitamin count early in the morning.\" \"Tomorrow morning? Aw, for gosh sakes, chief, why don't you take a day off sometime, or better yet, a night off. It'd do you good to relax. \"Never mind Myrtle, just have that equipment set up for the morning. Good night.\" He strode out of the huge laboratory, but his mind was 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 Brian Hanson wondered dispassionately for a moment how his assistants could fail to be as absorbed as he was by the work they were doing, then he let it go as he stepped outside the research building. He paused and let his eyes lift to the buildings that surrounded the alone, he let his only known emotion sweep through him, pride. He had an important role in the building of this great new city. As head of the Venus Consolidated Research Organization, he was in large part responsible for the prosperity of this vigorous, young world. Venus apartment. This walk was part of a regular routine of physical exercise the laboratory. As he opened the door of his apartment he heard the in precisely seven minutes, four and four-fifths seconds. He undressed awake. It was the door that was being attacked, not his head. The Brian closed the door in puzzlement. What the devil had that flat-foot open door of his bedroom he could see his bed neatly turned down as regular routine. \"Hello.\" The voice matched the calm alertness of a pair of deep-blue eyes. Brian just stared at her in numbed fascination. That was what the policeman had meant with his insinuating smirk. The girl swung her legs out of bed and Brian blinked dressed. The snug, zippered overall suit she wore did nothing to conceal the fact that she was a female. He wrapped his bathrobe \"Well, what do you think?\" he burst out angrily. \"I'm going to finish my bath and I'd suggest you go down to the laboratory and hold hands with Pete. He'd appreciate it.\" He got the impression that the girl was struggling heroically to refrain from laughing and that didn't help his a gun with him or something. And Pete Brent. He thought with grim satisfaction of the unending extra work that was going to occur around the laboratory from now on. He sank back into the soothing liquid embrace of the bath and deliberately set his mind loose to wander in complete relaxation. \"Where is she?\" the sergeant demanded. \"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?\" \"She wuz in his bed when I seen her, sarge,\" one of the guards contributed. \"But she ain't there now.\" \"You don't think that I—\" \"Listen, bud, we don't do the thinkin' around here. You come on along Brian had had about enough. \"I'm not going anywhere to see anybody. Brian Hanson, Chief of Research for Venus Consolidated, as dignified as possible in a damp bathrobe, glared out through the bars at a slightly bewildered Pete Brent. \"Yes, you! If sending that damn blonde to my apartment and getting me arrested is your idea of a joke—\" \"But, my gosh, I didn't send anybody, chief. And this is no joke. That wasn't Myrtle, that was Crystal James, old man James' daughter. They're about the oldest family on Venus. Police have been after her panel last night. Communications been tied up all day.\" Pete lowered his voice to an appreciative whisper, \"Gosh, chief, I didn't know you had it in you. How long have you been in with that bunch? Is that girl as good-looking as they say she is?\" \"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 Brian's eyes almost popped out as he saw a gloved hand reach around silenced as he came around the end of the corridor. Someone was outside his cell door, a hooded figure which seemed, somehow, familiar. \"What the devil are you doing here?\" \"Somebody by the name of Pete Brent tipped us off that you were in He could hear the girl struggling with the lock. Brian felt as though something had kicked him in the stomach. She was barred side door. Brian's hands opened the complicated lock in a matter of seconds. They brilliance as the floodlights snapped on. Brian faltered to a stop and Crystal James pushed past him. \"We've got reinforcements down here,\" she said, then skidded to a halt. Two guards barred the street ahead of them. Brian felt as though his stomach had fallen down around his ankles He saw a sudden, convulsive movement from the girl. A black object He started after her. Two surface transport vehicles waited around the and that gave them the edge on Brian. They followed Crystal down into the garage's repair pit. She fumbled in the darkness a moment, then a darker patch showed as \"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. Brian struggled into a zippered overall suit as they followed a twisting, tortuous course for half an hour, switching from one tunnel to another repeatedly until he had lost all conception of direction. Crystal James, at the controls, seemed to know exactly where they were going. The tunnel emerged in a huge cavern that gloomed darkly away in every Venusian atmospheric ships. Dim light spilled over them from a ragged gash in the wall of the cavern. Brian followed Crystal into the smaller of the two ships and the rest of the rebels manned the other. \"Wait a minute, how do we get out of here?\" Brian demanded. set in grim lines as she pulled the ship up in a screaming climb. Brian \"The dirty, murdering rats!\" Brian's voice ripped out in a fury of \"Don't get excited,\" Crystal told him in a dead, flat voice. \"That's just normal practice. If you'd stuck your nose out of your laboratory once in a while, you'd have heard of these things.\" \"Into where?\" Brian demanded. All he could see immediately ahead was of the mountain face. Brian yelped and cowered instinctively back. The \"Who was that crazy coot and what is this place?\" Brian demanded. \"How come?\" Brian suggested doubtfully. She looked at him steadily. cautiously into the cavern, guns ready, expecting resistance. They met a dead silence. A score or more followed them without any attempt at concealment. Then Brian and Crystal cut loose with the drives of the Brian grabbed her and shook her. Crystal screamed. \"Brian! There's more police cutting in around the \"It's time to check out,\" Brian shouted. in the cavern behind them. \"Run!\" Brian shoved her and they plunged madly through the thick tangle Crystal went down as the ground slipped from under her. Brian grabbed gone and the primeval silence settled back into place. Brian and Crystal struggled painfully to solid ground. Crystal gazed \"How did you do it?\" \"Where are we heading for?\" Brian grunted as he struggled along.\n\n<question>:\nWhy was the woman in Brian’s apartment?\n\n<options>:\nA She was drawing his bath and cleaning his apartment.\nB Pete set them up on a date.\nC She was hiding from the police.\nD She worked in his vitamin research lab.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
945 | 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\"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?\" she asked, an oblique Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it! In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long though narrower ribbons. Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good imitation of speech. \"Yes, I've heard the legend.\" not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that, nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. \"But I thought it was toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no, through —everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger was turned. commented Taphetta dryly. \"It seems an unnecessary simplification.\" ribbons. \"Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories about himself.\" It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin. Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in helping him make up his mind. \"You've heard of the adjacency mating systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you.\" The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he was interested. \"It seems I must decide quickly.\" The Ribboneer glanced out the visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them. The Ribboneer shifted his attention. \"Aside from the sudden illness of have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational ability.\" Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. \"I had other such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the profits from any discoveries we may make.\" I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly everywhere in this sector—places men have never been.\" There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed. wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his \"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways. were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never \"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!\" The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. \"What kind of creatures are they?\" \"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small smarter?\" \"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's \"I don't question your authority,\" crinkled Taphetta. \"To me, all speech ribbons. \"Camp, did you say?\" \"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life,\" mused Taphetta. \"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?\" \"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know \"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?\" asked was tacitly assumed, such a destiny? It was Halden who answered him. \"There's the satisfaction of knowing where we came from.\" \"Of course,\" rustled the Ribboneer. \"But a lot of money and equipment was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual curiosity.\" \"Cultural discoveries,\" rumbled Emmer. \"How did our ancestors live? achieved that only within the last thousand years.\" \"But I think we have a better one than they did,\" said the Ribboneer. \"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics, but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?\" fractionally and ceaselessly. \"I don't like to, but we'll have to risk consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask it had been bothering him vaguely. \"What's the difference between the Ribboneer contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal.\" \"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race.\" there had been no intention of withholding hadn't intended, but could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition? He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired would have to be shared. technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now. \"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?\" asked Meredith, glancing itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent machines and went out. \"Do you think it will work?\" \"It might. We had an audience.\" \"Did we? I didn't notice.\" Meredith leaned back. \"Were the puppets exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?\" \"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough, they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it.\" \"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a creature without real hands?\" \"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and them start lower than I am?\" The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another, it governed personal relations between races that were united against non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves. \"Because you're afraid I'd refuse.\" It was true lead me astray.\" \"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific about it, he'd give you children of the higher type.\"\n\n<question>:\nIn the story, it is stated that \"the integrity of the Ribboneers was not to be questioned\" -- what potentially negative implications might this have?\n\n<options>:\nA The Ribboneers could use evidence from the adjacent mating principle to eradicate 'lower-level' species\nB The Ribboneers could be held responsible for solving problems that even they are not qualified to resolve\nC The Ribboneers could use evidence from the adjacent mating principle to further advance their own species\nD The Ribboneers could wield their reputation in order to lie, manipulate, and accumulate more power\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
384 | 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>:\nStart by asking whether human beings have a right to reproduce. I say \"yes.\" I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. When Clinton says, \"Let us resist the temptation to copy ourselves,\" it comes from a man not known for resisting other temptations of the flesh. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. It's an easy way to show sound-bite leadership on an issue that everybody is talking about, without much risk of bitter consequences. After all, how much federally funded research was stopped by this ban? Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership. If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction is done these days with medical help--at delivery, and often before. Truly natural human reproduction would mean 50 percent infant mortality and make pregnancy-related death the No. 1 killer of adult women. True, some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in the lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in \"test-tube babies.\" To date, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. Many would-be parents have been made happy. Who has been harmed? The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle--secular, humanist, or religious--says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is OK, but another is not? No matter how closely you study the 1 st century texts, I don't think you'll find the answer. Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Suppose that every prospective parent in the world stopped having children naturally, and instead produced clones of themselves. What would the world be like in another 20 or 30 years? The answer is: much like today. Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here. Hating a world of clones is hating the current populace. Never before was Pogo so right: We have met the enemy, and he is us ! Adifferent scare scenario is a world filled with copies of famous people only. We'll treat celebrity DNA like designer clothes, hankering for Michael Jordan's genes the way we covet his Nike sneakers today. But even celebrity infatuation has its limits. People are not more taken with celebrities than they are with themselves. Besides, such a trend would correct itself in a generation or two, because celebrity is closely linked to rarity. The world seems amused by one Howard Stern, but give us a hundred or a million of them, and they'll seem a lot less endearing. The notion of an 80-year-old man cloning himself to cheat death is quaint, but it is unrealistic. First, the baby wouldn't really be him. Second, is the old duffer really up to changing diapers? A persistent octogenarian might convince a younger couple to have his clone and raise it, but that is not much different from fathering a child via a surrogate mother. Fear of clones is just another form of racism. We all agree it is wrong to discriminate against people based on a set of genetic characteristics known as \"race.\" Calls for a ban on cloning amount to discrimination against people based on another genetic trait--the fact that somebody already has an identical DNA sequence. The most extreme form of discrimination is genocide--seeking to eliminate that which is different. In this case, the genocide is pre-emptive--clones are so scary that we must eliminate them before they exist with a ban on their creation. What is so special about natural reproduction anyway? Cloning is the only predictable way to reproduce, because it creates the identical twin of a known adult. Sexual reproduction is a crap shoot by comparison--some random mix of mom and dad. In evolutionary theory, this combination is thought to help stir the gene pool, so to speak. However, evolution for humans is essentially over, because we use medical science to control the death rate. Whatever the temptations of cloning, the process of natural reproduction will always remain a lot more fun. An expensive and uncomfortable lab procedure will never offer any real competition for sex. The people most likely to clone will be those in special circumstances--infertile couples who must endure IVF anyway, for example. Even there, many will mix genetics to mimic nature. Another special case is where one member of a couple has a severe genetic disease. They might choose a clone of the healthy parent, rather than burden their child with a joint heritage that could be fatal. The most upsetting possibility in human cloning isn't superwarriors or dictators. It's that rich people with big egos will clone themselves. The common practice of giving a boy the same name as his father or choosing a family name for a child of either sex reflects our hunger for vicarious immortality. Clones may resonate with this instinct and cause some people to reproduce this way. So what? Rich and egotistic folks do all sorts of annoying things, and the law is hardly the means with which to try and stop them. The \"deep ethical issues\" about cloning mainly boil down to jealousy. Economic jealousy is bad enough, and it is a factor here, but the thing that truly drives people crazy is sexual jealousy. Eons of evolution through sexual selection have made the average man or woman insanely jealous of any interloper who gains a reproductive advantage--say by diddling your spouse. Cloning is less personal than cuckoldry, but it strikes a similar chord: Someone has got the reproductive edge on you. Once the fuss has died down and further animal research has paved the way, direct human cloning will be one more option among many specialized medical interventions in human reproduction, affecting only a tiny fraction of the population. Research into this area could bring far wider benefits. Clinton's knee-jerk policy changes nothing in the short run, but it is ultimately a giant step backward. In using an adult cell to create a clone, the \"cellular clock\" that determines the difference between an embryo and adult was somehow reset. Work in this area might help elucidate the process by which aging occurs and yield a way to reset the clocks in some of our own cells, allowing us to regenerate. Selfishly speaking, that would be more exciting to me than cloning, because it would help me . That's a lot more directly useful than letting me sire an identical twin 40 years my junior. To some, the scientist laboring away to unlock the mysteries of life is a source of evil, never to be trusted. To others, including me, the scientist is the ray of light, illuminating the processes that make the universe work and making us better through that knowledge. Various arguments can be advanced toward either view, but one key statistic is squarely on my side. The vast majority of people, including those who rail against science, owe their very lives to previous medical discoveries. They embody the fruits of science. Don't let the forces of darkness, ignorance, and fear turn us back from research. Instead, let us raise--and yes, even clone--new generations of hapless ingrates, who can whine and rail against the discoveries of the next age.\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the writer use other medical procedures as evidence to support cloning?\n\n<options>:\nA To show that there is a demand for more reproductive aids like cloning.\nB To show that the fear of cloning is not based on science.\nC To show that reproduction has always been assisted to the benefit of people one way or another, with good results.\nD To prove the science behind cloning and to show it is based in commonly used practices.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
530 | 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, in short, humanity's hopes for survival! creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed through her hallways. Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was hand across the dark stubble on his chin. It could wait. \"Anything new during the night?\" \"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the 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 our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them 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 had happened to the exploration party fifteen years back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check up. glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was completely hidden by the fog. There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals 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 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 luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors moved there. He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist. 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 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.\" 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 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 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 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. 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. But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had 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 of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was it now seemed, no more time could be wasted here. Primitives could be overcome, maybe. It would be ruthless and unfair to hand had been able to do for centuries. \"Beautiful primitive work,\" he muttered. He went to the port and glanced out. About sixty of the things were squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship. They were perhaps a thousand yards away, waiting patiently. For what? For the return of their leader—or for something that would give the seemed to understand, and was making a comment as the captain dashed in. The captive was sitting on the bunk, unbound and oddly unmenacing. The thick features were relaxed and yet somehow intent. He seemed to make ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the ship again. He'd have to tell the men and women of the crew later, after he'd had time to organize things and present it all in a way they could accept, however much they might hate it at first. But there was no putting off \"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 eyes. And in time, Earth wouldn't even be a memory to this world. She was silent a long time, staring out of the port toward what must don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll believe it all. And it's too late now. But we haven't really been changed yet, have we?\" \"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.\" becoming uncertain. Here, though, the blobs had adapted men to the alien world instead of men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange\n\n<question>:\nWhy was the mission of the Pandora initially referred to as a “fool’s errand”?\n\n<options>:\nA The original exploration party had already reported back about the planet.\nB They had already learned everything they could about the blobs.\nC They had found Hennessy’s crew.\nD The crew hadn’t found anything new or dangerous.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,402 | 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\"Pretty frightening?\" \"But you weren't afraid of them, were you?\" \"No, sir. No, because....\" good, long, strong rope.\" \"What are you going to do?\" Ri asked, terrified. \"Why, I'm going to tie the rope around your waist and stake you out as bait.\" \"No!\" \"Oh, come now. When the farn beast hears you scream—you can Delicately, Extrone raised a hand to his beard. \"I'd hate to lose a day scream, by the way?\" ridge, too.\" creeping toward his nose. \"It is!\" Ri said. \"It's a farn beast, all right!\" \"You'll be safe,\" Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. \"I'll shoot the animal before it reaches you.\" Extrone smiled, almost pointed teeth showing through the beard. \"I'm glad we won't have to cross the ridge.\" Extrone shrugged. \"I—Look, sir. Listen to me.\" Ri's lips were bloodless and his hands killed a farn beast before were trembling. \"It's not me you want to do this to. It's Mia, sir. He collar. \"It's a good thing that farn beast sounded off when it did. I'd \"I wish to God I'd never heard of a farn beast,\" Ri said. \"At least, staked him out, tying the free end of the rope tightly around the base of a scaling tree. \"You will scream,\" Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed across the water hole. \"The farn beast will come from this direction, I enough for the farn beast to charge us.\" \"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?\" Mia Extrone's eyes narrowed, and he began to pet the gun stock with quick, A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest. heard the rumor that farn beasts were somewhere around here. It wasn't \"I didn't think a Club pilot would do that.\" \"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to to kill it?\" The farn beast coughed again \"How do you know?\" \"Hear the lower pitch, the more of a roar?\" \"Hey!\" Extrone shouted. \"You, down there. There are two coming. Now let's hear you really scream!\" many people already know about the farn beasts. You said that yourself.\" He snapped his hand into a fist, held the fist up before his eyes, imprisoning the idea. \"Spring the trap when the quarry is inside. \"It's screwy. I didn't think farn beasts had this wide a range. There \"Killing?\" \"Hunting,\" Extrone repeated harshly. The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his lap. The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank, \"What in hell do you want?\" Extrone asked. Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed. knees almost stiff. Extrone's face looked much too innocent. \"How did it get there, The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head. \"Look!\" Extrone cried excitedly. \"Here it comes!\" waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination. The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. \"You'll lose a fleet before you'll dare let anything happen to me, gentlemen. his tent. \"We ... located signs of the farn beast, sir. To the east.\" Extrone held back the flap of the tent. \"Won't you come in?\" he asked and smoothly inset into the ground. Hanging from the center, to the left of the slender, hand-carved center pole, was a chain of crystals. \"You were, I believe, the first ever to kill a farn beast?\" he said. \"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir.\" Extrone narrowed his eyes. \"I see by your eyes that you are never killed a farn beast. In fact, I haven't a farn beast.\" that the aliens hunt them quite extensively ... on some of their \"I meant in our system, sir.\" \"Of course you did,\" Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his sleeve with his forefinger. \"I imagine these are the only farn beasts in our system.\" when you discovered the farn beast in our own system.\" a small moon, smooth-surfaced, except for a central mountain ridge that bisected it into almost twin hemispheres. \"To think of him. As flesh and blood. Not like the—well that—what we've read about.\" want to overthrow him!\" Ri's teeth, suddenly, were chattering. \"You're wrong. He's not like that. I know you're wrong.\" Mia smiled twistedly. \"How many has he already killed? How can we even guess?\" And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his \"The farn beasts are dangerous, sir,\" Lin said. \"Eh? Oh, yes. Those. What did the manual say about them?\" \"I believe they're carnivorous, sir.\" information on our newly discovered fauna from an alien manual—and, of course, two businessmen.\" \"They have very long, sharp fangs, and, when enraged, are capable of tearing a man—\" \"An alien?\" Extrone corrected. afraid of you.\" \"The farn beasts, according to the manual....\" \"... It's the only thing I know anything about. The farn beast, as I \"All right,\" Extrone said, annoyed. \"I'll be careful.\" In the distance, a farn beast coughed. Instantly alert, Extrone said, \"Get the bearers! Have some of them cut leisurely, well back of the cutters, who hacked away, methodically, at the vines and branches which might impede his forward progress. Their sharp, awkward knives snickered rhythmically to the rasp of their heavy breathing. Occasionally, Extrone halted, motioned for his water carrier, and drank for farn beasts, and ahead, beyond the cutters, Lin flittered among the Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a Once Extrone unslung his blast rifle and triggered a burst at a tiny, arboreal mammal, which, upon the impact, shattered asunder, to Extrone's satisfied chuckle, in a burst of blood and fur. \"Damn,\" Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. \"It better be \"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!\" Extrone a quarter ahead. It looks fresh.\" Extrone's eyes lit with passion. The farn beast, somewhere beyond a ragged clump of bushes, coughed. The farn beast coughed again, more distant this time. fast, too.\" \"Eh?\" Extrone said. \"They charge on scent, sight, or sound. I understand they will track down a man for as long as a day.\" them? Why not make them come to us?\" \"They're too unpredictable. It wouldn't be safe. I'd rather have surprise on our side.\" \"You don't seem to see what I mean,\" Extrone said. \" We won't be the—ah—the bait.\" \"Oh?\" Extrone nodded genially. \"The farn beast hunter, eh?\" what they look like,\" he said suddenly. \"Well, sir, they're ... uh....\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat doesn't a farn beast have according to the story?\n\n<options>:\nA a strong sense of smell\nB a tail\nC mates\nD sharp fangs\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
538 | 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 Starship Pandora creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from Captain Gwayne cursed and rolled over, reaching for his boots. He was but ten years of responsibility had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the 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 now, as they often seemed to do. Gwayne stared at them for a minute, 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 Gwayne grabbed the microphone, yelling into the radio toward the cadets. \"Get the jeeps out!\" Gwayne yelled at Jane. He yanked the door of Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back. There was no sign of the cadets at first. Then Gwayne spotted them \"Follow the blobs,\" Gwayne yelled. He realized now he'd been a fool to There was no time to stop. The jeep plowed through them. Gwayne had a Abruptly, Barker's foot ground at the brake. Gwayne jolted forward leaped back. But Gwayne was out of the jeep before it stopped, diving shoulders, but amazingly strong. Gwayne felt them wrench at him as his sound, and it collapsed. Gwayne eased back slowly, but it made no \"I hope so,\" Gwayne told him. \"I want that thing to live—and you're metabolism.\" He sucked in on the cigarette he'd dug out, then spat 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.\" \"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 busy being little heroes. Gwayne sentenced them to quarters as soon 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. But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had finally proved that the sun was going to go nova. 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. Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and four more months back. In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was precious as a haven for the race. 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 Gwayne grabbed the phone and called Barker. \"How's the captive coming?\" Gwayne dropped the phone and headed for the little sick bay. He swore sound that lifted the hair along the nape of Gwayne's neck. Barker some kind of a salute as he saw Gwayne enter, and his eyes burned up \"Captain Gwayne, may I present your former friend, Captain Hennessy?\" Gwayne had his own ideas on that. It was easy for an alien to seize By the time the session was over, Gwayne had begun to understand the silence. Finally Gwayne drew a shuddering breath and stood up. \"Is it Gwayne led the former Hennessy to the exit. The waiting blobs dropped ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the ship again. 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 now be her home. Then she sighed. \"You'll need practice, but the others don't know you as well as I do, Bob. I guess we can fix it so they'll And then, before he could answer, her own intelligence gave her the 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 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 men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back to civilization. The gadgets would be lost for a time. But perhaps \"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.\" She smiled then and moved toward him, groping for his strength. \"Be 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 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 reasoning behind Gwayne’s decision?\n\n<options>:\nA They can take the information they learned to improve conditions on Earth.\nB Earth is struggling to find suitable colonies, so they need to rescue the people here and keep looking.\nC They can bring more people to this planet to live.\nD Earth is struggling to find suitable colonies, and this planet has proven to be livable despite the drawbacks.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
936 | 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>:\nName Your Symptom the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Anybody who shunned a Cure needed his head examined—assuming he had one left! world is going mad and we are just sitting back watching it hike along. Do you know that what we are doing is really the most primitive medicine in the world? We are treating the symptoms and not the disease. One cannibal walking another with sleeping sickness doesn't cure anything. Eventually the savage dies—just as all those sick savages out in the street will die unless we can cure the disease, not only the indications.\" to talk like that. We psychiatrists can't turn back the clock. There therapy to all the sick people.\" all are like that. Those Cures for mother complexes aren't even like a hearing aid. Yet for a nominal sum, the patient is equipped to the patient with radiation? With that image over everything he sees and with that insidious voice drumming in his head night and day, do you mean to say that man's senses will only be impaired 23 per cent? Why, he'll turn violently schizophrenic sooner or later—and you know it. The only cure we have for that is still a strait jacket, a padded cell or one of those inhuman lobotomies.\" He walked along, buffeted by the crowd, carried along in this direction, shoved back in that direction. Most people in the crowd seemed to be Normals, but you couldn't tell. Many \"Cures\" were not readily apparent. A young man with black glasses and a radar headset (a photophobe) was of Cure. \"Pardon me,\" he said warmly. for anything. He had been one of those condemned Normals, more to be scorned than pitied. Perhaps he could really get to understand these people, now that he had taken down the wall. immediately. Description: safety belt. But his emotions didn't behave so well. He was thoroughly terrified, heart racing, sweat glands disassembled. care about other people's feelings. This is official The young man's eyes almost seemed to narrow, although his face didn't move he merely radiated narrowed eyes. \"How long have you been Cured?\" \"Not—not long,\" Infield evaded. The other glanced around the street. He moistened his lips and spoke organization of the Cured?\" Infield's pulse raced, trying to get ahead of his thoughts, and losing out. A chance to study a pseudo-culture of the \"Cured\" developed in Under the mousy hair, Price's strong features were beginning to gleam moistly. \"You are lucky in one way, Mr. Infield. People take one look at your Cure and don't ask you to go walking in the rain. But even Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like \"It's a cure for alcoholism,\" Price told him. \"It runs a constant blood temple and kills me.\" The psychiatrist felt cold fury rising in him. The Cures were supposed to save lives, not endanger them. \"What kind of irresponsible idiot could have issued such a device?\" he can't be removed without causing my death and it's indestructible. himself, Infield knew. The threat of death would keep him constantly shocked sane. Men hide in the comforts of insanity, but when faced with death, they are often forced back to reality. A man can't move his legs in a fire, though, he may run. His legs were definitely paralyzed before and may be again, but for one moment he would forget the moral defeat of his life and his withdrawal from life and live an enforced sanity. But sometimes the withdrawal was—or could become—too complete. \"We're here.\" Cured,\" he said as a reminder. Price looked up, no longer interested in the relic of a cigarette. He was suddenly intensely interested and intensely observant of the rest The psychiatrist felt his face frown. \"Who?\" \"I forgot. You haven't been one of us long. The Incompletes is a truer name for the so-called Normals. Have you ever thought of just how say but tiring of constant pretense. \"You don't understand. Everyone has some little phobia or fixation. Maybe everyone didn't have one once, but after being told they did have them for generations, everyone who didn't have one developed a defense mechanism and an aberration so they would be normal. If that phobia isn't brought to the surface and Cured, it may arise any time and endanger other people. The only safe, good sound citizens are Cured. Those lacking Cures—the Incompletes— must be dealt with .\" Price started to glance around the cafe, then half-shrugged, almost visibly thinking that he shouldn't run that routine into the ground. \"We'll Cure them whether they want to be Cured or not—for their own good.\" Infield felt cold inside. After a time, he found that the roaring was ranks of the Cured—if indeed the plot was not already universal, imposed upon many ill minds. He could picture an entirely Cured world and he didn't like the view. Every Cure cut down on the mental and physical abilities of the patient as it was, whether Morgan and the others admitted it or not. But if everyone had a crutch to lean on for one phobia, he would develop secondary symptoms. People would start needing two Cures—perhaps a foetic gyro and a else—until everyone would be loaded down with too many Cures to A Cure was a last resort, dope for a malignancy case, euthanasia for the hopeless. Enforced Cures would be a curse for the individual and the race. want or need it? and suave, draped clothes. In this den of the Cured, Infield thought half-humorously, it was surprising to see a Normal—an \"Incomplete.\" But then he noticed something about the baby she carried. The Cure had been very simple. It wasn't even a mechanized half-human robot, just a He's not an alcoholic. He didn't need to put that Cure on his head. me how you were going to Cure the Incompletes.\" psychiatrists are sensitive about wearing Cures themselves, but it is a mark of honor of the completely sane man. You should be proud of your Cure and eager to Cure others. Very eager.\" Price leaned forward. \"There is one phobia that is so wide-spread, a Cure is not even thought of—hypochondria. Hundreds of people come to your office for a Cure and you turn them away. Suppose you and the other Cured psychiatrists give everybody who comes to you a Cure?\" Infield gestured vaguely. \"A psychiatrist wouldn't hand out Cures unless they were absolutely necessary.\" \"You'll feel differently after you've been Cured for a while yourself. Other psychiatrists have.\" they could laugh at him or pounce on him why shouldn't he like to make to soothe it, and stared in horror. same as when he had diagnosed his first case. No, better than that. happened. You could find some way to get rid of that Cure.\" different. I'd be a hopeless drunk without the Cure. Besides, no one ever gets rid of a Cure.\" They were all looking at Infield. Somehow he felt this represented a critical point in history. It was up to him which turn the world took, the world as represented by these four Cured people. \"I'm afraid I'm for less Cures instead of more, Price. Look, if I can show you that someone can discard a Cure, would you get rid of that—if I may use the threw the Cure on the floor. \"Now,\" he said, \"I am going out in that rain storm. There's thunder and lightning out there. I'm afraid, but I can get along without a Cure and so can you.\" excitement was all gone now and it left an empty space into which fear rushed. out without his Cure.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat does it mean to be Cured?\n\n<options>:\nA Cured humans are genetically superior to Normal humans\nB Cured humans have received an intervention for their phobia\nC Cured humans are allowed to reproduce while Normals aren't\nD Cured humans are fearless while Normals live their lives in fear\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
352 | 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\"To celebrate,\" Ferris said. The colonel shrugged. \"That's as good a reason as any.\" On the street, Mitchell watched the two men go off together in bewilderment. IV \"Do you think we'll have to use force on Macklin to get him to cooperate in the experiment?\" Ferris asked eagerly. \"How are you going to go about forcing him, Doctor?\" Mitchell inquired. \"He outweighs you by fifty pounds and you needn't look to against that repatriated fullback.\" Ferris fingered the collar of his starched lab smock. \"Guess I got carried away for a moment. But Macklin is exactly what we need for a quick, dramatic test. We've had it if he turns us down.\" \"I know,\" Mitchell said, exhaling deeply. \"Somehow the men with the money just can't seem to understand basic research. Who would have \"When we prove our results that should be of enough practical value for anyone. But those crummy trustees didn't even leave us enough for a field test.\" Ferris scrubbed his thin hand over the bony ridge of his \"Oh, you want to know if my wife is around. No, she's asleep. That Army of all headaches.\" Mitchell's blue eyes narrowed and his boyish face took on an expression of demonic intensity. \"Ferris, would you consider—?\" \"No!\" the smaller man yelled. \"You can't expect me to violate forehead. \"I've been worrying so much about this I've got the ancestor \"If you say so. But I don't guess I can come anyway. The Army is around the campus. Ferris paced off the tidy measurements of the office outside the laboratory in the biology building. Mitchell sat slumped in the chair behind the blond imitation wood desk, watching him disinterestedly. \"Do you suppose the Great Man will actually show up?\" Ferris demanded, pausing in mid-stride. \"I imagine he will,\" Mitchell said. \"Macklin's always seemed a decent this campus treats biologists like dirt. Sometimes I want to bash in their smug faces.\" Sometimes, Mitchell reflected, Ferris displayed a certain lack of scientific detachment. There came a discreet knock on the door. \"Doctor, we understand you have severe headaches,\" Mitchell said. Macklin nodded. \"That's right, Steven. Migraine.\" \"That must be terrible,\" Ferris said. \"All your fine reputation and \"But think,\" Ferris interjected, \"what a boon it would be if everyone could be cured of headaches of all of this, the one real cause of headaches,\" Mitchell announced. \"We have definitely established this for this first time,\" Ferris added. \"Certainly it has,\" Ferris said. \"On rats, on chimps....\" \"But not on humans?\" Macklin asked. \"Not yet,\" Mitchell admitted. \"We want you,\" Ferris told him. Macklin coughed. \"I don't want to overestimate my value but the government wouldn't like it very well if I died in the middle of this project. My wife would like it even less.\" Ferris turned his back on the mathematician. Mitchell could see him mouthing the word yellow \"Doctor,\" Mitchell said quickly, \"I know it's a tremendous favor to ask of a man of your position. But you can understand our problem. Unless we can produce quick, conclusive and dramatic proof of our All our test animals survived and seem perfectly happy and contented. As I said, the virus is self-stabilizing. Ferris and I are confident that there is no danger.... But we may be wrong.\" Macklin held his head in both hands. \"Why did you two select \"You're an important man, doctor,\" Ferris said. \"Nobody would care if Mitchell or I cured ourselves of headaches—they might not even believe us if we said we did. But the proper authorities will believe a man \"Yes, I do,\" Macklin said. \"Very well. Go ahead. Give me your injection.\" Mitchell cleared his throat. \"Are you positive, doctor?\" he asked uncertainly. \"Perhaps you would like a few days to think it over.\" \"No! I'm ready. Go ahead, right now.\" II \"Ferris!\" Mitchell yelled, slamming the laboratory door behind him. \"Right here,\" the small man said briskly. He was sitting at a work table, penciling notes. \"I've been expecting you.\" newspapers,\" Mitchell said. He tapped the back of his hand against the folded paper. \"On the contrary, I should and I did,\" Ferris answered. \"We wanted something dramatic to show to the trustees and here it is.\" \"Yes, we wanted to show our proof to the trustees—but not broadcast unverified results to the press. It's too early for that!\" \"Don't be so stuffy and conservative, Mitchell! Macklin's cured, isn't \"But—\" The shrill call of the telephone interrupted Mitchell's objections. Ferris excused himself and crossed to the instrument. He answered it Mitchell dropped the receiver heavily. \"What could be wrong with Macklin?\" he asked without removing his hand from the telephone. Ferris frowned, making quotation marks above his nose. \"Let's have a look at the test animals.\" Together they marched over to the cages and peered through the Under Mitchell's thumb the bell chimbed dum-de-de-dum-dum-dum . As they waited Mitchell glanced at Ferris. He seemed completely undisturbed, perhaps slightly curious. The door unlatched and swung back. is anything wrong with your husband. This is Dr. Ferris. I am Dr. Mitchell.\" The Army officer came out into the hall to meet them. that happens to him. The Army doesn't like what you have done to him.\" Mitchell wondered desperately just what they had done to the man. \"Can we see him?\" Mitchell asked. \"Why not? You can't do much worse than murder him now. That might be just as well. We have laws to cover that.\" \"How is he different?\" Mitchell demanded. The medic examined Mitchell and Ferris critically before answering. \"He used to be a mathematical genius.\" \"And now?\" Mitchell said impatiently. Mitchell tried to stop Colonel Sidney as he went past, but the doctor mumbled he had a report to make. Mitchell and Ferris stared at Colonel Carson and Macklin and at each other. Ferris followed them docilely. \"What have you done to him?\" the colonel asked straightforwardly. \"We merely cured him of his headaches,\" Mitchell said. \"I think I can explain,\" Ferris interrupted. \"You can?\" Mitchell said. Ferris nodded. \"We made a slight miscalculation. It appears as if the cells to function properly.\" \"Why won't they function?\" Carson roared. \"They don't get enough food—blood, oxygen, hemoglobin,\" Ferris explained. \"The cerebral vessels don't contract enough to pump the Mitchell groaned. He was abruptly sure Ferris was correct. The colonel drew himself to attention, fists trembling at his sides. \"I'll see you hung for treason! Don't you know what Elliot Macklin properly once again you will have the headaches again. Our research is a dismal failure.\" \"I wouldn't go that far,\" Ferris remarked cheerfully. Mitchell was about to ask his associate what he meant when he saw Macklin slowly shaking his head. treatment. He wants to remain in his state of lower intelligence.\" She nodded. \"If those are his wishes, I can't go against them.\" \"But Mrs. Macklin!\" Mitchell protested. \"You will have to get a court order overruling your husband's wishes.\" Ferris' antitoxin treatment is the best method of restoring Dr. Macklin to sanity.\" \"I doubt very much if the court would rule in that manner,\" she said. the Pentagon. I think I'll go out and get drunk.\" \"I'll go with you,\" Ferris said. Mitchell glanced sharply at the little biologist. Carson squinted. \"Any particular reason, doctor?\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the army get involved with the situation?\n\n<options>:\nA Macklin is a valuable asset to them, and they don't want something to happen to his intellect.\nB The army is investigating Mitchell and Ferris because they gave unauthorized medical assistance.\nC Mrs. Macklin called them in to help.\nD They want to see the results of Ferris and Mitchell's trial.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
2,368 | 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>:\nFEBRUARY STRAWBERRIES How much is the impossible worth? [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] know how it is. Snead's dead, don't you remember?\" \"Couldn't have been him, though,\" Linton answered automatically. \"My friend's dead.\" you've probably got old Snead into trouble.\" \"Snead's dead,\" Linton said. \"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. 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 \"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: God? \"The Mafia, I guess. Who knows who runs it?\" \"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 \"Sh-h,\" Howell said uneasily. \"This is a public place.\" \"I don't understand,\" Linton said helplessly. \"Look, Frank, you can't legalize a thing like resurrection,\" Howell said with feigned patience. \"There are strong religious convictions to consider. The undertakers have a lobby. I've heard they got spies right in the White House, ready to assassinate if they have to. Death is their whole life. You got to realize that.\" \"That's not enough. Not nearly enough.\" \"Think of all the problems it would cause. Insurance, for one thing. Overpopulation. Birth control is a touchy subject. They'd have to take it up if everybody got resurrected when they died, wouldn't they?\" \"But what do they do about it? Against it?\" \"There are a lot of fakes and quacks in the resurrection business. When the cops find out about a place, they break in, smash all the equipment and arrest everybody in sight. That's about all they can do. The Time the other day that said 'death' was our dirty word, not sex. You want to shock somebody, you tell him, 'You're going to be dead someday,' not anything sexual. You know how it is. The opposite of 'live' these days is 'video-taped.'\" \"I see,\" Linton said. 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!\" the thick-set man and stalked out. I've got to hurry too, Linton thought. It's Resurrection Day! Linton stared suspiciously. \"Do you know where I can find a resurrectionist?\" \"I am a resurrectionist.\" \"But the policeman brought me to you!\" \"Well, that's what you paid him to do, wasn't it? Did you think a \"Doctor, can you really resurrect the dead?\" \"Will you stop being cynical? Of course I can!\" \"Doctor, I'm beginning to believe in you,\" Linton said, \"but tell me, can you resurrect the long dead?\" \"Size has nothing to do with it.\" \"No, my wife has been dead a long time. Months.\" \"Months?\" The doctor snapped those weeks away with his fingers. \"It could be years. Centuries. It's all mathematics, my boy. I need only one fragment of the body and my computers can compute what the rest of it was like and recreate it. It's infallible. Naturally there is a degree of risk involved.\" \"Infallible risk, yes,\" Linton murmured. \"Could you go to work right away?\" \"First, I must follow an ancient medical practice. I must bleed you.\" Linton grasped the situation immediately. \"You mean you want money. You realize I've just got out of an institution....\" care less. \"Oh, yes—yes, indeed. But I didn't come out broke.\" \"When they hit rock bottom, they bounced up. If I hadn't found you, I would have been secure for the rest of my lonely, miserable life.\" \"All that's ended now,\" the doctor assured him. \"Now we must go dig up the corpse. The female corpse, eh?\" Resurrection Day! \"Doctor,\" Linton whispered, \"my mind is singing with battalions of choirs. I hope that doesn't sound irreverent to you.\" Beautifully.\" The certificate to allow reburial in Virginia hadn't been impossible 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. 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 course it would be it hadn't changed even in the grave. He remembered 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?\" \"Darling, resurrection is a risky business and an expensive one. You 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. But you're sure you haven't the money to do it?\" \"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.\" to quench death and smother decay. It's perfect .\" those shiny little tabs that looked like pictures of transistors in He knelt beside the body and poked into the bleeding, smoldering wreckage. Yes, it seemed they had to automate and modify the bodies somewhat in resurrection. They couldn't chemically revive the old corpse like pouring water on a wilted geranium. Or— Did they use the old bodies at all? What were all those acid baths for if the bodies were used? Didn't the resurrectionists just destroy the old corpses and make androids, synthetic creatures, to take their place? But it didn't matter. Not a bit. She had thought she was his wife, sharing her viewpoint down to the doctor looked down at him consolingly. \"You'll have to go back, Mr. 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.\" \"Do you really\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the central theme of February Strawberries?\n\n<options>:\nA Death, while tragic, should be permanent\nB Just because technology has the means to accomplish great feats does not mean it should cross certain lines\nC It is better to have all the details before making a life-changing and costly decision\nD The value of a human life cannot transfer once one is resurrected\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,159 | 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>:\nGoing straight meant crooked planning. He'd never make it unless he somehow managed to PICK A CRIME By RICHARD R. SMITH treatment and taking it. But you wouldn't do that. You wanted to commit a crime, get caught and be a hero ... an \"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.\" It was easy enough to understand, he reflected, but a lot harder to do. on the verge of drunkenness. At the proper time—since drunkenness was illegal—a bartender always watered the drinks. 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 . He opened his mouth to tell Hendricks exactly what he thought of him, get another—everyone was required by law to carry a CPA ID card and . He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a \"And who'll hire a guy with criminal tendencies? You know the score. crime. And now that he knew, it didn't seem fair. He decided to tell When you try to get a job, they ask to see your ID before they even . \"See what I mean?\" Hendricks asked. \"A century ago, you would have been locked in a prison and taxpayers' money would have supported you until 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!\" something big to plan a crime. blackmail, rape, arson, and drunkenness had originated the CPA—Crime that. All his life it had been telling him he couldn't do things he wanted to do and now almost impossible, and during the previous year, only a few hundred men wonderful world, Joe. A world of happy, healthy people. Except for in the whole country had been convicted of criminal acts. freaks like yourself, criminals are—\" the door behind him before the car stopped completely. \"Let me out!\" Joe grabbed at the door and was on the sidewalk, slamming No crime was ever punished. If a man was smart enough to kill wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all a dozen other methods. An expensive operation, but since there were few He wanted to spit his contempt, but the increasingly familiar pain and criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock prisoner inside his own body ... made a prisoner by a world that hated him back. treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy and He stared at the car as it pulled away from the curb and glided into the stream of traffic again. He realized he was a prisoner ... a prisons and their guards, large police forces, squad cars and weapons. commit a crime was a sort of hero. He And, ironically, a man who did hero, but because of the CPA Treatment, he was—when he left one of the 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. 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 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 \" Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when in on him. When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, \"Okay. Snap out of it.\" Joe handed him the card with trembling fingers. He felt as if the world 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 the CPA didn't punish crimes or attempted crimes, and it didn't attempt to prevent crimes by punishment. If it did, that would be a violation of the New Civil Rights. Hendricks crossed the room, deposited the card in a slot and punched a 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, because it's exciting to be an amateur cop, and if they ever did prevent you from committing a crime, they'd get a nice reward and they'd be famous.\" Joe waved the money away. \"Listen, why don't you do me a favor? Why 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.\" me go?\" \"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.\" \"How can I help you without committing a crime myself?\" Hendricks walked to his desk, opened a drawer and removed a small black book. 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 own imagination. He hated the CPA and at night he couldn't shrug the feeling that the CPA lurked in every shadow, watching him, waiting for store was absolutely impenetrable. No one had even tried to rob a place of business for years. supervision of the CPA, it was a scientific colossus and to think of kidnapping someone or to contemplate the use of narcotics was someone, for instance, he wasn't sent to prison to be punished he law, it would have been wired with CPA burglarproof devices, but evidently he didn't want to pay for installation. 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. John with Love . His trial would be a clean-cut one: it would be easy Chuckling with joy, he opened the window and shouted, \" Thief! Police! Help! \" cameras clicked and recorded the damning evidence. When Joe was securely handcuffed to a seat inside the helicopter, the metal police officers rang doorbells. There was a reward for anyone who As Joe dressed, he searched his mind and tried to find some difference. 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. he looked in the mirror, he was paler. The treatment had taken months and he had, between operations, been locked in his room. Hendricks was standing by the window. Joe stared at the massive back. glad the CPA caught you, and because they're glad you're an Ex. You're ex-murderer came out. In Hendricks' robot-chauffeured car, he ate the fudge and consoled employee and he doesn't live in the apartment you robbed. The CPA pays\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Joe want to commit a crime and be caught by the CPA?\n\n<options>:\nA So that he would fit the part of a hardened criminal.\nB So that he could become a part of the CPA team.\nC So that he could receive the CPA Treatment and be offered a good job.\nD So that he could get into the prison.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,712 | 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>:\nwhatever to it. It's obviously utterly impossible ... isn't it? implications are discussed here in an exclusive interview with Dr. NIEMAND. I suppose you might say my main job today is to find out all I can between activity on the Sun and various forms of activity on the Earth. LATHAM. What do you mean by activity on the Sun? NIEMAND. Well, a sunspot is a form of solar activity. LATHAM. Just what is a sunspot? NIEMAND. I'm afraid I can't say just what a sunspot is. I can only describe it. A sunspot is a region on the Sun that is cooler than its surroundings. That's why it looks dark. It isn't so hot. Therefore not so bright. LATHAM. Isn't it true that the number of spots on the Sun rises and falls in a cycle of eleven years? NIEMAND. The number of spots on the Sun rises and falls in a cycle of about eleven years. That word LATHAM. In what way? NIEMAND. It means you can only approximately predict the future course of sunspot activity. Sunspots are mighty treacherous things. LATHAM. Haven't there been a great many correlations announced between sunspots and various effects on the Earth? NIEMAND. Scores of them. LATHAM. What is your opinion of these correlations? sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that. LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of others? NIEMAND. I think our biggest advance was the discovery that sunspots themselves are not the direct cause of the disturbances we have been studying on the Earth. It's something like the eruptions in rubeola. a conspicuous symptom of the disease. Whereas the real cause is an invisible filterable virus. In the solar case it turned out to be these S-Regions. LATHAM. Why S-Regions? NIEMAND. We had to call them something. Named after the Sun, I suppose. radiation we detect is the actual cause of the disturbing effects observed. LATHAM. Just what are these effects? our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.\" LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see— NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had put it the other way around. \"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in ourselves but in our stars\" or better \"in the Sun.\" LATHAM. In the Sun? NIEMAND. That's right, in the Sun. I suppose the oldest problem in the world is the origin of human evil. Philosophers have wrestled with it ever since the days of Job. And like Job they have usually given up in ten days later the attack would cease as mysteriously as it had come and they would be their old self again. LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of overworked. Been hearing about it ever since I was a pre-med student at ucla . Even as a boy I can remember my grandfather deploring the stress as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the inquiry into their personal life. Here again I drew a blank. They had no remedies for a patient. To my way of thinking it is a lazy slipshod way of carrying on the practice of medicine. The only thing for which I do give myself credit was that I asked my patients to keep a detailed record of their symptoms taking special care to note the time of NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all occurred during the daytime, between the hours of about seven in the distribution very closely. I couldn't possibly see what daylight had to do with it. There is some evidence that mental patients are most disturbed around the time of full moon, but a search of medical literature failed to reveal any connection with the Sun. LATHAM. What did you do? NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did, however, take pains to impress upon them the necessity of keeping an exact record of the onset of an attack. The better records they kept the more conclusive was the evidence. Men and women were experiencing nearly simultaneous attacks of rage and depression all over southern LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy— NIEMAND. No, no. The weather had nothing to do with it. I mean the Sun had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no corresponding record of an attack in California where it was still dark. Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some connection with the Sun. LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first. Middle Ages when astrology and medicine went hand in hand. But since it was our only lead we had no other choice but to follow it regardless of astronomers have gotten so used to hearing from flying saucer enthusiasts and science-fiction addicts that nothing surprises them any Sun in a way that was even more convincing. LATHAM. How was that? LATHAM. Why is that so important? NIEMAND. Because the average period of solar rotation in the sunspot optical telescope, but are detected with ease by a NIEMAND. Very closely. You see it takes about twelve days for an S-Region to pass across the face of the Sun, since the synodic rotation NIEMAND. Apparently an S-Region is not particularly effective when it is just coming on or just going off the disk of the Sun. LATHAM. Are the S-Regions associated with sunspots? NIEMAND. They are connected in this way: that sunspot activity and S-Region activity certainly go together. The more sunspots the more The same thing is true of sunspots and magnetic storms. LATHAM. How do you account for this? NIEMAND. We don't account for it. LATHAM. Does this mean that the mental disturbances arise from some form of electromagnetic radiation? this malignant radiation. Then a new region develops in perhaps an entirely different region of the Sun. Sometimes there may be several different S-Regions all going at once. LATHAM. Why were not the S-Regions discovered long ago? NIEMAND. Because the radio exploration of the Sun only began since the end of World War II. LATHAM. How does it happen that you only got patients suffering from S-radiation since about 1955? NIEMAND. I think we did get such patients previously but not in large enough numbers to attract attention. Also the present sunspot cycle started its rise to maximum about 1954. LATHAM. Is there no way of escaping the S-radiation? on the Sun. But a new one may develop at any time. Also, the outlook for a decrease in activity is not very favorable. Sunspot activity continues at a high level and is steadily mounting in violence. The last sunspot resist. LATHAM. Could we not be warned of the presence of an S-Region? NIEMAND. The trouble is they seem to develop at random on the Sun. I'm afraid any warning system would be worse than useless. We would be crying WOLF! all the time. LATHAM. How may a person who is not particularly susceptible to this malignant radiation know that one of these regions is active? NIEMAND. If you have a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, if you are may be pretty sure that an S-Region is passing across the face of the Sun. Keep a tight rein on yourself. For it seems that evil will always be with us ... as long as the Sun shall continue to shine upon this little world. THE END\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the main point of this interview?\n\n<options>:\nA To complain that the conference paper was underattended and underappreciated\nB To discuss the effects of hidden areas on the sun on people's behavior\nC To argue that multidisciplinary science is the best kind of science\nD To warn people of the dangers of the sun on their minds and bodies\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
337 | 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>:\nslide-rule and logarithm tables. \"Now all we have to do is find out if she's made of tungsten, iron, quartz crystals, and cinnabar! But there couldn't be two asteroids of that shape anywhere else in the Belt, so this has to be it!\" He jerked a badly crumpled ethergram from his pocket, smoothed it out, and thumbed his nose at the signature. neither Bob nor Queazy would have thought of sending an answering ethergram to Burnside stating that they would fill the order. It was, plainly, a hair-brained request. And yet, if by some chance their mass-detectors in a weight-elimination process, seemed like an incredible stroke of luck. For there are literally millions of And quit poking around at it with that spectroscope. I've already taken a reading. Cinnabar, iron ore, quartz crystals, tungsten. Goodbye.\" go and play somewhere else! Else I'll let the Interplanetary Commission know you've infringed the law. G'bye!\" I just want you to listen to reason. You've taken a whim to stay on an asteroid that doesn't mean anything to you one way or another. But to us—to me and Queazy here—it means our business. We got an order If we don't take this asteroid to Earth before June 2, we go back to Satterfield City and work the rest of our lives in the glass factories. Don't we, Queazy?\" Queazy said simply, \"That's right, miss. We're in a spot. I assure you expression did not change. She put her hands on the bulging hips of her space-suit. \"Okay,\" she said. \"Now I understand the conditions. Now we both understand each other. G'bye again. I'm staying here and—\" she smiled sweetly \"—it may interest you to know that if I let you have the asteroid you'll save your business, but I'll meet a fate worse than death! So that's that.\" Bob recognized finality when he saw it. \"Come on, Queazy,\" he said fuming. \"Let this brat have her way. But if I ever run across her without a space-suit on I'm going to give her the licking of her life, right where it'll do the most good!\" The girl nodded dumbly. Suddenly she seemed to be frightened. \"It's—it's very important that this—this asteroid stay right where it is,\" she said huskily. \"What—what will they do?\" clamps took hold. A few seconds later, the airlocks swung down, and five men let themselves down to the asteroid's surface and stood surveying the three who faced them. The two men in the lead stood with their hands on their hips their and his boots were wrenched loose from their magnetic grip. Vaguely, before the flickering points of light in his brain subsided to complete no asteroid, no girl, no Queazy. He was alone in the vastness of space. Alone in a space-suit. \"Queazy!\" he whispered. \"Queazy! I'm running out of air!\" There was no answer from Queazy. With sick eyes, Bob studied the of spastic rays, enough to screw up every muscle in his body to the snapping point, putting him in such a condition of suspended animation that his oxygen needs were small. He closed his eyes, trying to fight against panic. He was glad he couldn't see any part of his body. He was probably scrawny. And he was hungry! \"I'll starve,\" he thought. \"Or suffocate to death first!\" He couldn't keep himself from taking in great gulps of air. Minutes, then hours passed. He was breathing abnormally, and there wasn't enough air in the first place. He pleaded continually for Queazy, hoping He groaned. He never would get out of it! After another hour, he was gasping weakly, and yellow spots danced in his eyes. He called Queazy's name once more, knowing that was the last time he would have strength to call it. suddenly brightening face. \"Don't thank me,\" he whispered. \"We'd have both been goners if it hadn't been for her. The Saylor brothers left her paralyzed like us, and when she woke up she was on a slow orbit around her ship. scattered us far and wide.\" Queazy's broad, normally good-humored face twisted blackly. \"The so and so's didn't care if we lived or died.\" stubbornest old hoot-owl in this universe! He's always had his way, and when people stand in his way, that's just a challenge to him. He's been badgering me for years to marry Mac, and so has Mac—\" If you knew my grandfather, you'd know how absolutely impossible did find the asteroid in time they wouldn't be able to get it back to Earth, I came out here and decided to live here. determination. \"Miss, pardon me if I say that this deal you and your granddad cooked up is plain screwy! With us on the butt end. But I'm going to put this to you plainly. We can catch up with the Saylor \"That's right,\" Bob said grimly. \"We're in business. For us, it's a matter of survival. If the by-product of delivering the asteroid is your marriage—sorry! But until we do get the asteroid back, we three can work as a team if you're willing. We'll fight the other problem out Queazy looked from one to another of them. He waved his hand scornfully at Bob. \"You're plain nuts,\" he complained. \"How do you propose to go Starre. \"He's always pulling me up short when I go off half-cocked. All I know is, that maybe we'll get a good idea as we go along. In the meantime, Starre—ahem—none of us has eaten in three weeks...?\" Bob Parker was in love with Starre Lowenthal. He knew that after five days out, as the ship hurled itself at breakneck speed toward Earth probably that distracting emotion was the real reason he couldn't attach any significance to Starre's dumbbell-shaped ship, which trailed Starre apparently knew he was in love with her, too, for on the fifth \"Even I know that isn't the control to the Holloway vacuum-feeder, All moving bodies contract in the line of motion. What Holloway and Hammond did was to reverse that universal law. They caused the contraction first—motion had to follow! The gravitonic field affects have to marry him?\" Her eyes filled with tears. \"I have to live up to the bargain.\" \"And ruin your whole life,\" he ground out. Suddenly, he turned back to it! \" snapped his fingers. \"It'll work!\" His gray eyes showed satisfaction. \"Now, if only the Saylor brothers are where we calculated!\" They weren't where Bob and Queazy had calculated, as they had scornfully, they made no attempt to evade. There was no possible harm the oncoming ship could wreak. Or at least that was what they thought, again. All this had happened in such a short space of time that the Saylor brothers must have had only a bare realization of what was going on. Starre was chortling with glee. Queazy whispered, \"Attaboy, Bob! This \" If you're alive,\" Bob snarled wrathfully. \"And you won't be unless heavily, then rebounded and came spinning back with perfect, sparkling precision. And even before it snugged itself into its berth, it was apparent that the Saylor brothers had given up. Like a wounded terrier, their ship shook itself free of the asteroid, hung in black space for\n\n<question>:\nWhy do Starre, Bob, and Quezy work together, despite having goals that are at odds with one another?\n\n<options>:\nA Starre is hopeful that they can eventually help her out of her own predicament.\nB The Saylor brothers are in the way for both parties, and it makes more sense to work together to take them down.\nC Bob and Quezy don't care what happens to her after. They just want to get through the situation.\nD They simply don't have any other choice.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,911 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n\"If there was ever a fellow THE TALKATIVE TREE ready for this planet,\" decided have no manners—but what do you expect, when they used to be men! Kolin sensed a lack of direct things considered—the obscure star, the undetermined damage to the All \"Don't know what got into me, talking that way to a noticed his hands shaking. tree,\" he muttered. \"If Yrtok I'm as good as re-personalized right now.\" As he brooded upon the sorry choice of arousing a Peter Kolin had to admit that search by hiding where he snapped out of it and heard, \"Maybe you're all set, Sonny. The Life has been thinkin' of learning about other Peace State . He lined them up as if on parade. Kolin made himself Silenced but doubting, Kolin the damage,\" announced the tones, \"I have volunteered my He considered what form might most easily escape the section for preliminary scouting, as is suitable. It may be Chief in clipped, aggressive a long time without renewal. thought Kolin rebelliously. his musings: mere hope of escape was unsatisfying after the outburst that had defined Like the Supreme Director Another factor slipped into Prudently, he did not express this resentment overtly. His well-schooled features revealed no trace of the idea—or of any other idea. The don't?\" \"Why?\" wheezed Ashlew. \"They're scared that without talk of war, and scouting for Earth fleets that never come, people would have time to think about the way they have to live and who's running things in the Planetary intentions to harbor treasonable thoughts. posture had betrayed \"You will scout in five details wherein mere unenthusiastic of three persons each,\" Kolin had heard of instances one person in to report, and he will be replaced by one of the five I shall keep here to Kolin permitted himself to wonder when anyone might get some rest, but assumed a mildly willing look. (Too eager to kill two birds with one stone, as they used to say on make thinking connections, no matter how far away. an attitude could arouse suspicion of disguising an improper the hostile plots of Earth and the latter's decadent colonies. That, at least, was the official line. Kolin found himself in a scowled in turn, impartially, at his watch and at the weary stewards of his headquarters detail. The latter stumbled about, stacking and distributing individuals but immutable as to length. Slichow muttered something profane about disregard of orders as he glared at the rocky ridges surrounding the landing place. He was so intent upon planning greetings with which to of favoring themselves would go without. Kolin in regard to food. They maintained a standard expression favor the tardy scouting parties emergency, give even the appearance made up of myriads of tiny spores. They resembled those cast forth by one of the bushes Kolin's party had followed, and Kolin brought haze faded raggedly into thin air, but the units evidently formed a cohesive body. They drifted together, approaching the men as if taking intelligent advantage of the breeze. staggering flunkies, stealing their way, its elongated leaves on the pretext of dumping an reflections against a shimmering with bronze-green a few seconds of relaxation After a few heartbeats, he dropped the trash and stared at ship and men as if he had Kolin shared their sense of isolation. They would be out of sight of authority and responsible for their own actions. It was a strange sensation. pace, he murmured, \"My They marched down into Unit One.\" Throughout the cloud of spores, the mind formerly known as Peter Kolin congratulated itself upon its choice of form. For all Kolin could tell, he name is Frazer. I'm a second assistant steward. I'll think as , he thought. He paused to consider the in a world bounded by the rocky ridge behind them and got and the others were isolated a semi-circle of damp trees armful of light plastic packing, Low creepers became more plentiful, interspersed with spore was taking charge of that very instant. There are not enough men , thought Kolin. Some of me and Kolin agreed. the crew but like brief moments on a low shrub. Kolin regarded the trees with misgiving. in infinity to other officers. \"Could hardly be better, could it?\" he chuckled to the \"Maybe we can find a way through.\" In two or three minutes, \"Reformation of the Planetary State,\" mused the captain, smiling dreamily as he They craned their necks to estimate then—formation of the Planetary Mind!\" END Transcriber's Note: but, returning at a moderate the altitude of the more aware of the grasped the handrail. \"And This e-text was produced from clouds and atmospheric haze. Kolin looked over his shoulder. Distant objects seemed him a doped appearance. Kolin of greenish fur. All Kolin Nearer to the original The corners of his mouth felt oddly stiff they had involuntarily drawn back to glanced warily about, but nothing appeared to threaten him. \"It's time to end this scout,\" he told himself. \"It's dangerous. One good look and I'm clinging to the rugged trunk suggested a route. He tried his weight gingerly, then began Kolin progressed rapidly. \"Depends on what you're looking for, Sonny!\" something remarked in a soughing wheeze. Kolin, slipping, grabbed was likely to result in a siege the eerie voice. \"It took me all summer to grow those!\" Kolin could feel the skin of treatment that left the subject are you?\" he gasped. The answering sigh of laughter gave him a distinct chill despite its suggestion of amiability. with what I am. Didn't figure Kolin looked about, seeing told himself in a reasonable tone. \"It's bad enough that the other two passed out without me going space happy too.\" the voice. \"I can talk to you just as easy all the way Kolin examined the bark of mind—some little planet. I don't bother with them all, since I came here and found out I could be anything I State. Then the gravy train Kolin, testing the firmness of \"Just what I said,\" continued the voice, sounding closer in his ear as his would get blown up—and I hour, each detail will send mean blown up!\" The tree was silent for a life and when I remembered how long some of them live, that settled it. Sonny, this world ain't all it looks like.\" thinking, and set its roots down all over until it had control. That's the outskirts hanging on grimly. \"Doggone vine!\" commented the windy whisper. \" have seen his looks before the Life got in touch with his mind and set up a mental field to help him change form. He looks twice as good as a Kolin politely. He groped for mental field helping. Guess he started living with a different way of thinking. It burns me. I thought of being a tree, and then he came along Kolin braced himself securely to stretch tiring muscles. \"Maybe I'd better stay a while,\" he muttered. \"I don't helps you change form. You don't have \" Uh -uh! Some of the boys the outside anyway. Most of them have to change as the bodies wear out, which I don't, and some made bad mistakes tryin' to be things were about the same height. \"Listen!\" Kolin blurted out. \"I wasn't so much enjoying being what I was that getting back matters to me!\" have to think and even look the way that's standard thirty hours a day, asleep or awake. You get scared to sleep for fear you might dream treason and they'd find \"Whooeee! Heard about them places. Must be tough just to live.\" Suddenly, Kolin found himself the Planetary State's planned expansion. He dwelt upon the desperation of having no place to hide in case of trouble with the authorities. A imagine. Somehow, the oddity of Kolin heard opinions spouting stormed and complained, the more relaxed he felt.\n\n<question>:\nOf what does Kolin and his peers need to be most careful of managing, lest they be perceived as treasonous?\n\n<options>:\nA Their language\nB Their guise\nC Their rations\nD Their thoughts\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
2,233 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nNot all the world’s citizens were content. Bergstrom was waiting in his office when Zarwell arrived that evening. kill him right away,” a second, less confident voice said. “It’s supposed “What do you think they’ll do with him?” “Execute him, I suppose,” the harsh voice said matter-of-factly. “They’re probably just curious to see what he looks like first. They’ll be disappointed.” Zarwell opened his eyes a slit to observe his surroundings. It was a mistake. “He’s out of Two men hurried through a doorway of a small anteroom to his left, calling to him. He turned away it,” the first speaker said, and Zarwell Zarwell did not deign to acknowledge that he heard. The big man turned. “You can tell the Chief he’s awake,” he said. Zarwell followed his gaze to where a younger man, with a blond lock of hair on his forehead, stood behind him. The youth nodded and went out, while the other pulled a chair up to the side of Zarwell’s cot. While their attention was away from him Zarwell had unobtrusively loosened his bonds as much as possible with arm leverage. As the Zarwell told him. The grin faded from the oily face as the man stood up. He leaned over ruffian, copper-brown face damp with perspiration and body oil, grabbed him by the jacket and Zarwell pulled the struggling body down against his chest and held it there until all agitated now why he always carried it. Bergstrom, asked. John Zarwell shook his head. “Did I talk while I was under?” nonchalance. “The next couple “How does it tie in with what I told you before?” Bergstrom’s neat-boned, fair-skinned face betrayed no emotion Zarwell did not answer. His memory seemed on the point of other than an introspective stillness complete return, and he sat quietly, should do it.” yet?” “I don’t see why not.” Zarwell Bergstrom had his bad moment. “You’re not going to …” he began at the sight of the gun. He tried [p 137 Zarwell corrected him. “You’d be foolish!” Bergstrom obviously realized how close he was to death. Yet surprisingly, after the first start, area. “Good.” Bergstrom rose. “The serum is quite harmless, John.” He maintained a professional diversionary Curiosity restrained his trigger finger. Bergstrom shook his head. “I know it’s been broken before. But you need me. You’re not through, and rolled gently toward the far wall. Bergstrom continued talking, with practiced urbanity. “When “Is that the best you can do?” “No.” Bergstrom was angry now. “But use that logical mind you’re analyst.” psychiatry was a less exact science,” turn you in to the police, I’d have done it before this.” Zarwell debated with himself the truth of what the other had said. trouble.” The floor continued its transmutation, and Zarwell sank deep into killer!” Now that the crisis seemed to be past, Bergstrom spoke more calmly, even allowed himself to above. They faded, were gone. ZARWELL found himself The words tumbled down from relax. “You’re still pretty much in Zarwell’s eyebrows raised. “Who am I?” he asked, very interested now. Without attention he put his pistol away in a trouser pocket. Bergstrom brushed the question the human worlds. I’d like to talk more with you on that later.” While Zarwell considered, Bergstrom pressed his advantage. “One more scene might do it,” he said. 145 ] Zarwell made his decision quickly. “Go ahead,” he answered. ALL Zarwell’s attention seemed on the cigar he lit as he rode down the escalator, but he surveyed “O DD,” Bergstrom said. He brought his hands up and joined until he found his key. The briefcase more to you than the first, I suppose?” “No,” Zarwell answered. He was not a talking man, Bergstrom reflected. It was more than concealed by his present perplexity. He was a man who could handle himself well in an emergency. Bergstrom shrugged, dismissing his strayed thoughts. “I expected down at his appointment pad. “Tomorrow at two, then?” Zarwell grunted acknowledgment “A good man must have done that job on your mind,” Bergstrom homes of the laborers and lower class techmen who live there. Zarwell passed a group of smaller children playing a desultory game of lic-lic for pieces of Zarwell nodded. “I’m glad to hear that,” Bergstrom assured him. “Now that you’re well again I’d like to introduce ] The next morning when Zarwell you see the reason for all this? I’m tired. I’m trying to quit.” “Quit?” Bergstrom did not quite follow him. viscous depths. “Lie back and relax. Zarwell explained listlessly. “A gang of hoods had taken over the government. I helped organize a Don’t …” “I’m not a professional do-gooder.” Zarwell’s tone appealed to Bergstrom for understanding. “I have only a normal man’s indignation at injustice. And now I’ve done A village was being ravaged. Men struggled and died in the streets. Zarwell moved among Johnson can do your own revolting. I’m through!” Bergstrom did not argue as he left. RESTLESSNESS drove Zarwell was nearing its end. Zarwell was riding a shaggy pony outside a high from his flat the next day—a wall surrounding the stricken metropolis. He moved in and joined a can spare a few minutes,” the stranger said. in the streets again, plundering and killing. Zarwell was not the leader of the invaders, only a lesser figure in the Zarwell turned and studied the rebellion. But he had played a leading man without answering. He was The job had been well done. Time passed, without visible break in the panorama. Now Zarwell was fleeing, pursued by the same bearded men who had been The man nodded. Zarwell tried to feel the anger he “You’re Johnson?” he asked. wanted to feel, but somehow it “Then will you just listen? After, I’ll leave—if you tell me to.” Against his will he found himself liking the man, and wanting at least conflict engulfed him. Weary but resigned he accepted it, and did what he had to do …BERGSTROM was regarding BERGSTROM was regarding him with speculative scrutiny. “You’ve had quite a past, apparently,” Zarwell smiled with mild embarrassment. “At least in my dreams.” “Dreams?” Bergstrom’s eyes They …” past.” Zarwell’s expression became wary. He watched Bergstrom closely. After a minute, however, he seemed satisfied, and he let himself Zarwell found himself not listening as Johnson’s voice went on. The story was always the same. But why “That’s why you’re here, you know,” Bergstrom answered. “To of what I saw,” he observed. help you remember.” “… and we need your help.” Johnson had finished his speech. Zarwell gazed up at the bright sky. He pulled in a long breath, Bergstrom went on, “that your lost that your mind has been tampered Bergstrom said confidently. “I won’t have any time off again until next week end,” Zarwell reminded him. “That’s right.” Bergstrom tomorrow?” “I suppose I could.” “Fine,” Bergstrom said with satisfaction. more than casually interested in your case by this time.” A WORK truck picked Zarwell up the next morning and he rode with a tech crew to the edge of needs. When Zarwell arrived, six months before, the vitalized area\n\n<question>:\nWhy doesn't Bergstrom alert the authorities that he has a wanted criminal, drugged and unconscious in his office?\n\n<options>:\nA Bergstrom is Zarwell's partner and is wants Zarwell to regain his memories.\nB Bergstrom is a fan of Zarwell. He thinks Zarwell would overthrow the current dictatorship if Zarwell could regain his memories.\nC Bergstrom is afraid Zarwell might wake early and kill him before the authorities arrive.\nD Bergstrom wants Zarwell to meet with some people to overthrow the current dictatorship.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,827 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nwith an incoherent cry. He seized the first object his hand touched—it happened to be a heavy wooden cane leaning against Jakdane's bunk—propelled himself like a projectile at Quest. Quest rose from the table in a sudden uncoiling of movement. He did not unbuckle his safety a string. JUPITER WEAPON By CHARLES L. FONTENAY He was a living weapon of In his haste, Quest missed the companionway in his leap and was cornered against one of the head and shoulders with the heavy stick. Quest made no effort to retaliate. He cowered under the attack, to the Golden Satellite. It was a squalid saloon in the rougher section of Jupiter's View, the terrestrial dome-colony on Ganymede. holding his hands in front and pulled him off. When they had Asrange in irons, Jakdane turned to Quest, Motwick, Quest shook his head. “Don't bother him,” he said. “It's nothing but a few bruises.” Quest and when the skeptical Jakdane insisted on examining demanded Jakdane. “You could have, easily.” “I couldn't,” said Quest miserably, her some sober advice. “If you think you're in love with Quest, forget it,” he said. “Why? Because he's a coward? I know that ought to make “Not because he's a coward. Because he's an android!” “What? Jakdane, you can't be serious!” It all figures. “Look, Trella, he said he was born on Jupiter. A human could stand the gravity of Jupiter, inside a dome or a ship, but what human could stand the rocket acceleration necessary to break free of Jupiter? Here's a man strong enough to break a spaceship safety belt just by getting up out of his chair against it, tough enough to take a beating Kregg striking Quest in the face and then crying that he had injured his hand on the bar. his father,” protested Trella. “Robots and androids frequently look on their makers as their parents,” said Jakdane. “Quest may not even know he's 57 his quarry and swung a huge fist like a sledgehammer. Exactly what happened, Trella wasn't sure. She had the impression artificial. Do you know how Dr. Mansard and his wife had that Kregg's fist connected squarely with the short man's chin Quest lived in the poisonous atmosphere of Jupiter, if he's human?” Trella was silent. “For the protection of humans, upward turn. “He developed the man Quest to a T, Trella. There is no other explanation for him: he must be an android.” Jakdane was right, but his reasoning was unassailable. Looking upon Quest as an android, many things were explained: his great strength, his short, broad had not told Quest of her mission to Ganymede. He thought he was Dr. Mansard's son, but you, eh?” asked Blessing intently. inheritance from his owner. She would leave it to Dom Blessing to decide what to do about Quest. an android had no legal right of Blessing had been searching the wrong and Quest was human—as now seemed unlikely—Quest The gravity of Ganymede was hardly more than that of Earth's like the looks of the men she saw. The transparent dome of Jupiter's View was faintly visible in the reflected night lights of the colonial city, but the lights were overwhelmed by the giant, vari-colored disc of Jupiter itself, riding high in the sky. “I'm Quest Mansard, Miss,” said her companion. “I'm just in from Jupiter.” “I'm Trella Nuspar,” she said, favoring him with a green-eyed Jupiter.” “You're lying,” she said flatly. “No one has ever landed on Jupiter. It would be impossible to blast off again.” “My parents landed on Jupiter, and I blasted off from it,” he said soberly. “I was born I should tell you about.” She told him about Quest. “He thinks he's the son of Dr. Mansard,” she finished, “but apparently he is, without knowing it, an android Dr. Mansard built on Jupiter.” ship was drawn into Jupiter and “It was drawn into Jupiter, but he landed it successfully,” said Quest. “He and my mother lived on Jupiter until the oxygen equipment wore out at last. I “He came back to Earth with surgiscope, didn't he? But his lost.” he's an android and claim ownership as Dr. Mansard's heir.” a small rocket with a powerful was born and brought up there, Trella planned to spend a few up in heavy gravity. He trod the street with a light, controlled hold himself down. “If Dr. Mansard succeeded in landing on Jupiter, why didn't anyone ever hear from him again?” she demanded. “Because,” said Quest, “his radio was sabotaged, just as his ship's drive was.” “Jupiter strength,” she murmured, looking him over coolly. 53 of. Without actually intending to, she exclaimed: “You aren't afraid of Quest? Why, an android can't hurt a human!” his mechanical servant. She was sure that Blessing was wrong, that Quest, whether man or android, intended no 59 harm to him. Surely, Quest Quest came the day before she against telling him that the assignment on which she had come to the Jupiter system was to gather his own father's notebooks and take them back to was scheduled to leave. and Quest burst through. The two guards turned and fired together. and it leaped into the driveway with spinning wheels. Quest was after it, like a chunky deer, running faster than Trella had ever seen a man at the end of the driveway and glanced back over his shoulder. Seeing Quest almost upon him, he slammed down the accelerator and twisted the wheel hard. ran down the driveway toward the smoking heap of metal. Quest was already beside it, probing it. As she reached his side, he lifted the torn body of “But why, Quest? I knew he was afraid of you, but he didn't tell me why.” Cometfire swung around great Jupiter in an opening arc and plummeted ever more swiftly toward the tight circles of the sphere, and Trella was thrown with Quest almost constantly. Io. Blessing wanted the valuable rights to the surgiscope, and he sabotaged the ship's drive so it would fall into Jupiter. “But my father was able to control it in the heavy atmosphere of Jupiter, and landed it successfully. I was born there, and he conditioned me to come More gently than Trella would have believed possible for his Jupiter-strong muscles, Quest took her in his arms. “Now I can say I love you,” “What in space makes you think that?” he demanded. “Why, Quest, it's obvious,” she cried, tears in her eyes. “Everything about you … your build, suited for Jupiter's gravity …your strength … the your strength … the disappeared into the turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter just after in Jupiter's atmosphere after the oxygen equipment failed. I know you think Dr. Mansard fact that you were able to live his invention of the surgiscope, and it had been developed by was your father, but androids was inventor of the surgiscope? He knew I'd have to grow up on Jupiter, and he operated on the genes before I was born. He altered my inherited characteristics Jovian moons for a second, hidden of Jupiter … even to laboratory of Dr. Mansard. When it was found at last, he to adapt me to the climate being able to breathe a chlorine atmosphere as well as an oxygen with a laugh. “They don't grow up. And I remember my boyhood on Jupiter very well.” He took her in his arms again, were eating lunch on the center-deck. Quest picked up his bulb of coffee, but inadvertently pressed it before he got it to his\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the Jupiter weapon?\n\n<options>:\nA Asrange is the Jupiter weapon.\nB The surgiscope is the Jupiter weapon.\nC No one knows what the Jupiter weapon is, but the plans are in Dr. Mansard's notes.\nD The Jupiter weapon is Quest himself.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
878 | 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 can I prove that I don't have my health? Not if you believe me. The first thing I can remember, the start of all this, was when I was four or five somebody was soiling my bed for me. I absolutely was not morning the bed would sit there dispassionately soiled and convict me on circumstantial evidence. My punishment was as sure as the tide. Dad was a compact man, small eyes, small mouth, tight clothes. He was and I was left there in the dark. Being four or five, I didn't know any better, so I thought Dad made it dark to add to my punishment. But I learned he didn't know the light went out. It came back on when he unlocked the door. Every time I told things that came to me. They were real to me. They never touched me, but they had a little boy. him. Because they were real, I talked about them as if they were real, and I almost earned a bunk in the home for retarded children until I got smart enough to keep the beasts to myself. My mother hated me. I loved her, of course. I remember her smell mixed on my ninth birthday. The trouble came from the notes written in my drawings. My mother and father must have been glad when I was sent away to reform school after my thirteenth birthday party, the one no one came to. My trouble there was that I was always being framed for stealing. I couldn't be me who did the stealing. There was reason for me to steal, if I could have got away with it. The 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 the things I wanted. It was two or three years later that I skulked into Brother Partridge's 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. amening. I could see he had a lot to be thankful for—somewhere he had received a fix. \"Brothers,\" Partridge went on after enjoying the interruption with a beaming smile, \"you shall all be entitled to a bowl of turkey soup prepared by Sister Partridge, a generous supply of sweet rolls and dinner rolls contributed by the Early Morning Bakery of this city, The Stars and Stripes Forever , John Philip Sousa's grand old patriotic song.\" I had to laugh at all those bums clattering the chairs in front of me, scampering after water soup and stale bread. As soon as I got cleaned couldn't. It had to be a one. Who drops anything but a one into a Skid his hot little fist, he can't get his hand out. He's too greedy to let go, so he stays there, caught as securely as if he were caged. I seen it for the first time, the electricity wound the spring motor The next time I glanced at the clock, it said ten minutes had gone by. 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.\" My head hinged until it lined my eyes up with Brother Partridge. The pipe hung heavy in my pocket, but he was too far from me. 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 intervention. But I can't imagine what.\" get apprehended somehow, Brother,\" I said. \"I'm pretty special.\" \"Your name?\" \"William Hagle.\" No sense lying. I had been booked and printed before. Partridge prodded me with his bony fingers as if making sure I was substantial. \"Come. Let's sit down, if you can remove your fist from As long as it stalled off the cops, I'd talk to Partridge. call the cops. a break. \"One is almost— almost —reminded of Job. William, you are being punished for some great sin. Of that, I'm sure.\" \"Punished for a sin? But, Brother, I've always had it like this, as long as I can remember. What kind of a sin could I have committed when I was fresh out of my crib?\" \"William, all I can tell you is that time means nothing in Heaven. Do you deny the transmigration of souls?\" \"Well,\" I said, \"I've had no personal experience—\" \"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!\" \"And you think I'm being punished for something I did in a previous \"I don't know,\" I confessed. \"I certainly haven't done anything that 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. \"Perhaps this will help in your atonement,\" he said. when I got out of the reformatory and the one when I tried to steal It was all an accident, but killing somebody is reason enough to get I went outside with my baloney and crackers. It was warm enough even for November. Two of them, dressed like Harvard seniors, caps and striped duffer jackets, came up to the crate I was dining off. \"What do you do, Jack?\" the fatter one asked. \"Stack boxes.\" \"Got a union card?\" \"No,\" I said. \"I'm just helping out during Christmas.\" make an example of him and do something permanent squirmed away across the rubbish like a polite mouse. News . There was a pick-up slip from the warehouse under the fingers of one hand, and somebody had beaten his brains out. The police figured it was part of some labor dispute, I guess, and they 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. matches dropping down on the floor next to his tennis shoes, and even a from spilling more from the spoon. old newspapers.\" \"Which newspapers?\" the old girl asked stiffly. I thought back. I couldn't remember the exact date. \"Ones for the first \"I didn't want to see the good pipe tobacco. I had been here before. In this world, it's the man with education who makes the money. I had been reading the Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia. So far I knew a lot about Mark Antony, Atomic Energy, Boron, Brussels, Catapults, Demons, and Divans. I guess I had stopped to look around at some of the titles, because the and left me alone with address. Somebody was sure to see me and I couldn't risk trouble just that they had paid a lot of money for. I remembered Fredric March's double-breasted in Executive Suite while Walter Pidgeon and the rest 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 difficulties.... The slimy, scaly beasts were slithering over the newspaper holders, that they used to destroy when I was locked up with them in the dark. 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 They say it's a bad sign when you start hearing voices. But a new thought suddenly impressed itself on me.\n\n<question>:\nWho is getting William in trouble with his parents?\n\n<options>:\nA Brother Partridge\nB William's twin\nC William\nD William's parents\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,459 | 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>:\nHere is what happened and what it meant: 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. To include one fancy product from a monster-scale U.S. mass brewery, to see if the tasters liked it better or worse than the cute little microbrews. This was Michelob Hefeweizen , from the pride of St. Louis, Anheuser-Busch. Click for pricing information and pre-quaffing evaluations. The beers tasted were: 4. Data Analysis. 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 results were clearest at the bottom: three Worsts for Pyramid Hefeweizen , even though most comments about the beer were more or less respectful. (\"Bitter, drinkable.\") But at the top and middle the situation was muddier: There were three Bests for Full Sail ESB , which most of the tasters later said they weren't familiar with, and 2.5 for Redhook IPA , which all the tasters knew. But each of these also got a Worst vote, and most of the other beers had a mixed reading. So far, the tasters are meeting expectations, finding something to like in nearly all these fancy beers. b) Overall preference points. Here the complications increase. The loser was again apparent: Pyramid Hefeweizen came in last on rating points, as it had in the Best/Worst derby. But the amazing dark horse winner was Michelob Hefeweizen . The three elements of surprise here, in ascending order of unexpectedness, are: This best-liked beer belonged to the same category, Hefeweizen, as the least-liked product, from Pyramid. This was also the only outright Anheuser-Busch product in the contest (the Redhooks are 75 percent A-B free). It is safe to say that all tasters would have said beforehand that they would rank an American macrobrew last, and Anheuser-Busch last of all. Although it clearly won on overall preference points, Michelob Hefeweizen was the only beer not to have received a single \"Best\" 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. c) Value rankings. Last time this calculation led to what the colorful French would call a bouleversement. One of the cheapest beers, Busch, which had been in the lower ranks on overall preference points, came out at the top on value-for-money ratings, because it was so cheap. The big surprise now is that the highest-rated beer was also the cheapest one, Michelob Hefe , so the value calculation turned into a rout: Pyramid Hefeweizen was expensive on top of being unpopular, so its position at the bottom was hammered home--but not as painfully as that of Bass Ale . Bass had been in the respectable lower middle class of the preference rankings, so its disappointing Val-u-meter showing mainly reflects the fact that it was the only beer not on \"sale\" and therefore by far the costliest entry in the experiment. d) Taster skill. As members of the tasting panel began to suspect, they themselves were being judged while they judged the beer. One of the tasters, No. 7, decided to live dangerously and give specific brands and breweries for Samples A through J. This man was the only panel member whose job does not involve designing Microsoft Word--and the only one to identify two or more of the beers accurately and specifically. (He spotted Redhook IPA and Redhook ESB.) The fact that the beers correctly identified were the two most popular microbrews in the Seattle area suggests that familiarity is the main ingredient in knowing your beer. 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 : 5. Implications and Directions for Future Research. Science does not always answer questions often, it raises many new ones. This excursion into beer science mainly raises the question: What kind of people are we? 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. But, of course, there is another possibility: that what is excluded in a blind taste test is in fact what we want, and are happy to pay for, when we sit down with a beer. The complicated label, the fancy bottle, the exotic concept that this beer has traveled from some far-off corner of Bohemia or even the Yakima Valley--all this may be cheap at the $1.25-per-pint cost difference between the cheapest and the most expensive beers. In elementary school, we all endured a standard science experiment: If you shut your eyes and pinch your nose closed, can you tell any difference in the taste of a slice of apple, of carrot, of pear? You can't--but that doesn't mean that from then on you should close your eyes, hold your nose, and chew a cheap carrot when you feel like having some fruit. There is a time and place for carrots, but also for juicy pears. There is a time for Busch, but also for Full Sail \"Equinox.\" For scientists who want to continue this work at home, here are a few suggestions for further research:\n\n<question>:\nWhat isn't a conclusion drawn?\n\n<options>:\nA Michelob Hefeweizen is a great beer for the cost\nB Anheuser-Busch lived up to its popularity\nC Sam Adams was easily identifiable\nD Pyramid Hefeweizen is not worth the money\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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515 | 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>:\nDeath was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and every planet had known his touch. But now, on Mercury, he was selling his guns into the weirdest of all his exploits—gambling his life .\" The song was a rollicking, ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots She bent her head in acknowledgment so that her bronze red hair fell down about her face. There was perspiration on her upper lip and temples. Her crimson mouth wore a fixed smile. Her eyes were frightened. newest, the wildest, the hottest of Earth's frontiers. Fans spaced about the garden's walls sluggishly stirred the night air, while the men and women sitting at the tables drank heavily of Latonka, the pale green wine of Mercury. Only the native waiters, the enigmatic, yellow-eyed Mercurians, seemed unaffected by the heat. They didn't I don't trust you, but since....\" the pale green wine. The man, Jaro Moynahan, raised his glass. \"Here's to the revolution,\" he said. His low voice carried an odd, compelling note. His eyes, light blue and amused, were pale against his brown face. The girl drew in her breath. \"No! Mercury is not ready for freedom. Only a handful of fanatics are engineering the revolution. The real Mercurian patriots are against it, but they are afraid to protest. You've got to believe me. The revolution is scheduled to break during the Festival of the Rains. If it does, the Terrestrials here will be massacred. The Mercurians hate them. We haven't but a handful of troops.\" The girl ignored the interruption. \"There is one man he is the leader, the very soul of the revolution. The Mercurians worship him. They will do whatever he says. Without him they would be lost. He is the rebel, The lights had gone out. It was as unexpected as a shot in the back. One moment the garden was glowing in light, the next the hot black night swooped down on the revelers, pressing against their eyes like dark wool. The fans about There was no answer. \"Red!\" he repeated, louder. \"It's all right. The master fuse blew out. The lights will be on in a moment.\" On the heels of his speech the lights flashed on, driving the night upward. The fans recommenced their monotonous whirring. Latonka. The pale green wine had a delicate yet exhilarating taste. teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge. He wondered who was putting up the ten thousand Earth notes? Who stood to lose most in case of a revolution? The answer seemed obvious enough. Who, but Albert Peet. Peet controlled the Latonka trade for which there was a tremendous demand throughout the Universe. And what had happened to the girl. Had the rebels abducted her. If in the dark as any alley-prowling cat. For centuries they had lived most their lives beneath ground to escape the terrible rays of the sun. Only at night did they emerge to work their fields and ply their engineered it in the dark and the Mercurians were a clannish lot. revolutionist, and the girl. At infrequent intervals green globes cut a hole in the night, casting a faint illumination. He had just passed one of these futile street lamps But as soon as he emerged he was conscious again of the followers. In the dense, humid night, he was like a blind man trying to elude the cat-eyed Mercurians. In the East a sullen red glow stained the heavens like the reflection of a fire. The Mercurian dawn was about to break. With an oath, he set out again for his hostelry. He made no further effort to elude the He had, he supposed, killed rather a lot of men. He had fought in the deadly little wars of the Moons of Jupiter for years, then the Universal Debacle of 3368, after that the Martian Revolution as well as dozens of skirmishes between the Federated Venusian States. No, there was little doubt but that he had killed quite a number of men. But this of his line. Furthermore, there was something phony about the entire set up. The Mercurians, he knew, had been agitating for freedom for years. Why, at this time when the Earth Congress was about to grant them self-government, should they stage a revolution? A loud, authoritative rapping at the door interrupted further speculation. He swung his bare feet over the edge of the bed, stood \"Why, no. As it happened she was abducted before I had the chance.\" Mr. Peet licked his lips. \"But you will, surely you will. Unless Karfial Hodes is stopped immediately there will be a bloody uprising all over the planet during the Festival of the Rains. Earth doesn't realize the seriousness of the situation.\" \"Then I was right \"Not entirely,\" said Peet uncomfortably. \"There are many of us here, Mercurians as well as Earthmen, who recognize the danger. We have—ah—pooled our resources.\" \"But you stand to lose most in case of a successful revolution?\" \"Perhaps. I have a large interest in the Latonka trade. It is—ah—lucrative.\" gained control of the Latonka trade. Other Earthmen are in control of the mines and the northern plantations. Together you form perhaps the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time self-government has come before the Earth Congress you've succeeded in blocking it. You are, perhaps, the most cordially-hated group anywhere. I don't wonder that you are afraid of a revolution.\" Mr. Peet took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. \"Fifteen Earth Congress suspends negotiations on Mercurian freedom pending Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the of the city, bright radoxide lights took the place of the green globes, and there was a sprinkling of Colonial guards among the throng. \"LATONKA TRUST\" youth. \"Let's get this straight,\" he said mildly. \"I've known your kind before. Frankly, ever since I saw you I've had to repress a desire to \"What's happened?\" cried Albert Peet in distress. \"What's wrong with \"Oh,\" said Miss Webb, \"the offices of the Latonka Trust.\" \" said Joan, choking on the Latonka. \"But the police!\" she cried, as she caught her breath. \"There'll never be an investigation. Albert Peet will see to that. I was called here on what I supposed was a legitimate revolution. Instead I was offered ten thousand Earth notes to assassinate the leader of the revolution.\" \"What revolution? I'm going around in circles.\" \"The Mercurians, of course.\" \"I don't believe it,\" said the girl. \"The Mercurians are the most peaceable people in the Universe. They've been agitating for freedom, yes. But they believe in passive resistance. I don't believe you could induce a Mercurian to kill, even in self-protection. That's why Albert Peet and the rest of the combine had such an easy time gaining control of the Latonka trade.\" \"A gal's gotta eat. But the truth is, I was quitting. The Latonka Trust is almost on the rocks. Their stock has been dropping like a meteor.\" \"Albert Peet,\" she continued, \"has been trying to sell out but nobody first thing the Mercurians will do, will be to boot out the Latonka inciting the Mercurians to rebellion. The newscaster had a line about the revolution too. The government has advised all Terrestrials to return to Earth.\" \"It's not true,\" Joan flared. \"It's all a pack of lies invented by the Latonka Trust. I know.\" \"But I should think rumors like that would run down the Latonka stock.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy did the Latonka Trust stock start dropping?\n\n<options>:\nA Alternatives to Latonka flooded the market.\nB Demand for Latonka was decreasing.\nC There were rumors that the Earth Congress would grant Mercurians independence.\nD People suspected the revolution would be successful.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
2,095 | 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\"Mom, just leave that and I'll…\" \"Your father's in the front room,\" she says, just before she disappears from view. \"Go say hi.\" For a few seconds Sara is alone in the hallway, the smell of cooking meat coming from one doorway, the sound of rolling news from another. She shakes her head, kicks off shoes, tucks hair behind her ears. Braces herself. He's sat in the living room, reclining in the Lazy Boy. He doesn't hear her enter - her socked feet silent on the pile carpet floor, his attention lost in the screen that fills most of the wall. Fox News. She braces herself again. \"Hey Dad.\" \"Fine.\" \"Sorry Mom.\" Sara turns back to the TV, to watching the war, to trying to work out which one it is. 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. 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 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. \"-because they are the world's largest manufacturers of solar panels. But the research has been done. The scientific evidence is out there. Look it up.\" \"Look it up?\" Sara shakes her head, not knowing where to even start. \"Dad, who is telling you this stuff?\" \"No one is telling me it, Sara. I read it. It's in the news. I mean, really, I'm surprised you've not seen it. It was all over Facebook.\" \"Maybe on yours, but it's not all over my Facebook.\" She doesn't have the heart to tell him she muted him six months ago. \"Well, I don't read the news and I don't know any science,\" says Mom, \"But I do know this: after they opened that solar farm up near Mary, within just a few years her and two of her neighbours had cancer. I mean I don't know anything for sure honey, but given the risk are you sure it's safe to be putting these panels on top of schools?\" \"There's no risk, Mom. None at all. Dad, I wish you'd stop believing everything you see on Facebook.\" \"Well, maybe you should read things yourself before passing judgement on them.\" He pushes himself up from his seat, steps away from the table. Sara sighs, thinking she's upset him that much that he's actually abandoning his dinner, but he stops to grab something off a nearby shelf. His iPad. He heads back and takes his seat again. \"No blasphemy at the dinner table, please honey\" says Mom. \"What about them?\" \"Just… just look at them. They're terrifying. They're like… like adverts for the end of the world! You know they show you this stuff just to make you scared, right? Just to keep you paranoid.\" \"They show me this stuff because they've got products to sell. That's how the economy works. That's how we create jobs. Godammit Sara, are you telling me you hate advertising now? Do you just hate everything about America?\" Sara looks over to Mom, who looks like she's on the brink of tears. Suddenly she finds she's also lost the will to fight. Gently she closes the iPad and puts it down on the table, next to her plate. \"No, of course not Dad. Maybe I'll read this later, after the game.\" After dinner she helps Mom clean-up, the two of them loading the dishwasher in near silence. She's leaning against the counter, scrolling through Twitter on her phone, when Mom finally speaks. \"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.\" \"Fuck this,\" says Sara, getting up from her seat. \"Sara!\" says Mom. \"No I'm sorry, I can't. I can't sit here and watch this… this bullshit. This propaganda.\" She storms out of the room. \"Sara!\" Mom makes to get up. \"No, just leave her,\" says Dad, gently, his eyes still fixed on the screen. \"Just let her go.\" Out in the kitchen Sara sits at the table and wants to scream. She's angry, mainly with herself. She should never have fucking come here. She should have known better. There was never any fucking way anything good was going to come from this. As much as Mom wants to romanticise things, to make them sound cute and adorable, the truth is shit with Dad has never been right since she was a teenager. Too much resentment, too much bad blood, too much control and rebellion. They hadn't agreed on anything - they hadn't managed to have a simple conversation that didn't descend into fighting - in 15 goddamn years, and no amount of eating cookies and watching fucking Super Bowl ads on the TV was going to fix that. She sighs, wipes a tear from her cheek. On autopilot she takes her phone from her pocket, feels its reassuring warmth in her hand, and swipes open Twitter. Everybody seems to be talking about the same thing.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the implication about getting TV networks through Facebook?\n\n<options>:\nA The channels would be customized by age group so Sara would not have anything she'd like to watch\nB There would only be a few channels because it was a basic package\nC There would not be much available to watch besides sports\nD The available media is conservative-leaning which meant Sara would not want to watch it\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,869 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nthere isn't a trap, the Karna can't satisfy Braynek, because he's convinced There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one. For the wildest possibilities, just serves to keep Nordon from getting unconfused. \"These two men are honestly doing their best to win at the peace conference, and they've got the Karna reeling. The Karna can see that we're not trying to stall our men are actually working at trying to reach a decision. But what the Karna don't see is that those men, as a team, are unbeatable because, in this situation, they're psychologically incapable of losing.\" of men who were sent to him, he twitch or a quirk was shipped to Again the Secretary of State nodded to him. They were typical of the kind thought. Which meant, as usual, that his approval, but there was still they were atypical. Every man in the Diplomatic Corps who developed a of complex symbolism that 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 they're covered with armor. No, I'm and Braynek have blind spots, but on his guard against imaginary plots and persecutions. Number two suffered from some sort of emotional block that left him continually on the horns of one dilemma or another. He was psychologically incapable of making a decision if he were faced with two or more it that way. I suffer from agoraphobia and xenophobia. \"I have to be drugged to be put on like possible alternatives of any major bigshot should, is because I were alike, and yet there sometimes about all men. He considered himself an individual, for instance, but wasn't the basic similarity there, after all? seemed to be an eternal sameness He was—how old? He glanced at stand aliens!\" next week. Fifty-nine years old. And what did he have to show for it besides flabby muscles, sagging skin, a wrinkled face, and gray hair? Well, he had an excellent record in Transcriber's Note: casually through the dossiers of the four new men who had been assigned men, ships, planets, suns, and whole galaxies without filling its insatiable void. of the alien Karna in the most important that meant keeping on good terms with the Saarkkadic government. The Saarkkada themselves were humanoid in physical form—if one allowed the term to cover a wide range of differences—but their minds just didn't function along the same lines. For nine years, Bertrand Malloy ever seen him. To have shown himself to one of them would have meant instant loss of prestige. official was aloof. The greater his isolation. The Occeq of Saarkkad himself was never seen except by a handful of picked nobles, who, themselves, were never seen except by their Saarkkad IV to work under Bertrand underlings. It was a long, roundabout It was Bertrand Malloy's job to the Saarkkada weren't difficult to get along with. A staff of top-grade men could have handled them without half trying. 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 \"Maybe, but I doubt it. They might So Malloy was stuck with the culls. Not the worst ones, of course less important than Saarkkad to the what was wrong with a man, as long as he had the mental ability to dress himself and get himself to work, useful work could be found for him. Physical handicaps weren't at all difficult to deal with. A blind man can work very well in the total darkness or total losses of limbs can be compensated for in one way or another. The mental disabilities were harder to deal with, but not totally impossible. On a world without liquor, a glad I couldn't go his own on Saarkkad unless it's better this merely thwarting mental quirks he liked to find places where they were hand was turned against him. He \"Bring it in, Miss Drayson.\" Miss Drayson was a case in point. trusted no one, and was perpetually She was uncommunicative. She liked keep secrets from everyone except know? I wondered why you appointed what he had done unless she was ordered to tell someone. without actually seeing her. The war Number three ... The Karna, slowly being beaten Malloy sighed and pushed the dossiers away from him. No two men The trouble was that the Karna had a reputation for losing wars and winning at the peace table. They were clever, persuasive talkers. They could twist a disadvantage to an advantage, and make their own strengths look a spaceship because I can't take all again within a few years. Now—at this point in time—they could be beaten. They could be forced to allow supervision of the production potential, forced to disarm, rendered impotent. But if the armistice went to their own advantage ... They had sent a full delegation to only by low-intelligence animals. The Karna considered this to be The Karna pointed out that the THE END Karna were putting on had to be galaxy, most of whom had remained as neutral as possible during the into a battle between the two most would find that some of the now-neutral Karna played their cards right, their 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 made his decision. He flipped on his get hold of James Nordon and Kylen Braynek. I want to see them both immediately. Send Nordon in first, and tell Braynek to wait.\" it was better to give her permission to do so. James Nordon was tall, broad-shouldered, and thirty-eight. His hair was graying at the temples, and his handsome face looked cool and efficient. the Karna peace talks. \"We need a man who can outthink them,\" Malloy finished, \"and judging from your record, I think you're that man. It involves risk, of course. If certainly. Am I to go alone?\" \"No,\" said Malloy, \"I'm sending an assistant with you—a man named much time, but it's the Karna who are said softly: \"Send in Braynek, \"Naturally, they'll be trying to trick you every step of the way,\" Malloy went on. \"They're shrewd and underhanded laying out for themselves and plug them. Don't antagonize them, but \"They won't get anything by me, ship that had taken Nordon and Braynek on to V to take charge of the conference. \"Tense. They're waiting to see what is going to happen on Five. So am I, for that matter.\" His eyes were curious. \"You decided not to go to see the reports?\" ins and outs of the Diplomatic Corps. They've held off the Karna at every point! They've beaten them back! They've managed to cope with and outdo the finest team of negotiators the Karna could send.\" doing here with ... ah ... sick men. Is this one of your ... ah ... successes?\" Karna put us in a dilemma, so I threw a dilemma right back at them.\" \"How do you mean?\" \"Nordon had a mental block against making decisions. If he took that kind of guy. Until he's presented with one, single, clear decision which admits of no alternatives, he can't \"As you can see, the Karna tried they backed down to a single point and proved that it wasn't rigged, this was, and the more importance there is attached to his decisions, the more incapable he becomes of making them.\" The Secretary nodded slowly. \"What about Braynek?\" \"Paranoid,\" said Malloy. \"He thinks everyone is plotting against because the Karna are plotting against him. No matter what they put forth, find out what the trap is. Even if\n\n<question>:\nWho are the kind of men who are sent to Sararkkad IV?\n\n<options>:\nA Men who are hardened criminals.\nB Men who have mental illnesses.\nC Men who are physically challenged.\nD Men who are mentally challenged.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,629 | 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>:\nPLANET of DREAD was being marooned on a planet of endless terrors. in miniature form on other worlds. Enlarged like this. Earth, and unless all parts of the complex were present, the total was settlement. Mosquitos throve on the inhabited globes of the Rim Stars. Roaches twitched nervous antennae on the settled planets of the could see the planet that had been chosen for his marooning. It was a been left out of the seeding of this planet. The element—which might be nowhere else. There was an ice-cap in view. The rest was—clouds. The ice-cap, by its existence and circular shape, proved that the planet a bacterium or a virus or almost anything at all—the element that kept creatures at the size called \"normal\" was either missing or inoperable hydrochloric-acid ice. But the ice-cap was simple snow. Its size, too, thick, dense cloud-masses which covered most of the surface,—all the surface, in fact, outside the ice-cap. But since there were ice-caps , then approaching the world on planetary drive. He was to be left here, with no reason ever to expect rescue. Two of the such as are placed on certain worlds for the convenience of interstellar landing-point, and they had still to re-locate themselves. They'd been on Coryus Three and they'd gotten departure clearance from its space-port. With clearance-papers in order, they could land unquestioned at any other space-port and take off again—provided the have bought a ticket, but he'd tried to get off the planet Coryus on the Nadine . The trouble was that the had clearance papers covering five persons aboard—four men and a girl Carol. Moran made six. Wherever the yacht landed, such a disparity between its documents and because the drive had been dismantled in the engine-room. So the ship's innumerable random noises to be heard in supposedly empty space. \"That's a marker,\" Carol announced. \"I saw a costume-story tape once that had that sound in it. It marked a first-landing spot on some planet or other, so the people could find that spot again. It was supposed to be a long time ago, though.\" \"I think,\" said Carol, \"that we should land. People have been here. If they left a beacon, they may have left an identification of the planet. had cleared for Loris. That was where it should make its next landing. The little yacht went on. All five of its proper company watched as the planet's surface enlarged. The ice-cap appeared. There were cloud-banks everywhere, probably low down in the off-planet, and fast. But space-travel regulations are especially designed to prevent such escapes. He'd made a pretty good try, at that. One of the controls on space-traffic required a ship on landing to deposit its fuel-block in the space-port's vaults. The fuel-block was not returned until clearance for departure had been granted. But Moran had waylaid the messenger carrying the Nadine's fuel-block back to that space-yacht. He'd planet from which they'd carried away a criminal, even though they'd done it unwillingly. Investigation of such a matter might last for months. surface that the planet-wide cloud-level seemed to begin. From there on \"The signal's coming from that mound, yonder.\" with practically no impact at all. But around her there was a monstrous burned-out hollow some three or four feet deep with a bottom of solid stone. The walls of the hollow were black and scorched. It seemed that from the mound which was the source of the space-signal. That mound no mineral surface! The landing-pockets had burned away three or four alive. And something shrieked in lunatic fashion and something else \"What's that stuff there, the ground?\" he demanded. \"We burned it away in landing. I've seen something like it somewhere, but never taking the mound was not a fold in the ground. It was not an up-cropping of the ash-covered stone on which the dirty-yellow-dirty-red-dirty-blue-and-dirty-black ground-cover hid something. It blurred the shape it covered, very much as enormous carefully at the mound, there was a landing-fin sticking up toward the leaden skies. It was attached to a large cylindrical object of which the fore part was crushed in. The other landing-fins could be traced. \"It's a ship,\" said Moran curtly. \"It crash-landed and its crew set up a signal to call for help. None came, or they'd have turned the beacon off. Maybe they got the lifeboats to work and got away. Maybe they lived suit. Modern space-suits weren't like the ancient crudities with bulging the place of metal, and constant-volume joints were really practical nowadays. A man could move about in a late-model space-suit almost as easily as in ship-clothing. The others of the landing-party donned their special garments with the brisk absence of fumbling that these people water-soluble gases in the atmosphere, and a gas can't be an active poison if it can't dissolve. They filed out of the airlock. They stood on ash-covered stone, only slightly eroded by the processes which made life possible on this planet. They looked dubiously at the scorched, indefinite substance which had been ground before the Nadine The hole exposed a cheesy mass of soft matter which seemed riddled with Something black came squirming frantically out of one of the openings. It was eight or ten inches long. It had a head, a thorax, and an cheese-like, curd-like stuff. More black things squirming to view in that the top of the soil, here, was a thick and blanket-like sheet over the whitish stuff. The black creatures lived and thrived in tunnels under it. twenty times the size of the beetles we humans have been carrying around the galaxy, but that's what they are! discovered. It had not been practical for men to move onto new planets and subsist upon the flora and fauna they found there. On some new grow in the new-made dirt and insects to fertilize the plants so they would multiply, and animals and birds to carry the seeds planet-wide. On most planets, to be sure, there were local, aboriginal plants and large and monstrous under the conditions of a new planet. And the it, so somebody dumped germs and spores and bugs to make it ready for plants and animals eventually. But nobody's come back to finish up the job.\" parchment-like top skin yielded. It was like walking on a mass of was uncertain, as on a trampoline. They staggered. They moved toward the hillock which was a covered-over wrecked ship. The ground was not as level as it appeared from the Nadine's Something moved. It came out from behind a very minor spire of whitish stuff that looked like a dirty sheet stretched over a tall stone. The equally abrupt thinning, again, toward the landing-fins. The sharpness of the change was blurred over by the revolting ground-stuff growing everywhere. \"We're going to find that this wreck has been here a century at least!\" men—the armed ones—moved back from the smoke. They wore space-helmets But above all he raged because he was to be marooned here. He could not altogether blame the others. They couldn't land at any colonized world with him on board without his being detected as an extra member of the galaxy, naming five persons of such-and-such description and such-and-such fingerprints, voyaging in a space-yacht of such-and-such size and registration. The world they came from would claim them as fugitives. They would be returned to it. They'd be executed.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is hiding underneath the gigantic mound on the alien planet?\n\n<options>:\nA A pulsing, reeking object egg casing that contains countless unhatched beetle eggs\nB An empty spacecraft where a crew member had survived long enough to set up a marker\nC A 'yard-worm,' which is an uncontrolled type of an 'inch-worm'\nD The remains of a crew that had landed on the alien planet a century earlier\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
2,034 | 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. \"Go back? The planet itself was tough enough—barren, desolate, Go back? like you, out on the genius who had a motto: Death to all Terrans! \"Let's desert. That's the only sport I have left—Geig-hunting. Look die out here on Mars is to and I know you'd never be happy quitting in the middle that some grease monkey back at the Dome was at fault—whoever it was who had failed to fasten down the engine hood. Nothing but what had But no she blamed it all on me somehow: So we were out He smiled, as calmly as if I'd just praised his house-keeping. \"Because I hate you,\" he said blandly. \"I intend to wipe every last one of you out, one by one.\" I stared at him. I'd never seen a man like this before I thought all his kind had died at the time of the atomic wars. I heard Val sob, \"He's a \"No,\" Ledman said evenly. \"Just pick us off in the desert?\" but the mazes and gullies of this dead world. He was a cripple in a wheelchair—helpless as a rattlesnake. He didn't smile this time. \"Kill you,\" he told her. \"Not your husband. I want him as I found myself fervently wishing I was back out there on the infinitely safer desert. \"We're not heroes—we're suckers! Why did I ever let you volunteer for the Geig Earth to keep the atomic engines unless she was so exhausted she didn't know what she was doing. She had been just as Ledman said acidly. \"How Sadlerville Blast?\" he asked. And we'd always had a roving I'd never forget it. No one would. How could I forget that great accident—killing hundreds, injuring thousands foot, both of us. No, we had decided together \"Of course.\" And I did, too. represented Ledman Atomics. the contract, but I got a good blaster-point. But then I remembered enough to kill me,\" he said. \"Just enough to necessitate that meant we had found pay-dirt. I started to feel tired dose of radiation instead. Not myself, terribly tired. I longed that sudden explosive tumult I still didn't understand. \"But why kill us Geigs? We had nothing to do with it.\" up with the idea before I did. I wished there was some way of turning the weary, bedraggled \"You're just in this by accident,\" the board of Ledman Atomics decided that a semi-basket case like myself was a poor he said. \"You see, after the explosion and the amputation, \"They renamed Ledman \"You're a very sick man, title than Ledman time you could have been sprawled out on the sands. Poor kid , I thought. Maybe we shouldn't have come to happy, useful on Earth, instead of being holed up here A second thought appeared, but I squelched it: to tide us over until then. In a me into a walking pin-cushion. But I'll pay it all back,\" he said. He plunged it held for us for the raw, untamed wasn't seriously worried But I knew I'd do it again, if I had the chance. It's because we wanted to keep what we about his threat to wipe out struggle that was Mars. too nightmarish to be real. I same way I did. \"Do you really think you can succeed?\" I taunted him. every Earthman on Mars? Of again. No—no, it's all a lie. cut me off. But Ledman They told me I'd never walk,\" meddled with the atom in the first place, I'd be as tall and powerful as you, today—instead of a useless cripple in a wheelchair.\" Val said quietly. \"You've conceived an impossible scheme of revenge and now you're taking it out on innocent people who've done I never finished. It would be so than the auto-wiper could swab it away. was. But I had to get Ledman That did it. Ledman hadn't Earthman who had bound us. much humanity left in him, but there was a little. He lowered the blaster a bit and She continued to retch and glued-in instantly. Ledman Ledman clawed his way to Somehow I'd missed him. What shocked me most was which he had entrapped us, and a very efficient-looking \"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 painfully. Then anger ripped through me, washing away the terror. I looked uneasily at Ledman. \"I suppose you'll kill me now,\" he said. \"No. That's the difference I told him. \"I'm not going to kill you at all. I'm going to see to it that you're sent back to Earth.\" \" don't want to face them again—not after what they did to \"I hate Earthmen,\" he spat out. \"I hate all of them.\" \"I know,\" I said sarcastically. \"You're just all full of hate. You hated us so much that you couldn't bear to hang around on Earth for as much as a year after the Sadlerville hated Earth so much you had to leave.\" \"Why are you telling all this to me?\" \"Because if you'd stayed long enough, you'd have used some of your pension money ever left Earth. Earth needed radioactives, to buy yourself a pair of prosthetic Ledman scowled, and then again. \"They told me I was paralyzed below the waist. That I'd never walk again, even with prosthetic legs, because I had no muscles to fit \"You left Earth too quickly,\" In three centuries the shattered world had been completely Val said. \"It was the only way,\" he the Sadlerville Blast were given the necessary replacement you had to get away from the world you despised and come \"It's not true!\" \"Oh, but it is,\" Val smiled. I saw him wilt visibly, and for a moment I almost felt sorry for him, a pathetic legless figure propped up against And that started the chain he'd killed twelve Geigs—or more—and would of events that led Val and me to end up as a madman's prisoners, have added Val to the number on Earth, we had tried other on Mars. With every had he had the chance. Ledman,\" I said. \"All this nursing your hatred. You might have been useful, on Earth. But you decided to channel everything out as revenge.\" \"I still don't believe it—those legs. I might have walked decade or so, our power would be just about gone. I could world we'd revert back to. Millions of starving, freezing humans tooth-and-clawing of hate starting to topple, and I decided to give it the final push. picture the sort of dog-eat-dog I could see his whole structure still. he said, weakly but stubbornly in the Sadlerville Blast, too,\" I said. \"But I didn't go crazy with hate when I lost my legs.\" Ledman was sobbing. you'll be a new man inside of a year.\" Ledman.\" He herded us off to \"But I'm a murderer!\" sentenced to psych adjustment. When they're finished, Gregory Ledman the killer will be as dead as if they'd electrocuted you, but there'll \"That's right. And you'll be be a new—and sane—Gregory His face was a bitter, dried-up mask. He was a man who hated. Ledman had caught us, I remembered The place was spartanly and unscrewed the ancient spacesuit fishbowl. Ledman.\" I turned to Val. And I'd been too dense to see how unfair I had been. and I put Ledman \"I imagine you want to know the whole story,\" he said. \"The others did, too.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat would have happened if Ledman had stayed on Earth?\n\n<options>:\nA He would've managed to maintain leadership of his company\nB He might not have needed a wheelchair long-term\nC He would have joined the Project Sea-Dredge mission\nD He would've become more depressed and never found revenge\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
544 | 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>:\nbooks. But cook? Sorry.\" \"Well, one of us had better learn, and I'll have other things to do.\" Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened , he promised himself, I'll explain how I cut the fuel flow and see if she's detective enough to suspect that we're just orbiting Ganymede! here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on the estimates.\" \"You asked any of them lately?\" Tolliver prodded. me ,\" he complained. \"You know I took this piloting job just to scrape up money for an advanced engineering degree back on Earth. I only want to finish my year—not get into something I can't quit.\" whenever your contract's up. Think we'd bend a good orbit on your account?\" that way, either you get in line with us or you're through right now!\" \"You can't fire me,\" retorted the pilot pityingly. \"I came out here on a contract. Five hundred credits a week base pay, five hundred for hazardous duty. How else can you get pilots out to Jupiter?\" \"Okay I can't fire you legally—as long as you report for work,\" your quarters and see if the company calls that hazardous duty!\" \"Doesn't matter,\" answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. \"The hazardous part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months.\" He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him. Looks like a little vacation , he thought, unperturbed. He'll come around. I just want to get back to Earth with a clean rep. Let Jeffers by the arbitrary calender constructed to match Ganymede's week-long journey around Jupiter. His contract guaranteed a pilot's rating, but someone had neglected to specify the type of craft to be piloted. spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes. He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles. The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean.\" \"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason but them for sending a ship back with a crew instead of in an economy orbit. Wait till you see the baggage you'll have to load!\" Later in the day-period, Tolliver recalled this warning. Under a apparently won from one of the pilots. She wore gray slacks and a heavy sweater, like a spacer. \"Sorry to keep you waiting,\" she said, sliding into the seat beside Tolliver. \"By the way, just call me Betty.\" or does he just know where bodies are buried? \"They were making dates,\" said the girl. \"Were they ribbing me, or is it true that none of the four of them goes back with the ship?\" \"It's true enough,\" Tolliver assured her. \"We need people out here, and it costs a lot to make the trip. They found they could send back loaded ships by 'automatic' flight—that is, a long, slow, economical orbit and automatic signalling equipment. Then they're boarded approaching Earth's orbit and landed by pilots who don't have to waste their time making the entire trip.\" He followed the signals of a spacesuited member of the port staff and the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me see much else.\" \"You never can tell,\" said the pilot, yielding to temptation. \"Any is trying too hard to sound like one of the gang. \"Yeah,\" he went on, \"right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions from the city to the spaceport.\" \"Missions! You call driving a mile or so a mission ?\" \"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!\" he warned portentously. \"Many a \"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?\" \"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!\" \"I was thinking of the mountain slides,\" said the pilot. \"Not to mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an paycheck he had received that morning. It did not, naturally, indicate he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful. \"I'm retiring in six months if I'm still alive,\" he said bravely, edging the tractor into the airlock at their destination. \"Made my that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience prickled. \"Jeffers,\" he announced, \"this is ... just call her Betty.\" \"Miss Koslow!\" he beamed, like a politician the day before the voting. \"It certainly is an honor to have you on Ganymede with us! That's all, \"Wh-wh-what do you mean, Miss Koslow?\" Jeffers stammered. he told me to find out what was wrong with operations on Ganymede. Betty, and Tolliver thought he muttered something about \"just landed.\" seemed to blame you for it.\" \"Sure!\" grumbled the pilot. \"He thinks I told you he was grafting or smuggling, or whatever he has going for him here. That's why I want to get out of here—before I find myself involved in some kind of fatal \"What do you think you're up to?\" asked Betty with some concern. \"Where are you going?\" asked Betty. dusty, moist air puffing out into the near-vacuum of Ganymede's \"Takeoff!\" shrilled Betty. \"What do you think you're going to do? I just want to use the radio or TV!\" dials!\" He ran a practiced eye over the board, reading the condition of the ship. It pleased him. Everything was ready for a takeoff into an economy orbit for Earth. He busied himself making a few adjustments, doing his best to ignore the protests from his partner in crime. He warned her the trip might be long. When Betty produced a memo giving frequency and call sign, he set about could arrange for a cruiser to escort his daughter to Ganymede and When he heard Betty requesting assistance in arresting Jeffers and For one thing, though the officer seemed well acquainted with Betty, he never addressed her by the name of Koslow. For another, he accepted the request as if he had been hanging in orbit merely until learning who to go down after. They really sent her out to nail someone \"We do have one trouble,\" he heard Betty saying. \"This tractor driver, Tolliver, saved my neck by making the ship take off somehow, but he says it's set for a six-month orbit, or economy flight. Whatever they call it. I don't think he has any idea where we're headed.\" Tolliver pulled her back, holding her in mid-air by the slack of her sweater. \"Actually, I have a fine idea,\" he informed the officer coldly. \"I happen to be a qualified space pilot. Everything here is under control. If Miss Koslow thinks you should arrest Jeffers, you can call us later \"Miss Koslow?\" repeated the spacer. \"Did she tell you—well, no matter! \"This 'Miss Koslow' business,\" he said suspiciously. \"He sounded funny send his own little girl way out here to Ganymede to look for whoever \"Sure. The name's Betty Hanlon. I work for a private investigating firm. If old Koslow had a son to impersonate—\" ! Can't they get us back? How can you tell where we're going?\" \"I know enough to check takeoff time. It was practically due anyhow, so we'll float into the vicinity of Earth at about the right time to be picked up.\" He went on to explain something of the tremendous cost in fuel\n\n<question>:\nWhy did “Betty Koslow” really come to Ganymede?\n\n<options>:\nA To investigate possible criminal behavior.\nB To learn about business management.\nC To arrest Jeffers.\nD To take a vacation and date pilots.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,456 | 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 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). As before, each tester found before him on a table 10 red plastic cups, labeled A through J. Each cup held 3 ounces of one of the beers. The A-to-J labeling scheme was the same for all testers. Instead of saltines for palate-cleansing, this time we had popcorn and nuts. As they began, the tasters were given these and only these clues: that the flight included one \"holdover\" beer from the previous round (Sam Adams) 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. To this the beer scientist must say: Book-learning is fine in its place. But let's be realistic. Actual drinking experience teaches the American beer consumer that a) all cheap beers are lagers 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. 4. Data Analysis. 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 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. Next, we have \"corrected average preference points,\" throwing out the high and low marks for each beer. The result is basically the same: It is worth noting the fate of Sam Adams on these charts. Here it ends up with a score of less than 61. These were the numbers awarded by the very same tasters who gave it a corrected preference rating of 83.33 the last time around--and 10 \"Best\" votes, vs. one Best (and one Worst) this time. The shift in Bests is understandable and demonstrates the importance of picking your competition. The severe drop in preference points illustrates more acutely the ancient principle of being a big fish in a small pond. These same tasters thought that Sam Adams was objectively much better when it was surrounded by Busch and Schmidt's. c) Value rankings. Last time this calculation led to what the colorful French would call a bouleversement. One of the cheapest beers, Busch, which had been in the lower ranks on overall preference points, came out at the top on value-for-money ratings, because it was so cheap. The big surprise now is that the highest-rated beer was also the cheapest one, Michelob Hefe , so the value calculation turned into a rout: Pyramid 5. Implications and Directions for Future Research. Science does not always answer questions often, it raises many new ones. This excursion into beer science mainly raises the question: What kind of people are we? 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. For scientists who want to continue this work at home, here are a few suggestions for further research: 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. If you're going to test imported lagers, try Foster's or Corona rather than Grolsch. Remember to stay strictly in the scientist's role. Don't take the test yourself.\n\n<question>:\nWhat isn't a generalization that can be made from the data?\n\n<options>:\nA the most expensive beers aren't always the best\nB best is very subjective\nC if all people dislike the same beer, they're likely to all like the same beer\nD people can rank the same item differently on two separate days\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,348 | 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 One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had trees and midnight church services. The star salesman for mankies and the gentleman who was in charge of against the wall. He wasn't hurt. But the impact knocked the hallowed portrait of H. H. Hartshorne, co-founder, from its nail. It tinkled imposingly as its glass splintered against the floor. machine. \"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!\" someone shouted at her. \"Have another!\" jovially, \"Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!\" Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form: \"Best electric doorbell. Junior detective kit. Disposable sacks for vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl.\" She turned to the assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in a great proposal and the room grew quiet—\"unless we broke the rules pulled a batch of keys from his pocket. \"Someone scoot down to the warehouse. Tell the watchman that it's on my authority. Hunt up the stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years.\" the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and therefore hadn't been broken in shipment. 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 illustration. Moreover, the shoulders were lumpier than any small The dress fitted precisely, except for the absurd shoulder bumps. Sally Les pulled off the lid and found inside a circular, shiny metal object. A triangular trio of jacks stuck out from one end. \"Is this the doorbell? I've never seen a plug like this. And there's no wire.\" He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. \"They must have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment.\" Sally was still in his arms. \"That's the doorbell, I think,\" he said, looking at the next object. It had a lovely, tubular shape, a half-dozen connecting rods and a plug for a wall socket. \"That's funny,\" Ann mused, her mind distracted from Sally for a moment. \"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of the doorbell.\" The bottom of the carton contained the detective outfit that they had ordered for their son. Ann glanced at its glaringly lithographed cover fingers. She tossed it to Les. Immediately, she regretted her action. \"Drop it!\" she yelled. \"Maybe it'll turn you green, too!\" 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. He said: \"It's all right. There must be balloons or something in the Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit up at the doorbell, which he had installed just above the upper part of the door frame. \"Queer,\" he said. \"That isn't in contact with the door itself. I don't see how it can keep the door from opening.\" doorbell box threatened to penetrate every corner of the house. Ann letting her get peeved.\" The back door was already open, because it was a warm day. The screen 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. \"Hey, that's mine,\" Bob said. \"You know, this is a funny detective kit. That was in it. But there aren't instructions on how it works.\" 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. \"This toy is too complicated for a ten-year-old boy,\" Les told his stood out clearly against the shiny, coated paper. 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.\" Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But in cut and fold, it was suspiciously like the dress that had arrived in 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. put small wads of cotton into her ears, because she didn't like the 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: \" at the envelope, until she realized that this wasn't an impossibly something that his parents gave him.\" \"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 The doctor dropped the dress and looked in perplexity at the point \"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't \"Oh, no,\" Ann breathed. \"Something's happened to Les.\" have a job if I can't get this stuff off my fingers. Big black fingerprints on everything I touch. I can't handle correspondence or 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 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 sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin through the window. \"I know those bearers,\" Dr. Schwartz said. He yanked the window open. \"Hey, Pete! What's wrong?\" doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: \"Don't answer me, \"Don't bother about the girls' clothing,\" Bob said, \"because it was knocking. He ignored the doorbell's pleas. \"I forgot about it,\" Bob continued, \"when that ray gun accidentally to think, and I remembered. I put some white stuff from the detective 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 the doorbell box, striking him squarely on the chest. The policeman \"Where's that ambulance?\" Dr. Schwartz yelled from the top of the steps. \"The child's getting worse.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat wasn't abnormal in the detective kit?\n\n<options>:\nA the white powder\nB the toy gun\nC the Detectolite\nD the flashlight\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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2,439 | 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>:\nDivided we stand Sara lets the Lyft park itself in the drive, lets out a sigh, and tweets wish me luck \"The Chevrolet ad?\" '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.\" \"Not much. Really. I can afford-\" \"Cabs are expensive. You shouldn't be wasting your money.\" \"It wasn't expensive. It wasn't a cab, it was a Lyft.\" \"One of those driverless things?\" \"Yeah.\" Ad break. An elderly couple ride a tandem bicycle through a park, laughing and smiling in Instagram-perfect sunshine, as a calm, relaxing voice lists the potentially lethal side effects of a diabetes drug. Dad shakes his head. \"I don't know how you can use those things. I don't trust them.\" \"Dad, they're perfectly safe.\" There's a brief second, a fleeting moment, where Sara can bite her lip, let it go. She misses it. \"But I thought it was immigrants that are stealing people's jobs?\" \"Well I'm sure they'll be fine.\" She regrets the sarcasm as soon as she hears it in her own voice, but she still can't stop herself, like it's expected, like it's part of the routine. Part of their schtick. \"They just got to get themselves out there, huh Dad? Pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That's the American way, right?\" 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. 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 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. Dad finishes chewing his mouthful, swallows, wipes his beard with a napkin. Sighs, barely controlled anger simmering behind his face. \"Solar panels cause cancer.\" Sara laughs, covering her mouth as she nearly chokes on chewed food. \"What? No they don't Dad.\" \"Look it up?\" Sara shakes her head, not knowing where to even start. \"Dad, who is telling you this stuff?\" \"There's no risk, Mom. None at all. Dad, I wish you'd stop believing everything you see on Facebook.\" \"Well, maybe you should read things yourself before passing judgement on them.\" He pushes himself up from his seat, steps away from the table. Sara sighs, thinking she's upset him that much that he's actually abandoning his dinner, but he stops to grab something off a nearby shelf. His iPad. He heads back and takes his seat again. Reluctantly, she takes it. His Facebook feed. Somewhere in the middle of it is the article, a very to the point CHINESE SOLAR PANELS CAUSE CANCER headline. But she can't even focus on it, because the rest of the screen is filled with distractions, looping videos and animated gifs, all adverts, and all for guns. Or security systems. Panic rooms. Back up power generators. Emergency rations. More guns. \"Jesus Christ Dad, these ads!\" \"No blasphemy at the dinner table, please honey\" says Mom. \"Just… just look at them. They're terrifying. They're like… like adverts for the end of the world! You know they show you this stuff just to make you scared, right? Just to keep you paranoid.\" \"They show me this stuff because they've got products to sell. That's how the economy works. That's how we create jobs. Godammit Sara, are you telling me you hate advertising now? Do you just hate everything about America?\" Sara looks over to Mom, who looks like she's on the brink of tears. Suddenly she finds she's also lost the will to fight. Gently she closes the iPad and puts it down on the table, next to her plate. \"No, of course not Dad. Maybe I'll read this later, after the game.\" \"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.\" \"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.\" \"Sara!\" says Mom. Out in the kitchen Sara sits at the table and wants to scream. She's angry, mainly with herself. She should never have fucking come here. She should have known better. There was never any fucking way anything good was going to come from this. As much as Mom wants to romanticise things, to make them sound cute and adorable, the truth is shit with Dad has never been right since she was a teenager. Too much resentment, too much bad blood, too much control and rebellion. They hadn't agreed on anything - they hadn't managed to have a simple conversation that didn't descend into fighting - in 15 goddamn years, and no amount of eating cookies and watching fucking Super Bowl ads on the TV was going to fix that.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is ironic about Sara's father's justification for the ads on his page?\n\n<options>:\nA He claims to value entities that create jobs, and ignores the potential for solar energy to do the same.\nB He accuses Sara of hating advertising, when her job involves advertising.\nC He accuses Sara of hating America, when most of his ads are from other countries.\nD He dislikes modern ads for companies like Lyft, but supports them if they benefit him personally.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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983 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nHe reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his Slowly he slipped to the cool floor—how his head was burning!—and for heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest: the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone, Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright. Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside which he could see in the dim light through the open door. \"Where's the buzzer?\" he sobbed. \"I must find the buzzer.\" Crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, \"You broke it. You down against it, exhausted. Behind him, the voices and the footsteps So tightly did he grip the handle that his fingers began to hurt. And his heart pounded hard and he felt the pulses leaping on either side of embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a Crifer was tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the door, and someone was grabbing at his legs, trying to make him fall. He kicked out and the hands let go, and then he turned the handle and shoved the weight of his body with all his strength against the door. It opened and he stepped outside into the warmth. headache? A hardly perceptible purple glow pervaded the air in the room of the larger every moment. He turned to go, but the door clicked shut and a metallic voice said. \"Fifteen minutes under the tubes, please.\" whirled once more down the tortuous course of half-formed questions and With so many people, and especially now with women, he was not afraid. It was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer, frightening doors and women by appointment only. again, something which was as impalpable as air. authority to stop him. This puzzled him, because somehow he felt that there should have been authority. A long time ago the reading machine in the library had told him of the elders—a meaningless term—who had governed the world. They told you to do something and you did it, but that was silly, because now no one told you to do anything. You only listened to the buzzer. And Rikud could remember the rest of what the reading machine had said. There had been a revolt—again a term without any real meaning, a term that could have no reality outside of the reading machine—and the elders were overthrown. Here Rikud had been lost utterly. The people had decided that they did not know where they were going, or why, and that it was unfair that the elders alone had this authority. They were born and they lived and they died as the elders directed, like little cogs in a great machine. Much of this Rikud could not understand, but he knew enough to realize that the reading machine had sided with the people against the elders, and it said the people had won. \"Yes?\" Almost no one read any more, and the library was heavy with the meant that, in the two unoccupied hours before sleep, he went to the library and listened to the reading machine. Everyone else simply sat \"I left it in the library. You can find several of them under \"Well, it's wrong. Variability and change are two words without meaning.\" viewport. When he passed the door which led to the women's half of the \"Broom, brroom, brrroom!\" Chuls imitated the intermittent blasting of the engines. \"I'm hungry, Rikud.\" he admitted to Rikud. \"But why should the garden be in the viewport?\" It changed. Where are the stars? Where are they, Chuls, if it did not change?\" it was with a purpose—to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the He had long wondered about the door in the back of the library, and door. \"What's in here?\" he demanded. \"It's a door, I think,\" said Crifer. \"I know, but what's beyond it?\" the door.\" it. It's only a door.\" \"Open it. Open the door and look inside.\" There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud.\" breath. Rikud had turned the knob and pushed. The door opened silently, end of which was another door, just like the first. Halfway across, door. The machinery in the next room is your protection against the not, then here is your protection. As nearly as possible, this ship is a perfect, self-sustaining world. It is more than that: it is human-sustaining as well. Try to hurt yourself and the ship will not permitted through this door— than that, however, was the second door. Would it lead to another When he opened the door a strange new noise filled his ears, a gentle humming, punctuated by a throb-throb-throb Odder still was the third door. Rikud suddenly thought there might opened on a bare tunnel which led to yet another door. hand on the door, all the while watching the garden through the new What would he do out in the garden? He couldn't go alone. He'd die of the strangeness. It was a silly Slowly, he took his hand off the door lever. He made his way back through the tunnel and then through the room of machinery and finally through the little room with the confusing voice to Crifer. garden again. Not when he knew there was a door through which he could walk and then might find himself in the garden. Chuls did not believe Rikud at all. \"There are not that many doors in the world,\" he said. \"The library has a door and there is a door to the the world, there are two other doors!\" \"You'll show me nothing because I won't go.\" he did, his hands began to tremble. But he held on, and he tugged at shirt. Presently, the members of the crowd had pretty well paired off, each though. Maybe then he could take them outside with him to the big upon entering the room. swung the bar into the mass of metal. Each time he heard a grinding, under his blows, shattered by the strength of his arm. was a shambles of twisted, broken metal. He laughed, softly at first, He opened the door and ran through the little corridor to the smaller door. But his hands trembled too much when he touched it, and once, eat or drink. Rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the whimpering to the dining room, his tongue dry and swollen, but the smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food. Chuls said, over and over, \"I'm hungry.\" \"What won't?\" \"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it.\" \"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have \"We must go outside—through the viewport.\" Rikud listened to the odd A hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. He heard broken the machinery, Crifer was his enemy, because Crifer came nearer to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud. and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away. It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would He stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library, through the inner door and into the room with the voice—but the voice didn't speak this time—through its door and into the place of machinery. Behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and He got up slowly and opened the next door. The voices behind him were\n\n<question>:\nWhat struggle does the door in the library represent?\n\n<options>:\nA The struggle between man and machine, and the power machine now has over them.\nB The struggle for Rikud and all the others to conceptualize what they don't know or haven't seen before.\nC Rikud's fear of what's behind it.\nD The struggle between authority and the people it runs.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
2,099 | 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>:\nHang on, are they taking about the same ad? wish me luck plus some emojis before slipping her phone into a hoody pocket. Curtains twitch, and before she can get her bag out of the back Mom is there, right there next to her, their hands touching on the handle as they compete for control. \"It's OK Mom, I got it.\" Hastily she opens her FB TV app, pulls up the game. The ad is just finishing. She hits the 10-second rewind icon a couple of times, then leans the phone on its side against a ketchup bottle. \"You should have let us come pick you up.\" \"It's fine, there was no need. I didn't want to put any-\" Text flashes across the screen. ALERT CANCELLED. ALL PATROLS: STAND DOWN much of a failure.\" Mom sighs, shoulders falling, looks at Sara directly. \"I'm sorry honey.\" She looks old, Sara thinks, watching a resigned tiredness flicker across her face in a way she'd not noticed before. Like she's exhausted by conflict, surrendered to it. \"Now, don't I get a hug?\" Sara smiles. They hold each other for a few long seconds, rubbing and squeezing each other as the Lyft silently backs itself out of the driveway. When they part it's Mom's hand that's on the bag's handle. Inside she unwraps herself from scarves and layers, the heat in the house almost a shock after the cold air. Michigan in February. Mom is already halfway up the stairs, bag in tow, headed for her room. Sara finds herself in the front room, sobbing. \"Honey?\" \"The Chevrolet ad?\" \"Yeah. Fine. Y'know. Same as always.\" He smiles back at her, nods knowingly. She falls on him, wrapping her arms around his neck, burying her face in his chest. \"I'm sorry Dad. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to be so mean-\" \"It's OK, honey. It really is.\" \"No, no it's not. We always fight. And I know that's mainly my fault-\" 'Well, now, c'mon-\" She straightens herself up, wipes her eyes. Suddenly feels a little self conscious. \"Sure. Let me just go freshen up first.\" \"Of course honey.\" Mom and Dad watch Sara leave the room, and then look at each other. \"Well.\" \"Cabs are expensive. You shouldn't be wasting your money.\" \"Well indeed.\" Ad break. An elderly couple ride a tandem bicycle through a park, laughing and smiling in Instagram-perfect sunshine, as a calm, relaxing voice lists the potentially lethal side effects of a diabetes drug. \"That's not what I mean. They're stealing people's jobs.\" \"Nope.\" \"Ed!\" Mom had appeared in the doorway. \"Please! Both of you. No fighting today, please.\" \"Sheryl-\" \"No. I don't want to hear you two as much as disagreeing about anything today, unless it's about the game. And even then you'd better keep it civil. Otherwise you can both go hungry. Understand?\" Awkward pause. \"Fine.\" \"Sorry Mom.\" Sara turns back to the TV, to watching the war, to trying to work out which one it is. 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. Text flashes across the screen. ALERT CANCELLED. THREAT NEUTRALISED. 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 \"Jesus Christ Dad, these ads!\" \"No blasphemy at the dinner table, please honey\" says Mom. \"What about them?\" advertising Sara looks over to Mom, who looks like she's on the brink of tears. Suddenly she finds she's also lost the will to fight. Gently she closes the iPad and puts it down on the table, next to her plate. \"No, of course not Dad. Maybe I'll read this later, after the game.\" After dinner she helps Mom clean-up, the two of them loading the dishwasher in near silence. She's leaning against the counter, scrolling through Twitter on her phone, when Mom finally speaks. \"You should go easy on your father, you know. He's worried about a lot of things.\" \"What things? Solar panel cancer?\" \"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.\" \"I don't know. He won't go to the doctor. Hasn't been in months. He's worried about his insurance.\" \"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.\" \"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. Voiceover: They say you need to get up pretty early to get past America's finest. But the truth is we never sleep.\n\n<question>:\nWhich of these is true about the ad break?\n\n<options>:\nA Sara's patience allows for some rebuilding of trust\nB It's ironic that Ed things ads about things that separate people will bring him and his daughter together\nC The family can agree that they all enjoy watching ads together even if other things are rough\nD It is the one chance daughter and father have to patch things up\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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1,526 | 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\"Well, I mean, it's not only about Wanda,\" said Harry. \"You see, my wife, Jane, that is....\" \"And with your permission, Father....\" \"Ah....\" \"She's a very pretty woman.\" \"Ah.... Quite so.\" \"Well, about Wanda. I really shouldn't mention this. But Father, if we \"I don't care a smidgen,\" he said, \"if en they ayre.\" short one woman....\" \"Hummmm.\" \"I mean, the girls might think a man gets rusty.\" \"I see what you mean.\" Nestir blinked his eyes. \"It wouldn't be fair, \"Please,\" she said. \"Joanne Marie,\" he said, \"you know that when I aims ta do somethin', \"I may tell you, my son, that, in thinking this matter over last night, I decided that Wanda—ah—Miller, yes, has had sufficient duty to merit participation in the Festival.\" \"Justice is a priestly virtue,\" Harry said. \"And you really think your wife would...?\" \"Oh, yes, Father.\" perched jauntily on his shiny, shaven head. The baldness was symbolic of diligent mental application to abstruse points of doctrine. exentiati pablum re overum est : \"Grass grows not in the middle of a busy thoroughfare.\" The baldness was the result of the diligent application of an effective depilatory. His blood-red cloak had been freshly cleaned for the occasion, and it rustled around him in silky you have the greatest sensibility in questions of duty.\" \"That's quite so, y'know. I pride myself upon it, if I do say so.\" \"Exactly. Argot y calpex. Zentahday—I may depend upon you to wed Wanda Miller, the bosun's \"Come now, sir. I realize she is the daughter of a crewman, but—\" \"Captain! I fear I must be very severe with you. I will be forced to foolish and hid their sores and these three did live.\" That morning was to be the time of the captain's wedding. He had nor would he consent indignity of it came home to him even more poignantly than he had imagined it would. I'm jest natcher'lly bound to do hit. An' iffen I aims ta talk....\" \"Husband,\" Wanda said simply. She closed the door behind her and stood staring at him. \"Madam,\" he said, \"I hope you will have the kindness not to refer to me by that indecent appelation a second time.\" \"Gee. You say the cutest things. I'm awful glad you had to marry me, huh.\" everything in our power to make our Casting Off as wonderful as any anywhere. \"Huh?\" \"Ah,\" he said. \"Quite true, of course.\" She walked over to the chair and sat down. \"I don't like them,\" she family had become involved in a conspiracy against the illustrious King Fod. As the Soong family was traveling....\" \"I don't like 'em anyway,\" said Wanda. sigh of disapproval. \"Well, what do you think wine. \"The problem, my dear Helen,\" he said, \"is one of intent. To raise the issue of concomitant agonies is to confuse the whole matter. For \"But it was a case of obvious intent ,\" continued Nestir, \"and therefore constituted a clear out attempt to avoid his duty by hastening to his Reward.\" And I must say, I think you're being quite short-sighted about the Casting Off date. After all, it's not only a question of how Certainly you've misinterpreted that. Anticipation can be a joy, y'know: almost equal to the very Reward. Anticipation should spur man in duty. It's all noble and self sacrificing.\" He scratched the back of his right hand. following the captain's outburst. Casting Off, Captain. You can The captain was not visibly cheered \"It seems to me that the whole thing would depend on the intent of the strangler.\" \"That's very kind of you, but I....\" instinct of the mother to release her child from its duty, then....\" the time.\" \"I do not,\" Jane contradicted. \"Now, honey, you know you do so.\" At that moment, he lost interest in his wife and leaned across the \"Oh, really, now. Now. Duty, duty,\" the captain reprimanded him mildly. you, Father.\" \"Wanda?\" \"Yes. She's sixteen, now.\" \"Wanda who?\" the steward asked. \"She's the oldest child on the ship, and she wants you to sign her \"She's so young....\" \"Sixteen, Father.\" woman.\" \"There wouldn't be one short if he had brought a wife,\" the first because you have to stay with your husband.\" \"All right, so I am. But it's true. And if Carstar hadn't been killed, there would have been two short.\" She shot a wicked glance at Nestir. \"Why don't you and him share a woman—\" \"Martha!\" \"Although the Prophet knows what woman in her right mind would consent to....\" \"Actually, in a way, it would be her duty to, you see. Think of it like that: as her way to do her duty.\" \"She's too young for you, dear,\" Jane said to her husband. \"Pish-tush.\" \"No, Harry. I mean it. Helen looked at me strangely all through dinner. She has three children, you know.\" \"You're imagining things.\" \"But she does have three children.\" \"I mean about her looking at you.\" Harry fiddled with his tie without speaking. \"But still ... it ... I mean, there was Helen, looking at me like I wasn't doing my duty. You know.\" She walked to the bed and sat down. \"Harry?\" \"Yes, dear?\" \"Don't you really think she's awful young?\" \"Huh-uh.\" \"I mean, why don't you pick someone else? Like Mary? She's awful sweet. I'll bet she'd be better.\" \"Probably.\" \"She's a lot of fun.\" \"Oh, I don't know.\" She looked down at her legs, raised them up from the floor and held them out in front of her. \"I think I'd kind of like Nestir. With his funny bald head. I hope he asks me.\" \"Harry? Are you going to meet Wanda in the control room?\" \"Uh-huh.\" \"I thought so. Well, remember this, dear: It isn't the day of the \"No, dear. I know you wouldn't. But just don't , I mean.\" \"Might even bar him from the Festival.\" \"Yeah,\" said Harry, \"the captain's funny that way.\" \"Uh. Harry? Are you really going to take that Wanda girl?\" \"If Nestir lets me.\" \"Say. Harry. Do you suppose your wife would...?\" \"Sorry, old fellow. She's got it in her head to take Nestir.\" He shrugged. \"I don't exactly approve, of course, but ... I'm sure if he doesn't want her, she'd be glad to hear your offer.\" all thought out. You know that saber I picked up on Queglat? Well....\" \"Look. How about telling me another time?\" \"Uh, Sure. If you say so. Uh?\" \"I'm kind of expecting Wanda.\" \"Oh. Sure. I should have known you weren't here early for nothing. In \"Uh-huh. Look. Wanda.\" you. He's going to check your record. And Wanda?\" \"Wanda, listen to me.\" \"No, Captain. I'm afraid I can't agree to that,\" Nestir said. The captain said, \"Oh, don't be unreasonable, Father. After all, this \"Shut up,\" said the captain softly. \"I have to be toddling along,\" said the captain. \"But Captain! I haven't finished telling you about....\" \"It's about Wanda, Father,\" said the third mate. The young girl.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the Captain resist marrying Wanda?\n\n<options>:\nA Because she is sixteen.\nB Because she carries a doll around with her.\nC Because she is the daughter of a crewman.\nD Because she is dim-witted.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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274 | 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\"Phone Me in Central Park\" By JAMES McCONNELL There should be an epitaph for every man, big or little, but a really grand and special one for Loner Charlie. the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Charles turned over on his side to look at her. She lay quietly in the the day. And he had been a nobody, full of a nobody's idle hopes and schemes. And now he was lying in the bed next to hers in her swank Manhattan \"Now the world is dead. The whole world is dead.\" New York lay quietly below him. It was the hour of indecision when day has not quite made up its mind to leave and night has not yet patterns through the dusk of Central Park. Some of the billboards were of the sharp pain that raced through his system, in spite of the bright, warm, red stream that trickled down his face, he knelt by the \" Maybe I'm not the last! \" Isle of the Dead on full automatic. The music haunted him down the hall to the elevator that he had to run himself. ignored it. The street that led towards the Bureau of Vital Statistics was fun, just a bowl of cherries, until....\" Two years ago the animals had started dying. Strangely enough the scientific laboratories chained to a perpetual rodent-cycle began to complain bitterly. Then the lovers who hunted out and haunted the lonely lanes through the in New York. And now.... \"I've got to find out,\" Charles told himself. He meant it, of course, but in a sense he was afraid—afraid that his trip to the Bureau might Only once, before the plague, had he seen the interior of this room. But he still remembered it and he still recalled the powerful emotional mechanical wonder had remained with him the rest of his life. \"So different now,\" he thought, surveying the room. \"Now it's empty, so empty.\" The machine seemed to reflect the stillness, the very deadness coward, afraid to check the whole world from the start. \"I'll start with New York and work up.\" Charles activated the switches that would flash a schematic map of New York on the screen. \"There's bound to be somebody else left here. After one . Charles was by himself, the last person alive in all of New York City. He began to tremble violently. The silence of the room began to press quickly in on him. His frantic fingers searched for the computer The bottom dropped out from under him! Why? Such a simple question, but in those three letters lay the essence of animals, when he first asked the question: \"Why?\" But thinking about \"why\" didn't answer the question itself, Charles thought. He looked around him. He was sitting on a bench in Central Park, alone except for a few stray corpses. But the park was fairly free of bodies. \"You've got about ten minutes warning,\" he said to himself. \"I guess that most people wanted to die inside of something—inside of anything. Not out in the unprotected open.\" The silence was like a weight hanging around his neck. Not an insect earth, me. The last. Why me? Chance. That was it! The laws of probability, the bell-shaped curve, normal distribution, rectilinear regression. More people per square foot in New York than elsewhere. The first person who died was from New He sighed slowly. \"So now I'm a hermit, whether or not I like it,\" he said in derision to the gravel path as he walked along it. \"A hermit in the midst of a city It was hard to realize, even now. \"A hermit, alone—and I haven't even got a cave....\" Charles stopped walking suddenly. No cave, he thought. No place to sleep out the long one, no place to rest while time came to change things around and make them for the better. No place to hide. And suddenly it was the most important thing in life to him to find his \"cave.\" It took him almost an hour to find the proper tools, and better than two hours more of hard, nighttime work to get the hole dug to his satisfaction. It took almost three hours to find the right sort of casket, durable but not too heavy for one man to handle. He carted it out to a grassy plot close to the center of the park where the grave was. He let the coffin down slowly into the depression, then piled up loose dirt on the sloping sides of the hole so that the rain would wash it down over him. \"I can't very well bury myself,\" he said. \"I guess it will rain after I'm gone.\" He looked carefully down at the metallic container. the head of the grave. \"I'll have to fix that.\" A sheet of metal, bent double, served for the monument proper. A nearby tool shed yielded up a can of paint and a brush. By the glow of one of practice up for things like this. But it ought to be good, it ought to be proper. \"'In this now hallowed corner of the planet Earth—' No. That sounds too ... too....\" Make it simple, he thought. And he finally wrote: HERE LIES THE BODY OF THE LAST MAN ON EARTH Yes. That was it. Simple. Let whoever came afterwards figure out the Charles was hungry. He got up and started for one of the restaurants near the park. Later on, when there was more time, he'd find a piece of granite and move it to the plot. He could spend his free time carving on it, copying the inscription. He would make it into a real shrine maybe he would practice up a bit and try to carve a statue to go with the stone. But it seemed less pressing now that he had almost come to the conclusion that he would live for a long time. Later, in a few days action. He set up his goal everything else seemed irrelevant: he had to get back to the park, to his hermit's cave, to his long, narrow home. He couldn't die until then. Ten minutes. He was allotted ten minutes before the end. meant nothing to him. It was not a matter of measuring seconds and minutes. It was a matter of forgetting time and measuring space. He concentrated on the grave he forced his body to become an unwilling Convulsions shook his body like a cat shakes a captive mouse. He humped his body forward between the seizures, hands outstretched, searching for the grave. And then he was upon it. One arm reached out for grass, and clutched bare space instead. He was home. He gathered energy from his final reservoirs of strength for one final movement that would throw him headlong into the shallow grave. He into the hole. Instantly the thought struck him with paralyzing devastation. The sapped the last bit of his energy, corroding his nerves and dying muscles. Now he knew, and the knowing was the end of it. He collapsed at the edge of the pit. Only one arm hung loosely down into it, swinging senseless in the air, pointing accusingly at the empty coffin. The world will end, not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with the last man's anguished cry at the unreasonableness of it all. Charles screamed. \"It is finished?\" asked the second. \"Yes. Just now. I am resting.\" \"I can feel the emptiness of it.\" riverfront, dropping gently to the caressing eddies of the water (read the names: Smith, Smitha, Smitj). And here two pages danced down into Central Park, pirouetted, promenaded, and finally came to rest against a propped-up piece of metal (read the names: Whit, Whita, Whitacomb). It was not until the dusty morning sun stirred up the breezes that they fluttered down into the shallow hole beneath, unnoticed. The writing on the metal, until then partially obscured by the papers, became legible: HERE LIES THE BODY OF THE LAST MAN ON EARTH— CHARLES J. ZZYZST\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the significance of the story’s title, “Phone Me in Central Park?”\n\n<options>:\nA Central Park is where the mass animals deaths were first noticed.\nB Central Park is where the aliens first attack.\nC Central Park is where Charlie digs a grave for the beautiful woman, writes her epitaph, and declares himself the last man on Earth.\nD Central Park is where Charlie builds his cave/grave, writes his epitaph, and eventually dies.\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.] Of course using live bait is the best way to lure dangerous alien animals ... unless it turns out that you are the bait! \"What are you going to do?\" Ri asked, terrified. bait.\" \"No!\" \"Oh, come now. When the farn beast hears you scream—you can scream, \"You'll be safe,\" Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. \"I'll shoot the animal before it reaches you.\" Ri gulped for air. \"But ... if there should be more than one?\" killed a farn beast before I Ri shrugged hopelessly. Mia said, \"I don't think he even saw a blast area over here. I think he Ri cleared his throat nervously. \"Maybe you're right.\" \"It's the Hunting Club he don't like.\" \"I wish to God I'd never heard of a farn beast,\" Ri said. \"At least, then, I wouldn't be one of his guides. Why didn't he hire somebody else?\" Shortly they were inside of the scrub forest, safe from sight. \"Let's wait here,\" Mia said. \"No, we better go on. He may have sent a spy in.\" \"You will scream,\" Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed across the water hole. \"The farn beast will come from this direction, I They pushed on, being careful to blaze the trees, because they were not professional guides. imagine.\" forest for many minutes. \"Without guns, we don't want to get near enough for the farn beast to charge us.\" \"We don't want to get too near,\" Ri said after toiling through the They stopped. The forest was dense, the vines clinging. \"He'll want the bearers to hack a path for him,\" Mia said. \"But we go Ri was almost slobbering in fear. he brought.\" \"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?\" Mia asked. \"You think it's their blast?\" \"So?\" Ri said. \"But who are they?\" It was Mia's turn to shrug. \"Whoever they were, they couldn't have been hunters. They'd have kept the secret better.\" \"We didn't do so damned well.\" A farn beast coughed, far in the matted forest. Extrone laughed nervously. \"He must have heard.\" \"We didn't have a chance,\" Mia objected. \"Everybody and his brother had heard the rumor that farn beasts were somewhere around here. It wasn't our fault Extrone found out.\" \"I wish we hadn't shot our guide, then. I wish he was here instead of \"We're lucky to rouse one so fast,\" Lin said. Extrone we'd hunted this area.\" \"I didn't think a Club pilot would do that.\" \"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to Mia shook perspiration out of his eyes. \"We should have shot our pilot, the alien system? Listen, you don't know.... Wait a minute.\" \"Listen,\" Mia said in a hoarse whisper. \"I just thought. Listen. To . And besides, why would he want to do that? It wouldn't do any good to shoot us. Too many people already know about the farn beasts. You said that yourself.\" Mia said, \"I hope you're right.\" They stood side by side, studying the Ri, below, whimpered childishly and began to retreat toward the tether \"There's a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too,\" Extrone said. \"Making them come to your bait, where you can get at them.\" He \"There may be a pass,\" Mia said, pushing a vine away. \"Killing?\" \"Hunting,\" Extrone repeated harshly. The farn beast coughed. Another answered. They were very near, and there was a noise of crackling underbrush. \"He's good bait,\" Extrone said. \"He's fat enough and he knows how to scream good.\" Ri had stopped screaming The farn beast, its tiny eyes red with hate, stepped out on the bank, swinging its head wildly, its nostrils flaring in anger. It coughed. Its mate appeared beside it. Their tails thrashed against the scrubs The lead farn beast sighted Ri. It lowered its head. \"Look!\" Extrone cried excitedly. \"Here it comes!\" Ri began to scream again. waited, frozen, his eyes staring at the farn beast in fascination. The farn beast plunged into the water, which was shallow, and, throwing a sheet of it to either side, headed across toward Ri. \"Watch! Watch!\" Extrone cried gleefully. Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. \"You'll lose a fleet before you'll dare let anything happen to me, gentlemen. I'm quite safe here, I think.\" \"Sir?\" Ri said, hurrying toward him in the gathering darkness. \"Eh?\" Extrone said, turning, startled. \"Oh, you. Well?\" \"We ... located signs of the farn beast, sir. To the east.\" Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, \"You killed one, I believe, on your Ri obeyed the order. electric from a portable dynamo. Extrone flipped it on. He crossed to the bed, sat down. \"You were, I believe, the first ever to kill a farn beast?\" he said. \"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir.\" Extrone narrowed his eyes. \"I see by your eyes that you are Ri looked away from his face. \"Perhaps I'm envious of your reputation as a hunter. You see, I have never killed a farn beast. In fact, I haven't seen a farn beast.\" Ri glanced nervously around the tent, his sharp eyes avoiding Extrone's glittering ones. \"Few people have seen them, sir.\" \"I meant in our system, sir.\" \"Of course you did,\" Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his sleeve with his forefinger. \"I imagine these are the only farn beasts in our system.\" Ri waited uneasily, not answering. \"... I'm flattered, sir.\" \"Of course,\" Extrone said. \"But you should have spoken to me about it, when you discovered the farn beast in our own system.\" \"I realize that, sir. That is, I had intended at the first opportunity, sir....\" Mia nodded. \"It makes you think,\" Mia added. He twitched. \"I'm afraid. I'm afraid \"No,\" Ri said stubbornly. \"Listen,\" Mia pleaded. \"No,\" Ri said. \"Even if we tried to tell them, they wouldn't listen. Ri whined nervously. \"No?\" Mia challenged. \"Couldn't we? Not today, but what about tomorrow? Lin waited. \"Now I can spit on them, which pleases me.\" \"The farn beasts are dangerous, sir,\" Lin said. \"Eh? Oh, yes. Those. What did the manual say about them?\" \"I believe they're carnivorous, sir.\" all afraid of you.\" \"The farn beasts, according to the manual....\" \"You are very insistent on one subject.\" \"... It's the only thing I know anything about. The farn beast, as I was saying, sir, is the particular enemy of men. Or if you like, of aliens. Sir.\" \"Look,\" Extrone said. \"If that's the case, why do we bother tracking them? Why not make them come to us?\" \"They're too unpredictable. It wouldn't be safe. I'd rather have surprise on our side.\" Extrone was seated, petting his rifle. Extrone nodded genially. \"The farn beast hunter, eh?\" \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat may have gone differently if Ri had listened to Mia?\n\n<options>:\nA they could have shared the truth with the galaxy\nB they could have killed Extrone\nC they both could have escaped Extrone\nD they could have discovered the farn beasts without bait\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
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{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nExtrone was smiling innocently. \"Good. I want you to do something for \"I ... I....\" Ri glanced nervously at Lin out of the tail of his eye. Lin's face was impassive. \"Of course you will,\" Extrone said genially. \"Get me a rope, Lin. A good, long, strong rope.\" Extrone asked, \"Is there a pass?\" \"Eh?\" Extrone said. Extrone raised his eyebrows. \"You'll be safe,\" Extrone said, studying his face with amusement. \"I'll Extrone smiled, almost pointed teeth showing through the beard. \"I'm Extrone shrugged. Extrone we'd hunted this area.\" He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's \"He what?\" Extrone demanded, leaning forward intently. Extrone said, \"Which one is he?\" \"Yes, sir. That's him. That's him, sir.\" Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle and said, \"Here comes Lin with the rope, I see.\" Ri was greenish. \"You ... you....\" don't, sir.\" \"Tie it,\" Extrone said inexorably. Lin bent with the rope his face was colorless. \"Hey, you!\" Extrone called. They were at the watering hole—Extrone, Lin, two bearers, and Ri. \"You will scream,\" Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed \"You'll have to do better than that.\" Extrone inclined his head toward Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert. Lin moved to the left, out on the main branch, rested in a smaller crotch. underlined by an occasional piping call, something like a whistle. Ri's screams were shrill, echoing away, shiveringly. Lin sat quiet, hunched. jerky movements. Lin licked his lips, keeping his eyes on Extrone's face. The sun seemed stuck in the sky, and the heat squeezed against Extrone laughed nervously. \"He must have heard.\" our fault Extrone found out.\" Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. \"I like this. There's more excitement in waiting like this than in anything I know.\" Lin nodded. \"The waiting, itself, is a lot. The suspense. It's not only the killing that matters.\" \"It's not only the killing,\" Lin echoed. \"You understand?\" Extrone said. \"How it is to wait, knowing in just a \"After Extrone said he'd hunt farn beasts, even if it meant going to didn't tell Extrone, if that's what you're thinking,\" Mia said. \"I know,\" Lin said. \"But it's not only the killing. It's the waiting, too.\" nearer. \"It's a different one,\" Lin said. \"How do you know?\" \"Hey!\" Extrone shouted. \"You, down there. There are two coming. Now \"There's a lot of satisfaction in fooling them, too,\" Extrone said. really will come to your bait.\" Lin shifted, staring toward the forest. \"I've always liked to hunt,\" Extrone said. \"More than anything else, I think.\" Lin spat toward the ground. \"People should hunt because they have to. For food. For safety.\" \"No,\" Extrone argued. \"People should hunt for the love of hunting.\" Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat Extrone began to tremble with excitement. \"Here they come!\" The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his \"What in hell do you want?\" Extrone asked. \"Haven't I told you gentlemen that rockets frighten the game?\" Extrone \"Wait,\" Extrone said. \"Let's see what they do.\" He had not moved Extrone's face looked much too innocent. \"How did it get there, \"Look!\" Extrone cried excitedly. \"Here it comes!\" \"So?\" Extrone mocked. Extrone stared at them for a space. Then, indifferently, he turned \"Watch! Watch!\" Extrone cried gleefully. \"You'll destroy this one, too,\" Extrone said. Extrone said, \"To begin with, they probably don't even know I'm here. Extrone plucked at his right ear lobe, half closing his eyes. \"You'll The bearer brought Extrone his drink. \"Eh?\" Extrone said, turning, startled. \"Oh, you. Well?\" Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, \"You killed one, I believe, on Extrone held back the flap of the tent. \"Won't you come in?\" he asked Extrone narrowed his eyes. \"I see by your eyes that you are Ri glanced nervously around the tent, his sharp eyes avoiding Extrone's \"Oh?\" Extrone questioned mildly. \"I wouldn't say that. I understand \"Of course you did,\" Extrone said, lazily tracing the crease of his Extrone pursed his lips. \"It wouldn't have been very considerate of you Extrone bent forward. \" \"Get out!\" Extrone said. Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his conversational gestures. When he had finished, he washed his mouth with water and spat on the ground. \"Lin!\" he said. His personal bearer came loping toward him. \"Have you read that manual I gave you?\" Lin nodded. \"Yes.\" Extrone pushed the table away. He smacked his lips wetly. \"Very Extrone laughed harshly. \"It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?\" Lin's face remained impassive. \"I guess it seems that way. Sir.\" \"Damned few people would dare go as far as you do,\" Extrone said. \"But Lin shrugged. \"Maybe.\" \"I can see you are. Even my wives are. I wonder if anyone can know how \"All right,\" Extrone said, annoyed. \"I'll be careful.\" Instantly alert, Extrone said, \"Get the bearers! Have some of them cut Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a Extrone's satisfied chuckle, in a burst of blood and fur. \"Damn,\" Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. \"It better be \"Extrone. Eh?... Oh, you got their ship. Well, why in hell bother \"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!\" Extrone Extrone squinted up at the sun his eyes crinkled under the glare, and perspiration stood in little droplets on the back of his hands. Lin, returning to the column, threaded his way among reclining Extrone's eyes lit with passion. Lin's face was red with heat and grimy with sweat. \"There were two, I think.\" \"Two?\" Extrone grinned, petting the rifle. \"You and I better go forward up. \"I wish you had let me bring a gun along, sir,\" Lin said. \"One is enough in The two of them went forward, alone, into the forest. Extrone moved They went a good distance through the forest, Extrone becoming more \"Eh?\" Extrone said. \"Extrone wants to see you,\" Lin said. for?\" \"I don't know,\" Lin said curtly. he sighed, a tiny sound, ineffectual. He followed Lin beyond an outcropping of shale to where Extrone was seated, petting his rifle. Extrone nodded genially. \"The farn beast hunter, eh?\" Extrone drummed his fingers on the stock of the blast rifle. \"Tell me\n\n<question>:\nWho does Extrone trust the most?\n\n<options>:\nA Ri\nB Mia\nC businessmen\nD Lin\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
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114 | 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>:\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— [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from \"That all, chief? Gonna quit now?\" Brian Hanson looked disgustedly at Pete Brent, his lanky assistant. That was the first sign of animation he had displayed all day. \"I am, but you're not,\" Hanson told him grimly. \"Get your notes still on the vitamin research they had been conducting, he barely heard the remarks that followed him. of revolution among the disgruntled older families. apartment. This walk was part of a regular routine of physical exercise in precisely seven minutes, four and four-fifths seconds. He undressed and climbed into the tub, relaxing luxuriously in the exhilaration of irradiated water. He let all the problems of his work drift away, his mind was a peaceful meet astern. He paddled wetly across the floor sounding like a flock of regular routine. \"Hello.\" The voice matched the calm alertness of a pair of deep-blue Now he got it. This was probably the young fool's idea of a joke. He'd soon fix that. \"All right, joke's over, you can beat it now.\" \"Joke? I don't see anything funny, unless it's you and that suggestive towel. You should either abandon it or get one that goes all the way round.\" austerely around him. \"Well, now what?\" she asked and looked at him questioningly. \"Well, what do you think?\" he burst out angrily. \"I'm going to finish struggling heroically to refrain from laughing and that didn't help his dignity any. He strode into the bathroom, slammed the door and climbed back into the bath. force.\" \"Get out of here!\" he yelled and the door shut abruptly on a rippling satisfaction of the unending extra work that was going to occur around the laboratory from now on. He sank back into the soothing liquid embrace of the bath and deliberately set his mind loose to wander in complete relaxation. A hammering thunder burst on the outer door. He sat up with a groan. \"Say! What the—\" \"Rebel? You're crazy! That was just ... Pete said ... rebel? Did you say rebel?\" \"Yeah, I said rebel, an' where is she?\" pass the word along.\" Brian retired to his cell bunk and clutched his aching head in frustrated fury. For the nineteenth time Brian Hanson strode to the door of his cell and \"Hello, pantless!\" a voice breathed. \"Guards are coming,\" a voice warned. \"This way,\" he snarled and took the lead. He knew the ground plan of \"Oh, you don't have to whisper, we're safe enough here. This is one of level tunnel. \"What do we do? Hide here?\" rebels crowded into it and they went rumbling swiftly down the echoing passage. The lights of the car showed the old working, rotten and twisting, tortuous course for half an hour, switching from one tunnel to another repeatedly until he had lost all conception of direction. going. The tunnel emerged in a huge cavern that gloomed darkly away in every \"You're crazy, you can't get through there.\" \"Oh, yeah? Just watch this.\" The ship thundered to life beneath them \"We're going to crash! That gap isn't wide enough!\" into some semblance of order. \"That's some flying,\" he said as soon as he could speak. almost as soon as we can walk.\" 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 \"Authority doesn't make much difference to them,\" Crystal snapped bitterly. \"They've been killing people all over the planet. What do you think this revolution is about?\" \"You must be mistak—\" He slumped to the floor as Crystal threw the astern. \"I guess that was a mistake!\" Crystal yelled as she fought the controls. saw the crew battling their controls in startled terror. The ship slipped frantically away and fell into a spin. \"That's them,\" Crystal said with satisfaction. \"How are the others doing?\" them. It was over in a few moments. The dead rebels drifted down into the mist-shrouded depths of the valley. \"The dirty, murdering rats!\" Brian's voice ripped out in a fury of outrage. \"They didn't have a chance!\" \"Don't get excited,\" Crystal told him in a dead, flat voice. \"That's just normal practice. If you'd stuck your nose out of your laboratory once in a while, you'd have heard of these things.\" through the fuselage. \"They're after us now!\" hung on nothing, then the ship fell over on its back and they screamed down in a terminal velocity dive, heading for the safety of the lower valley mists. The heavier police ship, with its higher wing-loading, ship out of its dive. \" Phew! flickered closer and closer to the danger point. They tore loose from the clinging fog as it swung firmly to \"Empty.\" The drive sputtered and coughed and died. \"That's figuring it nice and close,\" Crystal said in satisfaction. \"We can glide in from here.\" through the foliage—there was no crash. They burst through into a huge, brilliantly lighted cavern and settled to a perfect landing. Men thundered to life, streaked across the floor and burst out through the opening Crystal's ship had left. \"He hasn't got a chance! We'll be spotted for sure, now.\" crescendoing roar of ships in a dive followed by the terrific crash of an explosion. \"How come?\" \"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 a dead silence. A score or more followed them without any attempt at Startled screams of agony burst from the crowded group of police as they were caught in the annihilating cross fire of roaring flame. They crisped and twisted, cooked to scorched horrors before they \"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.\" \"Oh, let them shoot us! I can't go through that again!\" mixture down till the exhaust was a lambent, shuddering stutter, verging on extinction. He dashed to the other ship and repeated the adjusted to critical fineness. The beat of the stuttering exhaust seemed to catch up to the other and built to an aching pulsation. In a moment the whole mass of air in the cavern hit the frequency with a subtle, intangible thunder of vibration. the line of the exhaust flames. The pulsating thunder in the cavern slope, the whole jungle muttered and groaned and came to life as it joined the roaring rush of the slide. They were tumbled irresistibly downward, riding the edge of the slide for terrifying minutes till it stilled and left them bruised and shaken in a tangle of torn vegetation. they attempted to land, stuck up grotesquely out of the foot of the slide. The dust was settling away. A flock of brilliant blue, gliding lizards barking in raucous terror, fled down the valley. Then they were gone and the primeval silence settled back into place. Brian and Crystal struggled painfully to solid ground. Crystal gazed with a feeling of awe at the devastated mountainside. \"How did you do it?\" \"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?\"\n\n<question>:\nHow would you describe the changes in tone through the passage?\n\n<options>:\nA From detached to intense\nB From excited to calm\nC From scary to tranquil\nD From calm to depressing\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>:\nSo here's how the race shapes up. Bauer will frame it as a populist showdown, chiefly between himself and Forbes. Forbes will frame it as a fight between the establishment, led by Bush, and conservatives, led by himself. Dole will exploit feminism as well as feminine stereotypes, pitching herself as the candidate of change, civility, and moral renewal. And McCain will fortify his war chest while his rivals battle and bleed. Ames has organized the contestants. Let the games begin. Elizabeth Dole Playback 1. Top three. Dole needed to get within striking distance of Bush and to seal off the rest of the pack behind her. On Meet the Press , Face the Nation , and Late Edition , she boasted that she had cracked \"the top three.\" Pundits bought the three-winners line, treating Ames as a horse race (\"win, place, and show\") and noting that \"no one's ever won the Republican nomination without finishing in the top three\" at Ames. Newspapers, cramped for space, confined their headlines to Bush, Forbes, and Dole. Though Dole's 14 percent was closer to Bauer's 9 than to Forbes' 21, she earned a \"solid third\" and a place among the leaders by crossing the \"double-digit\" threshold. As Fox News' Carl Cameron put it: \"The other seven candidates could not crack double digits.\" 2. Race for third. Since Bush and Forbes were expected to finish first and second, many pundits concluded, as Lisa Myers put it on Meet the Press , that \"the real race here was for third. Elizabeth Dole won that.\" The Boston Globe called Dole \"the winner of this contest-within-the-contest.\" Dole touted her \"victory\" on every talk show and cited the Myers and Globe quotes in a press release. At a news conference, an aide introduced Dole as the straw poll's \"real winner.\" 3. Underdog. In every TV interview, Dole claimed to have been \"outspent by millions of dollars.\" Her spokesman told reporters that \"on a dollar-per-vote basis, Elizabeth Dole trounced George Bush and Steve Forbes.\" Reporters love an underdog. \"From a strict cost-benefit standpoint, the big winner may be Elizabeth Dole,\" concluded Time . 1. Top four. Like Dole, Bauer needed to crack the top tier and seal off the pack. Since sports analogies tend to cut off the top tier at three rather than four (e.g., \"bronze medal,\" \"win, place, and show\"), Bauer changed metaphors, telling reporters that he had reached \"the first rung of candidates\" and that lower finishers might soon perish. On Meet the Press , he called himself the \"breakout candidate.\" While some pundits lumped Bauer with the winners, others offered him the next best position--\"leading the rest of the pack\"--or at least distinguished him from the \"losers.\" 2. Social conservative quarterfinal. This was Bauer's big spin win. Like Dole, he won a crucial \"contest-within-the-contest.\" His scant margin over Pat Buchanan--8.9 percent to 7.3 percent--became a huge factor in the post-poll analysis. Pundits concluded that Bauer \"did what he had to do ... beat Pat Buchanan,\" and therefore \"can legitimately say he is the candidate of the Christian right,\" establishing himself as \"one of the winners,\" the \"three or four\" candidates who \"got their tickets punched\" to stay in the race. Talk show hosts reminded Buchanan that he had lost to Bauer and asked whether Buchanan was finished. 4. Underdog. Bauer couldn't claim to be more strapped than Dole, so he claimed underdog status on the basis of low name recognition, inexperience, and working-class heritage. \"I am running against some big bios ... the son of a former president, the son of a tycoon, and the wife of a senator,\" Bauer argued on Late Edition . \"I have never run for president or office before. And yet here we come in fourth place.\" Newsweek 's David Brooks wrote that Bauer \"overcame his own financial disadvantages\" and joined Dole as the two surviving \"Have-Not candidates.\" 1. Buchanan will defect. Since Buchanan's combativeness and loyal base make him hard to write off as a candidate, his rivals have persuaded the media at least to write him off as a Republican by inferring that his low score at Ames will prompt him to transfer to the Reform Party. The more Buchanan fends off comparisons to Bauer by emphasizing his protectionism, the more he plays into this scenario. 3. Conservatism. If Bauer wins the social conservative quarterfinal and the conservative semifinal, he gets to run as the \"Reagan\" candidate against \"Bush-Gore\" moderation on abortion, Hollywood, China, and other hot-button issues. This bracket-by-bracket tournament strategy reduces Bauer's obstacles from three candidates to two. He can target Forbes, knowing that if he prevails, either Bush or Dole will have vanquished the other in the moderate semifinal. Indeed, Dole's success at Ames arguably helps Bauer by giving Bush a semifinal contest. 1. Ames meant nothing to him. Despite having skipped the straw poll, McCain was invited onto Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday to discuss it. \"If you're going to be taken seriously,\" Brit Hume asked him, \"don't you have to face up to the fact, when all the other candidates decide that an event is worth attending ... that maybe you've got to play too?\" In reply, McCain repeatedly called Ames \"meaningless.\" His chutzpah bowled over the pundits. Stephanopoulos called McCain's no-show \"a pretty smart move\" and portrayed the 83 votes he won in the straw poll--putting him in last place among active Republican candidates--as evidence of his strength. 2. Ethanol. Many pundits, fancying themselves shrewd, suggest that McCain's true reason for skipping Iowa is that he has \"taken a position on ethanol subsidies that's unpalatable to voters in Iowa.\" On This Week , Stephanopoulos suggested that McCain might \"have to do something dramatic,\" such as \"make a stand and say, 'We're not going to compete in Iowa. We think these ethanol subsidies are an abomination.' \" This is McCain's greatest triumph: He has conned the media into disbelieving his political calculations and accusing him instead of principle. \"I've taken a lot of unpopular positions,\" he conceded on Fox News Sunday . 3. Experience. The longer McCain stays out of the race without damaging his credibility, the more the field narrows to his advantage. Alexander and Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, are already gone. Quayle and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, won't be far behind. If the field dwindles to Bush, Forbes, and Bauer, McCain can sell himself as the only experienced officeholder running against Bush. But Dole's third-place finish at Ames, coupled with her victory in the post-Ames spin contest, complicates this plan.\n\n<question>:\nWhat was something that Dole, Bauer, and McCain all have in common?\n\n<options>:\nA They were all trying to justify their position in the primaries\nB They were all trying to secure financial backing\nC They all had very small odds of winning overall\nD They all had things that were actively going against their personal record\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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1,076 | 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>:\nJAMES BARON was not pleased to hear that he had had pardons, Mr. Baron. The gentleman—he would leave no Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to think so, too. McIvers’ restlessness was beginning to grate on our nerves. He talked too much, while we were resting or while we were driving Now Baron drummed his fingers on the table top, staring number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin I figured that it would pass off after a while. I was apprehensive down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held 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 The grizzled man searched Baron’s face for a moment “Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded. “The name is Claney,” said the stranger. There was a silence. Then: “Claney? of a Bug Claney?” Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger “Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My miscalculate? What were the trouble spots?” Baron jabbed a finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma? “You want to know why we failed?” asked Claney. McIvers’ scheme for an advanced scout more dangerous for I caught myself wishing that the Major had okayed “It’s simple. We failed because it can’t be done. We couldn’t One error in judgment could sink us all, but I wasn’t thinking the individual, maybe, but I was driving blind now and I didn’t me , plenty worried. I kept thinking, better McIvers should go than me. It wasn’t healthy thinking and I knew it, but I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind. “Nonsense,” Baron declared. “We will.” can blame the equipment or the men—there were flaws in that whipped us, that and the Claney shrugged. “I was there. I know what I’m saying. You It was the “Never,” said Baron. “Let me tell you,” Peter Claney said. then I edged my Bug I know now that they were a pair of idiots, starting off without place. Too many men in this game are all nerve and luck, He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion? It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned he’d been with the Major at Vulcan and had begged to join this trek. I had a funny feeling that Jack really didn’t care for liable to get awfully uneasy and none of them can ever give you an answer that makes sense. Anyway, Stone had borrowed three men from the Lab, and had the supplies and equipment all lined up when we got there, ready to check and test. with special lead-cooled cut-in engines when the heat set in, and one heavy-duty tractor model for pulling the sledges. The Major went over them like a kid at the circus. Then he said, “Have you heard anything from McIvers?” “Who’s he?” Stone wanted to know. “He’ll be joining us. He’s a good man—got quite a name for climbing, back home.” The Major turned to me. “You’ve probably heard of him.” I’d heard plenty of stories about Ted McIvers and I wasn’t too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil, isn’t he?” The Major laughed. “I don’t think we need to worry about McIvers. We understood each other when I talked up the trip to him and we’re going to need each other too much to do any fooling around.” He turned back to the supply list. to cut weight sharply and our time is short. Sanderson says 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 It seemed that the more we considered the problem, the that avoided those upheavals as far as possible. But in the final analysis, we were barely scraping the surface. The only way we would find out what was happening where was to be there. Finally, on the third day, McIvers blew in on a freight 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?” “Of course.” Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t worried us first and Baron nodded in agreement. “What kind of suits did you “The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid if the suits failed somewhere.” “How about the Bugs?” “You weren’t!” Baron exclaimed. “Why not?” forward work on foot.” Claney smiled bitterly. “Which meant Baron licked his lips. His fingers stroked the cool, wet glass “Oh, yes,” said Claney, “we started on schedule, all right. time-consuming. Delays could cost us our lives. We all knew “Peter, you’ll take the lead Bug, the small one we stripped down for you. Stone and I will flank you on either side, giving you a hundred-yard lead. McIvers, you’ll have the job of dragging the sledges, so we’ll have to direct your course pretty 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 take the sledges. That would give me a little more mobility.” The Major looked up sharply at Stone. “Do you buy that, Jack?” Stone shrugged. “I don’t mind. Mac wanted—” McIvers made an impatient gesture with his hands. “It doesn’t matter. I just feel better when I’m on the move. Does it make any difference?” “I guess it doesn’t,” said the Major. “Then you’ll flank Peter along with me. Right?” “Sure, sure.” McIvers pulled at his lower lip. “Who’s going to do the advance scouting?” “It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead McIvers shook his head. “No, I mean the advance work. “But why not? We could save ourselves days!” climber knows that everybody is safer in a party than one man alone—any time, any place.” McIvers stared at him, his cheeks an angry red. Finally he gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.” “Well, I say so and I mean it. I don’t want any fancy stuff. We’re going to hit Center together, and finish the Crossing together. Got that?” McIvers nodded. Mikuta then looked at Stone and me and we nodded, too. “All right,” he said slowly. “Now that we’ve got it straight, back over my shoulder, I could see the Major and McIvers crawling out behind me, their pillow tires taking the rugged floor of the gorge smoothly. Behind them, Stone dragged the sledges. came due, we pulled the Bugs together into a square, threw up we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise. We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our but we couldn’t sleep them off. We sat around looking at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would Yet we knew that even the land might have been conquered\n\n<question>:\nWhat does Baron think was one of the mistakes Claney's team made?\n\n<options>:\nA Trying to cross on foot\nB Using suits with fiberglass lining\nC Not counting on the Bugs for protection\nD Asking McIvers to be on the team\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
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180 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nCAPTAIN CHAOS By D. ALLEN MORRISSEY Science equipped David Corbin with borrowed time sent 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. \"Your name is David Corbin. Do you understand?\" \"No.\" \"Your name is David Corbin. If you understand, press button A on your \"Your name is David Corbin.\" nothing to me, but I thought about it, watching the relentless lights opened door I had left, and the thought of that questioning voice made crowded with equipment and.... I will always remember the scream of terror, the paralyzing fright of It was space. When I looked again I knew where I was. Why the little room had been I knew more of the puzzle. Something was wrong. After the first shock WHY, Why, Why? The thought kept pounding at me. I was afraid to touch glowing eyes. It had asked me if I understood. Now it must tell me why \"Your name is David Corbin. If you understand, press button A on your I pressed the button by the cot. The red lights blinked out as I stood Precaution against forgetting. It was crazy, but I trusted the panel. It was the only thing I saw that the clear portholes. \"It is assumed the experiment is a success,\" the voice said. What experiment? \"You have been removed from suspension. Assume manual control of this ship.\" \"Tell me what to do,\" I shouted wildly. I hammered the hard metal until message there was. In blind panic I pushed away from the panel. the cot. His muscular body was secured by a wide belt. He was as still as death, motionless without warmth or breath as I hovered over him. A flat, illogical voice had instructed me to revive these men. I shivered in spite of the warmth of the room, studying the black box that squatted on a shelf by his head. My hand shook when I touched instructions without knowledge were useless to me. I stopped looking 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. Not mine. Not now. 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 at a deep blue eye that stared back in glassy surprise. Four people in all, depending on a blind helpless fool who didn't know their names or the reason for that dependence. I sat beside her on the cot until I no point to start from, no premise to seek. I sensed the place to start was the same type of black box, but out from it was a metal arm, bent looked right. It was then I realized the needle came to a spot where it manually I was lost. I had no knowledge of what to inject or where to look for it. The chamber of the needle that had awakened me was empty. That meant a measured amount. In the laboratory on the lower level I went over the rows of cans and tubes fastened to the shelves. There were earths and minerals, seeds 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 I went back to the cabin where the powerful man lay. I had to risk down the thought that he might be the key man, remembering the voice that had given the message. It was up to me, and soon. The metal in the box would have withstood a bullet. It couldn't be pried apart, and I I found it. I swung the massive cover off and set it down. The equipment waited for The needle went into the corded neck of the man. The fluid chamber restlessly, closing his hands into fists. The deep chest rose and fell \"Who is in charge of this ship?\" I asked. He tensed suddenly. \"You are, sir. Why?\" wanted him to understand. \"Look, I'm in trouble. Nothing fits, except \"No.\" head?\" \"The others. What about the others?\" he blurted. He shook his head, watching me like I was a freak. \"Let's check the rest right away.\" quarters. \"What about her. Why is she here?\" I asked my companion. He lifted the cover from the apparatus. \"She's the chemist in the crew.\" \"There must be men who could have been sent. I've been wondering why a \"What is the mission of this ship?\" I asked. The question frightened her. \"Should I? I feel so strange. Give me a The dark haired man came into the room, silent and watchful. My \"Croft. John Croft.\" \"John, what are your duties if any?\" \"Automatic control. I helped to install it.\" \"Can you run this ship? How about the other two?\" searched each face without recognition. The blond man was Carl Herrick, a metallurgist. His lean face was white from his spell but he was \"We set out from Earth for a single star in the direction of the center \"What direction?\" \"It was set at about a hundred years, sir. Doesn't that fit at all?\" \"I can't believe it's possible.\" \"Don't think about it,\" Paul said. \"We can still pull this out 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 in an effort to help her remember her job. Carl went back to divide the rations. I was to study the charts and manuals. It was better than doing control room and watched John at the panel. \"I wish we knew. What about her—Dr. Thiesen?\" \"She's in the lab. I don't think that will do much good. She's got to be shocked out of a mental state like that.\" \"I guess you're right,\" he said slowly. \"She's trained to administer the suspension on the return trip.\" I let my breath out slowly. \"I didn't think about that.\" \"What about me?\" shock treatment? It sounds risky.\" \"I know. It's the only thing I could think of. Why didn't everyone react the same?\" control screen. It wasn't operating. \"What—made you—think of that,\" I asked weakly. \"Shock treatment.\" \"I must have acted on instinct.\" John as he was at the base, big and competent, sweating in the blazing sun. the intercom to open. \"This is control. Listen ... everyone. I'm over it. Disregard the warning siren ... we were testing the ship.\" The lab light blinked on as Paul cut in. \"What was it ... hey, you said you're all right.\" \"John did it. He hit the alarm figuring I would react. Listen, Paul. Is any one hurt?\" \"No. Carl is here too. His stomach flopped again but he's okay. What about food. We're supposed to be checked before we eat.\" \"We'll have to go ahead without it. Any change?\" \"No, I put her to bed. Shall I bring food?\" I glanced at John. He rubbed his stomach. \"Yes,\" I answered. \"Bring it We had to get off course before we ran into the yellow-white star that 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 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 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 was selected when the planets in Earth's solar system had proved to be\n\n<question>:\nWhat did David determine the black box was for?\n\n<options>:\nA Storage of canned food\nB A navigation device\nC A device to deliver medication\nD Testing equipment\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,061 | 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>:\nwhat happened to me atomic power practical. Jerome Boell, just a plain engineer, the man who put atomic power in every home. You won't exactly believe it, but you'll want to go along. I'll be tired of talking by then, and in a hurry to get going. So I traveling along it, you'd need a fifth. Don't ask me. I didn't invent the machine and I don't understand it.\" \"But....\" crazy. You'll see later why I couldn't have invented the machine. Of course, there may have been a start for all this once. There may have been a time when you did invent the machine—the atomic motor first, then the time-machine. And when you closed the loop by going back and saving yourself the trouble, it got all tangled up. I figured out once this century, as near as I can remember it, and I should be able to pass fairly well. I've had all my fortune—the one you make on that atomic generator—invested in such a way I can get it on using some identification I've got with me, so I'll do all right. I know they still use some kind of money, you'll see evidence of that. And it's a anyway?\" I'd told you that, too, but you've forgotten. \"As near as I can guess, and there is an elevator waiting, fortunately with the door open. \"What about the time machine?\" you ask. \"Since nobody ever stole it, it's safe.\" We get in the elevator, and I say \"first\" to it. It gives out a go home. But then a guard comes to the gate. Except for the short legs \"Thanks,\" you mutter, wondering what kind of civilization can produce guards as polite as that. \"I—I'm told I should investigate your display of atomic generators.\" He beams at that. \"Of course.\" The gate is swung to behind you, but obviously he isn't locking it. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a lock. \"Must be a new part. You go down that corridor, up one flight them to check his latest theory of how they work. Too bad he could not explain the principle, either. Someone will, some day, though. Lord, the genius of that twentieth century inventor! It's quite a his name. Either they don't know it, or they take it for granted that everyone does, which seems more probable. They call attention to the fact that they have the original model of the first atomic generator built, complete with design drawings, original manuscript on operation, They state that it has all major refinements, operating on any fuel, producing electricity at any desired voltage up to five million, any chosen cyclic rate from direct current to one thousand megacycles, and any amperage up to one thousand, its maximum power output being fifty kilowatts, limited by the current-carrying capacity of the outputs. They also mention that the operating principle is still being each side. \"Nice,\" the guard says over your shoulder. \"It finally wore out one of it, either. You work down the line. It'd be foolish to take the early model if you can get one with built-in magnetic current terminals—Ehrenhaft or some other principle?—and nuclear binding-force energy terminals. But they're all held down by the same whatchamaycallem effect. moves. There's a little sign under it, indicating you shouldn't touch it, since the gravostatic plate is being renewed. Well, you won't be able to change the time cycle by doing anything I probably can't help it, anyhow. Pre-set, you might say. Well, you stagger down the corridor, looking out for the guard, but all dart past. The street is pretty clear now and you jolt along, with your arms seeming to come out of the sockets, and that atomic generator getting heavier at every step. Out of nowhere, something in a blue uniform about six feet tall and You did notice the name of the building from which you came and you mutter it. The stranger nods again, reaches out and picks up the other side of the generator, blowing a little whistle the cop hands him. Pedestrians begin to move aside, and you and the stranger jog down the street at a trot, with a nice clear path, while the cop stands beaming dissimilar in other ways. He snaps it open and you get set to duck. \"You forgot the prints, monograph, and patent applications,\" he says. \"They go with the generator—we don't like to have them separated. A good thing I knew the production office of 'Atoms and Axioms' was in this building. Just let us know when you're finished with the model and to satisfy your amiable guard friend. He finally smiles in satisfaction and heads back to the museum. You still don't believe it, but you pick up the atomic generator and the information sheets, and you head down toward the service elevator. There is no button on it. In fact, there's no door there. in the direction of the time machine, bumping against boxes, staggering here and there, and trying to find the right place by sheer feel. Then a shred of dim light appears it's the weak light in the time machine. You've located it. You put the atomic generator in the luggage space, throw the papers down beside it, and climb into the cockpit, sweating and mumbling. You reach forward toward the green button and hesitate. There's a red one beside it and you finally decide on that. Suddenly, there's a confused yell from the direction of the elevator it. Your finger touches the red button. You'll never know what the shouting was about—whether they finally doped out the fact that they'd been robbed, or whether they were trying to help you. You don't care which it is. The field springs up around you and the next button you touch—the one on the board that hasn't because there is only one of you this time. Instead, everything flashes off and you're sitting in the machine in your own back yard. You'll figure out the cycle in more details later. You get into the machine in front of your house, go to the future in the sub-basement, land in your back yard, and then hop back thirty years to pick up yourself, landing in front of your house. Just that. But right then, you don't care. You jump out and start pulling out that atomic generator and taking it inside. It isn't hard to disassemble, but you don't learn a thing just some But when you put it together again, about an hour later, you notice something. Everything in it is brand-new and there's one set of copper wires missing! It won't work. You put some #12 house wire in, exactly like the set on the other side, drop in some iron filings, and try it again. And with the controls set at 120 volts, 60 cycles and 15 amperes, you get just that. You don't need the power company any more. And you feel a little happier when you realize that the luggage space wasn't insulated from time effects by a field, so the motor has moved backward in time, somehow, and is back to its original youth—minus the replaced wires the guard mentioned—which probably wore out because of the makeshift job you've just done. But you begin getting more of a jolt when you find that the papers are all in your own writing, that your name is down as the inventor, and that the date of the patent application is 1951. It will begin to soak in, then. You pick up an atomic generator in the future and bring it back to the past—your present—so that it can be put in the museum with you as the inventor so you can steal it to be yourself.... Who invented what? And who built which? Before long, your riches from the generator are piling in. Little kids from school are coming around to stare at the man who changed history and made atomic power so common that no nation could hope to came looking for you and shouting, before the time machine left. Let's go.\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Jerome not stop when he was being shouted at when leaving the futuristic civilization?\n\n<options>:\nA He was unsure what they wanted and didn't want to wait and find out.\nB He knew they had caught on to his actions.\nC He was fearing being held there for theft.\nD He knew they were going to switch the generator with another\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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1,164 | 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>:\ntreatment and taking it. But you wouldn't do that. You wanted to commit a crime, get caught and be a hero ... an Ex .\" were laughing, squealing with joy as they played games designed by CPA psychologists to relieve tension. And—despite the treatment, Joe Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but his arm froze before it moved it an inch. 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 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, a group of teen-agers scrambled to the dance floor. Feeling safe from hidden microphones because of the uproar, he leaned He smiled at her admiration. It was \"I think it's a lousy, filthy system.\" Joe's head was still tingling something big to plan a crime. 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 wanted to do and now 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 And, ironically, a man who did commit a crime was a sort of hero. He was a hero to the millions of men and women who had suppressed impulses to kill someone, beat their mates, get drunk, or kick a dog. Not only a hero, but because of the CPA Treatment, he was—when he left one of the CPA hospitals—a thoroughly honest and hard-working individual ... a man who could be trusted with any responsibility, any amount of money. He surprised her completely, but when she recovered, she backed away, the act, and if he didn't complete the act, that meant simply that the CPA had once again functioned properly. \"What's the matter?\" Joe complained. \"I'm not asking you to do anything Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when 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 When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, \"Okay. Snap out of it.\" \"Where's the girl?\" Joe asked. Joe listened numbly to his voice as it came from one of the hundreds of 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—\" Joe squirmed in the chair. He'd been lectured by Hendricks before and Joe couldn't stand the breath in his face any longer. He rose and paced Joe eyed the huge man suspiciously. \" Joe laughed. \"If your damned CPA is so all-powerful, why can't you make me go?\" Joe stared at the door to the adjoining office as it closed behind the Almost running to the desk, Joe opened the book, selected a name and \"Huh? Thanks for what? I didn't do anything.\" When Joe reached the street, he hurried toward the nearest subway. As a child, he had been frightened of the dark. As a man, he wasn't afraid of the dark itself, but the darkened city always made him feel ill at ease. The uneasiness was, more than anything else, caused by his own imagination. He hated the CPA and at night he couldn't shrug the feeling that the CPA lurked in every shadow, watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake. Imagination or not, the CPA was almost everywhere a person went. The FBI had always been a powerful organization, but under the supervision of the CPA, it was a scientific colossus and to think their aim was infallible. It was like a fantastic dream come true. Only the dream wasn't 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 of other DCTs, Joe refused to believe it, and when he reached apartment When Joe entered the cubbyhole, he had to stand to one side in order to 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. He broke out in a sweat when he found nothing but underwear and old crime, but the newspapers would splash satirical headlines. Instead of being respected as a successful criminal, he would be ridiculed. He stopped sweating when he found a watch under a pile of underwear. but—perfection itself—engraved on the back was the inscription, To John with Love . 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. Chuckling with joy, he opened the window and shouted, \" Thief! Police! Help! When Joe was securely handcuffed to a seat inside the helicopter, the He was having a nightmare when he heard the voice, \"Hey. Wake up. Hey!\" As Joe dressed, he searched his mind and tried to find some difference. 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. He felt more relaxed than he'd ever felt before, but that could be an after-effect of all the sedatives he'd been given. And, he noticed when he looked in the mirror, he was paler. The treatment had taken months and he had, between operations, been locked in his room. Deliberately goading his mind, he discovered the biggest change: 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. They had toned down his capacity to hate, but not done away with it on the hospital steps: a band, photographers, television trucks, cameramen and autograph hunters. He'd waited a long time for this day. But now—another change in him— He put the emotion into words: \"I don't feel like a hero. Funny, but I don't.\" \"Hero!\" Hendricks laughed and, with his powerful lungs, it sounded like a bull snorting. \"You think a successful criminal is a hero? You stupid—\" He laughed again and waved a hand at the crowd below them. \"You think those people are down there because they admire what you did? They're down there waiting for you because they're curious, because they're understand he didn't believe. A crowd was waiting for him. He could see the people with his own eyes. When he left the hospital, they'd cheer and shout and ask for his autograph. If he wasn't a hero, what was he It took half an hour to get through the crowd. Cameras clicked all around him, a hundred kids asked for his autograph, everyone talked at once and cheered, smiled, laughed, patted him on the back and cheered some more. Only one thing confused him during all the excitement: a white-haired 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 himself with the thought, People are funny. Who can understand 'em? Feeling happy for one of the few times in his life, he turned toward Hendricks and said, \"Thanks for what you did. It turned out great. I'll be able to get a good job now.\" Joe frowned. Few men had ever done him a favor and he had rarely thanked anyone for anything. And now ... after thanking the man who'd done him the biggest favor of all, the man was denying it!\n\n<question>:\nWhat did Joe find strange when he first awoke at the hospital after his treatment?\n\n<options>:\nA He had a pounding headache.\nB He felt unable to lie.\nC He felt no different.\nD He felt like a hero.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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1,448 | 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>:\nSo here's how the race shapes up. Bauer will frame it as a populist showdown, chiefly between himself and Forbes. Forbes will frame it as a fight between the establishment, led by Bush, and conservatives, led by himself. Dole will exploit feminism as well as feminine stereotypes, pitching herself as the candidate of change, civility, and moral renewal. And McCain will fortify his war chest while his rivals battle and bleed. Ames has organized the contestants. Let the games begin. 2. Race for third. Since Bush and Forbes were expected to finish first and second, many pundits concluded, as Lisa Myers put it on Meet the Press , that \"the real race here was for third. Elizabeth Dole won that.\" The Boston Globe called Dole \"the winner of this contest-within-the-contest.\" Dole touted her \"victory\" on every talk show and cited the Myers and Globe quotes in a press release. At a news conference, an aide introduced Dole as the straw poll's \"real winner.\" 3. Underdog. In every TV interview, Dole claimed to have been \"outspent by millions of dollars.\" Her spokesman told reporters that \"on a dollar-per-vote basis, Elizabeth Dole trounced George Bush and Steve Forbes.\" Reporters love an underdog. \"From a strict cost-benefit standpoint, the big winner may be Elizabeth Dole,\" concluded Time . 4. Comeback kid. Dismissive coverage of Dole before the straw poll played to her advantage, as everyone marveled at her \"surprisingly\" strong third. \"Dole Revived,\" the Washington Post 's front page proclaimed. On This Week , George Will conceded, \"There had been a lot of very skeptical stories about whether her people would show up. She, therefore, I think, is the biggest winner.\" Playbook 2. Experience. Having narrowed the field to three, Dole needs to focus the contest on criteria that favor her. The first of these is political experience, of which Bush has little and Forbes has almost none. On every talk show, Dole vowed \"to demonstrate that the candidate with the most experience is more qualified than the candidates with the most money. ... We're talking about president of the United States.\" 3. Gender. This is the more obvious criterion that distinguishes Dole. She hardly needs to mention it--the media bring it up anyway--but she invokes it subtly, alluding (as she did on two Sunday talk shows) to \"women who drive their daughters halfway across the state to shake my hand, a woman they dare to believe in.\" Newspapers hail Dole's female followers as evidence \"that she can attract new voters to the GOP.\" Gary Bauer 1. Top four. Like Dole, Bauer needed to crack the top tier and seal off the pack. Since sports analogies tend to cut off the top tier at three rather than four (e.g., \"bronze medal,\" \"win, place, and show\"), Bauer changed metaphors, telling reporters that he had reached \"the first rung of candidates\" and that lower finishers might soon perish. On Meet the Press , he called himself the \"breakout candidate.\" While some pundits lumped Bauer with the winners, others offered him the next best position--\"leading the rest of the pack\"--or at least distinguished him from the \"losers.\" 2. Social conservative quarterfinal. This was Bauer's big spin win. Like Dole, he won a crucial \"contest-within-the-contest.\" His scant margin over Pat Buchanan--8.9 percent to 7.3 percent--became a huge factor in the post-poll analysis. Pundits concluded that Bauer \"did what he had to do ... beat Pat Buchanan,\" and therefore \"can legitimately say he is the candidate of the Christian right,\" establishing himself as \"one of the winners,\" the \"three or four\" candidates who \"got their tickets punched\" to stay in the race. Talk show hosts reminded Buchanan that he had lost to Bauer and asked whether Buchanan was finished. 4. Underdog. Bauer couldn't claim to be more strapped than Dole, so he claimed underdog status on the basis of low name recognition, inexperience, and working-class heritage. \"I am running against some big bios ... the son of a former president, the son of a tycoon, and the wife of a senator,\" Bauer argued on Late Edition . \"I have never run for president or office before. And yet here we come in fourth place.\" Newsweek 's David Brooks wrote that Bauer \"overcame his own financial disadvantages\" and joined Dole as the two surviving \"Have-Not candidates.\" Playbook 1. Buchanan will defect. Since Buchanan's combativeness and loyal base make him hard to write off as a candidate, his rivals have persuaded the media at least to write him off as a Republican by inferring that his low score at Ames will prompt him to transfer to the Reform Party. The more Buchanan fends off comparisons to Bauer by emphasizing his protectionism, the more he plays into this scenario. 2. Populism. With Buchanan out of the way, Bauer will go after Forbes. When asked on television about Forbes' claim to represent the right. Bauer cited Forbes' wealth and called himself \"the son of a maintenance man.\" On This Week , George Stephanopoulos agreed that Bauer \"is becoming the populist in the race,\" noting that Bauer's supporters \"love the fact that he was the son of a janitor.\" 3. Conservatism. If Bauer wins the social conservative quarterfinal and the conservative semifinal, he gets to run as the \"Reagan\" candidate against \"Bush-Gore\" moderation on abortion, Hollywood, China, and other hot-button issues. This bracket-by-bracket tournament strategy reduces Bauer's obstacles from three candidates to two. He can target Forbes, knowing that if he prevails, either Bush or Dole will have vanquished the other in the moderate semifinal. Indeed, Dole's success at Ames arguably helps Bauer by giving Bush a semifinal contest. 1. Ames meant nothing to him. Despite having skipped the straw poll, McCain was invited onto Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday to discuss it. \"If you're going to be taken seriously,\" Brit Hume asked him, \"don't you have to face up to the fact, when all the other candidates decide that an event is worth attending ... that maybe you've got to play too?\" In reply, McCain repeatedly called Ames \"meaningless.\" His chutzpah bowled over the pundits. Stephanopoulos called McCain's no-show \"a pretty smart move\" and portrayed the 83 votes he won in the straw poll--putting him in last place among active Republican candidates--as evidence of his strength. 3. Experience. The longer McCain stays out of the race without damaging his credibility, the more the field narrows to his advantage. Alexander and Rep. John Kasich, R-Ohio, are already gone. Quayle and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, won't be far behind. If the field dwindles to Bush, Forbes, and Bauer, McCain can sell himself as the only experienced officeholder running against Bush. But Dole's third-place finish at Ames, coupled with her victory in the post-Ames spin contest, complicates this plan.\n\n<question>:\nWhat doesn't the author believe about Bauer?\n\n<options>:\nA Forbes is Bauer's current competition\nB Bauer is able to spin results in his favor\nC he is pro-choice and a moderate conservative\nD he is an underdog because of his inexperience\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
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1,325 | 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 can't be both a queenly queen and a womanly woman, says the script (by Michael Hirst)--at least not in 1554. (The director, Shekhar Kapur, made the same point in his grim 1994 Indian epic The Bandit Queen , against a backdrop of scrubby plains along the Ganges.) Is this feminist take historically accurate? Probably, although the evidence suggests that Elizabeth had developed a head for stratagems earlier in life (her position had been precarious since the beheading of her mother) and came to the throne with few girlish illusions about How Things Work in a barbarous state. 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. Whatever you make of Velvet Goldmine (opinions have ranged from rapturous to casually dismissive), it's like no other musical ever made. It's determinedly swirling, discursive, elliptical. Now the story is told by an omniscient narrator, now a TV reporter, now a participant. Now it's flashing back, now forward. Every other line of dialogue is a cue for one of its dazzling numbers, largely covers of songs by Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, and T. Rex. The narrative is a challenge to keep up with, but then, great artists often invent their own syntax. In the '80s, Haynes employed Barbie dolls to depict the rise and wasting away from anorexia of the singer Karen Carpenter. Lucky audiences who caught Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (it was shelved when Richard Carpenter served the producers with an order to cease and desist exhibition) began by laughing at this elaborately posed, soft-rock femme, only to discover by the climax that the cultural forces that were eating at her (and that kept her from eating) had grown heartbreakingly palpable. Poison (1991), Haynes' Genêt-inspired exploration of transgression, didn't overcome its own artiness. But Safe (1995), the story of a Reagan-era housewife (Julianne Moore) convinced that her environment is poisoning her, is an entrancing meditation on the power of culture to crush the individual. Despite its ironic detachment, the film draws you into its heroine's sickly state: Breathing oxygen from a canister inside a high-tech igloo, she dwindles to nearly nothing, the modern incarnation of the Incredible Shrinking Man. (It was partly my passion for Haynes' films that led me to accept a job offer from his indefatigable producer Christine Vachon last year to collaborate on a nuts-and-bolts book about producing, Shooting To Kill . So my review of Velvet Goldmine --like my review of Vachon's other recent release, Happiness --should be read as the work of a partisan. But not a blind partisan.) 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 Shoot the Moon , 1982), labored on this moldy script, which features characters who ask questions that begin \"Am I to understand that ...?\" and a corporate villain who directs another character to \"wake up and smell the thorns.\" It apparently never occurred to even one of these overpaid scribes to eliminate Hopkins' rueful realization that he'd \"never write the great American novel\"--no kidding, given his flagrantly Welsh accent. 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 is probably the author's favorite movie?\n\n<options>:\nA Velvet Goldmine\nB Meet Joe Black\nC Elizabeth\nD Shooting to Kill\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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1,347 | 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>:\nthreatening to become more legendary than usual this Christmas. The farm machinery manager had already collapsed. When he slid under the table containing the drinks, Miss Pringle, who sold millinery, had screamed: \"He'll drown!\" story. The recently developed liquors which affected the bloodstream three times faster had driven away twinges of conscience about untrimmed trees and midnight church services. the frame at one corner and it wouldn't hang straight. \"We'd better put old H. H. away for safekeeping until after the holiday,\" he told a small, blonde salesclerk who was beneath his attention on any working day. With the proper mixture of respect and bonhommie, he lifted the heavy A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She machine. \"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!\" someone shouted at her. \"Have another!\" returned to reality. Looking at the envelope, she said: \"Oh, I see. They must have stuck it in to tighten the frame. Gee, it's old.\" Mr. Hawkins had refreshed himself. He decided that he liked Milly's voice. To hear more of it, he said to her: \"I'll bet that's been in there ever since the picture was framed. There's a company legend that that picture was put up the day this branch opened, eighty years ago.\" \"I didn't know the company ever used buff envelopes like this.\" Milly \"This thing has never been processed!\" Raising his voice, he shouted jovially, \"Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!\" Milly was reading aloud the scrawled words on the order form: vacuum cleaner. Dress for three-year-old girl.\" She turned to the assistant general manager, struck with an idea for the first time in her young life. \"Let's fill this order right now!\" \"The poor woman must be dead by now,\" he objected, secretly angry that he hadn't thought of such a fine party stunt himself. Then he brightened. \"Unless—\" he said it loud enough for the employes to scent There was a silence. Finally, from an anonymous voice in one corner: \"Would the warp work over eighty years? We were always told that it must be used only for complaints within three days.\" stuff that's on the order. Get the best of everything. Ignore the catalogue numbers—they've changed a hundred times in all these years.\" of excitement. \"Look, Mr. Hawkins! The name on this order—it's my great-grandmother! Isn't that wonderful? I was just a little girl when she died. I can barely remember her as a real old woman. But I remember that my grandmother never bought anything from Hartshorne-Logan because of some look fatherly. It didn't. \"Well, now. Since it's your relative, let's thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll The label was addressed in a wandering scrawl, a sharp contrast to time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter. Then they'll write again.\" Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted the expletives that she wanted to add. dress and shook it into a freely hanging position. Then she groaned. the dress she had admired from the Hartshorne-Logan catalogue Ann's legs were rubber. She was shaking her head and wobbling \"It's me,\" her husband said. \"Slow day at the office, so I came home early.\" \"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—\" \"It looks terribly expensive. Maybe they sent door chimes instead of the doorbell.\" when she—\" Ann's frazzled nerves carried a frantic order to her muscles. She hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. \"Neatest trick I've seen in a long time. That voice you heard was the new doorbell. I put it up while you were in the kitchen. Did you hear what happened when old lady Burnett out there pushed the button?\" them, like 'Another hour shot.' Well, if there's a little tape in there repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get boring after a while. And it might insult someone.\" figure of Mrs. Burnett, half-visible through the heavy curtain, shifted back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck.\" \"I just wanted to borrow some sugar,\" the woman cried from the porch. \"If this is ventriloquism—\" she began icily. office,\" Les said. \"But you'd better let the old girl in. No use letting her get peeved.\" when Mrs. Burnett waddled up the three back steps, and smiled at her neighbor. \"I'm so sorry you had to walk around the house. It's been a rather hectic day in an awful lot of ways.\" Something seemed to impede Mrs. Burnett as she came to the threshold. \"Excitement isn't good for me,\" Mrs. Burnett said testily. \"I've had a lot of troubles in my life. I like peace and quiet.\" \"Your husband is better?\" \"Worse. I'm sure I don't know why everything happens to me.\" Mrs. Defeated, Mrs. Burnett left. A muffled volley of handclapping, mixed \"Les, I think we've made poor Mrs. Burnett angry,\" Ann said. \"She's so upset over her poor husband's health and she thinks we're insulting her.\" you've got to be very careful with it, because its effects last for a long time.\" The only good thing about the morning for Ann was the fact that the today. \" 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 involving his name, if you'll—\" \"I'll be right down,\" Ann said. \"I mean I won't be right down. I've got a sick baby here. Don't do anything till I telephone my husband. And I'm sorry for Bob. I mean I'm sorry for the girls, and for the boys, too. I'm sorry for—for everything. Good-by.\" of the cloth. Sally writhed and kicked, then collapsed in a faint. The 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.\" rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo. Dr. Schwartz glanced outside the window. \"An ambulance. Looks as if they're stopping here.\" her own troubles. She saw two attendants carry Mr. Burnett, motionless and white, on a stretcher from the house next door into the ambulance. A third member of the crew was struggling with a disheveled Mrs. awful sick. I think his wife is nuts.\" Mrs. Burnett had broken free. She dashed halfway down the sidewalk, going to die! It means the electric chair!\" The orderly grabbed her again. This time he stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth to quiet her. \"Come back to this house as soon as you deliver him,\" Dr. Schwartz shouted to the men. \"We've got a very sick child up here.\" \"I was afraid this would happen,\" Les said. \"The poor woman already has lost three husbands. If this one is sick, it's no wonder she thinks that somebody is poisoning him.\" Bob stuck his head around the bedroom door. His mother stared weary sadness. \"People will suspect you of being a sex maniac for the rest of your life. You can't possibly explain—\" \"Don't bother about the girls' clothing,\" Bob said, \"because it was on the threshold of the front door. \"I heard that! The woman next door claims that her husband is poisoned. Young man, I'm going to put you under arrest.\" \"Close the door, close the door,\" the doorbell was chanting urgently. \"Where's that ambulance?\" Dr. Schwartz yelled from the top of the steps. \"The child's getting worse.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhich word least describes Mrs. Burnett?\n\n<options>:\nA neighborly\nB serious\nC irritable\nD elderly\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
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601 | quality | [
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThey weren't human. They were something more—and something less—they were, in short, humanity's hopes for survival! Pandora creaked and groaned as her landing pads settled unevenly in the mucky surface of the ugly world outside. She seemed to be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from the waiting hordes on Earth. Straining metal plates twanged and echoed through her hallways. but ten years of responsibility had pressed down his shoulders and put age-feigning hollows under his reddened eyes. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies were rough on the men who traveled them now. He shuffled toward the control room, grumbling at the heavy gravity. during the night?\" \"About a dozen blobs held something like a convention a little ways north of us. They broke up about an hour ago and streaked off into the 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 our two cadets sneaked out again. Barker followed them, but lost them 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 Of course there was no obvious need for caution here. The blobs hadn't seemed dangerous, and the local animals were apparently all herbivorous something had happened to the exploration party fifteen years glowed yellow-green. Motions around them suggested a herd of feeding animals. Details were impossible to see through the haze. Even the 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 luck. It had obviously been hidden deep enough to foil the detectors The blobs had left the herd. Now the three were streaking at fantastic speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that moved there. He saw the two cadets then, heading back to the waiting ship, just beyond the movement he'd seen through the mist. 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 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. leave his suit the radio would have let him keep in contact with the kids. But it was too late to go back. 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.\" \"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 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 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. But forty years ago, observations from beyond the Solar System had 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. Almost eighty worlds. The nearest a four month journey from Earth and four more months back. In another ten years, the sun would explode, leaving man only on the footholds he was trying to dig among other solar systems. Maybe some of the strange worlds would let men spread his seed again. Maybe none would be spawning grounds for mankind in spite of the efforts. Each was precious as a haven for the race. 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 squatting in the clearing fog, holding lances and staring at the ship. 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? as the great tanks of fuel discharged their contents out onto the ground where no ingenuity could ever recover it to bring life to the ship again. 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 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 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 men having to adapt the whole planet to their needs. Here, the strange children of man's race could grow, develop and begin the long trek back 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 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>:\nWhy was space exploration so important?\n\n<options>:\nA it was trendy to live on a different planet\nB there was a lot of interest in life on other planets\nC they were running out of time on Earth\nD people were trying to leave the wars on Earth\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
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1,951 | 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>:\nDELEGATE VENUS what the delegate from Venus approached the object only not more than fifteen feet in total circumference. well. I guess there's no use \" \"We expect a certain amount of fighting it. Maybe if I Let me put it this way,\" voice spoke to them. \"Greetings from Venus,\" it said, and then repeated the phrase in six languages. \"The ship you see is a Venusian Class and said nothing. One part of his mind wanted him to play it assignment he had waited four years to get. But another cagey, to behave the way the tell of the story he felt sure was about to break. safe to approach. There is a \"It's a box!\" someone said. \"A crate—\" \"Colligan! Moore! Schaffer! explosion rocked the quiet sands Then the voice spoke again Jerry deduced that it must have will find our delegate within. emissary.\" They set to work on the crate, its gray plastic material giving in readily to the application of you think is going on?\" \"I haven't the faintest idea.\" \"Don't kid me, Mr. Conners. Think it's war?\" \"That'll be all, Bridges.\" \"'Instructions for assembling Delegate,'\" he read aloud. \"'First, remove all parts and arrange them in the following order. A-1, central nervous system housing. A-2 ...'\" He looked up. \"It's an instruction book,\" item which had started the whole affair, and he seemed more interested in the romantic The Delegate, a handsomely feet tall, was pieced together some three hours later, by a team of scientists and engineers who seemed to find the Venusian instructions as elementary as a blueprint in an Erector set. But simple as the job was, they were quite a dame, all right. I think mechanism they had assembled. It stood impassive until they obeyed the final instruction. they ought to get the Secret Service to guard her. She really \"That's not sighed. \"What a way to get radioactive.\" did face of the United Nations that bothered him it was the certainty that something of and said: White House, flying visits by State Department officials, mysterious conferences involving So far, the byword had been secrecy. They knew under way, he knew that it was true. The highest echelons of the at the realization—Nikita Khrushchev himself. It was a summit foreign minister's debate. And the cause of it all, a placid, highly-polished metal robot, was seated blithely at a desk which bore the designation: VENUS. The robot delegate stood up. \"Gentlemen,\" it said into the reasons. Greta Johnson had that effect upon men. Even did?\" the confining effect of a mannishly-tailored microphone, and the great men prompt attention. I come as a Delegate from a great neighbor planet, in the interests of peace upon the other. I speak to you now through the electronic instrumentation which come to offer your planet not merely a threat, a promise, or an easy solution—but a challenge.\" The council room stirred. \"Your earth satellites have we foresee the day when contact story—\" \"But I'm a reporter opened, the Delegate was an exploded without unleashing the terrible forces of power sadly. \"What?\" of Venus, promise you this—that speed over the world, and Venus will act swiftly, mercilessly, in a babble of languages. \"The vessel which brought me here came as a messenger of peace. But envision it, men of Earth, as a messenger of war. Unstoppable, inexorable, it may return, bearing a different Delegate from Venus—a Delegate of Death, who speaks not in words, but in the explosion of atoms. you what I know, we could act human of the incredible event moons up there?\" promise and the challenge that will hang in your night sky from a brother.\" the planet Venus, men of Earth, and see a Goddess of Vengeance, poised to wreak its wrath upon those who betray the peace.\" The Delegate sat down. Four days later, a mysterious \"At first, they thought it was of Los Alamos, and the Venus \" hours after that, the robot delegate, its message delivered, its Who locked inside a bombproof chamber. When the door was another sputnik.\" mission fulfilled, requested to be spacecraft was no more. Two and nobody could figure out what the damn thing was.\" it. Then there were joint meetings, dizzily. \"You mean to tell me there's another of those metal \"Wait a minute,\" Jerry said left him vaguely unsatisfied. He tried to explain his feeling Jerry Bridges' eyewitness accounts what ?\" \"Well, what's bothering you?\" for about three days, and they're thinking of calling a plenary session of the UN just to figure the Delegate speak, something's \"About the Venusians, of more for peace than anything that's ever come along in this cockeyed world. But still ...\" from Venus guess they're and Jerry responded the way a can land their delegate.\" \"Their delegate. They came \"What's the matter?\" \"I just thought of something! Now where the hell did I put my old notebooks?\" \"You mean these Venusians notebooks inside. \"What are guess. They've been having radio talks with practically \"Well, how else can I take it? I'm not even supposed to know heading for the ivy-choked main building. It was remarkable a pencil to her mouth. \"Well, I guess he'd be in the Holland a massive woman with gray hair and impervious to charm, guarded the portals of his office with all the indomitable will of the U. S. Marines. But Jerry Bridges tried. \"You don't understand, Lana,\" from the men's dorm. He met a student at the door, who told \"My name's not Lana, and I can't deliver any messages.\" \"But this is something he wants an envelope, stamped URGENT. \"Do it for me, Hedy. And I'll \"Well,\" the woman said, thawing slightly. \"I could deliver the Delegate speak. I didn't hooded. \"What do you mean, Jerry?\" with a grin of triumph. There were six men in the and produced a sheet of paper. He unfolded it and read aloud. \"'It's my belief that peace is the responsibility of individuals, do you think it means?\" \"You know better than I do, it easy for us. It's our opinion by the Delegate from Venus.\" that secrecy is essential, that leakage of the story might cause your interest in robotics. I'll never forget that mechanical homing pigeon you constructed. And you've probably learned much more these past eleven it, we have two choices. One of them is to lock you up.\" person who knows of and engineers, a group who were suddenly struck by group that worked in the quiet and secrecy of a University on a fantastic scheme to force the idea of peace into the minds of group would secretly launch an earth satellite of their own, and a marvelous electronic robot radio message to earth from the reached to accept the delegate. cone, seemingly as if it originated from their 'spaceship.' Landing instructions are being through it to demand peace for all mankind ...\" \"You don't have to say it, in custody.\" The USAF jet transport wasn't the only secrecy-shrouded aircraft that took off that evening business is to tell the world Professor, I know what you're what I told you was nothing planet can do to us!\" \"Oh, I dunno. Venus is also the Goddess of Love.\" around her, and Venus winked himself by sitting on the sand, his back against the grill of a staff car, smoking one cigarette after another. As the minutes ticked off, the activity became more frenetic tension was a tangible substance in the night air. in an intricate pattern. Then the clouds seemed to voices could no longer be heard. Then the crisscrossing lights struck metal, glancing off the gleaming body of a descending object. Larger and larger the object grew, until it assumed the definable shape of a squat silver funnel, falling in a perfect A loudspeaker blared out an unintelligible order, but its message\n\n<question>:\nThe Venusian delegate's message to humans on Earth is best characterized as a:\n\n<options>:\nA ultimatum\nB attack\nC task\nD enigma\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
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1,698 | 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>:\ntroops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his saddle. To his right, he could see the brilliant red-and-gold banner of the lion-hearted Richard of England— guardant or . Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his firm-held shield, was the King himself. Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun. Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. \"They are not far off, Sir Gaeton. face us in open battle.\" \"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?\" \"Both,\" said Sir Gaeton flatly. \"They fear us, else they would not dally dogged by the Bedouin and the black horsemen of Egypt, it would seem that Saladin has at hand more than enough to overcome us, were they all truly Christian knights.\" heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable. Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect. \"In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of Burgundy against King Richard—\" He gave a short, barking laugh. \"I fear no man,\" he went on, \"but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard of England.\" Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned to remain with us.\" \"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip Augustus,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"No, and with good cause. But he allowed his anger against Philip to color his judgment when he spoke harshly against the Duke of Burgundy. The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said, he spoke in haste.\" \"And you intervened,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"It was my duty.\" Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. \"Could we have permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip too?\" \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have not gained the love of Richard by doing so.\" Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. \"My king knows I am loyal.\" Sir Gaeton said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty of Sir Robert de Bouain. Sir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath Sir Robert turned his horse to look. the sword against armor, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a thousand anvils. \"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!\" It was the voice of King Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle. Sir Robert felt his horse move, as though it were urging him on toward the battle, but his hand held to the reins, keeping the great charger in check. The King had said \"Stand fast!\" and this was no time to disobey the orders of Richard. were slowly being forced back. The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard, stopped moving. The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears. \"Stand fast. The King bids you all to stand fast,\" said the duke, his voice fading as he rode on up the column toward the knights of Poitou and the Knights Templars. The Master of the Hospitallers was speaking in a low, urgent voice to the King: \"My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!\" \"Good Master,\" said Richard, \"it is you who must sustain their attack. No one can be everywhere at once.\" The Master of the Hospitallers nodded curtly and charged back into the fray. A voice very close to Sir Robert said: \"Richard is right. If we go to the aid of the Hospitallers, we will expose the column to a flank attack.\" It was Sir Gaeton. \"My lord the King,\" Sir Robert heard his voice say, \"is right in all but one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear, there will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the Hospitallers breathing time. Are you with me?\" \"Against the orders of the King?\" \"The King cannot see everything! There are times when a man must use his own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?\" After a moment's hesitation, Sir Gaeton couched his lance. \"I'm with you, sir knight! Live or die, I follow! Strike and strike hard!\" \"Forward then!\" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. \"Forward for St. George and for England!\" Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance. Beauvais, who carried a great warhammer in order that he might not break Church Law by shedding blood. Sir Robert's own sword rose and fell, cutting and hacking at the enemy. He himself felt a dreamlike detachment, as though he were watching the battle rather than participating in it. Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword. before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them completely.\" \"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end.\" \"This is no time to worry about the future,\" said the Gascon. \"Rest for \"Thanks. When the going gets rough, I really enjoy an Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply. \"That's for sure.\" Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air. There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped Kings right down to the very end.\" Saladin had expected him to hold fast! Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping banner of England. The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he sparkling blade with power and force. On his steel helm gleamed a golden coronet! Richard! And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded monarch, his great blade cutting a path before him. they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain. He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy, for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight. Richard Plantagenet will not forget.\" Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king. \"My lord king, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you call.\" King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I \"How'd you like it, Bob?\" asked one of the two producers of the show. Robert Bowen sighed. \"If this thing goes on the air the way it is, he'll\n\n<question>:\nWhat is Robert's relationship with loyalty?\n\n<options>:\nA He is loyal to his crown but makes his own decisions\nB He is loyal to a small group but not to his country\nC He tries to hide his disloyalty to the crown\nD He is staunchly loyal and always obeys orders\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,606 | 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>:\nthings got tough, but could still satisfy a woman's craving to mother something small. was impossible not to love them. Of course, that was precisely why they were dangerous! There was no use hanging around after breakfast. His wife was in a hurt them and left the seizure to the local authorities. Yates had already brought in the three from yesterday. they bare their fangs, I get out without another word. Funny thing though—I've got a feeling one mother pulled a fast one.\" \"What happened?\" \"I didn't know you killed them,\" she said venomously. \"I won't have to kill many. Besides, they're only animals.\" \" Intelligent gather up the rest of the group. By four o'clock, he had gotten all that were to be had without the threat of a warrant. The screams and pleas and tears of the owners left him gloomily despising himself. 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. She sipped her coffee and appeared to be listening, so he went on. \"And what can I do? You know how the Federation handles employment. They looked over my aptitude tests and sent me to Bio-Administration. If I don't want to follow my aptitudes, the only choice is common labor. That's the law afraid to make the quasi-humans too intelligent, lest sentimentalists proclaim them really human. set approximately two to an acre on the lightly wooded land. With its population legally fixed at three hundred million, most of the country onto a porch and began wailing through the screen, \"Mama no run ray! Mama no run ray!\" were emotionally safer than the quasi-human chimp-K series called \"neutroids.\" When a pet neutroid died, a family was broken with grief but most couples could endure the death of a cat-Q or a dog-F. Class-C of growth hormones, trying to raise himself a harem to sell. Besides, were class-C—defective heredity. you're required to keep sales records until they've been micro-filmed. There hasn't been a microfilming since July.\" Negligency Case. Seize all animals in this category, impound, and run proper sections of normalcy tests. Watch for mental and glandular The bio-agent waited. Again the thought of a black market troubled him. Unauthorized neutroids could mean lots of trouble. the slightest abnormality in the normalcy tests. Forward to central lab. Return standard units to their owners. Accomplish entire survey Norris hesitated. \"Extremely,\" he said. \"Well, this won't take long. One of my patients—a Mrs. Sarah Glubbes—called a while ago and said her baby was sick. I must be getting absent-minded, because I forgot she was class C until I got there.\" He hesitated. \"The baby turned out to be a neutroid. It's dying. Eighteenth order virus.\" \"So?\" \"Well, she's—uh—rather a me how much trouble she had in childbirth, and how she can't ever have another one. It's pathetic. She believes understand?\" \"I think so,\" Norris replied slowly. \"But what do you want me to do? 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—\" . You're welcome to it, Doctor, but you can't fake a serial number. She'll know it. And even though they look exactly alike, the new one won't recognize her. It'll be spooky.\" There was a long pause, followed by a sigh. \"I'll try it anyway. Can I come get the animal now?\" \"I'm on the highway—\" \"Please, Norris! This is urgent. That woman will lose her mind completely if—\" \"Yes?\" \"Don't let me catch you falsifying a serial number.\" its third try, in a Wylo pool hall. \"I'm getting so I hate that infernal gadget,\" Yates grumbled. \"I think \"Cooperation. I'm mailing you three letters charging three Wylo citizens with resisting a Federal official—namely me —and charging Yates bellowed lusty laughter into the phone. \"It's not funny. I've got to get those neutroids. It's in connection with the Delmont case.\" Yates stopped laughing. \"Oh. Well, I'll take care of it.\" don't have to get a helicopter posse to chase down the mothers.\" \"That'll be all right. And listen, Yates—fix it so the charges will be dropped if they cooperate. Don't shake those warrants around unless as they leaped about their compartments with monkey grace. Their human appearance was broken by only two distinct features: short \" Apple cores! \" He turned to face his wife. \"How did apples get in there?\" She reddened. \"I felt sorry for them, eating that goo from the paused, wondering how he could tell her the truth. He blundered on: \"They get to love whoever feeds them.\" \"I can't see—\" \"How would you feel about disposing of something that loved you?\" 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. 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 ovum. He passed it on to the incubators to get a credit, knowing it wouldn't be caught until after birth.\" \"It wasn't caught at all?\" Anne asked. \"Funny thing, he was afraid it wouldn't be. He got to worrying about flow into its compartment.\" \"Why that?\" \"So it malfunction. He thought it was pretty smart. Trouble was they didn't catch the female. She went on through they all look female.\" \"How did they find out about it now?\" \"He got caught last month, trying it again. And he confessed to doing \"I know what I'm saying. We're class-C on account of heart-trouble in to have a baby.\" \"You know what they'd do to us?\" \"If they catch us, yes—compulsory divorce, sterilization. But they won't catch us. I'll have it at home, Terry. Not even a doctor. We'll hide it.\" \"I won't let you do such a thing.\" was locked. He shrugged and went to sit on the sofa. The television set was on, and a newscast was coming from a local station. \"... we were unable to get shots of the body,\" the announcer was word about the case. Doctor Georges' death has shocked the community deeply. Most of you local listeners have known him for many years—some carried them to a large glass-walled compartment. These were the long-time residents 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. as much, or grew up to be unemployed. A neutroid could be killed if\n\n<question>:\nWhich of the following is NOT true of Class C citizens?\n\n<options>:\nA They are not legally permitted to reproduce and bear human children.\nB They are not legally permitted to go against the results of their aptitude tests.\nC There is a 100% chance that they will develop and/or die from a significant physical or mental illness.\nD It is difficult for them to access news and information, such as a viral outbreak.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
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