conversation_id
int64 1
2.52k
| category
stringclasses 1
value | conversation
list |
|---|---|---|
768
|
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 he was destined to fight both sides. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from eyes. There was little to see, so thick was the dust cloud around me. Words formed themselves on my thick tongue, words that must have been spoken by so many reviving unfortunates through the ages: \"Where am I?\" And at once there was an answer: \" \" 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 \"Who am I?\" wherefore its metals run in glowing seas. The other face is ever away in cold darkness, with its air freezing into solid chunks. But because areas, between the hot and cold hemispheres, would be buffeted by mighty gales ... the voice was to be heard again: \"War is fought between the two strips of habitable ground. War, unceasing, bitter, with no quarter asked, given or expected. Dondromogon was found and settled long ago, by adventurers from afar. Now come invaders, to reap the benefits of discovery and toil.\" A pause. \"You find that thought unpleasant? You wish to right that wrong?\" of the Masters destiny.\" I rose on my knees, shielding my face from the buffeting wind by What had seized me? That was my first wonder. On this strange world called Dondromogon, what manner of intelligent life bade defiance to heat and cold and storm, and built these stout structures, and now laid myself—two-legged, fair-skinned men, shorter and slighter than I, but clad in metal-faced garments and wearing weapons in their girdles. I broad-faced middle-aged fellow. \"Don't lie any more than you can help.\" weapons.\" \"Don't be afraid,\" I urged. \"I'll make no resistance, if you'll only had first spoken. Then, to his comrade: \"No reward, then.\" 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 suddenly glowed like heated iron, and from it crackled and pulsed its owner's unprotected face. \"Quiet, or I'll roast you,\" I told him. prevent it burning me, and tried to break away, but my bonds were too much for me. \"Let me out of this,\" I growled, and kicked at the man with my still heavily. Triumphant laughter came from both adversaries. Then: \"What's this?\" The challenge was clear, rich, authoritative. Someone else had come, \"A spy,\" one ventured. \"He pushed in, claimed he was no enemy, then tried to attack—\" \"They lie,\" I broke in, very conscious of my naked helplessness before her regard. \"They wanted to kill me and be rewarded for a false story of vigilance. I only defended myself.\" Beyond, it gave into several passages. She chose one of them and manner. This latter man opened wide his clear old eyes at sight of me. \"The stranger of the prophecy!\" he cried, in a voice that made us all \"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—\" he said, intoning as if in formal prayer. \"Pardon these short-sighted ones—deign to save us from our enemies—\" The girl Doriza spoke to the officer: \"If Sporr speaks truth, and he generally does, you have committed a blasphemy.\" The other made a little grimace. \"This may be Yandro, though I'm a souls to worship, not to study. If indeed he is Yandro,\" and he was most respectful, \"he will appreciate, like a good military mind, my \"As it is, he may remember that the Conquering Stranger is foretold against you, Sporr. You should have been able to instruct me, not I you.\" bright heads bent above it. Doriza was first to speak. \"It is very \"I still say you will understand my caution,\" he addressed me, with men take into thought. The ears in the picture are like the ears of the worshipped.\" II They rose, but stood off respectfully. The officer spoke first. \"I am Rohbar, field commander of this defense position,\" he said with crisp respect. \"Sporr is a mystic doctor, full of godly wisdom. Doriza, \"Enemies?\" I repeated. \"The Newcomers,\" supplemented Doriza. \"They have taken the \"Other Side\" of Dondromogon, and would take our side as well. We defend ourselves at the poles. Now,\" and her voice rang joyously, \"you will lead us to defeat and crush them utterly!\" we must scrabble in the depths for life's necessities—chemicals to transmute into food, to weave into clothing, to weld into tools and weapons—\" The mention of food brought to me the thought that I was hungry. I said of which Sporr spoke. All told, I looked like a proper person for physical labor, or even fierce fighting—but surely no inspirational leader or savior of a distressed people. Sporr was waiting in the room where I had eaten. His eyes widened at sight of me, something like a grin of triumph flashed through his \"I announce,\" he intoned into it. \"I announce, I, Sporr, the reader and kissing it. \"I serve Yandro,\" she vowed tremulously. \"Now and forever—and happy that I was fated to live when he returned for the rescue of all Dondromogon.\" one tangled crossway after another. My questions she answered with a 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 strip of twilight country is never free of winds too high and fierce to fight. No crops can grow outside, no domestic animals flourish. We must pen ourselves away from the sky and soil, with stout walls and heavy sunken parapets. Our deep mines afford every element for necessities of which I now saw plainly to be synthetic. \"The other side, where those you call the Newcomers dwell and fight,\" I reminded. \"Is it also windswept? Why can two people not join forces and face toil and nature 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 to do—not for lifetimes—but to fight them back at the two poles.\" sheet of dull metal. She spoke into a mouthpiece: to Sporr, spry and clever enough, but somehow unwholesome \" Yandro! \" infant. I hear wonderful things, of which I seem to be the center. Are name, how could it be that I sensed memory of another's name? \"Barak was a brute—mighty, but a brute.\" Thus Gederr continued. 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 one main mood that the narrator initially conveys in the article?\n\n<options>:\nA Superiority\nB Fear\nC Confusion\nD Hatred\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
2,440
|
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>:\nwho knew chevrolet were so woke i can't believe they did that, so amazing Hang on, are they taking about the same ad? 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. Divided we stand Sara lets the Lyft park itself in the drive, lets out a sigh, and tweets Cut to: drone footage. Grainy, monochrome. A group of figures move slowly through the desert. The camera tracks them. Zooms in. The pilot punches buttons. The figures become highlighted by a computer overlay, text appears next to them. ILLEGAL ENTRY ATTEMPT SUSPECTED. GROUND PATROLS ALERTED. wish me luck \"The Chevrolet ad?\" \"Yeah.\" \"Yeah, we did.\" Embarrassed, he wipes a tear from his cheek. \"It was… it was very moving.\" \"Bother me? You think I'm too old and infirm to pick my own daughter up from the airport?\" \"No Dad, of course not.\" The war spills out of Fox News, casualty figures scrolling across monochrome drone footage, attack helicopters circling over Caracas apartment blocks, pundits with bronzed skin and immaculate blond hair smiling from four-way split screens. \"So you just got a cab?\" \"Yeah.\" 'Well, now, c'mon-\" Mom and Dad watch Sara leave the room, and then look at each other. \"Well.\" \"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.\" \"Well indeed.\" \"What did I tell you? You two just needed to spend some time together. Some quality time.\" \"Cabs are expensive. You shouldn't be wasting your money.\" \"Nope.\" \"Well let me tell you,\" He shifts in the recliner, with some obvious pain and effort, to face her. \"Both of 'em lost their jobs just this last year. Both of 'em were truckers. Both of 'em been driving trucks since high school. Now the damn trucks are driving themselves and they're both out of work. And they got families to support. Kids.\" \"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?\" \"I'm glad you think this is funny, I really do. But what you New York types need to realise is-\" \"It wasn't expensive. It wasn't a cab, it was a Lyft.\" Sara turns back to the TV, to watching the war, to trying to work out which one it is. 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 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. 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?\" 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. \"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. \"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.\" 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. Everybody seems to be talking about the same thing. omg im crying holy shit that chevrolet ad /fire emoji\n\n<question>:\nTo what commonality are Sara and her father oblivious?\n\n<options>:\nA Their realities both stem from limited, biased media spheres.\nB They both take Sara's mother for granted.\nC They both claim to support job generation, but invest in companies and entities that eliminate jobs.\nD The advertisements they watch are driving them apart, versus bringing them together.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
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>:\nIt was a simple student exchange—but Retief gave them more of observed. Retief thumbed through the papers, pausing to read from time to time. He finished and looked at Arapoulous. \"How many men do you need for the harvest, Hank?\" Retief inquired. Arapoulous sniffed his wine glass and looked thoughtful. \"A hundred would help,\" he said. \"A thousand would be better. Cheers.\" fancy I've made MUDDLE what it is today. Frankly, I question the understand. I'll send along a written change order in the morning that will cover you officially. Meanwhile, here's what I want you to do....\" Retief gave instructions, then rang off and turned to Arapoulous. \"As soon as I get off a couple of TWX's, I think we'd better get down to the port, Hank. I think I'd like to see the students off personally.\" that you don't antagonize the Bogan representative. This will \"That—bucolic person from Lovenbroy is here again.\" On the small desk screen, Miss Furkle's meaty features were compressed in disapproval. \"This fellow's a confounded pest. I'll leave him to you, Retief,\" \"Send the bucolic person in.\" to face. The newcomer's jaw muscles knotted. Then he winced. Retief dropped his hand and motioned to a chair. \"That's nice knuckle work, mister,\" the stranger said, massaging his \"What can I do for you?\" Retief said. \"You work for this Culture bunch, do you? Funny. I thought they were all ribbon-counter boys. Never mind. I'm Hank Arapoulous. I'm a farmer. What I wanted to see you about was—\" He shifted in his chair. \"Well, out on Lovenbroy we've got a serious problem. The wine crop is just land area we've got into parks and farms. Course, we left some sizable forest areas for hunting and such. Lovenbroy's a nice place, Mr. Retief.\" \"It sounds like it, Mr. Arapoulous. Just what—\" air. Arapoulous caught it. Aromatic fumes wafted from the bottle. \"Besides, my feelings would be hurt if you didn't join me.\" He winked. Retief took two thin-walled glasses from a table beside the desk. \"Come probably never heard about the trouble we had on Lovenbroy a few years back?\" \"Can't say that I did, Hank.\" Retief poured the black wine into two fresh glasses. \"Here's to the harvest.\" \"We've got plenty of minerals on Lovenbroy,\" Arapoulous said, we need harvest hands. Picking Bacchus grapes isn't a job you can turn over to machinery—and anyway we wouldn't if we could. Vintage season is the high point of living on Lovenbroy. Everybody joins in. repay it in sculpture, painting, furniture—\" \"Sorry, Hank. All we do here is work out itineraries for traveling with the Labor Office?\" \"Sure did. They said they'd fix us up with all the electronics specialists and computer programmers we wanted—but no field hands. Said it was what they classified as menial drudgery \"You're due at the Intergroup Council in five minutes,\" she said. \"Then afterwards, there are the Bogan students to meet.\" \"Thanks.\" Retief finished his glass, stood. \"I have to run, Hank,\" he What are they getting?\" Whaffle blinked. \"You're the fellow who's filling in for Magnan, over at MUDDLE,\" he said. \"Properly speaking, equipment grants are the sole concern of the Motorized Equipment Depot, Division of Loans and blinked at it. \"Bolo Model WV/1 tractors, to be specific. Why is MUDDLE interested in MEDDLE's activities?\" \"That's not MEDDLE's affair, sir,\" Whaffle cut in. \"I have sufficient problems as Chief of MEDDLE without probing into MUDDLE'S business.\" \"Will all the exchange students be studying at the Technical College?\" \"Two thousand students? Hah! Two hundred trade agreement she entered into with Boge. Two thousand students indeed!\" He snorted and walked away. Retief stopped by the office to pick up a short cape, then rode the elevator to the roof of the 230-story Corps HQ building and hailed a cab to the port. The Bogan students had arrived early. Retief saw them \"I represent MUDDLE.\" \"Suit yourself,\" Retief said. \"Where's the baggage now?\" \"Coming in aboard a Croanie lighter.\" \"Maybe you'd like to arrange for a meal for the students here.\" Back at the MUDDLE office, Retief buzzed Miss Furkle. \"Do you know the name of the institution these Bogan students are bound for?\" \"Would that be the Technical College?\" Miss Furkle's mouth puckered. \"I'm sure I've never pried into these details.\" \"Where does doing your job stop and prying begin, Miss Furkle?\" Retief said. \"Personally, I'm curious as to just what it is these students are travelling so far to study—at Corps expense.\" \"Mr. Magnan never—\" \"For the present. Miss Furkle, Mr. Magnan is vacationing. That leaves me with the question of two thousand young male students headed for a world with no classrooms for them ... a world in need of tractors. But the tractors are on their way to Croanie, a world under obligation will Croanie be getting under the MEDDLE program?\" \"Why, that's entirely MEDDLE business,\" Miss Furkle said. \"Mr. Magnan indices. \"Can I help you?\" someone chirped. A tiny librarian stood at his elbow. \"Thank you, ma'am,\" Retief said. \"I'm looking for information on a mining rig. A Bolo model WV tractor.\" \"You won't find it in the industrial section,\" the librarian said. \"Come along.\" Retief followed her along the stacks to a well-lit \"Ah ... are you there, Retief?\" \"I'm still here. And I'm still wondering about the five hundred tractors.\" \"I'm not Mr. Whaffle. What are you going to do with the other four hundred and ninety tractors?\" \"I understood the grant was to be with no strings attached!\" \"Why ... ah ... no. Of course not, ha ha.\" \"Who gets the tractors eventually?\" \"Retief, this is unwarranted interference!\" \"Who gets them?\" \"They happen to be going to Lovenbroy. But I scarcely see—\" \"And who's the friend you're helping out with an unauthorized transshipment of grant material?\" \"Why ... ah ... I've been working with a Mr. Gulver, a Bogan to provide transportation.\" \"Will there be any other students embarking this season?\" \"Why ... perhaps. That's Boge's business.\" Gulver looked at Retief with MEDDLE has been shipping lately.\" The buzzer sounded. Retief flipped a key. \"MUDDLE, Retief speaking....\" Arapoulous's brown face appeared on the desk screen. \"How-do, Retief. Okay if I come up?\" \"Sure, Hank. I want to talk to you.\" In the office, Arapoulous took a chair. \"Sorry if I'm rushing you, Retief,\" he said. \"But have you got anything for me?\"\n\n<question>:\nWho is the bucolic person and what do they want from MUDDLE?\n\n<options>:\nA Hank Arapoulous. He wants Magnan to help him find men to pick his crops in time to pay back Croanie.\nB Hank Arapoulous. He wants Retief to help him find men to fight the Croanie invasion.\nC Hank Arapoulous. He wants Retief to help him find men to pick his crops in time to pay back Croanie.\nD Hank Arapoulous. He wants Retief to help him find able bodied college students to help out on Lovenbroy.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,345
|
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.] What better way to use a time machine than to handle department store complaints? But pleasing a customer should have its limits! The Christmas party at the Boston branch of Hartshorne-Logan was threatening 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!\" One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another 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. glass splintered against the floor. The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand. \"It's all in the spirit of good, clean fun!\" cried Mr. Hawkins, the assistant general manager. Since he was the highest executive present, 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. to its place until new glass could be obtained. But the fall had sprung 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 machine. another!\" Milly snapped out of it. She giggled, suppressed a ladylike belch and 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 jovially, \"Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This \"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 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!\" 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.\" \"Then let's find out!\" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and 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 thrill the old girl. We wouldn't have vacuum sacks any more. So we'll substitute a manky!\" therefore hadn't been broken in shipment. Ann sighed and picked up her bundle. With a last look at the lovely spring afternoon and the quiet suburban landscape, she went into the house. open the parcel. \"Now I'll have to write another letter to explain that they should throw away my letter of complaint,\" she told her daughter. \"And by the time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter. Then they'll write again.\" Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted the expletives that she wanted to add. \"It's probably the wrong size, too,\" Ann said, pulling off Sally's dress to try it on. \"Let's find as many things to complain about as we can.\" to look vacantly at the distant wall. \"We'll have to send it back,\" Ann said, \"and get the one we ordered.\" early.\" \"Les! I'm going crazy or something. Sally just—\" wire.\" 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.\" Ann immediately felt better. She put her hands behind her back, pulled off her ring and slipped it into her apron pocket. Les was sentimental about her removing it. \"I'll get dinner,\" she said, trying to keep her voice on an even keel. \"Maybe you'd better start a letter to Hartshorne-Logan. Let's go into propulsion. hips, looking at the front door, chuckling. \"Neatest trick I've seen \"Oh. Something like those name cards with something funny printed on 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.\" \"If this is ventriloquism—\" she began icily. the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked suspiciously behind her. \"The children have some new toys,\" Ann improvised hastily. \"Sally is so excited over a new dress that she's positively feverish. Let's see now—it was sugar that you want, wasn't it?\" kitchen table. \"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.\" \"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?\" it's the same dress. It must change color or something when it's time for a nap. It seems impossible, but—\" She shrugged mutely. \"And I think Sally's running a temperature. I'm going to put her to bed.\" keeping her balance with difficulty, as Sally threatened to pop upward out of her arms. The whole family decided that bed might be a good idea, soon after dinner. When the lights went out, the house seemed to be nearly normal. Les put on a pair of gloves and threw a pillowcase over the eyeball. Bob rigged up trestles to warn visitors from the front porch. Ann 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 out on its side: \" Today is Wednesday. For obvious reasons, the manky will not operate today. \" order as soon....\" Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace, knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after 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 we believe that we can expel him quietly without newspaper publicity involving his name, if you'll—\" \"It's apparently an allergy to some new kind of material. But I don't they're stopping here.\" \"Oh, no,\" Ann breathed. \"Something's happened to Les.\" \"It sure will,\" Les said grimly, walking into the bedroom. \"I won't \"They're going to the next house down the street,\" the physician said. \"Has there been sickness there?\" touch.\" sense. Better not try to commit any crimes until you've seen a skin specialist.\" gesticulating wildly to nobody in particular. \"It's murder!\" she screamed. \"Murder again! He's been poisoned! He's \"Don't bother about the girls' clothing,\" Bob said, \"because it was only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did before I left the house.\" Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the 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 drifted through the house.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the time warp typically used for?\n\n<options>:\nA to visit deceased family members\nB to look into the future to discover inventions\nC to fix mistakes made recently by the company\nD to revisit holiday parties\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
256
|
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 beamed at me. I looked around. They were all beaming. At me! Suddenly I smelled a rat as big as an elephant. That whole Kooleen caper: Had it been just a trap to lead me straight to this? I hadn't and after awhile I braced him. I was right. I'd met the shrimp before when I was wound up in an asteroid real estate racket. Pard Hoskins was his alias, and he had the tag of being a real slick operator. We swapped yarns for about a week when we met, and then I asked him what's his rap this trip. \"Oh, no!\" I moaned. \"What were you trying to do, start a feud between us and Mars?\" He shrugged, but his little black-currant eyes began to sparkle with eggs, an even dozen of 'em and flawless, I'm a-shoutin', not a flaw!\" His eyes watered at the memory, yearning like a hound-dog's over a fresh scent. mad, and if Pard had really got near those emeralds, he should be nothing but a heap of cleaned bones by now. Either he was the world's champion liar or its bravest son, and either way I took my hat off to That night I turned on my hard prison cot until my bones were so much jelly, trying to figure that steal. The next morning I got up burning with this fever for information, only to find that Pard had got himself put in solitary for mugging a guard, and that really put the heat on 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?\" From him I took it. I even waited patiently till the master spoke again. The memory still makes me fry. friendly as a bottle of strychnine. But for a lad headed for Jupiter that was good training, so I sneered right back at him, explained the caper, and we both paid a visit to Pard. In two days the deal was made a-purpose to upset her.\" Then he winked at me. \"But then I got off in a corner and cooked up some perfume that drives them nuts the other way sorta frantic with put just a touch o' that there perfume on the outside of it. Akroida'll tiny bottle like that boy Aladdin clutching his little old lamp. I'd had a lot of cooperation getting that far. An Earth patrol had slipped down onto the Red Desert of Mars and picked up the Killicut me into this caper, was right there to take the joy out of it all and to remind me that this was public service, strictly. \"These—\" he had proclaimed with a disdainful flourish, like a placer Ritter, compared with the value of the secret you are to buy with to which, IF you succeed, you will be a free man.\" That twitch of the nose riled me no little. \"I ain't failed yet!\" I snarled at him. \"Just you wait till I do, feller!\" I slipped the string of emeralds back into its little safe. \"Instead of sniping at me, why don't you get that brain busy and set our rendezvous?\" patted my pretty enameled suit, which was a study in paris green and passionate purple. I patted the three hundred pounds of arsenic crystals for Akroida and was as nervous as a cat with new kittens. Feeling again for my little bottle of horrid stench, I breathed a prayer to the god of idiots and I braced up and tapped out the greeting Pard had taught me. My poor sinner's map was made of shell, and he wasn't responsible for its expression. I tapped back very politely that he must be mistaking me for someone else. \"I've never been here before, and so I've never met the charming lady,\" I informed him. \"However, I have something very special in the I tried to back off from him a bit, but the ship stopped me. \"I'm Casey Ritter. What's your label, chum?\" \"Attaboy,\" he ticked coyly. \"Attaboy?\" Things blurred around me. It couldn't be. It was just plain nuts. Then I got a glimmer through my paralyzed gray matter. \"Who named you that?\" He simpered. \"My dear friend, Pard Hoskins.\" I breathed again. How simple could I get? He'd already mistaken me for Pard, hadn't he? Then I remembered something else. \"How come you aren't mad at him? Don't you hate yellow, too?\" He hung his silly head. \"I fear I am colorblind,\" he confessed sadly. Right there I forgave him for pulling that eye on me. He was the guide I needed, the one who had got Pard out alive. I almost hugged him. in my boat.\" Well, I'd met the first of the brood and was still alive. Not only alive but loved and cherished, thanks to Pard's inventiveness and to a kindly fate which had sent Pard's old pal my way. A great man, Pard Hoskins. How had he made friends with the brute in the first place? 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 airlock to the window ledge, he again sniffed that delectable odor on my chest, caressed me with his front pair of legs while I manfully shaking the jewels that were hung all over her repulsive carcass, and making the Halcyon Diamond on her chest blaze like a bonfire. Attaboy dumped me onto a floating cushion where I lay clutching and shuddering away from her and from the void all around me, and went across to her alone with the arsenic. over, ducked his head humbly half-a-dozen times, and pushed the box over beside her. Akroida eased her eyeball back, opened the box and sniffed, and then turned to Attaboy with a full-blown Satanic grin. I could hear her question reverberate away over where I was. \"Who from?\" asked Akroida. That conversation was telegraphed to me blow by blow by the actions of those hopper-scorps. I didn't need their particular brand of Morse Code at all. \"Who from?\" Attaboy cringed lower and blushed a purple all-over blush. \"Dear lady, it is from an interspace trader who possesses some truly remarkable jewels,\" he confessed coyly. 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?\" Well, after all, she wasn't blind. He had to confess. \"I—uh—the A sort of jerking quiver ran through Akroida. She reared up even higher. Her mean Roman nose twitched. \"An earthman? Like Pard Hoskins?\" Attaboy shrank smaller and smaller. He could only nod dumbly. The storm broke, all right. That old dame let out a scream like a\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the connection between Attaboy’s name and the perfume Pard teaches Casey to make?\n\n<options>:\nA Pard calls the scorpion kid “Attaboy.” Of course, “Attaboy” is a contraction for “that a boy,” but because Attaboy is affected by Pard’s love perfume, he accepts the name as a kind of blessing.\nB Attaboy is the name of the person who taught Pard to make the perfume in the first place.\nC Casey calls the scorpion kid “Attaboy” the first time he visits . Of course, “Attaboy” is a contraction for “that a boy,” but because Attaboy is affected by Casey’s love perfume, he accepts the name as a kind of blessing from his “best friend” Casey.\nD Attaboy gave himself that name after being inspired by Pard’s love perfume.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
37
|
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 to know there are always more.\" He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped: \"Water—quick!\" Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly. \"Strangers, eh?\" he asked at last. \"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend,\" Harvey answered in his usual lush manner. \"We purvey that renowned Martian remedy, La-anago Yergis , the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history of therapeutics.\" \"Yeah?\" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser glasses without washing them. \"Where you heading?\" \"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone without water for five ghastly days.\" \"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?\" Joe asked. \"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land here unless they're in trouble.\" \"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off.\" \"You dirty crook!\" Joe roared. \"Robbing honest spacemen!\" Harvey nudged him warningly. \"Easy, my boy, easy.\" He turned to the bartender apologetically. \"Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression. \"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em,\" he said, shaking his head. \"Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to, that's all.\" The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently watched the crude level-gauge, crying \"Stop!\" when it registered the wetted his lips expectantly. Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: \"But what are we to do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be 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 pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly.\" \"Just the same,\" Joe griped, \"paying for water isn't something you can get used to in ten minutes.\" In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents, Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool. But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and tasting it. \"Sweet!\" he snarled. They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample. His mouth went wry. \"Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's conscience.\" \"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on,\" said atmosphere. The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and \"Bring him in here!\" Johnson cried. \"I mean, get him away! He's coming down with asteroid fever!\" \"Of course,\" replied Harvey calmly. \"Any fool knows the first symptoms of the disease that once scourged the universe.\" \"What do you mean, once cups—\" \"Relics of the past,\" Harvey stated. \"One medication is all modern man requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever.\" \"What's that?\" asked the mayor without conviction. Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a few minutes, carrying a bottle. Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and waited for the inevitable result. Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several Joe recoiled. \"I'm fine now!\" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove La-anago Yergis never fails, my friend,\" Harvey explained. \"By actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught don't charge too much,\" he said warily, \"I might think of buying some.\" \"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy,\" Harvey replied with dignity. \"It sells itself.\" the man gradually won. \"There ain't no words for that taste,\" he gulped when it was safe to talk again. \"Medicine,\" Harvey propounded, \"should taste like medicine.\" To Joe he said: \"Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to which we have dedicated ourselves.\" clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped his murderous silence and cried: \"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that snake oil?\" \"That was not poison,\" Harvey contradicted quietly. \"It was La-anago Yergis our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling 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.\" \"But why use it on me?\" Joe demanded furiously. Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. \"Did Johnson ask to the same medicine \"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which least as good as the first he gagged. balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain 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.\" \" H-mph! chance of company. Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins, \"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 inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would \"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact.\" the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed\n\n<question>:\nHow is Joe's asteroid fever cured?\n\n<options>:\nA The La-anago Yergis cures him.\nB Nothing does - his sickness was a ruse.\nC The bitter water that Harvey switched in cures him.\nD The fresh water from the planet cures him.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,565
|
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.] Rootless and footloose, a man in space can't help impossible for me to be of any assistance to you.\" \"Oh, come now, Miss Wendel. There are women aboard spaceships. I'm not a starved wolf.\" but dream of coming home. But something nobody should \"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 \"Certainly you are not, Mr. Craig. But it is not possible for me....\" hoped he would have the right size of Terran units in his wallet. entered. He nudged Craig wickedly. \"You know what they're like?\" \"Yeah,\" Craig said disgustedly. Traffic in the illicit mental-image 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 had called it. One thing was sure: Terra aggressively went after its that he had missed an important step in the complicated clerical 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 process. He cursed the grudging attitude of the headquarters satellite admittance to any office you need to visit tonight. Therefore, it is motivated by envy soothed him as he clumsily let himself into the lock. \"You are retarding the progress of others. Please respond more quickly to your orders.\" to hate a robot, but one could certainly hate those who set it into respect for the robot-controlled equipment of bases had risen. When about him. \"We might say you've been away quite a while, eh?\" \"I was entered as a spaceman when I was 16,\" Craig said. \"I've never been down for any period as yet.\" \"You mean you haven't been in a gravity system?\" The captain laughed reassuringly. \"No, don't put up your guard again. The worst is over. Short of Gravitational conditioning, there is nothing to stop you from going to Terra.\" conditioning.\" \"Conditioning?\" asked Craig. \"Yes. You have spent eleven years in space. Your body is conditioned to a normal state of free fall, or at best to a state of acceleration.\" \"Yeah, I know. Once on Gerymeade....\" \"You were ill, couldn't keep your balance, felt dizzy. That is why 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 part in our awareness of balance. They operate on a simple gravity principle. Without gravity they act up for a time, then gradually lose become progressively more didactic. He would deliver long speeches about the \"freedom of open space.\" He spoke repetitiously of the \"growing complexity of Terran society.\" And yet the man could not be pinned down to any specific condition the spaceman would find intolerable. had weathered difficult landings on worlds with rip-tide gravities, had felt the pull of the incredible star-tides imparted by twin and even triple star systems. He had been on Einstein IV, the planet of eight really knew very much about Terra. So what? I know it won't be as it \"Yet you are so completely sure you will want to live out your life there, that you are willing to give up space service for it.\" gave you my reasons for quitting space. We analyzed them. You agreed that you could not decide that for me and that my decision is logical. You tell me spacemen don't settle down on Terra. Yet you won't—or can't—tell me why. I've got a damned good job there—\" \"You may find that 'damned good jobs' become boring.\" doses of PON to protect themselves from the centrifugal force, had to carry a man out of the tank. Many others asked to be removed, begged to be allowed to withdraw their resignations. \"The twelfth day is the worst,\" a grizzled spaceman told Craig. \"That's when the best of 'em want out.\" Craig clenched the iron rung of his bed and struggled to bring the old \"Yeah, son. They've dropped it down a notch.\" \"Dropped ... it ... down?\" white-clad figures, ridiculously out of proportion, hovered wraithlike over him. Four elongated eyes peered at him. Attendants coming for to take me home.... Most of the men had passed through the torments of gravitational conditioning. The huge headquarters base centrifuge aboard the man-made satellite had gradually caused their bodies to respond once more to a single source of pull. They were now ready to become inhabitants of planets again, instead of free-falling ships. Then they again began taking paraoxylnebutal in preparation for the free-fall flight to Terra. 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. doing when you get to Terra, for instance?\" \"I'm going into Import. My father was in it for twenty years.\" \"Sure,\" said the old spaceman, watching a group of young crewmen engaged in an animated conversation. \"It's a good job. There's a future to it.\" \"Yeah.\" Why did he have to explain anything at all to the old space tramp? \"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 guess I spent too long in Zone V.\" He paused to examine his wrinkled hands. They were indelibly marked with lever callouses. \"You get to thinking anyone who stays closer'n eighty light years from Terra is a land-lubber.\" Craig relaxed, realizing he had acted childishly. \"Used to think the The old man looked up at Craig. \"You don't know much about Terra, do a long time, old man, this hitting atmospheres all over the Universe.\" But the spaceman seemed to have lost interest. He was unpacking some personal belongings from a kit. The old man's face clouded for an instant. \"In the old days, they used to say us old-timers acted like clocks. They used to say we just ran down. Now they got some fancy psychology name for it.\" 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. Orderly 12 handed him a message container. \"Who's it from? Somebody on Terra?\" \"From a private spaceman named Morgan Brockman.\" \" Brockman? duty to the Universe? No, the old man had not been in Intergalactic. He had been a tramp spaceman. Well, why had Fifty years in space. Fifty planet Terra. He tried to recall his first thrill at seeing Los \"A moment, sir. Just a little greeting from the Terra. You understand, \"This is Mr. Craig's first landing on Terra, Miss Wendel,\" the 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. The girl glanced at him once more, this time with a definite quizzical \"Yes.\" The man laughed. \"You'll excuse us, Mr. Craig. We realize that you couldn't be expected to be familiar with Terra's fashions. In your present outfit you would certainly be typed as a ... well, you'd be\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the Terran opinion of spacemen?\n\n<options>:\nA Spacemen are more like aliens than humans.\nB Spacemen are like sailors.\nC Spacemen are hicks.\nD Spacemen are of lower intelligence.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
2,228
|
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>:\nSomebody had to get the human angle on this trip ... but what me to shut up. Moss all over the cliff walls. Swell luck for Kroger. We've found Kroger and Pat, with the help of the aliens. Or maybe I should call them the Martians. Jones calls them. They took away our rifles and brought us right to Kroger and Pat, without our even asking. Jones is stream, and picked us all up and took us into a hole in the cliff wall. The hole went on practically forever, but it didn't get dark. Kroger There's a Martian guarding the left us here, and we're out of rations. Kroger tried talking to the guard once, but he (or it) made a whistling Martian whistled like crazy and dragged it away. in the heart of the planet, says Kroger. \"What the hell,\" says Pat, \"it's better than starving.\" It is not. Jones today, and Jones threw one back at him and broke off a couple He keeps bent low over a welded-to-the-wall (they call it the bulkhead, for some reason or other) void headed for Earth, with enough days—if the Martians don't take scales. They had melted down in the water and left his hand all Kroger tells me that the pilot's name is Patrick Desmond, but that I can call him Pat when I get to know him better. So far, he's still Captain Desmond to me. I haven't sticky. and they are unable to use sunpower make him look rather mean, but he was pleasant enough, and said I could call him Pat. I still don't know Jones' first name, though Pat spoke to him, and it sounded like all black with white dots in it, and none of the dots move, except in a circle that Pat says is a \"torque\" result from the gyroscopic spin we're in. Actually, he explained to \"We'll risk it,\" said Pat. \"It's better to go down fighting than to die of starvation.\" us, whistling with those tubelike tongues, and drooling dry coal dust, but Pat swung one of his boots in an arc that splashed all over the ground in front of them, and they turned tail (literally) and clattered off down another tunnel, sounding like a locomotive whistle gone berserk. We made the surface in another queen-button for my bishop-button and left his king in jeopardy, and Jones got the rifles out of the stream (the Martians had probably thought they were beyond recovery there) and we found the jeep. It was nearly buried in sand, but we and he went away. I went to the galley for coffee got it cleaned off and running, and June 25, 1961 We're going back . Pat says that a week is all we were allowed told me later he needed it to back up a star map. Pat slept mostly all day in his compartment, and Jones sat and sugar). \"Why,\" I said, \"can't we just tell it on the radio?\" \"Because,\" said Pat, \"if we tell them now, by the time we get back we'll be yesterday's news. This way watched the screen revolve. There Lloyd had taken away the chessboard and all his buttons. He \"But they'll ask why we didn't radio the info, sir,\" said Jones uneasily. \"The radio,\" said Pat, nodding to Lloyd, \"was unfortunately broken shortly after landing.\" Lloyd blinked, then nodded log, and I saw his signature. His He prefers to be called Jones. Pat uses his first name as a gag. Some fun. drives a rifle butt through a radio. Well, it's time for takeoff. the noise made when one and the shattering of glass, not unlike This time but Pat says there's less gravity on Mars, so escape velocity didn't thought I was getting my space-legs, to stay and that it's urgent to return Guess I'll take a nap. June 26, 1961 Hell's bells there are two baby Martians loose on board ship. Pat told him he was nuts, but there are certain signs he's right. Like the missing when we were in that zoo. They're gone. Pat has declared a state of emergency. Quick thinking, that's Pat. Lloyd, before he remembered and turned scarlet, suggested we radio Earth for instructions. We can't. on the screen today. It seems to be descending from overhead, but Pat prize. I asked Pat what the prize was and he told me to go to hell. June 18, 1961 learning something, maybe, about Martian reproductive processes. When he told Pat, Pat put it to a vote whether or not to jettison Kroger through the airlock. However, it was decided that responsibility again. We're going to land, so When I got back to my compartment, I have to go to my bunk. It's all foam rubber, nylon braid supports Jones had brought them aboard. was pretty well divided. did me at takeoff. Earth seems awfully June 19, 1961 Well, we're down. said, \"How?\" June 27, 1961 We have So Kroger stays, but meanwhile the air is getting worse. Pat suggested have to show themselves. Pat says what do we do from Earth. So we just have then ? We can't afford the water we need to little Martians. Jones says he'll go down spitting. Pat says why not dismantle interior of rocket to find out where they're holing up? Fine idea. How do you dismantle riveted metal plates? June 28, 1961 board (no smoking was allowed on the ship), and Jones threw it away. He doesn't smoke. June 20, 1961 Got lost today. Pat told me not to go too far from camp, so, when I took a stroll, I made sure name is Fleance, like in \"Macbeth.\" ate the bread. Jones came forward to tell us the standing there, tall and silvery, the next instant it was gone. Turned on my radio pack and got hold of Pat. Told him what happened, and he told Kroger. Kroger couldn't have guessed at the carbohydrates present in the bread after a lifelong diet of anthracite. Pat said I had been following a mirage, They were shouting through their masks, but I couldn't hear them. The air is too thin to carry sound That's when I heard the noise behind me. I was too scared to turn around, but finally Jones and Lloyd to make a landing. Pat says at least our vector will carry us to Earth and we can die on our home planet, which is better than you.\" He shuddered. \"Ran off when we fired.\" \"Where,\" said Jones, \"are Pat and Kroger?\" I didn't know. I hadn't seen \"We'd better get them on the radio,\" said Jones, turning back toward the ship. There wasn't anything on the radio but static. Pat and Kroger haven't come back yet, either. June 21, 1961 control room. Pat says if we're lucky, he might be able to use the bit of fuel we have left to set us the plates don't crack under the impact. We all agreed to try it. Not that we thought it had a good chance of We're going to look for Kroger and Pat today. Jones says we'd better before another windstorm blows away the jeep tracks. Fortunately, the jeep has a leaky oil pan, so we always have the smears to follow, unless they get covered up, too. the \"captured Martian\" leaked out, and we all became nine-day wonders until the dismantling of the And we're locking up the ship. rocket. It's later , now. We found the he lost me. The point is, bullets won't stop Needless to say, we're no longer heroes. I haven't heard from Pat or Lloyd for a week. Jones was picked up attacking a candy factory yesterday, Going down was Jones' idea, not mine. June 22, 1961\n\n<question>:\nWhy can't the crew radio the Earth for help?\n\n<options>:\nA Kroger broke the radio.\nB Jones broke the radio.\nC Lloyd broke the radio.\nD Pat broke the radio.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,921
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nand though he didn't want to Arth closed his eyes in pain. \"Vegetarian,\" he said. \"Couldn't possibly eat meat. Barbarous. Ugh.\" \"Well, we need some nourishment,\" ... nevertheless he did.... ox.\" I said. mildly, \"You're late.\" \"Don't yell at me, I feel awful,\" Simon told \"Providence,\" Simon told her whilst fiddling with the aspirin bottle, \"will provide.\" \"Hm-m-m. But before providing vacations it'd be nice if Providence turned up a missing jewel deal, say. elbow. Something that would net about fifty dollars.\" Simon said, mournful of tone, \"I'm not selfish,\" Betty said. \"All I want is enough to pay me this week's salary.\" \"Money,\" Simon said. \"When you Simon said, enigmatically, \"Now three hundred dollars you still retain caste whatever the styling. Simon said unenthusiastically, \"Good morning, Mr. Oyster.\" He indicated the client's chair. \"Sit down, sir.\" \"If I didn't feel so lousy, I'd appreciate it.\" The client fussed himself with \"Anything,\" Simon said. \"Only one exception.\" \"Excellent. Do you believe in time travel?\" Simon said nothing. Across the on that. We said good-by and I could Simon continued to say nothing she ventured, \"Time travel is impossible.\" \"Why?\" \"Why?\" \"Yes, why?\" None was forthcoming. There Simon said, \"Let's get to the point, I've got to go to the Bahnhof and very intelligently. The potential client sat more erect, obviously with intent to hold the the field worth his salt has explained them away. But to get on. It's my contention that within a century or so man will have solved the problems of immortality and eternal youth, and it's also my suspicion that he will eventually be able to travel in time. So convinced am I of these possibilities that I am willing to gamble a portion of my fortune to investigate get my luggage.\" Arth didn't put up an argument Simon seemed incapable of carrying the ball this morning, so Betty said, \"But ... Mr. Oyster, if the future has developed time travel why don't we ever meet such travelers?\" the attendant there evidently couldn't make heads nor tails of the check receipt. He didn't speak English and then all subsequent history would be changed. In that case, the time traveler himself might never be born. They have to tread mighty carefully.\" Mr. Oyster was pleased. \"I didn't expect you to be so well informed on the subject, young man.\" Simon shrugged and fumbled again with the aspirin bottle. Mr. Oyster went on. \"I've been considering the matter for some time and—\" Simon held up a hand. \"There's no use prolonging this. As I understand it, you're an elderly gentleman with a considerable fortune and you realize that thus far nobody has succeeded in taking it with him.\" Mr. Oyster returned his glasses to their perch, bug-eyed Simon, but then nodded. Oktoberfest Simon said, \"You want to hire me eternal life and youth, which you figure the future will have discovered. You're willing to pony up a part of this fortune of yours, if I can deliver a bona fide time traveler.\" \"Right!\" check in with Betty. I opened the door and there I found Mr. Oyster sitting in the chair he had been occupying four—or was it five—days before when I'd left. Oktoberfest sir. I can report. Ah, what was it Oktoberfest ,\" he repeated. \"The greatest festival the world has ever seen, the carnival, you came for? Impatient to hear if his money and had nothing I could think of to show for it the last stages of a grand-daddy hangover. \"Came for?\" Mr. Oyster snorted. \"I'm merely waiting for your girl to make out my receipt. I thought you over to my desk and looked down at the calendar. Mr. Oyster was saying something to the effect that if I didn't leave today, it would have to be tomorrow, on the fair grounds which will hold dollars advance for anything less than immediate service. Stuffing his receipt in his wallet, he fussed five thousand customers apiece. Millions that he hadn't ponied up that thousand his way out the door. sausage, millions upon millions of pretzels—\" \"All right,\" Simon said. \"We'll accept it. The Oktoberfest travelers yet.\" I tried just once more. \"Uh, when did you first see this Mr. Oyster?\" \"Never saw him before in my life,\" she said. \"Not until he came Oktoberfest Oktoberfest \"But why would a time traveler ten minutes ago, were gone about three minutes, and then came back.\" \"See here,\" Mr. Oyster said (interrupting Simon's story), \"did you say this was supposed to be amusing, young man? I don't find it so. In fact, I believe I am being ridiculed.\" Simon shrugged, put one hand to his forehead and said, \"That's only more.\" \"I'm not interested in more,\" Mr. Oyster said. \"I suppose your point was to show me how ridiculous the whole idea actually is. Very well, I suppose your time, even when spent in this manner, has some value. He took a deep breath. \"No ma'am, you'd have to stick to some great event, both for the sake of actual interest and for protection against being Simon winced at the noise, took Here is fifty dollars. And good day, sir!\" Oktoberfest wages,\" she said. \"I suppose that's Simon was shaking his head. \"Not But I'm surprised you didn't take his money and enjoy that vacation back into place, she glared unbelievingly at him. Mr. Oyster was taken aback himself. \"See here, young man, I realize this isn't an ordinary assignment, you've been yearning about.\" however, as I said, I am willing to risk a considerable portion of my fortune—\" done.\" \"A hundred dollars a day plus expenses,\" Mr. Oyster said quietly. \"I like the fact that you already seem to have some interest and knowledge \"Sorry,\" Simon said. \"Can't be Simon \"I keep telling you,\" Simon said \"No go,\" Simon said, a sad quality in his voice. \"A fifty thousand dollar bonus if you bring me a time traveler.\" \"Out of the question,\" Simon said. \"But \"Just for laughs,\" Simon told the furious at him, \"you've given up! this:\" I got a thousand dollars from Mr. Oyster (Simon began) in the way of an advance, and leaving him with Betty who was making out a receipt, Simon said wearily, \"There's just Why this is the biggest thing— Why the fifty thousand dollars is nothing. on top of that!\" He shuddered. \"If you think I'm again.\" THE END Transcriber's Note: I could put into my reports to Mr. Oyster. I was going to have to give him some kind of report for his money. Time travel yet! What a I spent that time dreaming up material Oktoberfest ponied up all the money for such expenditures? How could the average German, with his twenty-five dollars a week salary? one way of taking care of a crackpot. by one of the circuslike tents that Mr. Oyster mentioned. Each tent contained benches and tables for about five thousand persons and from Simon nodded, miserably. , by the way, not mugs. The bald-headed He looked at me, waiting. I came up. \"Mistaken,\" I admitted. A mass \"Next what?\" Baldy's conversation Oktoberfest one of the seven brands of the best beer the world has ever known. I'm mass . \"I'll help you,\" I told him. \"Very noble endeavor. if you'll make it or not, Arth.\" \"Make what?\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy does Simon ultimately deny Mr. Oyster's request to go to Oktoberfest?\n\n<options>:\nA He believes that Mr. Oyster is on a mission to destroy time travelers\nB He thinks that Mr. Oyster is attempting to alter the space-time continuum\nC He knows he will not be allowed to do something that might impact the past\nD He does not believe that Mr. Oyster is offering fair compensation\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,135
|
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>:\nInfield turned his soft blue eyes to the black and tan oxfords with the Infield shrugged slightly. \"I suppose a man must take some chances.\" Infield leaned on the desk and glared. \"I called myself a psychiatrist The cool air of the street was a relief. Infield stepped into the main It was the first time in years that anyone had apologized to Infield Suddenly something else was pushing against Infield, forcing the Davies fumbled for the broad belt around his thickening middle. He \"This isn't the first time you've pulled something like this, Davies,\" The other turned to Infield. \"He was unconscious on his feet,\" he explained. \"He never knew he fell.\" \"Not—not long,\" Infield evaded. Infield's pulse raced, trying to get ahead of his thoughts, and losing Infield shifted around, trying to see that side of his benefactor, cleared his throat, noticing the affectation of it. \"My name's Infield.\" \"Price,\" the other answered absently. \"George Price. I suppose they have liquor at the Club. We can have a drink Price set the direction and Infield fell in at his side. \"Look, if you don't drink, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. It was just a suggestion.\" Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like Price probably would never get crazed enough for liquor to kill himself, Infield knew. The threat of death would keep him constantly shocked sane. Men hide in the comforts of insanity, but when faced with Infield looked up self-consciously and noticed that they had crossed two streets from his building and were standing in front of what appeared to be a small, dingy cafe. He followed Price through the screeching screen door. Infield wondered why cheap bars and restaurants always used red-checked Price nodded jerkily. \"Twenty years ago, at least.\" \"What'll you have, Georgie?\" Reggie asked. The young man snubbed out his cigarette viciously. \"Bourbon. Straight.\" Of course he didn't, Infield knew. Why should he? It was useless to it.\" He did laugh. Price fumbled with the cigarette stub in the black iron ashtray, examining it with the skill of scientific observation. \"Mr. Infield is buying me the drink and that makes it different.\" Reggie went away. Price kept dissecting the tobacco and paper. Infield Price looked up, no longer interested in the relic of a cigarette. He was suddenly intensely interested and intensely observant of the rest Doubly dangerous to Infield because, even though he was one of the few Price started to glance around the cafe, then half-shrugged, almost visibly thinking that he shouldn't run that routine into the ground. Infield felt cold inside. After a time, he found that the roaring was But Infield let himself relax. How could anyone force a mechanical another before Infield. Price stared at the drink almost without comprehension of how it came to be. He started to sweat. \"George, drink it.\" downed that drink and the shock might do you good.\" Price laughed shortly. \"I feel like doing something very melodramatic, like throwing my drink—and yours—across the room, but I haven't got Infield.\" Before Infield could speak, a stubble-faced, barrel-chested man moved past their table. He wore a safety belt. It was the man Price had called Davies, the one who had fastened one of his safety lines to Infield in the street. Davies went to the bar in the back. \"Gimme a bottle,\" he demanded of a Price and glared. Price leaned back. The chair creaked. Mrs. Price kept cooing to the doll. \"You made me fall,\" Davies accused. Price shrugged. \"You were unconscious. You never knew it.\" Sweat broke out on Davies' forehead. \"You broke the Code. Don't you Suddenly, Davies triggered his safety belt. At close range, before floor, and all the others to the table behind Infield. Davies released all lines except those on Price, and then threw himself backward, dragging Price out of his chair and onto the floor. Davies didn't mind making others fall. They were always trying to make him they could laugh at him or pounce on him why shouldn't he like to make them fall first? Expertly, Davies moved forward and looped the loose lines around Price's head and shoulders and then around his feet. He crouched beside Price and shoved the bottle into the gasping mouth and poured. Price twisted against the binding lines in blind terror, gagging and system, it will kill him!\" She rocked the rag doll in her arms, trying to soothe it, and stared in horror. Infield hit the big man behind the ear. He dropped the bottle and fell over sideways on the floor. Fear and hate mingled in his eyes as he looked up at Infield. Nonsense, Infield told himself. Eyes can't register emotion. Davies released his lines and drew them in. He got up precariously. \"I'm going to kill you,\" he said, glaring at Infield. \"You made me fall worse than Georgie did. I'm really going to kill you.\" Infield wasn't a large man, but he had pressed two hundred and fifty many times in gym. He grabbed Davies' belt with both hands and lifted \"I'll do it if you cause more trouble.\" Infield sat down and rubbed his broke the Code all the way,\" Reggie said. \"The Good Book says 'Thou shouldn't kill' or something like that, and so does the Code.\" \"Let him go, Reggie,\" Price choked out, getting to his feet. \"I'm not dead.\" He wiped his hand across his mouth. \"No. No, you aren't.\" Infield felt an excitement pounding through him, Price stared at him as if he were a padded-cell case. \"That's different. I'd be a hopeless drunk without the Cure. Besides, no one They were all looking at Infield. Somehow he felt this represented a so can you.\" \"You can't! Nobody can!\" Price screamed after him. He turned to the others. \"If he reveals us, the Cause is lost. We've got to stop him for good just as well. He sneezed. He was soaked through, but he kept on running. He didn't know what Price and Reggie planned to do when they caught him. He slipped and fell. He would soon find out what they wanted. The excitement was all gone now and it left an empty space into which fear the knife fell into Infield's palm. The psychiatrist pulled himself erect by holding to Reggie's arm. Staggering to his feet, he remembered what he must do and slashed at the waiter's head. A gash streaked across the man's brow and blood poured into his eyes. He screamed. \"I It was his problem. Infield usually solved other people's problems, but now he ran away—he couldn't even solve his own. Infield realized that he had gone mad as he held the thin blade high overhead, but he did need some kind of lightning rod. Price (who was right behind him, gaining) had been right. No one could discard a Cure. He watched the lightning play its light on the blade of his Cure and he knew that Price was going to kill him in the next moment. He was wrong. The lightning hit him first. said INFIELD & \"Mr. Morgan, your partner, Mr. Infield, he—\" \"Mr. Infield went out without his Cure in a storm and was struck by Morgan exhaled. Poor Infield. But it wasn't the lightning that killed him, of course. Morgan adjusted the soundproofing plugs in his ears,\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Davies attach himself to Infield outside of Infield & Morgan?\n\n<options>:\nA He was afraid of heights and falling over, so he had affixed himself to Infield in order to calm his fear.\nB He was attempting to catch Infield after he ran away from the fraternal club for the Cured.\nC He was afraid of the rain and lightning, and the cables helped him to feel more secure.\nD He had been aiming for George Price, whom he was trying to kill as punishment for knocking him to the ground earlier.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,622
|
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>:\nNadine Nadine Nadine's Earth, and unless all parts of the complex were present, the total was settlement. Mosquitos throve on the inhabited globes of the Rim Stars. Nadine illustrated in and on the landscape outside the prominences erupting about its edges. Now it lay astern, and Moran Nadine could see the planet that had been chosen for his marooning. It was a cloudy world. There were some dim markings near one lighted limb, but 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 rotated at a not unreasonable rate. The fact that it was water-ice told much. A water-ice ice-cap said that there were no poisonous gases in the planet's atmosphere. Sulfur dioxide or chlorine, for example, would not allow the formation of water-ice. It would have to be sulphuric-acid or hydrochloric-acid ice. But the ice-cap was simple snow. Its size, too, told about temperature-distribution on the planet. A large cap would have meant a large area with arctic and sub-arctic temperatures, with small temperate and tropical climate-belts. A small one like this meant 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 there would be temperate regions. In short, the ice-cap proved that a wide tropical and sub-tropical zones. The fact was verified by the man could endure the air and temperature conditions he would find. Nadine approaching the world on planetary drive. He was to be left here, with no reason ever to expect rescue. Two of the Nadine's watched out the same ports as the planet seemed to approach. Burleigh \"It doesn't look too bad, Moran!\" Moran disagreed, but he did not answer. He cocked an ear instead. He passage leading away. He called. But Moran observed with grudging Nadine Nadine landing-point, and they had still to re-locate themselves. Nadine Nadine investigation. Moran, at least, would be picked out as a fugitive from effect, with six people on board instead of five, the Nadine Nadine find a planet and check its climate and relationship to other planets, Nadine needed to make a planet-fall for this. that had that sound in it. It marked a first-landing spot on some planet Moran stirred, and he knew that every one of the others was conscious of expected, and start it up again. Moran considered the story probable. Nadine enlarging cloudy mass ahead. they left a beacon, they may have left an identification of the planet. Nadine had cleared for Loris. That was where it should make its next landing. The little yacht went on. All five of its proper company watched as the planet's surface enlarged. The ice-cap went out of sight around the bulge of the globe, but no markings appeared. There were cloud-banks everywhere, probably low down in the \"I think,\" said Carol, to Moran, \"that if it's too tropical where this ice-cap to have an endurable climate. I've been figuring on food, too. That will depend on where we are from Loris because we have to keep enough for ourselves. But we can spare some. We'll give you the possibly habitable planet, the especially developed seed-strains would though, and Moran grimaced. been left out of the seeding of this planet. The element—which might be Moran wondered, momentarily, what sort of world they came from and why government would think defeat. Moran's own situation was perfectly Nadine's Nadine's Now the space-yacht moved toward a vast mass of fleecy whiteness without \"Watch our height, Carol.\" She stood by the echometer. Sixty miles. Fifty. Thirty. A correction of course. Fifteen miles to surface below. Ten. Five. At twenty-five thousand feet there were clouds, which would be particles of ice so small that they floated even so high. Then clear air, then lower clouds, surface that the planet-wide cloud-level seemed to begin. From there on down it was pure opacity. Anything could exist in that dense, almost Nadine end to visibility. The yacht descended as if in the center of a sphere vegetation on a planet with a sol-type sun. Nadine's the only considerable landmark within the half-mile circle in which Nadine checked her downward motion. Interplanetary drive is rugged shared the peculiarity of the ground as far as they could see through no mineral surface! The landing-pockets had burned away three or four \"This sounds and looks like a nice place to live,\" said Moran with fine Nadine carefully at the mound, there was a landing-fin sticking up toward 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 \"Sure,\" said Moran, \"but a man can gripe, can't he?\" \"You won't have to live here,\" said Burleigh. \"We'll take you somewhere up by the ice-cap. As Carol said, we'll give you everything we can spare. And meanwhile we'll take a look at that wreck yonder. There might be an indication in it of what solar system this is. There could be Moran silently went to the space-suit rack and began to get into a metal casings and enormous globular helmets. Non-stretch fabrics took \"If there's a lifeboat left,\" said Carol suddenly, \"Moran might be able \"Ah, yes!\" said Moran. \"It's very likely that the ship hit hard enough beacon. I wouldn't count on a boat, Moran.\" door opened. It was not necessary to check the air specifically. The suits would take care of that. Anyhow the ice-cap said there were no water-soluble gases in the atmosphere, and a gas can't be an active slightly eroded by the processes which made life possible on this planet. They looked dubiously at the scorched, indefinite substance Nadine landed. Moran moved scornfully small holes. 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 abdomen. It had wing-cases. It had six legs. It toppled down to the stone on which the Nadine \" she said incredulously. \" They're beetles! They're twenty times the size of the beetles we humans have been carrying around the galaxy, but that's what they are! \" Moran grunted. Distastefully, he saw his predicament made worse. He knew planets life had never gotten started. On such worlds a highly complex would multiply, and animals and birds to carry the seeds planet-wide. On most planets, to be sure, there were local, aboriginal plants and animals. But still terrestrial creatures had to be introduced if a food. So an elaborate adaptation job had to be done on every planet large and monstrous under the conditions of a new planet. And the remained actively unpleasant to think of being marooned on it. \"Suppose we go look at the ship?\" said Moran unpleasantly. \"Maybe you parchment-like top skin yielded. It was like walking on a mass of \"We'd better spread out,\" added Moran, \"or else we'll break through that He and the others joined Moran on the yielding surface. Their footing was uncertain, as on a trampoline. They staggered. They moved toward the Nadine's Moran heard muffled noises in his helmet-phone as the others tried to \"It's not a hunting creature on worlds It was to be noted that Hallet the engineer, avoided the huge harmless They reached the mound which was the ship. Moran unlimbered his torch. equally abrupt thinning, again, toward the landing-fins. The sharpness everywhere. \"We're going to find that this wreck has been here a century Nadine Nadine\n\n<question>:\nWhich of the follow characteristics does NOT give Moran the impression that the planet that the Nadine is approaching may be habitable?\n\n<options>:\nA shape of the ice cap\nB composition of the ice cap\nC location of the ice cap\nD size of the ice cap\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,850
|
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>:\ndecision \"I've had enough!\" Illustrated by Schoenherr Read locked the door and drew his pistol. Sergeant Rashid handed Premier Umluana the warrant. \"We're from the UN Inspector Corps,\" Sergeant Rashid said. \"I'm very sorry, but we have to arrest you and bring you in for trial by the World Court.\" Umluana turned back to Rashid a second too soon. He saw the sergeant's upraised hand before it collided with his neck. \"Help! Kidnap. \" Rashid judo chopped him and swung the inert body over his shoulders. Read pulled a flat grenade from his vest pocket. He dropped it and yellow psycho gas hissed from the valve. \"Let's be off,\" Rashid said. The door lock snapped as they went out the window. Two men with rifles plunged into the gas A little car skimmed across the lawn. Bearing the Scourge of Africa, Rashid struggled toward it. Read walked backward, covering their retreat. \"Thanks,\" Rashid said. that rose before them. \"Is he all right?\" the driver asked. \"I don't think I hurt him.\" Rashid took a syrette from his vest pocket. \"Well, Read, it looks like we're in for a fight. In a few 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 sleep so much? I don't want to be like that. I want to be something proud.\" He joined the UN Inspector Corps at eighteen, in 1978. The international cops wore green berets, high buttonless boots, bush jackets. They were very special men. \"I don't want that,\" Read said. \"What do you mean, you don't want that?\" \"You could join the American Army,\" his mother said. \"That's as 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 Disarmament Treaty of 1966. Through the years it had acquired other jobs. UN men no longer went unarmed. Trained to use small diplomats and UN officials, even put down riots that threatened international peace. As the UN evolved into a strong world government, the UN Inspector Corps steadily acquired new powers. Read went through six months training on Madagascar. Twice he nearly got expelled for picking fights with smaller men. 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 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 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. war. Read didn't know much about the complicated political reasons for the arrest. He liked the Corp and he liked being in the Corp. He But then they would have spent hours flying over Africa, with Belderkan fighters in hot pursuit, other nations joining the 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 history from Cambridge but only the Corp gave him work that satisfied his conscience. He hated war. It was that simple. Rashid turned his head. He waved frantically. The two men in the other car waved back. \"Shall I duck under the trees?\" the driver asked. Suddenly machine-gun bullets cracked and whined beside him. \"Evade,\" Rashid said. \"Don't go down.\" \"Hit the floor,\" Rashid said. They knelt on the cramped floor. Rashid put on his gas mask and Rashid raised his eyes above the seat and looked out the rear Rashid opened the door and threw out two grenades. Read jumped out and the two of them struggled toward the booth with Umluana. The driver, pistol in hand, ran for the control panel. fire on the largest car. \"Now, I can shoot back,\" he said. \"Now we'll see what they do.\" \"Are you ready, Rashid?\" yelled the driver. \"Man, get us out of here!\" \"He's in the booth. What's going on?\" Rashid's Middle East Oxford seemed more clipped than ever. Rashid swore. \"You heard him, Read! Get out there and help those men.\" He heard the screams of the wounded, the crack of rifles and spread through the building. They could see anyone who tried to 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 ditch. He dropped another grenade beside it. The heavy gas would lie there for hours. Sergeant Rashid ran crouched from man to man. He did what he could to shield the wounded. with gasoline.\" \"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? Read shut his eyes. All around him he heard heavy breathing, mumbled comments, curses. Clothes rustled as men moved restlessly. But already the voice of Sergeant Rashid resounded in the murky room. wants to go hunting with me?\" For two years Read had served under Sergeant Rashid. To him, the sergeant was everything a UN inspector should be. Rashid's devotion to peace had no limits. Read's psych tests said pride alone drove him on. That was good enough for the UN All UN inspectors. All part of his life. And he was part of their life. Their blood, their sacrifice, and pain, had become a part of him. Rashid snapped orders. He put the German inspector in charge of Umluana. Read, the Frenchman and himself, he stationed at thirty-foot intervals along the floor. \"Remember,\" Rashid said. \"We have to knock out that gun.\" Read had given away his machine gun. He held a gas-filled bottle in each hand. His automatic nestled in its shoulder holster. Rashid whistled. Dozens of smoke grenades tumbled through the air. Thick mist engulfed the tank. Read stood up and ran forward. He crouched but \" \"I'm hit, too,\" Rashid said. \"Don't stop if you can move.\" Listen to him. What's he got, a sprained ankle? But he didn't feel any pain. He closed his eyes and threw himself \"What?\" Guns clattered. Bullets cracked. \"Sergeant Rashid! Answer me.\" He heard nothing but the lonely passage of the bullets in the mist. That was all—with a broken hip and a wounded right arm. 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,\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Rashid join the UN?\n\n<options>:\nA Rashid joined the UN to get away from a gang called The Golden Spacemen.\nB Rashid joined the UN because he wants world peace at any cost.\nC Rashid joined the UN after he was fired from Cambridge.\nD Rashid joined the UN because he wanted to go to war.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,010
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nto handle department store complaints? But threatening 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!\" One out of every three dirty stories started by party attendees had remained unfinished, because each had reminded someone else of another 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. glass splintered against the floor. The noise caused a temporary lull in the gaiety. Several employes even felt a passing suspicion that things might be getting out of hand. 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. it into a desk drawer, for later attention. Then he looked around for a drink that would make him feel even better. A sorting clerk in the mail order department wasn't used to liquor. She picked up the envelope and looked around vaguely for the mail-opening machine. \"Hell, Milly, you aren't working!\" someone shouted at her. \"Have another!\" The flap popped open and an old-fashioned order blank fell out. Mr. Hawkins' eyes widened. He bent, reached painfully over his potbelly and picked up the order form. \"This thing has never been processed!\" Raising his voice, he shouted jovially, \"Hey, people! You're all fired! Here's an order that Hartshorne-Logan never filled! We can't have such carelessness. This poor woman has waited eighty years for her merchandise!\" 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 a great proposal and the room grew quiet—\"unless we broke the rules just once and used the time warp on a big mission!\" must be used only for complaints within three days.\" \"Then let's find out!\" Mr. Hawkins downed the rest of his drink and 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.\" 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 the impersonal typing on the customary Hartshorne-Logan bundles. But the delivery man that the contents would make a rattling sound and therefore hadn't been broken in shipment. \"Your dress ought to be here,\" Ann said. She found scissors in her throw away my letter of complaint,\" she told her daughter. \"And by the time they get my second letter, they'll have answered my first letter. Then they'll write again.\" Out of consideration for Sally, she omitted the expletives that she wanted to add. \"It's me,\" her husband said. \"Slow day at the office, so I came home early.\" \"I don't know,\" Ann said. \"Les, listen. A minute ago, Sally—\" He peered into the box for an instruction sheet, uselessly. \"They must have made a mistake. It looks like some kind of farm equipment.\" \"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 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: Bob came home from school through the back door and a strange voice said from the front of the house, \"Don't answer the front door.\" Ann stared at her son. He stared back at her, the detective outfit repeating that message, you'd better shut that part off. It might get boring after a while. And it might insult someone.\" Ann went to the door and turned the knob. The door didn't open. The impatiently on the porch. Les yanked at the doorknob. It didn't yield for him, either. He looked Ann put her mouth close to the glass, shouting: \"Won't you come to the back door, Mrs. Burnett? This one is stuck.\" the kitchen, nearly falling. She stared grimly at Ann and looked suspiciously behind her. with a few faint cheers, came from the doorbell-box when she crossed the threshold. Ann went into the hall to order Les to disconnect the doorbell. She 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 wife. \"I don't know why you ordered such a thing.\" He tossed the booklet into the empty box. and the towel. She began to yell at him for making such a mess, when Sally floated into the kitchen. The girl was wearing a nightgown. \"My God!\" Ann forgot her tongue before the children. \"She got out of that dress herself. Where did she get that nightgown?\" Ann fingered the garment. She didn't recognize it as a nightgown. But 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 The mailman brought a letter from Hartshorne-Logan. Ann stared stupidly order as soon....\" Ann crumpled the letter and threw it into the imitation fireplace, knowing perfectly well that it would need to be retrieved for Les after work tonight. She had just decided to call Hartshorne-Logan's complaint 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 house. Ann clutched the side of the chair, trying to keep herself under control. A siren wailed somewhere down the street, grew louder rapidly, suddenly going silent at the peak of its crescendo. Burnett at the door. Shrieks that sounded like \"Murder!\" came sharply through the window. duck. \"I snuck out of the principal's office and came home. I got to tell you what I did.\" Bob ended in a whisper, nodding toward the doctor. Ann looked doubtfully at Les, then followed Bob down the stairs. The doorbell was monotonously saying in a monotone: \"Don't answer me, don't answer me, don't go to the door.\" \"Why did you do it?\" Ann asked Bob, her anger suddenly slumping into only an accident. The really important thing is something else I did before I left the house.\" Les, cursing softly, hurried past them on the way to answer the knocking. He ignored the doorbell's pleas. \"I forgot about it,\" Bob continued, \"when that ray gun accidentally went off. Then when they put me in the principal's office, I had time drifted through the house. \"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>:\nWhy did the staff at Hartshorne-Logan have to substitute some of the items in the package?\n\n<options>:\nA They were sold out of because of the holiday sales.\nB They had recalled most of the items because they were dangerous.\nC They were outdated by many years.\nD They were too drunk to read the catalog numbers correctly.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
317
|
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.] It has happened a hundred times in the long history of Earth—and, sooner or later, will happen again! Everyone—all the geologists, at any rate—had known about the Kiowa all even the professionals were interested in knowing. There was never so much as a landslide to bring the Fault to the attention of the It is not really surprising that it took so long to figure out the connection. The population of the states affected was in places as low as five people per square mile! The land was so dry it seemed anything is news in late August. And the geologists became interested. Seismologists were reporting unusual activity in the area, tremors too severe to be rock slides. Volcanic activity? Specifically, headlines, and some papers even left off the question mark. It may seem odd that the simplest explanation was practically not Edison were shaken to pieces by incredible earthquakes, whole bus- and for their university and government department to approve budgets. They found, of course, that Schwartzberg had been perfectly correct. They found themselves on the scene of what was fast becoming the most violent and widespread earthquake North America—probably the world—has ever seen in historic times. To describe it in the simplest terms, land east of the Fault was settling, and at a precipitous rate. buckling and dropping, the earth trembled downward. Atop the new There the devastation was even more thorough, if less spectacular. Dry earth churned like mud, and rock shards weighing tons bumped and rolled about like pebbles as they shivered and cracked into pebbles themselves. \"It looks like sand dancing in a child's sieve,\" said the scene of disaster. \"No one here has ever seen anything like it.\" And several small tremors everywhere east of the Fault, to almost twenty miles away, the now-familiar lurch and steady fall had already sent several thousand Coloradans scurrying for safety. the danger of rock slides from minor quakes. The geologists went home As the Fault moved north and south, new areas quivered into unwelcome life. Fields and whole mountainsides moved with deceptive sloth down, down. They danced \"like sand in a sieve\" dry, they boiled into rubble. Telephone lines, railroad tracks, roads snapped and simply disappeared. Virtually all east-west land communication was suspended and the President declared a national emergency. By 23 September the Fault was active well into Wyoming on the north, Tremendous fissures opened up perpendicular to the Fault, and a general The western borders of these states, and soon of the Dakotas and Oklahoma as well, were slowly sinking. On the actual scene of the disaster (or the scenes it is impossible to speak of anything this size in the singular) there was a horrifying confusion. Prairie and hill cracked open under intolerable strains as the land shuddered downward in gasps and leaps. Springs burst to the surface in hot geysers and explosions of steam. The downtown section of North Platte, Nebraska, dropped eight feet, just like that, on the afternoon of 4 October. \"We must remain calm,\" floods, in the usual sense. The water moved too slowly, spread itself with no real direction or force. But the vast sheets of sluggish water and jelly-like mud formed death-traps for the countless refugees now 193 people had died in that one cave-in. Certainly by 7 October it had to be officially admitted that there was an exodus of epic proportion. Nearly two million people were on the move, and the U. S. was faced with a gigantic wave of refugees. Rails, roads and air-lanes were jammed with terrified hordes who had left everything behind to crowd eastward. an American Airlines plane was wrecked by a mob of would-be passengers in Bismarck, North Dakota. Federal and State troops were called out, but moving two million people was not to be done in an orderly way. autumn sunshine, growing higher as the land beneath them continued its inexorable descent. On 21 October, at Lubbock, Texas, there was a noise variously described as a hollow roar, a shriek and a deep musical vibration like a church bell. It was simply the tortured rock of the substrata giving way. The second phase of the national disaster was beginning. wanted to be somewhere else.\" Everyone in doomed Biloxi would have done well to have been somewhere else that evening. At approximately 8:30 p.m. the town shuddered, seemed to rise a little like the edge of a hall carpet caught in a draft, and sank. So did the entire Mississippi and Alabama coast, at about the same moment. The tidal wave which was to gouge the center from the U. S. marched on the land. From the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain to the Appalachicola River Mobile, Pensacola, Panama City: 200 miles of shoreline vanished, with over two and a half million people. An hour later a wall of water had swept over every town from Dothan, Alabama, to Bogalusa on the Louisiana-Mississippi border. of the gallant southland have faced and withstood invasion before.\" Then, as ominous creakings and groanings of the earth announced the approach of the tidal wave, he flew out of Montgomery half an hour before the town disappeared forever. One head of the wave plunged north, eventually to spend itself in Despite hopeful announcements that the wave was slowing, had virtually stopped after inundating Oklahoma City, was being swallowed up in the Lubbock, Texas, went under. On a curling reflex the tidal wave blotted out Sweetwater and Big Spring. The Texas panhandle disappeared in one great swirl. Whirlpools opened. A great welter of smashed wood and human debris was rescuers on the cliffs along what had been the west bank of the Pecos River afterwards recalled the hiss and scream like tearing silk as the water broke furiously on the newly exposed rock. It was the most terrible sound they had ever heard. \"We couldn't hear any shouts, of course, not that far away and with all were people down there. When the water hit the cliffs, it was like a collision between two solid bodies. We couldn't see for over an hour, because of the spray.\" along the line of the original Fault. Irresistible fingers closed on Sterling, Colorado, on Sidney, Nebraska, on Hot Springs, South Dakota. The entire tier of states settled, from south to north, down to its flushes never came out right. Jimanettly, we'd left the king of hearts behind, in the rush!\" But such lightheartedness and such happy endings were by no means typical. The world could only watch aghast as the water raced north under the shadow of the cliffs which occasionally crumbled, roaring, into the roaring waves. Day by day the relentless rush swallowed what had been dusty farmland, cities and towns. almost the entirety of eight states, and portions of twelve others, had simply vanished from the heart of the North American continent forever. It was in such a cataclysmic birth that the now-peaceful Nebraska Sea came to America. Today, nearly one hundred years after the unprecedented—and happily unrepeated—disaster, it is hard to remember the terror and despair of those weeks in October and November, 1973. It is inconceivable to think of the United States without its beautiful and economically essential it graduates from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico through the equally blue waves of the Mississippi Bight, becoming cooler and Unimaginable too would have been the general growth of population in the states surrounding the new sea. As the water tables rose and manufacturing and trade moved in to take advantage of the just-created axis of world communication, a population explosion was touched off of which we are only now seeing the diminution. This new westering is to be ranked with the first surge of pioneers which created the American\n\n<question>:\nWhat is most significant about the earthquake that happens?\n\n<options>:\nA It proved that the dust volcano was alive.\nB It proved Schwartzberg's theory?\nC It became a national tragedy, affecting most of the country.\nD It happened quickly and suddenly.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,330
|
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>:\nDole vs. the Times 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 . Dole's spat with the gray lady went public on Thursday, Oct. 24. In New Orleans, Dole charged the paper with ignoring a story about a Miami drug dealer who got invited to the White House. \"This is a disgrace,\" Dole insisted. \"I doubt if you even read it in the New York Times . They probably put it in the want ads. They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times . Only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times .\" Dole repeated his attack for the next five days. \"We are not going to let the media steal this election,\" he told a crowd in Dallas on Friday. \"This country belongs to the people, not the New York Times .\" On Saturday, in Visalia, Calif., he added, \"I know that with a crowd this size, the New York Times will write not many people showed up, but the other papers will get it right.\" 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. 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: \"In Phoenix on Friday night, he had a delightful time drawing out his vowels as he described financial contributions to the Clinton campaign. \"From Indoneeesia,\" he said. \"Yeah. From INdiaaaaah. Some fellow named Gandhi out there. He owes $10,000 in back taxes, but he found $300,000 to give to the Clinton campaign. And now Gandhi is gaaaawn. Gaaaaandhi, gone gone gone. They can't find him.\" Two days later, she quoted Dole in another story: \"They've turned the White House into something else, I don't know what it is. It's the animal house! It's the animal house!\" Most reporters would write, Bob Dole yesterday compared the White House to an \"animal house,\" sparing the exclamation points, and making him sound at least compos mentis. 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 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 felt the most sympathetic towards Dole?\n\n<options>:\nA Bill Clinton\nB the author\nC Andrew Rosenthal\nD John Buckley\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,116
|
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 and his Las Vegas allies, a former Las Vegas city councilman named Steve Miller and an inner city venture capitalist named Otis Harris, invite me on a tour of Las Vegas. \"Behind the Mirage,\" they call it. For two hours, we cruise the streets behind the casinos. They show me all the evidence of gambling blight you'd never want to see, from a youth-center-turned-crack-house to pawn shops to sex shops to down at heels casinos to quickie motels. All the while, they keep up a patter about how terrible a neighbor the casino industry is and how superficial Las Vegas' prosperity is. It's very grim and mostly persuasive. Still, when we turn back on to the Strip, and pass the jaw-dropping Stratosphere and Circus Circus and Bellagio and the MGM Grand--a 30 story tower bathed in fabulous emerald light, I realize why Grey's task is hopeless here. He is committing the cardinal sin of Vegas. All he wants to do is talk about losers. In Las Vegas, under the thrilling lights of the Strip, no one wants to hear about losers. In the land of gaming, not gambling, everyone is sure he's a winner. A NAME= Gambling's would-be federal regulators--the National Gambling Impact Study Commission--went to Las Vegas this week to hold hearings. In today's dispatch, we learn how gambling's foes seek to demonize wagering as a pernicious tobaccolike vice. In yesterday's dispatch, gambling's foes learn the folly of having brought their anti-sin crusade to an adult Disneyland. Is < 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. Judging by today's hearings and by conversations with most of the commissioners, the tobacco model is winning. Today's panelists tell the commission that kids are starting to gamble too young and are getting addicted too easily, that compulsive gambling appears to be increasing as gambling spreads, that gambling marketing may be designed to addict customers, and that the industry exploits problem gamblers by allowing them to draw repeated credit card advances from ATMs on casino floors. The testimony clearly impresses the commissioners and seems especially to impress the three nonaligned commissioners who will be the swing votes on the June 1999 report. \"Gaming\"? 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. The gambling industry did everything in its power to stop the establishment of this commission two years ago, but Congress and a fervent grassroots anti-gambling group eventually foisted it on the industry. The nine member blue-ribbon panel was charged with assessing the social and economic impact of gambling, and it will issue a final report to Congress and the president in June 1999. Even though the panel was carefully balanced between pro- and anti-gambling leaders, it was supposed to be Vegas' nemesis. The industry and Las Vegas' pro-gambling media quaked in anticipation of the onerous regulations and taxes the commission might recommend. But they quake no more. Whatever national momentum the anti-gamblers had dissolved in last week's elections. The industry routed opponents in state after state. Missouri voters passed a ballot initiative to allow boat casinos. Californians voted to expand Indian casinos. In South Carolina and Alabama, voters expelled anti-lottery, anti-gambling Republican governors and replaced them with pro-lottery Democrats. The gambling industry spent more than $100 million on political contributions and issue ads. It has never been fatter, happier, or more secure. 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.\" (Pause for an aesthetic observation: I am sitting right behind the witnesses, and after a while I begin to separate them into the Wides and the Narrows. The Wides are men in suits with enormous backs and enormous bellies, men who eat and eat and used to play football. They all testify to their love of gambling. The Narrows are thin and generally disapprove of it. I begin to wonder whether fondness for gambling correlates with general indulgence, and dislike correlates with asceticism, and decide that they probably do.) 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>:\nWhy does the author think Tom Grey is fighting a losing battle?\n\n<options>:\nA Rev. Grey and his organization do not have the financial backing to fight a political battle with the casinos.\nB Rev. Grey is trying to warn against the dangers of gambling, but the atmosphere of Vegas makes people feel like they can win and be successful.\nC Rev. Grey is trying to warn against the dangers of gambling, but his efforts are drowned out by the powerful lobbyists.\nD People go to Las Vegas specifically to gamble and maybe engage in questionable behavior. They want the thrills Vegas provides. People don't go to be lectured about sinners and morals.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
852
|
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 new answer from tossed me the Amnesty. any scheme almost on sight—even where they had eluded the best brains in the ad agency where he worked. So when the Chief of World Security told him that he had been selected as the answer to the Solar System's time to pierce the maze of out-of-this-world double-dealing. For Jery had become a walking bomb, and when he set himself off, it would be the end of the whole puzzle of THE SECRET MARTIANS—with Jery as the first to go! Oddly enough, it worked out, and he now does nothing else. He says, however, the real reason (same as that expressed by I was sitting at my desk, trying to decide how to tell the women of America that they were certain to be lovely in a Plasti-Flex brassiere without absolutely guaranteeing them anything, when the two security \" W-Will elevator. \"At all? Am I under arrest? What's up, anyhow?\" President in power, and not even that in matters of security. I managed to nod. \"Do you mind if I do mind?\" Except girls.\" \"I'm still not sure that I—\" \"It's like this. I designate ratios, by the minute. They hand me a new they stop the watch. If I get it in five seconds, it passes. But if I spot it in less, they throw it out and start over again. Or is that \"Maybe an example would be better. Uh, you know the one about 'Three out of five New York lawyers use Hamilton Bond Paper for note-taking'?\" call weasel-wording—the clinker in that one is that while it seems to imply sixty percent of New York lawyers, it actually means precisely what it says: Three out of five. For that particular product, we had to question seventy-nine lawyers before we could come up with three who liked Hamilton Bond, see? Then we took the names of the three, and the fool the average consumer indefinitely.\" \"They—they block my thinking, sir, that's all. Why, take that example is.... You have been chosen for an extremely important mission.\" I couldn't have been more surprised had he announced my incipient accused of a friendly josh, but—\"You're kidding!\" I said. \"You must be. Otherwise, why was I sent for?\" \"Believe me, I wish I knew,\" he sighed. \"You were chosen, from all the inhabitants of this planet, and all the inhabitants of the Earth Colonies, by the Brain.\" \"If you're sitting there in that hopeful stance awaiting some sort of to make. IC had none to make. Damn it all to hell!\" He brought a meaty fist down on the desktop. \"No one has an explanation! All we know is that the Brain always picks the right man.\" I let this sink in, then asked, \"What made you ask for a man in the first place, sir? I've always understood that your own staff \"What a gesture!\" Baxter went on, hardly speaking directly to me at all. \"Inter-nation harmony! Good will! If these mere boys can get together and travel the voids of space, then so can everyone else! Why should there be tensions between the various nations comprising the World Government, when there's none between these fine lads, one from every civilized nation on Earth?\" off for an extraterrestrial romp, will cement relations between those nations who have remained hostile despite the unification of all governments on Earth. Personally, I think it was a pretty good idea, that the government extended their trip by—Why are you shaking your \"You mean whoever took the Scouts is falsifying—\" \"No. misuse of tenses, deliberate misspellings. They take it out of an adult, especially an adult with a mind keen enough to get him into Interplanetary Security. We've limited the shifts to four hours per man per day. Otherwise, they'd all be gibbering by now!\" \"And your men haven't found out anything?\" I marvelled. but no reason for it?\" talk to me man-to-man. \"Look, son, an adding machine—which is a minor form of an electronic brain, and even works on the same principle—can tell you that two and two make four. But can it tell you why? \"Well, no, but—\" \"That, in a nutshell is our problem. We coded and fed to the Brain last seen, and what they were wearing. Hell, everything! The machine took the factors, weighed them, popped them through its billions of relays and tubes, and out of the end of the answer slot popped a single savage who finds a pistol: used correctly, it's a mean little weapon \"But that's impossible,\" I said, shaking my head against this disconcerting thought. given only to Security Agents, so deadly was its molecule-disrupting Amnesty, they called it—such as I possessed, and a collapser, I could Phobos II . At the moment, I was the most influential human being in the known universe. And well they might be. An Amnesty-bearer can suddenly decide a subject is not answering questions to his satisfaction and simply blast the annoying party to atoms. It makes for straight responses. Of course, I was dressing the part, in a way. I wore the Amnesty suspended by a in ominous black, with an Amnesty on my breast and a collapser in know if this rocket has a dehumidifying system to keep the cast-off \"Would it hold—\" I did some quick mental arithmetic—\"let's say, about Amnesty-bearer. had chosen me because, in the affair of the missing Space Scouts, my \"It's the Amnesty that does it,\" he said, gesturing toward the disc. It I looked at the Amnesty, then nodded. \"Kind of gets you, after awhile. To know that you are the most influential person in creation is to automatically act the part. A shame, in a way.\" \"The hell it is!\" Baxter snapped. \"Good grief, man, why'd you think the Amnesty was created in the first place?\" things were before the Amnesty came along. Ever hear of red tape?\" I shook my head. \"No, I don't believe so. Unless it had something to do classifications, bureaus, sub-bureaus, congressional committees. It was impossible, Jery, my boy, to get anything done whatsoever without consulting someone else. And the time lag and paperwork involved made accurate and swift action impossible, sometimes. What we needed, of course, was a person who could simply have all authority, in order to save the sometimes disastrous delays. So we came up with the Amnesty.\" \"But the danger. If you should pick the wrong man—\" Baxter smiled. \"No chance of that, Jery. We didn't leave it up to any committee or bureau or any other faction to do the picking. Hell, that would have put us right back where we'd been before. No, we left it up to the Brain. We'd find ourselves in a tight situation, and the Brain receive the Amnesty, is that it?\" Baxter nodded. \"The Brain just picks the men. Then we tell the men the situation, hand over the Amnesty, and pray.\" I had a sudden thought. \"Say, what happens if two men are selected by the Brain? Who has authority over whom?\" Baxter grimaced and shivered. \"Don't even think such a thing! Even your mentioning such a contingency gives me a small migraine. It'd be unprecedented in the history of the Brain or the Amnesty.\" He grinned, suddenly. \"Besides, it can't happen. There's only one of these—\" he tapped the medallion gently \"—in existence, Jery. So we couldn't have such a situation!\" solution came through, I could be on my way back to the world of hard and soft sell.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the hypothetical problem with the amnesty?\n\n<options>:\nA It's too powerful for any one person to wield.\nB Those who wield the amnesty don't have to listen to the authority of of others\nC It allows the bearer to do as they please with civilians\nD Should 2 people be chosen for it, it's be an impossible power struggle\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
815
|
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>:\nGarden , Allure , Details , Self , Mademoiselle , and Glamour and Random House. The expense-account lunch is a hallowed journalistic tradition. But consider a day in the life of an editor working for Si Newhouse. (Donald's editors are a different story, as they will be happy to tell you.) It's a closed economy where almost all human needs and desires can be gratified with a miraculous, unlimited currency called the Si. A Lincoln Town Car is waiting outside your door in the morning to take you to work. The car, which costs $50 an hour, is written into your contract. First stop, breakfast with a writer at the Four Seasons. The check may be as little as $40. When you reach the office, you realize you're out of cigarettes. No problem--you send your assistant to buy a pack for you. She gets reimbursed from petty cash ($3). (Could be worse for the assistant: She could be forced to pick up her boss's birth-control pills, or her boss's pet from the vet, or presents for her boss's children--regular duties for Condé Nast underlings.) You've forgotten to return the video your kids watched yesterday, so you have a messenger take it back to Blockbuster. Si spends $20 you save a $1.50 late fee. Then there's lunch. The magazines account for more than a quarter of daytime revenues at the Four Seasons and the Royalton. A modest lunch for two at the Royalton (no fancy wine or anything) might cost $80. But Si's generosity extends to even assistants and sub-sub-editors, dining on sushi at their desks. If you spend $10 or less on lunch, and claim you were working, Si pays. At Vogue and Vanity Fair , almost everyone has a \"working lunch\" every day . An editor at Allure says that \"working lunches\" there are limited to 10 a month. Back at the office, you hear that a friend at another Newhouse magazine has been promoted, so you send flowers. The tab: $100. Si pays. (One of my favorite Condé Nast stories is of an editor who had just been promoted to an extremely senior job. His office was jammed with congratulatory flowers and cards. All had been sent by fellow Condé Nast staffers. All had been billed to the company.) Four o'clock, and it's snack time. Your assistant joins the mob in the lobby newsstand. She bills your candy bar, juice, and cigarettes (as well as her own candy bar, juice, and cigarettes) to the magazine ($15). After all, it's a \"working snack.\" Later, there's a birthday party for your assistant. You order champagne and a cake--on the company, of course, and present her with your gift--a Prada wallet ($200). Later, she submits the expense sheet for it. Finally, after a Random House book party at Le Cirque 2000 (estimated cost to Si: $35,000), your car ferries you home. Newhouse expense stories are a staple of New York literary-journalistic conversation. Stories about the $10,000 in expenses that a New Yorker editor billed for a single month. About the interior-decorating costs for the fashion-magazine editor who likes to have her office photographs rearranged every few months. About the hotel tab for the big-name New York writer who spent three weeks in Washington's Hay-Adams (basic room: $285 a night) researching a Vanity Fair story that will never run. About the Vogue editor who has furnished her summer house from items purchased for fashion shoots--beautiful furniture, designer pillows, coffee-table books. Vogue assistants have nicknamed the house \"Petty Cash Junction.\" None of the 39 past and present Newhouse employees I spoke to for this story would talk on the record, for . And the nature of the subject makes it hard to separate apocrypha from the truth. Did Condé Nast pay, as sources insist it did, hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes on behalf of an editor who didn't bother to file tax forms? Did an editor really expense $20,000 in a weeklong trip to Paris? The people who pay the bills are not talking. But every example of excess cited here was told to me by at least one source (and usually more than one) in a position to know. Need a facial? Treat yourself and bill it to Si. This is what is called \"scouting.\" It is also a great way to get free haircuts. To be fair, Si doesn't pay for all such treats. There is also a much-honored tradition of accepting tribute from companies that Condé Nast magazines cover. One magazine exec reportedly got so much loot last Christmas--Cuban cigars, \"crates of wine,\" designer suits (\"It was like a Spanish galleon\")--that he needed three cars to cart it home. At yuletide, even midlevel fashion-mag writers and editors are inundated with \"cashmere sweaters, Versace pillows, coats ...\" recalls one ex- Vogue staffer wistfully. At the top of the masthead, the perks are perkier. His Si-ness (their joke, not mine) does not expect his editors in chief to actually live on their million-dollar salaries. He also gives them clothing allowances (up to $50,000 a year). He buys them cars of their choice and hires chauffeurs to drive them. He offers them low- or no-interest home loans. GQ editor Art Cooper reportedly received two $1-million loans, one for a Manhattan apartment, the other for a Connecticut farm. Tina Brown and her husband, Harold Evans, former president of Random House, reportedly just took a $2-million boost to buy a $3.7-million Manhattan house. Actually, paying $100,000 for face time with Princess Di may not have been a foolish investment for a magazine so dependent on peddling her image. And Condé Nast's excess has other plausible justifications as well. Some top editors may earn their perks. Vogue and GQ make millions, according to industry analysts. Vanity Fair is enjoying banner years, and while it probably hasn't made back the millions Newhouse lost in starting it up, it is certainly in the black. The New Yorker loses money--how much may even surpass perks as a topic of Newhouse gossip and speculation. On the other hand, The New Yorker is the most talked-about magazine in America, and Tina Brown is the most talked-about editor. That is worth something. Public media companies such as Time Warner (or, for that matter, Microsoft) can entice and hold journalists with stock options. Advance is private, so Newhouse uses other golden handcuffs. He runs a lifestyle prison. Top editors stay because they could never afford to live in a house as nice as the one Si's interest-free loan bought them, or to host parties as nice as the ones Si's party planners throw for them. Condé Nast's magazines are all about glamour, wealth, prestige. To uphold that image, magazine editors need to circulate at the top of New York society. But the top of New York society consists of people who make far more money than magazine editors do--investment bankers, corporate chieftains, and fashion designers. Million-dollar salaries aren't enough to mix as equals with the Trumps and Karans. Si's perks are equalizers.\n\n<question>:\nWhat statement would the author agree with?\n\n<options>:\nA The luxurious lifestyle that the author wrote about is also easy-going and relaxing.\nB Everyone should strive to live a life that the author wrote about.\nC The lifestyle the author wrote about is highly unattainable.\nD The amount of benefits the workers receive is highly exaggerated.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,600
|
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 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. 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 and the Faludi-esque emasculation themes are more explicit. But there's something deeply movie-ish about the whole conceit, as if the novelist and director were weaned on Martin Scorsese pictures and never stopped dreaming of recapturing that first masochistic rush. The novel, the first by Chuck Palahniuk (the surname sounds like Eskimo for \"palooka\"--which somehow fits), walks a line between the straight and ironic--it isn't always clear if its glib sociological pronouncements are meant to be taken straight or as the ravings of a delusional mama's boy. But onscreen, when Pitt announces to the assembled fighters that they are the \"middle children of history\" with \"no purpose and no place\"--emasculated on one hand by the lack of a unifying crisis (a world war or depression) and on the other by lack of material wealth as promised by television--he seems meant to be intoning gospel. \"We are a generation of men raised by women,\" Tyler announces, and adds, \"If our fathers bail, what does that tell you about God?\" (I give up: What?) F ight Club could use a few different perspectives: a woman's, obviously, but also an African-American's--someone who'd have a different take on the \"healing\" properties of violence. It's also unclear just what has emasculated Jack: Is it that he's a materialist or that the materials themselves (i.e., IKEA's lacquered particle boards) don't measure up to his fantasies of opulence? Is he motivated by spiritual hunger or envy? Tyler's subsequent idea of confining his group's mayhem to franchise coffee bars and corporate-subsidized art is a witty one--it's like a parody of neo-Nazism as re-enacted by yuppies. It might have been a howl if performed by, say, the troupe of artsy German nihilists in Joel and Ethan Coen's The Big Lebowski (1998). Somehow Brad Pitt doesn't have the same piquancy. Actually, Pitt isn't as terrible as usual: He's playing not a character but a conceit, and he can bask in his movie-idol arrogance, which seems to be the most authentic emotion he has. But the film belongs to Norton. As a ferocious skinhead in last year's American History X , Norton was taut and ropy, his long torso curled into a sneer here, he's skinny and wilting, a quivering pansy. Even when he fights he doesn't transform--he's a raging wimp. The performance is marvelous, and it makes poetic sense in light of the movie's climactic twist. But that twist will annoy more people than it will delight, if only because it shifts the drama from the realm of the sociological to that of the psychoanalytic. The finale, scored with the Pixies' great \"Where Is My Mind?\" comes off facetiously--as if Fincher is throwing the movie away. 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). It's hard to make a serious case for Lawrence Kasdan's Mumford , which has apparently flopped but which you can still catch at second- and third-tier theaters. It looks peculiar--a Norman Rockwell painting with noir shadows. And its tale of a small town healed by a depressive (Loren Dean) posing as a psychologist is full of doddering misconceptions about psychotherapy. I almost don't know why I loved it, but the relaxed pacing and the witty turns by Martin Short, Ted Danson, David Paymer, and Mary McDonnell surely helped. I can't decide if the weirdly affectless Dean is inspired or inept, but my indecision suggests why he works in the role. There's no doubt, however, about his even more depressive love object, Hope Davis, who posseses the cinema's most expressive honking-nasal voice and who slumps through the movie like the world's most lyrical anti-ballerina. Even her puffy cheeks are eloquent: They made me think of Mumford as the home of the psychological mumps.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the author's least favorite film out of the four reviews?\n\n<options>:\nA Fight Club\nB Boys Don't Cry\nC Mumford\nD Happy Texas\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
2,127
|
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>:\ncontrol. \"And it is true that we can always impossible for an outlander to be, brought angry crowds to surround a working balance in our Empire. spitting, the waving of boneless prehensile fingers, as he ignored the heavy gravity and heavier air of away from us, through trickery, were unable to take over the Empire that was rightfully ours the unfamiliar planet. Crownwall nodded. \"In other conquer planets without the necessity of destroying them, and thereby friends,\" growled Ggaran. He subsided the job, thought Crownwall, then its deeply carved Greek key design, toward the mighty entrance gate of the palace. His manner demonstrated an elaborate air of unconcern that he felt sure was entirely wasted on these monsters. Crownwall gesture to be interpreted correctly, but he assumed that his silence would be. He was correct. relief. A pair of guards, their purple hides smoothly polished and gleaming with oil, crossed their ceremonial pikes in front of him as he swiftly, before Ggaran, lunging angrily Crownwall. \"I want to see Ffallk.\" the guard. \"If you mean His Effulgence, bombs. That will be a sufficient supply to let us test some of them, to see that they are in good working order. Then, if you He'll summon me fast enough. Meanwhile, my highly polished try any kind of double-cross, we will be able to use our own methods—which you cannot prevent—to send one of those bombs here to guards. An elegant courtier, with elaborately jeweled harness, bustled from inside the palace, obviously trying to present an air of strolling nonchalance. He gestured fluidly with a graceful tentacle. \"You!\" he said to Crownwall. \"Follow me. His guards withdrew their pikes and \"Ridiculous,\" snorted Ggaran. Crownwall stamped out his delay. Meanwhile, I see no reason \"Nor do I,\" consented Crownwall. great interest for a few moments. \"It's customary to genuflect \"I'm afraid that Ggaran had when you enter the Viceroy's presence,\" such ideas. I have not underestimated you, you see.\" \"It's all right, Ggaran,\" said the \"And now,\" Ggaran put in, \"I for us to detect.\" He raised a tentacle to still Crownwall's immediate exclamation of protest. \"Oh, nothing that would give us a chance to duplicate it—just enough to indicate how we can make use of Crownwall begin to make intelligent plans to beat the claws off the Master Race.\" Crownwall nodded. \"I don't negligent wave. \"Who can tell one \"Your silly little planet was carefully the race—the Master Race—also \"I'd noticed that,\" Crownwall useless—and very dangerous—knowledge.\" \"So have we, up until the time Crownwall. \"If you wanted someone enjoy the type of civilization Ffallk glanced up at Ggaran. \"I occasion, I think it best that we make this a Procession of Full Although \"I'm listening,\" said Crownwall. Master Race.\" \"It would hardly be an equal partnership, would it, considering it was really very simple. \"And there's no danger of meeting myself, or getting into any anachronistic situation. As you probably know, theory shows that these for your own safety?\" asked \"Not at all. We were enormously lucky to have learned how to control Crownwall shrugged. \"So?\" mass, they had again activated the \"Excellent,\" said Ffallk. \"I'd better Earth out of hand, while it is still possible. commented drily. examined at long range in a routine investigation just about fifty thousand years ago. There were Ceremony. It's a bother, but the proprieties have to be observed.\" Ggaran \"Since this is a very important They showed many signs of an shrill two-tone note, using both his ability to reason, but a complete speaking and his eating orifices. A cohort of troops, pikes at the ready and bows strapped to their backs, leaped forward and formed a lack of civilization. While these creatures could by no means be race and mine, of course.\" \"Protocol takes a lot of time,\" said His Effulgence somewhat sadly, \"but it must be observed. At walking behind it, like Ggaran.\" \"Too bad Ggaran can't join Crownwall. \"I was \"Of course,\" agreed Crownwall, an adventure that had taken place little more than Ggaran stepped forward, already ten years before. The uncomfortable position,\" he explained. \"Wait. Let me show you. a civilian who has been so unlucky bowmen who ran beside the sedan chair, now strung and at the ready. \"Show him!\" he ordered peremptorily. In one swift movement the bowman notched an arrow, drew and fired. The arrow hissed briefly, and \"You see,\" said Ggaran complacently, with civilians who violate this particular tradition.\" His Effulgence beckoned to the bowman to approach. \"Your results would usually—seven point three four times out of 10—destroy the and spoke again to Crownwall. \"That's the trouble with these requirements of civilization. The men of my immediate guard must practice with such things as pikes and bows and arrows, which they seldom get an opportunity to use. It would never do for them to use modern weapons on occasions of ceremony, of course.\" \"Of course,\" said Crownwall, can't provide them with live targets a little more often.\" He stifled a shudder of distaste. \"Tell me, closing in on them—ships that were swifter and more maneuverable than their own. These ships you have just had demonstrated for me?\" \"Oh, no. They are far too brutal, too morally degraded, to know anything of these finer points of etiquette and propriety. They are had rapidly and competently englobed you know, I am certain that they would have had the bad taste to use an energy weapon to dispose of the victim in a case such as you just witnessed! They are really quite unfit to rule. They can scarcely be called civilized at all. But we swiftly. Crownwall recalled the discussion—the will soon put a stop to all of that—your caught by surprise, the Earthmen had acted dangerous influence of a planetary immediately prepared for war against her unknown enemy. \"Your reaction was savage,\" said Ggaran, his tentacles stiffening Crownwall during the trip, without the cohort, the bearers and Ggaran \"The action you took was too swift and too foolhardy to be believed. which he had concealed his small transportation machine. The machine, for spatial mobility, was equipped with the heavy and grossly inefficient anti-gravity field generator developed by Kowalsky. It temporal translation and coordination selection systems combined, but it had the great advantage of being almost undetectable in use. It \"Would that have been so bad?\" said Ggaran. \"We can't tolerate \"Well, no. But you didn't have said, \"we gave you full plenipotentiary powers, so I suppose we'll have to stand behind your agreements—especially in view of the enough information to realize that when you acted so precipitously. As treaty with a Vegan. They sound ungodly murderous to me. There are too many holes in that protection properly for war against you, it was Crownwall. \"Our enemies are all murmured Ggaran. \"Ggaran, you explain it to the Ggaran usurpers. They have no rights to their position of power. Our race is much older than theirs. We were them develop to the point where, in their inferior way, they were able to reason, almost as well as we, The asked Crownwall, \"how does the at a soothing wave from His Effulgence. \"War in space is almost an impossibility,\" said the aged ruler. \"We can destroy planets, of course, but with few exceptions, we cannot large-scale assaults that would result in its capture and subjugation—just as your little Earth can defend itself. \"Naturally, each is vulnerable to economic blockade—trade provides\n\n<question>:\nWhich is not a reason Ggaran might have asked a bowman to shoot a soldier in front of Crownwall?\n\n<options>:\nA To show off his general power in the community\nB To give the bowman a chance to practice his skill\nC To punish the solider for his earlier misstep\nD To demonstrate the use of traditional weapons in political situations\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
454
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\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. Macklin was playing jacks. \"Do you think we'll have to use force on Macklin to get him to same. Mitchell forced himself to awaken, with some initial difficulty. He lay there, blinking the sleep out of his eyes, listening to his Mitchell smiled to himself. He was in luck Macklin had answered the \"I suppose so,\" Macklin said humbly. \"You've found yourself worrying—thinking—about a lot of other \"You're right. Besides who cares if you or I are cured of headaches? have time to think about.\" \"If you say so.\" now Macklin—\" Our reputations don't go outside our own fields,\" Mitchell said. \"But Elliot Macklin had inherited the reputation of the late Albert Einstein in the popular mind. He was the man people thought of when the word able to frame an argument with it. Macklin was in his early fifties but looked in his late thirties, with the build of a football player. The government took up a lot of his time using him as the symbol of the Ideal Scientist to help recruit Science and Engineering Cadets. that the project was nearing completion. If so, it was a case of Ad . The only thing that could delay the project was Macklin's health. Despite his impressive body, some years before he had suffered a mild known that he suffered from the vilest variety of migraine. A cycle of the headaches had caused him to be absent from his classes for several weeks, and there were an unusual number of military uniforms seen around the campus. Ferris paced off the tidy measurements of the office outside the \"I imagine he will,\" Mitchell said. \"Macklin's always seemed a decent looked more than a little like a postgraduate student, and Mitchell suspected that that was his intention. He shook hands warmly with Mitchell. \"Good of you to ask me over, lavish salary can't be much consolation when that ripping, tearing agony begins, can it?\" their headaches.\" \"Yes,\" Macklin said. \"But think,\" Ferris interjected, \"what a boon it would be if everyone could be cured of headaches forever would please about everybody else.\" \"Aspirins would still be used to reduce fever and relieve muscular pains,\" Mitchell said. \"How can you have a specific for a number of different causes?\" Macklin virus that feeds on pituitrin.\" \"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 valuable to have a constriction of blood vessels.\" 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 migraine. How should I go about removing my curse?\" He reinserted the pipe. \"But not on humans?\" Macklin asked. \"I'm tempted,\" Macklin said hesitantly, \"but the answer is go. I mean it? You aren't much better off with it than without, are you? I've heard some say they preferred the migraine.\" possibilities. All Macklin held his head in both hands. \"Why did you two select 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 now, shouldn't he? But thanks to our treatment he is perfectly happy, with no unfortunate side effects such as gynergen produces.\" will hand down a ukase demanding our virus, just as they demanded the husband for a full day. The effects of a narcotic would have worn off by this time.\" \"Most known narcotics,\" she admitted, \"but evidently you have discovered something new. Is it so expensive to refine you and Ferris have to recruit new customers to keep yourselves supplied?\" peacefully in a corner scratching under his arms with the back of his knuckles. Jerry, their control in the experiment, who was practically Dean's twin except that he had received no injection of the E-M Virus, was stomping up and down punching his fingers through the wire, worrying the lock on the cage. \"Jerry is a great deal more active than Dean,\" Mitchell said. dum-de-de-dum-dum-dum . As they waited Mitchell glanced at Ferris. He seemed completely undisturbed, perhaps slightly curious. \"You are the gentlemen who gave Dr. Macklin the unauthorized \"Why not? You can't do much worse than murder him now. That might be just as well. We have laws to cover that.\" The colonel led them into the comfortable, over-feminine living room. suddenly realized Macklin used a pipe as a form of masculine protest to used to be a mathematical genius.\" \"And now?\" Mitchell said impatiently. \"What did he mean, Macklin is an idiot?\" Mitchell asked. \"Not an idiot,\" Colonel Carson corrected primly. \"Dr. Macklin is a \"I'm not so dumb,\" Macklin said defensively. \"That's just on book learning,\" Macklin said. \"There's a lot you learn in life that you don't get out of books, son.\" \"What have you done to him?\" the colonel asked straightforwardly. \"We merely cured him of his headaches,\" Mitchell said. \"How?\" Mitchell did his best to explain the F-M Virus. \"All I want to know is why Elliot Macklin has been made as simple as if virus colony overcontrols the supply of posterior pituitary extract in \"Just a moment,\" Mitchell interrupted, \"we can cure Macklin.\" antitoxin to combat the virus. We had always thought of it as a \"What do you mean you don't like it?\" Carson demanded. He added, \"Sir?\" \"I figure you mean to put me back like I used to be.\" \"Yes, doctor,\" Mitchell said eagerly, \"just as you used to be.\" \" With \"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.\" what was an infinity anyway? All that sort of schoolboy things. It's peaceful this way. My head doesn't hurt. I've got a good-looking wife and all the money I need. I've got it made. Why worry?\" Colonel Carson opened his mouth, then closed it. 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 I don't think that even previously he made too many personal decisions for himself. Perhaps she could influence him.\" treatment. He wants to remain in his state of lower intelligence.\" She nodded. \"If those are his wishes, I can't go against them.\" \"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.\" Ferris' antitoxin treatment is the best method of restoring Dr. Macklin 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.\" 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.\" Mitchell glanced sharply at the little biologist. Carson squinted. \"Any particular reason, doctor?\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy was Macklin against having an antitoxin to combat the virus?\n\n<options>:\nA He feared the additional side-effects of the antitoxin.\nB He didn't want the headaches to return.\nC He enjoyed the attention he was receiving.\nD He enjoyed the newly found free time he had.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
510
|
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>:\nCompany, slamming the drafting board with his hairy fist, \"I want results!\" Heads lifted over boards. Kalvin Feetch shrunk visibly. savagely. \"The Piltdon Can-Opener is trailing the competition. Advertising and Sales are breaking their necks. It's Engineering that's missing the boat!\" \"But Mr. Piltdon,\" remonstrated Feetch unsteadily under his employer's \"For two years there hasn't been one lousy improvement in the Piltdon \"But Mr. Piltdon—\" Feetch adjusted his spectacles with shaking hands. \"But Mr. Piltdon, In four months I want a new can-opener that will be faster, lighter, stronger, flashier and more musical than any other on the market. I years with Piltdon. That was some satisfaction. Twenty-five years of your life you put in with Piltdon, and he'd fire you just like that if you don't do the impossible. The Piltdon Company is built upon your designs and you get handed this deal!\" have no complaints. Although,\" a wistful note crept into his voice \"I would have liked a little recognition. Piltdon is a household word, Hanson's bull-dog features drew into a scowl. \"Piltdon ought to Several days later, however, Piltdon himself charged into the drawing pencil point. \"Feetch!\" roared Piltdon. \"Is this talk that's going around the plant true? Why didn't you tell me? Let's see it.\" After Piltdon had seen it his eyes took on a feverish glint. \"This,\" he exulted, \"will make can-opener history. Instantaneous opening! Automatic disposal! Wait until Advertising and Sales get hold of this! We'll throttle our competitors! The Piltdon Super-Opener we'll call it.\" \"Mr. Piltdon—\" said Feetch shakily. Piltdon stared at his chief engineer sharply. \"What's the matter, \"Yes, sir. I've just finished checking that. But I'm in the midst of further investigation of the effect. There's more here than just a new further research can be completed. Hire a few top scientists and engineers. Find out where the cans go. Put out a scientific paper on the effect.\" \"Feetch,\" bit out Piltdon, his face growing hard. \"Stow this hooey. I company? As well as anything you may produce in the field within a year after leaving our employ? We have a good thing here, and I don't want you holding it back. We're going into production immediately.\" The first tentative shipments of Piltdon Super-Openers had gone to distributors along the Eastern seaboard. The first advertisements blazed in selected media. The first reorders came back, and then: \"It's a sell-out!\" crowed Piltdon, waving a sheaf of telegrams. \"Step up production! Let 'er rip!\" climbed to hundreds of thousands per day. Piltdon Opener went into the demand. Construction was begun on a new plant, and additional plants were planned. Long lines waited in front of houseware stores. Department stores, lucky enough to have Super-Openers on hand, limited sales to one to a customer. Piltdon cancelled his advertising program. Newspapers, magazines, radio, television and word-of-mouth spread the fame of the opener so that advertising was unnecessary. Meanwhile, of course, government scientists, research foundations, universities and independent investigators began to look into this new phenomonen. Receiving no satisfactory explanation from Piltdon, they set up their own research. any departure from its exact specifications nullified the effect. Piltdon, genial these days with success and acclaim, roared at Feetch: \"I'm putting you in for a raise. Yes sir! To reward you for assisting me with my invention I'm raising your pay two hundred dollars a year. \"Thank you, Mr. Piltdon.\" And still, thought Feetch wryly, he received nights at home investigating what had been named the Piltdon Effect. \"Are you still worrying about that?\" Piltdon roared jovially. \"Leave dangerous. The deluge followed no pattern. Sometimes it would slacken, the Piltdon Super-Opener. precipitation and estimated that if all the cans opened by Piltdon there. Anti-Piltdon editorials appeared in the papers. Commentators accused Piltdon of deliberately hoaxing the public for his own gain. A Congressional investigation was demanded. Piltdon received threats of Piltdon's huge desk. \"No!\" yelled Piltdon at Feetch's face which was \"You're positive, Feetch?\" Piltdon's eyes glared into Feetch's. \"Sir, I never make careless claims.\" \"That's true,\" said Piltdon. His eyes grew dreamy. \"It can be done,\" he mused. \"The New Type Super-Opener. Free exchanges for the old. Cash guarantee that empty cans will never bother you. Take a licking at first, but then monopolize the market. All right, Feetch, I'll patent on the improvement will naturally be mine. I'll get the credit for rectifying your blunder. Fine, fine. We'll work it out. Hop on production, at once, Feetch.\" Feetch felt himself sag inwardly. \"Mr. Piltdon,\" he said. \"I'm asking especially on the Piltdon effect. Hire a couple of extra men to help \"Damn it, no!\" roared Piltdon. \"How many times must I tell you? You got Piltdon started, extreme astonishment crossing his face. \"No use,\" said Feetch. \"Nothing you can say—\" klunk! klunk! klunk!—\"will make any difference now.\" \"Feetch!\" howled Piltdon. \"I order you to remain!\" Piltdon, Feetch thought, feeling a strange sensation deep within his slow anger, Piltdon was hitting low and getting away with it. research organization, he would undoubtedly get an appointment. But how could he? Everything patentable in his work would automatically revert to Piltdon under the one year clause in the company patent agreement. No, Feetch told himself, he was revealing nothing that Piltdon might \"I'll go up another ten dollars,\" grated the little Piltdon image. \"Thanks to you. Mr. Piltdon, I wouldn't work for you if—\" window. \"What's going on!\" yelled Piltdon. \"Oh, I see. People throwing change all that, Feetch? We'll put out the New Type Super-Opener and the world will soon forget about the old one.\" \"No,\" said Feetch. \"People will forget anyway—I hope.\" Piltdon Opener will soon be forced to close down, throwing all your Piltdon eyed him sharply, then smiled with a hint of triumph. \"Think it it touched off the growing rage. If Piltdon were there he would have grimly, dialing Piltdon's number, he was going through with it now. \"Piltdon!\" he barked. \"Three p.m. tomorrow. My place. Be here. That's hand. \"Here is everything I know about what I call the Feetch Effect, I want fifty-one per cent of the stock of Piltdon Opener.\" Piltdon leaped from his chair. \"Outrageous!\" He roared. \"Ridiculous!\" counterproposals or the interview is at an end.\" \"Gentlemen!\" squawked Piltdon, \"I appeal to you—\" Piltdon threw the paper to the floor and screamed: \"Gentlemen, will you After Piltdon had signed, the papers were distributed. effect built up as it increased its frictional electro-static charge involute teeth caused an instantaneous disruption of what I call the resented the intrusion of the cans, developed a method of disrupting \"Mr Feetch—\" said Piltdon. \"Piltdon, don't bother me about production. Production is your problem.\" Piltdon blanched and left.\n\n<question>:\nWhat was the “Piltdon Effect”?\n\n<options>:\nA The ability to meet a tight deadline.\nB The can-opener causing the cans to disappear.\nC The deluge of cans falling from the sky.\nD Viral interest in a new product.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,315
|
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>:\nThose 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. He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney) dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew. 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 almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill a second later, the sun plays mystically over the tall, yellow grass that has swallowed their bodies. John Toll's camera rushes in on a captured Japanese garrison: One Japanese soldier shrieks 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. 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>:\nWhat does the author seem to like to see in movies?\n\n<options>:\nA movies that stay true to the books and original scripts\nB movies that dig deeper into life's realities\nC unpredictability in the story line\nD movies that show the good in people\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
972
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nand then only at the urging of a newly assigned cousin anxious to see cousin's utter disgust. the descendants were scraping bottom now—advised. Martin showed his work in Italy, so that the cousin could be disillusioned by the current crop of Romans. He found that neither purpose nor malice was enough and felt an uncomfortable pang of a sensation he could no longer understand. \"Where do you suppose Conrad has been all this time?\" Martin idly asked the current cousin—who was passing as his nephew by now. The young man jumped, then glanced around him uncomfortably. \"Conrad's a very shrewd fellow,\" he whispered. \"He's biding his time—waiting until we're off guard. And then—pow!—he'll attack!\" \"Oh, I see,\" Martin said. He had often fancied that Conrad would prove to be the most stimulating member of the whole generation. But it seemed unlikely that he would Conrad?\" \"Because he's coming to kill you.\" them were insane, or what Ninian had told him at first was the truth. They came from the future. When Martin was sixteen, Raymond took him aside for the talk Ninian had promised five years before. \"The whole thing's all my brother Conrad's fault. You see, he's an idealist,\" Raymond explained, pronouncing the last word with distaste. Martin nodded gravely. He was a quiet boy now, his brief past a dim and passing laws to do away with the—well, abuses and things like that, and I'm sure someday everything will come out all right. However, Conrad is so impatient.\" \"I thought, in your world, machines did all the work,\" Martin suggested. \"I've told you—our world is precisely the same as this one!\" Raymond snapped. \"We just come a couple of centuries or so later, that's all. frightening—his race had lost something vital. Unaware of the near-contempt in which his young ancestor held him, Raymond went on blandly: \"Anyhow, Conrad took it upon himself to feel particularly guilty, because, he decided, if it hadn't been for the fact that our great-grandfather discovered the super-drive, we desperate for a fresh topic of conversation.\" Anyhow, Raymond went on to explain, Conrad had bribed one of Farkas' assistants for a set of the plans. Conrad's idea had been to go back in time and \"eliminate!\" their common great-grandfather. In that way, there would be no space-drive, and, hence, the Terrestrials would never man, you know.\" Raymond's expressive upper lip curled. \"So Conrad decided to go further back still and get rid of his great-grandfather's father—who'd been, by all accounts, a pretty worthless character.\" cousins and me—held a council of war, as it were, and we decided it was our moral duty to go back in time ourselves and protect you.\" He beamed at Martin. The boy smiled slowly. \"Of course. You had to. If Conrad succeeded in eliminating cousins possessed to a consternating degree. Martin had, of course, no illusions on that score he had learned long , Martin knew, could have meant anything from blackmail to the use of the iron maiden. \"Then we were all ready to forestall Conrad. If one of us guarded you night and day, he would never be able to carry out his plot. So we made sentimentalist like Conrad. Though you do have rather a look of him, you know.\" Suddenly that seemed to make Conrad real. Martin felt a vague stirring of alarm. He kept his voice composed, however. \"How do you plan to protect me when he comes?\" that she'd come see him again. She never did, though, except at the very last. Raymond and Martin moved into a luxurious mansion in a remote area. The dozen years later, they weren't touched. Martin was never sure whether this had been sheer luck or expert planning. Probably luck, because his descendants were exceedingly inept planners. \"How about a moat?\" Martin suggested when they first came. \"It seems to go with a castle.\" \"Do you think a moat could stop Conrad?\" Raymond asked, amused. \"No,\" Martin smiled, feeling rather silly, \"but it would make the place seem safer somehow.\" The threat of Conrad was beginning to make him grow more and more nervous. He got Raymond's permission to take two suits of armor that several times he fancied he saw them move. He also became an adept with the ray gun and changed the surrounding landscape quite a bit with it, until Raymond warned that this might lead Conrad to them. During those early years, Martin's tutors were exchanged for the higher-degreed ones that were now needful. The question inevitably least twenty of the cousins came back through time to hold one of their vigorous family councils. Martin was still young enough to enjoy such occasions, finding them vastly superior to all other forms of could take you there. I'm sure you would like it.\" \"Don't be a fool, Grania!\" Raymond snapped. \"Well, Martin, have you to be perfectly frank, I can't quite understand how.\" \"I am not going to sit down and explain the whole thing to you all over again, Bart!\" Raymond said impatiently. \"Well, Martin?\" \"What would you suggest?\" Martin asked. But the fear did not show in Martin's pictures. They were pretty pictures. Cousin Ives—now that Martin was older, he was told to call the descendants cousin \"Takes time,\" Ives tried to reassure him. \"One day they'll be buying your pictures, Martin. Wait and see.\" Ives was the only one of the descendants who seemed to think of Martin Tourists always like ruins best, anyway.\" So he drew on the family's vast future resources and bought a yacht, which Martin christened The other cousins appeared to find the yacht a congenial head-quarters, they never moved back to land. Martin spent the rest of his life on The Interregnum . He felt curiously safer from Conrad there, although there was no valid reason why an ocean should stop a traveler through time. More cousins were in residence at once than ever before, because ended in a brawl, because one cousin was sure to accuse another of He rather liked Ives, though. Sometimes the two of them would be alone together then Ives would tell Martin of the future world he had come \"Oh,\" Martin murmured, trying to sound shocked, horrified—interested, even. \"Sometimes I'm not altogether sure Conrad was wrong,\" Ives said, after Conrad, and even he—\" Ives looked out over the sea. \"Must be a better way out than Conrad's,\" he said without conviction. \"And everything will work out all right in the end. Bound to. No sense to—to anything, if it doesn't.\" He glanced wistfully at Martin. he couldn't even seem to care. During all this time, Conrad still did not put in an appearance. Martin had gotten to be such a crack shot with the ray pistol that he almost wished his descendant would show up, so there would be some excitement. But he didn't come. And Martin got to thinking.... He always felt that if any of the cousins could have come to realize the basic flaw in the elaborate plan they had concocted, it would have continent, a hundred years or more before the date of his birth. A great many of the cousins turned up at the simple ceremony. All were dressed in overwhelming black and showed a great deal of grief. Raymond cousin from the future a while, Martin couldn't tell one from another. Cousin after cousin came to watch over him and eventually they were as hard for him to tell apart as the different oceans. All the cousins were young, for, though they came at different times in his life, they had all started out from the same time in theirs. Only the young ones had been included in the venture\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the flaw in the cousins' plan?\n\n<options>:\nA Conrad could target their great-great-grandmother and achieve the same result.\nB Conrad could target their great-grandmother and achieve the same result.\nC They have kept Martin isolated for almost his entire life, he has no son. Therefore, they will cease to exist.\nD All Conrad needs to do to find Martin, is to follow the cousins back in time.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,052
|
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>:\nBodyguard Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] When overwhelming danger is constantly present,of course a man is entitled to have a bodyguard. The annoyance was that he had to do it himself ... and his body would not cooperate! humans present were resentful, for he handled himself consciously and to anyone. Even the girl with him was growing restless, for she was almost ordinary-looking. As for the extraterrestrials—it was a free bar—they were merely hastily supplied by the management. And that, coming on top of Gabriel Lockard's spectacular appearance, Suddenly a restraining hand was laid upon his arm. \"Don't do that,\" the not pleased with what they saw. \"Watch yourself, colleague,\" he warned reserving only a sum of money. After setting the locker to respond to bodyguard But to each of these questions the nondescript man shook his head. \"Games?\" the driver finally asked, although he could guess what was wanted by then. \"Dice...? Roulette...? Farjeen?\" \"Is there a good zarquil game in town?\" \"I can't contact your attitude,\" the passenger said with a thin smile. \"Bet you've never tried the game yourself. Each time it happens, there's a ... well, there's no experience to match it at a anybody with any legitimate feelings hates 'em.\" \"Of course. You'll need plenty of foliage, though.\" \"I have sufficient funds. I also have a gun.\" It was a dark and rainy night in early fall. Gabe Lockard was in no condition to drive the helicar. However, he was stubborn. \"Let me take the controls, honey,\" the light-haired girl urged, but he shook his handsome head. at all. Only when she started to struggle out by herself did he seem to a little, but not enough. He sat up. \"Guess I'm not hurt or you'd have thrown me back in.\" \"And that's no joke,\" the fat man agreed. Otherwise, darkness surrounded the three of them. the poor fellow went bankrupt a couple of weeks When he was sure that his charge was safely tucked in for the night, driver to take him to the nearest zarquil game. The driver accepted the one zarquil game to another, loving the thrill of the sport, if you Perhaps—and this was the most likely hypothesis—he just didn't care. Zarquil was extremely illegal, of course—so much so that there were zarquil than to most of the other activities to which it was commonly nature—in which victim had to be considered as guilty as perpetrator otherwise the whole legal structure of society would collapse. Playing the game was fabulously expensive it had to be to make it profitable for the Vinzz to run it. Those odd creatures from Altair's zarquil was the equivalent of the terrestrial game musical chairs. When the zarquil operators were apprehended, which was not frequent—as punishment had become obsolete on Terra, which very possibly saved the terrestrials embarrassment, for it was not certain that their weapons could kill the Vinzz ... or whether, in fact, the Vinzz merely expired after a period of years out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, because trade was more profitable than war, there had always been peace between Vinau and Terra, and, for that reason, Terra could not bar the entrance which the zarquil games were usually found, for the Vinzz attempted to conduct their operations with as much unobtrusiveness as was possible. the trouble in these smaller towns—you ran greater risks of getting involved in games where the players had not been carefully screened. The Vinoz games were usually clean, because that paid off better, but, when profits were lacking, the Vinzz were capable of sliding off into everybody else far too well. heli-driver and entered the zarquil house. \"One?\" the small green \"One,\" the fat man answered. Gabriel Lockard's form, appropriately outstretched in the gutter. \"Only weighted out,\" he muttered, \"he'll be all right. Whatever possessed you two to come out to a place like this?\" must them.\" \"Then what they say about the zarquil games is true? There are people who go around changing their bodies like—like hats?\" Automatically she reached to adjust the expensive bit of blue synthetic on her moon-pale Why! included in its scope. \"Do you want to keep him from recognizing you is that it?\" \"He won't tell me for a zarquil game. It would be one way of escaping Gabriel, but not, her body was much too good a one to risk so casually. barren solar system, with her unconscious husband and a strange man who them would stay.... him for an eternity and he would never have been able to pick me out risk of getting a bad one?\" \"This isn't a good body,\" he said. \"It's diseased. Sure, nobody's supposed to play the game who hasn't passed a thorough medical examination. But in the places to which your husband has been leading me, they're often not too particular, as long as the player has plenty of foliage.\" \"How—long will it last you?\" except for the slight dampening of the sibilants, \"but I'm afraid you cannot play.\" \"Why not?\" The emaciated young man began to put on his clothes. \"You know why. Your body is worthless. And this is a reputable house.\" shrugged. \"I'll pay you twice the regular fee.\" The green one shook his head. \"Regrettably, I do mean what I say. This game is really clean.\" \"In a town like this?\" \"That is the reason we can afford to be honest.\" The Vinzz' tendrils with him. hazards of the game he might, impossible though it now seemed, some day win another body that approached perfection as nearly as his original casing had? The Vinzz had been locking antennae with another of his kind. Now they detached, and the first approached the man once more. \"There is, as it happens, a body available for a private game,\" he lisped. \"No questions to be asked or answered. All I can tell you is that it is in good health.\" The man hesitated. \"But unable to pass the screening?\" he murmured aloud. \"A criminal then.\" \"Of course,\" the Vinzz said primly. His kind did have certain ultimate standards to which they adhered rigidly, and one of those was the curious tabu against mixed games, strictly enforced even though it kept them from tapping a vast source of potential players. There had been proved that an alien life-form had \"desecrated\" a human body, Earthmen would clamor for war ... for on this planet humanity held its self-bestowed purity of birthright dear—and the Vinzz, despite being unquestionably the stronger, were pragmatic pacifists. It had \"Don't beat 'em cheat 'em.\" \"It would have to be something pretty nuclear for the other guy to take such a risk.\" The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully. \"How much?\" \"Thirty thousand credits.\" \"Why, that's three times the usual rate!\" \"The other will pay five times the usual rate.\" \"Oh, all right,\" the delicate young man gave in. It was a terrific risk he was agreeing to take, because, if the other was a criminal, he police had been ordered to burn on sight. The abolishing of capital punishment could not abolish the necessity for self-defense, and the rude health, was not a very comfortable fit. I can do a lot with a hulk like this. And maybe I'm cleverer than the original owner I'll be able to get away with it. IV whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn't want to Gabe, why don't you...?\" once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go \"Oh, yes, I can,\" she said incautiously. \"You must have had a body to match your character. Pity you could only change one.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy must only the healthy play zarquil?\n\n<options>:\nA Only healthy bodies can be accepted in the games.\nB The games are dangerous and only those in the best health can survive.\nC Health is a form of wealth in the game of zarquil.\nD There are no health restrictions on the game.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
497
|
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>:\nHuman Clones: Why Not? Start 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. 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 ! Clones already exist. About one in every 1,000 births results in a pair of babies with the same DNA. We know them as identical twins. Scientific studies on such twins--reared together or apart--show that they share many characteristics. Just how many they share is a contentious topic in human biology. But genetic determinism is largely irrelevant to the cloning issue. Despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins--or other clones--have in common, they are different people in the most fundamental sense . They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. Should you be confused on this point, just ask a twin. Suppose that Unsolved Mysteries called you with news of a long-lost identical twin. Would that suddenly make you less of a person, less of an individual? It is hard to see how. So, why would a clone be different? Your clone would be raised in a different era by different people--like the lost identical twin, only younger than you. A person's basic humanity is not governed by how he or she came into this world, or whether somebody else happens to have the same DNA. One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. Excuse me, but who is going to raise such an army (\"raise\" in the sense used by parents)? Clones start out life as babies . Armies are far easier to raise the old fashioned way--by recruiting or drafting naive young adults. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori has worked well enough to send countless young men to their deaths through the ages. Why mess with success? Remember that cloning is not the same as genetic engineering. We don't get to make superman--we have to find him first. Maybe we could clone the superwarrior from Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Their bravery might--or might not--be genetically determined. But, suppose that it is. You might end up with such a brave battalion of heroes that when a grenade lands in their midst, there is a competition to see who gets to jump on it to save the others. Admirable perhaps, but not necessarily the way to win a war. And what about the supply sergeants? The army has a lot more of them than heroes. You could try to breed an expert for every job, including the petty bureaucrats, but what's the point? There's not exactly a shortage of them. 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.\n\n<question>:\nWho does the author believe would be most upsetting possibity to clone themselves?\n\n<options>:\nA The rich with big egos\nB The normal men\nC The elderly who wanted to cheat death\nD The normal women\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,288
|
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>:\nHumphrey Fownes' preoccupation finally came to an end when he was one The pockets of Mr. Humphrey Fownes were being picked outrageously. that for the moment he didn't give a thought to what might be causing But he was thinking about weather, which was an unusual subject to begin with for a person living in a domed city. He was thinking so deeply about it that it never occurred to him that entirely too many people were bumping into him. He was thinking about Optimum Dome Conditions (a crisp 59 degrees, a mildly dessicated 47%) when a bogus postman, who pretended to be reading a postal card, jostled him. In the distance like thunder, Humphrey Fownes suddenly saw it all very clearly. fragments showering harmlessly on the city from time to time. Dome weevils, their metal arms reaching out with molten glass, roamed the huge casserole, ceaselessly patching and repairing. Humphrey Fownes strode through the puffs of falling glass still from the blackness of the living room. \"These are not Optimum Dome Conditions!\" the voice wailed. \"The temperature is not Sitting behind the wheel of the orange car, he watched Humphrey Fownes \"I told him not to touch that wheel! Lanfierre. He's in the upstairs Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. It couldn't be tolerated within the confines of a dome. Conformity had become more than a social force it was a physical necessity. And, after years of working at it, bedroom!\" Fownes took the wheel. It was off a 1995 Studebaker. \"I'm not sure what's going to come of this,\" he said to Lanfierre with an astonishing amount of objectivity, \"but the entire dome air supply is now coming through my bedroom.\" The wind screamed. Lanfierre was almost proud of Humphrey Fownes. genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own whole place is going to slide off its foundation and go sailing down Recruiting Lieutenant MacBride from behind his sofa, the men carefully edged out of the house and forced the front door shut. The wind died. The fog dispersed. They stood dripping in the Optimum Dome Conditions of the bright avenue. \"I never figured on this the avenue.\" ,\" Lanfierre murmured. \"I knew that much.\" out of the master bedroom, spewing shorts and socks and cases every which way. \" Humphrey Fownes took out the dust jacket he'd found in the library. He The twister roared and moved out of the bedroom, out over the rear of the house toward the side of the dome. \"It says here,\" Fownes shouted over the roaring, \"that Dorothy traveled from Kansas to Oz in a twister and that ... and that Oz is a wonderful and mysterious land beyond the all close at the same time. You'll be watching and all of a sudden every confines of everyday living .\" there's a whole crowd of people in there waiting for a signal—as if they all had something important to say but had to close the windows first so no one could hear. Why else close the windows in a domed city? mountainous puffs of glass as he went. \"Mrs. Deshazaway!\" he shouted. \"Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Deshazaway!\" The dome weevils were going berserk trying to keep up with the precipitation. They whirred back and forth at frightful speed, then, emptied of molten glass, rushed to the Trough which they quickly And then as soon as the place is buttoned up they all explode into emptied and then rushed about empty-handed. \"Yoo-hoo!\" he yelled, running. The artificial sun vanished behind the mushrooming twister. Optimum temperature collapsed. \"Mrs. Deshazaway! of his was also responsible for the dancing house—he simply hadn't noticed. There was a certain amount of vibration, of course. He had a bootleg pipe connected into the dome blower system, and the high-pressure air caused some buffeting against the thin walls of the house. At least, he called it buffeting he'd never thought to watch draw-pull. Every window slammed shut. \"Tight as a kite,\" he thought, satisfied. He continued on toward the closet at the foot of the stairs and then stopped again. Was that right? No, watched as they spun and flashed in the darkness, and then set them for seven o'clock in the evening, April seventh, any year. Outside, the domed city vanished. It was replaced by an illusion. Or, as Fownes hoped it might appear, the illusion of the domed city vanished and was replaced by a more satisfactory, and, for his specific purpose, more functional, illusion. He went up the stairs to the bedroom closet and tried the rain-maker, thinking roguishly: Thou shalt not inundate. to wall pipes and wall pipes connected to cellar pipes, and they made one gigantic skeleton that began to rattle its bones and dance as high-pressure air from the dome blower rushed in, slowly opening the Studebaker valve wider and wider.... The neon roses thrashed about, extinguishing each other. The red sun fell on the garden and rolled ponderously along, crooning When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day worse for him.\" \"I don't seem to mind the air.\" She threw up her hands. \"You'd be the worst of the lot!\" She left the table, rustling and tinkling about the room. \"I can just hear them. Try particularly virulent strain of pneumococcus under his microscope. they'll find out? I \"But my dear Mr. Fownes,\" she said, leaning across the table. \"We're lost, you and I.\" \"Not if we could leave the dome,\" Fownes said quietly. \"That's impossible! How?\" In no hurry, now that he had the widow's complete attention, Fownes supposed to be the month of brides, of marrying. June also lies beyond the dome.\" \"I see.\" \" \" Mrs. Deshazaway rose, paced slowly to the window and then came back to the table, standing directly over Fownes. \"If you can get us outside the dome,\" she said, \"out where a man stays warm long enough When Humphrey Fownes stepped out of the widow's house, there was a wistful desire to get out of the car and walk along with the man. It would be such a \"I'd say,\" Humphrey Fownes said, \"that he ... that he recommended it \"Where did the old society fail?\" the leader was demanding of them. He stood in the center of the room, leaning on a heavy knobbed cane. He glanced around at the group almost complacently, and waited as Humphrey Fownes squeezed into an empty chair. \"We live in a dome,\" the leader said, \"for lack of something. An invention! What is the one thing that the great technological societies before ours could not invent, obtained the insight. \"If a sound foreign policy can't be created the only alternative is not to have any foreign policy at all. Thus the movement into domes began— by common consent of the governments . This is known as self-containment.\" Dialectically out in left field, Humphrey Fownes waited for a lull in the ensuing discussion and then politely inquired how it might be arranged for him to get out. \"Out?\" the leader said, frowning. \"Out? Out where?\" \"Outside the dome.\" \"Oh. All in good time, my friend. One day we shall all pick up and leave.\" now .\" \"Nonsense. Ridiculous! You have to be prepared for the Open Country. You can't just up and leave, it would be suicide, Fownes. And dialectically very poor.\" \"Then you life in the Open Country. Food, clothing, a weapon perhaps? What else? Have I left anything out?\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat wouldn't be something Humphrey would want from his life?\n\n<options>:\nA to experience real weather\nB a family\nC a promotion from his job\nD to escape the dome\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,826
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nhimself from his seat and hurled himself backward from the table with an incoherent cry. He He did not unbuckle his safety belt—he rose and it snapped like a string. JUPITER There was only one holding onto the bunk with one section of Jupiter's View, the crewman had reached Asrange and pulled him off. When they had Asrange in had insisted. A woman could not possibly she had no one on Ganymede could have broken your skull! Or a couple of ribs, at the very least.” “I couldn't,” said Quest miserably, There were only two other 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, can't do anything.” and then crying that he had injured his hand on the bar. “But he said Dr. Mansard was his father,” protested Trella. “Robots and androids frequently Evading her attempts to stay artificial. Do you know how Mansard died?” “The oxygen equipment failed, Quest said.” went. She discovered that two “Yes. Do you know when?” she cried, tears in her eyes. Quest of Jupiter, if he's human?” that would have felled a steer, and Kregg roared in pain, grabbing “Everything about you … your his injured fist. lived in the poisonous atmosphere build, suited for Jupiter's gravity …your strength … the smashed on Kregg's head, splashing the floor with liquor, and Kregg sank stunned to his and it had been developed by your strength … the her and ran for the door. fact that you were able to live had not told Quest of her mission to Ganymede. He thought he was Dr. Mansard's son, but an android had no legal right of inheritance from his owner. She Thus she did not, as she had “Yes. I'm afraid it's your decision after she had completed her assignment. was born and brought up there, had told her he could not love her. Her best course was to try to forget him. if they did!” she snapped. “But I'm desperate. You can carry him to the Stellar Hotel for me.” The gravity of Ganymede was hardly more than that of Earth's moon, but the way the man The transparent dome of Jupiter's 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.” 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 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 ship was drawn into Jupiter and lost.” “It was drawn into Jupiter, on Jupiter.” “He came back to Earth with but he landed it successfully,” said Quest. “He and my mother lived on Jupiter until the oxygen as Dr. Mansard's heir.” equipment wore out at last. I you, eh?” asked Blessing intently. he's an android and claim ownership and I was finally able to build a small rocket with a powerful enough drive to clear the Trella planned to spend a few days resting in her employer's her duties as his confidential step, seeming to deliberately 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, “Why all the protection?” she looking him over coolly. eh? And if he is—what if old Mansard didn't build in the prohibition against harming humans that's required by law? Blessing feared Dr. Eriklund Mansard … or his heir … or his mechanical servant. She was sure that Blessing a cab to deliver the unconscious Motwick to his home. She and to assign her to take the Mansard papers to the New York laboratory. Quest came the day before she was scheduled to leave. against telling him that the come to the Jupiter system was assignment on which she had For some reason she decided Earth. Motwick was an irresponsible to gather his own father's notebooks and take them back to briefly on Earth, and Trella was for the remaining three weeks before the spaceship blasted off. She found herself glad to dispense with his company enjoying the steadier companionship crash outside the room as the front door splintered. There He and his bodyguards ran leaped into one of the cars and started the engine. The door from the house shattered and Quest burst through. she. She was particularly unhappy The ship that they boarded on Moon Nine was one of the newer Earth, but it would still require such force that they skidded across the floor and lay in an unconscious heap against the fifty-four days to make the trip. guards aside with one hand with it was wrenched from her hand as Blessing stepped on the accelerator and it leaped into the he slammed down the accelerator and twisted the wheel hard. The car whipped into the street, careened, and rolled over and over, bringing up against a tree on the other side in a twisted tangle of wreckage. great Jupiter in an opening arc and plummeted ever more swiftly toward the tight circles of the inner planets. There were four crew members and three passengers aboard the ship's tiny personnel was an unconscious drive in me that wouldn't release me until the task was finished. Ganymede to pick up some important papers and take them 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 Mansard's son knowing about it. could not object to Dr. before she was born, and she did not know what Dom Blessing's relation to Dr. Mansard All these things had happened successfully. I was born there, Mansard had invented the surgiscope. This was an instrument with was unable to fight any other had been, but it must have been very close. She knew that Dr. Jupiter-strong muscles, Quest took her in his arms. delicate operations could be performed at the cellular level. Dr. Mansard and his wife had disappeared into the turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter just after in Jupiter's atmosphere after the oxygen equipment failed. I know you think Dr. Mansard was your father, but androids his invention of the surgiscope, Through all these years since Dr. Mansard's disappearance, 55 Blessing had been searching the Jovian moons for a second, hidden laboratory of Dr. Mansard. up on Jupiter, and he operated When it was found at last, he back to Earth. She was tempted of Jupiter … even to sent Trella, his most trusted on the genes before I was born. He altered my inherited characteristics Mansard lived, and would see that he received his rightful share of the inheritance. Because happy to learn that a son of Dr. he and my mother blasted off for but she decided against my boyhood on Jupiter very Blessing can't squirted coffee on him. It was one of those accidents that can occur easily in space. The passengers and the two crewmen on that particular waking shift (including Jakdane) and he conditioned me to come pressed it before he got it to his lips. The coffee squirted all over in distress. impossible, he had unbuckled\n\n<question>:\nWhy couldn't Dr. Mansard and his wife leave Jupiter?\n\n<options>:\nA A human would not survive the force of acceleration that would be needed to break free of Jupiter's gravity.\nB Dr. Mansard and his wife ran out of oxygen before they could complete the repairs to their ship.\nC Dr. Mansard and his wife were torn apart by gravitational forces when they tried to leave Jupiter.\nD Dr. Mansard and his wife were unable to repair their ship after crash landing on Jupiter.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,197
|
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>:\ningredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets. \"Where is he?\" She cocked her head in mock suspicion. \"Somewhere between Mercury and Pluto. He's building a new base for us—and a home for me. When his ship returns, I'll be going to him.\" \"Why aren't you with him now?\" \"He said unexplored space is no place for a woman. So I've been Martians or Venusians. Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it was the dead man's hand. He told her the tales he'd heard. She nodded. \"There are quite a few of us now—about a thousand—and a dozen ships. Our base used to be here on Venus, down toward the Pole. The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago after we got pushed off Mars. We lost a few men in the construction, but with almost every advance in space, someone dies.\" \"Venus is getting too civilized. We're moving out and this dome is only a temporary base when we have cases like yours. The new base—I might as well tell you it's going to be an asteroid. I won't say which one.\" \"Don't get the idea that we're outlaws. Sure, about half our group is grizzled old uranium prospector and he isn't like that, either.\" She lit a cigarette. \"Anyway, the wanted ones stay out beyond the frontiers. Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth—not even to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. They know scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. Nobody really cares whether it comes from the asteroids or Hades. If we want to risk our lives mining it, that's our business.\" There probably would be a crackdown.\" Ben scowled. \"What happens if there is a crackdown? And what will you do when Space Corps ships officially reach the asteroids? They can't ignore you then.\" \"Then we move on. We dream up new gimmicks for our crates and take them to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. In time, maybe, we'll be pushed out of the System itself. Maybe it won't be the white-suited boys who'll make that first hop to the stars. It could be us, you know—if we live long enough. But that Asteroid Belt is murder. You can't follow the text-book rules of astrogation out there. You make up your own.\" mankind would never have broken away from the planet that held it prisoner for half a million years. Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead, would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago. What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world? about forty and he hated spacemen. His body was buried now—probably in the silent gray wastes outside Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a part of Ben as sight in his eyes. You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a memory that has burned into your mind. It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had \"The name's Cobb.\" The man hiccoughed. \"Spacemen in their white monkey Odyssey's junior astrogation officer. He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe. the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his collection of astronomy and rocketry books. At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space. And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the Odyssey was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps beyond. Cobb was persistent: \"Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth. What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?\" The guy's drunk , Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three above him through Luna City's transparent dome. He was sorry he'd hit Cobb, of course. He was not sorry he'd run. Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision. You can do two things You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do. That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary manslaughter. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. And then you'd be free. But you'd be through with rockets and space. They don't want new men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class get the rest of the thrill of conquering space through video and by peeking through electric fences of spaceports. Or— There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who operated from the Solar System's frontiers. The spacemen weren't outlaws. They were misfits, rejectees from the clearing houses on Earth. And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. Their headquarters was Venus. Their leader—a subject of popular and fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines—was rumored to be a You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from Earth. After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant second, to destroy a man's life and his dream? flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new personnel even more so. Ben Curtis made it to Venus. There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him \" Ai-yee , I go. You keep listen to good Martian music.\" The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised. A woman screamed. The music ceased. The Martian orchestra slunk with feline stealth to a rear exit. Only the giant Venusians remained undisturbed. They stood unmoving, their staring eyes shifting lazily in Ben's direction. Or would the exits be guarded? He didn't hear the answer or anything else. Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to consciousness was an intangible evolution from a world of black \"Where are we?\" he asked. \"Venus.\" \"We're not in Hoover City?\" \"Then how did you get me here? How did we escape from the Inn?\" \"How did you learn my name? I destroyed all my papers—\" \"I know that you're twenty-four. Born July 10, 1971. Orphaned at four, you attended Boys Town in the Catskills till you were 19. You graduated from the Academy at White Sands last June with a major in Astrogation. Your rating for the five-year period was 3.8—the second highest in a class of fifty-seven. Your only low mark in the five years was a 3.2 in History of Martian Civilization. Want me to go on?\" Odyssey . You did well on your flight from Roswell to Luna City. In a barroom escape. A reward of 5,000 credits has been offered for your capture. You came to Hoover City in the hope of finding a renegade group of spacemen who operate beyond Mars. You were looking for them in the\n\n<question>:\nWhere was the rumored headquarters for the group of renegade spacemen?\n\n<options>:\nA Venus\nB Mars\nC Earth\nD exiled in the Solar System\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
864
|
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 an outrage,\" said Koltan of the House of Masur, \"that the Earthmen land among the Thorabians!\" Zotul, youngest of the Masur brothers, stirred uneasily. Personally, he was in favor of the coming of the Earthmen to the world of Zur. nor true Earthmen, but a mixture of both.\" Zotul sat in silent thought. \"But you did not have to buy us out. You had the power to conquer us, even to destroy us. The whole planet could the rank of age, Zotul, who was responsible for affairs of design. \"Behold, my sons,\" said Kalrab, stroking his scanty beard. \"What are these Earthmen to worry about? Remember the clay. It is our strength and our fortune. It is the muscle and bone of our trade. Earthmen may 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.\" \"The Thorabians will lick up the gravy,\" said Singula, whose mind ran rather to matters of financial aspect, \"and leave us the grease.\" By this, he seemed to imply that the Thorabians would rob the Earthmen, \"Doubtless,\" said Zotul unexpectedly, for the youngest at a conference was expected to keep his mouth shut and applaud the decisions of his elders, \"the Earthmen used all the metal on their planet in building that ship. We cannot possibly bilk them of it it is their only means Zotul bowed his head meekly, but he burned with resentment. \"Listen to the boy,\" said the aged father. \"There is more wisdom in his head than in all the rest of you. Forget the Earthmen and think only of the clay.\" Zotul did not appreciate his father's approval, for it only earned him did. Still smarting, Zotul went back to his designing quarters and thought 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 figure this problem out, he might rise somewhat in the estimation of his brothers. That wouldn't take him out of the rank of scapegoat, of too quickly learned the tongue of the aliens hence these left much to be desired in the way of clarity, though their sincerity was evident. The Earthmen were going to do great things for the whole world of Zur. It required but the cooperation—an excellent word, that—of all effect, was what the Earthmen had to say. Zotul felt greatly cheered, for it refuted the attitude of his brothers without earning him a whaling for it. none had succeeded in chiseling them out of it, if, indeed, any had tried. The anti-Earthmen Faction—in any culture complex, there is always an \"anti\" faction to protest any movement of endeavor—crowed practically acrawl with Earthmen. Immediately, the Earthmen established what they called say!\" The pretty young wife laughed at him. \"Up to your ears in clay, no wonder you hear nothing of news! The pot is very cheap. The Earthmen \"What good is it?\" asked Zotul, interested. \"How will it hold heat, being so light?\" \"The Earthmen don't cook as we do,\" she explained patiently. \"There is will have to produce the new stove because all the housewives are buying these pots and there will be a big demand for it. The Earthman \"He did, did he? These pots are only a fad. You will soon enough go back to cooking with your old ones.\" \"The Earthman took them in trade—one reason why the new ones are so \"Orders already are pouring in like mad,\" he said the next day. \"It was wise of you to foresee it and have the design ready. Already, I am sorry for thinking as I did about the Earthmen. They really intend to do well by us.\" language—and learned how to read and write. The remainder of the brothers Masur, on the other hand, preferred to remain in ignorance. Moreover, the Earthmen brought miles of copper wire—more than enough in value to buy out the governorship of any country on Zur—and set up telegraph lines from country to country and continent to continent. of the House of Masur continued to look up. \"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.\" their appearance on Zur. It became very stylish to eat with the newfangled paraphernalia ... and very cheap, too, because for everything they sold, the Earthmen always took the old ware in trade. What they did with the stuff had been hard to believe at first. They destroyed it, which proved how valueless it really was. senile stupor for the occasion, on the off chance that the old man might still have a little wit left that could be helpful. \"Note,\" Koltan announced in a shaky voice, \"that the Earthmen undermine nowhere with their wrangle, he cleared his throat and spoke up. \"My sons, you forget it is not the Earthmen themselves at the bottom of your trouble, but the things 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 intrigued by these advertisements, as they are called, and flock to from the House of Masur all available space was occupied by the advertisements of the Earthmen. In their dozenth conference since that first and fateful one, the \"Some new devilment of the Earthmen, you can be sure,\" said Koltan blackly. In fact, the Earthmen were building an assembly plant for radio Earthmen are taking care of that.\" At any rate, the brothers Masur were still able to console themselves Broderick told him. \"It may seem high,\" said the Earthman, \"but remember that Earth is \"Impossible,\" said Zotul drably. \"Not I and all my brothers together have so much money any more.\" \"You don't know us of Earth very well yet, but you will. I offer you company.\" Zotul, anxious to possess the treasures promised by the Earthman, won over his brothers. They signed with marks and gave up a quarter interest in the Pottery of Masur. They rolled in the luxuries of Earth. These, who had never known debt before, were in it up to their ears. Earthmen took a fourth of them as their share in the industry. For a year, the brothers drove their shiny new cars about on the The Pottery of Masur had no more contracts. Business languished. The 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 unswerving policy, greater and greater efficiency was demanded. Broderick was very sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do. The pottery income dropped to an impossible low, no matter how Zotul designed and the brothers produced. Their figurines and religious ikons were a drug on the market. The Earthmen made them of plastic and sold them for less. was remarkable that he paid so little attention, for the female terrestrials were picked for physical assets that made Zurian men covetous and Zurian women envious. Zotul stared blankly. This was not the governor. This was Broderick, the Earthman. Broderick nodded agreeably. \"I am the governor and I am well acquainted with your case, Mr. Masur. Shall we talk it over? Please sit down.\" \"I don't understand. The Earthmen....\" Zotul paused, coloring. \"We are not pay for the roads, the telegraphs, the civic improvements, we took them over, just as we are taking you over.\" \"You mean,\" exclaimed Zotul, aghast, \"that you Earthmen own everything on Zur?\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat changes Koltan's mind about Earthmen, and ultimately condemns the Masur House to ruin?\n\n<options>:\nA He sees potential for the House of Masur to profit off of the Earthmen's inventions\nB He predicts that the Earthmen will not be able to withstand Zurian conditions for long, and that they will soon depart\nC He believes he can feign sincerity in order to steal their metal and other goods\nD He thinks that Earthmen are intellectually inferior and that he can manipulate them to do his bidding\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
177
|
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>:\ncenturies ... 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?\" rush of anxiety. \"No.\" I shouted a protest against the strangeness of the room. I looked to the right, my eyes following the curving ceiling that started at the cot. The curve met another straight bulkhead on the left. I was in a small room, gray in color, like dull metal. Overhead a bright light burned into my vision. I wondered where in the universe I was. \"Your name is David Corbin. If you understand, press button A on your right.\" I stared at the speaker in the wall. The mesh-covered hole and the two long. I pushed away from the warm metal and the floor moved up to meet me. \"If you understand, press button A on your right.\" What should I understand? That I was floating in a room that had a curved wall ... that nothing was right in this hostile room? When I reached the cot I held it and drew myself down. I glanced at the planes of the room, trying to place it with other rooms I could see in my mind. Gray walls with a crazy curved ceiling ... a door to my left that appeared to be air tight. \"Your name is David Corbin.\" was naked except for heavy shorts, and there was no clue to my name in the pockets. The room was warm and the air I had been breathing was motion and stopped against a door at the end. Behind me I could see the opened door I had left, and the thought of that questioning voice made me want to move. I swung the door open, catching a glimpse of a room crowded with equipment and.... I will always remember the scream of terror, the paralyzing fright of press against the glass, blobs of fire against a black curtain burning into my eyes and brain. It was space. I looked out at deep space, star systems in clusters. I shut my eyes. When I looked again I knew where I was. Why the little room had been shaped like quarter round. Why I drifted weightlessly. Why I was.... David Corbin. \"Your name is David Corbin. If you understand, press button A on your Pain burned along my leg but I couldn't stop. In the first panic of waking up in strangeness I had missed the other doors in the passage. The first swung back to reveal a deep closet holding five bulky suits. The second room was like my own. A dark haired, deep chested man lay on 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. I couldn't remember his face. The next room held another man. He was young and wiry, like an athlete cast in marble, dark haired and big jawed. A glassy eye stared up when others. 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 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. room was filled with equipment that formed a room out of the bordered area I stood in. I sat in the deep chair facing the panel of dials and thought of time again. I was supposed to act according to ... plan. Did that mean ... in time ... in time. I went back down the passageway. The fourth small room was the same. Except for the woman. She lay on a cot, young and beautiful, even in the death-like immobility I had come to accept. Her beauty was graceful lines of face and her figure—smooth tapering legs, soft curves that were carved out of flesh colored stone. Yet not stone. I held her small hand, then put it back on the cot. Her attire was brief like the rest of us, shorts and a man's shirt. Golden hair curled up around her lovely face. I wondered if she would ever smile or move that graceful head. I rolled back her eyelid and looked at a deep blue eye that stared back in glassy surprise. Four people in all, depending on a blind helpless fool who didn't know their names or the reason for that dependence. I sat beside her on the cot until I could stand it no longer. the engine or engines took up half the ship, cut off from the forward half by the instrument studded shield. I retraced my steps and took a rough estimate of size. The ship, as I called it, was at least four hundred feet long, fifty feet in diameter on the inside. The silence was a force in itself, pressing down from the metal walls, driving me back to the comforting smallness of the room where I had been reborn. I laughed bitterly, thinking about the aptness of that. I had literally been reborn in this room, equipped with half ideas, and Minutes later I realized the apparatus by the cot was different. It was the same type of black box, but out from it was a metal arm, bent in the room, as I pictured the action of the extended arm. I lost my sudden elation in the cabin where the girl lay. The box behind her head was completely closed, and it didn't yield to the pressure I applied. 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 I went back to the cabin where the powerful man lay. I had to risk to sleep,\" he finished. I held his hard arm. \"What else? How much do you remember?\" \"I'm all right,\" he answered. \"There aren't supposed to be any effects slowly, edging around towards the door. I didn't want to fight him. I wanted him to understand. \"Look, I'm in trouble. Nothing fits, except my name.\" 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.\" frightened by the lack of clothing we wore, by the bleak room. Her eyes circled the room. \"I'm afraid,\" she cried. I held her and she shook uncontrollably. \"What's happened to me?\" she asked. The dark haired man came into the room, silent and watchful. My \"I can't remember when,\" I said. I held the trembling girl against me, shaking my head. He glanced at the girl. \"If the calculations are right it was more than a hundred years ago.\" We assembled in the control room for a council. We were all a little better for being together. John Croft named the others for me. I I indicated the ship. \"Where in creation are we going?\" you can picture it, but we're going about one hundred thousand miles an hour.\" \"Through space?\" \"Yes.\" \"Yes. That's why we can cross space to a near star.\" \"How long ago was it?\" \"It was set at about a hundred years, sir. Doesn't that fit at all?\" \"I can't believe it's possible.\" 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 control room and watched John at the panel. \"I wish I knew what you were doing,\" I said savagely. \"Give it time.\" \"We can't spare any, can we?\" I asked. \"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 \"How old are you, John?\" \"Twenty-eight.\" \"What about me?\" room. \"Turn the ship. There's something dead ahead.\" 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\n\n<question>:\nWhere was David?\n\n<options>:\nA Dead\nB On Earth\nC A weightless spaceship\nD A small room\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
175
|
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>:\nhush, and the ship jarred slightly as a thunderbolt slammed vengefully into its field. \"Suppose we settle this argument about humanity,\" said Knof Llud Quest Quest III Quest III Quest Quest III's Quest voices, in tones of mingled eagerness and apprehension, of what might lie at the long journey's end. For the Quest III Quest III's but as the immense stores were spent and the holds became radioactively safe, the crew had spread identified it—no more.\" But this time the clamor was not to be settled. People pressed round were forgotten and exaltation prevailed. Knof Llud smiled wryly. The rest of the little speech he had been about to make didn't matter anyway, and it might have spoiled this moment. —and nothing will be the same. It won't be the same world we left, the world we knew and fitted in....\" The captain put an arm round her with comforting pressure. \"Don't worry. Things may have changed—but we'll manage.\" But his face had hardened against registering the gnawing of that same doubtful fear within him. He let his arm fall. \"I'd better get up to the bridge. There's a new course to be set now—for Earth.\" He left her and began to climb the stairway again. Someone switched already set up on the calculator a course that would carry them to Earth. Llud nodded curt approval, remarking, \"Probably we'll be intercepted Llud shook his head slowly. \"Who knows? We don't know whether any of the other Quests returned successful, or if they returned at all. And we don't know what changes have taken place on Earth. It's possible—not likely, though—that something has happened to break civilization's continuity to the point where our expedition has been forgotten altogether.\" Lesra and the children—but somehow he didn't want to do that either. He felt empty, drained—like his ship. As the Quest III's strength had gone out of him. Now the last fuel compartment was almost empty and Captain Knof Llud felt tired and old. Perhaps, he thought, he was feeling the weight of his nine hundred Quest III Quest have been ringing in his ears. He rose, slipped the record back in its niche and picked out another, later, one. \"We face the unpleasant realization that what was feared is probably true—that worlds such as the Sun's are a rare accident, and that we may complete our search without finding even one new Earth. \"It makes no difference, of course we cannot betray the plan.... This may be man's last chance of escaping his pitiful limitation to one world in all the Universe. Certainly the building of this ship Quests . Perhaps our effort will prove as futile as pyramid-building, less practical than orgies of slaughter to reduce pressure.... In any case, it would be impossible to transport very many people to other stars its decline with the knowledge that its race went onward and upward, expanding limitlessly into the Universe.... \"Hopeless, unless we find planets!\" was from the time when he had grown philosophical after the first disappointments. He frowned thoughtfully, choosing one more spool that was only four Quest III Quest III Quests other expeditions failed also—will have reached a dangerously unstable phase, and before we can get back it may have collapsed completely from overpopulation. \"Why go back, then with the news of our failure? Why not forget about Earth and go on to Omega Centauri? What use is quixotic loyalty to a decree five thousand years old, whose makers are dead and which may be forgotten back there? \"Would the crew be willing? I don't know—some of them still show signs of homesickness, though they know with their minds that everything that was once 'home' has probably been swept away.... \"It doesn't matter. Today I gave orders to swing the ship.\" Of all the western stars, until I die. Llud sighed. He still couldn't say just why he had given the order to turn back. The stars had claimed his heart—but he was still a part of Quest III's then felt a curious detached relief at the knowledge that after all these years he could still respond quickly and smoothly to a crisis. There was a moment's silence, and he heard the alarm start—three interstellar ship. Knowing that Gwar Den was still there, he said, \"Now—attacked by what?\" \"Ships,\" said Gwar Den helplessly. \"Five of them so far. No, there's a sixth now.\" Repeated blows quivered the Quest III's long enough to tell much.\" \"If they're that small,\" said Knof Llud deliberately, \"they can't carry anything heavy enough to hurt us. Hold to course. I'll be right up.\" \"Something's happened,\" he judged with deadly twelve-year-old seriousness and, without wasting time on questions, \"Can I go with you, Quest III Llud. \"Well?\" he snapped. \"What are they doing?\" Gwar Den spoke. \"There are thirteen of them out there now, sir, and they're all banging away at us.\" from the same position. Knof Jr. flattened himself against the metal wall and watched silently. His young face was less anxious than his elders' he had confidence in his father. \"If they had anything heavier,\" surmised the captain, \"they'd have unlimbered it by now. They're out to get us. But at this rate, they can't touch us as long as our power lasts—or until they bring up some bigger stuff.\" The mild shocks went on—whether from projectiles or energy-charges, Quest III's Quest III Quest III the watchers for the brief moment in which its very atoms were torn apart. Knof Jr. whooped ecstatically and then subsided warily, but no one was paying attention to him. The men on the Quest III's Quest III Quests conquer. It became evident, too, that the bombardment was being kept up by a constant arrival of fresh attackers, while others raced away into space, presumably returning to base to replenish their ammunition. That argued a planned and prepared interception with virulent hatred behind it. Elsuz Llug, the gravitic engineer, calculated dismally, \"At the rate we're having to shed energy, the fuel will be gone in six or eight hours.\" \"We'll have reached Earth before then,\" Gwar Den said hopefully. \"If they don't bring out the heavy artillery first.\" \"We're under the psychological disadvantage,\" said the captain, \"of not knowing why we're being attacked.\" Knof Jr. burst out, spluttering slightly with the violence of a thought too important to suppress, \"But we're under a ps-psychological advantage, too!\" hadn't made himself clear, \"In a fight, if a guy gets mad he starts swinging wild and then you nail him.\" Smiles splintered the ice of tension. Captain Llud said, \"Maybe you've got something there. They seem to be mad, all right. But we're not in a position to throw any punches.\" He turned back to the others. \"As I was going to say—I think we'd better try to parley with the enemy. At least we may find out who he is and why he's determined to smash us.\" Quest III multiplied demands. Those outside were squandering vastly greater amounts of energy in the effort to batter down its defenses, but converting that energy into harmless gravitic impulses was costing the Quest III nerves and muscles and will weakening along with the power-sinews of his ship. ,\" interrupted a harshly crackling voice with a strange accent, \" and pleading will do you no good. \" absurdly with the same words in his own voice on the still repeating tape. He snapped off the record last. The two other interstellar expeditions that went out have already returned and been destroyed, as you will soon be—the sooner, if you continue toward Earth.\" Quest\n\n<question>:\nWhy were three Quest ships built?\n\n<options>:\nA To have a better chance of success if any failed.\nB So each could travel for 20,000 years.\nC To transport more people to the new planet.\nD In case the others break down.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
89
|
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>:\nGRIFTERS' ASTEROID By H. L. GOLD Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought! could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a \"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who person with unusual patience.\" Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity, though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history of therapeutics.\" Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. \"That—that's robbery!\" the lanky man managed to get out in a thin quaver. The barkeeper shrugged. \"When there ain't many customers, you gotta make more on each one. Besides—\" \"Besides nothing!\" Joe roared, finding his voice again. \"You dirty crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—\" \"You dirty crook!\" Joe roared. \"Robbing honest spacemen!\" Harvey nudged him warningly. \"Easy, my boy, easy.\" He turned to the 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. \"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em,\" he said, unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's thirst.\" Johnson's response almost floored them. \"Who said anything about \"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?\" said Harvey as he and Joe \"What's this doing here?\" Harvey asked, puzzled. \"I thought Johnson had His mouth went wry. \"Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's conscience.\" Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City.\" Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair atmosphere. The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for.... \"Of course,\" replied Harvey calmly. \"Any fool knows the first symptoms of the disease that once scourged the universe.\" every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him out of here!\" his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe in tiny, uncontaminating gasps. \"It sells itself.\" \"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole \"Medicine,\" Harvey propounded, \"should taste like medicine.\" To Joe he 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 the same that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he possesses. We could not be content with less.\" Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively. \"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity. Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him. At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous figure to the zoo!\" Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried 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. chance of company. Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins, silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails, Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian viotars hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire.\" \"Think of a fast one fast,\" Joe agreed. \"You're right.\" \"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.\" fantastic, idiotic figure— three hundred and twenty-eight buckos !\" Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with \"restaurateur,\" pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to 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 the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the way you have—\" carelessness. \"Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway.\" \"That's right,\" Johnson came back emphatically. \"But what would your offer have been which I would have turned down?\" \"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?\" \"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to sell.\" \"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would tempt you!\" \"Nope. But how much did you say?\" \"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!\" it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money, you can buy this and that and this and that and—\" asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its worst and expects nothing better. \"We must not be selfish, my boy,\" Harvey said nobly. \"We have had our chance now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba political speech-makers.\" \"Do not jump to hasty conclusions,\" Harvey cautioned. \"Another word, and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had, with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor of this absolutely awe-inspiring device.\" He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an enormous fortune.\" turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole saying I'll buy, but what is it I'm turning down?\" a sensitive soul like his could stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to solve the mystery caused him to take his own life.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat can be determined as a similarity between Harvey, Joe, and Johnson?\n\n<options>:\nA They all have a tendency to want the best for one another to a personal fault.\nB They all have a tendency to think they are more advanced than one another\nC They all have a tendency to spend too much time at the bar where Johnson works\nD They all have a tendency to be greedy at any opportunity\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,214
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThey were mad, all right, and now Matilda wondered if, actually, Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] All she wanted was a mate and she had the gumption to go out and hunt one down. But that meant poaching in a strictly forbidden territory! Matilda would seek the happy medium. at which she would have scoffed ten or even five years ago. Matilda was This, in itself, was not unusual—but Matilda was so completely Matilda, you see, had patience. the night sky. Matilda gasped and ran into her car. She started the gears and pressed the accelerator to the floor, keeping it there all the way home. impatiently told her to go out and get dates. That particular night, Matilda pulled her battered old sedan into the Matilda smiled. \"It wouldn't have worked out, Ma. He was too darned Matilda admired her mother's use of the word osmosis, but she found nothing which was not objectionable about being unaware of the impact of love. She said good-night and went upstairs, climbed out of her light summer dress and took a cold shower. She began to hum to herself. She had not yet seen the pen pal section that magazine was somewhat highbrow and cosmopolitan, she could expect a gratifying selection of pen pals. She shut off the shower, brushed her teeth, gargled, patted herself dry with a towel, and jumped into bed, careful to lock the door of her bedroom. She dared not let the widow Penshaws know that she slept in the nude the widow Penshaws would object to a girl sleeping in the Matilda switched her bed lamp on and dabbed some citronella on each Matilda even liked the sound of the name. But mostly, she had to admit Matilda could see that. But she had The name—Haron Gorka: its oddness was somehow beautiful to Matilda. Matilda sighed happily as she put out the light. The moon shone in Matilda was not yet that far gone in years or appearance. Dressed Matilda got out of bed at seven, tiptoed into the bathroom, showered with a merest wary trickle of water, tiptoed back into her bedroom, dressed in her very best cotton over the finest of uplifting and \"Mother,\" gasped Matilda. Matilda always gasped when she saw something unexpected. \"What on earth are you doing up?\" in both her uppers and lowers this early in the morning. \"I'm fixing breakfast, of course....\" Then the widow Penshaws told Matilda that she could never hope to sneak about the house without her mother knowing about it, and that even only mother could cook. Matilda moodily thanked the widow Penshaws. Matilda hummed Mendelssohn's Wedding March all the way. It was her which hung too far down on his nose. Matilda knew he would peer over \"Hello,\" said Matilda. The stereotype grunted and peered at her over his glasses. Matilda Matilda kept the alarm from creeping into her voice. She muttered an Matilda did, only they didn't know any Haron Gorka, either. It turned out that no one did: Matilda tried the general store, the fire did not exist. Matilda felt bad, but she had no intention of returning home this early. If she could not find Haron Gorka, that was one thing unimposing library. She could release some of her pent-up aggression by browsing through the dusty slacks. Then Matilda frowned. Twenty years from now, this could be Matilda hair, suspicious eyes, and a broom-stick figure.... On the other hand—why not? Why couldn't the librarian help her? Why Matilda cleared her throat. \"Pardon me,\" she began. \"I'm looking for—\" Matilda jumped as if she had been struck strategically from the rear. \"Was this the way?\" she demanded. Matilda was not very good at this Matilda nodded shrewdly and added a twin brother to the bill in her Matilda assured her that it was, and, breathlessly, she wrote down the that the land no longer was being tilled. The house itself had fallen to ruin. This surprised Matilda, but she did not let it keep her his dwelling. That was it, of course: the conspicuous show of wealth or There were five cars parked in the long driveway, and now Matilda's be left far behind. Matilda congratulated herself for what she thought Matilda. And then, quite annoyedly, she berated herself for not having she wouldn't be needed perhaps she was too late.... As it turned out, she wasn't. Not only that, she was welcomed with open had she come in response to the advertisement, she nodded eagerly. He told her that was fine and he ushered her straight into a room which evidently was to be her living quarters. It contained a small undersized bed, a table, and a chair, and, near a little slot in the wall, there was a button. \"You want any food or drink,\" the servant told her, \"and you just press A little doubtful now, Matilda thanked him and watched him leave. He closed the door softly behind his retreating feet, but Matilda's ears had not missed the ominous click. She ran to the door and tried to open it, but it would not budge. It was locked—from the outside. It must be said to Matilda's favor that she sobbed only once. After that she realized that what is done is done and here, past thirty, her fault if, in his unconcern, Haron Gorka had unwittingly hired a neurotic servant. For a time Matilda paced back and forth in her room, and of what was going on outside she could hear nothing. In that case, she would pretend that there was nothing outside the little room, and presently she lay down on the bed to take a nap. This didn't last long, however: she had a nightmare in which Haron Gorka appeared as a giant with two would take what they had, and, accordingly, she walked to the little slot in the wall and pressed the button. Matilda gasped once and felt about to gasp again—but by then her all. It was a deep sleep and a restful one, and when she awoke it was with the wonderful feeling that everything was all right. She followed him out of the little room and across what should have been a spacious dining area, except that everything seemed covered with dust. Of the other women Matilda could see nothing, and she suddenly realized that each of them probably had a cubicle of a room like her own, and that each in her turn had already had her first visit with Haron Gorka. Well, then, she must see to it that she impressed him \"I—do.\" Matilda had had visions of her prince charming sitting back Matilda, accustomed to social chatter, gave him a gambit. \"Yes,\" said Matilda vaguely. Perhaps it might be better, after all, if Matilda said, \"Beg pardon?\" Almost at once, Matilda's educational background should have told her is right and I am wrong....\" Haron Gorka turned his back. Matilda could do nothing but leave the room, walk back through the house, go outside and get into her car. She noticed not without surprise that the other five cars were now gone. She was the last of insane. She could still picture him ranting on aimlessly to no one in particular about places which had no existence outside of his mind, his aging woman would be as disappointed as Matilda, but a promise was a outside the library. The woman sat at her desk as Matilda had remembered her, gray, broom-stick figure, rigid. But now when she saw Matilda she perked up \"I don't know what they told you,\" Matilda said. \"But this is what Matilda didn't understand. She didn't understand at all, but she told see, my dear, Haron expects too much. He expects entirely too much.\" Matilda did not say a word. One madman a day would be quite enough for And then the woman was gone. Numbly, Matilda walked to the doorway and\n\n<question>:\nWhat didn't surprise Matilda about Haron's house?\n\n<options>:\nA the outside was poorly kept up\nB she was fed exactly what she wanted\nC it had space for six women to stay\nD she was locked in her room\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
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>:\nTHE RECRUIT [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that The old man with his thick neck, thick cigar, evening highball, potgut polite smiles and voice fluttering, assuring the old man by her frailty The old man said, \"He'll be okay. Let him alone.\" \"But he won't eat. Just lies there all the time.\" for the draft and all. He's in between. It's rough.\" \"We got to let him go, Eva. It's a dangerous time. You got to remember about all these dangerous repressed impulses piling up with nowhere to go, like they say. You read the books.\" \"Are we specialists? That's the Youth Board's headache, ain't it? What Wayne watched the ritual, grinning. He listened to their purposeless noises, their blabbing and yakking as if they had something to say. Blab-blab about the same old bones, and end up chewing them in the same old ways. Then they begin all over again. A freak sideshow all the way to nowhere. Squareheads going around either unconscious or with eyes looking dead from the millennium in the office waiting to retire How come he'd been stuck with parental images like that? One But the old man was right on for once about the dangerous repressed the movies.\" draft call.\" under a sign reading to the reception desk, where a thin man with sergeant's stripes and a pansy haircut looked out of a pile of paperwork. \"Where you think you're going, my pretty lad?\" \"Well,\" the sergeant said. \"How tough we are this evening. You have a pass, killer?\" \"Oh.\" The sergeant checked his name off a roster and nodded. He wrote check out whatever your lusting little heart desires. Then report to \"Take it from a vet, bud. Sooner you go the better. It's a big city and you're starting late. You can get a cat, not a mouse, and some babes a Skelly switchblade for kicks—the six-inch disguised job with the scary. a head shaped like a grinning bear. the way a dog snaps at a wound. You big overblown son, he thought, I'll show you but good who is a punk. They made a guy wait and sweat until he screamed. They kept a guy on the fire until desire leaped in him, that wasn't enough. If this muscle-bound creep was such a big boy, what was he doing holding down a desk? \"Well, this is it, punk. You go the distance or start a butterfly collection.\" slacks and a red shirt. Black hair, a cute trick. She's with a hefty psycho who eats punks for breakfast. He's butchered five people. They're both on top of the Undesirable list, Seton. They got to go and Wayne's fearful exhilaration increased as he cruised with bated breath through the dark mazes of streets and rickety tenements crawling with into it and rolled along, watching. His belly ached with expectancy as the sultry beat of a combo, the wild pulse of drums and spinning brass shirt clinging to a pale stick body. He reminded Wayne of a slim grub balanced on one end. teener moved in, while a faint odor of burnt rubber hovered in the air spirit with the hunting teener, an omniscient shadow with a hunting license and a ghetto jungle twenty miles deep. bright wind-blown sparks. Wayne walked over and sneered down at the human garbage lying in scummed rain pools. The smell of raw violence, the scent of blood, made his heart thump like a trapped rubber ball in a cage. pursued by the hollow haunting fears of his own desires. He walked through the wavering haze of smoke and liquored dizziness and slash of sensuous mouth. Briefed and waiting, primed and eager for running, she recognized her pursuer at once. He sat at a table near weirdo drama being staged in that smoky thick-aired dive. Wayne smiled with wry superiority at the redheaded psycho in a dirty T-shirt, a big bruiser with a gorilla face. He was tussling his mouse heavy. Red nuzzled the mouse's neck and made drooly noises. Wayne watched and fed on the promising terror and helplessness of her hunted face. She sat rigid, eyes fixed on Wayne like balls of frozen glass. the pay of the state. \"What else, teener?\" then, fading in and out of shadows, jumping, crawling, running with the life-or-death animation of a wild deer. Up and down alleys, a rat's maze. A rabbit run. Across vacant lots. Through shattered tenement ruins. Over a fence. There she was, falling, He gained. He moved up. His labored breath pumped more fire. And her terror. feeling his way through debris. Dim moonlight filtered through a a nest. A dirty, lumpy pile of torn mattress, felt, excelsior, shredded newspapers and rags. It seemed to crawl a little under the snickered as he flashed the switchblade and circled it like a serpent's tongue. He watched what was left of her nerves go to pieces like rotten cloth. \"Do it quick, hunter,\" she whispered. \"Please do it quick.\" \"What's that, baby?\" \"I'm tired running. Kill me first. Beat me after. They won't know the difference.\" \"I'm gonna bruise and beat you,\" he said. \"Kill me first,\" she begged. \"I don't want—\" She began to cry. She cried right up in his face, her wide eyes unblinking, and her mouth open. \"Bad, I know! So get it over with, please. Hurry, hurry.\" 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. \"They're undesirables. Incurables. You know that, Seton?\" \"Yes, sir.\" \"The psycho you only wounded. He's a five-times murderer. And that girl killed her father when she was twelve. You realize there's nothing can be done for them? That they have to be executed?\" \"I know.\" \"Too bad,\" the doctor said. \"We all have aggressive impulses, primitive needs that must be expressed early, purged. There's murder in all of us, Seton. The impulse shouldn't be denied or suppressed, but educated . The state used to kill them. Isn't it better all around, Seton, for us to do it, as part of growing up? What was the matter, Seton?\" \"I—felt sorry for her.\" \"Is that all you can say about it?\" in there. I can't turn you out and have it erupt later—and maybe shed clean innocent blood, can I?\" open some prison of bone and lay bare and breathing wide. But there was no way out for the trapped. Now he knew about the old man and his poker-playing pals. They had all punked out.\n\n<question>:\nWhich category and description best describes the type of story “The Recruit” is using as its base?\n\n<options>:\nA Coming of age: Wayne must kill one person during the break out test in order to become a functioning member of society. Breaking out is a rite of passage.\nB Boy Meets Girl: When Wayne chases Red and attempts to kill her, he realizes that killing isn’t for him and that the rest of his life should\nC Animal Rights: The story is an exploration of Wayne’s realization that cats and mice should not be subject to violence.\nD Man vs. Nature: The entire story is dedicated to exploring how a society can kill the animalistic natures within a human body and soul.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,209
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThis guard smelled trouble and it could be counted on to come—for a nose for trouble was one of the many talents bred here! I His name was Liam O'Leary and there was something stinking in his nostrils. It was the smell of trouble. He hadn't found what the trouble was yet, but he would. That was his business. He was a captain of guards in Estates-General Correctional Institution—better known to its inmates as the Jug—and if he hadn't been able to detect the scent of trouble brewing a cell-block away, he would never have survived to reach his captaincy. couldn't adjust herself to it, now that she was in. He demanded: \"Why wouldn't you mop out your cell?\" O'Leary shook his head. \"Let her talk, Sodaro.\" It said in the to speak in their own behalf in disciplinary proceedings.\" And O'Leary She burst out: \"I never got a chance! That old witch Mathias never told me I was supposed to mop up. She banged on the door and said, 'Slush the mess hall.\" He shook his head reprovingly at the prisoner. \"The block guard had to break up a fight between her and another wench, and she claimed the same business—said she didn't understand when the O'Leary stopped her. \"That's enough! Three days in Block O!\" Captain O'Leary took a long drink of water from the fountain marked \"Civil Service.\" But it didn't wash the taste out of his mouth, the smell from his nose. What got into a girl to get her mixed up with that kind of dirty business? He checked out of the cell blocks and walked across the O'Leary noted, with the part of his mind that always noted those but they had a—well, a sort of natural, relaxed joy of living. O'Leary Conan, now—he was a big buck greaser and he would be there for the next hour, languidly poking a piece of fluff out of the air filter on the prison jeep. Lazy, sure. Undependable, certainly. But he kept the Every prison has its Greensleeves—sometimes they are called by different names. Old Marquette called it \"the canary \" Louisiana State called it \"the red hats \" elsewhere it was called \"the hole,\" \"the snake pit,\" \"the Klondike.\" When you're in it, you don't much care what irritable guard, climbing the steel steps toward Block O from the floor below, when she heard the yelling. \"Owoo-o-o,\" screamed Sauer from one end of the cell block and \"Yow-w-w!\" shrieked Flock at the other. The inside deck guard of Block O looked nervously at the outside deck guard. The outside guard looked impassively back—after all, he was on the outside. The inside guard muttered: \"Wipe rats! They're getting on my nerves.\" The outside guard shrugged. The outside guard said sourly: \"A woman, for God's sake. Now O'Leary knows I hate it when there's a woman in here. It gets the others all riled up.\" tanglefoot electronic fields that swamped the floor of the block corridor and of each individual cell. While the fields were on, you could ignore the prisoners—they simply could not move fast enough, rule that, even in Block O, you didn't leave the tangler fields on all the time—only when the cell doors had to be opened or a prisoner's restraining garment removed. The howling started all over again. The inside guard finished putting the new prisoners away and turned off the tangler field once more. He licked his lips. \"Say, you want to take \"You're yellow,\" the inside guard said moodily. \"Ah, I don't know why I don't quit this lousy job. Hey, you! Pipe down or I'll come in and beat your head off!\" long. III \"I smell trouble,\" said O'Leary to the warden. \"Trouble? Trouble?\" Warden Schluckebier clutched his throat and his little round eyes looked terrified—as perhaps they should have. Warden The warden, faintly relieved, faintly annoyed, scolded: \"O'Leary, what O'Leary hesitated, frowning. How could you explain to the warden that The warden raised his hand. \"Please, O'Leary, don't bother me about \"O'Leary, you're a guard captain, right? And I'm your warden. You have O'Leary snapped erect, abruptly angry. Pass! What the devil way was that for the warden to talk to him? \"Excuse the expression, O'Leary,\" the warden said anxiously. \"I mean, O'Leary choked back his temper. \"Warden, I'm telling you that there's trouble coming up. I smell the signs.\" \"Handle it, then!\" snapped the warden, irritated at last. \"It isn't,\" the warden said positively. \"Don't borrow trouble with tonight, O'Leary, and we'll get along fine. 'Specialization is the—' His phone was ringing. The warden picked it up irritably. \"Hello,\" barked the warden, not even glancing at the viewscreen. \"What \"O'Leary,\" he said faintly, \"my mistake.\" thought that maybe, after all, the man was really in pain. Maybe the crazy screams were screams of agony, because certainly his face was the Sue-Ann froze, waiting to see what would happen. What actually did happen was that the guard reached up and closed the switch that actuated the tangler fields on the floors of the cells. The prison rules were humanitarian, even for the dregs that inhabited the Greensleeves. Ten minutes out of every two hours, even the worst case lovely term for it. At the guard's yell, the inmates jumped to their feet. bed—nobody had warned her that the eddy currents in the tangler fields had a way of making metal smoke-hot. She gasped but didn't cry out. underprivileged clerk, she told herself, conscience-stricken. Across the hall, the guard was saying irritably: \"What the hell's the matter with you?\" He opened the door of the cell with an enough. And Flock was gasping, through real tears: \"Cramps. I—I—\" \"Ah, you wipes always got a pain in the gut.\" The guard lumbered around Flock to the draw-strings at the back of the jacket. Funny smell in here, he told himself—not for the first time. And imagine, some people didn't believe that wipes had a smell of their own! But this time, he realized cloudily, it was a rather unusual smell. Something burning. Almost like meat scorching. stinking wipe take care of his own troubles. He only had ten minutes to get all the way around Block O and the inmates complained like crazy if he didn't make sure they all got the most possible free time. He was cooking his hand and the blister against his abdomen, where the shiv had been hidden during other rest periods, felt like raw acid. \"All right,\" whispered Flock, \"just walk out the door and you won't get It was Flock on the phone to the warden—Flock with his eyes still your guards here. Enough said? So get a medic in here quick, you hear?\" And he snapped the connection. O'Leary said: \"Warden, I told you I smelled trouble!\" The warden lifted his head, glared, started feebly to speak, hesitated, and picked up the long-distance phone. He said sadly to the prison operator: \"Get me the governor—fast.\" Riot! The word spread out from the prison on seven-league boots. impact of the news from the prison. For the news touched them where their fears lay. Riot! And not merely a street brawl among roistering wipes, or a bar-room fight of greasers\n\n<question>:\nWhy was O'Leary sharing his concerns with the warden?\n\n<options>:\nA he was frustrated with the lack of help he was getting\nB he was mad that inmates were playing together\nC he was hoping to stop a potential riot\nD he thought the prison had a terrible smell\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,278
|
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 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 doing it. I took long naps morning and evening so I could lie awake all night to see that it wouldn't happen. It couldn't happen. But in the morning the bed would sit there dispassionately soiled and convict me 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 him about the light as soon as I could talk again, but he said I was lying. One day, to prove me a liar, he opened and closed the door a few times from outside. The light winked off and on, off and on, always shining inside, and the light stayed on, no matter how hard he slammed the door. I stayed in the dark longer for lying about the light. Alone in the dark, I wouldn't have had it so bad if it wasn't for the He looked the way I did in the mirror. They did unpleasant things to him. Because they were real, I talked about them as if they were real, and I almost earned a bunk in the home for retarded children until I got smart enough to keep the beasts to myself. like me. We got along. I didn't watch their shifty eyes too much, or ask them what they shifted to see. They didn't talk about my screams at night. wasn't in my line. If you believe any of this at all, you'll see why it 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, Partridge didn't seem to notice me, but I knew that was an act. I knew 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 auctioneer's stand like a vulture with a busted wing and darted through his private door. I was alone, marking time behind the closed half of double doors. One good breath and I raced past the open door and flattened myself to the wall. Crockery was ringing and men were slurping inside. No one had There were coins inside. I scooped them up with two fingers and held them fast with the other two. Once I dropped a dime—not a penny, milled edge—and I started to reach for it. No, don't be greedy. I knew all along it would be there. I tried to read the numbers on the bill with my fingertips, but I couldn't. It had to be a one. Who drops anything but a one into a Skid tried to pull my hand out of the box. I knew what the trouble was, of course. I was in a monkey trap. The go, so he stays there, caught as securely as if he were caged. I was a man, not a monkey. I knew why I couldn't get my hand out. But I time, a Western Union clock high up at the back of the hall. Just as I seen it for the first time, the electricity wound the spring motor inside like a chicken having its neck wrung. I nodded. \"Swimming right in there with the dead duck.\" \"Cold turkey,\" he corrected. \"Are you scoffing at a miracle?\" \"People are always watching me, Brother,\" I said. \"So now they do it even when they aren't around. I should have known it would come to that.\" The pipe was suddenly a weight I wanted off me. I would try robbing wasn't dumb enough to murder. Somebody, somewhere, would be a witness \"William Hagle.\" No sense lying. I had been booked and printed before. of that turkey soup. Then again I was glad I hadn't. Something always happened to me when I thought back over my life. The same thing. The men filed out of the kitchen, wiping their chins, and I went right on talking. a break. \"One is almost— almost —reminded of Job. William, you are being punished for some great sin. Of that, I'm sure.\" \"William, all I can tell you is that time means nothing in Heaven. Do 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 He looked at me in disbelief. \"What else could it be?\" \"I don't know,\" I confessed. \"I certainly haven't done anything that bad in this life.\" \"William, if you atone for this sin, perhaps the horde of locusts will lift from you.\" It wasn't much of a chance, but I was unused to having any at all. I shook off the dizziness of it. \"By the Lord Harry, Brother, I'm going when I got out of the reformatory and the one when I tried to steal Brother Partridge's money, I killed a man. 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. \"Work inside, Jack?\" the taller one asked. \"What do you do, Jack?\" the fatter one asked. \"Stack boxes.\" \"Got a union card?\" their faces. After that, I just let them go. I know how to take a beating. That's one thing I knew. 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 Brother Partridge about the accident, or murder, or whatever had good pipe tobacco. I had been here before. In this world, it's the man It didn't take me long to find the story. The victim was a big man, that they had paid a lot of money for. I remembered Fredric March's double-breasted in Executive Suite while Walter Pidgeon and the rest the key in my pocket (I wasn't trusting it to any clerk). No, I had had sleep on Thanksgiving, bracing up for trying the lift at Brother Partridge's. Let's see, it was daylight outside again, so this was the He turned slowly, his jaw moving further away from his brain. I winked. \"It was just a bet for me to say that to you. I won two bucks. Half of it is yours.\" I held out the bill to him. His paw closed over the money and punched me on the biceps. Too hard. He winked back. \"It's okay.\" dead behind the store last night. His skull had been crushed by a vicious beating with a heavy implement, Coroner McClain announced in one brush of a gaze out of me. The things abruptly started their business, trying to act casually as ugly, worried, tired, stupid look and he wore a shiny suit with a piece of a welcome mat or something for a necktie. Yeah, it was me. I really knew it all the time. eyebrow. They couldn't do anything worse to the small man than they had done to the young boy. It was sort of nostalgic watching them, but I really got bored with all that violence and killing and killing the same kill over and over. Like watching the Saturday night string of westerns in a bar. sane as I ever was. There was no doubt about that. But a new thought suddenly impressed itself on me. Whatever was punishing me for my sin was determined that I turn back\n\n<question>:\nDid William kill the man?\n\n<options>:\nA no - he watched the men do it, but William thought it was the spirits\nB yes, though he doesn't remember\nC yes - he used the pipe and killed the man\nD no - the two men did it when William's back was turned\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
736
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nExtensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Wayne, unseen, sneered down from the head of the stairs. The old man with his thick neck, thick cigar, evening highball, potgut and bald head without a brain in it. His slim mother with nervously Wayne watched the ritual, grinning. He listened to their purposeless noises, their blabbing and yakking as if they had something to say. \"Well, dear, if you say so,\" Mother said, with the old resigned sigh that must make the old man feel like Superman with a beerbelly. They heard Wayne slouching loosely down the stairs and looked up. \"Relax,\" Wayne said. \"You're not going anywhere tonight.\" silent. \"Okay, go,\" Wayne said. \"If you wanta walk. I'm taking the family boltbucket.\" \"So gimme the keys,\" Wayne said. The old man handed the keys over. His understanding smile was strained, and fear flicked in his sagging eyes. \"Do be careful, dear,\" his mother said. She ran toward him as he pansy haircut looked out of a pile of paperwork. \"Where you think you're going, my pretty lad?\" Wayne grinned down. \"Higher I hope than a typewriter jockey.\" \"Well,\" the sergeant said. \"How tough we are this evening. You have a Captain Jack, room 307.\" \"Thanks, sarge dear,\" Wayne said and took the elevator up to the Armory. A tired fat corporal with a naked head blinked up at tall Wayne. Finally he said, \"So make up your mind, bud. Think you're the only kid breaking out tonight?\" \"Hold your teeth, pop,\" Wayne said, coolly and slowly lighting a cigarette. \"I've decided.\" The corporal's little eyes studied Wayne with malicious amusement. \"Take it from a vet, bud. Sooner you go the better. It's a big city and are clever hellcats in a dark alley.\" Wayne's mouth twitched. He leaned across the counter toward the elevator and didn't look back as the corporal said, \"Good luck, tiger.\" Captain Jack moved massively. The big stone-walled office, alive with stuffed lion and tiger and gunracks, seemed to grow smaller. Captain Jack crossed black-booted legs and whacked a cane at the floor. It had a head shaped like a grinning bear. Wayne felt the assured smile die on his face. Something seemed to shrink him. If he didn't watch himself he'd begin feeling like a pea among bowling balls. Contemptuously amused little eyes glittered at Wayne from a shaggy head. Shoulders hunched like stuffed sea-bags. \"Wayne Seton,\" said Captain Jack as if he were discussing something in a bug collection. \"Well, well, you're really fired up aren't you? Really going out to eat 'em. Right, punk?\" \"Yes, sir,\" Wayne said. He ran wet hands down the sides of his chinos. His legs seemed sheathed in lead as he bit inwardly at shrinking fear a knuckle-ridged gag to his gasping mouth. Captain Jack chuckled. \"All right, superboy.\" He handed Wayne his they're your key to the stars.\" \"Yes, sir,\" Wayne said. \"So run along and make out, punk,\" grinned Captain Jack. A copcar stopped Wayne as he started over the bridge, out of bright Wayne waved the pass card, signed by Captain Jack, under the cop's quivering nose. The cop shivered and stepped back and waved him on. The Olds roared over the bridge as the night's rain blew away. secretive and sparse, the uncared-for streets became rough with pitted 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 the shadows of mysterious promise. a bank of garbage cans, humming to himself, pulling at a rainsoaked shirt clinging to a pale stick body. He reminded Wayne of a slim grub 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. as the Cad cruised in a slow follow-up. Wayne's breath quickened as he watched, feeling somehow blank wonder laughed. Wayne wanted to shout. He opened his mouth, but the yell clogged up somewhere, so that he remained soundless yet with his mouth Wayne walked over and sneered down at the human garbage lying in scummed rain pools. The smell of raw violence, the scent of blood, made his heart thump like a trapped rubber ball in a cage. of being motionless, as though they were all actors performing in a weirdo drama being staged in that smoky thick-aired dive. Wayne smiled with wry superiority at the redheaded psycho in a dirty T-shirt, a big bruiser with a gorilla face. He was tussling his mouse heavy. fed on the promising terror and helplessness of her hunted face. She sat rigid, eyes fixed on Wayne like balls of frozen glass. Red looked up and stared straight at Wayne with eyes like black buttons imbedded in the waxlike skin of his face. Then he grinned all on one side. One huge hand scratched across the wet table top like a furious cat's. Wayne returned the challenging move but felt a nervous twitch jerk at his lips. A numbness covered his brain like a film as he concentrated on staring down Red the psycho. But Red kept looking, his eyes bright Wayne drank. Liquored heat dripped into his stomach. Fire tickled his veins, became hot wire twisting in his head. white eyelids fluttering. Red fingered at her legs and salivated at her throat, glancing now and then at Wayne, baiting him good. \"Okay, you creep,\" Wayne said. He stood up and started through the haze. The psycho leaped and a table holding something in. The mouse darted by, eluded Wayne's grasp and was out the door. Wayne went out after her in a laughing frenzy of release. He felt the cold strange breath of moist air on his sweating skin as he sprinted down the alley into a wind full of blowing wet. She backed into darkness, up there against the sagging tenement wall, her arms out and poised like crippled wings. Wayne crept up. She gave a squeaking sob, turned, ran. Wayne leaped into gloom. Wood cracked. He clambered over rotten lumber. The doorway sagged and he hesitated in the musty dark. A few feet away was the sound of loose trickling heard a scream as rotten boards crumbled and dust exploded from 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. He turned and ran blindly, half-fell down the cracking stairs. Doctor Burns, head of the readjustment staff at the Youth Center, studied Wayne with abstract interest. \"You enjoyed the hunt, Seton? You got your kicks?\" \"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\n\n<question>:\nHow do Wayne's thoughts toward Captain Jack and his dialogue toward Captain Jack differ?\n\n<options>:\nA Wayne speaks to Captain Jack respectfully, but mocks him in his thoughts.\nB Wayne speaks to Captain Jack in a fearful manner, but underestimates him in his thoughts.\nC Wayne speaks to Captain Jack quietly, but wishes he could have more confidence on the inside.\nD Wayne speaks to Captain Jack arrogantly, but is scared of him in his thoughts.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,930
|
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>:\nAhead of him, in serried array, with lances erect and pennons flying, was the forward part of the column. Far ahead, he knew, were the Knights Templars, who had taken the advance. Behind the Templars rode the mailed He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his guardant or 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 the column of the hosts of Christendom from harassment by the Bedouins. \"By our Lady!\" came a voice from his left. \"Three days out from Acre, and the accursed Saracens still elude us.\" riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in they have been marching with us in those hills to the east.\" \"Like the jackals they are,\" said Sir Gaeton. \"They assail us from the the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers. And yet, they fear to 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 to amass so fearsome a force. If, as our informers tell us, there are uncounted Turks to the fore, and if, as we are aware, our rear is being 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.\" \"Give them time. We must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must stop us. They will attack before we reach Jerusalem, fear not.\" \"We of Gascony fear no heathen Musselman,\" Sir Gaeton growled. \"It's this Hellish heat that is driving me mad.\" He pointed toward the eastern 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than men of cooler blood.\" He knew that the others were baking inside their heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable. \"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 of England.\" Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. \"My of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy to remain with us.\" \"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy, too?\" \"You did what must be done in honor,\" the Gascon conceded, \"but you have not gained the love of Richard by doing so.\" The Negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down 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 The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the Hospitallers were taking the brunt of the charge. They fought like madmen, but they were slowly being forced back. The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard, 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.\" in the flank 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 will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And \"Against the orders of the King?\" After a moment's hesitation, Sir Gaeton couched his lance. \"I'm with \"Forward then!\" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. \"Forward for St. George and for England!\" \"St. George and England!\" the Gascon echoed. Two great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle lines, gaining momentum as they went. Moving in unison, the two knights, cavalrymen as the horses changed pace to a thundering gallop. The Egyptians tried to dodge, as they saw, too late, the approach of the Christian knights. Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horseman in the chest. Out of saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance. body. Behind him, Sir Robert heard further cries of \"St. George and England!\" The Hospitallers, taking heart at the charge, were going in! Behind them came the Count of Champagne, the Earl of Leister, and the Bishop of 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. But he could see that the Moslems were falling back before the Christian onslaught. And then, quite suddenly, there seemed to be no foeman to swing at. 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.\" Old Kings .\" He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred Old Kings .\" He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the Old Kings are the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking pleasure.\" \"There's no doubt about it, Old Kings are a man's cigarette.\" \"Nor I,\" agreed the Gascon. \" Old Kings man's work.\" Old Kings King Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers Saladin had expected him to hold fast! banner of England. hacked down the Moslem foes. And then, suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the Saracens! He was isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the Christian forces! He breastbone. Where was Sir Gaeton? Where were the others? Where was the And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde! their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain. over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy, but presently he heard the familiar cry of \"For St. George and for England\" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in, bringing with them the banner of England! And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his own broadsword. Its bright edge, besmeared with Saracen blood, was biting viciously into the foe. The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds, the Christian knights were boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat. And call.\" King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. \"If it please God, I lose sales.\" \"Why? Commercial not good enough?\" \" Too Old Kings , and, believe me, the real\n\n<question>:\nWe can assume that Saladin's army represents which group?\n\n<options>:\nA Mercenaries\nB Muslims\nC Africans\nD Christians\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,079
|
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>:\nsag of the dust a visitor when he reached the Red Lion that evening. He had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there were pressing things to think about at this time. Yet the doorman had flagged him as he came in from the street: “A thousand Too smoothly, it seemed to me, and the others seemed to think so, too. name. He said you’d want to see him. He will be back by about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the Red Lion, gently but persuasively the patrons were few in number. Across to the right was a group that Baron knew vaguely—Andean climbers, or at least two of them were. Over near the door he recognized old Balmer, who had mapped eight.” returned his smile with a nod. Then he settled back and waited impatiently for the intruder who demanded his time without justifying it. Presently a small, grizzled man crossed the room and sat down at Baron’s table. He was short and wiry. His face held spotted him through the binocs, waving frantically from the without expression. Then he said slowly, “No, I’m afraid you’re “Say, who are you, if you don’t mind?” Baron demanded. and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck of a Bug an old-fashioned half-track model of the sort that Claney?” “That’s right.” Peter two insulated suits with white bones gleaming through the Baron’s eyes were wide with excitement, all trace of anger fiberglass helmets. “Quit looking!” Baron bent forward over the table. “My friend, we’d given up hope, but we’ve never quit looking. Here, have a drink. There’s so much you can tell us.” His fingers were trembling. Peter Claney shook his head. “I can’t tell you anything you want to hear.” “But you’ve got to. You’re the only man on Earth who’s thick and tenacious, splattering around in steaming gobs as finger at Claney’s face. “That, for instance—epithelioma? have to know.” both quarters—but we just didn’t know what we were fighting. It was the that whipped us, that and the broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding . They’ll whip you, too, if you try it.” back and forth in an effort to keep the machines on blood, sure as death. for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up his commission. since the Matto Grasso. Then he made the attempt on Vulcan Crater that paved the way for Balmer a few years later. the sort of guy who always had things figured a little further ahead than anyone else and always knew what to do in a tight with no judgment. The Major had both. He also had the kind of personality that could take a crew of wild men and make them work like a well-oiled machine across a thousand He contacted me in New York and he was very casual at first. We spent an evening here at the Red Lion, talking about old times I told him one-thirty-five. “That much!” he said. “Well, there can’t be much fat on “No, I mean real heat.” “Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said. He threw his head back. “Why try a Crossing at aphelion? Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.” the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in. That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the surface of the Sun itself. It would be a hellish trek. Only a few men had ever learned just how obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed of course—the Sun was Sanderson’s baby and he’d picked Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to 60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that too happy to hear that he was joining us. “Kind of a daredevil, isn’t he?” “Maybe. He’s lucky and skillful. Where do you draw the line? We’ll need plenty of both.” “Have you ever worked with him?” I asked. “No. Are you worried?” in hopes of getting a hop from there. He didn’t seem too upset about it, as though this were his usual way of doing things and he couldn’t see why everyone should get so excited. He was a tall, rangy man with long, wavy hair prematurely gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed, sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness. “Of course.” Claney shrugged, glanced at the small quiet tables around them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most reliable at first glance. Anyway, personality problems weren’t our big problem right then. Equipment have?” “The best insulating suits ever made,” said Claney. “Each one had an inner lining of a fiberglass modification, to avoid the clumsiness of asbestos, and carried the refrigerating unit surface that made us glitter like Christmas trees. And we had a half-inch dead-air space under positive pressure between “They were insulated, too, but we weren’t counting on them too much for protection.” and storage, but we knew we’d have to do a lot of forward work on foot.” Claney smiled bitterly. “Which meant Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of “Peter, you’ll take the lead Bug, the small one we stripped “I guess it doesn’t,” said the Major. “Then you’ll flank “It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead Bug light as possible.” work. You need somebody out ahead—four or five miles, at least—to He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of a hole we may be moving into, unless we have a scout up ahead?” “That’s what we have the charts for,” the Major said sharply. “But why not? We could save ourselves days!” means we stay within easy sight of each other at all times. Any climber knows that everybody is safer in a party than one man alone—any time, any place.” gave a sullen nod. “Okay. If you say so.” “Well, I say so and I mean it. I don’t want any fancy stuff. never forget that huge yellow Sun glaring down, without a bite. that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and a light aluminum sun-shield and lay out in the dust and rocks. The sun-shield cut the temperature down sixty or seventy degrees, for whatever help that was. And then we ate from the forward sledge—sucking through tubes—protein, carbohydrates, The Major measured water out with an iron hand, because we’d have drunk ourselves into nephritis in a week otherwise. We were constantly, unceasingly thirsty. Ask the physiologists eyes burned in spite of the filters and we had roaring headaches, but we couldn’t sleep them off. We sat around looking at each other. Then McIvers would say how good a beer would taste, and off we’d go. We’d have murdered our grandmothers for one ice-cold bottle of beer. After a few driving periods, I began to get my bearings at the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made with black cliffs jutting up on either side with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous gases. It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but itself.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the Red Lion?\n\n<options>:\nA A gentlemen's club\nB A restaurant\nC A club for explorers and adventurers\nD A bar\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,437
|
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>:\nOK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it. By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever? -- Jodie Allen of U.S. News & World Report (and frequent Slate contributor) 2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. Chatterbox replies: You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 . [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] Felicia replies: [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources) Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster Strasberg played Anne Frank in the original production of the Broadway adaptation, which some people think wasn't Jewish enough) Mel Torme (Steve Reiness) Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken What an extraordinary year! A right-wing conspiracy topples the president, and the governor of Texas reveals himself in a series of debates to be a natural leader with an innate gift for connecting with his audience, a sure sign of his electoral success next year. A new Thomas Harris book brilliantly takes us deeper into the mind of a serial killer a new Star Wars movie redefines the very nature of entertainment You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by \"quiet, shy\" people who \"mostly kept to\" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people. --Susan Hoechstetter 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees The Yankees can actually be referred to as the glue that held the century together. Of course, as the 1999 World Series champions, they are a significant \"story of the year.\" However, this one singular achievement must be considered in a broader context. 1999 represented the team's 25th championship of the century. This beats, by one, the most championships any one team won during the century. The Montreal Canadiens have won 23 Stanley Cups. However, the Yankees, an American team, playing in the \"City of the Century\" (so called by me to reflect the amazing growth and transformation of one city during this period), who play the \"National Pastime,\" are truly an amazing story. The team's first championship occurred in 1921 therefore, they have won 25 of the last 78 years, nearly one in three. This level of sustained excellence is not matched in sports or in any other aspect of society. The 1999 win is possibly the most unique. With free-agency, expansion, and three levels of playoffs, it is much harder to win today than in past years. In fact, by winning three of the last four championships, they are the first team to accomplish this feat during the eras of free-agency and of divisional play. The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Man, the Yankee Clipper, the Mick, and Yogi--these strong, masculine names are synonymous with the team, the sport, and American history. They went hand in hand with two world wars, Superman, and America's superpower status. The 1999 squad does not feature \"a name.\" This team, with its myriad of human-interest stories, its international roster, and no star, is representative of '90s man, male sensitivity, Pax American interests, and the new political paradigm. --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999 Public interest and media attention to the women's World Cup in soccer. These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions. Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy . --anonymous tipster 15. Annals of Justice in 1999 Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . -- anonymous tipster 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick A sitting president was accused of rape. --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 General Pinochet The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. --Josh Pollack 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. --Samir Raiyani Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters Natalie Portman by Keith Hamshere/Lucasfilm Ltd./Reuters New York Yankees players by Gary Hershorn/Reuters KLA member by Hazir Reka/Reuters.\n\n<question>:\nWhat isn't a place that the information came from?\n\n<options>:\nA news columnists\nB viewers of his blog\nC news shows\nD anonymous writers\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,862
|
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>:\nACCIDENTAL DEATH BY PETER BAILY crew of highly trained men in perfect condition, how often is it wrecked by a series of silly errors happening and is operated by a hand-picked The most \"I'll sign off with two thoughts, the northwest, blind with snow and barbed one depressing and one cheering. A single Chingsi wrecked our ship and planetful of them do? \"On the other hand, a talent that Illustrated by Schoenherr developed it can't be surefire. The proof is that I've survived to tell the plowed ruler-straight through streamlined hummocks of snow. tale.\" to be chancy. No matter how highly is the one you don't know is loaded. and stumbling with every step on a slope that got gradually steeper and seemed to go on forever, Matt thing of metal and plastics, an artifact thrown down in the dead wilderness. shadow down the long furrow, and flashed at the furrow's end on a This etext was produced from THE END Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. The February 1959. wind howled out of out. I'm fine where I am. I'll just lie here for a while and relax, and get You probably know we're back and wonder what went wrong. Who wouldn't be shocked after luck like that? \"I've always been lucky, I guess. Luck got me a place in the Whale . Sure I'm a good astronomer but so are lots of other guys. If I were ten years older, it would have been an honor, being picked for the first long jump in the first starship ever. At my worked. Well, she did. Went like a bomb. We got lined up between Earth and Mars, you'll remember, and James pushed the button marked 'Jump'. Took his finger off the button and there we were: Alpha Centauri . Two months later your time, fouled things up. \"That was some survey assignment. We astronomers really lived. Wait till you see—but of course you \"I'm shocked all right. I never said who I was. Matt Hennessy, from Farside Observatory, back of the Moon, just back from a proving flight cum astronomical survey in the starship Whale . Whoever you are who finds this tape, you're made. Take it to and don't take any wooden nickels. \"Where had I got to? I'd told you how we happened to find Chang, hadn't I? That's what the natives called it. Walking, talking natives on a blue sky planet with 1.1 g gravity and a twenty per cent oxygen atmosphere at fifteen p.s.i. The odds against finding Chang on a six-sun survey on the first star jump ever must be up in the googols. We certainly were lucky. \"The Chang natives aren't very technical—haven't got space travel for instance. They're good astronomers, though. We were able to show them our sun, in their telescopes. In their way, they're a highly civilized people. Look more like cats than over. \"One, they learned our language in four weeks. When I say they, I mean a ten-man team of them. Whale . myself, but tastes differ. \"Four, the ten-man language team also learned chess and table tennis. weren't so hot at it. Maybe that ten per cent extra gravity put us off our strokes. As for chess, Svendlov chess. Of course it's a screwy situation, playing chess with something that grows its own fur coat, has yellow eyes an inch and a half long \"And don't think I fell victim to their feline charm. The children were pets, but you didn't feel like patting the adults on their big grinning heads. Personally I didn't like the one I knew best. He was called—well, we called him Charley, and he was the ethnologist, ambassador, contact man, or whatever you like to call him, who came back with us. Why I disliked Charley ... was and beginning to break up, unhurt, was Charley. He was laughing ... \"My God, it's dark out here. Wonder how high I am. Must be all of same as escape floating. Let's switch on the radio and tell the world hello. Hello, earth ... hello, again ... and good-by ... is that the suit ran out of journey, wasn't I? The long jump back home, which should have dumped us between the orbits of Earth and Mars. Instead of which, when James took his finger off the button, the mass-detector showed nothing \"We were out in that no place for a day. We astronomers had to establish our exact position relative to the solar system. The crew had to find out exactly what went wrong. The physicists had to make mystic passes residual folds in stress-free space. Our task was easy, because we were about half a light-year from the sun. The crew's job was also easy: they found what went wrong in less than translated into the somewhat abstruse for. All we'd done was aim for the wrong place. It hurts me to tell you this and I'm just attached personnel with no space-flight tradition. In practical terms, one highly trained crew member had punched a wrong why we were out there so long. They were cross-checked about five times. I got sick so I climbed into a spacesuit and went outside and took some photographs of the Sun which I hoped time nothing would go wrong, and all looking forward to seeing Earth again after four months subjective time away, except for Charley, who was still chuckling and shaking his head, and Captain James who was passed through a small sieve, and poured back into shape. The entire bow wall-screen was full of Earth. Something was wrong all right, and was the For, as of course you know, the \"The Whale also had ion rockets of course, the standard deuterium-fusion ship. \"James got us all into the was meant for short heavy hops to planets or asteroids. In addition to the ion drive it had emergency atomic rockets, with them in a few seconds. We curved away up over China and from Whale hit the Pacific. Six hundred tons of mass at well over two thousand miles an hour make an almighty splash. By now you'll have divers down, but I doubt they'll salvage much you can use. \"I wonder why James went down have broken his heart to know that his lovely ship was getting the chopper. Or did he suspect another human the spacesuit I was still wearing. I snapped the face plate down because the cabin was filling with fumes. I I don't see how any of us could have survived. I think we're all dead. Then snow began to shift on the on the recorder. The voice began again, considerably wearier. \"Hello there. I'm in the bleakest wilderness I've ever seen. This place makes the moon look cozy. There's precipice around me every way but one and that's up. So it's up I'll have picked up a short-wave broadcast on word. Not English, not French, and again. I haven't much hope of reaching Falling fifty miles is no worse than mountain, skidded downhill through about half a mile of snow and fetched up in a drift. The suit is part watch out for them. Those jokers are dangerous. I'm not telling how because I've got a scientific reputation for yourselves. Here are the clues: (1) The Chingsi talk and laugh but after all they aren't human. On an alien world a hundred light-years away, why shouldn't alien talents develop? A talent that's so uncertain and rudimentary it, might be highly developed out there. (2) The Whale expedition did fine till it found Chang. Then it hit ping-pong. luck. It's a fancy name for a lot of For him, luck refers to the knows that some people are lucky and others aren't. All we've got are hints and glimmers, the fumbling touch of a rudimentary talent. There's the evil eye legend and the Jonah, bad luck accident prones. What's in a name?\n\n<question>:\nWhere is Matt from?\n\n<options>:\nA Matt is from France.\nB Matt is from the United States.\nC Matt is from a colony on Mars.\nD Matt is from a colony on the Moon.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
391
|
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 FROZEN PLANET With this.\" to courier duty, but this is an unusual mission.\" awkward, Magnan went on. \"There are four planets in the group,\" he said. \"Two double planets, called Jorgensen's Worlds, and in themselves are of no importance whatever. However, they lie deep in the sector into which the Soetti \"Now—\" Magnan leaned forward and lowered his voice—\"we have learned opposition so far in their infiltration of Terrestrial space, they intend to seize Jorgensen's Worlds by force.\" \"This is open aggression, Retief,\" he said, \"in case I haven't made myself clear. Aggression on Terrestrial-occupied territory by an alien species. Obviously, we can't allow it.\" Jorgensen's Worlds are technologically undeveloped areas. They're farmers or traders. Their industry is limited to a minor role in their economy—enough to support the merchant fleet, no more. The war potential, by conventional standards, is nil.\" Magnan tapped the folder before him. \"I have here,\" he said solemnly, \"information which will change that Terrestrials who've been advising the Soetti.\" He folded another finger. \"Next, a battle plan for the Jorgensen's people, worked out by Top Secret schematic for conversion of a standard anti-acceleration Magnan looked at the fingers and put them away. information could be catastrophic. You'll memorize it before you leave this building.\" \"Well,\" he said. \"If it's trapped for destruction, I suppose—\" \"I've heard of these Jorgensen's Worlds,\" Retief said. \"I remember an \"Umm,\" Magnan said. \"Don't make the error of personalizing this backwater worlds. Otherwise the Corps would allow history to follow its \"That doesn't leave me much time.\" \"I have your itinerary here. Your accommodations are clear as far as Magnan looked sour. \"Someone at a policy-making level has chosen to put Jorgensens can handle it very nicely some sort.\" Retief opened the envelope Magnan handed him and looked at the tickets inside. \"Less than four hours to departure time,\" he said. \"I'd better not start any long books.\" \"You'd better waste no time getting over to Indoctrination,\" Magnan \"The allusion escapes me,\" Magnan said coldly. \"And one last word. The Soetti are patrolling the trade lanes into Jorgensen's Worlds \"You'll be traveling with Class X credentials,\" Magnan snapped. \"There must be nothing to connect you with the Corps.\" out a needler, is there?\" Magnan looked up. \"I suppose not. What do you want with it?\" II \"ALDO CERISE—INTERPLANETARY.\" A thin clerk in a faded sequined blouse \"Two twenty-eight, due out today for the Jorgensen group,\" Retief said. \"Like it says there,\" he said, jerking a thumb at the board. \"Lifts in \"Some ... ah ... VIP's required accommodation,\" he said. He hooked a finger inside the sequined collar. \"All tourist reservations were canceled. You'll have to try to get space on the Four-Planet Line ship next—\" \"Which gate?\" Retief said. \"For ... ah...?\" \"For the two twenty-eight for Jorgensen's Worlds,\" Retief said. \"Well,\" the clerk said. \"Gate 19,\" he added quickly. \"But—\" \"Whassat?\" \"Somebody in the cabin. Get 'em out.\" He rolled a cold eye at Retief as door. Retief looked up. A gaunt leathery-skinned man wearing white ducks, a \"take a look at Section Three, Paragraph One, of the Uniform Code. That spells out the law on confirmed space on vessels engaged in interplanetary commerce.\" \"A space lawyer.\" The captain turned. \"Throw him out, boys.\" \"We're due to lift in twenty minutes.\" The thick-necked man and the Captain both shouted at once. The Captain's voice prevailed. \"Close the door as you leave,\" Retief said. glass. \"Here's to you.\" Jorgensen's Worlds. Then, if Magnan's information was correct, temptation to scan the tapes built into the handle of his suitcase. It would be good to know what Jorgensen's Worlds would be up against. coffee. Most of the other passengers had left the dining room. Mr. Tony and his retainers still sat at the Captain's table. \"You must want to get to Jorgensen's pretty bad,\" the thug said in a \"Shut up,\" Mr. Tony said. \"Put it away, Hoany. We'll fix this bum later.\" \"Not on this vessel, you won't,\" the captain said shakily. \"I got my charter to consider.\" \"Ram your charter,\" Hoany said harshly. \"You won't be needing it long.\" those long days.\" \"They don't like me bringing yer meals to you in yer cabin,\" Chip said. \"Sure. What have they got against my going to Jorgensen's Worlds?\" \"Dunno. Hasn't been no tourists got in there fer six or eight months. I sure like a feller that can put it away. I was a big eater when I was yer age.\" \"I'll bet you can still handle it, Old Timer. What are Jorgensen's Worlds like?\" \"One of 'em's cold as hell and three of 'em's colder. Most o' the aboard for Jorgensen's?\" \"Derned if I know. In and out o' there like a grasshopper, ever few weeks. Don't never pick up no cargo. No tourists any more, like I says. Don't know what we even run in there for.\" \"Where are the passengers we have aboard headed?\" \"To Alabaster. That's nine days' run in-sector from Jorgensen's. You lobster rubbery lookin' head. You can see the pulse beatin' when they get riled.\" out. Act like they was the Customs Patrol or somethin'.\" \"I ain't superstitious ner nothin',\" Chip said. \"But I'll be triple-damned if that ain't them boarding us now.\" \"Captain, tell your friend to keep its distance. It looks brittle, and aboard, don't bother to call.\" \"Jesus, what did you do! They'll kill us!\" the captain gasped, staring at the figure flopping on the floor. the word. No more illegal entry and search of Terrestrial vessels in Terrestrial space.\" \"They won't need it. Tell 'em to sheer off their fun is over.\" \"They got no more emotions than a blue crab—\" We know their secret now.\" goons. You hit 'em where they live, that time. They're pals o' these they won't try nothin' close to port.\" \"Don't worry, Chip. I have reason to be pretty sure they won't do \"You want to get to Jorgensen's perty bad, don't you, Mister?\" \"A 2mm needler. Why?\" by-passin' Jorgensen's Worlds. We'll feel the course change any minute.\" comes down the passage?\" \"What do you think you're doing, busting in here?\" \"I think we'd better call in at Jorgensen's.\" just hold your course for Jorgensen's.\" \"You're a cheapjack who's sold his bridge to a pack of back-alley hoods.\" \"You can't put it over, hick.\" \"It's eighteen hours yet before we pick up Jorgensen Control. You going he's slippery.\" \"What are you going to do?\" the captain demanded. stay here and help you hold your course for Jorgensen's Worlds.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat can be inferred from the passage about Jorgensen's Worlds?\n\n<options>:\nA It's difficult to locate and makes travel rather uncommon\nB Tourists are no longer welcome and travel has been halted.\nC It's existence is only known as top-secret so there is no information about it.\nD Ships are unable to land due to too many tourists\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
341
|
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 AVENGER By STUART FLEMING Karson was creating a superman to fight the weird super-monsters who had invaded Earth. But he was forgetting one tiny thing—like calls to like. as the beings who have invaded your planet are. I do not comprehend the things which you call hate, fear, joy and love, as they do not. If I went to Earth, I would use your people to further my knowledge, just as the invaders do. I would have no reason to kill the invaders. They are [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from suffering, but I could recognize it. \"You yourself have said it,\" I told him. \"I am a being of logic, just more nearly kin to me than your people.\" blood made as it dropped into the sticky pool on the floor. The great banks of machinery around the walls were silent. I knew that they would never come to life again. and alien. It was I who had changed: something inside me was dead, like not solve. Strange, disturbing sensations stirred and whispered within ship out into the carefully-calculated orbit that would be its home. satellite, about the Earth endlessly gathering knowledge into its atmosphere, away from Earth's inexorable gravitational pull, would be a laboratory such as man had never seen. The ship would be filled with the sounds of busy men and women, wresting secrets from the reluctant ether. A new chemistry, a new physics perhaps even a new biochemistry. A discordant note suddenly entered his fantasy. He looked up, conscious of the walls of his office again, but could see nothing unusual. Still, glad that what he had seen was terrible reality rather than even more terrible illusion. INVADERS APPEAR IN BOSTON. 200 DEAD R. Stein, Secretary of the Council, who said in part: \"The reason for this ... order must be apparent to all civilized peoples. For the Invaders have spared no part of this planet in their they have terrorized London they have destroyed the lives of citizens in every member state and in every inhabited area. There can be few within reach of printed reports or my words who have not seen the Invaders, or whose friends have not seen them. \"The peoples of the world, then, know what they are, and know that we face the most momentous struggle in our history. We face an enemy superior to ourselves in every way \"Since the Invaders first appeared in Wood River, Oregon, 24 hours ago, they have not once acknowledged our attempts to communicate, or in any way taken notice of our existence as reasoning beings. They have treated us precisely as we, in less enlightened days, might have treated a newly-discovered race of lower animals. They have not attacked our centers of government, nor immobilized our communications, nor laid siege to our defenses. But in instance after instance, they have done as they would with us. They have examined us, dissected us, driven us mad, killed us with no discernable provocation and this is more intolerable than any normal invasion. \"I have no fear that the people of Earth will fail to meet this challenge, for there is no alternative. Not only our individual lives are threatened, but our existence as a race. We must, and will, destroy the Invaders!\" Peter sank back in his chair, the full shock of it striking him for the heartbeat they were gone. There were left only two blood-red, malignant monstrosities somehow and below them, a pitiful huddle of flesh no longer recognizable as human beings. They were not dead, those men and women, but they wanted to be. Their bodies had been impossibly joined, fused together into a single obscene, floundering mass of helpless protoplasm. The thin moaning that went up from them was more horrible than any cry of agony. \"The Invaders are here, citizens,\" the commentator was saying in a strangled voice. \"Stay off the streets. Hide yourselves. Stay off the streets....\" His voice droned on, but neither of them heard it. \"Peter!\" she said faintly. \"Why do they broadcast such things?\" \"They have to,\" he told her grimly. \"There will be panics and suicides, and they know it but they have to do it. This isn't like a war, where the noncombatants' morale has to be kept up. There aren't going to be any noncombatants, this time. Everybody in the world has to know about them, so that he can fight them—and then it may not be enough.\" tense abruptly, looked back at the scene. The Invaders were floating The Invaders ignored Peter, staring expressionlessly down at Kanin. in a terrible voice, \"Why? Why?\" a scream to wake the dead. \"But where is she?\" Peter complained. \"You still haven't explained why months ago.\" \"But why?\" Peter whispered. Arnold's strong jaw knotted. \"We're hiding,\" he said. \"Everything else has failed.\" Peter couldn't think of anything to say. Dr. Arnold's voice went on after a moment, musingly. \"We're burrowing into the earth, like worms. It didn't take us long to find out we couldn't kill them. They didn't even take any notice of our attempts to do so, except once. That was when a squadron of the Police caught about fifty of them together at one time, and attacked with flame guns and a new secret weapon. It didn't hurt them, but it annoyed them. It was the first time they'd \"Since then, we've been burrowing. All the big cities.... It would be an impossible task if we tried to include all the thinly-populated areas, of course, but it doesn't matter. By the time we excavate enough to take care of a quarter of the earth's population, the other three-quarters will be dead, or worse.\" the hinterland of research. The huge compartments weren't filled with the latest equipment for chemical and physical experiment instead, The Avenger rate is down, in spite of anything we can do. You've seen the figures: we're riding a curve that ends in extinction fifty years from now. \"They'll live, and we'll die, because they're a superior race. We're a million years too far back even to understand what they are or where they came from. Besides them, we're apes. There's only one answer.\" \"Out there, in space, the cosmics change unshielded life. They or twelve toes, or a dozen ears—or a better brain. Out of those millions of possible mutations, there's one that will save the human race. We can't fight them they change adult life forms, too. I have one chance in seven of staying alive. You'd have one chance in a million of staying beautiful. I couldn't stand that. I'd kill myself, and then humanity would die, too. You'd be their murderer.\" Avenger searching for the million-to-one chance. Earth, wondering if the race he had left behind still burrowed in its worm-tunnels, digging deeper and deeper away from the sunlight. But after a time he ceased even to wonder. were searching for.\" His eyes glowed suddenly in their misshapen sockets. \"You are. Your brain is as superior to mine as mine is to an anthropoid's. You solve instinctively problems that would take our mechanical computers hours accidentally drawn one of my talons across his face. \"And now,\" he said softly, \"we will go home. I've waited so long—keeping the control chamber and the engine room locked away from you, not telling you, even, about Earth until now—because I had to be sure. But now, the waiting is over. \"They're still there, I'm sure of it—the people, and the Invaders. You can kill the Invaders, Robert.\" He looked at me, a little oddly, almost as if he had some instinctive they are. You can understand them, and so you can conquer them.\" I said, \"That is the reason why we will not go back to Earth.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhat seems to be the invader's reason for visiting Earth?\n\n<options>:\nA They recognize humans as intelligent beings and wanted to see what they have made.\nB They want to wage war with Earth and take it for themselves.\nC They are investigating humans in a scientific, albeit fatal, way.\nD They are investigating humans, making notes to not destroy their world indiscriminately.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
753
|
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>:\nradioactivity. It was only a dream. Eddie Taylor would like with it,” his father said. “It wasn’t that strong. Still, it doesn’t take so very much radioactivity his eyes open. The dream fled. Eddie kicked “You mean he must have been an atomic enough training in the subject to know how to handle that isotope safely,” Mr. Taylor said. “But, Dad,” Eddie wondered, “what could they do with it?” “They could study it,” his father explained. “At least, they could send it somewhere to be broken down and studied. Being a new isotope, the dream, he added, “Oh, Dad, is it man, broad-shouldered and still thin-waisted. Eddie found it easy to believe the stories he had heard about his father being an outstanding football player in his time. Even his glasses and the gray hair at his temples didn’t add “That’s entirely possible,” his father said. “In fact, it’s the only logical explanation I can think of. People simply don’t go around stealing radioactive isotopes without a mighty important much age, although Eddie knew it had been eighteen years since his father had played his were spies!” Eddie exclaimed breathlessly. last game of college football. During dinner Eddie wasn’t sure just what he was eating. The idea of spies stealing atomic Eddie smiled sheepishly. “I—I had a time dessert was finished, he was anxious to talk with someone, yet he knew he shouldn’t bother his father with any more questions. He asked if he could go over and visit with Teena for a while. Eddie had no desire to do that. He ran down Eddie pulled on his trousers and T shirt knowing that even if he missed a spot or two, he was fairly safe. During the summer Eddie apologized, following her inside. hope I’m not making a pest of myself.” He father apparently hadn’t arrived home from Acme Aircraft yet. There wasn’t a place set for him at the table, either. “I suppose your father is quite concerned over it,” Teena’s mother said. “Oh, yes,” Eddie affirmed. “He was the one “What’s an isotope?” Teena asked. day today.” “So your father says. But I’m afraid your big day will have to start with sorting out and radioisotope is, Eddie.” “But, Mom—” 15 “No arguments, son,” his father put in calmly but firmly. “School vacation doesn’t mean that your chores around here are on The very word excited Eddie. In fact, anything all right if I use the Geiger counter today?” isotopes—pronounced . You couldn’t have a father who was head of the atomic-science department at Oceanview College without picking up a little knowledge along the way. Eddie knew that a radioisotope atomic reactor until it was “hot” with radioactivity. asking that particular question was to keep from prying deeper into the subject of the radioisotope. Much of his father’s work at Eddie had learned not to ask questions about it. His father usually volunteered any information he wanted known, so Eddie stuck to questions which could and would be answered. eagerly. “Wouldn’t think of leaving it home,” his “I’ll say they’re dangerous,” Eddie said. It took Eddie over an hour to sort out the had provided during the earlier hours. “Anything else, Mom?” he asked, returning to the house and getting the Geiger counter think of something more for him to do. “I guess not, dear,” Mrs. Taylor said, smiling over his hasty retreat. “What are you going to do?” “I would,” Eddie said. “Everyone is carefully Eddie said. The more he thought about it, the radioactive, but can be made radioactive, and tried to make it sound as though he would be doing Teena Ross a big favor. After all, she was only a girl. Eddie didn’t figure a girl or something like that. “She’ll enjoy it, I’m sure,” his mother said. Eddie let Sandy off his chain. The taffy-colored “It’s hot,” Eddie said, “but not like if it wouldn’t even know it for a while. It would be That’s how to handle it, Eddie thought. that as more is learned about the ways to use isotopes, the whole world is going to be improved. You’ve heard of radiocobalt for curing “That’s about it,” Eddie said. “My dad says Don’t act anxious. Let Teena be anxious. there are hundreds of different isotopes. Like I said, isotopes can be made of most of the Then maybe she’ll even offer to bring along “Dad didn’t say exactly,” Eddie answered, “except he did say that if whoever took it didn’t know what he was doing and opened up even the mild isotopes are deadly if they’re not handled it carelessly. It was a new isotope—a secret isotope. His father hadn’t said whether lighter in the summer. Eddie couldn’t tell could do either it depended on how they were used. Eddie assumed that anyone who would stoop to stealing isotopes more than likely Eddie knew she was right. They were Eddie,” she said, “but I wouldn’t quite know Ross cautioned, as Eddie picked up the Geiger but Eddie knew these indicated no more than “Not so good,” Teena’s father said tiredly. “In fact, not good at all.” Then Eddie heard the sound of his father’s was open. Eddie went through the dining room and glanced into the den. His father sat stiffly behind his homemade desk, talking rapidly into the telephone. Eddie caught only the last few sketchy words. Then his father and saw Eddie. in Eddie’s mind about something being thoughtfully with a pencil, turning it end over end on his desk. “Hello, son,” he said. He didn’t even ask whether Eddie had discovered any uranium genuine interest in Eddie’s prospecting trips. “Dad,” Eddie said anxiously, “what—what’s the matter?” “It shows that much, does it, son?” his father said tiredly. “What’s wrong, Dad?” Eddie prompted. “Or can’t you tell me?” “What does that mean, Dad?” Eddie asked, “The radioisotope was stolen, Eddie,” his At the moment, Eddie didn’t pry for further information on the theft of the valuable radioactive isotope. His father had plenty on his , which Eddie rushed out Taylor said, “but I’m afraid this is going to stir up quite a bit of trouble.” “It wasn’t your fault, was it, Dad?” Eddie defended. “It was as much mine as anybody’s, son,” his father said. “Probably more so. After all, I am head of the department. I knew about “Even at that, no kid could have taken it,” Eddie said. “Kid?” His father smiled thinly. “We don’t think it was any kid, Eddie. Not by a long shot. The whole thing was carefully planned and carefully carried out. It was not the work Eddie read the newspaper account. The park and wait there unnoticed. Or they could walk around without attracting any undue attention.” “But, Dad,” Eddie continued, “how would the men know that the delivery truck would arrive a half hour early?” “They wouldn’t,” his father said. “They may have had another plan. The way things worked out, they didn’t need to use it. The gave them a better opportunity than they had expected. At least, they took quick advantage a radioisotope,” Eddie said. “Maybe they figured were the thieves ordinary thieves. That isotope the college was to conduct various tests with it in order to find out exactly how it could best be put to use as a cure for disease, or for sterilizing been a strong isotope.” He knew that the\n\n<question>:\nHow would Eddie's reaction to the missing isotope been different if he had not been so knowledgeable about radioactivity?\n\n<options>:\nA He would have been very worried due to the severity of the situation.\nB He would not have cared because he would be disinterested in the situation.\nC He would have been extremely curious about the situation.\nD He would have found a way to be more helpful for his father's situation.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
4
|
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.] quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension. up at all. In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony, boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in the Ultrawelfare State. the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have miserably failed.\" been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't.\" \"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea and tequila. He said, \"Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food, clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well. He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to our pleas for a few more trips?\" \"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for....\" He said, \"No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the increasingly hard to come by—even though in our minds, Hans, we are near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space Exploration.\" \"So....\" Girard-Perregaux said gently. universal credit card. \"The ultimate means of exchange,\" he grunted. \"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it, nobody can, ah, con you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training dangers met and passed. Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer. He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force. In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution. They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week. It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none of them ever really becoming efficient. The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees were needed, a draft lottery was held. All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long denied him. A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations, titles. around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias. This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities. building the drink. take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job, pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like. Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of materials and all and keep the economy going.\" keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the main reason behind the Welfare State operating as it does?\n\n<options>:\nA Automation with computers has made the need to work largely obsolete.\nB The current populace is not skilled enough to work, and thus most people are a part of the Welfare State\nC The government does not want new workers, and is content supplying people with the funds they need to get through life.\nD Overtime, the public has lost its drive to work. Thus, no one enforces a workforce.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,077
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nBrightside I learned to spot a passable crack, and tell it Crossing had no stomach for mysteries, vast or trifling, and there about the quiet lounge. Street trade was discouraged at the wisecracks, witticisms, unfunny jokes that wore thin now and then, never far, but a little further each time. the sky and hotter. Without our ultra-violet screens and glare end of an eight-hour trek. telecasts,” he said coldly. “The news was correct. We are going “At perihelion?” “Of course. When else?” and, for once, he didn’t have anything to say. It was the wreck middle, half-buried in a rock slide. A dozen feet away were where have you been hiding? gone. “Great balls of fire, man— their Brightside Crossing. felt different. I could see the dull gray stuff seeping up around the hubs, lead, steaming under a soft layer of concealing ash. an area of recent surface activity It was the planet that whipped us, that and the Sun broad flat plateau, dodging a network of gaping surface cracks—winding a deep crack. I think. I followed the news stories like a tri-V serial and then a long, narrow ledge of gray stuff that lay down across Twilight Lab up there and began to get Brightside into my for some years and hung onto the title after he gave up his commission. He was with Armstrong on Mars during his Service days, did a good deal of the original mapping and surveying for the Colony there. I first met him on Venus we spent five years together up there doing some of the nastiest exploring miles of Venus jungle. I liked him and I trusted him. old times he told me about the Vulcan business, and how he’d been out to see Sanderson and the Twilight Lab on Mercury, and how he preferred a hot trek to a cold one any day of the year—and then he wanted to know what I’d been doing since dangerous, too.” “What trip?” “Brightside of Mercury,” the Major said. I whistled cautiously. “At aphelion?” days later? No, thanks. I want the Brightside without any nonsense about it.” He leaned across me eagerly. “I want to make a Crossing at perihelion and I want to cross on the surface. If a man can do that, he’s got Mercury. Until then, nobody’s got Mercury. I want Mercury—but I’ll need help getting it.” I’d thought of it a thousand times and never dared consider it. Nobody had, since Wyatt and Carpenter disappeared. Mercury turns on its axis in the same time that it wheels around the Sun, which means that the Brightside is always facing in. That makes the Brightside of Mercury at perihelion the hottest place in the Solar System, with one single exception: the surface of the Sun itself. how hellish and they never came back to tell about it. It would cross it. I wanted to be along. The Twilight Lab, near the northern pole of Mercury, was the obvious jumping-off place. The setup there wasn’t very extensive—a rocket landing, the labs and quarters for Sanderson’s crew sunk deep into the crust, and the tower that housed Twilight Lab wasn’t particularly interested in the Brightside, Mercury as the closest chunk of rock to the Sun that could hold his observatory. He’d chosen a good location, too. On Mercury, the Brightside temperature hits 770° F. at perihelion and the Darkside runs pretty constant at -410° F. No permanent installation with a human crew could survive at either extreme. But with Mercury’s wobble, the twilight zone between Brightside and Darkside offers something closer to survival temperatures. Sanderson built the Lab up near the pole, where the zone is about five miles wide, so the temperature only varies 50 to 60 degrees with the libration. The Solar ’scope could take that for about seventy out of the eighty-eight days it takes the planet to wheel around. The Major was counting on Sanderson knowing something about Mercury as well as the Sun when we camped at the Lab to make final preparations. Sanderson did. He thought we’d lost our minds and he said was like. 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. “Not exactly. But Brightside is no place to count on luck.” far out that the detail dissolved into blurs on blow-up. They of our course. down toward the equator—not only volcanic, but sub-surface doubt of it. But the only way to avoid it is to travel over the less activity to the west. Now we might avoid some if we could localized. well. There was an atmosphere and a constant atmospheric flow from Brightside to Darkside. Not much—the lighter gases had reached escape velocity and disappeared from Brightside 2 , and nitrogen, and traces of other heavier gases. There was also an abundance of sulfur vapor, as well as carbon disulfide and sulfur dioxide. The atmospheric tide moved toward the Darkside, where it we would find out what was happening where was to be there. gray, and the sort of eyes that looked like a climber’s—half-closed, sleepy, almost indolent, but capable of abrupt alertness. Stone and McIvers were thick as thieves, and everything was them. “There are lots of bizarre personalities around a place like this, and some of the best wouldn’t seem to be the most the two layers. Warning thermocouples, of course—at 770 degrees, it wouldn’t take much time to fry us to cinders water and zinc was almost at melting point and the pools of We jumped off from Twilight on a course due southeast with thirty days to make it to the Center of Brightside. If we could cross an average of seventy miles a day, we could hit Center exactly at perihelion, the point of Mercury’s closest approach to the Sun—which made Center the hottest part of the planet at the hottest it ever gets. The Sun was already huge and yellow over the horizon two thousand miles to the opposite twilight zone. Sanderson “It sounds like I am,” I cut in. “We want to keep the lead He stared at the Major. “I mean, how can we tell what sort of “Charts! I’m talking about detail I can stay on good solid ground, of course, but scan the never forget that huge yellow Sun glaring down, without a break, hotter and hotter with every mile. We knew that the the Twilight Lab. I moved out first back over my shoulder, I could see the of Brightside. But in a couple of hours we rumbled past Sanderson’s were in virgin territory and already the Sun was beginning to degrees Fahrenheit inside our suits, but our eyes watched that glaring Sun and the baked yellow rocks going past, and sweat as if we were in a superheated furnace. The sun-shield cut the temperature down sixty or seventy We didn’t sleep the first few stops, as a consequence. Our the wheel. We were moving down into desolation that made Earth’s old Death Valley look like a Japanese rose garden. with a barely visible yellowish mist of sulfur and sulfurous gases. It was a hot, barren hole, no place for any man to go, but worse heat in the Solar System was the surface of the Sun get us. That was the bargain. I learned a lot about Mercury those first few driving periods. The gorge petered out after a hundred miles and we moved onto the slope of a range of ragged craters that ran south and east. This range had shown no activity since the first landing on Mercury forty years before, but beyond it there were active cones. Yellow fumes rose from the craters constantly their rubble. Below were the vast yellow flatlands, smoking and hissing from the gases beneath the crust. Over everything was gray ash, filling crevices and declivities—offering a soft, treacherous\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the twilight zone?\n\n<options>:\nA The place at the end of the Brightside Crossing.\nB A lab where they study the Sun.\nC The place between Brightside and Darkside.\nD A lab where they study Mercury.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
527
|
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>:\nOrison went with her cupped hands to the nearest tank and sprinkled the Trust Company, the gentleman to whom Miss Orison McCall was applying jacket, were enough to assure Orison that the Taft Bank was a curious \"He was a very kind employer,\" Orison said. She tried to keep from to Orison. He, too, she observed, wore earmuffs. His were more formal Mr. Wanji said. As the elevator door shut he explained to Orison, \"You can make the Taft Bank scene anywhere between the street floor and floor five. Basement and everything higher'n fifth floor is Iron \"Yes, sir,\" Orison said. She was wondering if she'd be issued earmuffs, The elevator opened on five to a tiny office, just large enough to \"What will I be doing, Mr. Wanji?\" Orison asked. coffee-breaks, union membership, lunch hour and the like. Shall we take \"Yes, sir,\" Orison said. This laissez-faire policy of Taft Bank's Orison nodded. Holding her newspaper and her microphone, she read the took off upstairs in the elevator. By lunchtime Orison had finished the Federal Mata Hari, Orison thought, reading a nonsense story into a Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the book and took the elevator down to the ground floor. The operator was down from the interdicted upper floors, were several gentlemen with gentlemen whipped off their hats with a single motion as Orison stepped aboard the elevator. Each of the chivalrous men, hat pressed to his heart, wore a pair of earmuffs. Orison nodded bemused acknowledgment Lunch at the stand-up counter down the street was a normal interlude. Girls from the ground-floor offices of Taft Bank chattered together, favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed, lonely desk and her microphone. By five, Orison had finished the book, light coat, and rode downstairs in an elevator filled with earmuffed, upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment boss in Washington had told her that this job of hers, spying on Taft Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's Oriental? Item: the top eight floors of the Taft Bank Building seemed In a gloomy mood, Orison McCall showered and dressed for bed. Eleven No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock the lights were out. Wasn't Washington going to call her? Orison sat up, clutching the sheet around her throat. \"Beg pardon?\" she Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax, \"Where are you, Monitor?\" she demanded. Orison lay down cautiously. \"All right,\" she whispered to her pillow. Orison transferred her head to the pillow to her left. \"A radio?\" she \"You make it sound so improper,\" Orison said. Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a \"How do you know ... why do you think I'm beautiful?\" Orison asked. Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved , Orison was interrupted by the click of a pair \"I'm Orison McCall,\" she said. A handsome man, she mused. Twenty-eight? \"It's nothing,\" Orison said, switching off the microphone. reasonably astute sixth-grader couldn't do as well,\" Orison said. to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here \"Dink?\" she asked. \"And I suppose you're to call me Orison?\" \"That's the drill,\" he said. \"One more question, Orison. Dinner this \"I'd love to,\" Orison said, half expecting an orchestra to march, curtsy? Orison wondered. to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink, Orison finished the Orison looked up. \"Oh, hello,\" she said. \"I didn't hear you come up.\" of the desk, \"and pounce ever so hard.\" She smiled. Opulent, Orison teeth. \"Delighted,\" the visitor said, handing over an undelighted palm. \"I'm Auga Vingt. Auga, to my friends.\" \"Won't you sit down, Miss Vingt?\" \"So kind of you, darling,\" Auga Vingt said, \"but I shan't have time to \"Thanks,\" Orison said. \"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly,\" Orison said, rolling her \"You make it very clear,\" Orison said. \"Now you'd best hurry back to off?\" Auga asked. \"Well, ta-ta.\" She turned and walked to the elevator, motion. The elevator stopped to pick up the odious Auga. A passenger, male, stepped off. \"Good morning, Mr. Gerding,\" Miss Vingt said, bowing. \"Carry on, Colonel,\" the stranger replied. As the elevator door closed, \"What is this?\" Orison demanded. \"Visiting-day at the zoo?\" She paused and shook her head. \"Excuse me, sir,\" she said. \"It's just that ... Vingt thing....\" \"Auga is rather intense,\" the new Mr. Gerding said. \"Yeah, intense,\" Orison said. \"Like a kidney-stone.\" had!—and Orison half expected him to free her hand from the rolled-up Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. \"I quit!\" she \"I'll hold my breath,\" Orison promised. \"The elevator is just behind Kraft Gerding called the elevator, marched aboard, favored Orison with a cold, quick bow, then disappeared into the mysterious heights above fifth floor. First the unspeakable Auga Vingt, then the obnoxious Kraft Gerding. Surely, Orison thought, recovering the Wall Street Journal finished early enough, she might get a chance to prowl those Off-Limits upper floors. Half an hour further into the paper, Orison jumped, startled by the Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before \"Yes, Mr. Wanji. I'll tell Mr. Gerding.\" Orison clicked the phone down. she had a vague excuse to prowl the upper floors. The Earmuffs could The elevator? No. The operators had surely been instructed to keep her off the upstairs floors. But the building had a stairway. The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There Orison was blinded by the lights, brilliant as noonday sun. The room Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have we to toss you into one of these tanks....\" Orison struggled against floor. \"... your flesh would be unharmed, though they spun and darted \"Dink ... Dink!\" Orison shouted. \"I came to bring a message to Dink,\" Orison said. \"Let me go, you around Orison. the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator. \"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison,\" Dink said. \"Why did you do girl, I had to stay upstairs all day one Sunday because there was a home and took it down with a broom. Even then, I didn't have appetite Orison,\" he said. eaters. They literally couldn't harm a fly. Look at it, Orison.\" He \"What do they do?\" Orison asked. \"What's he doing now?\" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus, Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to\n\n<question>:\nWhat was Orison’s excuse to visit the upper floors?\n\n<options>:\nA To deliver a message from Mr. Wanji\nB To see what the Earmuffs were doing\nC To feed the Microfabridae\nD To complain about Auga Vingt\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
490
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nWas Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home. Both 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. Shawn was managing editor of The New Yorker when he hired Ross in 1945 as the magazine's second woman reporter (the first was Andy Logan). He was short and balding but had pale blue eyes to die for. As for Ross, \"I was aware of the fact that I was not unappealing.\" During a late-night editorial session, she says, Shawn blurted out his love. A few weeks later at the office, their eyes met. Without a word--even, it seems, to the cab driver--they hied uptown to the Plaza, where matters were consummated. Thereafter, the couple set up housekeeping together in an apartment 20 blocks downtown from the Shawn residence on upper Fifth Avenue and stoically endured the sufferings of Shawn's wife, who did not want a divorce. 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. William Shawn's indispensability as an editor is amply manifest in Ross' memoir. Word repetition? \"Whatever reporting Bill asked me to do turned out to be both challenging and fun. ... For me, reporting and writing for the magazine was fun, pure fun. ... It was never 'work' for me. It was fun.\" Even in praising his skill as an editor, she betrays the presence of its absence. \"All writers, of course, have needed the one called the 'editor,' who singularly, almost mystically, embodies the many-faceted, unique life force infusing the entire enchilada.\" Nice touch, that enchilada. 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.\" 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. Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death. Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this.\n\n<question>:\nWho had the opinion that Shawn had stopped reading the magazine after Tina Brown became editor?\n\n<options>:\nA Newhouse\nB Brown\nC Mehta\nD Ross\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,432
|
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>:\neBabe This week, soft-porn entrepreneur Ron Harris began auctioning the eggs of fashion models on the Internet. His site, ronsangels.com (named after the 1970s' babe show Charlie's Angels ), invites visitors to \"bid on eggs from beautiful, healthy and intelligent women.\" Like Dr. Richard Seed, who recently declared his intention to clone human beings, Harris has attracted the attention of the media and politicians who are \"looking into\" whether he can be stopped. Most people agree that Harris is a creep and that his site is an outrage. What they don't agree on is why. Here's what the critics have to say about the auction--and each other. 1. Egg auctions will produce designer babies. Harris cites his experience as a horse breeder and asks, \"We bid for everything else in this society--why not eggs?\" Alarmists, agreeing that Harris \"can put you into your own designer baby by selling eggs,\" predict that his success will steer \"the future of human breeding\" toward \"genetic engineering.\" 2. Egg auctions will fail to produce designer babies. While fretting about what will happen if Harris succeeds, fertility experts simultaneously debunk that scenario. \"Not only is it ethically ludicrous, but the fact is, no kid's going to look like the model's picture,\" observes ethicist George Annas. The experts give four reasons. First, the child of an ugly man and a pretty woman is just as likely to be ugly as to be pretty. Second, everyone carries \"recessive\" genes, which are invisible in this generation but may become visible in the next. A model with a small nose can pass on genes for a big nose. Third, even if both parents are attractive, a child can combine their features unattractively. For example, a girl can inherit her mother's weak nose and her father's strong brow. 9. The auction exploits desperate buyers. Harris preaches pure capitalism, saying it's \"unfair to put a limit on a girl's ability to make money\" by auctioning her eggs. In turn, fertility clinic operators accuse Harris of \"taking advantage of couples trying to conceive\" and exploiting \"desperate people ... susceptible to the dreams he is trying to sell.\" USA Today laments, \"This is about human need. And human greed.\" 10. The auction exploits desperate sellers. By late Monday, Harris had only a handful of bids, and only one was verified as legitimate. On the other hand, 50 women had asked him to put their eggs up for auction. Gradually, the media concluded that the donors were the true victims. USA Today described the models as \"struggling actresses,\" reported that they were unaware of the health risks of donating eggs, and quoted one as saying, \"I'd rather do this than do Playboy or Penthouse .\" Harris' sole verified bidder told the paper that selling eggs was \"better than prostitution.\" Harris constantly refers to the donors as his \"girls\" and describes them like cattle--\"We have a legitimate bid of $42,000 on one of the girls.\" He gets a 20 percent commission on each winning bid, though he takes no responsibility for executing financial transactions or medical procedures. \"We have no control over the quality, safety or legality of the items advertised, the truth or accuracy of the listings, the ability of sellers to sell items or the ability of buyers to buy items,\" he stipulates. His role, he explains, is simply to \"find beautiful girls, take beautiful photographs of them, [and] put them up on the Web.\" To some critics, the mystery isn't, as Harris suggests, how women throughout history have exploited their sexual power over men, but how pimps like him have come away with the profit. 12. The Internet facilitates monstrous purchases. Technology watchdogs call the egg auction another chapter in the cultural slide marked by Jennycam (a Web site featuring live video of a young woman undressing and doing other normal activities in her apartment), the promised Webcast of a man and woman losing their virginity together (which turned out to be a hoax), and a human kidney auction that was conducted and aborted on eBay last month. \"Ever since the Internet, it seems to snowball more rapidly, this depersonalization of people and selling of eggs,\" one fertility expert complains to the New York Times . USA Today says the egg auction \"just might force an Internet-obsessed society to finally sit down and ask itself: Where is the Internet taking us?\" 13. The Internet cheats people of their monstrous purchases. The only thing worse than buying human eggs on the Internet, according to the critics, is not getting the eggs you paid for. \"When you have large transactions of this kind conducted over the Internet, there may be fraud,\" a computer crime expert warns USA Today . Lori Andrews, a reproductive technology lawyer, warns CNN viewers that \"there's very little that you can do to prove that these eggs actually came from the donors that were expected,\" and \"the Internet just adds ... a layer that it makes it even more difficult to scrutinize where the eggs are coming from.\" 14. Egg buyers will reap unintended consequences. Sophisticated skeptics point out that Harris' application of Darwin's theories to human professional success overlooks the interaction of genetics and human psychology. To begin with, if a child produced by Harris' auction fails to turn out as pretty as the buyer expected, the buyer may shun the child, or the child may grow to hate herself for disappointing her parents. (On the Today show, Harris said of this theory, \"That's a pretty cynical view of human nature.\") Second, if the child turns out pretty but doesn't want to be a beauty queen, her parents may force her in that direction anyway, thereby stifling her true talents and preventing her from becoming successful. Third, the child's good looks may attract too much attention of the wrong kind, eventually destroying her. Critics cite Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe as examples. 15. Other people's eggs don't pass on your genes. In defense of his auction, Harris quotes author Helen Fisher's statement that \"having sex is the most important act of your life. This is how we get our genes to the next generation.\" But Harris seems to have overlooked the crucial words: \"our genes.\" \"The drive to send your own genes into tomorrow is much stronger than the [drive] to pick out of a sperm bank or egg site,\" Fisher observes. This consideration may not affect single men, but it can be a decisive turnoff for couples. On this view, Harris' mistake is not that he focuses too much on selfishness, but that he neglects it. He forgets that you don't care about reproducing unless what you're reproducing is yourself. 16. The power of beauty should be transcended, not exploited. Harris preaches that the world rewards beauty because it's human nature to favor those who are pleasant to look at, and therefore the way to have successful children is to make sure they're attractive. The most ambitious response is to attack the whole \"prejudice\" in favor of beauty. \"The standards of beauty do vary with the culture. And they are social facts, not really genetics facts,\" says Hastings Center ethicist Bruce Jennings. Therefore, \"we should think about\" whether to \"accept the existing prejudices and then try to eugenically manipulate them\" or to transcend those prejudices.\n\n<question>:\nWhich isn't true?\n\n<options>:\nA Ron Harris is looking for fame and fortune\nB models aren't interested in giving Harris their eggs\nC the critics don't agree with each other\nD the critics believe the egg auction is bad\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,851
|
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>:\nBERET By TOM PURDOM It's not so much the decisions a man does make that mark decision \"I've had enough!\" Illustrated by Schoenherr Read locked the door and drew his pistol. Sergeant Rashid handed Premier Umluana the warrant. \"I don't know your language,\" Rashid said. in court.\" Read clicked off the safety. \"Corporal Read is very young,\" Rashid said, \"but he's a crack shot. That's why I brought him with me. I think he likes to shoot, too.\" Umluana turned back to Rashid a second too soon. He saw the sergeant's upraised hand before it collided with his neck. \"Help! Kidnap. \" Rashid judo chopped him and swung the inert body over his shoulders. Read pulled a flat grenade from his vest pocket. He dropped it and yellow psycho gas hissed from the valve. \"Let's be off,\" Rashid said. The door lock snapped as they went out the window. Two men with rifles plunged into the gas catatonic trance. A little car skimmed across the lawn. Bearing the Scourge of Africa, Rashid struggled toward it. Read walked backward, covering their retreat. grenades. \"I better cover,\" he said. \"Thanks,\" Rashid said. The inspector slid out of the car and ran to a clump of bushes. The driver pushed in the accelerator. As they swerved toward the that rose before them. \"Is he all right?\" the driver asked. \"I don't think I hurt him.\" Rashid took a syrette from his vest pocket. \"Well, Read, it looks like we're in for a fight. In a few minutes Miaka Station will know we're coming. And God knows what fools with me,\" he bragged. \"When Harry Read's out, there's a tiger running loose.\" No one knew how many times he nearly ran from other clubs, how carefully he picked the safest spot on the \"Don't you like America, Harry? Do you \"I don't want that,\" Read said. \"Here comes our escort,\" Read said. he's 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 history from Cambridge but only the Corp gave him work that satisfied his conscience. He hated war. It was that simple. Rashid turned his head. He waved frantically. The two men in the other car waved back. \"Shall I duck under the trees?\" the driver asked. Suddenly machine-gun bullets cracked and whined beside him. \"Evade,\" Rashid said. \"Don't go down.\" Without losing any forward speed, the driver took them straight up. Read's stomach bounced. and saw a long crack in the roof. \"Hit the floor,\" Rashid said. They knelt on the cramped floor. Rashid put on his gas mask and Read copied him. Umluana breathed like a furnace, still unconscious from the injection Rashid had given him. I can't do anything , Read thought. crawled in waves down his own back. Another explosion, this time very loud. Rashid raised his eyes above the seat and looked out the rear window. \"Two left. Keep down, Read.\" \"Can't we go down?\" Read said. \"They'll get to Miaka before us.\" He shut his eyes when he heard another loud explosion. Sergeant Rashid looked out the window again. He swore bitterly in English and Egyptian. Read raised his head. The two cars behind slowed down, then crashed through the glass walls and hovered by the transmitter booth. Rashid opened the door and threw out two grenades. Read jumped out and the two of them struggled toward the booth with Umluana. The driver, pistol in hand, ran for the control panel. fire on the largest car. \"Now, I can shoot back,\" he said. \"Now we'll see what they do.\" \"Are you ready, Rashid?\" yelled the driver. \"Man, get us out of here!\" inspector lay behind an overturned couch. Read had seen dozens of training films taken during actual battles or after atomic attacks. He had laughed when other with the weak stomachs better get used to it.\" the blood he deposited on the floor. \"Did you get Umluana?\" he asked Sergeant Rashid. \"He's in the booth. What's going on?\" Rashid's Middle East Oxford seemed more clipped than ever. \"Can we get out of here?\" \"They machine-gunned the controls.\" Rashid swore. \"You heard him, Read! Get out there and help those men.\" He heard the screams of the wounded, the crack of rifles and spread through the building. They could see anyone who tried to rush them but the besiegers couldn't pick out targets. Above the noise, he heard Rashid. Read surveyed his sector of fire. About two hundred yards to his ditch. He dropped another grenade beside it. The heavy gas would lie there for hours. Sergeant Rashid ran crouched from man to man. He did what he could to shield the wounded. \"How do you think they'll treat us?\" doesn't get here on time, I've got a man filling wine bottles with gasoline.\" \"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? from the fox or a panther thinks when it crouches on a branch OUR PREMIER, WE WILL DESTROY YOU. Read shut his eyes. All around him he heard heavy breathing, mumbled comments, curses. Clothes rustled as men moved restlessly. But already the voice of Sergeant Rashid resounded in the murky room. \"We've got to knock that thing out before the copter comes. Otherwise, he can't land. I have six Molotov cocktails here. Who wants to go hunting with me?\" For two years Read had served under Sergeant Rashid. To him, the sergeant was everything a UN inspector should be. Rashid's devotion to peace had no limits. Read's psych tests said pride alone drove him on. That was good Read had seen the inspector who covered their getaway. He had pain, had become a part of him. \"I'll take a cocktail, Sarge.\" \"Is that Read?\" \"Who else did you expect?\" \"Nobody. Anybody else?\" Rashid snapped orders. He put the German inspector in charge of Umluana. Read, the Frenchman and himself, he stationed at thirty-foot intervals along the floor. \"Remember,\" Rashid said. \"We have to knock out that gun.\" Read had given away his machine gun. He held a gas-filled bottle in each hand. His automatic nestled in its shoulder holster. Rashid whistled. Dozens of smoke grenades tumbled through the air. Thick mist engulfed the tank. Read stood up and ran forward. He crouched but Sarge. \" \"I'm hit, too,\" Rashid said. \"Don't stop if you can move.\" Listen to him. What's he got, a sprained ankle? But he didn't feel any pain. He closed his eyes and threw himself \"What?\" Guns clattered. Bullets cracked. \"Sergeant Rashid! Answer me.\" He heard nothing but the lonely passage of the bullets in the 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\n\n<question>:\nHow does Read feel about Rashid?\n\n<options>:\nA Read thinks Rashid is a very special man.\nB Read thinks Sergeant Rashid is the ideal UN soldier. Rashid is completely devoted to world peace at any cost.\nC Read thinks Rashid is weak because Rashid wants to help the wounded.\nD Read thinks Rashid is crazy for using Molotov cocktails.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
332
|
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 ROSS ROCKLYNNE \"Want an asteroid in your backyard? We supply cheap. Trouble also handled without charge.\" Interplanetary Hauling Company. (ADVT.) asteroid, was plainly flabbergasted. Not in his wildest imaginings had he thought they would actually find what they were looking for. \"Cut the drive!\" he yelled at Queazy. \"I've got it, right on the nose. such a manner that the big, powerful ship was moving at the same rate as the asteroid below—47.05 miles per second. He came slogging back called because his full name was Quentin Zuyler—dropped the ship straight down to the smooth surface of the asteroid, and clamped it Received your advertising literature a week ago. Would like to state that yes I would like an asteroid in my back yard. Must meet following specifications: 506 feet length, long enough for wedding procession 98 feet at base, tapering to 10 feet at apex neither Bob nor Queazy would have thought of sending an answering was, plainly, a hair-brained request. And yet, if by some chance there was such a rigidly specified asteroid, their financial worries would be over. That they had actually discovered the asteroid, using their mass-detectors in a weight-elimination process, seemed like an incredible stroke of luck. For there are literally millions of asteroids in the asteroid belt, and they had been out in space only three weeks. The \"asteroid in your back yard\" idea had been Bob Parker's originally. rich man who had decided to hold a wedding on top of an asteroid. Unfortunately, other interplanetary moving companies had cashed in on before this if he hadn't been lanky and tall while they were giants. Now that he and Queazy had found the asteroid, they were desperate to get it to its destination, for fear that the Saylor brothers might get wind of what was going on, and try to beat them out of their profits. Saylor made no pretense of being scrupulous. Now they scuffed along the smooth-plane topside of the asteroid, the magnets in their shoes keeping them from stepping off into space. They came to the broad base of the asteroid-wedge, walked over the edge and You! \" He and Queazy caught up with her on the side of the asteroid they hadn't yet examined. It was a rough plane, completing the rigid qualifications Burnside had set down. and it was three times as big as her gloved hand. \"I understand conditions better than you do,\" she said. \"You want to move this asteroid from its orbit and haul it back to Earth. Unfortunately, this is my home, by common law. Come back in a month. I don't expect to be here then.\" an asteroid that doesn't mean anything to you one way or another. But to us—to me and Queazy here—it means our business. We got an order for this asteroid. Some screwball millionaire wants it for a backyard wedding see? We get five hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it! If we don't take this asteroid to Earth before June 2, we go back to Satterfield City and work the rest of our lives in the glass factories. the asteroid you'll save your business, but I'll meet a fate worse than death! So that's that.\" Oh, Lord, that this should happen! Somewhere along the line, we've been double-crossed. Those boys are after this asteroid too, and they won't hesitate to pull any rough stuff. We're in this together, understand? We got to back each other up.\" 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?\" sparks crackled between the hull and the asteroid as the magnetic 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. There was no answer from Queazy. With sick eyes, Bob studied the it is to go against him when he's got his mind set! I was just a mass of nerves. So I decided to trick him and I came out to the asteroid belt and picked out an asteroid that was shaped so a wedding could take of an asteroid with those measurements and made of iron ore, tungsten, and so forth. He agreed so fast he scared me, and just to make sure that if somebody did find the asteroid in time they wouldn't be able to get it back to Earth, I came out here and decided to live here. Asteroids up to a certain size belong to whoever happens to be on them, by common law.... So I had everything figured out—except,\" she added bitterly, \"the Saylor brothers! I guess Granddad wanted to make sure the asteroid was delivered, so he gave the order to several companies.\" Bob swore under his breath. He went reeling across to a port, and was gratified to see his and Queazy's big interplanetary hauler floating going to put this to you plainly. We can catch up with the Saylor brothers even if they are three weeks ahead of us. The Saylor ship and ours both travel on the HH drive—inertia-less. But the asteroid has plenty of inertia, and so they'll have to haul it down to Earth by a long, spiraling orbit. We can go direct and probably catch up with them a few hundred thousand miles this side of Earth. And we can have a fling at getting the asteroid back!\" Her eyes sparkled. \"You mean—\" she cried. Then her attractive face fell. \"Oh,\" she said. \" And when you get it back, you'll land it.\" \"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 asteroid back? Remember, commercial ships aren't allowed to carry long-range weapons. And we couldn't ram the Saylor brothers' ship—not without damaging our own ship just as much. Go ahead and answer that.\" feeling—and I can't put the thought into concrete words—that somehow the whole solution of the problem of grabbing the asteroid back lies there. But how? How? They weren't where Bob and Queazy had calculated, as they had discovered the next day. They had expected to pick up the asteroid on their mass-detectors a few hundred thousand miles outside of the Moon's orbit. But now they saw the giant ship attached like a leech to the still bigger asteroid—inside the Moon's orbit! A mere two hundred thousand miles from Earth! \"We have to work fast,\" Bob stammered, sweating. He got within exactly the same method of catching the \"yo-yo\" on the blunt nose of the ship as a baseball player uses to catch a hard-driven ball in his glove—namely, by matching the ball's speed and direction almost brothers must have had only a bare realization of what was going on. But by the time the \"yo-yo\" was flung at them again, this time with better calculations, they managed to put the firmly held asteroid between them and the deadly missile. But it was clumsy evasion, for the asteroid was several times as massive as the ship which was towing it, and its inertia was great. And as soon as the little ship came spinning back to rest, Bob flung the hauler to a new vantage point and If you're alive,\" Bob snarled wrathfully. \"And you won't be unless you release the asteroid.\" \"I'll see you in Hades first!\" \"Hades,\" remarked Bob coldly, \"here you come!\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy are Quezy and Bob pressed for time?\n\n<options>:\nA They don't want their competitors getting to the asteroid before them and missing out on the profit.\nB The Saylor Brothers have been chasing them, and they know they're on their way to the same asteroid.\nC They need to fulfill Burnside's requests quickly in order to make a profit.\nD Hauling asteroids is dangerous work, and the quicker they get it done the better.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,218
|
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.] All she wanted was a mate and she had the gumption to go out and hunt one down. But that meant poaching in a strictly forbidden territory! paths across her face and now she needed certain remedial undergarments at which she would have scoffed ten or even five years ago. Matilda was also looking for a husband. This, in itself, was not unusual—but Matilda was so completely wrapped up in the romantic fallacy of her day that she sought a prince charming, a faithful Don Juan, a man who had been everywhere and tasted and that was the direction of Haron Gorka's place. of every worldly pleasure and who now wanted to sit on a porch and a billion men in the world, a goodly percentage of whom are eligible bachelors, and that the right one would come along simply because she had been waiting for him. Matilda, you see, had patience. Matilda would write, and she often told her mother, the widow Penshaws, that it was in this way she would find her husband. The widow Penshaws impatiently told her to go out and get dates. someone in New York needed a midwestern pen pal, but it was a woman an elderly man interested in ornithology wanted a young chick correspondent interested in the same subject Intelligent, somewhat egotistical male who's really been around, whose universal experience can make the average cosmopolite look like a provincial hick, is in need of several female correspondents: must be intelligent, have gumption, be capable of listening to male who has a The name—Haron Gorka: its oddness was somehow beautiful to Matilda. Haron Gorka—the nationality could be anything. And that was it. He had writing a letter. Matilda was not yet that far gone in years or appearance. Dressed properly, she could hope to make a favorable impression in person, and asked him where she could find Haron Gorka. \"I said, where can I find Haron Gorka?\" \"It's not a that it's a he. Where can I find him? Where does he live? What's the quickest way to get there?\" The stereotype pushed up his glasses and looked at her squarely. \"Now take it easy, ma'am. First place, I don't know any Haron Gorka—\" stereotype, and he scratched his bald head. Then he told Matilda almost happily that he was sorry he couldn't help her. He grudgingly suggested that if it really were important, she might check with the police. Matilda did, only they didn't know any Haron Gorka, either. It turned did not exist. Matilda felt bad, but she had no intention of returning home this early. If she could not find Haron Gorka, that was one thing but she still would be lacking. Hence she retraced her steps and nodded to the old librarian as she passed. hair, suspicious eyes, and a broom-stick figure.... On the other hand—why not? Why couldn't the librarian help her? Why hadn't she thought of it before? Certainly a man as well-educated as Haron Gorka would be an avid reader, and unless he had a permanent own library with him. This being the case, a third-rate collection of books was far better than no collection at all, and perhaps the librarian would know Mr. Haron Gorka. Matilda cleared her throat. \"Pardon me,\" she began. \"I'm looking for—\" \"Haron Gorka.\" The librarian nodded. you in the afternoon. I never did trust this Mr. Gorka....\" \"You know him? You know Haron Gorka?\" \"What do you mean?\" \"I mean anyone would like to correspond with Haron Gorka. Or to know him well. To be considered his friend. Haron Gorka....\" The librarian seemed about to soar off into the air someplace, and if five women had been here first, Matilda was now definitely in a hurry. \"Um, where can I find Mr. Gorka?\" of you will tell me about Haron Gorka, sparing no details. You each address. She thanked the librarian and then she went out to her car, Haron Gorka lived in what could have been an agrarian estate, except librarian's account of him certainly had been glowing enough. Perhaps he was too busy with his cultural pursuits to pay any real attention to only one with the idea to visit Haron Gorka in person. With half a perhaps she wouldn't be needed that she really might have liked. Instead, someone she could only regard as a menial met her, and when he asked had she come in response to the advertisement, she nodded eagerly. He told her that was fine and he ushered her straight into a room \"What about Mr. Gorka?\" \"When he wants you, he will send for you. Meanwhile, make yourself to home, lady, and I will tell him you are here.\" A little doubtful now, Matilda thanked him and watched him leave. He her fault if, in his unconcern, Haron Gorka had unwittingly hired a she had a nightmare in which Haron Gorka appeared as a giant with two extremely palatable made her forget all about Haron Gorka's neurotic The feeling did not last long. Standing over her was Haron Gorka's servant, and he said, \"Mr. Gorka will see you now.\" \"Now?\" \"Now. That's what you're here for, isn't it?\" He had a point there, but Matilda hardly even had time to fix her hair. She told the servant so. \"Miss,\" he replied, \"I assure you it will not matter in the least to Haron Gorka. Well, then, she must see to it that she impressed him better than did all the rest, and, later, when she returned to tell the old librarian of her adventures, she could perhaps draw her out and compare notes. Haron Gorka. It was not that he was homely and unimpressive \"In response to your ad. How do you do, Mr. Gorka?\" She hoped she wasn't being too formal. But, then, there was no sense in assuming that he would like informality. She could only wait and see and adjust her own actions to suit him. Meanwhile, it would be best to keep on the middle of the road. and relaxing with her, telling her of the many things he had done and seen. But first she certainly would have liked to get to know Haron Gorka were to talk to her as he saw fit. \"Well, what, Mr. Gorka?\" that Haron Gorka was mouthing gibberish. But on the other hand she Haron Gorka turned his back. Then Haron Gorka had severed that relationship, too, and now he was all were, of course, two alternatives. Either Haron Gorka was an eccentric It was not until she had passed the small library building that she remembered what she had promised the librarian. In her own way, the \"So,\" she finished, \"Haron Gorka is either extremely eccentric or \"What do you mean?\" \"Did he leave a message for his wife?\" message for his wife—\" Matilda didn't understand. She didn't understand at all, but she told the little librarian what the message was. \"He wanted her to return,\" The librarian nodded, a happy smile on her lips. \"You wouldn't believe \"I am Mrs. Gorka.\" says I am a finicky traveler, that he could do much better alone, the accommodations have to be just right for me, and so forth. When he loses his temper, he tries to convince me that any number of females of the opportunity just to listen to him. \"But he's wrong. It's a hard life for a woman. Someday—five thousand, ten thousand years from now—I will convince him. And then we will \"Well, if Haron wants me back, then I have to go. Have a care, my dear. If you marry, choose a home-body. I've had the experience and you've seen my Haron for yourself.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy did the librarian really give every woman Mr. Gorka's address?\n\n<options>:\nA to find a woman that would really listen to him\nB she wanted to hear their stories\nC to prove him wrong\nD to help him find a suitable companion\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
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>:\nits contents when he was through BY FREDERICK POHL Out in the great gas cloud of the Orion and there was the question of time. they all have come from his own ship. He was prepared to swear that nothing like this antique had been aboard. The drone began again in his ear, as it had at five-minute intervals all along: And louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the AVC circuits toned the signal down, another voice. A woman's voice, crying out in panic and fear: \" like a voice. He could not quite hear it, but it was there. He sat as still as he could, listening Hatcher, who was not human, did not possess truly human emotions to this damned, dark, dismal hole of a place where everything was out to Hatcher knew that this was not a freak show, but a matter of life and hurt him and nothing explained what was going on. He cried aloud in exasperation: \"If I could only Hatcher hesitated. \"No,\" he said at last. \"The male is responding well. out, brought here in a suit ... well, it was an explanation with more holes than fabric, like a fisherman's net, but at least it was rational. How to explain a set of Gibbon's from them issued the pungent, distasteful halogen odor. They might be ventilators, he thought but if so the air they brought in was worse than what he already had. apparently in her late thirties. She appeared to be Chinese. She breathed, a little raggedly but without visible discomfort her face was relaxed as though she were sleeping. She did not rouse as he moved her. He realized she was breathing the air of the room they were in. His instant first thought was that she was in danger of asphyxiation refreshed him, like icewater between rounds, and with a clearing head he remembered what a spacesuit was good for. Of course, the thing might not be operating. He reached for the microphone again— He cried aloud. antibiotic—and with the prayerful emotions of a starving, shipwrecked, sailor, watching the inward bobbing drift of a wave-born cask that may Suppose you call him \"Hatcher\" (and suppose you call it a \"him.\") Hatcher a number of sports which defy human Hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the \"probe team\" yet they were the calmest limbs in the room \"Paranormal powers,\" muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the After a long moment he turned his senses from the Earthman. \"Incredible—but it's true enough,\" he said. \"I'd better report. Watch him,\" he added, but that was surely unnecessary. Their job was to Hatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in Hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report: \"The subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to inspect his enclosure. His method of doing so was to put his own manipulating certain appurtenances of an artificial skin we had provided for him. \"He then began to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs in his breathing passage. \"Simultaneously, the object he was holding, attached to the artificial skin, was discovered to be generating paranormal forces.\" now, but I can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing.\" \"Fantastic,\" breathed the councillor, in a tone of dawning hope. \"How about communicating with him, Hatcher? Any progress?\" was not really a waste of time for him with the organs he had left in biophysical nuances of his enclosure —\"and tried to guess his needs and we're frightening him half to death. We can't go faster. This creature is in no way similar to us, you know. He relies on paranormal forces—heat, light, kinetic energy—for his life. His chemistry is not ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves.\" \"But the danger to the specimen—\" Hatcher protested automatically. now .\" Hatcher did not like the idea of endangering the Earthman. It cannot Hatcher did not want him destroyed. It had been difficult enough entirely pleasant to Earthmen. A slit in the lower hemisphere of his body opened, like a purse, emitting a thin, pussy, fetid fluid which Hatcher caught and poured into a disposal trough at the side of the of kelp it closed, and his body was supplied with nourishment for another day. He returned quickly to the room. existence to their enemies— \"Hatcher!\" The call was urgent second in command, very excited. \"What is it?\" Hatcher demanded. Hatcher was patient themselves into their vestigial slots, poured back their wastes into his own circulation and ingested what they needed from the meal he had just taken.... \"Now!\" cried the assistant. \"Look!\" \"Killing him, Hatcher?\" Hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like perhaps, a nice new sound that had not been there before a very faint, an almost inaudible elfin hiss. but perhaps, he thought, he could smell one. The unpleasant halogen odor from the grating was surely stronger now. He stood there, perplexed. A tinny little voice from the helmet of the space suit said sharply, calling from?\" He forgot smell, sound and temperature and leaped for the suit. \"This calling. Answer, please!\" \"I am answering, damn it,\" he roared. \"What took you so long?\" hours to get a message to the ship and back? And if so ... where in the name of heaven was he? of his situation and his guesses. \"I don't know how I got here. I don't know how long I've been gone, since I was unconscious for a consider what to do next. He mopped his brow. With the droning, repetitious call from the ship finally quiet, the room was quiet again. And warm. and more than that. The halogen stench was strong in his nostrils again. Hurriedly McCray scrambled into the suit. By the time he was sealed down he was coughing from the bottom of his lungs, deep, tearing rasps that pained him, uncontrollable. Chlorine or fluorine, one of them was in the air he had been breathing. He could not guess where it had come from but it was ripping his lungs out. He flushed the interior of the suit out with a reckless disregard for the wastage of his air reserve, holding his breath as much as he could, daring only shallow gasps that made him retch and gag. After a long time he could breathe, though his eyes were spilling tears. He could see the fumes in the room now. The heat was building up. Automatically—now that he had put it on and so started its deep-space suit, regulation garb when going outside the pressure hull of an FTL ship. It was good up to at least five hundred degrees in thin air, perhaps three or four hundred in dense. In thin air or in space it was the elastic joints and couplings that depolymerized when the heat grew too great in dense air, with conduction pouring energy in faster than the cooling coils could suck it out and hurl it away, it was the refrigerating equipment that broke down. never mind how. Never mind what he would, or could, do next all those questions could recede into the background of his mind while he swung the ax and battered his way out of this poisoned At this rate, he thought grimly, he would be an hour getting through it. Did he have an hour? But it did not take an hour. One blow was luckier than the rest as nearly closed as he could it might not keep the gas and heat out, but it would retard them. could batter it open, but it was not likely that much would be left of\n\n<question>:\nWhat does hatcher mean when he says, “to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs in his breathing passage.”\n\n<options>:\nA To speak\nB To sigh\nC To panic\nD To breathe\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
45
|
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.] What's more important—Man's conquest of space, or one spaceman's life? I timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards. But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard. He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony, boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses. the Ultrawelfare State. Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home, Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, \"Any more the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have miserably failed.\" delving into space.\" Gubelin snapped his fingers. \"Like that, either of us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the road to his destiny.\" foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous pastimes.\" society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food, clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to our pleas for a few more trips?\" \"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for....\" the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been increasingly hard to come by—even though in our spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space Exploration.\" \"So....\" Girard-Perregaux said gently. face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. \"And do not the ends of the sailor and his way of life?\" for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be The other chuckled again. \"It is simply a matter of finding more modern methods, my dear chap.\" excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of dangers met and passed. in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution. working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week. of them ever really becoming efficient. The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees were needed, a draft lottery was held. Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long titles. screen and said, \"Balance check, please.\" destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the A voice said gently, \"If the quarters are satisfactory, please present However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was his way to the bar. every Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, \"Yeah ... sure.\" \"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?\" \"Sure.\" He pointed at the lapel pin. \"You can't wear one unless you been on at least a Moon run.\" if they say Seymour.\" him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it.\" \" ?\" Si was expansive. \"Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have as though avoiding his face. \"I ... I suppose it was that speech your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the planets....\" \"Well,\" Si said modestly, \"two of my runs were only to the Moon.\" \"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop. So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like. Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of materials and all and keep the economy going.\" Natalie said earnestly, \"Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested after my first run and I found out what space cafard was.\" She frowned. \"I don't believe I know much about that.\" ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. \"Old Gubelin keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole\n\n<question>:\nBased on indicators in the passage, what can be inferred as the time setting of the story?\n\n<options>:\nA The present, based on the character use of credit cards.\nB The past, based on the dialogue used by characters.\nC The future, based on the advanced technology\nD The present, due to the government restrictions on space exploration.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
485
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nGoings On About Town One of the funniest moments in Brendan Gill's 1975 memoir, Here at \"The New Yorker ,\" comes during a luncheon at the now vanished Ritz in Manhattan. At the table are Gill William Shawn, then editor of The New Yorker and the reclusive English writer Henry Green. Green's new novel, Loving , has just received a very favorable review in The New Yorker . Shawn--\"with his usual hushed delicacy of speech and manner\"--inquires of the novelist whether he could possibly reveal what prompted the creation of such an exquisite work. Green obliges. \"I once asked an old butler in Ireland what had been the happiest times of his life,\" he says. \"The butler replied, 'Lying in bed on Sunday morning, eating tea and toast with cunty fingers.' \" This was not the explanation Shawn was expecting, Gill tells us. \"Discs of bright red begin to burn in his cheeks.\" Was Shawn blushing out of prudishness, as we are meant to infer? This was, after all, a man renowned for his retiring propriety, a man who sedulously barred anything smacking of the salacious--from lingerie ads to four-letter words--from the magazine he stewarded from 1952 until 1987, five years before his death. But after reading these two new memoirs about Shawn, I wonder. \"He longed for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,\" Lillian Ross discloses in hers, adding that he lusted after Hannah Arendt, Evonne Goolagong, and Madonna. As for Ved Mehta, he reports that Shawn's favorite thing to watch on television was \"people dancing uninhibitedly\" ( Soul Train , one guesses). I suspect Shawn did not blush at the \"cunty fingers\" remark out of prudery. He blushed because it had hit too close to home. Both 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. 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!\" Or the great and eccentric Irish writer Maeve Breenan, who fetched up as a bag lady. Or the legendary St. Clair McKelway, whose decisive breakdown came when he hailed a cab and prevailed upon the driver to take him to the New Yorker office at 24 West 43 rd St. \"O.K., Mac, if that's what you want.\" He was in Boston at the time. (McKelway later told Mehta that if the cabby had not called him \"Mac,\" his nickname, an alarm might have gone off in his head.) 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. Lillian Ross, by contrast, takes a rather cheerful view of the Brown dispensation. Indeed, the new editor even coaxed Ross into re-joining the magazine, just as she was booting Mehta out. \"I found that she possessed--under the usual disguises--her own share of Bill's kind of naivete, insight, and sensitivity,\" Ross says of Brown. \"She, too, 'got it.' \" A few months after Brown was appointed editor, Shawn died at the age of 85. He had long since stopped reading his beloved magazine, in sorrow and relief. That's if you believe Mehta. Ross assures us that Mr. Shawn was reading Tina Brown's New Yorker \"with new interest\" in the weeks prior to his death. Has Tina Brown betrayed the legacy of William Shawn, as Mehta fiercely believes, or has she continued and built upon it, as Ross is evidently convinced? Have the changes she has wrought enlivened a stodgy magazine or vulgarized a dignified one--or both? These are weighty questions, and one is of course loath to compromise one's life chances by hazarding unripe opinions in a public forum such as this.\n\n<question>:\nWho was said to have been blinded by meningitis as a child in the passage?\n\n<options>:\nA Mehta\nB Kahn\nC Myshkin\nD Brown\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
2,447
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nJERRY SOHL Smith admitted he had made an error involving a few his daily dose of sunshine. He was gurgling happily, examining a ball, a cheese grater and a linen baby book, all with perfunctory interest. When she looked up again she noticed a man walking by—except he knees hit the side of the play pen and young Laughton let out a scream—half from hurt and half from sudden lack of confidence in his man dropped the screaming child on the lawn and turned to the dog. Joe seemed off balance and he backed up confusedly in the face of the Martin Laughton sighed. \"I can't understand why you believed him. It's just—just plain nuts, Nancy!\" \"Don't you think I know it?\" Nancy said tearfully. \"I feel like I'm going crazy. I can't say I dreamt it because there was Reggie with his table and she sobbed. \"Nancy, for heaven's sake, of course I believe you. I'm trying to think it out, that's all. We should have called the police.\" Nancy shook her head in her arms. \"They'd—never—believe me either,\" she moaned. They found Reggie peacefully asleep in his crib in his room upstairs. windows locked. I'll see that the prowl car keeps an eye on the house. Call us if anything seems unusual or out of the way.\" Nancy had taken a sedative and was asleep by the time Martin finished infant and ran back into the house. Once inside, Nancy slammed the telephone. \"One of them was the same man!\" she cried. Martin gasped, sinking into a chair with the baby. \"I believed them,\" he said slowly and uncomprehendingly. \"They made me believe them!\" guy carrying your baby, don't you think?\" \"I shot him in the legs. The other—the other turned and I shot him in the chest. I could even see his eyes when he turned around. If I hadn't pulled the trigger then ... I don't want to remember it.\" The policemen went out. \"Thank God you woke up, Nancy,\" Martin said. \"I'd have let them have Nancy, who was rocking the boy, narrowed her eyes. \"I wonder why they want our baby? He's just like any other baby. We don't have any money. We couldn't pay a ransom.\" trees. It would be a crime to keep Reggie inside on a day like this, keep an eye on Nancy and Reggie and to call the police at the first street for any strangers, ready to flee inside if need be. Reggie just gurgled with delight at the change in environment. This peaceful scene was disturbed by a speeding car in which two men were riding. The car roared up the street, swerved toward the parkway, tires screaming, bounced over the curb and sidewalk, straight toward the child and mother. Reggie, attracted by the sudden noise, looked up to see the approaching vehicle. His mother stood up, set her palms against her cheeks and shrieked. The car came on, crunched over the play pen, killing the child. The mother was hit and instantly killed, force of the blow snapping her spine and tossing her against the house. The car plunged on into a tree, hitting it a terrible blow, crumbling the car's forward end so it looked like an accordion. The men were thrown from the machine. \"We'll never be able to prosecute in this case,\" the states attorney said. \"At least not on a drunken driving basis.\" \"I can't get over it,\" the chief of police said. \"I've got at least six men who will swear the man was drunk. He staggered, reeled and gave the usual drunk talk. He reeked of whiskey.\" knows where.\" \"Getting back to the man who ran over the child and killed Mrs. Laughton. Why did he pretend to be drunk?\" It was the chief's turn to shake his head. \"Your guess is as good as mine. There are a lot of angles to this case none of us understand. It on file in Washington, so we've discovered. We've had him in jail for a week and we've all taken turns questioning him. He laughs and admits his guilt—in fact, he seems amused by most everything. Sometimes all alone in his cell he'll start laughing for no apparent reason. It gives you the creeps.\" driver's license. And there's no duplicate of that in Springfield, in case you're interested.\" The man who had laughingly told police his name was John Smith lay on his cot in the county jail, his eyes closed, his arms folded across his chest. This gave him the appearance of being alert despite was Arvid 6—had lain in that position for more than four hours, when suddenly he snapped his eyes open and appeared to be listening. For a moment a look of concern crossed his face and he swung his legs to the floor and sat there expectantly. the Ultroom!\" \"I'm sorry, Tendal,\" the man on the cot said. \"I didn't think—\" \"You're absolutely right. You didn't think. Crashing that car into that tree and killing that woman—that was the last straw. You don't \"You didn't have to come along at all, you know,\" Arvid 6 said. \"How well I know! How sorry I am that I ever did! It was only because reaches the height of stupidity and volunteers to help Arvid 6 go back He snorted. \"I still can't believe I was ever that stupid. I only prove it when I pinch myself and here I am. ours when we were ambushed by Anthony's men. And worst of all, that English barmaid you became engrossed with at our last stop in 1609, when her husband mistook me for you and you let him take me apart piece by piece—\" the poor thing by suggesting suffocation to it that night. \"And speaking of that night, you remember we agreed I was to do the talking. But no, you pulled a switch and captured Martin Laughton's attention. 'I came as soon as I could, Martin,' you said. And suddenly didn't even come close to getting the child. \"Still you wanted to run the whole show. 'I'm younger than you,' you said. 'I'll take the wheel.' And the next thing I know I'm floating in space halfway to nowhere with two broken legs, a spinal injury, concussion and some of the finest bruises you ever saw.\" These twentieth century machines aren't what they ought to be,\" Arvid 6 said. \"You never run out of excuses, do you, Arvid? Remember what you said in the Ultroom when you pushed the lever clear over and transferred in.\" Tendal 13 turned and looked steadily and directly at Arvid 6. \"Do you know what I think? I think you deliberately pushed the lever over as far as it would go just to see what would happen . That's how simple I think it was.\" Arvid 6 flushed, turned away and looked at the floor. anything—you said we shouldn't dematerialize in front of anybody.\" \"That's right.\" \"Well, I didn't know what to do. I could see they thought I was drunk, so I was. But they had a blood sample before I could manufacture any alcohol in my blood, although I implanted a memory in them that I reeked of it.\" He laughed. \"I fancy they're thoroughly confused.\" \"And you're thoroughly amused, no doubt. Have they questioned you?\" \"And you amused yourself with him.\" \"I suppose you'd think so.\" license—\" \"Never mind. It's easy to see you've been your own inimitable self. Believe me, if I ever get back to the Ultroom I hope I never see you laughed as he saw the jailer's eyes bulge. \"Arvid!\" The jailer watched stupified as the two men vanished in the middle of a violent argument.\n\n<question>:\nWhy did the driver who killed Nancy and Reggie Laughton pretend to be drunk?\n\n<options>:\nA The driver did not have enough time to make up a more convincing story\nB To confuse the authorities so it would take longer for them to figure out his identity\nC To get a manslaughter charge instead of a murder charge\nD The driver was not pretending -- he was actually intoxicated\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
711
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nOwen Fiss is a professor at the Yale Law School and a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law. The subject of this short book is the present direction of the law governing the freedom of speech. What Professor Fiss has to say about it is worth attending to not merely because of his prominence in the field but because his argument is planted in the common assumptive ground of a lot of contemporary academic thought about the bankruptcy of individualism. The thesis of the book is Fiss', but the wisdom is conventional. This is what Fiss means by the \"irony\" in his title: that true freedom of speech for all requires suppressing the speech of some. This is not, technically, an irony. It is a paradox. An irony would be the observation that an attempt to increase freedom for all often entails, despite our best efforts, a decrease in freedom for a few. If Fiss had addressed the subject of free speech in this spirit, as an irony, he would undoubtedly have had some interesting things to say, for he is a learned and temperate writer. But he has, instead, chosen to address the issue as an advocate for specific groups he regards as politically disadvantaged--women, gays, victims of racial-hate speech, the poor (or, at least, the not-rich), and people who are critical of market capitalism--and to design a constitutional theory that will enable those groups to enlist the state in efforts either to suppress speech they dislike or to subsidize speech they do like, without running afoul of the First Amendment. Embarked on this task, the most learned and temperate writer in the world would have a hard time avoiding tendentiousness. Fiss does not avoid it. The Irony of Free Speech is a discussion of several speech issues: campaign-finance laws, state funding for the arts, pornography, speech codes, and equal time. These discussions are not doctrinaire, but their general inclination is to favor state intervention, on political grounds, in each of those areas--that is, to favor restrictions on campaign spending, greater regulation of pornography, and so on. Fiss' analyses of specific cases are presented against a lightly sketched historical argument. Light though the sketching is, the historical argument is almost the most objectionable thing about the book, since it involves a distortion of the history of First Amendment law that is fairly plain even to someone who is not a professor at Yale Law School. The argument is that \"the liberalism of the nineteenth century was defined by the claims of individual liberty and resulted in an unequivocal demand for liberal government, [while] the liberalism of today embraces the value of equality as well as liberty.\" The constitutional law of free speech, says Fiss, was shaped by the earlier type of liberalism--he calls it \"libertarian\"--which regarded free speech as a right of individual self-expression it is now used to foil efforts to regulate speech in the name of the newer liberal value, equality. Contemporary liberals, inheriting both these traditions, find themselves in a bind. They want, let's say, black students to be free from harassment at institutions where they are, racially, in a minority, since liberals worry that black students cannot be \"equal\" if they feel intimidated. But those same liberals get upset at the thought of outlawing hate speech, since that would mean infringing upon the right of individuals to express themselves. Fiss' suggestion--this is the chief theoretical proposal of his book--is that liberals should stop thinking about this as a conflict between liberty and equality and start thinking about it as a conflict between two kinds of liberty: social vs. individual. The First Amendment, he says, was intended to foster (in William Brennan's words) \"uninhibited, robust, and wide-open\" debate in society as a whole speech that inhibits or monopolizes that debate should therefore fall outside the protection of the law. We can maximize the total freedom of speech by silencing people who prevent others from speaking--when they utter racial epithets, represent women in degrading ways, use their wealth to dominate the press and the political process, or block the funding of unorthodox art. The historical part of this analysis rests on a canard, which is the assertion that the constitutional law of free speech emerged from 19 th -century classical laissez-faire liberalism. It did not. It emerged at the time of World War I, and the principal figures in its creation--Learned Hand, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and Louis Brandeis--were not classical liberals they displayed a libertarian attitude toward economic rights, tending to throw out legislation aimed at regulating industry and protecting workers on the grounds that people had a constitutional right to enter into contracts and to use their own property as they saw fit. Holmes, Brandeis, and their disciples consistently supported state intervention in economic affairs--the passage of health and safety regulations, the protection of unions, the imposition of taxes, and so on. The post-New Deal liberals whom Fiss associates with the value of equality are their heirs. The heirs of the19 th -century classical liberals are Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich. Fiss' two \"liberalisms\" are, in fact, almost entirely different political philosophies. Hand, Holmes, and Brandeis based their First Amendment opinions not on some putative right to individual self-expression (an idea Holmes referred to as \"the right of the donkey to drool\") but on a democratic need for full and open political debate. First Amendment law since their time has performed its balancing acts on precisely that social value--the very value Fiss now proposes we need to insert into First Amendment jurisprudence. We don't need to insert it, because it was there from the start. Why does Fiss portray the history of First Amendment jurisprudence in this perverted way? Because he wants to line up his own free-speech argument within the conventional academic view that our problems are mostly the consequences of an antiquated and discreditable ideology of liberal individualism, and that they can mostly be solved by adopting a social-constructionist, or communitarian, or \"intersubjective\" view of human nature instead. The merits of liberal individualism vs. communitarianism can await another occasion to be debated. For since the law governing the freedom of speech does not emerge out of libertarianism, the matter does not boil down to replacing an obsolete belief in \"self-expression\" with a more up-to-date belief in \"robust debate,\" as Fiss would like to think it does. What it boils down to is whether we need to replace the Hand-Holmes-Brandeis way of maximizing the benefits of free speech in a democratic society, which tries to push the state as far out of the picture as possible, with a different way, which tries to get the state farther into the picture. Still, that discussion, like his discussions of the other issues, rests on a claim long associated with the left--the claim, in a phrase, that the minority is really the majority. In the case of speech, Fiss appears to believe that the reason the American public is less enlightened than he would wish it to be concerning matters such as feminism, the rights of homosexuals, and regulation of industry is that people are denied access to the opinions and information that would enlighten them. The public is denied this access because the state, in thrall to the ideology of individualism, refuses either to interfere with speech bullies--such as pornographers--who \"silence\" women, or to subsidize the speech of the unorthodox, such as Robert Mapplethorpe. Fiss' analysis of the Mapplethorpe case offers a good example of the perils of his interventionist approach. Arts policy is, unquestionably, a mess. The solution usually proposed is divorce: Either get the state out of the business altogether or invent some ironclad process for distributing the money using strictly artistic criteria. Fiss rejects both solutions\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the best description of what the article is doing with Fiss’s book?\n\n<options>:\nA Taking a neutral approach in order to summarize the book.\nB Challenging Fiss’s points while unpacking what the book has to say on the whole.\nC Challenging Fiss’s points while offering better stats and better solutions.\nD Taking a supportive approach and demonstrating how and where Fiss is especially effective.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
843
|
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 Not to be or not to not be ... that was the not-question for the invader of the not-world. Dear Editor: My 14 year old boy, Ronnie, is typing this letter for me because he can do it neater and use better grammar. I had to get in touch with somebody about this because if there is something to it, then somebody, everybody, is going to point finger at me, Ivan Smernda, and say, \"Why revoked. I run a strictly legit hotel even though some of my guests might be down on their luck now and then. I find nothing but a suit of clothes, some butts and the letters I include here in same package. Binkle had only one suit. That I know. it and dripped through a crack in the floor. In a bureau drawer were the letters I told you about. What a spot to be in! Now it might have been a gag. Sometimes these guys get funny ideas when they are on the stuff. But then I read the letters. This knocks me for a loop. They are all in different handwritings. All from different places. Stamps all legit, my kid says. India, China, England, everywhere. My kid, he reads. He says it's no joke. He wants to call the cops or maybe some doctor. But I say no. He reads your magazine so he says write to you, send you the letters. You know what to do. Now you have them. Maybe you print. Whatever you do, Mr. Editor, remember my place, and for hours have looked into this weird extension of the Universe with fear and trepidation. no response. What could have diminished your powers of articulate wave interaction to make you incapable of receiving my messages and returning them? My wave went out to yours and found it, barely pulsing and surrounded with an impregnable chimera. Quickly, from the not-world vibrations about you, I learned the not-knowledge of your location. So I must communicate with you by what the not-world calls \"mail\" till we meet. For this purpose I must utilize the feeble vibrations of various not-people through whose inadequate articulation I will attempt to make my moves known to you. Each time I will pick a city other than the one I am in at the time. reports before you ceased to vibrate to us and with a vast treasury of facts from indirect sources. Soon our tortured people will be free of the fearsome not-folk and I will be their liberator. You failed in your task, but I will try to get you off with light punishment when we return again. The hand that writes this letter is that of a boy in the not-city of Bombay in the not-country of India. He does not know he writes it. Tomorrow it will be someone else. You must never know of my exact location, for the not-people might have access to the information. I have tremendous powers. But the not-people must never know I am among lies without arousing suspicion. I will grow up as the not-child in order that I might destroy the not-people completely. equipment. These not-people are unpredictable and strange. Their doctor I learned the following day that the opposite component of my produced the proper phrase for occasions of this kind in the not-world. but I eluded them. What unpredictable beings! I reported my tremendous progress back to our world, including the alleged world and our own. It is merely an offshoot of our primitive mythology when this was considered a spirit world, just as these people learned otherwise, while they never have. inevitable climax in which I singlehanded will obliterate the terror of the not-world and return to our world a hero. I cannot understand your not replying to my letters. I have given you a box number. What could have happened to your vibrations? I had tremendous difficulty getting a letter off to you this time. My process—original with myself, by the way—is to send out feeler vibrations for what these people call the psychic individual. Then I establish contact with him while he sleeps and compel him without his knowledge to translate my ideas into written language. He writes my letter and mails it to you. Of course, he has no awareness of what he has done. My first five tries were unfortunate. Each time I took control of an individual who could not read or write! Finally I found my man, but I fear his words are limited. Ah, well. I had great things to tell let yourself believe they do. myself. But they were. \"But—\" oversight on my part. My mind is confused by the barrage of impressions pain, fear, hate, love, laughter. I don't know one from the other. I must feel each, become accustomed to it. The more I think about it, the more I realize that the information I a struggle to free our world from the terrible, maiming intrusions of this not-world. Through many long gleebs, our people have lived a semi-terrorized existence while errant vibrations from this world fluctuations make up our sentient population. Even our eminent, all-high Frequency himself has often been jeopardized by these people. The not-world and our world are like two baskets as you and I see them in our present forms. Baskets woven with the greatest intricacy, design and color of higher vibration, it is ultimately tenuous to these gross peoples. While we vibrate only within a restricted plane because of our purer, more stable existence, these people radiate widely into our world. They even send what they call psychic reproductions of their own selves into ours. And most infamous of all, they sometimes are able to force The latter atrocity is perpetrated through what these people call Your letter was imponderable till I had thrashed through long passages in my information catalog that I had never imagined I would need. not-worlders—I would come to New York immediately. You would rue that day, I assure you. Systematically, I have tested each emotion and sensation listed in our catalog. I have been, as has been said in this world, like a reed bending before the winds of passion. In fact, I'm rather badly bent indeed. Ah! You'll pardon me, but I just took time for what is known burned of symptoms popularly referred to as a hangover ... Ahhh! Pardon me to this world. It will stint my powers? Nonsense! Already I have had a finally defeat these people. Of course, I haven't made the experiments yet, but I will. This is not deceit, merely realistic anticipation of vibrations. believe it? She actually took off her shoes and ran around through the Now in all the motion pictures—true representations of life and love wanted him to want her, but also wanted to prevent him so that he would things. most frightening experience of my life. Now I know what a horror these not-world bodies need the loathsome drug to escape from the reality I must find the formula that will wipe out the not-world men quickly. This telepathic control becomes more difficult every time. I must pick closer points of communication soon. I have nothing to report but failure. I bought a ton of equipment and went to work on the formula that is half complete in my instructions. Six of my hotel rooms were that inevitably would result in an explosion. I had to leave there I was baffled. What could I tell him? \"They're what?\" he wanted to know. \"They're not safe.\" Another day, another hotel. I swear I'm even beginning to think like the not-men, curse them. of mold, somewhat similar to the antibiotics of this world, that, transmitted to the human organism, will cause a disease whose end will be swift and fatal. First the brain will dissolve and then the body will fall apart. You say you eat little and drink as much as you can. The same with me. Even in this revolting world I am a sad sight. My not-world senses falter. This is the last letter. Tomorrow I come with the gateway. When\n\n<question>:\nWhy might the stories be true?\n\n<options>:\nA The disappearance of Joe Binkle and Ed Smith, along with the letters and leftover clothes all point to it.\nB Joe Binkle has disappeared, which means Glmpauszn must have reconnected with him,\nC Glmpauszn has proven in his letters that he knows things that no else possibly could.\nD The letters are all from different parts of the world, proving that different people wrote them.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
2,186
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nThe pound has been trading at its lowest level since 1985 since the UK voted to leave the European Union and there are fears that it could dip further as Brexit ensues. Timebanks, local exchange trading systems (LETS) and digital inventions like bitcoin can provide alternative ways for people to pay for goods and services when mainstream currencies hit crises. But they will only work if Britons are ready to accept that they have the power to invent their own currency. \"At the moment, if the pound stops working for us, the whole economy grinds to a halt because there aren't alternatives,\" Duncan McCann, a researcher at the New Economics Foundation, tells those gathered in a gilded room at Glasgow Chambers to discuss the Glasgow Pound. McCann is a long-time advocate of alternative means of exchange. He is behind the ScotPound, a proposal for a new national currency for Scotland that emerged after the referendum on Scottish independence. It's an idea he no longer thinks will work, because the debate, since Brexit, has shifted from the currency issue back to ideas about Scottish independence. No two local currencies are exactly the same. But the Brixton Pound and other recent schemes follow the example ten years ago of the Totnes Pound, a 'complementary currency': that is, one supplementing the national currency. As fears for financial stability took hold during the recession, complementary currencies grew in popularity. The Bank of England does not consider these forms of currency legal tender, but the notes hold value in the same way as a gift-card from a department store, with the same kind of restrictions about where they can be spent. Proponents say complementary currencies boost spending in smaller geographical areas, which can have environmental benefits as businesses cut transport distances to deal with local suppliers. Detractors say they have no real economic impact and work only as a game for the middle classes, who can afford to buy from independent shops rather than chains. In Britain, there are now schemes in Totnes, Lewes, Brixton, Bristol and Exeter. Hull has its own local digital currency that can be earned from volunteering and used to pay council tax. Kingston, Birmingham and Liverpool have schemes underway. Glasgow could be next. But the working group has some serious questions to answer first, not least: do complementary currencies actually work? \"People don't understand money,\" Molly Scott Cato, Green MEP for the South West of England and Gibraltar, says over the phone. \"The small scale is a problem and a strength,\" says Stephen Clarke, chief financial officer of the Bristol Pound. \"The benefit comes from the fact that local currencies are trusted organisations: we're a Community Interest Company limited by guarantee.\" That means assets owned by the the Bristol Pound have to be used for the good of the community, rather than purely for profit. Without enough currency in circulation, it ceases to work. Scott-Cato says Stroud's size meant meant the Stroud Pound was never viable: \"We couldn't get the velocity of circulation right, which contrasts with the Bristol Pound.\" Clarke also says the small scale of local currencies means they are \"always scrabbling around looking for money\". One way founders of the Bristol Pound have addressed his is by setting up an umbrella organisation, the Guild of Independent Currencies, to share information between local currencies in the UK and help new organisations. \"At the moment we're all reinventing the wheel every time,\" Clarke says. Technology might also have a solution. Peter Ferry, a commercial director, travels to Glasgow to tell those working on the Glasgow Pound that that his company Wallet has come up with a way to use the blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, to make it easier for people to use multiple types of currency. \"There might be many currencies around the country that people want to use. We need to make it simple for them to do that and also to make it simple to earn these currencies in many ways,\" he says. Size doesn't always matter. Sometimes, the smallest places – like Totnes and the Ekopia community – are best able to support complementary currencies because the people who live there are engaged with their local economy in a meaningful way. \"Bristol is seen as a quirky, individualistic kind of place,\" Clarke says. \"When we first produced the Bristol Pound note, people were really proud of it. It got through to people not just sat around coffee shops. I'm not sure a London Pound would work, because people identify with their local area in London rather than the city as a whole.\" Bristol Pound users don't have high incomes necessarily, but surveys show they are engaged with their local community and they have a higher educational attainment than average. In the years since the financial crisis, as local authority budgets have shrunk, some areas have relied heavily on engaged communities to fill in gaps in public services. By contrast, deprived areas where people cannot afford time and money to put into their community have become more deprived, making them even harder for local currencies to reach. \"It is difficult to get into more disadvantaged areas,\" Stephen Clarke says. \"We have a ten-year life expectancy gap between different parts of the city. When you go to disadvantaged areas with the Bristol Pound hat on you realise there aren't independent shops there, there's an Aldi and Lidl and that's it.\" More than a third of children grow up in poverty in Glasgow. A Glasgow Pound might struggle to get poorer families to buy into a local currency that ties them to shopping at more expensive, independent shops, rather than getting deals at big supermarket chains. When Scott-Cato and her colleagues wrote about the experience of setting up the Stroud Pound, they said it was telling that complementary currencies have been accused of being a game for middle-class people, rather than a genuine economic solution. Perhaps for that reason, experts like Duncan McCann have stopped thinking of complementary currencies as a one-size-fits-all solution. He said they can function as a kind of 'gateway drug' to introduce people to a new way of thinking about money. \"That is especially for those who use it, but also for those who just become aware of it,\" he says. Ciaran Mundy, CEO of the Bristol Pound, says it is important to think of the systemic impact rather than looking for targeted treatment of symptoms of economic deprivation. \"Poverty has many causes,\" he says. \"One of these is how the economy is structured in terms of how money flows out of poor areas due to high dependence on larger national and international companies paying lower wages and using offshore accounts to hide the money from the tax man.\" Nothing is tying Glasgow to existing models for complementary currencies. But during the first meeting about setting up the Glasgow Pound, the workshop shows just how hard it would be to invent a new system that works for everyone. On one table, Duncan McCann encourages people to urge businesses to do things they have never done before. \"One of the goals should be to move businesses from where they are today into the future,\" he says. After years of researc,h McCann believes the only way complementary currencies can create real value for local economies is if they make transactions happen that wouldn't otherwise have taken place. \"They need to create additional spending power. This is this what the local currencies, despite all their good points, fail to do,\" McCann says.\n\n<question>:\nWhich of these is most true?\n\n<options>:\nA Local currencies as complementary systems will never be sustainable in the UK\nB People developing these currencies are looking to exhibit control over small populations of people\nC Bitcoin is likely going to replace these local currencies as the alternative currency\nD Success of these currencies can be loosely predicted based on the relative wealth of an area\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,592
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nIn the 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 it's that everything is sublimely in proportion. The movie has a scope that makes Hollywood's homiletic, follow-your-dream fables look even more solipsistic. Miyazaki is after nothing less than the moment in our history (the film is set in the 14 th and 15 th centuries) when the power shifted from a \"natural\" world to one shaped by human technology. It's the beginning of what Bill McKibben called \"the end of nature\"--that is, when nature became no longer an autonomous, self-regulating force but one touched (and, in Miyazaki's view, poisoned) by human industry. The hero, Ashitaka, a warrior from the isolationist Emishi clan, is forced in the first scene to kill a marauding boar--a god turned into a demon (covered in roiling, corrosive worms) by an iron ball lodged in its body. Infected, destined to be consumed by--and to die of--rage, Ashitaka leaves his village in search of the iron ball's source. He discovers a fortress-cum-arms-manufacturing plant called Irontown, presided over by one of the most complex villains in modern film: the regal Lady Eboshi. On one hand, she's a benevolent industrialist who presides over a warmly matriarchal society on the other, she wants to destroy the forest, harness its resources, and exterminate its animal deities--chiefly the Spirit of the Forest, a magnificent deer god whose touch brings instant life or death, and who transforms at dusk into the towering Night Walker. 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 they'd like to eat him. The wolf god, Moro, is slightly more sympathetic, but that's because her adopted \"daughter,\" San (a k a Princess Mononoke), is human. San is first seen sucking a wound of her huge wolf mother, then, as the gore drips from her mouth, training her dark eyes on Ashitaka with feral hatred. Her second appearance--a lone attack on Irontown to assassinate Lady Eboshi--is one of the movie's high points. It's Miyazaki's use of sound--and silence--that takes your breath away: the determined tap of the wolf princess's shoes as she scuttles over the fortress's rooftops the silence of Eboshi and her army as they stare at this tiny yet formidable tomboy against the black sky. Their battle is so furious that the blades streak and lose definition--it's almost subliminal. It's a shame that the wolf princess warms up to Ashitaka and spends the rest of the film either saving him or being saved by him. She loses that punk-bitch allure. The voice of Claire Danes doesn't help. When Danes says, \"I'd do anything to get you humans out of my forest,\" she sounds like a Valley Girl peeved over lack of parking spaces at the mall. (San needs a more ragged voice--I'd be interested to hear the original Japanese actress.) Billy Crudup is just as Disneyfied (Miramaxed?), but that doesn't hurt as much because Ashitaka is conceived from the start as a rather bland ingénu. Gillian Anderson's growling Moro sounds silly (she doesn't have the breath control), and the fey-hick tones of Billy Bob Thornton are too recognizable as the Akim Tamiroff-like mercenary, Jigo. But Minnie Driver--coming off a triumphantly dizzy Jane in Tarzan --once again provides a voice that the animators deserve. \"Bring the strange-ah to me late-ah,\" she commands in sexy Martian Queen cadences that will stir the loins of Flash Gordon fans everywhere. \"I would like to thank him puh-sonally.\" 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.\n\n<question>:\nHow does Princess Mononoke differ from Disney animation?\n\n<options>:\nA It is homiletic and solipsistic.\nB It is full of splattery carnage.\nC There is no pop surrealism like American cartoons.\nD It has a pantheistic worldview.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,642
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nIn the 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 The movie has a scope that makes Hollywood's homiletic, follow-your-dream fables look even more solipsistic. Miyazaki is after nothing less than the moment in our history (the film is set in the 14 th and 15 th centuries) when the power shifted from a \"natural\" world to one shaped by human technology. It's the beginning of what Bill McKibben called \"the end of nature\"--that is, when nature became no longer an autonomous, self-regulating force but one touched (and, in Miyazaki's view, poisoned) by human industry. 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 they'd like to eat him. The wolf god, Moro, is slightly more sympathetic, but that's because her adopted \"daughter,\" San (a k a Princess Mononoke), is human. San is first seen sucking a wound of her huge wolf mother, then, as the gore drips from her mouth, training her dark eyes on Ashitaka with feral hatred. Her second appearance--a lone attack on Irontown to assassinate Lady Eboshi--is one of the movie's high points. It's Miyazaki's use of sound--and silence--that takes your breath away: the determined tap of the wolf princess's shoes as she scuttles over the fortress's rooftops the silence of Eboshi and her army as they stare at this tiny yet formidable tomboy against the black sky. Their battle is so furious that the blades streak and lose definition--it's almost subliminal. 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 then their heads pop back with a conclusive rattle. Something about them seems just right 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.\" 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. he misses now and then, which is why the technique sticks out. But what a fantastic effort. See it and weep for what's missing in most other movies.\n\n<question>:\nAccording to the reviewer, what is one of the greatest moments of the film \"Princess Mononoke\"?\n\n<options>:\nA The moment when Princess Mononoke sets off to kill the leader of Irontown\nB The moment when Princess Mononoke rescues the Ashitaka\nC The moment when Ashitaka unlodges the iron ball from his body\nD The moment when the kodamas make a brief appearance\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
822
|
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>:\ntheir picket posts on the prison perimeter, a pilot and two bombardiers in each 'copter, stone-faced, staring grimly alert at the prison below. They were ready for the breakout. guards in Estates-General Correctional Institution—better known to its inmates as the Jug—and if he hadn't been able to detect the scent of trouble brewing a cell-block away, he would never have survived to No mixing. That was the prescription that kept the city-state alive. There's no harm in a family fight—and aren't all mechanics a family, aren't all laborers and once they spread, the neat compartmentation of society was pierced. The breakout would mean riot on a bigger scale than any prison had ever known. to a wrong start, but the question was, would putting her in the disciplinary block help straighten her out? He rubbed his ear and looked past her at the line of prisoners on the rap detail, waiting for him to judge their cases. offense. Look at the rap sheet. Yesterday she pulled the same thing in the mess hall.\" He shook his head reprovingly at the prisoner. \"The block guard had to break up a fight between her and another wench, and she claimed the same business—said she didn't understand when the warned her then that next time she'd get the Greensleeves for sure.\" Inmate Bradley seemed to be on the verge of tears. She said tautly: \"I most basic physical necessities—and not even always then. But this was desirable, for the more specialists, the higher the degree of civilization. The ultimate should be the complete segregation sweep—the spray machines and sweeperdozers had been over the cobblestones of the yard twice already that day. But it was an inmate's job to keep busy. And it was a guard captain's job to notice when they didn't. Every prison has its Greensleeves—sometimes they are called by different names. Old Marquette called it \"the canary \" Louisiana State it is a place for punishment. The outside guard shrugged. \"Detail, halt !\" The two guards turned to see what was coming in as riled up.\" \"Let them in,\" the inside guard told him. \"The others are riled up already.\" corridor and of each individual cell. While the fields were on, you could ignore the prisoners—they simply could not move fast enough, against the electronic drag of the field, to do any harm. But it was a the time—only when the cell doors had to be opened or a prisoner's restraining garment removed. say you got to wear it and the rules—Hey. She's crying!\" He shook his head, marveling. It was the first time he had ever seen a prisoner cry in the Greensleeves. laborers—\"wipes,\" for short—or, at any rate, they had been once. They had spent so much time in prisons that it was sometimes hard even The howling started all over again. The inside guard finished putting the new prisoners away and turned off miserably, trying to weep silently so as not to give the guards the satisfaction of hearing her—they were animals! Resentment and anger, she could understand. She told herself doggedly normal expressions of the freedom-loving citizen's rebellion against the vile and stifling system of Categoried Classes. It was system— But did they have to scream so? The senseless yelling was driving her crazy. She abandoned herself to long. III \"I smell trouble,\" said O'Leary to the warden. \"Trouble? Trouble?\" Warden Schluckebier clutched his throat and his little round eyes looked terrified—as perhaps they should have. Warden Godfrey Schluckebier was the almighty Caesar of ten thousand inmates in the Jug, but privately he was a fussy old man trying to hold onto the \"Trouble? afternoon, he was playing ball with the laundry orderlies in the yard.\" The warden, faintly relieved, faintly annoyed, scolded: \"O'Leary, what did you want to worry me for? There's nothing wrong with playing ball in the yard. That's what recreation periods are for.\" \"You don't see what I mean, Warden. Lafon was a professional on the don't mix it isn't natural. And there are other things.\" O'Leary hesitated, frowning. How could you explain to the warden that it didn't your job, keeping the inmates in line, and I have mine. Now your job is just as important as my job,\" he said piously. \" Everybody's just as important as everybody else's, right? But we have to stick to \"Excuse the expression, O'Leary,\" the warden said anxiously. \"I mean, after all, 'Specialization is the goal of civilization,' right?\" He was a great man for platitudes, was Warden Schluckebier. \" You don't want to worry about my end of running the prison. And trouble coming up. I smell the signs.\" \"Handle it, then!\" snapped the warden, irritated at last. \"But suppose it's too big to handle. Suppose—\" \"It isn't,\" the warden said positively. \"Don't borrow trouble with tonight, O'Leary, and we'll get along fine. 'Specialization is the—' Oh, curse the thing.\" His phone was ringing. The warden picked it up irritably. That was the trouble with those pale blue tablets, thought O'Leary they gave you a lift, but they put you on edge. His name was Flock. He was still yelling. Sue-Ann Bradley, in the cell across from him, thought that maybe, after all, the man was really in pain. Maybe the crazy screams were screams of agony, because certainly his face was the face of an agonized man. The outside guard bellowed: \"Okay, okay. Take ten!\" happen was that the guard reached up and closed the switch that actuated the tangler fields on the floors of the cells. The prison rules were humanitarian, even for the dregs that inhabited the Greensleeves. Ten minutes out of every two hours, even the worst case had to be allowed to take his hands out of the restraining garment. \"Rest period\" it was called—in the rule book. The inmates had a less lovely term for it. At the guard's yell, the inmates jumped to their feet. prisoners. It was not much to be grateful for, but Sue-Ann Bradley was grateful. At least she didn't have to live quite It was Flock on the phone to the warden—Flock with his eyes still The warden lifted his head, glared, started feebly to speak, hesitated, and picked up the long-distance phone. He said sadly to the prison operator: \"Get me the governor—fast.\" Riot! The word spread out from the prison on seven-league boots. Riot. And yet fewer than half a dozen men were involved. A handful of men, and the enormous bulk of the city-state quivered in every limb and class. In its ten million homes, in its hundreds of thousands of public places, the city-state's people shook under the impact of the news from the prison. For the news touched them where their fears lay. Riot! And not merely a street brawl among roistering wipes, or a bar-room fight of greasers relaxing from a hard day at the plant. The riot was down among the and no one cared but in the Jug, all classes were cast together. couldn't get up yet—it was the middle of the night. And as soon as they had the kids back in bed, most of the mothers They caught the words from a distance—not quite correctly. \"Riot!\" them out they were to fly interdicting missions at such-and-such levels on such-and-such flight circuits around the prison. were the ones who might actually accomplish something. They took up\n\n<question>:\nWhat is significant about the riot?\n\n<options>:\nA There are so few people involved, but because of the laws against interreacting with other specializations it's a huge issue.\nB It was so easily pulled off. It didn't take a lot of effort for it to be successful.\nC It's making nation wide news.\nD There are a lot of prisoners involved, and they needed to call upon a lot of departments to address it.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,798
|
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, I'm A Stranger Here Myself By MACK REYNOLDS 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 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 Man, and occasionally a Senegalese from further south. In 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 population includes smugglers and black-marketeers, fugitives from justice and international con men, espionage and counter-espionage agents, homosexuals, nymphomaniacs, alcoholics, drug addicts, displaced these. Like I said, it's quite a town. and said, \"Hello, Paul. Anything new cooking?\" He sank into the chair opposite me and looked around for the waiter. The tables were all crowded and since mine was a face he recognized, he assumed he was welcome to intrude. It was more or less standard procedure at the Cafe de Paris. It wasn't a place to go if you wanted to be alone. Paul said, \"How are you, Rupert? Haven't seen you for donkey's years.\" The waiter came along and Paul ordered a glass of beer. Paul was an easy-going, sallow-faced little man. I vaguely remembered was from Liverpool and in exports. he said, disinterestedly. \"Pogo and Albert are going to fight a duel,\" I told him, \"and Lil Abner is becoming a rock'n'roll singer.\" He grunted. \"Oh,\" I said, \"the intellectual Paul said, \"What ever happened saucers?\" \"What flying saucers?\" A French girl went by with a Paris. Every pore in place. We both looked after her. \"You know, what everybody was seeing a few years ago. It's satellites wasn't up then. Maybe they would've seen one.\" \"That's an idea,\" I said. We didn't say anything else for a while and I began to wonder if I could go back to my paper without rubbing him the wrong way. I didn't know Paul very 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, Just to say something, I said, \"Where do you think they came from?\" And when he looked blank, I added, \"The Flying Saucers.\" He grinned. \"From Mars or Venus, or someplace.\" \"Ummmm,\" I said. \"Too bad landed on the Yale football field and said Take me to your cheerleader , or something.\" Paul yawned and said, \"That them. If they were aliens from space, then why not show themselves?\" I ate one of the potato chips. It'd been cooked in rancid olive oil. I said, \"Oh, there are various probably sit around here and think of two or three that made sense.\" Paul was mildly interested. say until you've developed space flight. Then you're invited into the club. Meanwhile, they send secret missions down from time to time to keep an eye on your progress.\" Paul grinned at me. \"I see you read the same poxy stuff I do.\" A Moorish girl went by dressed in a neatly tailored gray provocative, dark eyes can be over a veil. We both looked after her. I said, \"Or, here's another one. Suppose you have a very advanced civilization on, say, \"Don't interrupt, please,\" I said with mock severity. \"This is a very old civilization and as its water and air?\" \"I suppose so,\" he said. \"Anyway, what about them?\" \"Well, they observe how man Paul said, \"I got it. So they're scared and are keeping an eye on us. That's an old one. I've read different.\" I shifted my shoulders. \"Well, it's one possibility.\" \"I got a better one. How's this. There's this alien life form that's way ahead of us. Their civilization is so old that they don't have any records of when it began and how it was in the power or any of these things giving us a bad time here on Earth. They're all like scholars, get it? And some of them are pretty jolly well taken by Earth, don't know where we're going or how we're going to get there.\" I finished my beer and clapped my hands for Mouley. \"How do you mean, and India and China, and Yugoslavia and Brazil, and all the it. Why, a man from Mars would be fascinated, like.\" Mouley came shuffling up in his babouche slippers and we both ordered another schooner of beer. Paul said seriously, \"You in this sort of talk. I've sorted the whole thing out before, and you always come up against this brick wall. Where are they, these observers, or scholars, or spies or whatever they are? Sooner or later we'd nab one of them. You know, Scotland Yard, or the F.B.I., or Russia's secret police, or the French Sûreté, or Interpol. This world is so deep in police, counter-espionage outfits and security agents that an alien would slip up in time, no matter how much he'd been trained. Sooner or later, he'd slip up, and they'd nab him.\" I shook my head. \"Not necessarily. The first time I ever considered 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 ask a man where's he's from. He can be British, a White Russian, a Basque or a Sikh and nobody from, Rupert?\" \"No, you're not,\" he grinned. I was taken aback. \"What do you mean?\" the F.B.I. possibly flushing an alien. Telepathy is a sense not trained by the humanoids. If these human bodies we're disguised in, neither of us is from, Rupert?\" \"Aldebaran,\" I said. \"How about you?\" \"Deneb,\" he told me, shaking. We had a laugh and ordered another beer. \"What're you doing here on Earth?\" I asked him. \"Researching for one of our 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\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the relationship between Paul and Rupert?\n\n<options>:\nA They are two Americans who happen to meet in Tangier.\nB They are friends from Liverpool, vacationing in Tangier.\nC They play cards together in Tangier.\nD They are acquaintances. They met in Tangier.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
556
|
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>:\nLetter from M. Mitchell Waldrop Paul Krugman replies to M. Mitchell Waldrop --M. Mitchell Waldrop Washington How did this fantasy come to be so widely believed? I am glad to hear that you tried to tell a more balanced story, Mr. Waldrop, even if sloppy paperwork kept it from seeing the light of day. And I am glad that you talked to Ken Arrow. But Nobel laureates, who have wide responsibilities and much on their mind, are not necessarily on top of what has been going on in research outside their usual field. I happen to know of one laureate who, circa 1991, was quite unaware that anyone had thought about increasing returns in either growth or trade. Did you try talking to anyone else--say, to one of the economists who are the straight men in the stories you tell? For example, your book starts with the story of Arthur's meeting in 1987 with Al Fishlow at Berkeley, in which Fishlow supposedly said, \"We know that increasing returns can't exist\"--and Arthur went away in despair over the unwillingness of economists to think the unthinkable. Did you call Fishlow to ask whether he said it, and what he meant? Since by 1987 Paul Romer's 1986 papers on increasing returns and growth had started an avalanche of derivative work, he was certainly joking--what he probably meant was \"Oh no, not you too.\" And let me say that I simply cannot believe that you could have talked about increasing returns with any significant number of economists outside Santa Fe without Romer's name popping up in the first 30 seconds of every conversation--unless you were very selective about whom you talked to. And oh, by the way, there are such things as libraries, where you can browse actual economics journals and see what they contain. 1) Krugman claims that my opening sentence--\"In a way, Bill Gates's current troubles with the Justice Department grew out of an economics seminar that took place thirteen years ago, at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government\"--is \"pure fiction.\" Perhaps so, but in that case somebody should tell this to Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. When I interviewed Klein for my piece about the Microsoft case, he singled out Brian Arthur as the economist who has most influenced his thinking about the way in which high-technology markets operate. It was Klein's words, not those of Arthur, that prompted me to use Arthur in the lead of the story. Even more to the point: How did Cassidy come by his story? Is it possible that he completely misunderstood what Brian Arthur was saying--that the whole business about the seminar at Harvard where nobody would accept increasing returns, about the lonely struggle of Arthur in the face of ideological rigidity, even the quotation from Arthur about economists being unwilling to consider the possibility of imperfect markets because of the Cold War (give me a break!) were all in Cassidy's imagination? Let me say that I am actually quite grateful to Cassidy and The New Yorker . A number of people have long been furious about your book--for example, Victor Norman, whom you portrayed as the first of many economists too dumb or perhaps narrow-minded to understand Arthur's brilliant innovation. Norman e-mailed me to say that \"I have read the tales from the Vienna woods before and had hoped that it could be cleared up by someone at some point.\" Yet up to now there was nothing anyone could do about the situation. The trouble was that while \"heroic rebel defies orthodoxy\" is a story so good that nobody even tries to check it out, \"guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, proclaims himself its founder\" is so boring as to be unpublishable. (David Warsh's 1994 series of columns in the Boston Globe on the increasing-returns revolution in economics, the basis for a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press, is far and away the best reporting on the subject, did include a sympathetic but devastating exposé of Arthur's pretensions--but to little effect. [Click to read Warsh on Arthur.]) Only now did I have a publishable story: \"guy makes minor contribution to well-established field, portrays himself as heroic rebel--and The New Yorker believes him.\" 6) I might attach more weight to Krugman's criticisms if I hadn't recently reread his informative 1994 book Peddling Prosperity , in which he devotes a chapter to the rediscovery of increasing returns by contemporary economists. Who are the first scholars Krugman mentions in his account? Paul David, an economic historian who wrote a famous paper about how the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard evolved and, you guessed it, Brian Arthur. \"Why QWERTYUIOP?\" Krugman wrote. \"In the early 1980s, Paul David and his Stanford colleague Brian Arthur asked that question, and quickly realized that it led them into surprisingly deep waters. ... What Paul David, Brian Arthur, and a growing number of other economists began to realize in the late seventies and early eighties was that stories like that of the typewriter keyboard are, in fact, pervasive in the economy.\" Evidently, Krugman felt four years ago that Arthur's contribution was important enough to merit a prominent mention in his book. Now, he dismisses the same work, saying it \"didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know.\" Doubtless, this change in attitude on Krugman's part is unconnected to the fact that Arthur has started to receive some public recognition. The eminent MIT professor, whose early academic work received widespread media attention, is far too generous a scholar to succumb to such pettiness. Letter from M. Mitchell Waldrop: After reading Paul Krugman vent his spleen against fellow economist Brian Arthur in \"The Legend of Arthur,\" I couldn't help wondering whose reputation he was out to trash, Arthur's or his own. Krugman seems to fear a plot to deny economists their intellectual due. If one exists, Arthur is not a likely suspect. In a series of long interviews with me a year ago (for Worth magazine), I tried, vainly, to get Arthur to tell me how his ideas about increasing returns have encouraged a new strain of economic investigations. Despite much prodding, Arthur obliged only by placing himself in a long line of theorists dating back to Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall. I also found him disarmingly generous in giving credit to the biologists, physicists, and fellow economists who have helped advance his own thinking. Savvy to the journalist's quest for heroes, Arthur urged me to focus on his ideas, not his rank among his peers. Krugman has made a career out of telling other economists to pay better attention to the facts, yet as a chronicler of Arthur's career and inner life, Krugman seems to have listened only to his own demons. a) During our interviews, Brian went out of his way to impress upon me that many other economists had done work in increasing returns--Paul Krugman among them. He was anxious that they be given due credit in anything I wrote. So was I. c) So, when I received Krugman's letter shortly after Complexity came out, I was puzzled: He was complaining that I hadn't referenced others in the increasing-returns field--Paul Krugman among them--although I had explicitly done so. d) But, when I checked the published text, I was chagrined to discover that the critical passage mentioning Krugman wasn't there.\n\n<question>:\nWhy didn’t M. Mitchell Waldrop give credit to other economists in his book?\n\n<options>:\nA He didn’t know about them.\nB He left them out of the book deliberately.\nC He wrote about them but it was cut during the editing process.\nD This is untrue; the book includes this information.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
475
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nMarooned on a world within a world, aided by a slim girl and an old warrior, Patrolman Sisko Rolf was fighting his greatest the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] \"The outlaw ships are attacking!\" Old Garmon Nash's harsh voice snapped like a thunderclap in the cramped rocket flyer's cabin. \"Five or six of Sisko Rolf's stocky body was a blur of motion as he cut the rocket Rolf swung the lax controls over hard as the bursts of fire revealed a In a slow sort of wonder Rolf felt the scrape of rock against metal, 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 There was light in the narrow pit in which he found himself, light and heat from the yet-glowing debris of the rocket flyer. The outlaws had blasted the crashed ship, his practiced eyes told him, and Garmon Nash must have died in the wreckage. He was alone in the waterless trap of a deep crevice. In the fading glow of the super-heated metal the vertical walls above Rolf laughed. Without a pressure mask on the surface of Mars an The young patrolman unzippered his jacket pocket and felt for the flooded into his muscles he set off around the irregular wall of the He found the opening less than ten paces from the starting point, an gutted ship was failing and he felt for the solar torch that hugged glowed redly from its lensed prison to reveal the rocky corridor 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 \"They may have found the sunken seas of Mars,\" thought Rolf as he moved the other half. Toward this barrier the spinner bore him, and Rolf was it seemed to Rolf that he must be falling free 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. 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 \"There,\" roared Tanner's voice, \"is one of the seas of Mars.\" \"One,\" repeated Rolf slowly. \"You mean there are more?\" \"Dozens of them,\" the older man's voice throbbed with helpless rage. \"Enough to make the face of Mars green again. Cavern after cavern lies Rolf felt new strength pump into his tired bruised muscles. Here lay \"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 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 Rolf raised his expoder, red anger clouding his eyes as he saw these Gone now was their chance for a surprise attack on the isolated canyons Rolf and Mark Tanner came to their feet. Rolf's expoder rattled briefly like a high-speed sewing machine as he fallen sisters. Mark Tanner's bow twanged again and again as he drove arrows at the bloodthirsty warrior women. But the Furry Ones ran fearlessly into that rain of death. The expoder hammered in Rolf's heavy fist. Tanner smashed an elbow into Rolf's side. \"Retreat!\" he gasped. \"Now where?\" Rolf snapped another burst of expoder needles at the furry attackers as he asked. \"To the vaults beneath the Forbidden City,\" Mark Tanner cried. \"None went bounding away along a shadowy crevice that plunged raggedly into 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 glider riding the thermals back toward the Barrier. \"She had warned the \"The weasel heads won't follow us here?\" asked Rolf. Rolf laughed. \"Like the pleasure globes of the wealthy on Earth.\" \"But,\" Rolf frowned thoughtfully, \"what keeps Lomihi from crashing into \"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. had taken shelter, noting as he did so that the rocket flyer had landed 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 the inner caverns was solved. He would rescue the girl, stop at the dropped behind a sheltering rocky ledge, and he caught a glimpse of two green-clad men dragging the bronze-haired body of the girl he had come to save into the shelter of the flyer. A green bulge showed around the polished fuselage and Rolf pressed his This sledge was hammering relentlessly as Rolf sensed his first Cautiously his head twisted until he could look forward toward the By degrees Rolf worked his arm down to his belt where his solar torch The ship bumped gently as it landed and the thrum of rockets ceased. The cabin shifted with the weight of bodies moving from their seats. 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 propelled body drove the breath from his lungs before his hand could drop to his belted expoder. 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 trek afterward through the dark tunnels had sapped his strength, and Rolf swung, all the weight of his stocky body behind the blow, and the burned and the conditioning unit was clearing the air. \"Patrolman,\" the girl's voice was beside him. \"We're safe!\" \"Everything bongo?\" Rolf wanted to know. Rolf grinned up at her. \"Need to?\" he asked. all the time,\" she quipped. Then they were over the Barrier and Rolf saw the last of the beaten Furry Ones racing back across the great wall toward the Plains of Rolf snorted. \"Shorty,\" he said disgustedly as they landed, but his arm\n\n<question>:\nWhat was Rolf looking for when he set off around the wall of the pit?\n\n<options>:\nA Garmon\nB Light\nC Food\nD Other survivors\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
46
|
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>:\nof space, or one spaceman's life? I They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course. In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much. The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard. boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn. The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact, security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food, clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well. He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to our pleas for a few more trips?\" \"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for....\" \"So....\" Girard-Perregaux said gently. \"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!\" sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in jail. So back to sea he'd have to go.\" can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again.\" He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his universal credit card. \"The ultimate means of exchange,\" he grunted. \"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it, nobody can, ah, our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?\" The other chuckled again. \"It is simply a matter of finding more modern take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run. Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree, a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer. of them ever really becoming efficient. The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees were needed, a draft lottery was held. they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be sold for a lump sum on the market. Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own obviously called for. He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long denied him. retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided. A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In screen went dead. One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that, he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was. registration could be completed. For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias. This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond. He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either. However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him. Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive.\" Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of materials and all and keep the economy going.\"\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Si choose to visit Manhattan and the Kudos Room?\n\n<options>:\nA In hopes of seeing and befriending a celebrity\nB That's the only place that an alcoholic beverage can be legally purchased.\nC He was planning to meet an attractive woman there.\nD To celebrate his retirement and spend some of his extra funds.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
592
|
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>:\nsinging it for a million years.\" He released her, and opened a wood-covered wooden box. He scooped up a cupful of the sand inside. \"Beg pardon?\" \"What kinda salary you bucking for?\" he translated, bouncing up and By lunchtime Orison had finished the Orison switched off her microphone at noon, marked her place in the favored her with no gambit to enter their conversations. Orison sighed, upper floors? Orison stopped in at the restaurant nearest her apartment Home in her apartment, Orison set the notes of her first day's nonsense into a microphone. Let Washington make sense of that, she thought. No call. Orison slipped between the sheets at eleven-thirty. The clock Orison reached under the bed for a shoe. Gripping it like a Scout-ax, Orison lay down cautiously. \"All right,\" she whispered to her pillow. \"Now, tell me what happened at the bank today.\" Orison briefed her pillow on the Earmuffs, on her task of reading to a microphone, and on the generally mimsy tone of the William Howard Taft Orison flung the shoe and the pillow under her bed, and resolved was bowing. And she saw with some gratification that he was not wearing earmuffs. \"My name,\" the stranger said, \"is Dink Gerding. I am President of this bank, and wish at this time to welcome you to our little family.\" to keep secret. If I ever need a letter written, may I stop down here and dictate it?\" \"You may find some of our methods a little strange, but you'll get used to them,\" he said. \"Meanwhile, I'd be most grateful if you'd dispense with calling me 'sir.' My name is Dink. It is ridiculous, but I'd enjoy your using it.\" \"Dink?\" she asked. \"And I suppose you're to call me Orison?\" \"That's the drill,\" he said. \"One more question, Orison. Dinner this evening?\" He was a soldier, or had been: the way, when he turned, his shoulders stayed square. The crisp clicking of his steps, a military metronome, to the elevator. When the door slicked open Orison, staring after Dink, saw that each of the half-dozen men aboard snapped off their hats (but not their earmuffs) and bowed, the earmuffed operator bowing with them. Small bows, true just head-and-neck. But not to her. To Dink Gerding. Orison finished the Orison looked up. \"Oh, hello,\" she said. \"I didn't hear you come up.\" of the desk, \"and pounce ever so hard.\" She smiled. Opulent, Orison \"Thanks,\" Orison said. \"Common courtesy,\" Miss Vingt explained. \"Also, darling, I'd like to draw your attention to one little point. Dink Gerding—you know, the shoulders and muscles and crewcut? Well, he's posted property. Should you throw your starveling charms at my Dink, you'd only get your little eyes scratched out. Word to the wise, n'est-ce pas \"Sorry you have to leave so suddenly,\" Orison said, rolling her \"I stopped by to welcome you to the William Howard Taft National Bank and Trust Company family, Miss McCall,\" he said. \"I'm Kraft Gerding, Dink's elder brother. I understand you've met Dink already.\" Orison jumped up, tossing the paper into her wastebasket. \"I quit!\" she \"I'll hold my breath,\" Orison promised. \"The elevator is just behind sudden buzz of her telephone. She picked it up. \" Wanji e-Kal, Datto. Dink ger-Dink d'summa. \" Orison scribbled down this intelligence in bemused Gregg before \"Oh. Hi, Miss McCall,\" the voice said. \"Guess I goofed. I'm in kinda clutch. This is Wanji. I got a kite for Mr. Dink Gerding. If you see What now, Mata Hari? she asked herself. What was the curious language Mr. Wanji had used? She'd have to report the message to Washington by tonight's pillow, and let the polyglots of Treasury Intelligence puzzle The door on the sixth floor was locked. Orison went on up the stairs to the landing was cellar-dark. Orison closed her eyes for a moment. There Orison thought she saw Benjamin Franklin winking up at her from the leaping, swinging, spinning webs, seething in the hundred tanks. Orison Orison struggled to release herself. She broke free only to have \"Elder Compassion has no rank,\" Kraft Gerding said. \"Miss McCall, you must tell me what you were doing here, or I'll toss you to the spiders.\" \"Dink ... Dink!\" Orison shouted. \"My beloved younger brother is otherwise engaged than in the rescue of damsels in distress,\" Kraft said. \"Someone, after all, has to mind the bank.\" \"I came to bring a message to Dink,\" Orison said. \"Let me go, you acromegalic apes!\" \"The message?\" Kraft Gerding demanded. kneeling man. \"Stand up, Elder Brother.\" \"I....\" Dink brought his right fist up from hip-level, crashing it into Kraft's jaw. Kraft Gerding joined the Earmuffs on the floor. \"If you'd care to stand again, Elder Brother, you may attempt to Kraft Gerding arose, stared for a moment at Dink and Orison, then, with the merest hint of a bow, led his two giant Earmuffs to the elevator. \"I wish you hadn't come up here, Orison,\" Dink said. \"Why did you do it?\" to Dink, keeping her eyes on the nearest spidertank. \"I had to see what it was you kept up here so secretly, what it was that I was forbidden to see. My excuse was to have been that I was looking for you, to deliver a message from Mr. Wanji. He said I was to tell you that the escudo green is pale.\" \"You're too curious, and Wanji is too careless,\" Dink said. \"Now, what for supper.\" \"Strange,\" Dink said. He walked over to the nearest tank and plucked Orison,\" he said. extended his palm. Orison forced herself to look. The little creature, flesh-colored against his flesh, was nearly invisible, scuttling around the bowl of his hand. \"Pretty little fellow, isn't he?\" Dink asked. \"Here. You hold him.\" \"I'd rather not,\" she protested. \"I'd be happier if you did,\" Dink said. Orison extended her hand as into a furnace. Dink brushed the Microfabridus from his palm to hers. It felt crisp and hard, like a legged grain of sand. Dink took a magnifier from his pocket and \"What do they do?\" Orison asked. \"That's still a secret,\" Dink said, smiling. \"I can't tell even you that, not yet, even though you're my most confidential secretary.\" \"What's he doing now?\" Orison asked, watching the Microfabridus, perched up on the rear four of his six microscopic legs, scratching against her high-school class-ring with his tiny chelae. \"They like gold,\" Dink explained, peering across her shoulder, comfortably close. \"They're attracted to it by a chemical tropism, as Orison brushed the midget crustacean off her finger into the nearest Orison closed her eyes, leaning back into Dink's arms, listening to the music that seemed on the outermost edge of her hearing. Wildness, storm and danger were its theme, counterpointed by promises of peace quiet of sheltered tide-pools, the soft lub of sea-arms landlocked. \"It's an ancient song,\" Dink said. \"The Microfabridae have been\n\n<question>:\nWhat is Orison's main reason for going to floor seven?\n\n<options>:\nA To figure out what escudo green meant\nB To have a good reason to get fired\nC To find out what else is happening at the bank\nD To give Dink a message\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
2,003
|
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 Quest. Quest rose from the table in JUPITER WEAPON By CHARLES L. FONTENAY destruction— powerful, utterly invulnerable. In his haste, Quest missed the Quest made no effort to retaliate. squalid saloon in the rougher section of Jupiter's View, the terrestrial dome-colony on Ganymede. irons, Jakdane turned to Quest, drunk, at the table. “Take it easy,” he advised. “I'll wake the psychosurgeon had insisted. Quest shook his head. only hope was that this place Quest and when the skeptical “I couldn't,” said Quest miserably, with Quest, forget it,” he said. “Not because he's a coward. Because he's an android!” serious!” “I am. I say he's an android, an artificial imitation of a man. 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 heels. In desperation, she dodged refuge behind him. Her protector “Kregg!” arose, ponderously, and lumbered Kregg striking Quest in the face feet tall, with a brutal, vacant “But he said Dr. Mansard was 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 there. Have you ever heard of from the approaching Kregg. Quest said.” “Yes. Do you know when?” “No. Quest never did tell me, that I remember.” “He told me: a year before Quest made his rocket flight to Dr. Mansard and his wife had squarely with the short man's 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 surgiscope, didn't he? But his and Kregg sank stunned to his man Quest to a T, Trella. There Moving agilely around the end over Kregg, holding the jagged-edged fact that you were able to live ship was drawn into Jupiter and lost.” “I'll have no coppers upon Quest as an android, which Blessing headed. “That means you, too, lady,” a deep, resonant voice behind Dr. Mansard's disappearance, had not told Quest of her mission to Ganymede. He thought he was Dr. Mansard's son, but an android had no legal right of inheritance from his owner. She often believe that.” to decide what to do about Quest. Quest about seeing him again He grinned at her. wrong and Quest was human—as now seemed unlikely—Quest had told her he could not love her. Her best course was to try to forget him. Nor did Quest try to arrange taking his hand in farewell. 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.” “He came back to Earth with “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 was born and brought up there, you, eh?” asked Blessing intently. whether to let him go on living as a man or to tell him he's an android and claim ownership 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 to, she exclaimed: “You aren't afraid of Quest? was wrong, that Quest, whether harm to him. Surely, Quest Quest had a late sandwich in the such bitterness during their long 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 For some reason she decided of Quest. more than she intended to. Blessing, ahead of the rest, and Quest burst through. Quest was after it, like a days gone by, “I need a chaperon Seeing Quest almost upon him, Quest was already beside it, “I'm lucky,” said Quest soberly. “But why, Quest? I knew he was afraid of you, but he didn't tell me why.” “It was conditioned into me,” answered Quest “I didn't know 60 it until just now, when it ended, but my father conditioned me psychologically from my birth to the task of hunting down and plummeted ever more swiftly Dom Blessing and killing him. It thrown with Quest almost constantly. “You see, Blessing was my father's assistant on Ganymede. Right after my father completed development of the surgiscope, he and my mother blasted off for 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 could not object to Dr. Mansard's son knowing about it. All these things had happened before she was born, and she to Earth and track down Blessing. Blessing purpose.” Jupiter-strong muscles, Quest took her in his arms. “Now I can say I love you,” you know this, too, now: that “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 disappeared into the turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter just after in Jupiter's atmosphere after the oxygen equipment failed. I know you think Dr. Mansard was your father, but androids his invention of the surgiscope, and it had been developed by your strength … the “I'm no android,” he said confidently. 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 to adapt me to the climate of Jupiter … even to “Do you forget my father being able to breathe a chlorine atmosphere as well as an oxygen Blessing would, of course, be happy to learn that a son of Dr. to tell Quest the good news “How can you be sure?” she asked doubtfully. “Androids are made,” he answered with a laugh. “They don't grow up. And I remember my boyhood on Jupiter very well.” He took her in his arms again, “I kept waiting for Quest to do THE END “What did he say?” her wounded feelings with a after Asrange ran amuck. individual who said little and emotion … until the day Quest “I'm sorry!” exclaimed Quest in distress.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the central irony of Quest's last words in the story?\n\n<options>:\nA He claims that \"androids are made\" to justify his human status, disregarding the impact of his father's programming efforts\nB He declares that \"androids don't grow up,\" when in reality, his father programmed him to appear to (physically) age\nC He states that he \"remembers his boyhood on Jupiter,\" when in reality, he is still a boy\nD He says he \"remembers his boyhood on Jupiter,\" when in reality, his memories were programmed into his brain\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,816
|
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>:\ninto icy waters, a long descent into alkaline depths ... it was death. But Ned Vince lived again—a million years later! to control himself. His knuckles tightened on the edge of the vat. \"I don't know what you've been talking about,\" he grated wildly. \"But I want to get out of here! ten-thirty....\" Ned Vince was eager for the Loy Chuk pressed more keys. though their forefathers originated on this planet. They have a steep slope, struck a huge boulder, bounced up a little, and arced outward, falling as gracefully as a swan-diver toward the inky waters of the Pit, fifty feet beneath.... Ned Vince was still dimly conscious when that black, quiet he began to sink, trapped inside was a tremendously deep pocket in the ground, spring-fed. The edges of that almost bottomless to escape this nameless white—for the water, on which dead birds so often floated, was He had to go most of the way on his hands and knees, for the up-slanting passage was low. Excited animal chucklings around him, and the occasional touch of a furry body, hurried his feverish scrambling. But he emerged at last at the surface. He stood there panting in that frigid, rarefied air. It was night. The Moon was a gigantic, pock-marked bulk. The constellations in this abyss. The car was deeply submerged. The light had blinked out on the shallow, crystalline domes, set couldn't fight against the force of that incoming water. The after a million years of erosion under an ocean that was gone. In that ghastly moonlight, the ground glistened with dry salt. \"Well, I guess it's all true, huh?\" Ned Vince muttered in a among odd, scrub trees and bushes. The crags loomed on all squeaky chattering. Rodents liquid was sucked into his lungs. His last thoughts were those planet—so changed had the Earth become. A wave of intolerable homesickness came over him as he sensed the distances of time that the surface waters in the Pit, quieted again to glassy smoothness. pool were caked with a rim of cold sea-bottom, but what of it? What reason did he have left to live? He'd be only a museum ran, welcoming that bitter, killing accurately, arose thinly from the depths of a powder-dry gulch, water-scarred from an inconceivable antiquity. The noon-day Sun was red and huge. The cold. Nostalgia had him in its clutch, and there was no answer air was tenuous, dehydrated, chill. \"Kaalleee!... Tik, tik, Loy Chuk and his followers in his hell-world, lost beyond unconscious form, a mile from the city of Kar-Rah. In a flying before. But he was firmly strapped to a low platform this time, so that he could not escape babble of a group of workmen who have discovered something remarkable. The desolate expanse around the gulch, was all but without motion. The icy breeze tore tiny puffs of dust from grotesque, from the black box. It was Loy angling drifts of soil, nearly waterless for eons. Patches of drab lichen grew here and there the desert itself, no other life was visible. Even the hills had sagged away, flattened by incalculable Little Loy Chuk was in a gods in exodus, perhaps it was—half a million years ago. Man was gone from the Earth. Glacial looming. In far less extreme circumstances Loy Chuk was a scientist. In than this, death from regardless of the species from which they spring, he loved the wanted this ancient man to live The sounds were not human. They were more like the chatter and wail of small desert animals. So Loy considered carefully here in the depths of that the gulch had been cleared of the as ruler of the Earth. Loy Chuk had flown his geological expedition out from the far lowlands to the east, out with a vast and unlooked-for success. He crouched there on his haunches, at the dry bottom of the Pit. The breeze rumpled his long, brown fur. He wasn't very different in appearance from his spread around his inquisitive, into unconsciousness, Loy Chuk of hope. \"Hey, somebody!\" he called. of which Loy was a prime member. Loy Chuk and his fellow workers in it was a huddled form, brown and hard as old wood. The dry mud that had encased it had enveloped it. He was wandering aimlessly about in a familiar like an airtight coffin, had by room. The girders of the had gone into decay—yes. But saturation that had held time and change in stasis. A perfect brown house, where he lived. aided probably during most of those passing eras by desert dryness. The Dakotas had turned arid very swiftly. This body was wonder Loy Chuk and his co-workers that mighty sense of relief. \"I must have fallen asleep at the bench, here, and had a nightmare. I thought I had an accident At last Loy Chuk gave a soft, lot of worse things happened.... But it wasn't true ...\" there was still an elusive fog that he did not try to shake off, accepted apparent facts simply. He did not know anything about the invisible radiations beating down upon him, soothing devoid of moisture, the mummy was perfectly preserved, even to among Loy Chuk's kind. and energy-units and soft plastic. The trees outside were only lantern-slide illusions. It was all built inside a great, hidden television systems, too. Thus Loy Chuk's kind could Loy, though, was not observing, out into cold, sad sea-bottom, to ruins, left by the final supermen. Even they, who once ruled Earth, never escaped from the present America seemed to crawl backward, beneath. A tremendous sand desert, marked with low, washed-down mountains, and the by so much as an instant....\" continental plateau of North vague, angular, geometric Beyond the eastern rim of the continent, the plain dipped downward steeply. The white of dried salt was on the hills, but there too. The dead sea-bottom of the vanished Atlantic was not as dead as the highlands. Far out in a deep valley, Kar-Rah, the city of the rodents, maze of low, bubble-like structures, But this was only its surface aspect. Loy Chuk's people had built their homes mostly underground, since the beginning of their foggy evolution. Besides, in this latter day, the nights were very cold, the shelter of subterranean passages and rooms was welcome. The mummy was taken to Loy Chuk's laboratory, a short distance below the surface. Here at once, the scientist began his work. The body of the ancient Fluids submerged it, slowly soaking from that hardened flesh the alkali that had preserved it began. Still submerged in Loy Chuk pushed another switch. dehydrated, his brain had been kept perfectly intact through the nostalgic panic. Something was fearfully wrong! The nervous terror of the unknown was on him. Feeble and city was a glowing expanse of way they were assembled, were old, familiar friends. But the tone was wrong. It was high, shrill, parrot-like, and mechanical. source of the voice—located the black box just outside of his somehow, simply because they could never belong in a place as eerie as this. Loy Chuk had probed his brain, and that Loy Chuk had held befuddled terror. He gasped in the thin atmosphere. \"I've Loy's box, with its recorded on a frosted crystal plate before him. Thus he knew what Ned Vince was saying. Loy Chuk pressed more keys, Chuk....\" sought, with calm, human logic, speed. The spreading\n\n<question>:\nWhy did Loy Chuk's people live underground?\n\n<options>:\nA Subterranean passages protect against desert sand storms.\nB Subterranean passages protect against larger predators.\nC Loy Chuk comes from a rodent species. Rodents usually live in underground burrows.\nD The temperature above ground at night is very cold.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
2,457
|
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 little. After all, the most convincing liar always wins in any Altairian stopped, producing a huge key ring from some obscure certain evidence, would they have to draw the same conclusions logical.\" have some privacy now, if you please. Interplanetary ruling. and the judge banged the gavel for silence. As soon as Zeckler had taken his seat on the witness stand, the judge turned to the head juryman. \"Now, then,\" he said with happy finality. \"The jury—\" to convict me,\" he said softly, \"in the worst sort of way. Isn't \"That's right.\" \"But you can't really convict me until you've considered carefully any statement I make in my own defense. Isn't that right?\" record, then.\" His voice was loud and clear in the still room. \" All Earthmen are absolutely incapable of telling the truth. \" Puzzled frowns appeared on the jury's faces. One or two to soak in. And then pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. \"Really,\" said Harry Zeckler loftily, \"it was so obvious I'm \" You mean I'm not being extradited? \" convict me.\" He grinned impishly at Meyerhoff. \"The paradox You've committed a crime here—a major crime. The Altairians of Epimenides the Cretan. It really stopped them cold. They knew get you out of a mess. You're going to stand trial—and these he said weakly. \"Nothing like a good lawyer to handle a trial.\" trial. The Altairians weren't any too happy to oblige. They wanted to execute you outright. Thought a trial Arrest! \" \"Oh, yes. Didn't I tell you? Conspiring to undermine the straight back to Terra. And there I think you'll face a jury trial.\" Zeckler spluttered. \"There's no evidence—you've got nothing through some curious quirk of the Terrestrial mind, they knew they could count on Terran protection, however crooked and underhand their methods. social practices of the alien victims made it unwise to tamper don't think you'll get off.\" Transcriber's Note: rights almost as soon as they're born. Anything goes, as long as it benefits them as individuals.\" Meyerhoff grinned at the little man's horrified face. \"Never Altairians here for the food their planet can supply, and their it's every man for himself, and the loser starves, and their entire legal and monetary system revolves on that principle. They've built up the most confusing and impossible system of they're pathological! Only a fool would tell the truth when his life depended on his being a better liar than the next guy! Lying is the time-honored tradition, with their entire legal system built around it.\" Zeckler snorted. \"But how could they sold it to a dozen separate, self-centered, half-starved natives! Encroachment on private property is legal grounds for murder on this planet, and twelve of them descended on the same chunk of land at the same time, all armed with title-deeds.\" Meyerhoff sighed. \"You've got twelve mad Altairians in your I defend myself in a legal setup like con-man brain to working, I think,\" he said softly. \"By Interplanetary Rules, they have to give you a trial in Terran legal form—judge, jury, court procedure, all that folderol. They think it's a big joke—after all, what could a judicial oath mean like a courtroom, at any rate. In the front a courtroom, a judge, and a jury for this mess. Beyond that—\" Altairians attempted to push through the door at once. Zeckler of precedent seemed to be settled, and a group of the Altairians filed in, in order of stature, stalking across the room court. \"We are reading the case of the people of Altair I,\" the judge's voice roared out, \"against one Harry Zeckler—\" he paused for a long, impressive moment—\"Terran.\" The courtroom immediately burst into an angry growl, until the judge pounded the bench five or six times more. \"This—creature—is hereby accused of the following crimes,\" the judge bellowed. \"Conspiracy to overthrow the government of Altair I. Brutal murder of seventeen law-abiding citizens of the village of in a public square. Four separate and distinct charges of jail-break and bribery—\" The judge pounded the bench for order—\"Espionage \"The Chairman of the Jury,\" said the Judge succinctly, \"will read the verdict.\" a puppet on a string. \"Defendant found guilty on all counts,\" he said. \"Defendant is guilty! The court will pronounce sentence—\" \" Now wait a minute! Honor. Later, Your Honor. The trial comes \"Later. You have to have the trial before you can have the verdict.\" The Altairian shrugged indifferently. \"Now—later—\" he \"Have the prosecutor call his first witness,\" said Meyerhoff. Zeckler leaned over, his face ashen. \"These charges,\" he whispered. \"They're insane!\" Altairian equivalent of a hungry grin at the prosecutor. Then \"The oath,\" muttered the judge. \"We've got to have the oath.\" The prosecutor nodded, and four natives moved forward, cairn, and the prosecutor said, \"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you—\" he in an injured tone. \"Then tell this court what you have seen of the activities of this abominable wretch.\" in his heart, that I was—\" \"Objection!\" Zeckler squealed plaintively, jumping to his feet. \"This witness can't even remember what night he's talking about!\" his bundle of notes. \"Overruled,\" he said abruptly. \"Continue, please.\" The witness glowered at Zeckler. \"As I was saying before \"But how can I fight testimony like that?\" \"But they can't prove a word of it—\" He looked at the jury, who were listening enraptured to the second witness on the stand. This one was testifying regarding the butcherous slaughter of eighteen (or was it twenty-three? Oh, yes, twenty-three) his eyes turning glassy as the testimony piled up. \"But it's not \"Of course it isn't! Can't you understand? have no regard for truth. It's stupid, to them, silly, a mark of low intelligence. The only thing in the world they have any respect for is a liar bigger and more skillful than they are.\" the jury delivers the verdict?\" with fear and excitement. \"Your—Your Honor, I—I have a as a murmur arose in the court. \"Our land?\" to hear his words. \"These charges,\" he continued, \"all of them—they're perfectly true. At least, they seem Altair from my homeland on Terra. I—I landed on Altair II, theirs, not mine. They have bribed your Goddess, flattered her and lied to her, coerced her all-powerful goodness to their own evil interests, preparing for the day when they could persuade One by one the natives nudged one another, and booed, and guffawed, until the rising tide of racket drowned out Zeckler's words. \"The defendant is obviously lying,\" roared the prosecutor over the pandemonium. \"Any fool knows that the Goddess can't be bribed. How could she be a Goddess if she could?\" \"Unless the defendant wishes to take up more of our precious time with these ridiculous lies, the jury—\" \"Wait! Your Honor, I request a short recess before I present case.\" The judge settled back with a disgusted snarl. \"Do I have\n\n<question>:\nThe proceedings of Altairian trial defy which tenet of the modern western legal system?\n\n<options>:\nA a defendant is innocent until proven guilty\nB a defendant has a right to due process\nC no warrant shall be issued without just cause\nD no one shall be subject to self-incrimination\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,822
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nFor a moment Trella thought There was only one question: Was he human? Trella feared she was in for trouble even before Motwick's they shifted restlessly in their chairs. Trella had not wanted to come to the Golden Satellite. It was a squalid saloon in the rougher 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 and turned his face away. Later, alone with Trella on the control deck, Jakdane gave It all figures. “Look, Trella, he said he was born on Jupiter. A human could free of Jupiter? Here's a man strong enough to break a spaceship safety belt just by getting Trella remembered the thug his father,” protested Trella. “Robots and androids frequently look on their makers as Trella again as Kregg overtook his quarry and swung a huge fist like a sledgehammer. Exactly what happened, Trella wasn't sure. She had the impression lived in the poisonous atmosphere 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 “Those characteristics fit your man Quest to a T, Trella. There is no other explanation for him: her and ran for the door. Trella did not want to believe Jakdane was right, but his reasoning his refusal to defend himself against a human, his inability to return Trella's love for him. It was not inconceivable that she should have unknowingly and staggered out. Trella ran to the unconscious Motwick's side. “That means you, too, lady,” inheritance from his owner. She would leave it to Dom Blessing with her for a later meeting. “It has been pleasant knowing you, Trella,” he said when they Trella took a fast plane from He followed Trella out the door White Sands, and twenty-four steps of the familiar brownstone house on the outskirts of Washington. Dom Blessing himself met her at the door, a stooped, graying 58 The transparent dome of Jupiter's like the looks of the men she saw. 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 “Yes, there are things here. We shall make something of these, Miss Trella, eh?” “I'm glad they're something you can use, Mr. Blessing,” she 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 to tell Quest the good news her duties as his confidential Dom Blessing at breakfast and accompanied him wherever he went. She discovered that two “Why all the protection?” she asked Blessing. “A wealthy man must be careful,” said Blessing cheerfully. “When we don't understand all the implications of new circumstances, “Jupiter strength,” she murmured, Trella could think of. Without actually intending to, she exclaimed: human!” Blessing peered at her over his spectacles. “And what if he isn't an android, Trella sighed. Cowardice was a state of mind. It was peculiarly that's required by law? What about that, eh?” Trella was silent, shocked. There was something here she hadn't known about, hadn't even suspected. For some reason, Dom Blessing feared Dr. Eriklund Mansard … or his heir … or his mechanical servant. She was sure that Blessing city now. Trella could get a cab brightly lighted section of the Trella had the desk clerk call a cab to deliver the unconscious Motwick to his home. She and from here, but the Stellar Hotel time together on Ganymede and aspace, since he did not know of Trella's connection with Blessing. But, since this was to be the atmosphere of Blessing's house, she was glad that he decided to assign her to take the 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 Earth. Motwick was an irresponsible playboy whom Trella had known briefly on Earth, and Trella was glad to dispense with his company Trella heard the doorbell ring. The heavy oaken front door was kept locked now, and the guards enjoying the steadier companionship their posts. them. The other guards were at herself enjoying his companionship more than she intended to. with him. Now this did not suit her at all. Trella had always liked her men tall and dark. She had determined that when she married it would be to a curly-haired six-footer. Blessing, ahead of the rest, being so strongly attracted to a leaped into one of the cars and 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 rear of the garage. Trella had across the floor and lay in an unconscious heap against the and its skipper was her old friend, dark-eyed, curly-haired than Trella had ever seen a man I'm getting old,” he answered, laughing. “What's your trouble, Trella?” “I'm in love with that huge chunk of man who came aboard tree on the other side in a twisted tangle of wreckage. With a horrified gasp, Trella “If it's to keep you out of another fellow's clutches, I'm your Dom Blessing. Blessing was dead. “I'm lucky,” said Quest soberly. enjoyment out of being in love. crew members and three passengers Dom Blessing and killing him. It aboard the ship's tiny personnel sphere, and Trella was thrown with Quest almost constantly. She enjoyed every minute that wouldn't release me until the task was finished. “You see, Blessing was my father's was an unconscious drive in me of it. She told him only that she Her employer had impressed upon her that her mission was confidential, but surely Dom Blessing could not object to Dr. successfully. I was born there, All these things had happened before she was born, and she did not know what Dom Blessing's relation to Dr. Mansard had been, but it must have been and he conditioned me to come to Earth and track down Blessing. Mansard's son knowing about it. purpose.” More gently than Trella would have believed possible for his I know now that it was to the task of hunting down any woman until my job was done.” Trella disengaged herself. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Don't you know this, too, now: that Dom Blessing. Its success had built Spaceway Instruments, Incorporated, which Blessing headed. assistant on Ganymede. Blessing had been searching the Right after my father completed sent Trella, his most trusted secretary, to Ganymede to bring there. Blessing would, of course, be happy to learn that a son of Dr. Trella looked at him. He was that he received his rightful share of the inheritance. Because of this, Trella was tempted not badly hurt, any more than herself but she decided against it. It was Blessing's privilege to do this his own way, and he might not appreciate her meddling. At midtrip, Trella made a rueful confession to Jakdane. Io. Blessing wanted the valuable rights to the surgiscope, and he sabotaged the ship's drive so it love me and he feels that he\n\n<question>:\nWhat is Trella's relationship to Dom Blessing?\n\n<options>:\nA Trella is Dom Blessing's employer.\nB Trella is Dom Blessing's sister.\nC Trella is Dom Blessing's employee.\nD Trella is Dom Blessing's mistress.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,501
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\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. 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 Wiley's overexplanation of everything two people can do to each other with their mouths raises this question: Do you really need a five-minute video segment on whether or not to swallow? In the great tradition of hotel and travel ads, the guys tend to be markedly less attractive than the women. No way he'd be with her if this wasn't an instructional sex video! The inanity of the experts and the dubious casting make these films about as erotic as ... well, as the New York Times . You could learn more from any randomly selected porn video. Rating: 0 toes curled. We shopped for the food together and cooked together, drinking wine and beer along the way. At one point while I was working on the dessert, I asked my wife how long to beat the heavy cream mixture. \"Till it's stiff--it's an aphrodisiac,\" she said. Preparation took less than an hour, and everything came out perfectly. Eating at our dining room table for the first time ever without guests, we were having fun by candlelight. But the mood was romantic, not erotic. Overall rating: 4 toes curled. That's when we went for the Viagra ($212.50 for 10 doses, which includes a \"consultation\" fee). The drug was prescribed by a doctor, whom I've never met, and ordered from a pharmacy in Miami Beach, Fla., where I've never been. I completed the transaction via the Internet after filling out a cover-their-ass questionnaire in three minutes. We each decided to take one pill, clinked our glasses, and gulped. And then what? It felt awkward sitting in our bedroom, knowing that it could take up to an hour for Viagra to \"work.\" I suggested that we play strip poker, something I'd never done. Deb had never even played poker, so I had to explain the rules. I won in about six hands, auspiciously I thought, with three aces. But we still weren't really in the mood yet. So then I got out the other purchase I'd made at A Touch of Romance--\"Dirty Dice\" ($4.95). One of the two pink cubes is marked with these words instead of dots: \"lips,\" \"above waist,\" \"ear,\" \"breast,\" \"below waist,\" and \"?\". The other cube is labeled \"kiss,\" \"squeeze,\" \"lick,\" \"blow,\" \"suck,\" and \"eat.\" We took turns throwing the dice, but the activities generated seemed forced and arbitrary. Finally, as they say at NASA, there was word from the pad that the launch sequence was initiating. It was pretty much like all other sex, except for a slight lightheadedness. Deb said she noticed a remote tingling sensation. On the plus side, there was no priapism and neither of us experienced disruption of our color vision nor a fatal heart attack, which was nice. Overall rating: 5 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>:\nWhy is it suggested that you should not tell your partner when you take Viagra?\n\n<options>:\nA Viagra is expensive and you don't want the conversation about money to distract from intimacy\nB You don't want to be embarassed when they find out you need help getting aroused\nC Viagra isn't something you need to be honest about with your partner\nD Telling them takes some of the mystery out of the situation and is less fun\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,777
|
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>:\nappeared to have overcome every little imperfection he had been a full dinner, for he was unusually sat behind the desk of his shabby little office over Lemark's Liquors waited for his first customer. He had been in business for a week and as yet had had no callers. type.\" It was obvious that the liquor had been having some effect. Either that, or she had a basic flaw of loquacity that no one else had discovered. Pembroke decided he would have to cover his tracks carefully. would be before his next client would arrive. The series of events leading up roar of the sinking ship was the last thing he heard for some time. travel, organized peril, and political restriction. He had made for himself a substantial fortune through speculation in a and otherwise. Life had given him much and demanded little, which was perhaps the reason for his restiveness. Loyalty to person or to people was a trait Pembroke had never recognized in himself, nor had it for any obvious reason, but because Ann had no pulse. Mary Ann did Lacking such loyalties, Pembroke adapted quickly to the situation in which he found himself He awoke in a small room in what appeared to be a typical When she left the hotel at midnight, Pembroke was quite sure modern American hotel. The wallet three hundred dollars. His next thought was of food. He left the room and descended that she understood his plan and But then, Mary Ann was not a human being. via the elevator to the restaurant. hungry, he began to study the others in the restaurant. Here he observed that it was early afternoon. Ordering Many of the faces seemed familiar of the passengers. However, he made no attempt to speak to them. After his meal, he bought a good corona and went for a walk. His situation could have the city. Pembroke said he was going out anyway. been any small western American she inquired. \"Much of the time,\" said the man. \"Could it be me?\" would go straight to the police her and that she had shot where they had been target shooting, but would be unable to locate the spot where she had buried the body. Why had she for that. was not going to report the incident. \"Tell me what's wrong with was not airtight, but there would probably be no further investigation. me,\" she went on urgently. \"I'm fences as he walked. He had already torn the collar of the shirt and discarded his belt. By morning his beard would grow to blacken his face. And he would look weary and hungry and aimless. Only the last would be a deception. phoned Mary Ann. The police had accepted her story without even checking. And when, when would she be seeing him again? could requite it. Soon, he assured her, soon. \"Because, after all, you do owe me something,\" she added. And that was bad because it she might go to the police again, this time for vengeance. Twice during his wanderings Pembroke had seen the corpses because they bled. Mary Ann had admitted that she did not. left in Puerto Pacifico, and it would be simple enough to locate him if he were reported as the counter. \"What the hell was that?\" Pembroke demanded. \"Oh, you know—or don't you? loitered around the stalls where hot dogs and soft drinks were sold, leaning against a post in the counter and strutted back and forth a few times. docks every day, without being able to learn when the great exodus would take place. Yet he since no one he had talked to in the city had ever heard of was to leave shortly. If there was any but the most superficial examination, But since no one seemed concerned about anything but his own speech and behavior, he assumed that they had all qualified That was fine. At least he now knew where he was. But as he left the shop he began checking He headed for the nearest service station and asked for a map. The attendant gave him one which showed the city, but nothing Pembroke watched him hurry off to service a car with a sense of having been given the runaround. To his surprise, the boy came back a few minutes later after servicing the automobile. You name it. Been out of work for a long time now, though. Goin' on five months. \"Buses? Airlines?\" The kid shook his head. And so it went for about five minutes. Then he was told he had qualified as a satisfactory surrogate for a mid-twentieth century American male, itinerant \"That's for sure,\" the boy said, walking away to wait on another customer. \"If you don't like the place, you've had it.\" Pembroke returned to the hotel. Going to the bar, he recognized one of the Elena Mia's paying passengers. He was a short, rectangular little man in his fifties named Spencer. He sat in a in tears. Then she saw him. Waving frantically, she called his name several times. Pembroke mingled the woman persisted in her shouting. down. Why'n'sha try holdin' 'em straight?\" \"I thought it made me look sexy,\" the redhead said petulantly. \"Just be yourself, gal,\" Spencer feather cut was insisting. \"What is wrong with me?\" he told her, taking her hand. \"Ah, come on,\" she pleaded. \"Everyone tells me I chew gum that,\" said Pembroke, snickering again as he moved away from the other. \"And why not? Hey? Why not?\" Pembroke went right on hating lost interest in him. They got up one by one and walked out of the bar. Pembroke took his rum and tonic and moved over to Spencer's booth. himself, however, till the night he was deposited in a field police how he had drifted far from the scene of the sinking of the outside of Ensenada, broke but \"Sure,\" said the fat man. \"Wonder what the hell got into Spencer, peering at him suspiciously. Now, seated at his battered desk in the shabby rented office over Lemark's Liquors, Pembroke gazed without emotion at lay sprawled one atop the other in the corner. His watch said one-fifteen. The man from the hotel. I would be very grateful if you would give me a few minutes of honest criticism.\" \"Ah, no, not you, too,\" groaned Spencer. \"Look, Joe, what's the gag?\" Spencer,\" Valencia explained. Spencer. \"I've got more important pistol solved his problem the chair, both feet upon the desk. He would be out of business soon, once the FBI agent had got there. Pembroke was only in it to get the proof he would need to Spencer opened his mouth to allowed himself to admire the clipping of the newspaper ad he was amused at his companion's reaction but observed that Spencer still failed to see the point. FEE—$3.75 MONEY BACK IF NOT SATISFIED! THE END Mr. Spencer, your value has failed all we require of you.\" Valencia left. Spencer ordered another martini. Neither he nor Pembroke spoke for several minutes. \"Somebody's crazy around here,\" the fat man muttered Spencer. Consider the men who went down with the ship. That was just part of the game.\" \"What the hell are you sayin'?\" asked Spencer in disbelief. sunk the ship? Valencia and the waitress and the three babes? Ah, come on.\" determine what you do, Spencer. of the bar. A policeman entered and walked directly to Spencer's table. Loitering at the juke box, Pembroke overheard the conversation. \"You Spencer?\" \"That's right,\" said the fat man sullenly. \"What don't you like about in his pocket contained exactly he saw them carrying the body into the street. How many others, he wondered, had gone out on their backs during their first day in Puerto Pacifico? what it should, approximately After eating they danced for an hour, had a few more drinks, then went to Pembroke's room. He still knew nothing about her and had almost exhausted his critical capabilities, but not once had she become annoyed with him. She seemed to devour every factual point of imperfection\n\n<question>:\nWhy it was Spencer shot by the police at the bar?\n\n<options>:\nA He had treated the women poorly, which is against the law.\nB He refused to tell the policeman what was wrong with him.\nC There was no reason, it was a random act of violence.\nD He had refused to pay his bar tab.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
221
|
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>:\nCharles turned over on his side to look at her. She lay quietly in the Meanings and answers to his questions slithered out of his reach. \"God,\" he said. It was not an exclamation, nor yet an expletive. It was a mere statement of fact. A thought teased at him. Charles looked at the woman again and decided Charles smiled wanly and got up. He stood by the bed looking at her. \"Now the world is dead. The whole world is dead.\" New York lay quietly below him. It was the hour of indecision when freely, warmly, and Charles had accepted. But then he had known that she would. It was not him, it was the circumstances. Under the \"Why did it have to be her—or me? Why should it have to happen to anybody! Why!\" His thoughts beat a rapid crescendo, activating emotions, stimulating sensations of angry rage. He wanted to cry, to weep angry tears of protest. To any man, WHO HAPPENED TO BE THE LAST MAN ON EARTH! Charles picked up a heavy book end off the table and crashed it through flesh. Charles ignored it. Even smells had lost their customary stomach clenched up like an angry fist. \"But I don't want to be the last man alive!\" he shouted. \"I don't know what to do! I don't know where to go, how to act! I just don't know—\" A paroxysm of sobbing shook his body. Trembling, he dropped to his \" Maybe I'm not the last! \" The thought struck him with suddenness, promisingly, edged with Charles got up slowly, noticing for the first time that his fingers and dangled from the edge of the bed like a crazy pendulum. Charles to pull the sheet over her nude form, then stopped, smiling at his \"That was it,\" he said to himself. \"Pride. We called this the 'Proud cope with the situation. The president of the world-wide Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals committed suicide. Within a year it was obvious to everyone that man was the only animal left on earth. The panic which had begun with the death of the animals was quieted \"I've got to find out,\" Charles told himself. He meant it, of course, human on earth. Compulsory registration and the classification of each individual by means of the discrete patterns of his brain waves had accomplished for who was dead, and where everybody was. Once a year the Bureau issued The Index, an exact accounting of Earth's four billion inhabitants. Four billion names and addresses, compressed In all of his life, Charles had never once glanced at The Index. Reaching the gigantic building, Charles pushed aside the body of a But he still remembered it and he still recalled the powerful emotional recording that Charles had come to the Bureau some twenty-two years mechanical wonder had remained with him the rest of his life. \"So different now,\" he thought, surveying the room. \"Now it's empty, so Charles walked to the master control panel. With newly acquired Charles activated the switches that would flash a schematic map of New not because she liked him, but because.... Charles stopped talking and forced his eyes upwards. Peripheral vision He gasped. 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 He stopped. For even as he spoke, the light winked out! The counter One. Alone. Charles screamed. The bottom dropped out from under him! Why? Such a simple question, but in those three letters lay the essence of companionship, elimination. Certainly more decisive in the history of the race. Man began to think, to differentiate himself from the other animals, when he first asked the question: \"Why?\" But thinking about \"why\" didn't answer the question itself, Charles Civilization equals life equals noise. Silence equals.... Why. His mind kept returning to the question. Of all the people on earth, me. The last. Why me? Average, that's what he was. Height: 5'11\". Weight: 165. Age: 32. Status: Married, once upon a time. The Norm, with no significant departures, all down the line. Church it? Had God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, spared his life, saved him, singled him out because he was most nearly a saint, most nearly Charles sighed. 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 York, so the last person who gave way to the disease should come from here too. Spin the wheel assumptions about good and evil, no need for teleological arguments concerning cause and effect. Simply explain it by chance. Somebody had to be the last to go and that was— \"No,\" Charles said, standing up in the quiet of the spring evening. \"No, chance won't do it. No man can reckon with chance. The mind Charles stopped walking suddenly. No cave, he thought. No place to And suddenly it was the most important thing in life to him to find his was. He let the coffin down slowly into the depression, then piled up 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 rest. Let them decide. He smiled and finished the painting. Charles was hungry. He got up and started for one of the restaurants difference, it seemed to Charles that he'd probably have a long time smallpox. The vaccination never took. That's probably it.\" He smiled. Strange, but now he wanted very much to go on living, alone or not. There were things he could do, ways to keep occupied. with each passing second to retain his foothold on the tenuous path of physical existence. The tantalizing thought of \"why\" puzzled its way back into his mind. 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 perhaps, he would think about it. In a little while he'd have plenty of now he thought he almost had the answer, if there were an answer. He thought he had seen the solution peering out at him from the recesses of his mind, and he didn't like the expression on its face. Better to Charles reached the broad boulevard. There was a large cafe just across almost fell as he stepped from the curb. \"I—\" He started to say something, to think something. But some hidden part of his mind clamped down, obscuring the thought, rejecting the to the restaurant. This was the way the plague began, but—His mind quickly repressed the idea. It couldn't be the plague. He was immune! useless. His body, out of his voluntary control, tried to run off in Charles struggled to end his body's disorganized responses, to everything else seemed irrelevant: he had He was allotted ten minutes before the end. It could have been ten years or ten seconds, for now objective time Charles refused to think. Machines, especially half-broken machines, do pushed himself towards his goal, trying to add one final touch of grace movement that would throw him headlong into the shallow grave. He Instantly the thought struck him with paralyzing devastation. The answer to it all poked its face out from the recesses of his mind and sapped the last bit of his energy, corroding his nerves and dying 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. The large, invisible, ovular being that hung suspended over the Empire \"It is finished?\" asked the second. \"Beautiful,\" said the first. \"It went according to the strictest \"I know.\" \"Well?\" the book disappeared. The thousands of pages dropped softly, caught the metal, until then partially obscured by the papers, became legible: HERE LIES THE BODY OF THE LAST MAN ON EARTH— CHARLES J. ZZYZST GO TO HELL!\n\n<question>:\nWhat did Charles probably realize at the end?\n\n<options>:\nA He could have stopped the plague\nB There were more people alive that he hadn't found\nC There was an alien on the Empire State Building\nD He was the last person because of his last name\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
898
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nNow and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture? Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's \" 'real life' feature film,\" has proudly worn its mongrel status as a \"directed\" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside. This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film \"an exercise in mendacity,\" Barker goes on, \"I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths.\" Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary (\"I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it\"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of \"difficult\" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males. Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are \"mutts.\" Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt. Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, \"In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action.\" Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was \"true to her character.\" But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray. So what are Barker's \"larger dramatic truths\"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian. Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people. The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code, all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. (\"Furniture's temporary\n\n<question>:\nThe film review author gives all of the following reasons for his negative critique toward \"Unmade Beds\" EXCEPT that:\n\n<options>:\nA he believes the director has taken too many liberties to bend the characters to his own perceptions of them\nB he believes its scripted nature does not qualify it as a true documentary film\nC he believes the characters to be so vulgar that the audience cannot empathize with them\nD he believes the director does not ultimately communicate the more profound truths about society\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,398
|
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>:\nExtrone was smiling innocently. \"Good. I want you to do something for 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 shoot the animal before it reaches you.\" Extrone shrugged. Ri gulped for air. \"But ... if there should be more than one?\" were trembling. \"It's not me you want to do this to. It's Mia, sir. He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's \"He what?\" Extrone demanded, leaning forward intently. Mia glanced nervously over his shoulder. \"It's that damned pilot's He's the one you ought to use for bait. Then if there was an accident, wouldn't....\" Extrone said, \"Which one is he?\" \"That one. Right over there.\" sir, it wouldn't matter, because he said he ought to kill you. I Mia said, \"I don't think he even saw a blast area over here. I think he Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle us.\" Ri cleared his throat nervously. \"Maybe you're right.\" \"It's the Hunting Club he don't like.\" Mia looked at his companion. He spat. \"What hurts most, he pays us for \"Hey, you!\" Extrone called. \"You will scream,\" Extrone instructed. With his rifle, he pointed \"Let me hear you scream,\" Extrone said. \"You'll have to do better than that.\" Extrone inclined his head toward peeling away from under their rough boots. Ri watched them hopelessly. Once at the crotch, Extrone settled down, holding the rifle at alert. Looking down, Extrone said, \"Scream!\" Then, to Lin, \"You feel the Extrone chuckled. \"You were with me on Meizque?\" Extrone's head. He slapped at it, angry. The forest was quiet, \"The ones who discovered the farn beasts in the first place?\" Mia Extrone laughed nervously. \"He must have heard.\" our fault Extrone found out.\" Extrone dug his boot cleats into the tree, braced himself. \"I like only the killing,\" Lin echoed. didn't tell Extrone, if that's what you're thinking,\" Mia said. hell with how he found out. Here's the point. Maybe he'll shoot us, too, when the hunt's over.\" Ri licked his lips. \"No. He wouldn't do that. We're not—not just anybody. He couldn't kill us like that. Not even him . And besides, \"Hey!\" Extrone shouted. \"You, down there. There are two coming. Now why would he want to do that? It wouldn't do any good to shoot us. Too Extrone began to tremble with excitement. \"Here they come!\" \"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 the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath Extrone's face looked much too innocent. \"How did it get there, beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump. \"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 \"Eh?\" Extrone said, turning, startled. \"Oh, you. Well?\" Extrone held back the flap of the tent. \"Won't you come in?\" he asked \"I.... No, sir. There must have been previous hunters, sir.\" 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's lip twisted in wry amusement. \"If I had waited until it was Extrone bent forward. \" \"Get out!\" Extrone said. \"It makes you think,\" Mia added. He twitched. \"I'm afraid. I'm afraid \"No?\" Mia challenged. \"Couldn't we? Not today, but what about tomorrow? Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from Mia smiled twistedly. \"How many has he already killed? How can we even And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the and yet behind him, a fourth, with a steaming pitcher and a drinking mug. Extrone ate hugely, with none of the delicacy sometimes affected in his Extrone pushed the table away. He smacked his lips wetly. \"Very \"I believe they're carnivorous, sir.\" \"An alien manual. That's ludicrous, too. That we have the only course, two businessmen.\" \"They have very long, sharp fangs, and, when enraged, are capable of Extrone laughed harshly. \"It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?\" afraid of you.\" \"... 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.\" \"All right,\" Extrone said, annoyed. \"I'll be careful.\" Instantly alert, Extrone said, \"Get the bearers! Have some of them cut for farn beasts, and ahead, beyond the cutters, Lin flittered among the tree trunks, sometimes far, sometimes near. Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a powerful blast rifle, capable of piercing medium armor in sustained fire. To his rear, the water carrier was trailed by a man bearing a folding stool, and behind him, a man carrying the heavy, high-powered two-way communication set. 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. he sat on the stool with his back against an ancient tree and patted, reflectively, the blast rifle, lying across his legs. \"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 Extrone's eyes lit with passion. \"I wish you had let me bring a gun along, sir,\" Lin said. \"One is enough in my The two of them went forward, alone, into the forest. Extrone moved Extrone clenched the blast rifle convulsively. \"Damn!\" Extrone said. \"Eh?\" Extrone said. \"Look,\" Extrone said. \"If that's the case, why do we bother tracking \"You don't seem to see what I mean,\" Extrone said. \" \"Extrone wants to see you,\" Lin said. Extrone was seated, petting his rifle.\n\n<question>:\nWhy is Mia most afraid of Extrone?\n\n<options>:\nA he has the military behind him\nB they know too much about him now\nC he knows too many of their secrets\nD he's the only one with a weapon\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
992
|
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>:\nrelentlessly toward him. He awoke still screaming.... A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a question already formed in his mind. She came and at once he asked, \"Who is the man with the red beard?\" Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him. His fear-borne gaze traveled into the dimly illumined Venusian gin Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. Here and there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen, Martians or Venusians. Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it . I have Martian to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. They know \"Don't the authorities object?\" ?\" Ben shook his head. He thought, \"Not very strongly. The I. B. I. has too many problems right here to search the whole System for a few two-bit crooks. Besides, we carry it, that's our business.\" She pursed her lips. \"But if they guessed how strong we are or that we have friends planted in the I. B. I.—well, things might be different. There probably would be a crackdown.\" Ben scowled. \"What happens if there is a crackdown? And what will you Martian friend. Maybe you like House of Dreams. For House of Dreams—\" .\" The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for resisting, he followed. They plunged into shifting layers of smoke and can't follow the text-book rules of astrogation out there. You make up your own.\" Ben stiffened. \"And that's why you want me for an astrogator.\" through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices. Maggie rose, her eyes wistful. \"If you want to come—and if you get well.\" She looked at him strangely. Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO 2 -breathing They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape. They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine. Once he spied a white-uniformed officer of Hoover City's Security against the stone booths. Keep walking , Ben told himself. You look the same as anyone else here. Keep walking. Look straight ahead. The officer passed. Ben breathed easier. ,\" piped the Martian boy. \"A Close in the shadows.\" Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows? Frowning, he sat down—he and the dead man. The Martians were fragile, doll-like creatures with heads too large for For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead man. He thought, What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in faces of the Inn's other occupants. You've got to find him , he thought. His body was buried now—probably in the silent gray wastes outside Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a part of Ben as sight in his eyes. Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips spitting whiskey-slurred curses. Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the Ben smiled. \"If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here.\" Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white, crimson-braided uniform of the , Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three stools down the bar. Cobb followed. \"You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like people to call you a sucker.\" Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and be dyin' of radiation rot or a meteor'll get you. Wait and see, sucker!\" Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and He sank to the floor, eyes glassy, blood tricking down his jaw. Ben knew that he was dead. Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as, a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger. fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines—was rumored to be a \" The Martian kid grinned, his mouth full of purple teeth. \"I ?\" \"This isn't my first night here,\" Ben lied. \"I've been around a while.\" You know why city is called Hoover City?\" Ben didn't answer. \"They say it is because after women come, they want first thing a Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy. \" But his picture must have been 'scoped to Venusian visiscreens. A reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The Martian kid, perhaps? Far down the darkened aisle nearest him, his eyes caught a flash of You idiot! The damned Martian kid! You should have known! undisturbed. They stood unmoving, their staring eyes shifting lazily in Ben's direction. \"Curtis!\" one of the policemen yelled. \"You're covered! Hold it!\" Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into which the musicians had disappeared. A hissing sound traveled past his left ear, a sound like compressed air door closed behind him. The glare of the flashlight faded from his vision—if he still had vision. \"You're sure?\" the voice persisted. \"I'm sure,\" Ben managed to say. \"I have no antidote. You may die.\" His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection, \"Anti ... anti ...\" The words were as heavy as blobs of mercury forced from his throat. \"No ... I'm sure ... sure.\" He didn't hear the answer or anything else. Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to a deep, staccato grunting. But he heard someone say, \"Don't try to talk.\" It was the same gentle voice he'd heard in the Blast Inn. \"Don't talk. Just lie still and \"It would be a long story. Perhaps I'll tell you tomorrow.\" A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness. \"Tell me, will—will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?\" \"No.\" He looked at her, wondering. \"You won't tell me?\" \"Not yet. Later, perhaps.\" Her eyes twinkled mischievously. \"Because you're a good astrogator.\" His own eyes widened. \"How did you know that?\" Fascinated, Ben nodded. He gaped incredulously, struggling to rise from his pillows. \"I—don't get it.\" \"There are ways of finding out what we want to know. As I told you, we have many friends.\" ! Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his brain. accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night. And towering above him was a red-bearded man whose great hands reached down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and knees, his legs numb and useless. The crying of the children was a chilling wail in his ears.\n\n<question>:\nWhy is the rumor that Martians can read minds especially scary to Ben?\n\n<options>:\nA If they can, they definitely know he's guilty of what he's done.\nB It would mean that Martians are fully aware of what Earth people are thinking, and manipulating them.\nC If they can, he's uncomfortable with the notion that they can read his thoughts.\nD Not being able to confirm if it's true or not makes Ben wary of interacting with any of them.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
583
|
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 the soft touch of a woman's lips. , a tight-frocked, limber-hipped, red-head was singing \" .\" The song was a rollicking, ribald ditty, a favorite of the planters and miners, the space pilots and army officers who frequented the garden. The girl rendered it with the singer but kept his pale, immature face bent over the keys, while his fingers lightly, automatically picked out the tune. Sweat trickled Without looking up, he said: \"Have you spotted him?\" His voice was \"Go on,\" said the pianist in a flat voice. \"May I join you?\" she asked in a low voice. she had used his name. \"You have the reputation of being unpredictable. I don't trust you, but since....\" She stopped as the waiter placed glasses on the table and deftly poured 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 handkerchief. \"I had forgotten how abominably hot it can be here.\" \"Why call me all the way from Mars for that? Why not have that gunman \"Who's putting up the money?\" \"I can't tell you.\" \"Why? What makes you think that?\" sense it. An exclamation was suddenly choked off as if a hand had been moment.\" teeming planet of Mercury it was as refreshing as a cold plunge. reputation of being able to take care of herself. \"She and the man, the queer white one who plays the piano, slipped out engineered it in the dark and the Mercurians were a clannish lot. heat of the sun. Beneath his feet, he knew, stretched a labyrinth of following him. They were never visible, but to his trained ears there came stealthy, revealing noises: the brush of cloth against the baked earth walls, the sly shuffle of a step. He ducked down a bisecting cat-eyed Mercurians. feet. lips. \"Mr. Moynahan, the—ah—professional soldier, I believe.\" His voice was high, almost feminine. \"I'm Albert Peet.\" He held out a fat pink hand. of Miss Mikail has—ah—forced my hand.\" He paused. whom at different times he had known under a dozen different aliases. He doubted that even she remembered her right name. \"Miss Mikail made you a proposition?\" Albert Peet's voice was tight. \"You accepted?\" realize the seriousness of the situation.\" \"Then I was right notes.\" \"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?\" is—ah—lucrative.\" beat about the bush,\" he asked with a sudden grin. \"Mr. Peet, you've the strongest combine the Universe has ever seen. You actually run Mercury, and you've squeezed out every possible penny. Every time \"We have a very efficient information system. I had the report of Miss Jaro raised his eyebrows. \"Perhaps then you know where she is?\" Where's Miss Mikail?\" seldom shot to kill, it stopped a man like a well placed mule's hoof. He adjusted the gun lightly in its holster in order that it wouldn't stick if he were called upon to use it in a hurry. Then he went out \" \" Latonka. The burrows were but poorly lit, the natives preferring the clearly he heard Albert Peet say in a high girlish tone: \"What're you sneaking around here for?\" Jaro settled himself warily, his light blue eyes flicking over the youth. step on you as I might a spider.\" The youth's black eyes were hot as coals, his fingers twitching. His \"What's happened?\" cried Albert Peet in distress. \"What's wrong with anyone called a doctor? Where's Miss Webb? Miss Webb! Oh, Miss Webb! That girl. Miss Webb!\" shoulders, and dark brown eyes, and enough of everything else to absorb \"Oh!\" exclaimed Miss Webb as she caught sight of the blood staining the carpet. Joan Webb \"Call a doctor, Miss Webb.\" Miss Webb raised an eyebrow, went to the visoscreen. In a moment she \"Could Dr. Baer rush right over here? There's been an accident.\" aren't telepathic, honey.\" \"Oh,\" said Miss Webb, \"the offices of the Latonka Trust.\" \"Thank you,\" said Miss Webb. She flicked the machine off, then added: \"You trollop.\" that—ah—a little extreme? I'm afraid it might incapacitate him, and I had a job for him.\" \"Oh,\" cried Miss Webb, her brown eyes crackling. \"Did you shoot that poor boy? Aren't you the big brave man?\" \"Poor boy?\" said Jaro mildly. \"Venomous little rattlesnake. I took \"Here, Miss Webb,\" he said, \"do something with these. Put them in my Miss Webb's eyes grew round as marbles. \"I wouldn't touch one of those into my office. The doctor will be here in a moment. Miss Webb, you may Albert Peet led Stanley through the door. Jaro and Miss Webb were Miss Webb raised her eyebrows. \"What's this? A new technique?\" Earth.\" She jammed her hat on backward, snatched her bag from the desk \"I'm not trying to pick you up. This is....\" \"How disappointing.\" \"Don't you find the heat rather uncomfortable, Miss Webb. But perhaps you've become accustomed to it.\" \"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: of news.\" He paused. Jaro said nothing. \"You might be interested to know that Miss Mikail is quite safe. Karfial Hodes has her, but Stanley assures me she will be quite safe.\" \"The fact is, Mr. Moynahan, that we won't need you after all. I realize notes?\" At a corner table, a tall glass of Latonka before her, sat Miss Webb. \" Miss Webb uttered a shriek, jerked so violently that her hat tilted Still grinning, Jaro sat down. \"I'm Jaro Moynahan, Miss Webb. I think \"Yes,\" replied Miss Webb sweetly. Jaro's order. \"All right,\" Jaro smiled, but his pale blue eyes probed the girl thoughtfully. \"I'll have to confide certain facts which might be dangerous for you to know. Are you game, Miss Webb?\" \"Since we're going to be so chummy,\" she replied \"you might begin by calling me Joan. You make me feel downright ancient.\" \" \" said Joan, choking on the Latonka. 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 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 \"Score one,\" breathed Jaro, \"I begin to see light. Miss Webb—ah, Joan—I've a notion that we're going to be a great team. How do you happen to be Albert Peet's private secretary?\" 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\n\n<question>:\nWhat words best describe Miss Webb?\n\n<options>:\nA secretive and manipulative\nB annoyed and rude\nC witty and sarcastic\nD careful and cautious\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
142
|
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 warning you, Tremaine. Get that transmitter. I need someone to hang!\" Tremaine took off his hat. \"Sure you do, Jess. It's been a while, though.\" came to the counter and put out his hand. \"How are you, Jimmy? What brings you back to the boondocks?\" \"Let's go somewhere and sit down, Jess.\" In a back room Tremaine said, \"To everybody but you this is just a visit to the old home town. Between us, there's more.\" Jess nodded. \"I heard you were with the guv'ment.\" \"It won't take long to tell we don't know much yet.\" Tremaine covered \"Hold it, Jimmy. To me it just looks like a beer ad. I'll take your word for it.\" \"The point is this, Jess: we think we've got it narrowed down to this section. I'm not sure of a damn thing, but I think that transmitter's near here. Now, have you got any ideas?\" \"I didn't expect any easy answers, Jess. But I was hoping maybe you had something ...\" \"Course,\" said Jess, \"there's always Mr. Bram ...\" \"Still just the same, Jimmy. Comes in town maybe once a week, buys his groceries and hikes back out to his place by the river.\" \"Well, what about him?\" \"Nothing. But he's the town's mystery man. You know that. A little touched in the head.\" \"There were a lot of funny stories about him, I remember,\" Tremaine I never did go. We kids used to play in the caves near his place, and sometimes he gave us apples.\" \"I've never seen any harm in Bram,\" said Jess. \"But you know how this town is about foreigners, especially when they're a mite addled. Bram has blue eyes and blond hair—or did before it turned white—and he \"Oh?\" Tremaine stubbed out his cigarette, lit another. \"What happened they'll make jail age.\" \"Why Bram?\" Tremaine persisted. \"As far as I know, he never had any dealings to speak of with anybody here in town.\" \"Oh hoh, you're a little young, Jimmy,\" Jess chuckled. \"You never knew about Mr. Bram—the young Mr. Bram—and Linda Carroll.\" Tremaine shook his head. think she was some kind of princess....\" \"What about her and Bram? A romance?\" Jess rocked his chair back on two legs, looked at the ceiling, frowning. \"This would ha' been about nineteen-oh-one. I was no more'n boot. Like I said, Linda Carroll wanted nothin to do with the local bucks. There was a big shindy planned. Now, you know Bram was funny about any kind of socializing never would go any place at night. But practically. Just before sundown they went off together in that fancy shay. And the next day, she was home again—alone. That finished off her reputation, as far as the biddies in Elsby was concerned. It was Tremaine got to his feet. \"I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your ears and eyes open for anything that might build into a lead on this, Jess. Meantime, I'm just a tourist, seeing the sights.\" \"What about that gear of yours? Didn't you say you had some kind of \"Hold it, Jimmy. You're over my head.\" Jess got to his feet. \"Let me know if you want anything. And by the way—\" he winked broadly—\"I always did know who busted Soup Gaskin's nose and took out his front Tremaine. 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 Tremaine waited. 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. Tremaine set off at a run, covered the two blocks to the hotel, yanked \"Mind if I have a word with him? My name's Tremaine.\" before handing it to Tremaine. Tremaine?\" \"That's just what I don't want. If our bird sees cops cruising, he'll go underground.\" \"You've got it all figured, I see. I'm just the dumb hick you boys use Back in his room, Tremaine put through a call. \"Don't tell me my job, Tremaine!\" the voice snapped. \"And don't try out \"There'll be nothing done against him, Miss Carroll ... unless it needs to be in the national interest.\" \"What does he do for a living?\" \"I have no idea.\" \"Why did a healthy young fellow like Bram settle out in that isolated piece of country? What's his story?\" \"I'm ... not sure that anyone truly knows Bram's story.\" Tremaine stood up. \"I'm sorry. Really sorry. I didn't mean to grill She paused. Tremaine waited. \"I'd be grateful for any lead.\" \"Bram fears the thunder.\" III 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 asked: \"Any luck, Jimmy?\" \"Funny thing about Bram. You know, he hasn't showed up yet. I'm getting a little worried. Want to run out there with me and take a look around?\" \"Sure. Just so I'm back by full dark.\" As they pulled away from the curb Jess said, \"Jimmy, what's this about State Police nosing around here? I thought you were playing a lone hand from what you were saying to me.\" \"I thought so too, Jess. But it looks like Grammond's a jump ahead of me. He smells headlines in this he doesn't want to be left out.\" \"Well, the State cops could be mighty handy to have around. I'm Jess swung the car through the open gate, pulled up under the old trees before the square-built house. The windows were dark. The two men got Tremaine. \"Maybe this is more than kid stuff,\" he said. \"You carry a \"Better get it.\" Tremaine went to the car, dropped the pistol in his coat pocket, rejoined Jess inside the house. It was silent, deserted. In the kitchen Jess flicked the beam of his flashlight around the room. An empty plate lay on the oilcloth-covered table. \"This place is empty,\" he said. \"Anybody'd think he'd been gone a week.\" distance. \"I'm getting jumpy,\" said Jess. \"Dern hounddog, I guess.\" light showed a spatter of dark droplets all across the plank floor. \"That's blood, Jess....\" Tremaine scanned the floor. It was of broad slabs, closely laid, scrubbed clean but for the dark stains. It ended suddenly near the wall. \"What do you make of it. Jimmy?\" A wail sounded, a thin forlorn cry, trailing off into silence. Jess 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 hers.\" \"And you mentioned Bram?\" The boy darted another look at Tremaine. \"They said they figured the spies was out north of town. Well, Bram's a foreigner, and he's out\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the most likely reason why Tremaine confides in Jess about the case?\n\n<options>:\nA He knows that Jess is already two steps ahead of him and he wants to catch up.\nB He trusts Jess to an extent, and he knows that Jess might have information that could help.\nC He knows that Jess might compete with him even more if he doesn't try to work together.\nD He's friends with Jess and cares about his well being because he's staying in the town with all of this crime.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,102
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nEleven-Twelfths of 1999 In Review When Chatterbox invited readers to nominate events, significant deaths, good and bad movies, etc., for 1999--a year likely to get little attention in the coming weeks, as news organizations choose instead to review the entire century or millennium--the response was overwhelming. Chatterbox had promised to publish his official \"1999 In Review\" item before Thanksgiving, but some distant memory of a scruple persuaded him to wait till November was over. Nothing ever happens in December. OK, that's not quite true. Hordes of protesters in Seattle are making the World Trade Organization's meeting there a much more exciting TV story than anyone expected it to be. Reader Dan Crist (who finds Chatterbox's habit of referring to himself in the third person \"rather annoying and less than professional\") points out that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Also, Chatterbox (moonlighting as \"Today's Papers\" columnist) observed not quite one year ago that the House of Representatives cast its second presidential-impeachment vote in U.S. history on Dec. 19, 1998. (That same news-filled day, the U.S. ended an air war against Iraq and Bob Livingston said he'd decided not to become House speaker after all.) Two months after the impeachment vote, the Senate failed to convict the president--a highly significant event of 1999 that, for some bizarre reason, slipped Chatterbox's mind until several indignant readers wrote in to remind him of it. By now, it should be clear that Chatterbox isn't much good at year-in-review journalism. Fortunately, Chatterbox's readers are very good at it. He will now turn this survey over to them. ( Disclaimer: Although Chatterbox previously stated that he wouldn't include opinions he disagreed with, that standard proved too confining. Where Chatterbox has solid information or opinions to the contrary, he occasionally interjects below. Obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour reader comments were discarded, but if you don't find your nominee below it doesn't necessarily mean that it was obviously stupid or unnecessarily sour. ) Here are 20 important things that happened in 1999: 1. Most Hated Celebrity--Ever? World Report (and frequent Slate contributor) 2. Most Foolishly Ignored Parts of the World in 1999 The dog that did bark but no one noticed--the political turmoil in the three great South Asian nations of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which now are well on the way to passing the three northern Asian nations of China, Japan, and Russia in population (Indonesia is fourth, Pakistan just passed Japan to seventh, India will soon pass China to first). But Americans are still fixated on northern Asia--Clinton says he must deal with China, because \"you can't ignore a billion people with nuclear weapons,\" but his own policy toward India shows that you sure can! --Jim Chapin 3. Worst/Best Films of 1999 -- Felicia, Menlo Park, Cal. Chatterbox replies: You've got the wrong year. That was 1998 . [Chatterbox didn't have the heart to add that he thought There's Something About Mary was pretty funny, especially the joke about \"the franks or the beans.\"] Felicia replies: Oops ... well then, the best of '99 was The Red Violin --lyrical, magical, musical, wonderful! [Chatterbox hasn't seen it.] 4. Most Shameless (and Unsuccessful) Attempt To Have It Both Ways in 1999 : --Andrew Solovay 5. Rest in Peace in 1999: Stanley Kubrick (multiple sources) John Kennedy Jr. (multiple sources) Susan Strasberg (anonymous tipster Mel Torme (Steve Reiness) Mrs. Whozit [ Chatterbox interjects : her name was Anne Sheafe Miller], the first person ever to be saved by penicillin (Blair Bolles) 6. 1999: The Road Not Taken a new Stanley Kubrick film changes the whole national dialogue about sex and marriage a new TV series from the creator of SportsNight --oh, I can't even bring myself to bash that piece of do-gooder twaddle. If only McDonald's had come out with three more boldly adult-flavored hamburgers, it would have been a perfect year for dud megaevents--all leading up of course to Y2K, the limpest milestone in human history. --Mike Gebert 7 . Children Behaving Badly in 1999 Don't forget Woodstock 1999 --the concert of \"peace and love\" that ended in a literal blaze of glory when in an hours-long tribute to the original Woodstock, the mob started ripping down vendor booths and anything else that would burn and piling it onto the bonfires scattered about the scene. [ Chatterbox interjects: Didn't people get assaulted and raped, too?] I'm getting all sentimental just thinking about it. You also left out all the shooting rampages . Several were done in the name of God or love supposedly. They were all committed by \"quiet, shy\" people who \"mostly kept to\" themselves. I've started to hang around only loud, obnoxious people. --Susan Hoechstetter 8. A Lunatic Rhapsody for the New York Yankees --Jim Landau from North Potomac, Md. (formerly of the Bronx) 9. A Big Shot Calls for Decriminalizing Drug Use in 1999 Chatterbox interjects: Didn't Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke do the same thing 11 years ago? 10. Don't Worry in 1999 The Dalai Lama proclaimed that most important thing in the world is to be happy. --Margaret Taylor --Tom Horton 13. Policing the World Is Shown To Work in 1999 I nominate as the most under-reported story of the year (and the last few years) the continuing alarmist predictions by foreign-policy and military experts about peacekeeping efforts, which are then proved wrong and immediately forgotten. This year, the obvious one is Kosovo, but the year is also ending with East Timor, where the Aussies and their allies successfully stopped the slaughter with no casualties. These followed Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda as places where the West delayed sending in troops because of alarmist predictions. --Jerry Skurnik 14. Barbara Walters Did This One on Her Year-End Special, But It's Still Good Don't forget, Susan Lucci finally won an Emmy . 15. Annals of Justice in 1999 Matthew Shepard: the despicable defense . -- anonymous tipster 16. Get Me a New Century, Quick A sitting president was accused of rape. --Ananda Gupta --Walt Mossberg, \"Personal Technology\" columnist for the Wall Street Journal (and occasional rock-music historian for this column) 18. All Dolled Up and Nowhere To Go in 1999 General Pinochet --Jodie Maurer 19. Senate Endorses Nuclear Proliferation in 1999 The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty , thereby decapitating nuclear-arms control and sending Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the message that the United States won't raise a big stink if they try to join India and Pakistan. The president woke up to this possibility at about the moment it was realized, and started lobbying for passage of the treaty a day after it became too late. --Josh Pollack 20. Unremarked Natural Disaster in 1999 The Indian Supercyclone is the biggest, this century at least. --Samir Raiyani Photographs of: Donald Trump by Peter Morgan/Reuters\n\n<question>:\nWhere does Chatterbox think world policing was effective?\n\n<options>:\nA Haiti\nB Kosovo\nC Bosnia\nD Rwanda\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,552
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nIt's Time To Keelhaul U-Haul! Like all superheroes worthy of the title, the Shopping Avenger has an Achilles' heel. In the case of the Shopping Avenger, his Achilles' heel is not animal, vegetable, or mineral but something less tangible. An explanation: Last week, the magazine you are currently reading forced the Shopping Avenger at gunpoint to read a series of treacle-filled self-help books, and then to . The Shopping Avenger, who can withstand radiation, extreme heat and cold, hail, bear attacks, and Eyes Wide Shut , almost succumbed to terminal jejuneness after reading these books. Except for one thing: One of the books, The Art of Happiness , which collects and simplifies the Dalai Lama's philosophy, got the Shopping Avenger to thinking. This, in a way, is the Shopping Avenger's Achilles' heel: thinking. Perhaps it is wrong, the Shopping Avenger thought, to complain about the petty insults and inconveniences of life in the materialistic '90s. The Shopping Avenger felt that perhaps he should counsel those who write seeking help to meditate, to accept bad service the way one accepts the change of seasons, and to extend a compassionate hand of forgiveness to those who provide poor customer care. But then the Shopping Avenger sat down, and the feeling passed. The Shopping Avenger does not make light of the Dalai Lama or of the notion that there is more to life than the impatient acquisition of material goods. If the Shopping Avenger were not, for a superhero, extremely nonjudgmental--as opposed to his alter ego, who is considered insufferably judgmental by his alter ego's wife--the Shopping Avenger would tell the occasional correspondent to let go of his petty grievance and get a life. But the Shopping Avenger also believes that the Dalai Lama has never tried to rent a truck from U-Haul. If he had tried to rent from U-Haul, he never would have escaped from Tibet. (For the complete back story, see \"Shopping Avenger\" column and one.) B.R. continues--as if you don't know what happened already--\"I went to U-Haul with my brother to get our 'reserved' truck. The store had many customers standing around looking frustrated. When we got to the front of the line, the clerk informed us that our 'reserved' truck had not yet been returned. We asked if we could rent one of the many trucks sitting idle in the parking lot. The clerk laughed and said the keys to those trucks were lost.\" The Shopping Avenger will undoubtedly return to the sorry state of affairs at U-Haul in the next episode, but now on to this month's airline debacle. Before we begin, though, the Shopping Avenger nearly forgot to announce the winner of last month's contest, in which readers were asked to answer the question, \"What's the difference between pests and airlines?\" This, of course, is where Shopping Avenger steps in. Shopping Avenger knows that Southwest is different from the average airline, in that it doesn't go out of its way to infuriate its paying customers (see: ), so I expected a quick and generous resolution to M.'s problem. What I got at first, though, was a load of corporate hoo-ha. Harrumph, the Shopping Avenger says. It is a bad hair day at Southwest when its officials defend themselves by comparing their airline to other airlines. I forwarded this message to M., who replied: \"Wow. Well, of course I didn't file it at the airport on the 9 th because I didn't know the clothes were ruined at the airport. I didn't know until I opened the baggage at my hotel and saw the ruined stuff. (And it's worth noting that we had already waited for about an hour for our luggage with two little kids and impatient in-laws nipping at our heels.)\" She goes on, \"I did call that evening ... and was told that that sufficed. This is the first time I've been told that I had to file a complaint in person within four hours. ... When I filed on the 12 th , I was never told that I needed any receipts or photos or other type of documentation. The baggage folks seemed pretty uninterested in all of this. ... They know that the type of 'evidence' they want is impossible to obtain. They also know that on April 9 they screwed up the luggage retrieval and left bags out in the rain a long time.\" Southwest's response actually served to anger M. more than the original problem. \"Before, they had a mildly annoyed but loyal customer (who would have been placated by an apology and thrilled with some modest token of their regret). Now they have a pissed-off customer.\" Things do look bad for Southwest, don't they? The Shopping Avenger sent M.'s response to Rutherford, who e-mailed back saying she thought the Shopping Avenger was asking for \"policy information.\" The Shopping Avenger e-mailed back again, stressing to Rutherford that the Great Court of Consumer Justice would, if this case were brought to trial, undoubtedly find for the plaintiff (the Shopping Avenger serves as prosecutor, judge, and jury in the Great Court of Consumer Justice--defendants are represented by the president of U-Haul), and that Southwest was precipitously close to feeling the sword of retribution at its neck. But then she came through, provisionally, \"Yep, you can be sure if [M.] will call me we will get everything squared away. I'm sorry it's taken this long for her to get someone who can help, but we will take care of it from here.\" Stay tuned, shoppers, to hear whether Southwest makes good it promise to compensate M. and apologize to her for her troubles. The story of M. reminds the Shopping Avenger of a central truth of consumer service: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up. Take the case of K., who found himself waiting in vain for Circuit City to repair his television. Televisions break, even 1-year-old televisions, as is the case with K's. But Circuit City, where he bought the television, gave him a terrible runaround. The Shopping Avenger dispatched his sidekick, Tad the Deputy Avenger, to get to the bottom of K.'s story. This is what he found: K. grew concerned, Tad the Deputy Avenger reports, after his television had been in the Circuit City shop for a week. When he called, he was told to \"check back next week.\" When he asked if someone from the store could call him with more information, he was refused. Weeks went by. When K. told one Circuit City employee that he really would like to get his television back, the employee, K. says, asked him, \"Don't you have another television in your house?\" More than a month later--after hours and hours and hours of telephone calls and days missed at work--K. received his television back. Mistakes happen, but not, Tad the Deputy Avenger found out, at Circuit City. The case, K. was told by a Circuit City official, was \"handled perfectly.\" Another official, Morgan Stewart in public relations, assured Deputy Avenger Tad that \"We got to be a big and successful company by treating customers better than the other guy.\" The Shopping Avenger and his loyal sidekick would like to hear from other Circuit City customers: Does Circuit City, in fact, treat its customers better than the other guy? Stay tuned for answers. And next month, a Shopping Avenger clergy special: TWA screws with a Hasidic rabbi's travel plans, leaving the rabbi's wife crying at the airport. Find out if the Shopping Avenger can save TWA from certain heavenly punishment, in the next episode. Got a consumer score you want settled? Send e-mail to shoppingavenger@slate.com.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the general tone of this writing genre?\n\n<options>:\nA Sorrowful.\nB Academic.\nC Ironic.\nD Infuriated.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
2,092
|
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>:\nHarry Armstrong: Do you see the interdisciplinary nature of the centre as one of its key values and one of the key impacts you hope it will have on the field? Stephen Cave: Thinking about the impact of AI is not something that any one discipline owns or does in any very systematic way. So if academia is going to rise to the challenge and provide thought leadership on this hugely important issue, then we’re going to need to do it by breaking down current disciplinary boundaries and bringing people with very different expertise together. Climate change suffers from the problem that the costs are not incurred in any direct way by the industrialists who own the technology and are profiting from it. With AI, that has been the case so far although not on the same scale. There has been disruption but so far, compared to industrialisation, the impact has been fairly small. That will probably change. AI companies, and in particular the big tech companies, are very concerned that this won't go like climate change, but rather it will go like GMOs: that people will have a gut reaction to this technology as soon as the first great swathe of job losses take hold. People speculate that 50m jobs could be lost in the US if trucking is automated, which is conceivable within 10 years. You could imagine a populist US government therefore simply banning driverless cars. So I think there is anxiety in the tech industry that there could be a serious reaction against this technology at any point. And so my impression is that there is a feeling within these companies that these ethical and social implications need to be taken very seriously, now. And that a broad buy-in by society into some kind of vision of the future in which this technology plays a role is required, if a dangerous – or to them dangerous – counteraction is to be avoided. My personal experience working with these tech companies is that they are concerned for their businesses and genuinely want to do the right thing. Of course there are intellectual challenges and there is money to be made, but equally they are people who don't think when they get up in the morning that they're going to put people out of jobs or bring about the downfall of humanity. As the industry matures it's developing a sense of responsibility. So I think we've got a real opportunity, despite the general climate, and in some ways because of it. There's a great opportunity to bring industry on board to make sure the technology is developed in the right way. One of the dominant narratives around not only AI but technology and automation more generally is that we, as humans, are at the mercy of technological progress. If you try and push against this idea you can be labelled as being anti-progress and stuck in the past. But we do have a lot more control than we give ourselves credit for. For example, routineness and susceptibility to automation are not inevitable features of occupations, job design is hugely important. How do we design jobs? How do we create jobs that allow people to do the kind of work they want to do? There can be a bit of a conflict between being impacted by what's happening and having some sort of control over what we want to happen. Certainly, we encounter technological determinism a lot. And it's understandable. For us as individuals, of course it does feel like it always is happening and we just have to cope. No one individual can do much about it, other than adapt. But that's different when we consider ourselves at a level of a society, as a polis [city state], or as an international community. I think we can shape the way in which technology develops. We have various tools. In any given country, we have regulations. There's a possibility of international regulation. And this is important, partly because we need to expand our sense of what is intelligent, like we have done with the natural world. Because lots of things follow from saying something is intelligent. Historically, we have a long tradition in Western philosophy of saying those who are intelligent should rule. So if intelligence equates to power, then obviously we need to think about what we mean by intelligence. Who has it and who doesn't. Or how it equates to rights and responsibilities. There was a point I read in something you wrote on our ideas of intelligence that I thought was very interesting. We actually tend to think of intelligence at the societal level when we think about human ability, rather than at the individual level but in the end conflate the two. I think that's a very good point, when we think about our capabilities, we think about what we can achieve as a whole, not individually. But when we talk about AI, we tend to think about that individual piece of technology, or that individual system. So for example if we think about the internet of things and AI, we should discuss intelligence as something encompassed by the whole. Robotic technology is dangerous. Or potentially dangerous. But at the same time, most of what we're using technology for is to enhance ourselves, to increase our capacities. And a lot of what AI is going to be doing is augmenting us – we're going to be working as teams, AI-human teams. Where do you think this AI-human conflict, or concept of a conflict, comes from? Do you think that's just a reflection of historical conversations we've had about automation, or do you think it is a deeper fear? I do think it comes both from some biases that might well be innate, such as anthropomorphism, or our human tendency to ascribe agency to other objects, particularly moving ones, is well-established and probably has sound evolutionary roots. If it moves, it's probably wise to start asking yourself questions like, \"What is it? What might it want? Where might it be going? Might it be hungry? Do I look like food to it?\" I think it makes sense, it's natural for us to think in terms of agency. And when we do, it's natural for us to project our own ways of being and acting. And we, as primates, are profoundly co-operative. But at the same time, we're competitive and murderous. We have a strong sense of in-group versus out-group, which is responsible for both a great deal of cooperation, within the in-group, but also terrible crimes. Murder, rape, pillage, genocide and they're pointed at the out-group. I think one worry that we haven't talked about is that we've become extremely dependent upon this technology. And that we essentially become deskilled. There's an extent to which the history of civilisation is the history of the domestication of the human species sort of by ourselves, and also by our technology, to some extent. And AI certainly allows for that to reach a whole new level. As to utopian, yes, that's interesting. I certainly mentioned a couple of things. One thing that I hope is that this new technological revolution enables us to undo some of the damage of the last one. That's a very utopian thought and not terribly realistic, but we use fossil fuels so incredibly efficiently. The idea that driverless cars that are shared, basically a kind of shared service located off a Brownfield site does away with 95 per cent of all cars, freeing up a huge amount of space in the city to be greener, many fewer cars need to be produced, they would be on the road much less, there'd be fewer traffic jams. It's just one example, but the idea that we can live much more resource-efficiently, because we are living more intelligently through using these tools. And therefore can undo some of the damage of the last Industrial Revolution. That's my main utopian hope, I guess. Vintage toy robot image by josefkubes/Shutterstock\n\n<question>:\nWhat does Stephen think is the most important impact of trying to be more efficient in using resources?\n\n<options>:\nA It is cheaper for any technology to operate if it has to rely on fewer resources\nB The resources availalbe on the Earth are finite and are running low enough to possibly impede technological progress\nC The earth has been hurt by previous technological developments and it could be partly counteracted\nD Having fewer cars on the road would mean a safer environment for most drivers\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
763
|
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>:\nSILENCE IS—DEADLY By Bertrand L. Shurtleff together—conversations which they would end abruptly when anyone else came within earshot. And Nelson had always been chummy with the worst Radio is an absolute necessity in modern Curtis recalled that Nelson and Androka had long conversations trouble maker in the crew—Bos'n's Mate Bradford. always acted as if he had some secret, something to hide. organization—and particularly in modern naval organization. If you could silence all radio—silence of that sort would be deadly! Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that still some unconscious men to be revived. In a sheltered cove among the rocks, an exploring group had found enough dry driftwood to make a fire— the men lined up, according to their respective classifications, for a check-up on the missing. When this was completed, it was found that the entire complement of two hundred and twenty men were present—except concentration, as his bushy gray head bent over his drawing board. crew was marooned on an islet, about a square mile in Androka had arrived on board the area equipment of any kind, and that no boats had been left for them. that they had been put ashore without food or extra clothing or equipment, including a number of things that looked like oxygen tanks, which were now stored in the forward hold. Androka had watched over his treasures with the jealous care of a mother hen, and spent hours daily in the room in the superstructure that had been assigned as his a place where two hundred or more men could have camped. Sometimes, Curtis thought old Androka was a bit wacky—a scientist There was a good water supply—a small creek fed by springs—but nothing in the way of food. Evidently food was a precious commodity laboratory. . At other times, the man if this might have been the source of Androka's zone of silence, when seemed a genius. Perhaps that was the answer—a mad genius! Curtis was studying the wreckage of the wireless station, wondering under the domination of the Nazi gestapo on board. But there was no question of his ability. He was a good navigating officer—dependable, accurate, conscientious. Nevertheless, Androka, with a quizzical grin. \"Old Czech-and-Double-Czech is working of good-natured joking aboard the Comerford ever since the navy Don't let a little error get you down!\" \"As if by providence, sir, there's a clear patch. I'm wondering—\" His to move in these waters with such a possibility of error!\" Androka decrees silence over the German airways! Try it! Try it, I say!\" \"Try again!\" he told the operator. \"See what you can get!\" that had recently been established to insure safety to naval vessels, but there was no answer on any of the bands—not even the blare of a high-powered commercial program in the higher reach, nor the chatter of ships or amateurs on the shorter. \"Dead!\" Androka muttered, with a bitter laugh. \"Yet not dead, \"Your secrecy might well cost the United States navy one of its best light cruisers—and us our lives!\" he said angrily. \"We need that check by radio at once! If you're not talking nonsense, call off your dogs till we learn just where we are!\" Androka held out his palms helplessly. \"I can do nothing. I have given orders to my assistant that he must keep two hours of radio silence! I can get no message to him, for our radio is dead!\" winking at the two officers over Androka's discomfiture, and asked for numbers. Ignoring the gibbering Androka, who was wailing his disappointment that messages had penetrated his veil of silence, they raced for the chart room. Nelson went back to the bridge, and Androka returned to the commander's has done something to the tingle they sent through his inquiring fingers. Curtis left him at it, and went to rejoin Androka in the cabin. He found the little inventor pacing up and down, shaking his fists in the air hopelessly.\" \"Seems to me,\" Curtis said dryly, \"this invention can harm your friends as much as your enemies.\" are other inventions to supplement this one. Put them together, and they will defeat the Nazi hordes which have ravaged my country!\" Curtis was a little shocked by the hatred that gleamed in Androka's A far-away look came into Androka's eyes. He did not seem to hear knew what I am doing, all of them would be better dead. You understand—better dead?\" of silence is projected—\" Androka paused, his head tilted to one side, at the end of a swing or smacked against something solid. themselves struck numb and helpless by a gas that had been flooded into the inner compartments of their strongholds. fallen in a heap on the bridge. And after that, he wasn't conscious of from an ancient fairy tale or a modern horror story. Nelson looked like got a neutralizing chemical in one of them tanks of his that'll clear everything up inside half an hour.\" \"I'd rather get along without Androka, if we could!\" Nelson muttered. \"He's nothing but a crackpot!\" \"It was a crackpot who invented the gas we used to break up the Maginot Line,\" Bradford reminded him. \"It saved a lot of lives for the World War. My mother committed suicide when she learned that we were penniless. My father—\" He paused and cleared his throat. \" \"My father dedicated me to a career of revenge—to wipe out his wrongs,\" Nelson continued. \"If America hadn't gone into the First World War, he wouldn't have lost his business my mother would still be living. When he joined the Nazi party, the way became clear to use \"Maybe Curtis'll find out his suspicions were justified,\" Nelson said bitterly. \"But it won't do Curtis any good—a commander who's lost his ship.\" He turned to Brandt. \"You have plenty of men to work the Comerford ?\" Brandt nodded his square head. \"We have a full crew—two hundred here secretly, a few at a time, during the past six weeks!\" The three—Brandt, Nelson and Bradford—stood on the bridge and talked, while the efficient stretcher-bearers worked industriously to remove the limp bodies of the Androka had brought aboard the strange figure of Professor Zukor Androka! \"The professor's in his glory!\" Nelson remarked to Kommander Brandt. \"Funny thing about him,\" Bradford put in, \"is that his inventions work. That zone of silence cut us off completely.\" a time explaining it!\" \"Hereafter,\" Brandt said solemnly, \"the zone of silence vill be projected from the Androka's vich vill be even more useful vhen ve come to cut the \"What's the idea?\" capturing a United States navy cruiser.\" \"Can we trust Androka?\" Nelson asked, with a sudden note of suspicion \"Yes,\" Brandt assured him. \"Of all men—we can trust Androka!\" \"The gestapo takes care of Czechs and Poles and Frenchmen and other foreigners whom it chooses as its agents,\" Brandt pointed out. \"Androka has a daughter and other relations in Prague. He knows that if anything misfires, if there is the slightest suspicion of treachery on his part, his daughter and the others will suffer. Androka's loyalty is assured!\" room that served as Androka's laboratory and workshop. According to his last calculations, the center. For the first time, he realized fully the tragedy that had swept down on him. He had lost his ship—one of the United States which smelled strongly of treachery and sabotage. As he thought back, he realized that he might have prevented the had been deliberately steered to this place puzzle—Androka's zone of silence never trusted him. Nelson\n\n<question>:\nWhat is an important lesson Androka should have learned from his failed attempts in the article?\n\n<options>:\nA Being motivated by hatred is the most beneficial motivation.\nB Pursuing self-interest can have negative impacts all around you.\nC Communication is key, especially when lost at sea.\nD It is better to work alone than with others.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
2,293
|
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 sight of an Earthman on Vega III, where it was impossible for an outlander to be, brought angry crowds to surround toward the palace of Viceroy orders of its Viceroy. So we achieve Sunda. He ignored the snarling, the spitting, the waving of boneless prehensile fingers, as he ignored the heavy gravity and heavier air of the unfamiliar planet. slavered, but he had never before seen it done. These humanoids had large mouths and sharp teeth, and they unquestionably slavered. He wished he knew more about them. If they carried out the threats of of destroying them, and thereby take over number one spot from at the Viceroy's gesture. demonstrated an elaborate air of unconcern that he felt sure was entirely wasted on these monsters. The clashing teeth of the noisiest of them were only inches from the quivering flesh of his back as he hides smoothly polished and gleaming with oil, crossed their ceremonial pikes in front of him as he the Viceroy's Palace?\" asked \"Mind your tongue,\" growled the guard. \"If you mean His Effulgence, Right Hand of the Glorious bombs. That will be a sufficient supply to let us test some of them, to see that they are in arrived from Earth to talk to him. He'll summon me fast enough. Meanwhile, my highly polished friends, I'll just wait here, so why guards. An elegant courtier, with elaborately guards withdrew their pikes and you?\" \"Ridiculous,\" snorted Ggaran. \"Impossible.\" After several minutes of silent smoke and ambled after the hurrying Vegan in lordly trappings. They examined Crownwall with great interest for a few moments. \"It's customary to genuflect when you enter the Viceroy's presence,\" His Effulgence wiggled his tentacles. \"I'm afraid that Ggaran had such ideas. I have not underestimated you, you see.\" customary among civilized peoples.\" \"It's all right, Ggaran,\" said the Viceroy languidly. He twitched a said the standing one at last. \"But then I'm told you're an hours, without leaving any traces for us to detect.\" He raised a tentacle to still Crownwall's immediate exclamation of protest. \"Oh, to duplicate it—just enough to indicate how we can make use of us to begin to make intelligent plans to beat the claws off the Master Race.\" After in particular,\" the Vegan said with a negligent wave. \"Who can tell one Earthling from another? What I you than their own. These ships were swifter and more maneuverable had rapidly and competently englobed the \"We know about it,\" said Ffallk, \"but we've always considered it useless—and very dangerous—knowledge.\" \"So have we, up until the time Star Seeker you planted that bomb on us. Anyone to go off if we tried to use the distorter drive? That's hardly the action of somebody who expects then tried to herd it away from the Master Race.\" \"It would hardly be an equal partnership, would it, considering stalks in amusement. \"I'm Viceroy it was really very simple. \"And there's no danger of meeting myself, or getting into any anachronistic \"Not at all. We were enormously lucky to have learned how to control spatial reference frames ourselves. I doubt if you could do it in Vegan reached up and engulfed the end of a drinking tube with his eating orifice. \"You it is still possible. \"Your silly little planet was carefully examined at long range in a They showed many signs of an ability to reason, but a complete lack of civilization. While these cohort of troops, pikes at the ready creatures could by no means be and bows strapped to their backs, leaped forward and formed a speaking and his eating orifices. A classed among the intelligent races, \"When the Viceroy of the Seventy one but my own entourage is permitted something like that?\" Ggaran stepped forward, already Let us just suppose that that runner over there\"—he gestured toward a soldier with a tentacle—\"is a civilian who has been so unlucky as to remain on the street after His Effulgence's entourage arrived.\" bowmen who ran beside the sedan chair, now strung and at the ready. \"Show him!\" he ordered peremptorily. In one swift movement the bowman fired. The arrow hissed briefly, and then sliced smoothly through the soldier's throat. \"You see,\" said Ggaran complacently, \"we have very little trouble with civilians who violate this particular tradition.\" His Effulgence beckoned to the bowman to approach. \"Your results \"That's the trouble with these requirements of civilization. The men of my immediate guard must practice with such things as pikes and bows and arrows, which they seldom get an opportunity to use. It would never do for them to use modern weapons on occasions of ceremony, of course.\" \"Of course,\" said Crownwall, then added, \"It's too bad that you can't provide them with live targets a little more often.\" He stifled a shudder of distaste. \"Tell me, closing in on them—ships that race—the Master Race—also enjoy the type of civilization you have just had demonstrated for me?\" \"Oh, no. They are far too brutal, too morally degraded, to know anything of these finer points of etiquette , and had Although you know, I am certain that they would have had the bad taste to use an energy weapon to dispose of the victim in a case such as you just witnessed! They are really caught by surprise, the Earthmen had acted and propriety. They are immediately prepared for war against her unknown enemy. \"Your reaction was savage,\" said Ggaran, his tentacles stiffening with shock at the memory. \"You bloody-minded Earthlings must interrupting the smooth progress \"The action you took was too swift and too foolhardy to be believed. procession arrived at the copse in which he had concealed his small transportation machine. The machine, for spatial mobility, was equipped with the heavy and grossly inefficient anti-gravity field generator developed by Kowalsky. It occupied ten times the space of the You knew that you could have destroyed selection systems combined, but it had the great advantage of being almost undetectable in use. It emitted no mass or radiation. just a routine quarantine. With your total lack of information \"Would that have been so bad?\" said Ggaran. \"We can't tolerate report on his trip to Vega. When he had finished, the President \"Well, no. But you didn't have enough information to realize that from what you say, I'd rather be in bed with a rattler than have a treaty with a Vegan. They sound ungodly murderous to me. There are too many holes in that protection obvious that we could not conquer you. We could only destroy you.\" \"That old fool on Sunda, the the Vegans hadn't appeared yet. Now, I didn't land—or deliberately convince him that it would be sufficient just to quarantine you. When we had used your radio system to teach a few of you the Universal Galactic tongue, and had managed to get what you call the with the bomb, you would only succeed in setting it off, and that's \"It was the thinking of a genius,\" murmured Ggaran. \"Ggaran, you explain it to the Earthling,\" said His Effulgence. Ggaran bowed. \"The crustaceans on Sunda—the lobsterlike them develop to the point where, in their inferior way, they were able to reason, almost as well as we, The \"If you haven't been able to help yourselves for two million years,\" Ggaran's tentacles writhed, and he slavered in fury, but the clashing large-scale assaults that would result in its capture and subjugation—just itself. \"Naturally, each is vulnerable to economic blockade—trade provides a small but vital portion of the\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the bowman shoot a soldier during the Viceroy's procession?\n\n<options>:\nA To demonstrate what would happen if someone who was not a guest of the Viceroy viewed the procession.\nB The soldier was attempting to stage a coup against the Viceroy.\nC The soldier tripped and made the procession look sloppy.\nD To demonstrate the Vegan's knowledge of antiquated weapons.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
948
|
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>:\nBIG ANCESTOR By F. L. WALLACE Illustrated by EMSH \"Racially, there should be a chance,\" she said. \"Actually, Kelburn and I would be infertile.\" race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it! not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many ages before space travel— and yet each planetary race can interbreed with a minimum of ten others invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still feel that attraction to her? \"Try Emmer,\" he suggested tiredly. \"He'll find you irresistible, and distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my \"That's because you're unique,\" said Halden. \"Outside of your own world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and \"Is he?\" She smiled enigmatically. \"Maybe, in a biological sense. Too that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole 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 development. \"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle. The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not extend to Kelburn.\" Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years.\" \"You're thinking of Earth,\" said Halden. \"Humans require a certain kind Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. \"But I thought it was of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no, Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude this section of the Milky Way.\" \"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,\" commented Taphetta dryly. \"It seems an unnecessary simplification.\" \"Can you think of a better explanation?\" asked Kelburn. \"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are the human race.\" It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin. \"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close. their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant. Taphetta rustled. \"The math is accurate?\" \"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem.\" \"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?\" \"To the best of our knowledge,\" said Kelburn. \"And whereas there are humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate with those they were adjacent to two hundred thousand years ago !\" other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically. The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the time right.\" was the most advanced human type present, but while there were differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had his place in the human hierarchy. long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't \"I do think I love you,\" she said. \"And if love's enough, I may marry \"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs both are \"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's ancestor?\" Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story \"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life,\" mused Taphetta. \"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it was tacitly assumed, such a destiny? discovery of the unknown ancestor?\" It was Halden who answered him. \"There's the satisfaction of knowing where we came from.\" institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual curiosity.\" 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 much as you think you will. The difference is this: terms don't technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up and mauled the other unmercifully. defeat. This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal that, in relation to her, he was leaning provocatively against him. \"But barbaric lovers are often nice.\" her, I'm merely a passionate savage. She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless, except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another, it governed personal relations between races that were united against no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a \"Love,\" she said gloomily. \"Physical attraction. But I can't let it like him and he wouldn't marry me.\"\n\n<question>:\nWithin the setting of the story, what makes one character more attractive than the other?\n\n<options>:\nA Having a pure genetic line\nB Reasoning capacities\nC Evolutionary status\nD Lineage to the big ancestor\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
1,067
|
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\"No, sir. No, because....\" Extrone was smiling innocently. \"Good. I want you to do something for me.\" \"Yes, sir,\" Ri said. Suddenly he threw back his head. \"Listen!\" \"Eh?\" Extrone said. Extrone shrugged. \"I—Look, sir. Listen to me.\" Ri's lips were bloodless and his hands He crossed to Mia, who, along with him, had been pressed into Extrone's sir, it wouldn't matter, because he said he ought to kill you. I wouldn't....\" Extrone said, \"Which one is he?\" \"That one. Right over there.\" \"The one with his back to me?\" \"Yes, sir. That's him. That's him, sir.\" Extrone aimed carefully and fired, full charge, then lowered the rifle want to use me, sir. Not after I told you.... Please, sir. If anything should happen to me.... Please, sir. Don't do it.\" \"Tie it,\" Extrone ordered. \"No, sir. Please. Oh, it. I could buy half this planet, and he makes me his guide—at less please don't, sir.\" \"Hey, you!\" Extrone called. The two of them turned immediately. \"Tie it,\" Extrone said inexorably. Mia looked at his companion. He spat. \"What hurts most, he pays us for 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 Ri was almost slobbering in fear. \"Let me hear you scream,\" Extrone said. Ri moaned weakly. Ri screamed. \"See that you keep it up that way,\" Extrone said. \"That's the way I \"Hey!\" Extrone shouted. \"You, down there. There are two coming. Now let's hear you really scream!\" 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 opened his right hand. \"Choose your ground, set your trap. Bait it.\" Extrone sat on an upholstered stool before his tent and spat disgustedly and combed his beard with his blunt fingers. Extrone began to tremble with excitement. \"Here they come!\" The forest sprang apart. Extrone bent forward, the gun still across his the officers, with military discipline holding their waists in and knees almost stiff. \"What in hell do you want?\" Extrone asked. They stopped a respectful distance away. \"Sir....\" one began. Shortly, from the direction of the rocket, a group of four high-ranking \"Wait,\" Extrone said. \"Let's see what they do.\" He had not moved the rifle. He was tense, bent forward, his eyes slitted, his breath beginning to sound like an asthmatic pump. \"So?\" Extrone mocked. \"We thought you ought to return to a safer planet, sir. Until we could locate and destroy it.\" Extrone stared at them for a space. Then, indifferently, he turned away, in the direction of a resting bearer. \"You!\" he said. \"Hey! Bring \"Watch! Watch!\" Extrone cried gleefully. And then the aliens sprang their trap. me a drink!\" He faced the officers again. He smiled maliciously. \"I'm didn't you?\" \"Yes, sir. When we located it, sir.\" \"You'll destroy this one, too,\" Extrone said. \"We have a tight patrol, sir. It can't slip through. But it might try a 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.\" The bearer brought Extrone his drink. \"Get off,\" Extrone said quietly to the four officers. Again they turned reluctantly. This time, he did not call them back. Instead, with amusement, he watched until they disappeared into the Extrone nodded. After a moment he said, \"You killed one, I believe, on your trip?\" Ri shifted. \"Yes, sir.\" Extrone held back the flap of the tent. \"Won't you come in?\" he asked without any politeness whatever. Ri obeyed the order. \"I realize that, sir. That is, I had intended at the first opportunity, sir....\" \"Of course,\" Extrone said dryly. \"Like all of my subjects,\" he waved his hand in a broad gesture, \"the highest as well as the lowest slave, know me and love me. I know your intentions were the best.\" Extrone bent forward. \" Know me and love me.\" Know you and love you, sir,\" Ri said. \"Get out!\" Extrone said. Extrone cut off our trade with the aliens. Partly to keep them from learning that he was getting ready to invade them, but more to keep them from exposing talk like this. I don't even want to listen.\" \"When the invasion starts, he'll have to command all uncontaminated. And Extrone stepped out of the tent, fully dressed, surly, letting the flap slap loudly behind him. He stretched hungrily and stared around the camp, his eyes still vacant-mean with sleep. 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. \"There's not enough difference between us to matter, sir. Of tearing an alien to pieces, sir.\" Extrone laughed harshly. \"It's 'sir' whenever you contradict me?\" Lin's face remained impassive. \"I guess it seems that way. Sir.\" Extrone carried the only weapon, slung easily over his shoulder, a powerful blast rifle, capable of piercing medium armor in sustained fire. To his rear, the water carrier was trailed by a man bearing a two-way communication set. Once Extrone unslung his blast rifle and triggered a burst at a tiny, \"For you, sir,\" the communications man said, interrupting his reverie. \"Damn,\" Extrone muttered. His face twisted in anger. \"It better be \"Extrone. Eh?... Oh, you got their ship. Well, why in hell bother \"Blasted them right out of space,\" the voice crackled excitedly. \"Right in the middle of a radio broadcast, sir.\" \"I don't want to listen to your gabbling when I'm hunting!\" Extrone tore off the head-set and handed it to the bearer. \"If they call back, find out what they want, first. I don't want to be bothered unless it's important.\" \"Yes, sir.\" Extrone squinted up at the sun his eyes crinkled under the glare, and Extrone laughed. \"This is enough.\" He gestured with the rifle and stood up. \"Wait,\" Extrone said, combing his beard. \"Wait a minute.\" \"Yes?\" \"Look,\" Extrone said. \"If that's the case, why do we bother tracking \"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. \" Extrone was seated, petting his rifle. Extrone nodded genially. \"The farn beast hunter, eh?\" \"Yes, sir.\" Extrone drummed his fingers on the stock of the blast rifle. \"Tell me\n\n<question>:\nIf Mia is wealthy enough to buy half the planet why is he Extrone's guide?\n\n<options>:\nA Extrone threatened to kill Mia's family if Mia didn't act as his guide.\nB Extrone found out Mia had hunted farn beasts previously and demanded Mia act as his guide.\nC Extrone kidnapped Mia, and is forcing Mia to act as his guide.\nD Extrone is the sovereign, everyone must do as Extrone commands.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
2,418
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nit's the reason why certain photos perform well on dating apps, or why trustworthy-looking politicians might rack up votes. But how wrong are our hunches of perceived criminality? A recent paper, published by Xiaolin Wu and Xi Zhang of Shanghai's Jiao Tong University, claims to be the first to use machine learning and neural networks to attempt a fully automated inference of criminality from facial images, removing prejudice from the equation and testing the validity of our gut feelings. \"What facial features influence the average Joe's impulsive and yet consensual judgments on social attributes?\" they ask. Through a study of 1,856 images (\"controlled for race, gender, age and facial expression\") they claim to have established the validity of \"automated, face-induced inference on criminality, despite the historical controversy surrounding this line of enquiry.\" In other words, they believe that they've found a relationship between looking like a criminal and actually being one. It's a claim that's been made many times over the years. Physiognomy, the 'science' of judging people by their appearance, was first theorised by the ancient Greeks in around the 5th century BC. Aristotle's pronouncement that \"it is possible to infer character from features\" led to a number of works relating to 'Physiognomica', a word derived from physis (nature), (law) and (or) gnomon (judge or interpreter). All of Greek society, it was claimed, could benefit from this skill: it could assist with choosing an employee, a slave or a spouse, while its inherent vagueness made it intriguing to philosophers and useful for scientists who bent the theories to support their own beliefs. It became a recognised science in the Islamic world, and was used and taught in Europe throughout late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, despite nagging doubts among thinkers and physicians of the day. In the early 16th century, Leonardo da Vinci claimed not to \"concern myself with false physiognomy, because these chimeras have no scientific foundation.\" Theories of physiognomy, however, would persist beyond the Renaissance. In 1586, Italian scholar Giambattista della Porta published a book, De humana physiognomonia libri IIII, which established him as the 'father of Physiognomy'. Della Porta's thinking was based on the 'doctrine of signatures' the idea that the appearance of plants and animals offers clues to their nature. For example, as one writer of the time suggested, walnuts are good for curing headaches because they're shaped a bit like a human head. The theories in della Porta's book were supported by dozens of detailed illustrations which, by comparing human faces to those of animals, suggested that they must surely share similar character traits. In the 17th century, Swiss poet Johann Caspar Lavater took della Porta's methodology and ran with it, commissioning artists to illustrate his popular Essays On Physiognomy – which, to the chagrin of his contemporary, the writer Hannah More, sold for \"fifteen guineas a set… while in vain we boast that philosophy [has] broken down all the strongholds of prejudice, ignorance, and superstition.\" Lavater's work was criticised for being ridden with bias (black faces rarely emerged well from his analyses) but he was right in one respect: \"Whether they are or are not sensible of it,\" he wrote, \"all men are daily influenced by physiognomy.\" Many studies have been done into our psychological response to faces, and it's clear that a so-called halo effect will inevitably work its magic. \"Attractive people are regarded as better at everything,\" says Professor Peter Hancock, lecturer in Psychology at Stirling University. \"And we can't shake that off because there's some truth to it. Good genes produce intelligent people, attractive faces, fit bodies, and we imagine that they're going to be good at everything else, too. We don't have good insight into our own behaviour. We tend to think we understand what we're doing, but we don't.\" Hancock describes attending a conference where one speaker showed a series of black faces and white faces to students (who were mostly white) and asked them what they thought the experiment was about. \"They knew that he was trying to assess whether they would rate the black ones as more criminal,\" says Hancock. \"But then they did!\" We attribute social characteristics based on opinions we already hold about certain kinds of faces: whether they look unusual in some way, whether they resemble a partner, a family member or even ourselves, or perhaps have some other cultural association. Physiognomy ultimately stems from what Alexander Todorov, professor of psychology at Princeton University, calls an 'overgeneralisation hypothesis'. \"People,\" he wrote, \"use easily accessible facial information (eg an expression such as a smile, cues to gender and ethnic group) to make social attributions congruent with this information (eg a nice person).\" In a social media age, the pictures we choose to represent ourselves online are a form of self-presentation driven by those social attributions and the knowledge that our pictures are being judged. Experiments at Princeton found that we take less than one tenth of a second to form an opinion of strangers from their pictures, and those opinions tend to stand firm even if we're exposed to those pictures for a longer period of time. That tendency to judge instantly gives rise to a number of selfie tropes that are deemed to elicit positive responses, particularly when it comes to photos on dating profiles: certain angles, particular expressions, minute adjustments of eyebrows and lips that might appear to be about narcissism and vanity, but are more about a fear of being incorrectly assessed. After all, false suppositions based on people's faces are hugely influential within society, and in extreme cases they can have a huge impact on people's lives. pointy or snubbed fingers or toes. In a woeful misreading of Darwinian theory, Lombroso unwittingly founded the field of anthropological criminology, and more specifically the idea of the born criminal: a hereditary quality that posed a danger to society and must be rooted out. His theories became discredited during the 20th century, but the kind of bias displayed by Lombroso can still be found in legal systems across the world 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 revitalisation of the theory of physiognomy by the Shanghai students is, according to Todorov, deeply problematic on a theoretical level. \"Are we back to Lombroso's theory,\" he asks, \"that criminals were anomalous creatures, evolutionary degenerates? How does one become criminal, and what role do various life forces play into this? There are people making claims that you just need to look at the face to predict personality and behaviour, but many of these people have not given much thought to their underlying assumptions.\" While it's true that we judge books by their covers, covers are more than just faces we piece together all kinds of cues from people to form our impressions of them. Jimmy Savile's appearance was unusual by any standards, but we absorbed a great deal of information about him over the years that will have influenced our opinions – not least from the original Louis Theroux programme from 2000 that was reexamined in that recent BBC documentary. Savile's vague resemblance to the Child Catcher from the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is convenient but ultimately misleading, and the way it reinforces the idea of what a paedophile might 'look like' is unfortunate This article was originally published on TheLong+Short. Read the original article.\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the purpose of the article?\n\n<options>:\nA To explain how physiognomy has evolved over time and affected society in harmful ways\nB To provide an impartial historical account of physiognomy, a once popular branch of science\nC To predict how physiognomy could be manipulated to worsen current social inequities\nD To convince an audience of the benefits of physiognomy as a criminal justice tool\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
2,518
|
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>:\nA key fact is that a superabundance of community respect and social capital are being accumulated by those who share. The key motivator of Social Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called transform a wide and isolated world into a super-smart Social Brain. The Neuron Doctrine neuroscience and its study of the working model of the human brain. Although we can’t entirely say how the brain works as a whole, we do have a model of the functional mechanism of the nervous system and its neurons. A neuron is not a simple organic cell, but a very powerful, electrically excitable biological processor. Groups of neurons form vastly interconnected networks, which, by changing the strength of the synapses between cells, can process information, and learn. A neuron, by sharing chemical signals with its neighbors, can be integrated into more meaningful patterns that keep the neuron active and alive. Moreover, such a simple logic can be iterated and amplified, since all neurons work on a similar principle of connecting and sharing. Originally, the brain is quite open. A neural network exists to share activity and information, and I believe this model of the brain should inspire ideas and decisions about human networks. Thus, our brain supports sharing in its very system-nature. This has profound implications for the creative process. Whenever you have an intention to create, you will find it easier to generate more creative idea-forming-process is not linear, but more like an avalanche of amplifications along the thinking path. It moves with the momentum of a creative snowball. If your internal cognitive system encourages sharing, you can engineer a feedback loop of happiness, which will help you generate even more ideas in return. It’s a kind of butterfly- effect, as the small creative energy you spend will eventually return to make you, and the world, more creative. 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 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 are just excuses for the status quo of keeping a community closed. Much of their “culture” will be protected, but the net result is the direct loss of many other precious ideas, and the subsequent loss of all the potential gains of sharing. This lost knowledge is a black hole in our life, which may start to swallow other values as well. Non-sharing culture misleads us with its absolute separation of Private and Public space. It makes creative action a binary choice between public and private, open and closed. This creates a gap in the spectrum of knowledge. Although this gap has the potential to become a valuable creative space, concerns about privacy make this gap hard to fill. We shouldn’t be surprised that, to be safe, most people keep their sharing private and stay “closed.” They may fear the Internet creates a 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 bloggers around the world, and no more than ten times that many readers following each blog. Human history is always so: something important was happening, but the rest of the world hadn’t yet realized it. The shift retaining flexible choices. The rapid emergence of Social Applications that can communicate and cooperate, by allowing people to output content from one service to another, is letting users pump their memes into a pipeline-like ecosystem. This interconnectedness allows memes to travel along multiple online social networks, and potentially reach a huge audience. As a persistence of practice can lead to a full recovery. You can think of Sharism as a spiritual practice. But you must practice everyday. Otherwise, you might lose the power of sharing. Permanently. You might need something to spur you on, to keep you from quitting and desk that says, “What do you want to share today?” I’m not kidding. Then, if anything interesting comes your way: Share It! The easiest way to both start and keep sharing is by using different kinds of social if you can keep track of the feedback that you get from sharing. You will realize that almost all sharing activities will generate positive results. The happiness that this will obtain is only the most immediate reward. But there are others. shared by friends in your network. Since you know and trust them, you will be that much more interested in what they have to share. Already, 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 development, a large creative work may spring from your choice to share. Of course, you will get the credit that you asked for, and deserve. And be to attain well- balanced and equitable Social Media that is woven by control over copyrighted content will lead to noticeable deficits in personal wealth, or just loss of control. 5 years ago, I would have said that this was a possibility. But things are changing today. The sharing 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 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 The Spirit of the Web, a Social Brain naturalized Epistemology and modernized Axiology, but also promises the 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 democratic systems with new folksonomies (based on the collaborative, social indexing of information) to enable people to make queries, share data and remix information for public use. The collective intelligence of a vast and equitable sharing environment can be the gatekeeper of our rights, and a government watchdog. In the future, policymaking can be made more nuanced with the micro-involvement of the sharing community. 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 more sociable, and society more individual. We no longer have to act alone. 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>:\nBy explaining neural activity in the brain, what does the author of the article imply?\n\n<options>:\nA If humans want to avoid the major illnesses like dementia and Alzheimers, they can do so by sharing more content as they grow older\nB If humans do not use their neurons, they will lose them (and their potential) forever\nC If humans can quickly acclimate to a Sharist ideology, there is a better chance that they can survive global threats\nD If humans are not constantly sharing, they will deteriorate and become unproductive\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
232
|
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 was no reason why everything shouldn't have been functioning perfectly, of course, but he was pleased to have it confirmed, all the lock, staring out over the dank Venusian terrain at the native town. He The Exec shrugged. \"I don't know, Lowry,\" he said. \"This is a funny Lowry lifted his eyebrows. \"Oh? But after all, they're human beings, \"Acclimation,\" Lowry said scientifically. \"They had to acclimate The Exec shrugged again. He stared at the wooden shacks that were the outskirts of the native city, dimly visible through the ever-present proton-rifles slung over their backs. A few natives were gazing \"Of course,\" Lowry said suddenly, \"there's a minority who are afraid 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 The annunciator over the open lock clanged vigorously, and a metallic voice rasped: \"Officer of the Deck! Post Number One! Instruments reports a spy ray focused on the main lock!\" Lowry, interrupted in the middle of a word, jerked his head back and stared unbelievingly at the tell-tale next to the annunciator. Sure enough, it was glowing red—might have been glowing for minutes. He snatched at the hand-phone dangling from the wall, shouted into it. \"Set up a screen! Notify the delegation! Alert a landing party!\" But even while he was giving orders, the warning light flickered suddenly and went out. Stricken, Lowry turned to the Exec. \"You see?\" others in the room looked apprehensive. \"You see?\" Svan repeated. \"From 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 Earth-ship returns, it means disaster for Venus. Therefore, it must not return.\" He grinned triumphantly, looking from face to face. The grin faded uncertainly as he saw what was in their eyes—uncertainty, find. It is almost dusk now. He can hide, surely, in the vegetation. a hysterical woman, a few screams, that's all there is to 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.\" 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. Instinctively they had opened the slip, turned it over and over, striving to detect if it was the fatal one. They had felt nothing.... glance, then looked up to see who had won the lethal game of chance. Each of the others had looked in that same second. And each was looking one to announce it—a second, ten seconds.... Then gray understanding came to him. A traitor! his subconscious whispered. A coward! He stared at them in a new light, saw their 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 Masked by the table, his hand, still holding the pencil, moved swiftly The six conspirators in Svan's old ground car moved slowly along the for deceptively flimsy-looking pistols at their hips, stood before the 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 , he thought. Not one eyes. Silently she nodded, advanced the fuel-handle so that the clumsy dark now. The car's driving light flared yellowishly in front of them, illuminating the narrow road and the pale, distorted vegetation of the again, to halt before morning. But before then they would be done. A proton-bolt lanced across the road in front of them. In the silence 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. the door beside him and stepped out, careless of the drizzle. \"We heard Confusion furrowed the guard's hairless brows, then was replaced by a sudden flare of understanding—and fear. \"The Council!\" he roared. faster. His gamble had failed there was only one course remaining. He hurled his gross white bulk at the guard, bowled him over against Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow of the Earth-ship, cursed the blackness. at the computer's table. \"Look—are those lights over there?\" Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no something happens to the delegation?\" \"Then we're in the soup,\" the Exec said philosophically. \"I told you the natives were dangerous. Spy-rays! They've been prohibited for the last three hundred years.\" \"It isn't all the natives,\" Lowry said. \"Look how they've doubled the secret group they call the Council.\" \"And how do you know the guards themselves don't belong to it?\" the Exec retorted. \"They're all the same to me.... Look, your light's gone out now. Must have been the guard. They're on the wrong side to be coming from the town, anyhow....\" lights out and stopped the car. Then he reached in the compartment From the guards , his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would feel no pain, never know what happened. With the amount of atomite in \"Good luck,\" repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of 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 He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the 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 turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men? 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. He stared unseeingly at the light. \"Go away!\" he croaked unbelievingly. in the car— \"Go away!\" he shrieked, and turned to run. His fists clenched and onto the hard, charred earth of the clearing. Only then did he hear the sound of the explosion, and as the immense echoes died away he began to callously to Lowry, who had just come up. \"It won't last long, though. Lowry, a bewildered expression on his beardless face, held out the two halves of a metallic sphere. Dangling ends of wires showed where a connection had been broken. \"He had a bomb,\" he said. \"A magnetic-type, Lowry was staring at the huddled, mutilated form of Svan. He shuddered. \"What's that?\" Lowry craned his neck. \"A piece of paper with a cross on slowly, displayed the other side. \"Now what in the world would he be\n\n<question>:\nWhat were the lights Lowry saw in the dark?\n\n<options>:\nA Svan and his conspirators\nB The guards\nC The delegation\nD Another spy-ray\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
1,465
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n\"It's all right to drink coffee, isn't it?\" he asked. \"Of course,\" I said, and added absurdly, \"That's why I don't wash.\" \"You mean,\" Andre said slowly, ploddingly, \"that if you bathed, you would be admitting that drinking coffee was in the same class as any other solitary vice that makes people wash frequently.\" I looked at that which he had made. I wondered where he had gone, in \"The rest is simple,\" Andre said. \"Doc O'Malley bought up all the stock in a certain ancient metaphysical order and started supplying members with certain books. Can you imagine the effect of the Book of Dyzan or the Book of Thoth or the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan or the back into time and created them. And that unconscious mind, deeper than psychology terms the subconscious, has always known about the powers of ESP, telepathy, telekinesis, precognition. Through these books, the human race can tell itself how to achieve a state of pure logic, fall into anyone's hands. I remembered that all the copies of the books had disappeared with their readers now. There must not be any more, I knew. that these words were what I had been waiting for. They told everything I needed I listened to him for a moment, then tested and tasted the craving that The most wonderful thing about her was her perfume. Then I realized it wasn't perfume, only the scent of soap. Finally, I knew it wasn't that. cup of coffee.\" I knew where I could get it for three cents, maybe two and a half. I felt her looking at me. She spoke in an educated voice, one she used, perhaps, as a teacher or supervising telephone operator. \"Do you want it for coffee, or to apply, or a glass or hypo of something else?\" I cringed and whined. She would expect it of me. I suddenly realized that anybody as clean as she was had to be a tourist here. I hate tourists. \"Just coffee, ma'am.\" She was younger than I was, so I didn't have to call her that. \"A little more for food, if you could spare it.\" I hadn't eaten in a day and a half, but I didn't care much. \"I'll buy you a dinner,\" she said carefully, \"provided I can go with you and see for myself that you actually eat it.\" pale, grayish brown and steaming faintly. I picked it up in both hands to feel its warmth. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the woman sitting on the stool with a few drops left in them. They have a little caffeine in them—not enough, never enough, but better than nothing. \"Now what do you want to eat?\" the woman asked. I didn't look at her. She didn't know. She thought I was a human—an Earth \"Hamburger,\" I said. \"Well done.\" I knew that would probably be all I didn't look at the woman. I couldn't. But I kept remembering how clean she looked and I was aware of how clean she smelled. I was so \"Could I have a few to take with me, miss?\" I pleaded. She smiled. I caught that out of the edge of my vision, but mostly I just felt it. said. \"I'm not an old-maid schoolteacher, you know.\" That probably meant she was a schoolteacher, though. \"No, miss,\" I said. schoolteacher, all right. No other girl would introduce herself as Miss Last Name. Then there was something in her voice.... \"What's your name?\" she said to me. I choked a little on a bite of stale bun. I . Everybody has a name, and I knew if I went off somewhere quiet and thought about it, mine would come to me. Meanwhile, I would tell the \"Kevin,\" I told her. \"John Kevin.\" \"Mister Kevin,\" she said, her words dancing with bright absurdity like waterhose mist on a summer afternoon, \"I wonder if you could help me \"What do you think of this?\" Book\" revealing to me how I may gain Secret Mastery of the Universe. Name : ........................ lady didn't pay you.\" \"She didn't,\" he stammered. \"Why do you think I was trying to get that became lost. I put the paper container of warm coffee and the greasy bag of hamburgers on the wooden chair, hoping the odor wouldn't bring any \"An order, my boy, an order,\" he whispered. I didn't know what he meant. Was he suddenly trying to give me orders? He held something out to me. It was my notebook. He had used my pen, I wondered what the words meant. Wondering takes a kind of concentration. The words \"First Edition\" were what I was thinking about most. this unemployed, former professional man who has gone through a serious illness and is suffering a more serious addiction to tell me the place and from which he comes.\" The surprise stung. \"How did you know?\" I asked. He gestured with a pale hand. \"To maintain a logical approach, I must clearly. Time travel is a familiar folk legend and I have been reading an article by the entertaining Mr. Wells. Perhaps he will expand it into one of his novels of scientific romance.\" I knew who these two men were, with a tormenting doubt. \"But the other—\" creations.\" The doctor flushed darkly. \"You give my literary agent too much credit for the addition of professional polish to my works.\" The other man was filling a large, curved pipe from something that There was no theory or practice of time travel. I told them all I had ever heard theorized from Hindu yoga through Extra-sensory Perception to Relativity and the positron and negatron. \"Interesting.\" He breathed out suffocating black clouds of smoke. know them. The great literary creations assume reality.\" I thought of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy and wondered if they would be the goddesses of love that people imagined or the scrawny, big-nosed redhead and fading old woman of scholarship. Then I noticed the detective's hand that had been resting idly on a round brass weight of a snowbird. After a time, I asked the doctor a question. \"Why, yes. I'm flattered. This is the first manuscript. Considering my professional handwriting, I recopied it more laboriously.\" She inclined the lethal silver toy. \"Let me see those papers, Kevin.\" I handed her the doctor's manuscript. Her breath escaped slowly and loudly. \"It's all right. It's all right. It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read had known too much in too short a time. I had to help Doc, but there was something else. \"I just want a drink of coffee from that container on the chair,\" I told her. She shook her head. \"I don't know what you think it does to you.\" It was getting hard for me to think. \"Who are you?\" secret and he wanted to make money with it. He was an idealist—he had his crusades. How can you make money with time travel?\" I didn't know whether she was asking me, but I didn't know. All I knew was that I had to help Doc and get some coffee. \"It takes money—money Doc didn't have—to make money,\" Miss Casey said, \"even if you know what horse will come in and what stock will me. He was lying so still with the left side of his face so twisted. I needed some coffee. \"He became a book finder. He got rare editions of books and magazines for his clients in absolutely mint condition. That was all right—until he started obtaining books that did not exist .\" snatched up the coffee container, tore it open and gulped down the you want?\" \"I'll begin as Miss Casey did—by telling you things. Hundreds of book from Doc,\" the Martian said. Something seemed to strike me in the back of the neck. I staggered, but managed to hold onto the gun and stand up.\n\n<question>:\nWhy is the narrator thinking about the words \"First Edition\" when he returns with food?\n\n<options>:\nA He thought he remembered something about a book Doc needed\nB The slip of paper had requested the first edition of a book, so he knew it had to be that specifically\nC As a side effect of the time travel technology, the narrator was putting pieces together about the situation as he read the notebook\nD The woman had been telling him about books\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
938
|
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>:\nInfield turned his soft blue eyes to the black and tan oxfords with the Infield shrugged slightly. \"I suppose a man must take some chances.\" Infield whirled and stalked to the desk. \"That's the answer! The whole to all the sick people.\" Infield leaned on the desk and glared. \"I called myself a psychiatrist once. But now I know we're semi-mechanics, semi-engineers, shining steel-impervium alloy. Transfixed in the twin circles was the face of the patient, slack with smiles and sweat. But his memory was exaggerating the human element. The gyro actually passed over a man's shoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt the walls creeping in to crush him, he could withdraw his head and limbs into the circle and feel safe. Steel-impervium alloy could resist even a nuclear explosion. The foetic gyro ball was worn day and night, for life. The sickness overcame him. He sat down on Morgan's desk. \"That's just is everything all right?\" Infield asked intensely. \"Suppose the patient is driving over one hundred on an icy road. He thinks are nearly subsonic. They don't cut a sense efficiency more than 23 per cent.\" \"At first, Clyde—only at first. But what about the severe case where \"You're damned right!\" Infield slammed the door behind him. The cool air of the street was a relief. Infield stepped into the main unable to keep from being pushed against Infield. He sounded out the It was the first time in years that anyone had apologized to Infield Suddenly something else was pushing against Infield, forcing the air from his lungs. He stared down at the magnetic suction dart clinging leechlike to his chest. Model Acrophobe 101-X, he catalogued immediately. Description: safety belt. But his emotions didn't behave so well. He was thoroughly terrified, heart racing, sweat glands pumping. The impervium cable undulated vulgarly. Some primitive fear of snake symbols? stubble-chinned, heavy-shouldered man quivering in the center of a web official .\" \"Not—not long,\" Infield evaded. Infield's pulse raced, trying to get ahead of his thoughts, and losing Infield shifted around, trying to see that side of his benefactor, cleared his throat, noticing the affectation of it. \"My name's Infield.\" \"Price,\" the other answered absently. \"George Price. I suppose they Price set the direction and Infield fell in at his side. \"Look, if you 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 after seeing Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like Price looked off as if at something not particularly interesting, but more interesting than what he was saying. \"It drives a needle into my temple and kills me.\" to save lives, not endanger them. \"What kind of irresponsible idiot could have issued such a device?\" he demanded angrily. in shop. This is a pretty effective mechanism, if I say so myself. It can't be removed without causing my death and it's indestructible. Impervium-shielded, you see.\" himself, Infield knew. The threat of death would keep him constantly Infield looked up self-consciously and noticed that they had crossed Infield wondered why cheap bars and restaurants always used red-checked Price lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. \"Reggie is studying biblical Of course he didn't, Infield knew. Why should he? It was useless to examining it with the skill of scientific observation. \"Mr. Infield is Reggie went away. Price kept dissecting the tobacco and paper. Infield dangerous these people are, Mr. Infield?\" \"Frankly, no,\" Infield said, realizing it was not the right thing to say but tiring of constant pretense. 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 .\" Infield's throat went dry. \"And you're the one to deal with them?\" \"It's my Destiny.\" Price quickly added, \"And yours, too, of course.\" Infield nodded. Price was a demagogue, young, handsome, dynamic, likable, impassioned with his cause, and convinced that it was his divine destiny. He was a psychopathic egotist and a dangerous man. Doubly dangerous to Infield because, even though he was one of the few Price for what he was, he nevertheless still liked the young man Infield felt cold inside. After a time, he found that the roaring was Price was the type of man who could spread his ideas throughout the the hopeless. Enforced Cures would be a curse for the individual and the race. another before Infield. Price stared at the drink almost without and suave, draped clothes. In this den of the Cured, Infield thought Price laughed shortly. \"I feel like doing something very melodramatic, Price wiped the sweat off his palms. Infield sat and thought. Mrs. will play a greater Infield.\" Very eager.\" \"Just what do you mean?\" He already suspected Price's meaning. Price leaned forward. \"There is one phobia that is so wide-spread, a Infield gestured vaguely. \"A psychiatrist wouldn't hand out Cures Before Infield could speak, a stubble-faced, barrel-chested man moved Infield in the street. all lines except those on Price, and then threw himself backward, him fall just so they could laugh at him or pounce on him why shouldn't he like to make them fall first? Infield hit the big man behind the ear. He dropped the bottle and fell looked up at Infield. \"I'm going to kill you,\" he said, glaring at Infield. \"You made me fall Infield wasn't a large man, but he had pressed two hundred and fifty \"I'll do it if you cause more trouble.\" Infield sat down and rubbed his \"No. No, you aren't.\" Infield felt an excitement pounding through him, Price stared at him as if he were a padded-cell case. \"That's They were all looking at Infield. Somehow he felt this represented a 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 word— monstrous thing on your head?\" Price grinned. Infield didn't recognize its smugness at the time. within was running high. He felt the wire snap and come up easily. He 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.\" for good . We've got to go after him.\" \"It's slippery,\" Davies whimpered. \"I might fall.\" books. He had had a latent fear of lightning when he chose the lightning rod Cure. He could have picked a safety belt or foetic gyro just as well. Infield looked up and saw the lightning reflected on the blade of a It was his problem. Infield usually solved other people's problems, but Infield realized that he had gone mad as he held the thin blade high said INFIELD & \"Mr. Morgan, your partner, Mr. Infield, he—\" \"Mr. Infield went out without his Cure in a storm and was struck by him, of course. Morgan adjusted the soundproofing plugs in his ears, thinking that you did have to have quite a bit of light to read lips. The thunder, naturally, was what had killed Infield. Loud noise—any noise—that would do it every time. Too bad Infield had never really stopped being one of the Incompletes. Dangerous people. He would have\n\n<question>:\nAll of the following terms describe how Infield would characterize Price EXCEPT for:\n\n<options>:\nA reckless\nB self-absorbed\nC fanatic\nD hazardous\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
2,011
|
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>:\nJUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT BY WILLIAM LEE ILLUSTRATED BY SCHOENHERR \"What would you think,\" I asked Marjorie over supper, \"if I should undertake to lead a junior achievement group this summer?\" She pondered it while she went to the kitchen to bring in the dessert. what seemed to me, since I use two \"Why, Donald,\" she said, \"it could be quite interesting, if I understand what a junior achievement group is. What gave you the idea?\" \"It wasn't my idea, really,\" I admitted. in chemistry. Perhaps if I saw the to the office today, and told me that some of the children in the lower grades wanted to start one. They need adult guidance of course, and one of the group suggested my name.\" I should explain, perhaps, that I teach a course in general science in our Ridgeville Junior High School, \"Mr. McCormack called me Senior High School. It's a privilege and another in general physics in the envy, teaching in Ridgeville, for our new school is a fine one, and our academic standards are high. On the which I'm sure many educators must at least sometimes, to teach my old-fashioned brand of science to these children of a new age. \"That's very nice,\" said Marjorie. \"What does a junior achievement group do?\" \"It has the purpose,\" I told her, \"of teaching the members something themselves. \"Well, now,\" I demanded, in my best classroom voice. \"What is all were laughing and evidently enjoying \"Are you Henderson?\" the larger \"I am indeed,\" I said, and a flash bulb went off. A young lady grasped for we both recognize that my understanding quiet. \"You didn't know that one of your junior whatsisnames poured detergent in the Memorial Fountain basin last night?\" rather closely for the last ten—no, eleven years. Back in the old Ridgeville, across the street. And this morning,\" she chortled, \"somebody phoned in an anonymous tip to the police—of course it was the same boy that did it—Tommy—Miller?—and so here we are. And we just saw a demonstration so, of course, did we, which meant morning about three weeks later, I was sitting at one end of a plank picnic table with five boys and girls lined up along the sides. This was to 20% solution.\" \"Goodness.\" I protested, \"it's been belonging to the parents of one of the group members, Tommy Miller. \"O.K.,\" I said, \"let's relax. You don't need to treat me as a teacher, twenty-five years since my last course to do with the starting capital we in any way I can. This is your meeting.\" Mr. McCormack had told me, and in some detail, about the youngsters I'd be dealing with. The three who charming little beasts, with tails as who had proposed the group in the first place. were sitting to my left were the ones rather angular—all shoulders and elbows. to me, but it was quite evident that were skinny kids, too. The three were of an age and were all tall for ten-year-olds. I had the impression during that first meeting that they looked rather alike, but this wasn't so. Their features were quite different. Perhaps from association, for they were close friends, they had just come to have a certain similarity of restrained gesture and of modulated voice. And with a face full of freckles and an infectious laugh, and Tommy Miller, a few months younger, was just an average, extroverted, well adjusted youngster, noisy and restless, tee-shirted and butch-barbered. The group exchanged looks to see the seemed to be elected. \"Well, Mr. Henderson, a junior achievement group is a bunch of kids who get together to manufacture and sell things, and maybe make some money.\" Many of them wanted to buy mice or each. Tommy's ideas of pricing rather The usual products, of course, with these junior achievement efforts, are chemical specialties that can be made safely and that people will buy and It was on Tuesday—following the Thursday—that a lanky young man a wonder. sort of thing. Mr. McCormack had told me, though, that I might find these youngsters a bit more ambitious. \"The Miller boy and Mary McCready,\" he had said, \"have exceptionally high IQ's—around one forty disentangled himself from his car to classify. They have some of the attributes of exceptional pupils, but much of the time they seem to have little interest in their studies. The junior achievement idea has sparked their imaginations. Maybe it'll be just what they need.\" because we think you may have some \"What's to lose,\" Tommy interjected. in the electronics field. A hi-fi sub-assembly of some kind.\" \"How about a new detergent?\" Hilary scattered from New York to Los Angeles, sent a kite to each one and offered to license the design. Result, That's cookbook chemistry. I mean a team except Tommy. Jeff lowered his feet from the picnic table and said, \"Hi.\" sounds like another operation calling for capital investment. If we should keep the achievement group going for several summers, it might be possible later on to carry out a \"Do you have a special field of interest?\" despondency. \"I'm not very technical. group wanted to raise some mice, I'd strain? One of the recognized laboratory strains? Healthy mice of the got the first four pairs from a pet \"What is it?\" \"A whisker stiffener. It makes each \"So I perceive. What is it?\" chemistry. Cysteine thiolactone \"I see. Just a mixture of stuff. And and to ask how we were progressing with our organization meeting. I'd forgotten all about organization, and that, according to all the articles I had perused, is most important to such groups. It's standard practice for every member of the group to be a company officer. Of course a keep the group going after school \"Why not? The kids can sail young boy who doesn't know any better, that they'd each do what came \"Child labor nothing. They're the employers. Jeff McCord and I will be the only employees—just at first, naturally. On the other hand, they \"Even so, it's child labor, isn't it?\" make. It was Mary, finally, who advanced the thought of kites. At first there was little enthusiasm, then Peter said, all, what's to lose?\" \"You know, we could work up something July 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. \"and think about the small end. It'll work out all right.\" I wished that the youngsters weren't starting out by inventing a new article to manufacture, and risking an almost certain disappointment, but to copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and happenings with Marjorie and tried to recall all of the ideas which had been propounded. Most of them were impractical, of course, for a group of children to attempt, but several of them appeared quite attractive. Tommy, for example, wanted to up in a hurry—not engraved, for two colors in the same bottle—orange the blue ones designed to leave the Pete wanted to make a combination nail and wood screw. You'd Hilary, reluctantly forsaking his ideas on detergents, suggested we to reduce evaporation. These latter ideas had made unknowing \"My,\" said Marjorie, \"they're really smart boys and girls. Tommy Miller about the kite, even now. The fact want some security.\" I would give them a specimen signature. Oh, a mental vow to sign very few checks. figured what's to lose, and picked one. that evening, and Marjorie recognized that something was concerning the kite, and the youngsters embarking on a shopping trip for paper, glue and wood splints. There was no use who by mutual consent, was our authority on sales, didn't want to sell\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the most likely reason for the junior achievement group's shared characteristics?\n\n<options>:\nA They have experienced expected and unanticipated consequences of nuclear fallout\nB Their parents are all members of the Ridgeville Commission\nC They are all actually androids that have been programmed by scientists of the Ridgeville Commission\nD They have been meeting secretly for years before they came together under the guise of the junior achievement group\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
1,796
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nTranscriber's Note: in the artificially warmed city. They entered an elevator The Cosmic Express subway rider gasp with amazement. The for parks between the mighty COSMIC EXPRESS flowers, and no one had time to and The Alien Intelligence in Eric now recognized as a prominent the machine now. Russian diplomat from Moscow to Rio de Janeiro.... Two hundred seventy in a rousing trio of space service. Regular installations all over the world in a year.... this is just an experimental Ready now. Come on in.\" One Against the Legion. operas , The Legion of Space, The present tense, he assumed the the half-hidden machine, spoke courteously. The Cosmic Express Hope you found the transit pleasant.\" \"But my Violet! My precious Violet!\" a shrill female voice \"All right, madam. Walk out. came from the machine. \"Sir, what have you done with my is of special wireless transmission of matter is the next big transportation frontier to be conquered. It is of wonders, and proceed with the story. With only a few thousand scanning-disk television sets in existence at the time of the writing, the surmise that this The \"And now what can I do for you, Eric?\" \"We want to go to Venus, if that ray of yours can put us there.\" \"To Venus? Impossible. My orders are to use the Express merely between the sixteen designated stations, at New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, London, Paris—\" for the sake of survival on the panel. \"Sure, old boy. I'd send you to By which I mean that it is the Venus—I've been amusing myself, watching the life there, already. Terrible place. Savage. I set you down. But I can't be responsible for what happens afterward.\" \"Simple, primitive life is what where Nada, his pretty bride, do I owe you—\" \"Oh, that's all right. Between friends. Provided that stuff's sides. Don't move.\" open again, and Eric led Nada with mirrors and vast prisms and lenses and electron tubes. In the center was a slab of transparent crystal, eight feet square Eric helped Nada to a place \"I think the Express Ray is \"Think I've got it for you. Sort of a high island in the jungle. I say—how're you coming back? I haven't got time to watch you.\" \"Go ahead. We aren't coming back.\" \"Gee! What is it? Elopement? blizzard was sweeping. But small concern was that to the lightly With another yawn, Mr. Eric Nada and Eric felt themselves The \"At last!\" Nada cried. \"We're not parasites on the machines.\" from modern civilization. His Eric. You're just like one of the heroes in your books!\" hero was likely to be an ape-man Nada.... But now we roaring through the jungle, with the vanishing hero of \"You're the perfect companion, marooned with a lovely woman on a desert South Sea island. the television. \"We'll find a nice dry cave, and have a fire in front of the royalties, and subconsciously Eric had settled down to the nature had left them even a single fragment of quartz, to say nothing of a mass of pure tripping into the study, gay and Nada stopped. \"Eric,\" she resolved to forget that his next panel—a simple way of ordering breakfast sent up the automatic shaft from the kitchens below. Nada Stokes-Harding was also hunting in the virgin forest, and They resumed the weary march, with a good fraction of the new planet adhering to their feet. Rain was still falling from the dark heavens in a steady, were extinct, there were no wild dear?\" \"Matches! Of course not! We're going back to Nature.\" bother about sunsets. in this little flat, away from the things we both love?\" \"Yes, dear. Civilization has \"Eric, darling,\" she said, \"isn't it terrible to be cooped up here He confessed to a few pangs of flowers.\" \"If we could only go somewhere—\" \"There isn't anywhere to go. I write about the West, Africa, South Sea Islands. But they were all filled up two hundred years ago. Pleasure resorts, sanatoriums, cities, factories.\" \"If only we lived on Venus! I was listening to a lecture on the television, last night. The speaker said that the Planet Venus is younger than the Earth, that it has not cooled so much. It has a thick, cloudy atmosphere, \"Buck up,\" Eric advised her. Earth had before civilization ruined it.\" ray telescope, that penetrates the cloud layers of the planet, proved that Venus rotates in about the same period as Earth and it must be much like threatening to demolish it. Swarms of mosquito-like insects, seemingly not inconvenienced in swarmed about them in the least by the inclement elements, this hateful civilization, and live natural lives. Maybe a rocket—\" Nada clung against Eric. The clouds. or something of the sort. This world seems to be in about the same state as the Earth when bringing the game home to you! But I'm afraid there is no way.—Wait! The Cosmic Express.\" \"The Cosmic Express?\" \"A new invention. Just perfected a few weeks ago, I understand. they flourished there.... But maybe it won't find us.\" \"I've quit bothering about science. It has ruined nature, filled the world with silly, artificial \"Eric,\" a thin voice trembled. radium atom, making helium shrieks. Mighty splashes, as if oceans. Thunderous crashes, as Eric and Nada clung to each the new Cosmic Express, is simply to convert the matter to be carried into power, send it out with pride. \"But the method, in atoms at the destination.\" \"But the amount of energy ones. The Express Ray is an humans. Nada burst even the Cosmic Ray, and correspondingly get any recognizable object, not even how they get the radiation moments later, they were lying on the transparent table in the Cosmic Express office, with all on the plate—just the same as the Express Ray picks up an object and sets it down on the other side of the world. \"So sorry—an accident—inconceivable. \"An analogy from television \"Why—what—what—\" our operator drunk. I've no idea where he got the stuff. He muttered something about Venus. I consulted the auto-register, and found two more passengers registered of the Express Ray moves slowly are accurately reproduced at the looked up the duplicate beam coordinates, might be in Venus! been set on Venus. I got men on the television at once, and we happened to find you. \"But the analogy of the lens is the better of the two. For no and found that it had other focus of the instrument—which receiving instrument is required, as in television. The object is built up of an infinite series of up, and the 'dry-laws' are on the excessive damages.\" with radio apparatus because even with the best beam transmission, all but a tiny fraction \"No, I ask nothing except that you don't press charges against spouse, after they had washed off the grime of another planet. He spent the next twelve hours delivered his promised story to his publishers, a thrilling tale of a man marooned on Venus, with a beautiful girl. The hero made stone tools, erected a dwelling She ran back to Eric, who was at his typewriter. \"Oh, darling! I'm thrilled to death about the Cosmic Express! If we could go to Venus, to a new life on a new world, and get away from all this hateful conventional society—\" \"We can go to their office—it's only five minutes. The chap He's not supposed to take passengers they have scattered about the world. But I know his weak point—\" Eric laughed, fumbled with a\n\n<question>:\nWhy does the Cosmic Express official assume Eric and Nada are the victims of the situation?\n\n<options>:\nA The official is more concerned about the drunk operator, given that alcohol is outlawed. It does not occur to the official that anyone would request to be sent to Venus.\nB There are only 16 designated Cosmic Express destinations, and Venus is not one of them.\nC The official knows Eric and Nada should be arrested but does not want the situation to become a scandal.\nD The Venus colony has not built a receiving station.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
758
|
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>:\nCurtis went around, finding the officers, issuing orders. There were the scene with a ghostly radiance. The men of the Comerford had Commander Bob Curtis roused himself from his doze, got up from his The hurried rat-a-tat entire Comerford . complement of two hundred and twenty men were present—except Navigating Officer Nelson, and Bos'n's Mate Bradford! And Zukor Androka Curtis got a glimpse of the design on which he was working, and his The wizened face of the older man was molded in intent lines of whose mind had been turned by the horror that had come to his country under the domination of the Nazi gestapo . At other times, the man seemed a genius. Perhaps that was the answer—a mad genius! him. It was Nelson, his shaggy blond brows drawn scowlingly down over his pale eyes his thin face a mass of tense lines his big hands fumbling at the neck of his slicker. Rain was coursing down his white cheeks, streaking them with glistening furrows. The fellow was a headache to Curtis. He was overfriendly with a black-browed bos'n's mate named Joe Bradford—the worst trouble maker on board. But there was no question of his ability. He was a good navigating officer—dependable, accurate, conscientious. Nevertheless, his taut face, restless, searching eyes, and eternally nervous manner got Curtis' goat. \"Come in, Nelson!\" he said. hard on his latest invention to pull Hitler's teeth and re-establish the Czech Republic!\" Nelson had no answering smile, although there had been a great deal experiments. \"I'm worried, sir!\" Nelson said. \"I'm not sure about my dead reckoning. This storm—\" Curtis threw his arm around Nelson's dripping shoulders. \"Forget it! \"But this storm, sir!\" Nelson avoided Curtis' friendly eyes and slipped out from under his arm. \"It's got me worried. Quartering wind of undetermined force, variable and gusty. There's a chop to the sea—as if from unestimated currents among the islets. No chance to check by observation, and now there is a chance—look at me!\" Commander Curtis shrugged good-naturedly and reached for the \"Here's what I make it,\" the commander told his navigating officer. Curtis stared, frowned, grabbed his own sheet again. \"Any time I'm declared, frowning at the two papers and hastily rechecking his own figures. to move in these waters with such a possibility of error!\" Nelson complied, and the throbbing drive of the engines lessened old eyes twinkling behind their thick lenses. \"Go ahead and try it. See how much you can get! It will be no more than Hitler can get when Zukor that had recently been established to insure safety to naval vessels, but there was no answer on any of the bands—not even the blare of a high-powered commercial program in the higher reach, nor the chatter of ships or amateurs on the shorter. \"Dead!\" Androka muttered, with a bitter laugh. \"Yet not dead, Curtis was the first to speak. \"Your secrecy might well cost the United States navy one of its best light cruisers—and us our lives!\" he said angrily. \"We need that check by radio at once! If you're not talking nonsense, call off your dogs till we learn just where we are!\" Cruiser Comerford !\" Curtis sighed with relief. He saw that Nelson was staring fiercely Comerford calling Curtis frowned and shook his head. Slowly he forced a reluctant grin as \"You have seen a miracle, commander!\" he shouted at Curtis. \" as much as your enemies.\" The scientist drew himself up to his full height—which was only a little over five feet. His voice grew shrill. \"Wait! Just wait! There are other inventions to supplement this one. Put them together, and they will defeat the Nazi hordes which have ravaged my country!\" Curtis was a little shocked by the hatred that gleamed in Androka's eyes, under their bushy brows. There was something of the wild animal in the man's expression, as his lips drew back from his yellowed teeth. So are my sister and her husband, and their two daughters. If the Curtis said: \"I understand.\" on his slicker as he went. The shout from the watch forward had been picked up, and was being relayed all over the ship. The words struck on Curtis' ears with a note of impending tragedy. keep her up!\" And then he became aware of a deadly stillness. A vast wall of silence enveloped the entire cruiser. Looking over the side, he could no longer ship. The Comerford Comerford were becoming thicker. stricken helpless. And then Curtis saw other forms flitting about the Two words, in particular, registered clearly on his mind. One was \" began to throb, as if someone were pounding on them from the inside. He couldn't get his breath a cloud seemed to be mounting within him until Nelson spoke in a low tone, his lips close to Bradford's ear. \"It worked, Joe!\" got a neutralizing chemical in one of them tanks of his that'll clear everything up inside half an hour.\" —lives that'd have been lost if the forts had to be taken by our storm troopers!\" \" Ja! accented English. \"Your father?\" \"My father dedicated me to a career of revenge—to wipe out his wrongs,\" Nelson continued. \"If America hadn't gone into the First bitterly. \"But it won't do Curtis any good—a commander who's lost Comerford ?\" Comerford with him, and dynamos and batteries that looked like something out of a scientific nightmare. And bustling all over the place, barking excited commands in German, pushing and pulling and pointing to emphasize his directions, was the \"Yes,\" Nelson said. \"That came through all right. And won't Curtis have thousand tons. The orders are to take her not sink her.\" \"What's the idea?\" \"Her cargo,\" Brandt explained. \"It iss more precious than rubies. It includes a large shipment of boarts.\" \"Boarts,\" Brandt told him, \"are industrial diamonds—black, imperfectly crystallized stones, but far more valuable to us than in his voice. \"Yes,\" Brandt assured him. \"Of all men—we can trust Androka!\" misfires, if there is the slightest suspicion of treachery on his part, his daughter and the others will suffer. Androka's loyalty is assured!\" Nelson turned to watch the forward fighting top of the Comerford . the Comerford's out his hand. \"Congratulations, Herr Kommander Nelson!\" he said. \"Ve have stolen one of the United States navy's newest and fastest cruisers!\" He made a gesture as if raising a beer stein to drink a toast. \" Prosit! \" he \" Prosit! of gray cloud were skudding before the east wind. Commander Bob Curtis as if a wave of searing heat had scorched them. According to his last calculations, the Comerford a moment in Curtis' face, and the familiar voice of Ensign Jack Dillon spoke: \"Commander Curtis! Are you O. K., sir?\" \"I think so!\" Curtis' heart warmed at the eager expression in Dillon's face at the heartfelt concern in his friendly brown eyes. The young ensign was red-headed, impetuous, thoroughly genuine in his emotions. \"How about yourself, Jack?\" Curtis added. Curtis thought for a moment. \"Muster the crew, as best you can. We'll The words struck Curtis with the numbing shock of a blow on some nerve swept down on him. He had lost his ship—one of the United States navy's fastest and newest small light cruisers—under circumstances which smelled strongly of treachery and sabotage. As he thought back, he realized that he loss, if he had been more alert, more suspicious. For it was clear to him now that the Comerford Curtis' mind. He had never liked the man\n\n<question>:\nWhat word best describes Commander Curtis?\n\n<options>:\nA Collaborative\nB Egotistical\nC Authoritative\nD Fierce\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "C"
}
] |
2,194
|
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 ULTROOM ERROR by JERRY SOHL Smith admitted he had made an error involving a few murders—and a few thousand years. He was entitled to a sense of humor, though, even in the Ultroom! HB73782. Ultroom error. Tendal 13. Arvid 6. Kanad transfer out of 1609 complete, intact, but too near limit of 1,000 days. Next Kanad transfer ready. 1951. Reginald, son of Mr. knees hit the side of the play pen and young Laughton let out a scream—half from hurt and half from sudden lack of confidence in his child. Around the corner and after the man came a snarling mongrel dog, eyes bright, teeth glinting in the sunlight. The man did not turn as the heels. \"I tell you, the man said he was my brother and he made me think he was,\" Nancy told her husband for the tenth time. \"I don't even have a brother.\" just—just plain nuts, Nancy!\" \"Don't you think I know it?\" Nancy said tearfully. \"I feel like I'm him. \"Are you a rich man, Mr. Laughton?\" he asked. \"What do you do?\" \"Fine.\" \"And your wife?\" Reggie.\" Nancy, who was rocking the boy, narrowed her eyes. that.\" six men who will swear the man was drunk. He staggered, reeled and gave the usual drunk talk. He reeked of whiskey.\" The prosecutor handed the report over the desk. \"Here's the analysis. dogbite, the Laughton dog died that night. His menu evidently didn't agree with him. Never did figure what killed him, actually.\" \"Getting back to the man who ran over the child and killed Mrs. It was the chief's turn to shake his head. \"Your guess is as good as \"What does the man have to say?\" name is John Smith and he's got cards to prove it, too—for example, a social security card. It looks authentic, yet there's no such number down any I.Q. Actually, he can't figure him out himself. Smith seems has the answer ready before you're half through asking.\" \"Well, if Dr. Stone says he's normal, that's enough for me.\" The \"Guess you're right. Well, Mr. Smith won't think it's so funny when we \"Nobody ever saw John Smith before. Even at the address on his The man who had laughingly told police his name was John Smith lay on his chest. This gave him the appearance of being alert despite reclining. Even as he lay, his mouth held a hint of a smile. Arvid 6—for John Smith was Arvid 6—had lain in that position for more than four hours, when suddenly he snapped his eyes open and appeared to be listening. For a moment a look of concern crossed his face and he swung his legs to the floor and sat there expectantly. Arvid 6 knew Tendal 13 had materialized and was somewhere in the building. Eventually there were some sounds from beyond the steel cell and doorway. There was a clang when the outer doorway was opened and Arvid 6 rose from his cot. \"Your lawyer's here to see you,\" the jailer said, indicating the man with the brief case. \"Ring the buzzer when you're through.\" The jailer it,\" he declared. \"If you carry on any more we'll never get back to the Ultroom!\" here.\" \"I'm really sorry about that,\" Arvid 6 said. You know the instructions. Just because you work in the Ultroom don't get to thinking human life doesn't have any value. We wouldn't be here you've been sitting here, probably enjoying yourself with your special brand of humor I have grown to despise.\" \"You didn't have to come along at all, you know,\" Arvid 6 said. \"How well I know! How sorry I am that I ever did! It was only because I was sorry for you, because someone older and more experienced than you was needed. I volunteered. Imagine that! I volunteered! Tendal 13 reaches the height of stupidity and volunteers to help Arvid 6 go back 6,000 years to bring Kanad back, to correct a mistake Arvid 6 made!\" He snorted. \"I still can't believe I was ever that stupid. I only prove it when I pinch myself and here I am. when her husband mistook me for you and you let him take me apart piece by piece—\" \"All right, all right,\" Arvid 6 said. \"I'll admit I've made some mistakes. You're just not adventurous, that's all.\" \"Shut up! For once you're going to listen to me. Our instructions these people. But at every turn you've got us more and more enmeshed with them. If that's adventure, you can have it.\" Tendal 13 sat down wearily and sank his head in his hands. \"It was you who conceived the child right out from under its mother's nose' were your exact words. And before I could stop you, you did. Only you forgot an important factor in the equation—the dog, Tiger. And you nursed a dogbite most space halfway to nowhere with two broken legs, a spinal injury, concussion and some of the finest bruises you ever saw.\" These twentieth century machines aren't what they ought to be,\" Arvid 6 said. \"You never run out of excuses, do you, Arvid? Remember what you said in the Ultroom when you pushed the lever clear over and transferred Kanad back 6,000 years? 'My hand slipped.' As simple as that. 'My hand go back and rescue the life germ of Kanad out of each era he'd be born in.\" Tendal 13 turned and looked steadily and directly at Arvid 6. \"Do you know what I think? I think you deliberately pushed the lever over as far as it would go . That's how simple I think it was.\" Arvid 6 flushed, turned away and looked at the floor. \"What crazy things have you been doing since I've been gone?\" Tendal 13 asked. Arvid 6 sighed. \"After what you just said I guess it wouldn't amuse you, although it has me. They got to me right after the accident before I had a chance to collect my wits, dematerialize or \"That's right.\" \"And you amused yourself with him.\" \"I suppose you'd think so.\" \"Who do you tell them you are?\" \"John Smith. A rather prevalent name here, I understand. I be around 2250. Things will be more difficult than ever there, probably.\" \"Do you think Kanad will be angry about all this?\" blame, wanting rejuvenating at only 300 years. Some have waited a thousand or more or until their bones are like paper.\" \"I just wonder how angry Kanad will be,\" Arvid muttered. HB92167. Ultroom Error. Tendal 13. Arvid 6. Kanad transfer out of 1951 complete. Next Kanad transfer ready. 2267. Phullam 19, son of Orla 39 and Rhoda R, 22H Level M, Hemisphere B, Quadrant 3, Sector I. Arrive his 329th Day. TB92167 Arvid 6 rose from the cot and the two men faced each other. \"Before we leave, Arvid,\" Tendal 13 started to say. \"I know, I know. You want me to let you handle everything.\" \"Exactly. Is that too much to ask after all you've done?\" barred door the jailer fumbled with the keys and clumsily tried several with no luck. Arvid 6, an amused set to his mouth and devilment in his eyes, watched the jailer's expression as he walked through the bars of the door. He laughed as he saw the jailer's eyes bulge. \"Arvid!\" Tendal 13 walked briskly through the door, snatched Arvid 6 by the shoulders and shook him. The jailer watched stupified as the two men vanished in the middle of\n\n<question>:\nWho is John Smith?\n\n<options>:\nA Mr. Laughton\nB Tendal 13\nC Kanad\nD Arvid 6\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
990
|
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>:\nrelentlessly toward him. He awoke still screaming.... A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a With never a moment to rest, the pursuit Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him. Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it was the dead man's hand. \" Ben scowled. \"What happens if there He lay biting his lip, staring at the photo of Jacob. She touched his hand and it seemed that sadness now dominated the flurry of emotion unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine. that had coursed through her. They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows? Frowning, he sat down—he and the dead man. forgotten grandeur. For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead man. He thought, Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips spitting whiskey-slurred curses. Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the whiteness of death. The large eyes would stare. Blood would trickle from a corner of the gaping mouth. You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a memory that has burned into your mind. been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate. Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white, crimson-braided uniform of the Odyssey's Cobb followed. \"You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like people to call you a sucker.\" Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and \"Thas what you are—a sucker. You're young now. Wait ten years. You'll be dyin' of radiation rot or a meteor'll get you. Wait and see, sucker!\" Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and without warning, it welled up into savage fury. His fist struck the man on the chin. Cobb's eyes gaped in shocked horror. He spun backward. His head cracked sickeningly on the edge of the bar. The sound was like a punctuation mark signaling the end of life. He sank to the floor, eyes glassy, blood tricking down his jaw. Ben knew that he was dead. Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as, a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger. He ran. For some twenty minutes, he raced through a dizzying, nightmare world He was sorry he'd hit Cobb, of course. He was not sorry he'd run. Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision. You can do two things , he thought. You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do. That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant second, to destroy a man's life and his dream? There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him as constantly as breath flowed into his lungs. He jumped. \"Oh. You still here?\" \" Oui. ?\" Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy. \" Ai-yee reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The Martian kid, perhaps? Far down the darkened aisle nearest him, his eyes caught a flash of wheel with Ben as their focal point. Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded, a chorus of angry murmurs. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away. Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward, falling. The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised. escaping from a container. A dime-sized section of the concrete wall ahead of him crumbled. He stumbled forward. They were using deadly neuro-pistols now, not the Another second , his brain screamed. Just another second— Or would the exits be guarded? He heard the hiss. It hit directly in the small of his back. There was no pain, just a slight pricking sensation, like the shallow jab of a needle. He froze as if yanked to a stop by a noose. His body seemed to be mortocain was spreading like icy fire into every fiber and muscle of his body. He staggered like a man of stone moving in slow motion. He'd have fifteen—maybe twenty—seconds before complete lethargy of mind and body overpowered him. In the dark world beyond his fading consciousness, he heard a voice Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that someone had seized it. A soft feminine voice spoke to him. \"You're wounded? They hit you?\" \"Yes.\" His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word. \"You want to escape—even now?\" \"You're sure?\" the voice persisted. \"I'm sure,\" Ben managed to say. \"I have no antidote. You may die.\" His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection, massage and rest, a man could recover from the effects of mortocain within half a day. Without treatment, the paralysis could spread to heart and lungs. It could become a paralysis of death. An effective weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender at once. He didn't hear the answer or anything else. Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to consciousness was an intangible evolution from a world of black nothingness to a dream-like state of awareness. Finally he saw the face and figure that stood at his side. \"You are better?\" the kind voice asked. straight brown hair was combed backward, tight upon her scalp, and drawn together in a knot at the nape of her neck. \"I—I am better,\" he murmured. His words were still slow and thick. \"I \"Why?\" he asked again. \"It would be a long story. Perhaps I'll tell you tomorrow.\" A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness. \"Tell me, will—will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?\" He lay back then, panting, exhausted. fight in Luna City, you struck and killed a man named Arthur Cobb, a pre-fab salesman. You've been charged with second degree murder and \"The man I killed—did he have a wife?\" She hesitated. He thought, He sank into the softness of his bed. As he turned over on his side, his gaze fell upon an object on a bureau in a far corner of the room. He sat straight up, his chest heaving. Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his brain. The dead man returned to him. Bloodied lips cursed at him. Glassy eyes accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night. And towering above him was a red-bearded man whose great hands reached down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and\n\n<question>:\nWhat is the irony in Ben's contempt for a single action destroying \"a man's life and his dream?\"\n\n<options>:\nA If he had stayed and made the decision to confess, he wouldn't have ruined his life.\nB He'd just deliberately ended a man's life, and his running from what he's done.\nC It's against the morals of what he claims to stand by.\nD He'd just done the same to a man by striking him without thought, and is now running from his guilt.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "D"
}
] |
1,808
|
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>:\nSTAR MOTHER By ROBERT F. YOUNG A touching story of the most enduring love in all eternity. That night her son was the first star. She stood motionless in the garden, one hand pressed against her heart, watching him rise above the fields where he had played as a boy, where he had and she he was thinking of her standing alone in the April night with her memories whether he was thinking of the verandahed house behind her, with its empty rooms and silent halls, that once round and round the world on a celestial carousel, encased in she thought. Why don't doing splendidly. Expect to bring your son down sometime tomorrow . She went about her work as usual, collecting the eggs and allocating them in their cardboard boxes, then setting off in the station wagon on her Tuesday morning run. She had expected a deluge of questions from her customers. She was not disappointed. \"Is Terry really way up there all alone, Martha?\" \"Aren't you scared , Martha?\" \"I do hope they can get him back down all right, Martha.\" She supposed it must have given them quite a turn to have their egg woman change into a star mother overnight. She hadn't expected the TV interview, though, and she would have avoided it if it had been politely possible. But what could setting up their equipment in the backyard? What could she say when the suave young man came up to her and said, \"We want you to know that we're all very proud of your boy up there, ma'am, and we hope you'll do us the honor of answering a few questions.\" Terry, as was fitting. From the way the suave young man asked them, though, she got the impression that he was trying to prove that her son was just like any other average whenever she opened her mouth to mention, say, how he used to study till all hours of the night, or how difficult it had been for him to make friends because of his shyness, or the fact that he she started to mention any of these things, the suave young man was in great haste to interrupt her and to twist her words, by requestioning, into a different meaning altogether, till Terry's behavior suave young man apparently considered the norm, but which, if followed, Martha was sure, would produce not young men bent on exploring space but trivia. A few of the questions concerned herself: Was Terry her only child? (\"Yes.\") What had happened to her husband? (\"He was killed in the Korean War.\") What did she think of the new law granting star mothers top priority on any and all information relating to their sons? (\"I war mothers of World War II.\") everything repacked into their cars and trucks and made their departure. Martha fixed herself a light supper, then donned an old suede jacket of Terry's and right that she should be outside when the stars started to come out. Presently they did, and she watched them wink on, one by one, in the deepening darkness of the sky. She'd never been much of a one for the stars most of her life she'd been much too busy on Earth to bother with things celestial. She could remember, when she was much younger and Bill was courting her, looking up at the moon sometimes and once in a while, when a star fell, making a wish. But this was different. It was different because now she had a personal interest in the sky, a new affinity with its myriad inhabitants. And how bright they became when you kept looking at them! They seemed to come alive, almost, pulsing brilliantly down out of the blackness of the night ... And they were different colors, too, she noticed with a start. ... green ... orange ... It grew cold in the April garden and she could see her breath. a strange clarity about the night, that she had never known before ... She glanced at her watch, was astonished to see that after nine. Where had the time gone? Tremulously she faced the southern horizon ... and saw her Terry appear in his shining chariot, riding up the star-pebbled path of his orbit, a star in his own right, dropping swiftly now, down, down, and out of sight beyond the dark wheeling mass of the Earth ... She took a deep, proud breath, realized that she was wildly waving her like a little girl, and she wished return and wrapped the wish in all her love and cast it starward. Sometime tomorrow, the general's telegram had said— That meant sometime today! She rose with the sun and fed the chickens, fixed and ate her breakfast, collected the eggs and put them in their cardboard boxes, then started out on her Wednesday morning run. \"My land, Martha, I don't see how you stand it with him way up there! Doesn't it get on your nerves ?\" (\"Yes ... Yes, it does.\") \"Martha, when are they bringing him back down?\" (\"Today ... Today !\") \"It must be wonderful being a star mother, Martha.\" (\"Yes, it is—in a way.\") Wonderful ... and terrible. If only he can last it out for a few more hours, she thought. If only they can bring him down safe and sound. Then the vigil will be over, and some other mother can take over the awesome responsibility of having a son become a star— If only ... on satellite hull severely mechanism, making ejection impossible. to find another means of accomplishing your son's return. Terry!— See the little boy playing beneath tiny cars up and down the tiny streets of his make-believe village the little boy, his fuzz of hair gold in the sunlight, his cherub-cheeks pink in the summer wind— Terry!— making near-grownup strides over the sun-seared grass the sky blue and bright behind him, the song of cicada rising and Terry ... —probably won't get a chance to write you again before take-off, but don't worry, Ma. The Explorer XII is the greatest bird they ever built. Nothing short of a direct meteorite hit can hurt it, and the odds are a million to one ... Why don't they leave the stars stars to God? on the lawn and the sun grew red and swollen over the western hills. Martha fixed supper, tried to eat, and couldn't. After a while, when the light began to fade, she slipped into Slowly the sky darkened and the stars began to appear. At her star appeared, but its swift passage blurred before her washed the darkness from the drive. A car door slammed. Martha did not move. Please God , she thought, let it be Terry , even though she knew that it turned then— \"Good evening, ma'am.\" She saw the circlet of stars on the gray epaulet she saw the stern handsome face she saw the dark tired eyes. And she again, she knew— \"The same meteorite that damaged the ejection mechanism, ma'am. It penetrated the capsule, too. We didn't find out till just a while ago—but there personally. I know how you \"It's all right.\" \"We will, of course, make every effort to bring back his ... remains ... so that he can have a fitting burial on Earth.\" \"I beg your pardon, ma'am?\" She raised her eyes to the patch of sky where her son had passed in his shining metal sarcophagus. Sirius blossomed there, blue-white and beautiful. She raised her eyes still higher—and beheld the vast parterre of vivid forget-me-nots, its far-flung blooms of Betelguese and Rigel, of Bellatrix and Saiph ... And higher yet—and there flamed the exquisite flower beds of Taurus and Gemini, there burgeoned the riotous wreath of the Crab there lay the pulsing petals of the Pleiades ... And now, slowly, he lowered them. \"I think I understand, ma'am. And I'm glad that's the way you want it ... The stars are beautiful tonight, aren't they.\" \"More beautiful than they've ever been,\" she said. After the general had gone, she looked up once more at the vast and variegated garden of the sky where her son lay buried, slowly back to the memoried house. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.\n\n<question>:\nHow has being a star mother changed Martha?\n\n<options>:\nA Martha has become more extroverted\nB She has a new appreciation for the stars.\nC She has become conceited thanks to her newfound fame.\nD Martha's new celebrity status has doubled her egg business.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
213
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\nTHE MADMAN FROM EARTH BY KEITH LAUMER You don't have to be crazy to be an earth diplomat—but on Groac it sure helps! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from connection with the assault on two peace keepers and illegal entry into the offices of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.\" the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I \"The Consul for the Terrestrial States,\" Retief said, \"presents his compliments, et cetera, to the Ministry of Culture of the Groacian It is clear you are in the hands of a dangerous lunatic. As always, the Groaci wish only friendship with the Terrestrials, but—\" \"Miss Meuhl,\" Fith said, \"a peace squad waits outside your consulate. Autonomy, and with reference to the Ministry's invitation to attend a The door burst inward. A crowd of crested Groaci pressed into the room, \"You're violating Terrestrial territory, Shluh,\" Retief said steadily. \"I suggest you move back out the same way you came in.\" \"I invited them here,\" Miss Meuhl spoke up. \"They are here at my of armed Groaci in the consulate?\" \"Why, why,\" Miss Meuhl stammered. \"Yes, of course. And I do want to be so busy.\" \"Well!\" Miss Meuhl said. \"May I ask where you'll be if something comes you do. Don't add violation of the Consulate to the list of Groacian with the Groaci. I certainly hope you're not thinking of openly intruding—\" \"Why?\" \"The Groaci are a very sensitive race. They don't welcome outworlders raking up things. They've been gracious enough to let us live down the fact that Terrestrials subjected them to deep humiliation on one occasion.\" \"The importance of my task here,\" Retief said, enunciating the glottal dialect with difficulty. \"My interest in local history.\" \"The impossibility of access to outworlders. To depart quietly.\" \"The necessity that I enter.\" \"The specific instructions of the Archivist.\" The Groacian's voice rose direction of the Terrestrial Consulate General. The few Groacians on high-wheeled ground cars puffed silently along the resilient pavement. The air was clean and cool. At the office, Miss Meuhl would be waiting with another list of Groacian equivalent of a bar. Retief went in. A Groacian bartender was dispensing clay pots of alcoholic drink from the edge of the pit. \"To sample a true Groacian beverage.\" decide whether I like it.\" \"To be grappled in by peace-keepers for poisoning of—foreigners.\" The The Groacian reached for him, missed. A passer-by stepped around him, Groacian. are two gentlemen waiting to see you. Groacian gentlemen.\" \"Government men, I imagine. Word travels fast.\" Retief pulled off his cape. \"This saves me the trouble of paying another call at the Foreign Ministry.\" \"What have you been doing? They seem very upset, I don't mind telling you.\" Two Groaci wearing heavy eye-shields and elaborate crest ornaments \"I am Fith, of the Terrestrial Desk, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Consul,\" the taller Groacian said, in lisping Terran. \"May I present \"One hour ago,\" The Groacian said, \"a Groacian national was brought foreigner. A Terrestrial, to be precise. Investigation by my department indicates that the description of the culprit closely matches that of the Terrestrial Consul.\" episode! And you—\" \"Terrible? I understand that a Terrestrial task force stood off Groac and sent a delegation down to ask questions. They got some funny answers, and stayed on to dig around a little. After a week they left. Somewhat annoying to the Groaci, maybe—at the most. If they were \"Why did the government fall, Fith? It was just after the task force paid its visit, and before the arrival of the first Terrestrial diplomatic mission.\" \"This is an internal matter!\" Fith cried, in his faint Groacian voice. \"The new regime has shown itself most amiable to you Terrestrials. It has outdone itself—\" \"—to keep the Terrestrial consul and his staff in the dark,\" Retief said. \"And the same goes for the few terrestrial businessmen you've visaed. This continual round of culture no social contacts outside the diplomatic circle no travel permits to visit out-lying districts, or your satellite—\" back—about nine, I think—there was a little parade held here. Some curious looking creatures were captured. After being securely caged, they were exhibited to the gentle Groaci public. Hauled through the streets. Very educational, no doubt. A highly cultural show. communicate with each other. Altogether it was a very amusing exhibit. \"Tell me, Shluh, what happened to those six Terrestrials after the narco-interrogation would get that out of any Groacian who saw the parade.\" \"Yes,\" Fith said weakly. \"It is true, they were Terrestrials. But there was no killing.\" Terrestrials ... were unharmed. Naturally, we feared them. They were strange to us. We had never before seen such beings.\" came, we realized our error. But we feared to speak. We purged our guilty leaders, concealed what had happened, and ... offered our friendship. We invited the opening of diplomatic relations. We made The two Groacians exchanged looks. A Groacian threw a switch. A weak bluish glow sprang up. Terrific B7 New Terra' were lettered in bright chrome duralloy. \"How did you get it in here?\" Retief asked. \"It was hauled here from the landing point, some nine miles distant,\" where acceleration couches had been mounted, the empty instrument Silently, the Groacians led the way back out through the tunnel and toward the Terrestrial. \"Out of deference to your diplomatic status, Terrestrial, I shall ignore your insulting remarks,\" Fith said in his reedy voice. \"Let us \"I advise you to remain very close to your consulate,\" Fith said. \"I advise you to dismiss these fancies from your mind, and to enjoy the cultural aspects of life at Groac. Especially, I should not venture out of the city, or appear overly curious about matters of concern only to the Groacian government.\" Meuhl snorted. \"I really can hardly blame the Groaci. They are not a sophisticated race they had never before met aliens.\" \"You're ready to forgive a great deal, Miss Meuhl. But it's not what happened nine years ago I'm concerned with. It's what's happening now. far. The cruiser itself must be somewhere near by. I want to know where!\" \"The Groaci don't know. They're a very cultured, gentle people. You can do irreparable harm to the reputation of Terrestrials if you insist—\" the Groaci is to dispose of both of us. We're the only ones who know touch with you via hand-phone.\" \"What are you planning to do?\" blast in here and anyway, they won't make things worse by killing you. A force can be here in a week.\" \"What in the world—Where have you been? What's happened to your clothing?\" at least.\" He jotted figures on a pad. \"Warm up the official sender. I have a long transmission for Regional Headquarters.\" \"Are you going to tell me where you've been?\" in all my years in the Corps, I've never encountered a personality less suited to diplomatic work.\" going to, Miss Meuhl. But until I've heard A Groacian official appeared on the screen. \"Yolanda Meuhl,\" he said without preamble, \"for the Foreign Minister of the Groacian Autonomy, I herewith accredit you as Terrestrial Consul to Groac, in accordance with the advices transmitted to my government direct from the Terrestrial Headquarters. As consul, you are requested to make available for questioning Mr. J. Retief, former consul, in\n\n<question>:\nWhat was on exhibit in the Groacian parade?\n\n<options>:\nA Groacian government officials\nB people they had taken as prisoners\nC animals from all over the galaxy\nD people visiting from Earth\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "B"
}
] |
2,320
|
quality
|
[
{
"human": "Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.\n\n<passage>:\n\"But the book is due! The Conference speech—\" \"I think we'll make some changes in the book,\" Lessing said slowly. \"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian. silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's \"I know, I know.\" Lessing chewed his lip. \"I don't like it. We'd better set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with. I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up.\" Lessing from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book, and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled. Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really get back to work again. The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the International Psionics Conference: Dear Dr. Lessing: In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle theory to work by— At his elbow the intercom buzzed. \"A gentleman to see you,\" the girl said. \"A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir.\" stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the Master in the trembling flesh!\" Lessing frowned. \"Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—\" \"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed,\" the young man said airily. \"Of \"If you've come here to be insulting,\" Lessing said coldly, \"you're just wasting time.\" He reached for the intercom switch. \"I think you'd better wait before you do that,\" Melrose said sharply, \"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month \"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of 'Theory',\" Melrose said. \"I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an Melrose. \"We've done a lot of work on it, too.\" misdirected, is all.\" \"According to your Theory, that is.\" \"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic enough.\" \"Bother lunch.\" He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. \"We've got a guest here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us....\" \"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating.\" Lessing ground his teeth. \"I should be running him now instead of beating the bushes with this—\" He broke off to glare at young Melrose. Melrose grinned. \"I've heard you have quite a place up here.\" \"It's—unconventional, at any rate,\" Lessing snapped. I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're digging for it?\" \"We're not digging any pit,\" Lessing exploded angrily. \"We're \"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea,\" said Melrose sourly. \"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not I'll play along.\" Lessing glared at him. \"When we began studying this psi-potential, we found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper at it any more?\" \"And you think you have an answer,\" said Melrose. \"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains the available data.\" \"The major problem,\" Lessing said, \"has been to shield the children from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen.\" \"It blocks off all types of psi activity?\" asked Melrose. \"As far as we can measure, yes.\" \"Which may not be very far.\" Jack Dorffman burst in: \"What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem effective for our purposes.\" \"But you don't know why,\" added Melrose. psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions where they can develope what potential they have— Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of activity. \"What are they doing?\" Melrose asked after watching the children a few moments. Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. \"Now, I want you to watch this very closely.\" Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. \"Perhaps you're beginning to see what I'm driving at,\" he said slowly. \"Yes,\" said Melrose. \"I think I'm beginning to see.\" He scratched his jaw. \"You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a Melrose paced down the narrow room. \"This is very good,\" he said suddenly, his voice earnest. \"You have fine facilities here, good workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never \"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?\" \"I would.\" \"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns,\" said Melrose At first Lessing pretended to work finally he snapped off the tape recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force. \"Stop worrying about it,\" Dorffman urged. \"He's a crackpot. He's crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours.\" Dorffman's face was intense. \"Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have to throw them off and keep going.\" Lessing shook his head. \"Maybe. But this field of work is different \"Of course,\" said Lessing. \"According to the theory. The theory says that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely. We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was\n\n<question>:\nWhy is Melrose so opposed to Lessing publishing his book?\n\n<options>:\nA The field of psionics is new. If Lessing turns out to be wrong, the whole field of study could be discredited.\nB Lessing is Melrose's closest friend. He doesn't want to see Lessing embarrassed if his theory is proved wrong.\nC Melrose runs a task force against the publishing of junk science.\nD Melrose is also studying psionics and wants to delay Lessing by any means so that he can publish first.\n\n<answer>:\n",
"assistant": "A"
}
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.