inputs stringlengths 17 1.05M | targets stringlengths 0 2.92M | _template_idx int64 0 9 | _task_source stringclasses 1 value | _task_name stringclasses 70 values | _template_type stringclasses 1 value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
To find a new job 0
Please fix the punctuation. | To find a new job [0%] | 3 | Flan2021 | fix_punct | zs_opt |
Assault weapons are not necessary for self defence or hunting.
Come up with some evidence to support this claim. | 1. Simpson , Connor , Dianne Feinstein Wants to Ban Assault Weapons , , 16 December 2012 , Jackson , Jesse , Police Chiefs Are Right : Ban Assault Weapons , , 3 August 2012 , Kopel , David B. , Rational Basis Analysis of Assault Weapon Prohibition , , Vol .20 , 1994 pp.381-417 , p. 393 ,
2. These weapons are intended to wound rather than to kill so would certainly not be useful in taking down a deer .
3. Moreover he also concedes a hunter will carry only a few rounds so the large capacity magazine is also useless for sport .
4. To use an assault weapon would to spray an assailant with bullets from an assault weapon would be using disproportionate force that will not only harm the assailant but will likely hit anyone else nearby .
5. Even those who are against an assault weapons ban such as David Kopel concede that for the most part these are not useful weapons for hunting .
6. In a self defense scenario the person defending themselves need to have enough ammunition to provide deterrence , however they would have to be unwise to take on several assailants so there should be little need to have more than 10 rounds in the magazine .
7. Law enforcement expert Leonard J. Supenski has testified because of potential harm to others in the household , passersby , and bystanders , too much firepower is a hazard as in self defense , the defenders will often fire until they have expended all the bullets in their magazine .
8. As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg argues `` We 've got to really question whether military-style weapons with big magazines belong on the streets of America in this day and age .
9. Police chiefs such as Ralph Godbee of Detroit argue `` We 're talking about weapons that are made for war you can shoot 50 to 60 rounds within a minute . | 8 | Flan2021 | opinion_abstracts_idebate | zs_opt |
Saint Marie is a fictional island in the Lesser Antilles which serves as the setting for the BBC crime drama television series Death in Paradise.
What's the best answer to this question: is there a st. marie island in the caribbean?
pick from the following. A). no; B). yes;...A: | A). | 4 | Flan2021 | bool_q:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Mami, toho bych chtěl k Vánocům.
Translate this to English? | Mum, I want this for Christmas! | 3 | Flan2021 | wmt16_translate/cs-en:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
This question has options. How would someone go about accomplishing this goal?
To make 'snow' on top of your chocolate yule log cake
Select from: (I) This one is easy. Sift powdered sugar onto the cake from high up to create the illusion of gently falling snow. (II) This one is easy. Sift powdered sugar onto the cake from low down to create the illusion of gently falling snow. | (I) | 7 | Flan2021 | piqa:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
What is the solution?
Solve 0 = -118*j - 281 + 45 for j. | -2 | 2 | Flan2021 | math_dataset/algebra__linear_1d:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Write an article using the following points:
Two men had a close encounter with a great white shark near Newcastle. The shark circled their tinny, swam under it and hit the boat with his fin. The incident occurred south of Newcastle at Swansea on Sunday.
Article: | Terrifying footage shows the moment a five-metre shark hit a small fishing boat south of Newcastle. The video was filmed south of Newcastle at Swansea about 10.30am on Sunday. This comes as a procession of sharks, including the close encounter at Newcastle, has continued to shut down beaches along the NSW coastline. Manly Beach reopened on Sunday afternoon following a shark sighting, while Newcastle beaches remained closed for a record ninth consecutive day. Two men had a close encounter with a five-metre great white shark while fishing near Newcastle. In footage posted to Facebook on Sunday a shark circles the tinny, swims underneath the fishermen and hits the boat with his fin. In the video the two men, Tim Watson and Allan de Sylva, can be heard getting increasingly worried by the shark as it circles their boat. 'It's bigger than the boat!' one man says. 'That's so scary man, I want a spear gun!' The shark then hits the boat, prompting the two men to make a getaway. 'Can we go? Can we please go?' one says. 'Did he just hit it? Let's f***ing get out of here!' Mr Watson, 24, told Fairfax Media the boat rocked 'a solid two to three foot to the edge'. 'If it had hit much harder the boat would have taken in a bit of water.' The sea off Newcastle was first declared a no-go area when the great white, nicknamed Bruce, was seen at Merewether Beach on January 10. The shark circled the men's tiny tinny, swam underneath the fishermen and hit the boat with his fin. A helicopter crew spent Sunday scouring the ocean for signs of the fearsome predator along with a three-and-a-half metre shark that lunched on a dolphin last week. Surf Life Saving NSW said no decision on reopening the beaches would be made until Monday, while beach inspectors previously said they would only reopen beaches if the sharks were not spotted for at least 24 hours. 'You don't get a second chance with these things, (a) bite can be fatal,' Nobbys Beach inspector Paul Bernard told AAP. At Manly, many swimmers refused to be intimidated and remained in the sea on Sunday, according to Surf Life Saving NSW. A member of the public had raised the alarm after spotting an unspecified type of shark while swimming at 1.30pm. 'We've got the inflatable rescue boats out to chase it away,' a spokeswoman for Surf Life Saving NSW told AAP. 'The problem is there were already a lot of swimmers and surfers in the water who won't come out.' Shark attacks have also closed other NSW beaches in recent days. A procession of sharks, including the close encounter at Newcastle, has continued to shut down NSW beaches. Lifeguards were stopping people from going in the water at Port Kembla and Windang beaches near Wollongong on Sunday. A Surf Life Saving NSW spokeswoman said this was due to a dead seal and injured shark that had both been attacked by what was believed to be a much larger shark. And on Friday a 17-year-old boy was bitten on the hand by a 1.5 metre shark at Narrawallee Beach, about 200km south of Sydney. Sam Smith was flown to hospital with lacerations after he tried to film the shark while spear-fishing. Increased marine activity and warm weather are thought to be possible reasons for the sharks' prolonged presence. CSIRO shark expert Barry Bruce, whose name has been used for the great white off Newcastle and for a character in the hit animated film Finding Nemo, said the creatures were common along the NSW coastline. It's only when they stop near a heavily populated area, like Newcastle, that people notice them. The sea off Newcastle was first declared a no-go area when the great white, nicknamed Bruce, was seen at Merewether Beach on January 10. | 7 | Flan2021 | cnn_dailymail:3.4.0 | zs_opt |
Some pesticides are considered too hazardous for sale to the general public and are designated restricted use pesticides. Only certified applicators, who have passed an exam, may purchase or supervise the application of restricted use pesticides. Records of sales and use are required to be maintained and may be audited by government agencies charged with the enforcement of pesticide regulations. These records must be made available to employees and state or territorial environmental regulatory agencies.
What are pesticides that are thought to be extremely dangerous called? | restricted use pesticides | 2 | Flan2021 | squad/v1.1:3.0.0 | zs_opt |
Select from:
(1). He gave him another scoop of ice cream.
(2). He refused to give him another scoop.
Write a story that ends with: (1). | Danny was working at the local ice cream shop this summer. He was very excited to have started his first job. On his first day a little boy dropped his ice cream on the floor. Without hesitation, Danny knew just what to do. (1). | 8 | Flan2021 | story_cloze/2016:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Well, I don't know what the question is. It may relate to your standing objection, but we'll note that. We'll hold that thought, and you can proceed with the question, because all we have is the exhibit that is a newspaper article. So let's proceed with the question. There's no need to restate your objection, unless you want to put a finer point on the objection. But at this point, proceed with your question.
Based on that paragraph can we conclude that this sentence is true?
An objection to a question will be noted in the future about the newspaper article exhibit.
Choose your answer from:
+Yes.
+It's impossible to say.
+No. | It's impossible to say | 1 | Flan2021 | anli/r3:0.1.0 | zs_opt |
Translate "I feel that this could constitute an essential and even priority task for the future representative of a strong common foreign policy – a policy that we all wish very much to see." to Finnish? | Tämä voisi nähdäkseni olla hartaasti toivotun vahvan yhteisen ulkopolitiikan tulevan edustajan keskeinen ja jopa ensisijainen tehtävä. | 7 | Flan2021 | wmt16_translate/fi-en:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
MonclerClassicDownVestSleevelessWomenZipBlue,Moncleraclothingsensationbeginninginthefashioncapitaloftheworld,France.Monclerwasfoundinthe1950'sbyReneRamilion.Thiscollectionhasbeencreatedtointerpretanurbanandmodernstylethroughtheeyesofclassandelegance.Monclerisacollectionspecialisinginoutdoorclothing.Size:
Generate a sentence using the above characters: | Moncler Classic Down Vest Sleeveless Women Zip Blue,Moncler a clothing sensation beginning in the fashion capital of the world, France. Moncler was found in the 1950's by Rene Ramilion. This collection has been created to interpret an urban and modern style through the eyes of class and elegance. Moncler is a collection specialising in outdoor clothing.Size: | 0 | Flan2021 | word_segment | zs_opt |
1. I confess I find it too opaque to make the kind of investment that would qualify me as a real fan. But it should be seen.
2. This is a work of profound and melancholic beauty; every bit as essential in the 21st century as it was in the 20th.
3. Not about haunting impermanence but hollowness and fluidity. Surveillance-camera and cyborg-eye shots make us feel like we're in an electronic casing, looking out. And both gender and the physical body are fluid and temporary shells.
4. For sheer mind-expanding sci-fi strangeness this is hard to beat
5. Ghost In The Shell is an ultra-violent, rocket-paced film-over and out in just over 80 minutes-but it's a poetic one, too.
6. Occasionally Ghost in the Shell shows its age and the added CGI elements, while appropriate for the story, also help make this film feel more dated than it might have otherwise.
7. It's that rare example of spectacle and substance meshing beautifully.
8. Ghost in the Shell stands as one of the pioneering films of anime history, one that captures the imagination with its intricate story and dazzles the eyes with its gorgeous animation.
9. Thrilling, compelling, moving and visually splendid, this isn't just a classic anime, it's a great film.
10. This is exactly the kind of film that James Cameron would make if they ever let him through the Disney front gates.
What is the consensus? | A stunning feat of modern animation, Ghost in the Shell offers a thoughtful, complex treat for anime fans, as well as a perfect introduction for viewers new to the genre. | 3 | Flan2021 | opinion_abstracts_rotten_tomatoes | zs_opt |
The donkey wished a wart on its hind leg would disappear, and *it* did.
Are "it" and "wart" the same thing in the aforementioned sentence (choose from options)?
Options:
(1). no
(2). yes | (2). | 4 | Flan2021 | super_glue/wsc.fixed:1.0.2 | zs_opt |
Read the text and determine if the sentence is true (see options at the end):
"Everyday Food from the test kitchens of Martha Stewart Living" was a digest size cooking magazine and PBS public television program published and produced by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSLO). Both feature quick and easy recipes targeted at supermarket shoppers and the everyday cook.
Sentence: The recipes from "Everyday Food from the test kitchens of Martha Stewart Living" are simple and rapid to prepare.
Choose from: I. Yes; II. It's impossible to say; III. No; | I. | 6 | Flan2021 | anli/r1:0.1.0 | zs_opt |
The current President of Brazilian Central Bank, Henrique Meirelles, is accused of financial fraud among other accusations.
Question with options: Based on the paragraph above can we conclude that "The current President of Honduras is Manuel Zelaya."?
a. yes b. no | b. | 0 | Flan2021 | super_glue/rte:1.0.2 | zs_opt |
Read the text and answer the questions.
CHAPTER V. THE FIRST SPARK PASSES
"Now, gentlemen," shouted the auctioneer when he had finished his oration upon the girl's attractions, "what 'tin I bid? Eight hundred?"
Stephen caught his breath. There was a long pause no one cared to start the bidding.
"Come, gentlemen, come! There's my friend Alf Jenkins. He knows what she's worth to a cent. What'll you give, Alf? Is it eight hundred?"
Mr. Jenkins winked at the auction joined in the laugh.
"Three hundred!" he said.
The auctioneer was mortally offended. Then some one cried:--"Three hundred and fifty!"
It was young Colfax. He was recognized at once, by name, evidently as a person of importance.
"Thank you, Mistah Colfax, suh," said the auctioneer, with a servile wave of the hand in his direction, while the crowd twisted their necks to see him. He stood very straight, very haughty, as if entirely oblivious to his conspicuous position.
"Three seventy-five!"
"That's better, Mistah Jenkins," said the auctioneer, sarcastically. He turned to the girl, who might have stood to a sculptor for a figure of despair. Her hands were folded in front of her, her head bowed down. The auctioneer put his hand under her chin and raised it roughly. "Cheer up, my gal," he said, "you ain't got nothing to blubber about now."
Hester's breast heaved and from her black eyes there shot a magnificent look of defiance. He laughed. That was the white blood.
The white blood!
Clarence Colfax had his bid taken from his lips. Above the heads of the people he had a quick vision of a young man with a determined face, whose voice rang clear and strong,-- "Four hundred!"
1. Who was the second person to bid?
2. What did he offer?
3. Did that make Jenkins get more serious?
4. What was his new bid?
5. What was his first?
6. Did he act goofy with his first?
7. What did the auctioneer suggest for the first bid?
8. Was there a fourth?
9. from who?
10. Who was getting ready to bid when this new man did?
11. What is being sold?
12. What is her name?
13. Is she scared?
14. How does she feel?
15. What does the auctioneer see that as?
16. How does she show it to him?
17. What kind of look does she give him?
18. Where was she looking before that?
19. where were her hands?
20. Does the auctioneer like the first bid?
Numbered answers: | 1. Colfax
2. Three hundred and fifty
3. Yes
4. Three seventy-five
5. Three hundred
6. Yes
7. Eight hundred
8. Yes
9. a young man with a determined face
10. Clarence Colfax
11. a girl
12. Hester
13. No
14. defiant
15. the white blood.
16. from her black eyes
17. a magnificent look of defiance
18. down
19. folded in front of her
20. No | 1 | Flan2021 | coqa:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
They hope to make a bigger profit.
How much do you make a month in your new job?
Choose your answer: Does the word "make" mean the same thing in the above two sentences?
Choices:
A). different meanings.
B). the same meaning. | B). | 0 | Flan2021 | super_glue/wic:1.0.2 | zs_opt |
Write an article based on this summary:
– Don't be surprised if you hear Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah dominating airwaves today as a tribute to the man described by some as the best songwriter who ever lived. But there's quite the story behind the song covered by more than 300 artists, including Rufus Wainwright, Willie Nelson, Justin Timberlake, Neil Diamond, and Bob Dylan. Part of an album released in the US by an independent label in 1986—Sony "didn't think it was good enough," Cohen later said—it took more than a decade before it became famous, USA Today reports. Jeff Buckley, who first heard John Cale's cover on a 1991 Cohen tribute album, recorded his own version in 1994. It was that version that finally became popular when Buckley died in 1997. The creation of the song is also fascinating. Cohen reportedly wrote some 80 verses for Hallelujah—which took five years to complete—though the finished version contained only five, reports the Washington Post. He later recalled sitting in a New York hotel room in his underwear while "banging my head on the floor and saying, 'I can't finish this song."" Today, it's considered "pop music's closest thing to a sacred text," according to Maclean's magazine. In his 2012 book on the song, Alan Light called it "an open-ended meditation on love and faith" that's both "joyous and despondent, a celebration and a lament." Of course, it's not the only Cohen song worth listening to. Time points out five others, including one released this year.
Article: |
Photograph by Joel Saget/Getty Images.
On the occasion of Leonard Cohen’s death, Slate remembers the artist with a reprint of this 2012 post:
Check out our Spotify playlist of the Leonard Cohen songs discussed in this essay.
Leonard Cohen has a new album out: Old Ideas, his 12th, and his first in seven years. He's 77 now, and if you know Cohen you know his age will get its due in the new songs. The title, of course, has a double meaning, the second being that these songs are ideas about getting old. His life is his wellspring, and life has amounted to a long and singularly winding road for this troubadour.
Born in Montreal in 1934 of Polish and Lithuanian Jewish parents, Cohen was first a modestly successful poet. He learned guitar to pick up girls and got into songwriting partly because he was tired of being poor. His first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, came out in 1967, when he was 32. Probably it got green-lighted in the wake of Bob Dylan's success, when Dylan had demonstrated to record executives that you could make highly personal, elusively poetic, scraggly sounding records that the public would buy. Of course, Dylan was riding a folk wave when he emerged in the early ’60s, and Cohen caught that wave too.
I'd like to compare those two, in the process of looking back over Cohen's life and songs. He and Dylan have been working for decades without any visible connection or competition. In practical terms there is no competition, because Dylan has been by far the more visible and influential artist. But if Cohen has always sung in the shadow of Dylan, in the quality of the work I suggest he has been in nobody's shadow.
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A long career has done Cohen well by me, and I imagine a lot of listeners. In the ’60s and ’70s, I liked a few of his songs well enough, though I found the voice and the tunes not as striking as Dylan's brassy honk and his unforgettable melodies in the folk days. "Blowin' in the Wind," "Mister Tambourine Man," any number of Dylan songs seemed timeless, as if they'd evolved through many voices over many years. (Some, including "Blowin' in the Wind," were based on traditional tunes.)
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Cohen didn't do that, probably couldn't do that. He was never the tunesmith Dylan was, and in the early years his voice actually made Dylan's sound pretty good. Cohen sang in a tenor you could call "reedy" if you wanted to be nice, "nasal" if you didn't. They're both mediocre guitar players; any number of high-school students could play rings around them. Cohen's melodies tended to start at the bottom of his range, ascend toward the top of his range—which was not very far—then descend and screw around in the lower region for the rest of the verse. His early hit "Suzanne" is a case in point.
The lyrics were a different matter. Few if any Cohen songs would make a dent if not for the words. His first book of poems came out in 1956, when he was still an undergrad at McGill. Since then he has published several books of verse, plus a couple of novels in the ’60s. The experience has contributed to who he is: one of the finest, most distinctive, most authentic poets to write popular song in English in the last century or so. For one example of why, recall “Who By Fire?," his meditation on untimely death and the ultimate unanswerable question.
And who by fire, who by water,
who in the sunshine, who in the night time,
who by high ordeal, who by common trial,
who in your merry merry month of May,
who by very slow decay,
and who shall I say is calling?...
And who by brave assent, who by accident,
who in solitude, who in this mirror,
who by his lady's command, who by his own hand,
who in mortal chains, who in power,
and who shall I say is calling?
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Who else in our time would or could write a lyric like that?
To put Cohen at the top of his trade is not to forget classic American song lyrics like the wordplay of Ira Gershwin or Cole Porter. But I wonder how often either of those geniuses, for such they were, actually meant what they wrote: "In time the Rockies may crumble,/ Gibraltar may tumble,/ they're only made of clay,/ but our love is here to stay." That's from Ira Gershwin. It is, I submit, exquisite bullshit, music in itself. And I wonder in what respect Dylan means "Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot/ Fighting in the captain's tower/ While calypso singers laugh at them/ And fishermen hold flowers." You wonder sometimes if Dylan is earnest about much of anything other than his scorn.
There's an unmistakable sense that Leonard Cohen means every word he sings, in his irony and his cynicism, in his pain and his exaltation. For me, all that didn't sink in for quite a while. After the mid-’70s I lost track of Cohen. I'm a classical musician, perennially struggling to pursue my craft while somehow paying the rent. For decades, the little time I had to spare for pop music I spent on the Stones, Beatles, Creedence, Joni Mitchell, Dylan, Zappa, et al. Like a lot of people I was too lazy to come to terms with Cohen's lyrics. Then cruising cable one night about 15 years ago, I came upon him standing in his usual suit, at the foot of a staircase somewhere, behind a little keyboard, singing "Democracy." It was a dry and understated but strangely powerful performance, and the song slayed me. At the end he was ushered up the stairs by a couple of babes in tight dresses. It was a memorable turn for an aging bard and self-proclaimed ladies' man.
For the first time I heard Cohen's new voice, the whiskey baritone that I like better than his old voice. His melodies may still be on the plain side, but the voice says so much more than it used to. In that voice there's a lot of years, a lot of cigarettes, stimulants, lust, regret, and hard-won wisdom. When he gets spiritual, the voice questions that wisdom but doesn't destroy it—see "Anthem" and his much-covered "Hallelujah."
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The day after catching him on TV, I went out and bought The Best of Leonard Cohen and More Best of and have been listening to them ever since. I've got more songs from various albums in the mix, but mostly it's those collections and a few of Ten New Songs, from 2001. He put together the best-of albums himself, and he chose well.
If Cohen is the finest poet of our songwriters, he's hardly a simple or a predictable one. You can never guess which direction a line is going to come from: cynical, surreal, earnest, bitter, exalted—no way to know. Eventually it adds up to a strange sense. Beside Dylan's flights of fancy and rage, Cohen's sentiments seem more immediate, more real. Or maybe I just have a touch more preference for Cohen's familiar depression tinged with something like religion than for Dylan's wit and wildness and biliousness. A prime example is "Democracy," the song that brought me back to Cohen.
Look at how the trajectory of the lines builds to an unexpected climax.
It's coming through a crack in the wall,
on a visionary flood of alcohol,
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount,
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
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That's what I mean by never knowing where a line is going to come from. The trajectory of that verse careens among, roughly, 1) surreal/alcoholic, 2) the New Testament, 3) Otis Redding, 4) surreal/economic, before we arrive at the stunning refrain.
None of this is intended to put down Dylan. At his best he's incomparable. Consider the beginning of "Highway 61 Revisited":
Oh God said to Abraham, Kill me a son.
Abe say, Man, you must be puttin' me on.
God say, No.
Abe say, Whut?
God say, You can do what you want, Abe, but, uh,
next time you see me comin', you better run.
Abe say, Where you want this killin' done?
God say: Out on Highway 61.
That's not exact because I'm quoting it from memory. Even at their weirdest, you can often quote Dylan lyrics from memory. This song is sublime in its way, also hysterical. It begins with a succinct send-up of religion before dissolving into surrealism, which is where most of the song dwells.
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If Cohen is not as wild a poet as Dylan, he's closer to the heartstrings—his and ours both. He's got his surreal side too, but it's in support of his essential realism. And in many ways he's gotten better as he got older, which few would claim about Dylan. Cohen's best songs do what I think popular song ought to do: Capture something meaningful in our lives and put it into melodies worth singing in the shower.
I'll be adding to my mix songs from Old Ideas as I get to know it. (You can hear it streamed here.) In this one Cohen doesn't bother with the music so much, and he barely bothers to sing—or maybe his voice is too frayed for that now. He's homing in on the words, in that sense maybe returning to his roots as a young poet winning prizes and admirers. The valedictory quality is inescapable, starting with the titles: "Amen," "Darkness." It begins with "Going Home," which is a stern and sardonic address to the poet from his muse, or from God, or maybe they're the same:
I love to speak with Leonard,
he's a sportsman and a shepherd,
he's a lazy bastard livin' in a suit.
But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn't welcome—
he just doesn't have the freedom to refuse.
The song has one of Cohen’s unforgettable refrains:
Going home without my burden,
going home behind the curtain,
going home without this costume that I wore.
Over the decades, Cohen's songs have steadily darkened, even as five years in a Zen monastery during the ’90s tempered some of his lifelong depression. In Old Ideas, Cohen reaches maybe the deepest black yet in “The Darkness." Here darkness is at the center of all, evoking death, naturally, but also love and regret: "Winning you was easy, but darkness was the price." Yet there's still always a small niche for hope and renewal: "Come healing of the reason, come healing of the heart." In the new album there's a kind of aura around every line, a sense of something said once and for all, and it's not all bleakness, and it's terrifically moving.
Looking over his songs from the last decades, one has one's complaints. In some periods I wish there were more acoustics and less synth and slick production. For a while he was afflicted with Phil Spector. To mention another regret: I dearly love "The Land of Plenty" from Ten New Songs, right from its gently wafting opening lick, but I wish he had let this one blossom around its unforgettable refrain:
May the lights in the land of plenty
Shine on the truth someday.
Instead, Cohen takes it into some kind of vaporous personal kvetch:
I know I said I'd meet you,
I'd meet you at the store,
but I can't buy it, baby,
I can't buy it anymore.
I have a fantasy that someday he'll give in and write two or three verses for "The Land of Plenty" that are worthy of its refrain. It could be a song to make things happen, the way "This Land Is Your Land" and "We Shall Overcome" do. But in Ten New Songs he's generally near his prime. "My Secret Life" and "Here It is" are among the great ones, and "A Thousand Kisses Deep" is becoming the classic it deserves to be.
Love, lust, bitterness, transcendence. In his art the range of his concerns and his responses to life inescapably reflect his experience. The long list of his lovers, short- and long-term, includes Joni Mitchell and Rebecca de Mornay, with a celebrated-in-song encounter with Janis Joplin—"giving me head on the unmade bed/ while the limousines wait in the street." True, he later regretted those lines ("My mother would be appalled"). In person and in song, Cohen is funnier than you expect. That's another part of his range, his life. Cohen is reported to be an observant Jew and is an ordained Buddhist monk, and I'm not kidding. Yet some of the most memorable imagery in his songs is Christian:
Here is your cross,
Your nails and your hill;
And here is your love,
That lists where it will.
As for listing, I'm the sort of annoying person who trots out lists of favorites. With Dylan songs I'm not so sure what they are, because the nature of surrealism is that one bit of surrealism is more or less equivalent to another, and his rants and putdowns (see "Positively Fourth Street") only intermittently entertain me.
But with Cohen I know my favorites. Here are three to illustrate why I call him the finest poet of our songwriters. As usual the lyrics shine while the music is along for the ride—but particularly good rides in these cases.
The one already mentioned is "Democracy," which is generally the first song I play for people who don't know Cohen. It invariably knocks them out. Maybe my favorite is "Closing Time," partly because it's a terrific tune as tune, actually a fine thing to dance to, thanks to some splendid sidepersons.
It has all Cohen's fractured, paradoxical brilliance on display. The first verse sets a boozy Saturday-night scene:
Ah, we're drinking and we're dancing
and the band is really happening
and the Johnny Walker wisdom running high.
And my very sweet companion,
she's the Angel of Compassion,
she's rubbing half the world against her thigh.
And every drinker every dancer
lifts a happy face to thank her,
the fiddler fiddles something so sublime.
All the women tear their blouses off
and the men they dance on the polka-dots
and it's partner found, it's partner lost,
and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops.
It's closing time.
That mix of quotidian horniness, Biblical overtones, party trance, and down and dirty jealousy is classic Cohen. But everything turns on that little refrain. It reminds me of refrains in Yeats, one of Cohen's touchstones: Daybreak and a candle end. In the course of "Closing Time," the refrain evolves from the closing of a bar to the closing of love to the closing of life:
I loved you when our love was blessed,
and I love you now there's nothing left
but sorrow and a sense of overtime.
And I missed you since the place got wrecked,
and I just don't care what happens next:
Looks like freedom but it feels like death,
it's something in between, I guess.
It's closing time.
If "Closing Time" is my favorite all in all, the one I call Cohen's greatest is "Anthem."
This song doesn't wander off into personal bitterness and regret. It sets the sights high and keeps them there. It's a sort of gospel song celebrating the brokenness of life, everything flawed and incomplete, and the possibility of redemption in that. In its refrain there is a kind of truth the like of which is hard to find in popular song.
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in. ||||| Published on Oct 25, 2009
Jeff Buckley's official music video for 'Hallelujah'. Click to listen to Jeff Buckley on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/JefBSpotify?IQid=J...
As featured on Grace (Legacy Edition). Click to buy the track or album via iTunes: http://smarturl.it/JefBGLEiTunes?IQid...
Google Play: http://smarturl.it/JefBHPlay?IQid=JefBH
Amazon: http://smarturl.it/JefBGLEAmazon?IQid...
More from Jeff Buckley
Grace: https://youtu.be/A3adFWKE9JE
So Real: https://youtu.be/EcaxrqhUJ4c
Forget Her: https://youtu.be/HO0svGjVEP8
More great 90's Alternative videos here: http://smarturl.it/Alternative90?IQid...
Follow Jeff Buckley
Website: http://www.jeffbuckley.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JeffBuckley
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffbuckley
Subscribe to Jeff Buckley on YouTube: http://smarturl.it/JefBSub?IQid=JefBH
---------
Lyrics:
Well I heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
Well it goes like this:
The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah...
Well your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you toher kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah" ||||| + READ ARTICLE
Leonard Cohen, the singer and bard who spoke in gravelly, zenlike frankness about sex and God, and who oscillated between folk and funk and who could even do them both at once, is dead. He was 82.
From the time he released his first record, The Songs of Leonard Cohen, in 1967, he was prolific; You Want It Darker, his 14th studio album, was released just three weeks ago. And so there’s a lot of material to work with when it comes to grieving his loss appropriately — by listening to him, of course — but here’s where you should start:
1. “Hallelujah” (1984)
Maybe it’s trite to list his best-known track, perhaps, but how could you not? It’s been called one of the most lyrically beautiful songs ever written, and that’s hard to disagree with.
2. “Suzanne” (1967)
Cohen’s debut album was thoroughly acoustic and thoughtful. Its first track, “Suzanne,” is a sad, sweet meditation on love.
3. “So Long, Marianne” (1967)
The beautiful “So Long, Marianne” was inspired by Cohen’s muse and girlfriend Marianne Jensen, who he lived with for most of the 60s.
4. “Ain’t No Cure for Love” (1988)
This is one of those cases where the cover of a song is superior to the original. An underrated ballad.
5. “I’m Your Man” (1988)
The synth-pop-style “I’m Your Man” is a thinly-disguised homage to the act of lovemaking. “If you want a doctor,” Cohen sings, “I’ll examine every inch of you.”
6. “You Want It Darker” (2016)
Even at the very end of his career, Cohen was true to his roots — haunting, spare lyrics that offered both commentary and poetry. The titular track from his final album speaks to this. ||||| Published on Oct 2, 2009
Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah (Live In London) (Official Video)
Listen on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/lc_spotify
Listen on Apple Music: http://smarturl.it/lc_apple
Amazon: http://smarturl.it/lc_amu
YouTube Music: http://smarturl.it/lc_ytm
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leonardcohen
Official Website: https://www.leonardcohen.com
Lyrics:
Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing "Hallelujah"
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at somebody who outdrew you
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah ||||| Skip in Skip x Embed x Share Leonard Cohen, the voice behind a classic songbook including 'Hallelujah,' 'Suzanne' and 'Bird on a Wire,' has died at 82. USA TODAY
The most popular version of Leonard Cohen's song 'Hallelujah' is really a cover of a cover. (Photo: Chris Pizzello, AP)
As fans mourn the loss of singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen, who died at age 82, many are listening to versions of his hit, Hallelujah. The earnest tune is famously covered by Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, Willie Nelson, a contestant on every singing competition and many others.
But how did Cohen's slow, emotional song become so prevalent? On the podcast Revisionist History's episode "Hallelujah," host Malcolm Gladwell details the song's unusual journey to fame, with music writer Alan Light.
It all started with an agonizing songwriting process. Cohen, a meticulous songwriter, spent years "banging his head on the floor, because he couldn't solve this song," says Light, who wrote a book about Cohen called The Holy or the Broken.
It ultimately took Cohen five years to write Hallelujah, but many more to find an audience for the song.
In 1984, CBS Records passed on Cohen's album that had the original Hallelujah, but independent label Passport Records released Hallelujah "and it barely makes a ripple," says Gladwell, because that iteration of the song "was kind of turgid."
Then, Cohen revised the song: He made it longer, darker and changes up the first few verses.
Musician John Cale heard Cohen perform the updated song at a live performance in New York. Cale liked the tune, and decided to make his own version of Hallelujah with some new lyrics.
"Cale is really the one who cracks the code of Hallelujah, according to Alan Light," Gladwell said. Cale's version of the song, which sounds more like the popular version we know today, appears on a 1991 Leonard Cohen tribute album called I'm Your Fan.
Of the small number of audiophiles who purchased I'm Your Fan, one of them was a woman who lived in Brooklyn. Why's that important to know? Because a young singer named Jeff Buckley used to house-sit at that woman's apartment.
Yes, that Jeff Buckley.
Buckley stayed at the apartment and checked out the I'm Your Fan album, which includes Cale's cover of Hallelujah. Buckley went on to craft his own version of the song, and then performed it at a bar in the East Village.
At the bar, an executive from Columbia Records happened to be in the audience, heard the song, signed the singer, and had Buckley record his version of Hallelujah for a 1994 studio album.
That's the famous version of Hallelujah: A Jeff Buckley cover of John Cale's cover of Leonard Cohen's song.
But Buckley's album didn't sell big... until 1997, when the artist vanished. "That tragedy suddenly propels his work, and Hallelujah, into the spotlight," says Gladwell.
So, as Gladwell notes, it was 15 years since Cohen originally recorded Hallelujah, before it was hit.
You can listen to the full story, in the Revisionist History podcast, here. It starts at around the 20-minute-mark.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2fHlYpj ||||| Leonard Cohen spent almost two years writing Hallelujah, blackening two notebooks with some 80 verses before finally settling on a few that pleased him. He once told a British journalist, “I remember being on the floor of the Royalton Hotel [in Manhattan], on the carpet in my underwear, banging my head on the floor saying ‘I can’t finish this song.’ ” He did, eventually, but the song wasn’t finished with him. Since Hallelujah’s first release on his 1984 album Various Positions, it has been recorded by over 100 artists, including Bob Dylan, Bono, Willie Nelson, k.d. lang, Rufus Wainright, and Jeff Buckley. It has graced soundtracks ranging from Shrek to The O.C. And last month, after Cohen had rallied from financial ruin to stage a triumphant world tour, his comeback was heralded with a Hallelujah chorus that went through the roof.
Producers of X-Factor (the U.K. version of American Idol) paid $1.8 million to use the song for their contest finale. And a gospel-fired version performed by the winner, 20-year-old Alexandra Burke, became the fastest-selling download in Internet history, rocketing to No. 1 on the U.K. top 40 chart. Then partisans of Buckley’s version joined the fray and pushed his recording into the No. 2 spot. Even Cohen’s original track found a new life, hitting No. 36.
The song has become pop music’s closest thing to a sacred text. “Hallelujah is a masterful meditation on love, sex, God and music,” says Daniel J. Levitin, professor of psychology at McGill University, and the author of the bestselling book The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature. “Lyrically it does what only Leonard Cohen can do, and do so effectively—combine big, universal ancient and spiritual themes with the right-here and right-now.”
The lyrics weave a love story from a deft remix of the Old Testament. The singer slides from evoking divinity—“I’ve heard there was a secret chord / That David played, and it pleased the Lord”—to laying a psalm on an indifferent dame—“you don’t really care for music do ya?” Then as he conjures a moonlit scene of David agape at Bathsheba “bathing on the roof,” they morph into Samson and Delilah: “She tied you to a kitchen chair / She broke your throne, and she cut your hair.” And before it’s over, the sexual and the sacred have merged in a virtual threesome with the Holy Spirit: “remember when I moved in you / the holy dove was moving too.”
Melodically, the song performs a similar balancing act. “The music is timeless and modern at the same time,” says Levitin. “It has elements of 17th-century harmony—big, classical themes—but also an almost ’50s retro ballad arpeggio, combined with modern harmonic moves.” Hallelujah is also a postmodern marvel, a song about music that explains its own melody—“the fourth, the fifth / the minor fall, the major lift.”
Among those who have tackled the song, John Cale prompted its first pop revival with a 1991 piano/vocal cover that was used in Shrek (2001). But to the confusion of fans, Rufus Wainwright sang the version on the Shrek soundtrack album. Then a new generation of fans discovered Buckley’s rendition on The O.C. soundtrack. Buckley, who recorded it in 1994, said the song was about “the hallelujah of the orgasm.” Backed by sparse guitar, and stretched to almost seven minutes, his yearning vocal took on angelic overtones after his death by drowning in 1997.
Partisans of rival versions have sent debate ringing from the Internet to academia. In an exhaustive treatise on Hallelujah, professor Allan Moore, a British musicologist at Surrey University, mixes erudite theory of “appogiatural rises” and “glottal stops” with snatches of Web chat, such as: “Wainwright deserves to be beaten with sticks.”
Despite the song’s delicacy, it can take all kinds of abuse. Its vaulted chorus makes it ideal for the vocal gymnastics of pop singers like X-Factor’s Alexandra Burke, whose bombastic approach appalls the purists. Among the powerhouse interpretions, k.d. lang’s version stands out. When she performed it live at Cohen’s induction into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006—stalking the stage in bare feet and building a cathedral of sound as Cohen watched from the front row—it was electrifying. But it was even more inspiring to see Cohen repatriate the ballad on tour at the age of 74. As he scaled its melodic heights with that ancient baritone, taking slingshot aim at a Goliath of a song, Hallelujah had never sounded so heroic. ||||| The Canadian singer and songwriter known for his soul-searching, philosophical lyrics and deep voice died on Nov. 10, at the age of 82. (Reuters)
In the early 1980s, Leonard Cohen sat on the floor of a New York hotel room, wearing only his underwear and remembered “banging my head on the floor and saying, ‘I can’t finish this song.’”
He had been working on it for years.
Cohen, who died Thursday at 82, was many things: poet, writer and monk, among them. But the Canadian-born artist spent most of his career as a musician, one of the most influential songwriters of the past six decades.
During that career, he wrote many gorgeous songs, which he sang in his smooth, smoky basso. But, as every obituary written about the man (including The Washington Post’s) has led with, he attained fame with the song he was attempting to write in that hotel room, the song for which he wrote more than 80 verses before trimming down to five, the song whose third line reads, ironically, “You don’t really care for music, do you?”
The song is “Hallelujah,” which appeared on his 1985 record “Various Positions.”
According to his biography “I’m Your Man,” the song eventually took Cohen five years to write, a fact that embarrassed him so much he later obscured the duration in a conversation with Bob Dylan.
Finally, all that was left to do was decide between two endings. In typical Cohen tradition, one was light, the other bleak.
The light:
Even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but
Hallelujah
The dark:
Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya
And it’s not a cry that you hear at night
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah
Cohen went with the version bursting with joyful bravado for the album, relegating the dark ending to an earlier verse. (Cohen often juxtaposed light and dark. Consider the lyrics he sang in “Anthem,” “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”)
When they finished recording the song, Cohen’s producer, John Lissauer, said everyone in the room was stunned.
“We were like: ‘Whoa, this is a standard. This is an important song,'” Lissauer said.
Furthermore, when he and Cohen listened to the final mix of “Various Positions,” they were thrilled.
“This is special. This is it,” Lissauer recalled thinking. “This will be the record that’s going to do it for Leonard in the States.”
Canadian singer Leonard Cohen performing onstage in Loerrach, Germany, in July 2008. (Rolf Haid/European Pressphoto Agency)
That excitement took a nosedive when Walter Yetnikoff, the head of the music division Columbia Records, Cohen’s label, heard the album and questioned Cohen’s talent.
“Leonard, we know you’re great. We just don’t know if you’re any good,” he said, according to Cohen.
What he didn’t tell the singer was that he wasn’t releasing the album in the United States. Cohen learned that when he picked up a copy of Columbia’s catalogue of recent releases.
In 1985, “Various Positions” was released worldwide — save for in America, where it would finally be released in 1986 by an extremely minor label called Passport.
At the time, it almost seemed as if Yetnikoff may have been correct. The album — which as noted in his biography “was largely ignored by the UK music press” — bombed. It charted at 52 in Britain, low for Cohen, and it never made the charts in the United States.
[Singer Leonard Cohen: ‘I am ready to die. I hope it’s not too uncomfortable.’]
In particular, “Hallelujah,” which Lissauer called “the best single I’ve ever made for a serious artist,” was not even released as a single, after “Dance Me to the End of Love” flopped.
Then, something astounding happened.
About 30 years later, the song has been covered by more than 300 artists, including living legends such as Willie Nelson and the Nobel Prize-winning Bob Dylan. In 2010, K.D. Lang performed it at the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics, in Vancouver.
Bono, Justin Timberlake and Matt Morris, Neil Diamond, and Jake Shimabukuro — they all have versions.
The Canadian magazine Maclean’s has called it “pop music’s closest thing to a sacred text.”
For all its treatments, though, the cover that returned the sleeping song to the American pop culture consciousness after 10 years, was the electric guitar-plucking, voice-wavering version recorded by the late Jeff Buckley on his 1994 debut “Grace.”
(For the sake of fairness, some, such as Guardian music critic Jude Rogers, argue that Buckley’s version was actually a cover of John Cale’s interpretation of Cohen’s classic.)
Many television shows and films — such as “The West Wing,” “ER” and “House” — have used that very version for emotional moments.
In 2001, a version of the song sung by Rufus Wainwright was featured in DreamWork’s smash-hit “Shrek.”
But the bizarre thing that made Cohen’s rendition finally chart in Britain in 2008, some 22 years after its release, was an amateur singer named Alexandra Burke singing it on “The X Factor.”
After she sang the song in the finale, Cohen’s version charted at 36.
About this late success, Cohen admitted to the Guardian some sense of pride, of righteous retribution.
“The record that it came from which was called ‘Various Positions,’ [a] record Sony wouldn’t put out,” Cohen said. “They didn’t think it was good enough. … So there was a mild sense of revenge that arose in my heart.”
[Leonard Cohen, singer-songwriter of love, death and philosophical longing, dies at 82]
It’s difficult to pin down exactly what makes the song so popular and why it took so long for that popularity to take hold.
Without a doubt, like much of Cohen’s work, it’s a song of juxtapositions.
“The music is timeless and modern at the same time,” Daniel J. Levitin, professor of psychology at McGill University and the author of “The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature,” told Maclean’s. “It has elements of 17th-century harmony — big, classical themes — but also an almost ’50s retro ballad arpeggio, combined with modern harmonic moves.”
In “The Holy or the Broken,” his book about the song, Alan Light wrote, “Joyous and despondent, a celebration and a lament, a juxtaposition of dark Old Testament imagery with an irresistibly uplifting chorus, ‘Hallelujah’ is an open-ended meditation on love and faith — and certainly not a song that would easily be pegged as an international anthem.”
Even the tone of those lyrics shift.
As author and MTV editorial director Bill Flanagan told Light, “One of the funny things about ‘Hallelujah’ is that it’s got this profound opening couplet about King David, and then immediately it has this Woody Allen-type line of, ‘You don’t really care for music, do you?’ I remember it striking me the first time I heard the song as being really funny in a Philip Roth, exasperated kind of way — ‘I built this beautiful thing, but the girl only cares about the guy with a nice car.’ ”
Cohen simply said, “I wanted to indicate that Hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion.”
By 2009, his feelings on the song, as he related to the Guardian in 2009, were simple and straightforward, lacking the poetry he was so known for.
“I think it’s a good song, but I think too many people sing it.”
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Haupt was a West Point graduate — at age 18, Class of 1835. He resigned his military commission almost immediately to pursue a multifaceted civil engineering career that included stints as draftsman for a locomotive designer, railroad surveyor for the State of Pennsylvania, engineering instructor at Pennsylvania College, founder of a school for girls, author of a successful book — “General Theory of Bridge Construction” — engineer (at various levels) and superintendent for the Pennsylvania Railroad, as well as entrepreneur of several ambitious independent engineering projects. Haupt patriotically accepted a position as temporary, unpaid consultant, on April 25, expecting to return to his own business in three months or less.
Explore multimedia from the series and navigate through past posts, as well as photos and articles from the Times archive.
Haupt’s former protégé, Thomas A. Scott, was general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad when the war began. He resigned immediately to accept an Army commission as colonel to advise President Lincoln on security matters and Pennsylvania’s governor, Andrew Curtin, on military railroad matters. Wanting an experienced railroad man, Secretary of War Simon Cameron selected Scott as his assistant secretary in August, 1861. (Haupt applied for this position, but he’d alienated Cameron a few months earlier.) Scott brought along his principal telegraph assistant, Andrew Carnegie, to help organize railroad and telegraph lines between Washington and Virginia.
Lincoln replaced Cameron with Edwin M. Stanton as secretary of war in January 1862. Scott moved on to military railroad projects in Tennessee. Another of Haupt’s acquaintances, Daniel C. McCallum, former general superintendent of the New York & Erie Railroad and owner of the McCallum Bridge Company, was commissioned as an Army colonel and appointed director and superintendent of the Military Railroad.
Yet it was not McCallum, but Secretary of War Stanton, who summoned Haupt by telegram from his current (and most notorious) independent engineering project, the Hoosac Tunnel in Massachusetts. when the wharf, track and bridges of the Fredericksburg Railroad had to be rebuilt as quickly as possible to support General Irwin McDowell’s movement toward Richmond in April 1862.
The 50,000-square-foot wharf at Aquia Creek, three miles of railroad track and three bridges had been destroyed by the Confederates as McDowell’s corps headed south. Even as Haupt’s crew rushed to complete the work in a mere 21 days, he systematically documented the process with photographs by Andrew J. Russell. Haupt succinctly noted the number of men, the skills, training and leadership required and precisely described construction materials and techniques so that the process could be replicated exactly — again and again — in the future. Clearly defined policies and procedures are essential for efficient operation and maintenance of any railroad — military or civilian. The U.S.M.R.R. had neither clarity of policy nor definition of responsibility.
Haupt and his crew quickly rebuilt the wharf, then worked day and night to repair the wrecked roadbed in only three days. Daniel Stone, an experienced bridge contractor, had a crew repairing the bridge over the Rappahannock River and furnished Haupt with foremen and a detail of 300 soldiers, selected at random on a daily basis, to re-construct the daunting Potomac Creek Bridge. Haupt later complained that “nearly half of each day was lost in picking out the men who could use a tool of any kind.”
Haupt was always on the lookout for skilled men. One of the young soldiers assigned to his project had prior railroad experience. His name was E.C. Smeed; he was particularly adept at “organizing forces and expediting the work of construction, combined with unfailing fertility of resource in adopting expedients to meet unexpected contingencies.” Haupt made him supervisor of bridge construction. Much later, during Sherman’s Atlanta campaign in July 1864, Smeed supervised construction of an even bigger bridge over the Chattahoochee River: one nearly twice as long — in only half the time.
One key “expedient” was use of materials at hand. The iconic bridge “contained over two million feet of lumber, cut in the woods and dragged by oxen to the site of the bridge. The legs of the trestles were round sticks not divested of bark, and the braces were poles five to seven inches in diameter, flattened at the ends and spiked. There was not a mortise or tenon in the structure, and it became the model for all the bridges subsequently erected on the military railroads.”
But on May 26, as soon as the wharf, tracks, and bridges were ready, McDowell was deflected from his march toward Richmond, to Haupt’s bitter chagrin, because he believed that taking Richmond would end the war,. Instead, McDowell had to march west to protect Washington by intercepting Stonewall Jackson. Haupt was ordered to prepare the Manassas Gap Railroad to support troop movements; but found that Daniel Stone already had “absolute and exclusive control, not only over the bridges, but over construction of the road.”
Haupt wired immediately for clarification; Stanton’s May 28 reply named Haupt “Chief of Construction and Transportation in the Department of the Rappahannock … authorized to do whatever you may deem expedient to open for use in the shortest possible time all Military Railroads.” Stanton also concurred with the need for a standing body of trained civilian construction workers, authorizing Haupt “to form a permanent corps of artificers, organized, officered, and equipped in such manner as you may prescribe … to employ civilians and foremen and assistants, under such rules and rates of compensation as you may deem expedient.”
Haupt was dismayed to find individual Army commanders managing supply trains to suit their own convenience. He quickly obtained authorization from Stanton to confront these officers and keep the trains moving. Many locomotives on the line were not in good running order, nor were there enough telegraph operators to maintain communications around the clock. Haupt managed to “re-distribute power” equitably over all segments of the road, ordered the railroad to run on a published, fixed schedule and dispensed with routine telegraph operations altogether.. For safe night operations on the single track line, a man with a lantern walked in front of each engine. Supply trains ran on schedule to Front Royal by June 1, but Jackson had already escaped.
With qualified subordinates in charge of the new civilian United States Military Railroad Construction Corps; trains operating on a routine schedule; and shipment of personal or commercial goods on military railroads officially prohibited, Haupt considered his commitment to Stanton fulfilled. He returned to Massachusetts on June 26.
He would be back less than two months later.
Sources: Arnold, James R. and Weiner, Roberta, “On to Richmond: The Civil War in the East”; Haupt, Herman, “Factory and industrial management, Volume 4: Colonel E. C. Smeed and his work” (1892), “Reminiscences of General Herman Haupt” (1901); Lord, Francis A., “Lincoln’s Railroad Man: Herman Haupt”; McCallum, D. C., “McCallum’s inflexible arched truss bridge: explained and illustrated” (1859); Ward, James A., “That Man Haupt: A Biography of Herman Haupt”; Weber, Thomas, “The Northern Railroads in the Civil War”; orgchart.net/wiki/Charting_ History; willamette.edu/~fthompso/MgmtCon/ McCallum.htm; answers.com/topic/thomas-scott; mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/inside.asp?ID=725 &subject ID=2; civilwarinteractive.com/ArticleGoodLogistics.htm; Brasher, Michael, “Sherman, Atlanta, and the Sinews of War.”
Diana Bailey Harris is the author of “Reflections of a Civil War Locomotive Engineer: a ghost-written memoir.”
Write a one or two sentence summary. | Herman Haupt's skill and speed at building kept Union trains moving. | 0 | Flan2021 | newsroom:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Available choices: 1. Chuck decided to quit his job.. 2. He then felt compelled to get back to work..
Write a story that ends with: 2. | Chuck was tired from working. He closed his work for a while. He opened up the forum to chat with coworkers. After those nasty Zoltar hits he needed this break. 2. | 8 | Flan2021 | story_cloze/2016:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
I LOVED this studio when it featured Bikram yoga. I thought it was pretty shady for the owner to eliminate Bikram and replace it was a program he created to replace it. Don't get me wrong, the varieties that they have have their pros and cons, but I am overall unhappy with the changes. My yearly membership will expire in mid July. I will not join again, though I WILL greatly miss Connie's YIN class. It feels soooo good!
Choose the sentiment of this review?
Pick your answer from:
(a). negative
(b). positive | (a). | 1 | Flan2021 | yelp_polarity_reviews:0.2.0 | zs_opt |
Which mass is undergoing the greatest amount of acceleration?
Pick the answer from these options
Options: I. 1 kg subjected to a force of 1 N II. 1 kg subjected to a force of 100 N III. 100 kg subjected to a force of 1 N IV. 100 kg subjected to a force of 100 N | II. | 6 | Flan2021 | ai2_arc/ARC-Challenge:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
North Korea said it carried out the test on Wednesday - if confirmed it would be its fourth nuclear test, and its first of the more powerful H-bomb.
The UN Security Council has also agreed to start drawing up new measures against North Korea.
But scepticism remains over whether the North really did conduct such a test.
Experts have said the seismic activity generated by the blast was not large enough for it to have been a full thermonuclear explosion.
The White House said President Barack Obama had spoken separately to South Korea's President Park Geun-Hye and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
They "agreed to work together to forge a united and strong international response to North Korea's latest reckless behaviour", it said in a statement.
Mr Abe told reporters: "We agreed that the provocative act by North Korea is unacceptable... We will deal with this situation in a firm manner through the cooperation with the United Nations Security Council."
He added that Japan may take unilateral action, saying it is "considering measures unique to our nation".
South Korea's presidential office said in a statement that Ms Park and Mr Obama had agreed to closely co-operate and that the international community "must make sure that North Korea pays the corresponding price" for the nuclear test, reported Yonhap news agency.
The United Nations' Security Council held an emergency session on Wednesday and condemned the test claim as "a clear threat to international peace and security."
Japan's ambassador to the UN, Motohide Yoshikawa, called for a swift and robust new UN resolution, insisting: "The authority and credibility of the Security Council will be put in question if it does not take these measures."
But the UN ambassador for Russia, which has been developing warmer relations with Pyongyang, said it would be going "too far" to say Moscow supported further sanctions.
Despite North Korea's claims, experts are sceptical that North Korea can make a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on a missile.
Observers agree a nuclear explosion of some kind took place and it seems to have been a bit bigger than the last test in 2013, but not nearly big enough to be a full thermonuclear explosion - an "H-bomb" - as Pyongyang claims.
North Korea has a determination to defy both world opinion and heavy sanctions to reach its nuclear goal. Crucially, its main ally, China, has proved either unwilling or unable to help.
Meanwhile, South Korea has begun limiting entry to the Kaesong industrial park in North Korea, jointly run by both countries. Only those directly involved in operations there will be allowed to enter from the South, said Seoul's Unification Ministry.
Seoul has also said it will restart propaganda broadcasts across the border on Friday, an act which the North strongly opposes. The broadcasts were halted last year as part of a deal with the North to ease tensions that had escalated sharply in the summer.
The nuclear test came days before Kim Jong-un's 33rd birthday, which falls on Friday and is expected to be marked by celebrations.
Hydrogen bombs are more powerful and technologically advanced than atomic weapons, using fusion - the merging of atoms - to unleash massive amounts of energy.
Atomic bombs, like those that devastated two Japanese cities in World War Two, use fission, or the splitting of atoms.
Bruce Bennett, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, was among those casting doubts on Pyongyang's test: "The bang they should have gotten would have been 10 times greater than what they're claiming."
South Korea's intelligence agency also told politicians that the estimated power of the blast fell far short of what would be expected from a hydrogen bomb.
US White House spokesman Josh Earnest said "initial analysis was not consistent with North Korea's claims of a successful hydrogen bomb test". But he added: "Nothing that has occurred in the last 24 hours has caused the United States government to change our assessment of North Korea's technical and military capabilities."
Some analysts have suggested it is possible Pyongyang tested a "boosted" atomic bomb, which uses some fusion fuel to increase the yield of the fission reaction.
The US and nearby countries are thought to be carrying out atmospheric sampling, hoping to find leaked radioactive material, which would give clues as to what kind of device was tested.
What was that article about? | The US, South Korea and Japan have said they will be united in their response to North Korea's claim to have successfully tested a hydrogen bomb. | 4 | Flan2021 | huggingface:xsum | zs_opt |
Choose your answer?
About how often is a full moon observed from Earth's surface?
OPTIONS:
[I] each week.
[II] once a month.
[III] every two weeks.
[IV] once each leap year. | [II] | 4 | Flan2021 | ai2_arc/ARC-Easy:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Choose from the possible answers, would the following sentence, by the strictest standards, be considered correct by a linguist?
Heidi investigated to eat the cauliflower.
OPTIONS:
(1). unacceptable.
(2). acceptable. | (1). | 5 | Flan2021 | glue/cola:2.0.0 | zs_opt |
twenty south african students will have the opportunity to undergo training in tourism for a year in germany thanks to a project launched by the two governments .
What is a very short summary of the above text? | germany to help s. africa to train students in tourism | 5 | Flan2021 | gigaword:1.2.0 | zs_opt |
How is "Lack of transparency makes it hard to tell." said in Romanian? | Din cauza lipsei de transparenţă este greu de spus dacă acest lucru este adevărat sau nu. | 6 | Flan2021 | wmt16_translate/ro-en:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
They fuel colourism in society
Come up with some evidence to support this claim. | 1. Elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere , such as in Brazil , race is seen as an issue of colour and socio-economic background , not ancestry highlighting a much more obvious link between whitening creams and racism .
2. While it may sound absurd , in the US darker-skinned African Americans -LRB- and darker skinned latinos -RRB- are less well educated and have lower incomes .
3. It could cause communities to generate a form of inferiority complex , and it reinforces the structural difference rather than aiming to minimize it .
4. Allowing the use of racial overtones the perception that a product will bring a person towards a white ideal is harmful for several reasons .
5. Hunter , Margaret L. , If youre light youre alright : light skin color as social capital for women of color , , 2002 , , p. 35 Telles , Edward , , 2004 , online sample chapter ,
6. Banning such creams would help prevent such harmful effects by discouraging the notion that people should aim to make themselves lighter skinned .
7. Is it not the role of the state to reduce that discrimination , not to fuel it ? | 8 | Flan2021 | opinion_abstracts_idebate | zs_opt |
Keywords: cross, locomotive, train
What is a sentence that includes all these keywords? | a freight train with locomotives crosses the plain | 1 | Flan2021 | gem/common_gen:1.1.0 | zs_opt |
This is a question with answer options. What kind of thing would the answer to the question "What does A&W of root beer fame stand for ?" be an entity, an abbreviation, a description, a human, a location, or a numeric value?
(i) description; (ii) entity; (iii) abbreviation; (iv) human; (v) numeric; (vi) location; | (iii) | 3 | Flan2021 | trec:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
More than 60 suspected cases have been reported in the United States , none of them fatal .
Sixty-five probable cases of SARS have been identified in the United States , along with 255 suspected cases .
Are these two sentences paraphrases of each other?
Select from the following.
(i) no
(ii) yes | (i) | 6 | Flan2021 | glue/mrpc:2.0.0 | zs_opt |
How do you say "vacuum that opens the smallest pores of wood and absorbs the maximum moisture from the wood surface;" in Spanish? | vacío – que abre los poros más pequeños de la madera y extrae el máximo de humedad de la superficie de madera; | 0 | Flan2021 | para_crawl_enes | zs_opt |
Determine if the sentence is true based on the text below. Choose from options.
Mars is called 'the red planet'.
The planet probably got this name due to its red color; Mars is sometimes referred to as 'the Red Planet'.
pick from the following.
a). yes
b). no | a). | 8 | Flan2021 | super_glue/rte:1.0.2 | zs_opt |
W. de Wycombe (Wicumbe, and perhaps Whichbury) (late thirteenth century) was an English composer and copyist of the Medieval era. He was precentor of the priory of Leominster in Herefordshire. It is possible that he was the composer of the most famous tune from medieval England, "Sumer is icumen in".
Can we infer the following?
W. de Wycombe lived in the 1400s.
Choose your answer from: 1. Yes. 2. It's impossible to say. 3. No.
The answer is: | 1. | 4 | Flan2021 | anli/r1:0.1.0 | zs_opt |
Sentence 1: Indonesia's army has often been accused of human rights abuses during GAM's battle for independence, charges it has generally denied while accusing the separatists of committing rights violations.
Sentence 2: Indonesia's army has been accused of human rights abuses during its earlier battles with GAM, charges it has generally denied.
From 0 to 5 (0="no meaning overlap" and 5="means the same thing"), how similar are the two sentences?
Available options: A). 0 B). 1 C). 2 D). 3 E). 4 F). 5 | D). | 2 | Flan2021 | glue/stsb:2.0.0 | zs_opt |
What are the keywords in the following sentence:
players surround football player after his early strike from yards gave them the perfect start on saturday | player, saturday, surround | 6 | Flan2021 | gem/common_gen:1.1.0 | zs_opt |
John: Hi Sister! I'm a Dad! Sophie just gave birth!
Karen: Congratulations to both of you! :)
John: This is Kaitlin! My beautiful baby girl! :)
John:
Karen: How adorable! I'm so happy for you!!
Karen: Give me a call once you all arrive at home.
What was that dialogue about, in two sentences or less? | John has just become a dad. His daughter’s name is Kaitlin. | 3 | Flan2021 | samsum:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
To which organ system do the esophagus, liver, pancreas, small intestine, and colon belong?
Pick the answer from these options
Options are:
(i) reproductive system;
(ii) excretory system;
(iii) digestive system;
(iv) endocrine system; | (iii) | 6 | Flan2021 | ai2_arc/ARC-Easy:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
pollution is when humans pollute the environment with pollutants
Humans contribute to environmental pollution
Choices:
1). by purchasing products made from recycled products
2). by switching to energy efficient appliances
3). by leaving behind refuse on public beaches
4). by frequently recycling paper and plastic | 3). | 0 | Flan2021 | openbookqa:0.1.0 | zs_opt |
Based on the premise "what what is your major in school that your ah super that sounds good and you're finishing up this year huh", can we conclude the hypothesis "This is your last year." is true (see options)?
Pick from: a. yes. b. it is not possible to tell. c. no. | a. | 5 | Flan2021 | glue/mnli:2.0.0 | zs_opt |
Remove the spaces from the following sentence: Then Jehovah said unto me, Out of the north evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land. | ThenJehovahsaiduntome,Outofthenorthevilshallbreakforthuponalltheinhabitantsoftheland. | 9 | Flan2021 | word_segment | zs_opt |
What is the version of the following sentence with correct punctuation?
Once you have done so it is time to check the connecting cables
| Once you have done so, it is time to check the connecting cables. | 9 | Flan2021 | fix_punct | zs_opt |
Read the following paragraph and determine if the hypothesis is true:
Only 18 states, including Massachusetts, have specific provisions that allow women who quit their jobs due to domestic violence to qualify for UI.
Pick your answer from: A). Yes B). It's impossible to say C). No
Hypothesis: There are women who face domestic violence.
| A). | 5 | Flan2021 | anli/r3:0.1.0 | zs_opt |
According to the Social Security Trustees, who oversee the program and report on its financial condition, program costs are expected to exceed non-interest income from 2010 onward. However, due to interest (earned at a 3.6% rate in 2014) the program will run an overall surplus that adds to the fund through the end of 2019. Under current law, the securities in the Trust Fund represent a legal obligation the government must honor when program revenues are no longer sufficient to fully fund benefit payments. However, when the Trust Fund is used to cover program deficits in a given year, the Trust Fund balance is reduced. By 2034, the Trust Fund is expected to be exhausted. Thereafter, payroll taxes are projected to only cover approximately 79% of program obligations.
Choose your answer: Is the following statement correct based on the text
does the social security fund have a surplus
Possible answers:
[1]. no
[2]. yes | [2]. | 7 | Flan2021 | bool_q:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Data: name = The Rice Boat, food = English, priceRange = cheap, customer rating = 5 out of 5, area = riverside, familyFriendly = no, near = Express by Holiday Inn. Can you generate a sentence about this data? | You can get cheap English food at The Rice Boat in riverside. It's near Express by Holiday Inn and is not family-friendly, but had a 5 out of 5 rating. | 1 | Flan2021 | gem/e2e_nlg:1.1.0 | zs_opt |
What happens next?
How to become a city manager
Earn a bachelor's degree.
Some city manager positions only require a bachelor's degree. However, if they require graduate degrees, you'll still need to get your undergraduate degree first.
Select from the following. + You can find courses at the city or school district to help you plan your career as a city manager. If you want to move to a new city or rural area, your professional may change during the first few years of apprenticeship training. + Before you graduate, have a degree in business or finance, or pursue a real estate degree, you'll need a degree to have a job. Your degree you develop the qualifications to add to your career, like browsing and buying routes on your campus, will change or reduce your career prospects to where it's right for you. + If you want to gain a bachelor's degree in negotiation or financial planning, don't wait to get that specific degree. Discuss the possibility with any company you work for. + The type of major for your undergrad degree is pretty open. Programs in business, public administration, urban planning, economics, and political science will all set you up for a good future as a city manager. | The type of major for your undergrad degree is pretty open. Programs in business, public administration, urban planning, economics, and political science will all set you up for a good future as a city manager. | 7 | Flan2021 | hellaswag:1.1.0 | zs_opt |
Sam Goodman 's biography of the Spartan general Xenophanes conveys a vivid sense of the difficulties *he* faced in his childhood.
Which option(s) below is/are correct for question: are "Goodman" and "he" the same entity?
OPTIONS:
[a]. no
[b]. yes | [a]. | 0 | Flan2021 | super_glue/wsc.fixed:1.0.2 | zs_opt |
Dialogue:
Heather: Dad, everything ok?
Peter: Heather, love, your sister's just been on, she's popping over with some dinner in half an hour.
Heather: Just worried about you, after all, it's only been 2 weeks. Glad Stace is coming over.
Peter: Twins ok, lovey and Alistair?
Heather: Well, they've been off nursery with a nasty bug, but they're going back tomorrow, thank goodness! I'm working tomorrow, so that fits in well. Ali is ok, busy as ever!
Peter: Do they understand what happened with Mum?
Heather: Well, they saw Nanna was getting smaller and smaller in hospital and I told them she was very very ill and tried to explain about what will happen, but, no, I don't think they get it.
Peter: Well, they are only 3, they won't really remember her.
Heather: Maybe, but I am always talking about Mum to them, so they hopefully will understand when they're older. Course, there's all the photos too.
Peter: You're doing the right thing, love, mum would do the same. It seems so odd here now.
Heather: Dad, you need to get out and about whenever you can, stop you dwelling on it.
Peter: Bit difficult after 45 years not to dwell on it, maybe I want to!
Heather: Fair enough. Look, I'll pop over with the kids after school, bring a cake, we'll have a cup of tea.
Peter: You and your sister are determined to fatten me up! I'd love to see you all, see you tomorrow afternoon.
Heather: Bye, Dad xx
What were the main points in that conversation? | Heather's sister will bring Peter dinner in half an hour. Lovey and Alistair are off nursery and going back tomorrow. Heather is working tomorrow. Heather's mother passed away. Heather and her kids will visit Peter tomorrow afternoon and bring a cake. | 5 | Flan2021 | samsum:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
The Blarney Stone (Irish: Cloch na Blarnan) is a block of Carboniferous limestone built into the battlements of Blarney Castle, Blarney, about 8 kilometres (5 miles) from Cork, Ireland. According to legend, kissing the stone endows the kisser with the gift of the gab (great eloquence or skill at flattery). The stone was set into a tower of the castle in 1446. The castle is a popular tourist site in Ireland, attracting visitors from all over the world to kiss the stone and tour the castle and its gardens.
Based on the above text, what's the best answer to this question: is the blarney stone in the blarney castle?
OPTIONS:
(1). no;
(2). yes; | (2). | 5 | Flan2021 | bool_q:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Generate a context and a hypothesis. | Context: The Tempe Hometown Premiere will have all the trappings of a mega-Hollywood event including red carpet arrivals, klieg lights, screaming fans, paparazzi and media coverage of the film`s stars headed by Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman and including Liev Schreiber, Ryan Reynolds, Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, will.i.am and director Gavin Hood. Following a hard-fought contest stretching over thousands of cities and towns across the United States, Tempe emerged triumphant in a far-reaching, citywide bid to nab the gala event. Mayor Hugh Hallman himself rallied the community, which stepped up with dozens of videos that were posted on YouTube.
Hypothesis: Hugh Jackman plays the role of Wolverine in the movie. | 9 | Flan2021 | super_glue/rte:1.0.2 | zs_opt |
Please check if these have the same meaning. Pick from:
(a). no
(b). yes
The returning Isaac Fontaine , who last played with Sta.Lucia three years ago , replaces Carrawell .
The returning Carrawell , who played with Sta.Lucia for the last time three years ago , replaces Isaac Fontaine . | (a). | 9 | Flan2021 | paws_wiki:1.1.0 | zs_opt |
On a scale from 0-5, where 0 is "not similar" and 5 is "very similar", how similar is the sentence "bae systems is the uk's largest defense company." to the sentence "bae systems is the uk's largest military"?
(1). 0. (2). 1. (3). 2. (4). 3. (5). 4. (6). 5. | (4). | 6 | Flan2021 | glue/stsb:2.0.0 | zs_opt |
Question: DNA stores the genetic instructions transferred from one generation to the next. What is DNA?
What is the correct answer to the question from the following choices?
OPT:
(1). a molecule.
(2). a membrane.
(3). a cell nucleus.
(4). a spiral-shaped cell. | (1). | 2 | Flan2021 | ai2_arc/ARC-Easy:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Magnetism is the ability of a material to be attracted by a magnet. It also include the ability for some material to act like a magnet. No doubt youve handled refrigerator magnets. You can see some in Figure 1.28. You probably know they stick to a metal refrigerator. This is what holds your homework up. Maybe your little sisters drawings are hung on the fridge in this manner. Do magnets stick to all materials? Of course not. You have probably checked and they do not stick to other surfaces. They do not stick to wooden doors or glass windows. Wood and glass are not attracted to a magnet. Obviously, only certain materials are attracted to magnets.
After reading the above, is "No" the correct answer to the question "Do Magnets stick to all materials?"?
Pick from: (a). no. (b). yes. | (b). | 6 | Flan2021 | super_glue/multirc:1.0.2 | zs_opt |
This is an email
Jeff, Congratulations!--on your amazing successes and your uncanny ability to make good decisions. I've always held you in the highest regard for being the smartest person I ever worked with. I'm certain it's been a tough few weeks as you wrestled with your choice. In a small way I can relate and if others were willing to speak out you would find that you're far from alone.
What is the subject of this email? | Passages | 6 | Flan2021 | aeslc:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Data: Fitzbillies eatType coffee shop; Fitzbillies food Fast food; Fitzbillies customer rating 1 out of 5; Fitzbillies area city centre; Fitzbillies familyFriendly yes
What would a sentence about this data be like? | Fitzbillies is a coffee shop offering fast food. It has a customer rating of 1 out of 5, is kid friendly, and offers moderate pricing. It is located in the city centre. | 1 | Flan2021 | gem/dart:1.1.0 | zs_opt |
"Who or what is 'Quora User'?"
"Why are some users on Quora called 'Quora user'?"
Do those questions have the same meaning?
OPTIONS:
[1]. no.
[2]. yes. | [2]. | 1 | Flan2021 | glue/qqp:2.0.0 | zs_opt |
The Fifth Amendment (Amendment V) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights and, among other things, protects individuals from being compelled to be witnesses against themselves in criminal cases. ``Pleading the Fifth'' is thus a colloquial term for invoking the right that allows witnesses to decline to answer questions where the answers might incriminate them, and generally without having to suffer a penalty for asserting the right. This evidentiary privilege ensures that defendants cannot be compelled to become witnesses at their own trials. If, however, they choose to testify, they are not entitled to the right during cross-examination, where questions are relevant to their testimony on direct examination. The Amendment requires that felonies be tried only upon indictment by a grand jury. Federal grand juries can force people to take the witness stand, but defendants in those proceedings have Fifth Amendment privileges until they choose to answer any question. To claim the privilege for failure to answer when being interviewed by police, the interviewee must have explicitly invoked the constitutional right when declining to answer questions.
can you use the 5th amendment in court?
Choices:
[a]. no
[b]. yes | [b]. | 2 | Flan2021 | bool_q:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Write a brief sentence. | There are cheerleaders in the city. | 9 | Flan2021 | snli:1.1.0 | zs_opt |
Please briefly summarize this news article:
All the Details on His Montana Nuptials : People.com
Chris Klein and Laina Rose Thyfault
updated 08/12/2015 AT 11:00 AM EDT
•originally published 08/11/2015 AT 06:15 PM EDT
describes his Montana wedding on Saturday as the "perfect day."
actor, 36, and his girlfriend of four years, travel agent Laina Rose Thyfault, 30, tied the knot in front of 115 guests during an
Klein tells PEOPLE the two picked the location after a trip to Montana a few years earlier.
"We fell in love with the area and the nature," says Klein. "Luckily we have families who love to travel and also love nature so it was the perfect spot for us."
The picturesque locale featured an outdoor church with vintage pews on the banks of the Gallatin River, making the perfect backdrop for the bride, who wore a dress by Yumi Katsura to walk down the aisle.
"Laina looked beautiful. She holds herself with such grace," Klein tells PEOPLE. "I am a very grateful man."
The ceremony was followed by a "big old country hoedown," Klein says, a nod to the couple's Texas roots. Guests dined on BBQ brisket and fried fish while a DJ spun country music, including the couple's first dance song, George Strait's "I Got A Car".
"The song is actually about a man who meets a woman and they go start a life together," says Klein. "We did a groovy two-step to it!"
But the most special part of the evening for Klein was exchanging the vows.
"Promising forever was definitely the highlight," he says. "Nothing gets better than that."
Summary: | The American Pie star ties the knot in an beautiful outdoor ceremony | 2 | Flan2021 | newsroom:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
As the Soga clan had taken control of the throne in the sixth century, the Fujiwara by the ninth century had intermarried with the imperial family, and one of their members was the first head of the Emperor's Private Office. Another Fujiwara became regent, Sesshō for his grandson, then a minor emperor, and yet another was appointed Kampaku. Toward the end of the ninth century, several emperors tried, but failed, to check the Fujiwara. For a time, however, during the reign of Emperor Daigo (897-930), the Fujiwara regency was suspended as he ruled directly.
Try to answer this question if possible (otherwise reply "unanswerable"): Which emperor gave the Fujiware more power? | unanswerable | 4 | Flan2021 | squad/v2.0:3.0.0 | zs_opt |
Write a sentence that is about a restaurant with all the following properties: name = Loch Fyne, eatType = restaurant, food = Indian, familyFriendly = yes
Sentence: | Loch Fyne is a restaurant, which offers Indian food, and is kids friendly. | 7 | Flan2021 | gem/e2e_nlg:1.1.0 | zs_opt |
Single/multi-select question: Does the sentence "Usually, the only offenses that the referee will see and immediately disqualify the match on (as opposed to having multiple offenses) are low blows, weapon usage, interference, or assaulting the referee." provide a valid answer to the question "What are the usual reasons for an automatic disqualification?"
Choices:
[I] yes.
[II] no. | [I] | 1 | Flan2021 | glue/qnli:2.0.0 | zs_opt |
Read the following paragraph and determine if the hypothesis is true:
Nicola or Niccolo Massaro (died 1704) was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque period, active in his native city of Naples. He painted mainly marine vedute and landscapes in the style of his master, Salvatore Rosa. One of his colleagues was Marzio Masturzo. One of his pupils was Gaetano Martoriello, and Massaro's son's Girolamo and Gennaro.
Available options:
+ Yes;
+ It's impossible to say;
+ No;
Hypothesis: Massaro's son's styles are almost exact copies of their father's.
| It's impossible to say | 5 | Flan2021 | anli/r2:0.1.0 | zs_opt |
No. 27 Squadron RAAF is a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) reserve and ground support squadron located at RAAF Base Townsville, Queensland. The squadron was formed on 1 July 1981 to recruit and train RAAF reservists in the Townsville area and in July 2010 took on the additional role of providing support services to RAAF Base Townsville.
Can we infer the following?
No. 27 Squadron RAAF has gold.
Select from the following.
* Yes;
* It's impossible to say;
* No;
The answer is: | It's impossible to say | 4 | Flan2021 | anli/r2:0.1.0 | zs_opt |
As a heavy metal ball rolls down a hill, it goes faster and faster. Which statement is true?
Choose your answer from: (a). The ball's potential energy is changing to kinetic energy.; (b). The ball is gaining potential energy from the hill.; (c). The ball is rapidly losing kinetic energy as it rolls down the hill.; (d). The ball will continue gaining kinetic energy until it stops.;
| (a). | 5 | Flan2021 | unified_qa_science_inst | zs_opt |
What happens next in this paragraph?
A woman is seen speaking to the camera while kneeling down on one knee. the woman
Options are: A. then begins running her hands along a bicycle wheel.. B. continues showing how to dip the painting and using a hand held spray to move the paint up and down.. C. then moves her arms up above her head.. D. then begins running down a track while presenting a stick.. | C. | 0 | Flan2021 | hellaswag:1.1.0 | zs_opt |
Jenom to nejhorší!
Which language is this? | Czech | 9 | Flan2021 | wmt16_translate/cs-en:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Steve loved Bush but he did not tell.
Who is he referring to in this sentence?
Options: (1). Steve; (2). Bush; | (1). | 2 | Flan2021 | definite_pronoun_resolution:1.1.0 | zs_opt |
Jews
There is also a trend of Orthodox movements pursuing secular Jews in order to give them a stronger Jewish identity so there is less chance of intermarriage. As a result of the efforts by these and other Jewish groups over the past 25 years, there has been a trend (known as the Baal Teshuva movement) for secular Jews to become more religiously observant, though the demographic implications of the trend are unknown. Additionally, there is also a growing rate of conversion to Jews by Choice of gentiles who make the decision to head in the direction of becoming Jews.
Q: What is the trend for secular Jews to become more religiously observant known as? | the Baal Teshuva movement | 7 | Flan2021 | squad/v1.1:3.0.0 | zs_opt |
Summarize this article:
Bill Cosby has come under major scrutiny since numerous women have come forward claiming they were drugged and sexually abused by the comedian, but R. Kelly is not so quick to judge The Cosby Show star.
In an interview with GQ magazine, the R&B singer was somewhat sympathetic to Cosby, even comparing the accusations against 78-year-old star to his own legal woes.
WATCH: Whoopi Goldberg on Bill Cosby's Sexual Assault Charge -- 'I'm Glad It's Happening'
"I'm a fan of Bill Cosby's from the Bill Cosby show, of course -- who's not? -- and for me to give my opinion on something that I have no idea if it's true or not, all I can say is that it was a long time ago," Kelly said. "And when I look on TV and I see the 70-, 80-, 90-year-old ladies talking about what happened when they were 17, 18, 19, there's something strange about it."
GQ
The 49-year-old singer insisted that he will not speak to Cosby's alleged crimes until he has some sort of proof. "If God showed me that they were telling the truth, I would say that's wrong. I don't care if it was a zillion years ago. But God would have to do that, because God is the only one can show me that. No man can tell me that. No woman can tell me that," he explained. "And when you wait 70 years, 50 years, 40 years, to say something that simple, it's strange. You know why I say that is because it happened to me, and it wasn't true."
WATCH: Bill Cosby's Accusers -- A Timeline of Alleged Sexual Assault Claims
In 2003, R. Kelly was arrested on charges of sexual misconduct with a minor after a videotape was leaked that allegedly showed him engaging in sex with, and urinating on, an underage girl. In March 2004, those charges were dropped due to a lack of probable cause for the search warrants. However, the GRAMMY winner says he's still perceived as guilty to the public.
"When a person is found not guilty, they're found not guilty. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a murder case, it doesn’t matter what case it is, when they’re found not guilty, they’re not guilty," he declared. "And I think that a lot of haters out there wanted to see me go down."
WATCH: See Bill Cosby's Mug Shot After Posting $1 Million Bail for Sexual Assault Charge
When asked if it was him on the videotape, R. Kelly responded, "Because of my lawyers, to this day I cannot have those kind of conversations. Being advised by my lawyers in this. Because they could come back to haunt me. Things could come back and they can just restart all over again. And I have to protect myself."
As for Cosby, he requested that a Pennsylvania court dismiss the criminal charge against him. In a statement given to ET, Cosby's attorneys claim the charge was "illegally, improperly and unethically" brought against their client. Cosby's preliminary hearing is set for Feb. 2, and he's denied any wrongdoing.
Here's more from the TV star's attorney: ||||| SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER
Grammy Award-winning R&B star R. Kelly walked off during a live interview with the Huffington Post on Monday after apparently becoming increasingly uncomfortable with questions regarding past sexual assault accusations against him.
The singer had joined HuffPost Live to discuss his thirteenth studio album, The Buffet, when things took a sudden turn halfway through.
Roughly seven and a half minutes into the 20-minute interview, host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani brought up the uncomfortable subject:
“When people think of R. Kelly, they don’t just think of the music… I think people find it difficult to not think about the multiple lawsuits, the multiple allegations of you having inappropriate relations, sex relations, with minors,” she pressed. “What do you say to those people who find it conflicting?”
The singer immediately went on the defensive: “Well, since you’re the one that brought it up, I’ll just say it to you, ’cause I don’t hear it from anyone else… I would say, again, ‘f—k that.’ I’m a man that believes what I see.”
Things only went downhill from there, as the interview devolved into a gabfest with both sides talking over one another. At one point, Kelly insulted the hosts’s “level of intelligence” and asked if she knew what a deposition was. Eventually, Kelly threatened to leave the interview and head over to McDonald’s (“Hopefully the McRib is out”) and then back to Chicago to work on an upcoming Christmas album.
The straw that broke the camel’s back appeared to be when Modarressy-Tehrani asked the singer what he would say to fans who are “concerned” about his past and may not buy his latest album as a result.
“It doesn’t matter who they are, if they hate me, they love me, they want to destroy me, whatever, I love them all,” Kelly replied shortly before walking out.
For a refresher on the sexual assault accusations against Kelly, check out the recap from then-Chicago Sun-Times music reporter Jim DeRogatis, courtesy of the Village Voice.
Check out the interview in full above (things get interesting at the 7:30 mark). ||||| Music The Confessions of R. Kelly
This is a story about an entertainer named R. Kelly. It is a story about the remarkable, but also very strange, pop talent he has. It is a story about the difficult places he came from and the ways they may, or may not, have shaped who he has become. It is also the story of a man who has been publicly accused of multiple sexual offenses with underage women, and who stood trial for making child pornography. He was eventually acquitted of that charge, and his career has continued uninterrupted, but for the most part he has evaded even the most basic questions that might help people understand what is true about him.
For this story, R. Kelly agreed to speak about his whole life without restrictions. We met three times over three days in his hometown of Chicago. The second and third meetings were at his favorite cigar bar. The first meeting was on the ninety-ninth floor of the Sears Tower.
When Robert Kelly was 3 years old, growing up poor with a single mother on Chicago's South Side, construction started on a building a few miles away in the center of town. It was to be called the Sears Tower, and for nearly 25 years it would be the tallest building in the world. The tower—which was actually renamed the Willis Tower in 2009, though many Chicagoans, including Kelly, still refer to it by its original name—would also come to play a complicated role in the psychic geography of the 48-year-old man sitting up here now, looking down upon the city and to Lake Michigan beyond.
When Kelly was about 9, he and two friends rode their bicycles in from their neighborhood, and when they arrived, they challenged one another to stand next to this tower. “A lot of kids were scared to do it because it actually felt like it was moving and falling over,” he remembers. Also, Kelly's elder brother had told them that if they got too close, it really would fall on them. The way he remembers it, his friends chickened out, but not him. “I actually did it,” he says. “I put my hands up to the Sears Tower and I stood up and looked dead at it. I stood there for a long time. That's why I wanted to do this interview here.”
And what did you think when you looked up at it?
“I said, ‘I'm coming for you.’ ”
What did you mean?
“The top of it. The height, the massiveness. You know, the strength that it carries. I remember wanting that, somehow.”
In what way?
“In my life, I wanted to feel tall. I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to be tall as the Sears Tower. I wanted to be on top of the Sears Tower. I wanted to be as strong as the Sears Tower feels. When my mom would be on the highway, I would always look at the Sears Tower as: That's where I want to go, that's where I want to be.”
For many years now, most interviews with R. Kelly have been brief, and restrictions have often been imposed, fences rung around the subjects he wouldn't discuss. Not today. As yet, I'm not really sure why he's changed his mind. The simplest reason, of course, would be that he's innocent of anything he has ever been accused of—in that case the mystery would be why he has sidestepped real conversations for so long. (Though of course, not everyone who chooses to be silent is hiding something.) Maybe, whatever the reason for his reticence, he has come to realize that it is doing him more harm than good. Maybe his times of trouble seem so far behind him that he can't see any way they can hurt him now. Maybe he's just convinced that R. Kelly can ride through any challenge. Maybe he's confident that he has a good answer for any question he'll face, or maybe he doesn't yet realize the kinds of questions that he will be facing. Maybe he hasn't thought it through at all.
There's a common way that journalists often choose to approach encounters like this. Ask all the easy stuff first. Get on the subject's good side, get their confidence. Leave the tricky stuff until late in the last interview, when everything else is safely asked and answered, and then grab what you can.
That's not how I'm doing this. First, if he isn't prepared to engage in some kind of serious discussion on the more difficult parts of his life, then I can't see how there can be a significant article about R. Kelly in 2016 that is worth printing. Second, it would make me feel spineless and undignified. I've read, listened to, and watched every other R. Kelly interview I could find, and too often what happens is that if interviewers mention anything at all, what they do is make a perfunctory little raid on the subject, touching it just to say they did. Why play around? He knows, at least to some degree, what's coming. He's a grown man, 48 years old. He's stood on a thousand stages and sat through a criminal trial. I know it's not going to be a comfortable conversation, but surely the most respectful way to have it is to get on and have it.
So, walking in here, that is my plan.
The ninety-ninth floor appears to be completely bare. In the huge rectangular room where we meet, there are only two places to sit. One is on some sofas over in the far corner. Kelly chooses the other option. And so we sit facing each other, at a small round table set in the middle of the large empty space on the lakeward side of the tower, glass on three sides of us. It looks like a surreal over-the-top set for an interrogation scene in an action movie. Before we begin, Kelly tries to prop up his phone on the table between us, to record the conversation—I am as well—but it keeps sliding and falling over. First of all, before anything else, I want to talk with him about his childhood, and in particular some tough aspects of it that seem central to whom he has become. For one thing, his inability to read.
“Other kids could read, other kids could write, other kids could spell, they could do math,” he says. “I felt like an alien, I felt like an outcast. I felt like, ‘What is going to happen to me?’ My mother couldn't answer it. My stepfather wasn't really interested in it one way or another. And my brothers and sisters were so young at the time they wouldn't do nothing but tease me about it. I was the ‘dummy’: ‘How you gon’ do this? You can't even read!' ”
He says it's not like he didn't try, and he describes what would happen when he did: “I would always hear scrambled music, like an orchestra going off that didn't know what they was doing. It was so confusing. It was, like, violin's playing ‘I Believe I Can Fly,’ the bass is playing ‘When a Woman's Fed Up,’ the guitar's playing ‘Bump N' Grind,’ the piano's playing a gospel song. And then I would end up getting really sleepy and tired.”
Reading remains a struggle. “Since my daughter showed me voice texts on my phone, I've gotten a lot better,” he says. “I'm not a A student, I'm not even a B student, but I've gotten a lot better with the reading because of texts. And I can voice-text and say whatever I want to people. And then they text me back and I take my time and I can read through it.”
R. Kelly Sings the Story of His Life, the Abridged Version
Early on, Kelly faced other challenges. He grew up without a father, gone before Kelly was born, and his mother wouldn't talk about him. “That's the one thing,” he says to me. “If I could change anything, I would definitely have had a father around. My father. I would definitely say it affected me deeply as a young man, coming up. Who doesn't want a father? Those are the beginnings, and those are what can dictate the roads you choose in life, and choosing them well. And it affected me.”
Kelly had a deep, close relationship with his mother, but he says even she never knew everything that was going on in her young son's turbulent life. He says that until he mentioned it in his 2012 memoir, Soulacoaster, he had never told anyone at all about the sexual abuse that he experienced. (Not even his ex-wife Andrea? “Absolutely not.”) It was something he “put so far in the back of my mind that I even forgot about it.” This wasn't the history he wanted for the person he was becoming: “As I got older, the more I just didn't want it to be in my past. The more I became successful.” He was determined that the R. Kelly the world would know—the one who would sell more than 30 million albums, have 36 Billboard Hot 100 hits, invent his own strange musical language, write hits for countless others, and conceive one of the weirdest syntheses of video and music of all time, Trapped in the Closet—would be someone else. “I didn't want that to be something that was in my luggage once I got to my success home, so to speak.”
In the book, he describes a number of premature sexual experiences, including an approach by a trusted family friend, a man, who he says tried to persuade Kelly to masturbate him for money, which Kelly says he rebuffed. “It was a crazy weird experience,” he tells me. “But not a full-blown experience, because it didn't go down. Contact sexual—no. A visual—absolutely. A visual from him showing me his penis and all that stuff.” But he describes in his memoir how the full-on sexual abuse that lasted for several years (it was oral sex the first time, though he tells me it soon became intercourse) started one day when Kelly fell asleep in front of the TV and was awoken from “a crazy dream about Three's Company” to find a woman playing with him:
I tried to push her away, but she wouldn't stop until she was finished. When she was, she said, “You better not say shit to no one or else you gonna get a terrible whupping.”
The book says nothing about how this woman was connected to Kelly, other than implying that she was a regular presence in their home, but while we talk he refers to her as a relative. He doesn't say this as though he expects it to be any kind of revelation to me, more as though he assumes I already know it. I wonder if he even realizes she wasn't described like that in the book.
“At first, I couldn't judge it,” he says to me, when I ask him if he realized at the time that a really bad thing was happening. “I remember it feeling weird. I remember feeling ashamed. I remember closing my eyes or keeping my hands over my eyes. I remember those things, but couldn't judge it one way or the other fully.”
And did that change over time?
“Over time, yeah. I remember actually, after a couple of years, looking forward to it sometimes. You know, acting like I didn't, but did.”
How often would the abuse happen?
“Oh wow. It became a regular thing. Every other day, every other week.”
How many years did it go on for?
“As far as I can remember, about [age] 7 or 8 to maybe 14, 15. Something like that.”
Did anything in particular make it stop?
“When I started having a girlfriend, I felt really bad about it. Then I started getting older and knowing that's just not supposed to happen—family members. And I think it started getting scary for them because I just started acting really different about it, and I think it became a turnoff to them, and a scary thing.”
Was the person doing this still around in your life?
“People can say, ‘Hey, well, he's just trying to protect hisself.’ Well, I have nothing to protect myself from. I'm still successful, and I've got an album out now, I'm gonna move on after this interview and go to the next interview.”
“Absolutely. But eventually they stopped being around me.”
Are they still around now?
“No, I haven't seen them in so long.”
Did you ever have a discussion with them about it?
“Tried to, but.”
How long ago was that?
“Maybe eight, nine years ago. Didn't want to talk about it. Didn't own up to it. Told me, ‘Sometime when you're kids, you think you've been through something, or did something, that you didn't do, probably was a dream.’ Things like that. But it was definitely not a dream.”
They're an actual blood relative?
“Yeah. Yeah.”
What do you think now about what they did?
“I, well, definitely forgive them. As I'm older, I look at it and I know that it had to be not just about me and them, but them and somebody older than them when they were younger, and whatever happened to them when they were younger. I looked at it as if there was a sort of like, I don't know, a generational curse, so to speak, going down through the family. Not just started with her doing that to me.”
Let's take a moment here to acknowledge, even amid the sad sobriety of what Kelly is discussing, just how staggeringly odd this moment is: R. Kelly, a man who has been accused of multiple sexual offenses against underage girls, has just explained that he believes the sexual abuse he suffered is something that is passed down from generation to generation, so that in each new generation, victim becomes perpetrator. Once he has said these words, and they are hanging in the air between us, it just seems impossible to imagine that he won't at least address the obvious question—the question, he must surely realize, that anyone reading this would immediately ask: By that logic, wouldn't that make you the next in the cycle of child molesters? If only to disavow it or sidestep it. But he says nothing. I know I'll need to return to this, but given the awfulness of what he is sharing, now is not the time.
Instead, this is how the conversation continues:
Obviously you know that in the cold light of day what they were doing was a crime. Do you wish they had been held to account for that?
“Back then, too young to judge. As I'm older, I've only learned to forgive it. Was it wrong? Absolutely. But it's a family member that I love so I would definitely say no to that one. To be honest, even if my mom, I saw her kill somebody, I'm not gonna say, ‘Well, yeah, she definitely should go to jail.’ It's just something I wouldn't do.”
I believe a common reaction in such situations is to be angry about losing an innocence that shouldn't have been lost. Do you relate to that?
“Absolutely, yes. It teaches you to definitely be sexual earlier than you should have, than you're supposed to. You know, no different than putting a loaded gun in a kid's hand—he gonna grow up being a shooter, probably. I think it affects you tremendously when that happens at an early age. To be more hornier. Your hormones are up more than they would normally be. Mine was.”
And do you think that set you on a path that you kept on?
“Yeah. In a lot of ways, absolutely. I think so.”
And now here we are. There are no particularly easy ways to ask a man about his alleged relationships with underage girls, but at least the story of R. Kelly and Aaliyah offers a reasonably direct way in. Kelly's career took off quickly in the early '90s, and though he suggests that his first impulse was to write chaste and inspirational pop songs, this was the tail end of the New Jack Swing boom and he says his record label pushed him toward R&B. In particular, the lascivious and risqué R&B for which he showed a special gift. Soon after his initial success, he began writing and producing songs for other artists. As he explains it to me, it wasn't some big plan:
“Producing other people was something I definitely stumbled into because I didn't even really know I was a producer. I was making my own records and doing all the music—I didn't even know that that meant producing. So then when my manager took me to someone to produce them, said, ‘Can you do the same thing you did for you, do it for them?,’ I gave it a shot. Then when I found out I could do that, I didn't just want to make myself great, I wanted to make others great.”
One of the first artists he would produce, and one of his big early successes, was his manager's teenage niece, Aaliyah. Her first album would be named after one of the songs Kelly wrote for her: “Age Ain't Nothing But a Number.” In her particular case, that number was 15. (In Kelly's case it was 27.) They appeared together in interviews and videos. When Kelly accepted the best-R&B-artist trophy at the 1994 Billboard Music Awards, he thanked two people from the stage: his recently deceased mother and “my best friend in the whole wide world, Aaliyah.”
Rumors spread at the time that Kelly's relationship with his protégée was more than professional. Then Vibe magazine printed what appeared to be a marriage certificate they had discovered that showed Kelly and Aaliyah had been married in Rosemont, Illinois, on August 31, 1994. Though she was 15, the certificate stated that she was 18. The marriage reportedly was formally annulled some months later, Aaliyah and Kelly never worked together again, and they were never seen together after this period. (Aaliyah died in a plane crash after a video shoot in the Bahamas when she was 22.) Neither Kelly nor Aaliyah, before her death, has ever publicly confirmed these details, but their truth has never been credibly challenged; even in the Lifetime channel's carefully sanitized 2014 Aaliyah biopic, her father threatens to have Kelly charged with statutory rape.
The fullest version of what may have happened—and the most convincing one, for all its incidental detail and accidental nuance—is in a rambling memoir by a man named Demetrius Smith, who worked in various capacities for Kelly before and after he became famous, until they had a falling out. The week of the marriage, Smith recounts being in Miami on tour with Kelly, and how Kelly explained that he had received a distraught phone call from Aaliyah, saying she had run away from home, believing she was pregnant. Smith says that Kelly was then given some specious advice—that he could protect himself from the legal ramifications of the situation by marrying her. Smith's account of what happened next: During a break in the tour, Smith and Kelly flew together to Illinois; Smith procured a fake state ID for Aaliyah from a friend in the Public Aid office, and they got a backup ID through someone they knew at Federal Express. That night, after the ceremony in a suite at a Sheraton hotel, Kelly and Smith flew back to Miami to resume the tour.
As complicated as the full story may be, the situation, as it reflects on Kelly now, is fairly simple. He either was or was not married to, and in a sexual relationship with, a 15-year-old girl. If he wasn't, why not just say so? What possible reason could there be for refusing to?
First I ask Kelly what he saw in Aaliyah musically when he started working with her.
“Aaliyah? I heard first of all this soft voice, but very…a lot of charisma. And I saw her as a star the minute I heard her sing and dance. Saw her dance. She wasn't the greatest dancer, but the dance moves she was doing were different than the other dancers that I've seen on television. And I said, ‘This girl's gonna be a star, whether I work with her or not.’ ”
Obviously the two of you became very close.
“Yeah. Yeah.”
How would you describe that?
“Uh, I would describe it as best friends. Deep friends. As far as we both loved music and wanted to be successful. She's a Capricorn, I'm a Capricorn, my momma a Capricorn, her daddy's a Capricorn, you know. It was just so much in common with each other.”
And these are difficult questions but would you say you were in love with her?
“Yes. I would say I loved 'liyah.”
But “in love”?
“Well, there's a lot of ways to be in love with a person. I was in love with my grandfather, you know. But yeah, I would say I was in love with Aaliyah just like I was in love with anybody else. But in a different, friend type of way.”
And she was in love with you?
“I would think so. Absolutely. I would say that.”
As you know, people know that there was a wedding ceremony and you got married.
“Well, because of Aaliyah's passing, as I've always said, out of respect for her mother who's sick and her father who's passed, I will never have that conversation with anyone. Out of respect for Aaliyah, and her mother and father who has asked me not to personally. But I can tell you I loved her, I can tell you she loved me, we was very close. We were, you know, best best best best friends.”
But here's what seems difficult from the outside. Sadly, Aaliyah can't speak for herself, and people have what they think is a very clear idea of the situation—that the two of you got married, that you were having a sexual relationship. Right now, that's the record as far as people are concerned. Those are the facts.
“Right.”
So you not talking about it doesn't feel like it's protecting her or respecting her, it just feels like it's protecting you.
“Yeah, yeah. You know, I tell you this: I know Aaliyah's not here and can't speak for herself, but there was a time that she was plenty here, after that rumor and all of that stuff started. Plenty grown. She was 22 and could speak for herself. Her mother, her father, anybody else, could speak and say whatever they wanted.”
But with the documentary evidence, it doesn't seem an unclear situation. I'm trying to understand your life, and if you explained the real situation, it would maybe make people understand better than the version they have at the moment.
“Well, unfortunately when there's two parties involved in any situation, both parties have to be respected. Sometimes you have to sacrifice yourself in a way to respect someone else's wishes, and to respect someone else's passing…. People can say, ‘Hey, well, he's just trying to protect hisself.’ Well, I have nothing to protect myself from. I'm still successful, and I've got an album out now, I'm gonna move on after this interview and go to the next interview and do another interview, and these questions are going to be asked. I did the best I could by writing my book and putting it out there for whoever wants to read about Robert. [Aaliyah is not mentioned in Kelly's book.] Can't satisfy everybody, unfortunately. I wish that I could.”
Did you do anything in that situation that you feel bad about or you feel was wrong?
“Absolutely not. Absolutely not. That's my answer forever: Absolutely not.”
Kelly's career thrived through the rest of the '90s and into the new century. Few conversations with him leave any doubt about how significant he feels his achievements are. What is surprising, then, is that when I later try to talk with him in more detail about his musical career, he often seems to have only the most spotty and rudimentary familiarity with what he has done. At one point I ask him—purely to ease into the subject—which of his albums he thinks most perfectly realizes who R. Kelly is. This is his answer:
“I think that's… I forgot.… I don't know the name of the album. I think it's my second album. I don't know if that's the R. album or TP-2.” Pause. “Born into the 90's is my first album.”
I remind him that Born into the 90's was followed by 12 Play.
“12 Play!” he exclaims, and we have our answer. “The 12 Play album.” Probably. But he's still not quite sure. “Isn't ‘Body's Callin’ ’ on 12 Play?” he asks. (“Your Body's Callin' ” is the opening track.)
*12 Play'*s title track is the song in which Kelly's full-on full-press sexual persona flowered—a 12-step manual describing what he will be doing to his lucky lover. It began as an onstage improvisation while he was on tour; the audience reaction told him he had hit on a winning formula. (The phrase “12 Play” is intended to convey that what Kelly is offering is an upgraded version of foreplay. You know, three times as good.) It established a narrative where there would be two distinct types of R. Kelly albums. There would be the sex albums, or, as Kelly has sometimes called them, the “baby-makin' ” albums: 12 Play was followed by the sequels TP-2.com, TP.3 Reloaded, and 2013's Black Panties. And then there would be his other albums. In practice, Kelly has been pretty undisciplined about maintaining any kind of clear dividing line between the two. Often the sex albums have songs that are completely off-topic (the first single from TP-2.com was “I Wish,” a sensitive and rousing gospel-fueled hymn to his late mother) and pretty much all his other albums have sustained periods of lewdness. Either seemed to work, and the breadth of what he could achieve was anchored by two huge uplifting mainstream triumphs: the 1995 song he wrote for and produced with Michael Jackson, “You Are Not Alone,” and the song he wrote and performed for the movie Space Jam the following year, “I Believe I Can Fly.”
The first ripple of what was to come was a story in the Chicago Sun-Times at the end of 2000, revealing that Kelly had settled a 1996 lawsuit with a woman who claimed to have had sex with him when she was 15, and reporting that this was only one example of a pattern of behavior. Other lawsuits followed, and videos purporting to show Kelly having sex with various women were widely available for sale on the streets. Then, in February 2002, the Chicago police received a 26½-minute videotape that showed a man having sex with a young woman. The man looked extraordinarily like R. Kelly, and the location bore an extraordinary resemblance to the wood-paneled basement of the house where Kelly lived at the time. In the video, the man coaxed the woman through various sexual acts, exhorted her to call him “Daddy,” and urinated in her mouth. The police identified the other person on the tape as someone associated with Kelly—she was thanked as his “goddaughter” on his TP-2.com album, and her father was credited as the guitarist on many of Kelly's records—and they believed she was 14 at the time that the videotape was made. In June 2002, Kelly was indicted for making child pornography.
The first solo song Kelly released after this news broke was a bizarre, mawkish plea called “Heaven I Need a Hug”: Dear momma, you wouldn't believe what I'm goin' through… / Heaven, I need a hug / Is there anybody out there willin' to embrace a thug? Surreally, the guitarist credited on the record was the father of the girl. The second solo song he released, the first single off a new album, Chocolate Factory, was an anthem based around a phallic sexual metaphor, “Ignition (Remix).” It was a huge worldwide hit. From then on, Kelly's career seemed to continue, virtually unaffected by his continuing real-life problems. And despite advice from his lawyers, plenty of the songs he released in this era were as provocatively sexual as anything he'd ever done. He refused to back down. “I maintained my innocence,” he'll tell me. “Why would I run under a rock? Why wouldn't I just do what I do? It's what I've always done.”
The case took six years to go to trial. When it finally did, the girl whom the prosecutors had identified declined to cooperate, as did her parents. All three had apparently denied to a grand jury that it was her in the video, though a number of close relatives and school friends testified otherwise. Kelly likewise exercised his right not to testify. In Soulacoaster, Kelly says that at the start of the trial, the prosecutors offered him a deal: Plead guilty and serve only eight months behind bars. Kelly's attorneys and his business manager advised him to take it. Otherwise he was looking at 15 years. He refused. “Don't say we didn't warn you,” he reports that they told him.
His confidence, or faith, or stubbornness, turned out to be well placed. In June 2008, a jury found him not guilty.
I don't think there's many people who believe that wasn't you in the videotape.
“You say you don't what?”
I don't think there's many people who believe you weren't in that videotape.
“You don't think it's many people?”
I think everyone thinks that it was you.
“Even the ones that buy my albums?”
Yes, absolutely.
“And sell out my shows and buy the tickets?”
Yes.
“So what do you think they think about that?”
I think people really like your records, and they think they don't have to hate you.
“So you think my records overwhelm what they think about me?”
In truth? Absolutely. For instance, when the accusations first emerged and you were first charged, you came out with “Ignition”… And, to be blunt, the record was too good.
“That's an opinion. That's your opinion.”
You asked my opinion.
“The record was so good that it overwhelmed…?”
Yes. That's what I think.
“I don't think so. I don't think so. I just think those people didn't believe that nonsense. That's what I think. And they said, ‘The hell with what other people are saying—we love R. Kelly, we believe R. Kelly, he was found innocent, he's moving on with his life, he's not letting that tear him down.’ I believe that's what it was.”
“I sleep well when it's just pitch-black…. Once I get in that closet I feel like no one in the world has any idea that I am in this closet right now. And that gives me a peace of mind.”
Well, the trial didn't happen until years after that. And no one is found innocent. You were found not guilty. But when they interviewed the jurors who would talk afterwards, they pretty much all said that it was you in the video.
“Well, then, why didn't they find me guilty? They loved ‘Ignition’?”
No. They didn't find you guilty because they couldn't be sure that the other person in the video was who the prosecution said it was, and hence they couldn't be sure that person was underage. That's why you were found not guilty.
“Well, to be honest with you, man…however, whatever, whenever. When a person is found not guilty, they're found not guilty. And it doesn't matter if it's a murder case, it doesn't matter what case it is, when they're found not guilty, they're not guilty. And I think that a lot of haters out there wanted to see me go down.”
Sure. But let me ask a simple question: Is that you in that video?
“[pause] Because of my lawyers, to this day I cannot have those kind of conversations. Being advised by my lawyers in this.”
I understand why you wouldn't during the trial period, but…
“Because they could come back to haunt me. Things could come back and they can just restart all over again. And I have to protect myself.”
But people are going to think that if it wasn't you in the video, there would be no legal ramifications in saying, “It's not me.” It would be the easiest, simplest, most obvious thing on earth to say.
“Not necessarily. Because I've said certain things when it all first started, but that didn't do no good. So I had to go get lawyers and they had to protect me. So now I'm under my lawyers' advice.”
Though of course you describe in your book a very important moment when they told you to take a plea and you didn't take their advice.
“No, you know…I tell you this: I believe in my lawyers. You're not gonna take all advice all the time. But for the most part I'm taking my lawyers' advice as far as not discussing the court case.”
There's one other aspect of the video for which Kelly stood trial that I want to try to discuss with him today. If anything, it's even more awkward. The accusation that he had sex with a minor was behind all of his legal troubles, but another aspect of the video seems to have done at least as much damage.
Given that a lot of people believe that the video shows you, some of the behaviors on the video have become associated with you, particularly urination as part of sex. Pissing on people. You must have seen that Dave Chappelle skit.
“No, I haven't.”
He did several clips on his show.
“David Chappelle? [as though trying to place the name] David Chappelle? I don't…”
Chappelle's Show. Very famous.
“Okay…comedian?”
Really famous comedian.
“Okay, a comedian. Okay…go on.”
And acting as you, he did a parody of “Ignition (Remix)” called “Piss on You.”
“Mmmm.”
Likewise Macklemore mentioned it in his first big hit. [“Thrift Shop” includes the lyric Probably shoulda washed this, smells like R. Kelly's sheets…pissssss.] This has become part of popular culture.
“Whole lot of things become popular culture.”
But this is your name.
“Especially when it comes to a comedian, man. First of all, I have no respect for a comedian when it comes to being serious. If you get that. That's a joke.”
But this is your name and your reputation—pull up any YouTube video of yours and read the comments underneath, and pretty quickly there'll be a comment relating to this.
“Mmmm. Okay. Of course it is.”
Well, to ask the embarrassing question—to give you a chance to clarify something—and this wouldn't be illegal, but is that something you like as part of sex?
“Absolutely not.”
In no circumstances?
“No.”
So, given that, and given that there's a perception out there that associates you with that behavior, how do you feel about that?
“Well, I used to be, ‘Wow—seriously?’ It made me feel terrible. But now I, honestly, don't think about it or could care one way or the other what people think about me. I have fans and I have family that love me, and I have my music, and I have my breath going in and out. I'm more than okay with who I am and who I have become today as a man, and I'm just moving on with my life, man, doing this music. I'm good.”
After we pause for the day—“It's all good,” he says—Kelly accepts the building management's invitation to go up to the 103rd floor, where the tourists congregate.
I follow him as Kelly is skipped to the front of the line to stand on the Skydeck, a glass-floored extension over the building's edge with the city below him. He can see his current home, in Chicago's Trump Tower, from here. “Makes the Trump look like a needle,” he says.
The person chaperoning our party says that there's a roof deck on the ninetieth floor, where she can take him if he'd like. He'd like. To get outside, we have to clamber through the building's gigantic window-cleaning machinery, and then we're in the open air. Suddenly Kelly spreads his arms and begins to sing, really going for it.
I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
He does two full choruses, then we take the elevator down and he gets a coffee from Starbucks.
I spend all the following day waiting for news of when we will meet again. There seems to be some suggestion that he isn't happy with our conversation so far and that he may be reluctant to continue—but if so, he's careful not to give that impression when we do finally convene, at a little past 10 p.m. His favorite cigar club, Biggs, is in an old Chicago mansion, all curved staircases and wood-paneled rooms. Kelly sweeps in talking on his phone, evidently making arrangements for later on. It may be the most innocent of conversations, but it is still sprinkled with the kind of cryptic yet allusive phrases—“one of the twins…the one that just got here”—that a screenwriter would put in R. Kelly's mouth if this were a movie.
I've spent the day listening to his new album, The Buffet. One might assume, as I did, given his previous deployment of “buffet” imagery, that the album title was meant as a sexual metaphor. (And also because his website currently features a series of buffet-related portraits showing Kelly and six identical women around a table laden with food; it is unclear who will be dining and who will be dined upon.) But Kelly has consistently rebuffed this, telling people for months that the title is an allusion to the diversity of the music within. “All you can hear” has been his go-to quip.
Nevertheless, he acknowledges to me a past usage, from a Ja Rule song he guested on called “Wonderful”: I came from the dirt, what you want me to say / I'm at the top of the world and life's a pussy buffet. “All the women you can have,” he says. “That's what it's like when you become famous. It's a metaphor that I used. I said, ‘Wow, life is like a pussy buffet.’ Before I was famous, girls wasn't even checking for me. But when I became famous and came into money, I'd walk into a club and sometimes it'd be 20 girls stuck to me, coming out the club.”
And naturally, on *The Buffet'*s very first song, he immediately abandons the all-you-can-hear conceit: Come and feed me, baby / Put your body on a dinner plate / I just can't get enough of your buffet. That's from a half-recited song called “Poetic Sex” that he refers to as his first poem. At one point, the poem's preamble breaks mid-sentence so that Kelly can make a kind of licking-slurping sound that may well be one of the most sonically disturbing moments in music history. “That's just to turn the girls on, you know,” he says. “I did that strictly to turn the women on. And you know, break up the form a little bit before I get to the punch line.” He kindly spells it out. “Ladies can relate to that because that represent, you know, oral sex. So that's what that was about.” (If you buy the “clean” version, all the curse words have been scrubbed, but you still get the slurp.)
It's an extraordinary way to start any album, and in particular one whose declared raison d'être seems to have been to find the widest audience possible. Among its other lyrics: “Pussy my address, just being honest / and they say home is where the heart is,” “Like a ceiling with a hole / I'ma have you leaking,” “Put your pussy right up on my head, that's a fitted cap,” and the triumphant coup de grâce, “My lyrics got a big dick, and I just fucked the shit out of y'all—poetic.”
“I call that a finish line,” he says, in the tone of a proud tradesman.
The most famous of R. Kelly's sex songs is “Ignition (Remix),” though the heart and the power of the song is so far removed from the central penetrative image—I'm about to take my key and stick it in the ignition—that I wonder whether its ribald core passes many listeners by and they just relate to its infectious sense of late-night revelry. “It's an anthem,” says Kelly. “Some even want to call it the national anthem. I don't agree with that, but I've heard it so much.”
“Ignition (Remix)” is also the most successful example of one of R. Kelly's distinctive contributions to music. By the time Kelly's career was starting up, remixes had been around, in increasingly inventive forms, for over 15 years, but R. Kelly was the first to release remixes that were basically new songs altogether. Listen to the R. Kelly song just called “Ignition” and unless you pay very close attention and notice a few common musical parts, it's hard to detect how it's related to the hit version.
Kelly then tells me a story about “Ignition (Remix)” that is so bizarre and counter-logical that I'll get him to repeat the whole thing tomorrow. It makes so little sense that I assume I have misunderstood. What he tells me is this: that he wrote the basis of “Ignition (Remix)”—including the lyric It's the remix to “Ignition” / hot and fresh out the kitchen…—five or so years before he wrote the song called “Ignition.” (It stayed on the shelf because, initially, he didn't think much of it.) That's really what he's saying: He wrote the remix of a song, with lyrics identifying it as a remixed version, five years before he wrote the “original.” In other words, the song called “Ignition”—which was presented to the world as the song that “Ignition (Remix)” was the remix of—was actually an R. Kelly-style remix of the song we know as “Ignition (Remix).” I talk this through with him, again and again, increasingly mystified, but he really does seem to mean this. “It's ass-backwards,” he admits contentedly.
But how could you have the melody and words for something that was a version of a song you hadn't written yet?
“You tell me.”
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and we have a plan to meet at a homeless shelter where, in the late morning, Kelly is scheduled to hand out turkeys. “I'm giving my Thanksgiving for these people tomorrow,” he tells me. “All good.” While I have some reservations about how nakedly this seems like an attempt to shine up his public image, it still sounds like something worth witnessing. And if this is how he is choosing to spend his Thanksgiving, whatever his motives might be, then that seems worthy of respect.
I would see him there.
The next morning, about an hour before I am to rendezvous with Kelly at A Safe Haven, I receive a text from one of his representatives informing me that Kelly isn't feeling well and will no longer be feeding the homeless today.
I hang around all day, all Thanksgiving, waiting to be told when we're meeting for our final interview. I hear nothing until 8:45 p.m., when I'm told I need to be at the cigar bar by 9:15 p.m. Kelly arrives just before ten. “Had to cancel that thing,” he says of the homeless-shelter trip. He doesn't mention illness. He says he was working on a few songs in the studio late last night—in particular a mid-tempo country one called “Helicopter.” (He writes compulsively and claims to have written 470 songs for The Buffet.) “I got so inspired,” he explains. “Man's calling himself a helicopter, he's going to swoop down, sweep her off her feet and fly her away.” And anyway, that homeless thing—he was on it: “I had no energy when I got out, but I sent my lawyer up there to represent the whole thing, and everybody ate and everybody was good. So that was good.”
So that was good.
“I just woke up,” Kelly explains. He hasn't eaten yet, but after we finish here, there's a Thanksgiving dinner at his studio for his people. He is accompanied here this evening by two smartly dressed middle-aged women, one of whom introduces herself to me as his assistant. The other says nothing. Both are presumably waiting for this midnight Thanksgiving. As we talk, the women sit on a sofa nearby, close enough to hear, both looking straight ahead, sitting upright, rarely showing any reaction—even as the conversation that follows takes its turns. They look like they're in church.
If you devoted your life on this planet to the sole mission of understanding and making sense of what was going on in R. Kelly's head, the point at which I believe you'd finally give up and declare your quest utterly hopeless is after you watch the first few episodes of Trapped in the Closet. It's hard to even describe Trapped in the Closet in a way that is sufficient to capture its banal yet beguiling and magnificently inventive strangeness. Technically, I suppose, it is a video musical soap opera exploring the personal, romantic, and sexual entanglements of a growing cast of characters, told in three-minute episodes—33 of them so far—each sung by Kelly to the same relentless tune. (He has already written 50 more, 30 to be filmed soon.)
“It's absolutely not like anything else,” he says, and his pride here seems quite reasonable. “I call it an alien, because I've never seen it before. Everything about Trapped in the Closet is secrecy. Everybody has a closet.”
There is one tangentially related detail about R. Kelly that I had read about him—a detail too preposterously apt to be true. But I have to ask: Is it true you often used to sleep in your closet?
“Mmmm.” He nods. And laughs. “I still do.”
Really?
“Yeah. Absolutely.”
Up in your apartment in the Trump Tower, you'll go into the closet?
“Generational curse doesn't mean that the curse can't be broken. Just like having no father…. Which is why, when my kids were born, I was Bill Cosby in the house. You know, the good one.”
“Absolutely, sometimes. Most of the times, it's just peace of mind. First of all, it's a pretty big closet. There's a few reasons. The way the sunlight comes through the window, when I wake I don't like it. I like pitch-black, because I sleep well when it's just pitch-black. I leave my phones outside of the closet, and once I get in that closet I feel like no one in the world has any idea that I am in this closet right now. And that gives me a peace of mind, to know that no one knows where I'm at right now. ‘I bet you they can't find me here.’ So it's that kind of thought.”
Like you're hiding from everyone?
“Uh, in a way, yeah. And I feel so secure. I've got the front door locked, I got the back door locked, I got the room door locked, and I got the closet door locked. I'm in a door in a door in a door in a door, so I feel protected. Just like the way they put money in a thick vault. So, call me money at that point.”
Have you done that all your life?
“No, not all my life. I started doing that after I got rich and famous.”
You have…like a futon in there?
“No, just a pallet—like, four quilts, folded up.”
And do you only do that when you're sleeping on your own, or will you bring people in there?
“Oh no, ain't no room for nobody else. Wasn't even no room for my wife in there. No, it's just me. Nobody's allowed in the closet.” He laughs. “Not in that closet.”
What kind of dreams do you have?
“Oh, I have some of the weirdest, craziest dreams, and I believe that has to do with my imagination being so crazy, so widespread, because of my gift and all that.”
What kind of things?
“I've had dreams of heights—you know, very afraid of high heights, especially when it comes to flying and things like that. I've had dreams of being raped by women. I've had dreams about being cornered by things—I don't know what it is in front of me but I felt cornered. And I've had dreams where I'd wake up and think I'm cool but I'm still in the dream. I've had dreams about swallowing telephone cords—pulling 'em out and the cord never really ended type dreams. Wake up coughing. I dream about my mother an awful lot—I see her body but can't see her face, and then I wake up very frustrated about that. I have dreams about being chased and shot at all the time.”
There is a line in your book that I wanted to ask you about. You wrote: “I still feel alone, because no one—including me—understands my mind.…”
“Yeah, I definitely feel that way. If you look around, you see cars rolling down the street all the time, but if you ever see a floating car, you gonna be like, ‘Whoa! Whoa! Wait a minute, what is that? I've never seen that before.’ You can't figure it out because you don't know who built it, you don't know who created it, you don't know who came up with the concept, you don't know the blueprint of it, you don't even know how it works, but you love it because it looks so sweet, floating down the street. And that one car, if it has any type of feeling in it, is gonna feel alone, because it's not understood.”
So you're the one floating car?
“Oh man, absolutely. That's what I feel. I feel I'm a floating car around a lot of cars. Sometimes I feel like I'm a shooting star around a lot of stars. And it's not a bragging thing—I don't want nobody to get it twisted—but that's just how I feel, because I can't figure it out myself. You know, I can't figure out why do I have the ability? I can't really read or write, don't spell, no math, but at the same time I can write songs and do what I do. That boggles me.”
I need to ask Kelly about that thing he said on the first day we met—that moment when he was talking about the sexual abuse he endured, and his belief that abuse travels down generations like a curse. The implication was extraordinary to me, but at the time we hadn't yet begun to discuss the sexual accusations against him, so it seemed wiser to wait. Now I need to ask:
People are going to think: Well, if that passes down, why didn't it pass down to you?
“Well, you know, just like poverty—poverty was a generational curse in my family, too, but I decided that I'm gonna stop that curse. I'm not gonna be broke, like my mom was broke, my uncles were broke, my sisters didn't have money, my cousins on down. Generational curse doesn't mean that the curse can't be broken. Just like having no father, that's a generational curse. Which is why, when my kids were born, I was Bill Cosby in the house. You know, the good one. You know, let's be clear there: how we saw Bill Cosby when we were coming up.”
So what did you have to do to break a generational curse? To make that not be you?
“Well, it's really not about breaking it. There's things that you don't want to do that you're not gonna do. It was just as simple as that. I want to be able to be a father to my kids, where I've never seen my father, but my kids can see me whenever they want, so that was broken. [He and his wife Andrea divorced in 2009, and in practice, for reasons he suggests are beyond his control, he rarely sees his three children.] The poverty part was broken. And I feel the child-molestation part, that definitely was broken. But of course you gonna be misunderstood because you R. Kelly, and the success and things get mixed up in the music, and people take the words you sing in your songs and try to pound that on your head and say, ‘Ahh! You did do it—look what you just wrote over here.’ ”
And so an attempt to tie up one mystifying loose end only introduces another, even more baiting one: Bill Cosby? R. Kelly, with all of the baggage that comes with being R. Kelly, chooses to introduce into the conversation—as a symbol of a great father figure—Bill Cosby?
Naturally, I ask his perspective on what has been happening with Cosby. Though Kelly begins carefully, his deeper and truer feelings quickly seem to take over, and what he is saying is clearly just as much about himself.
“Well, my opinion on that is, I don't know what happened. I'm a fan of Bill Cosby's from the Bill Cosby show, of course—who's not?—and for me to give my opinion on something that I have no idea if it's true or not, all I can say is that it was a long time ago. And when I look on TV and I see the 70-, 80-, 90-year-old ladies talking about what happened when they were 17, 18, or 19, there's something strange about it. That's my opinion. It's just strange.”
Although if—
“[interrupts] It's strange. Strange is strange. I can't explain strange. That's why strange is strange. Because it's something we can't explain.”
But don't you think that if they're telling the truth, it doesn't matter how long ago it was?
“If God showed me that they were telling the truth, I would say that's wrong. I don't care if it was a zillion years ago. But God would have to do that, because God is the only one can show me that. No man can tell me that. No woman can tell me that. And when you wait 70 years, 50 years, 40 years, to say something that simple, it's strange. You know why I say that is because it happened to me, and it wasn't true.”
R. Kelly has acknowledged that he has settled with others who have accused him of underage sex. The popular assumption is that he bought these accusers' silence; Kelly has said that he shouldn't have settled—he was wrong, in these cases, to follow his lawyers' advice—and that he only did it to avoid bad publicity.
Just to get it directly from you, your position is that those people were extorting you?
“That's not my position, that's the absolute truth.”
So the people who said these things, they were all liars?
“All of them. And it wasn't many. It wasn't like it was a whole ton of people. But the people that did were absolutely lying. Absolutely.”
Why would they do that?
“Look, if I break up with a girl, and she don't wanna break up, and I'm R. Kelly, she's gonna be pissed. So pissed that she's gonna go out there, she's gonna say this, she's gonna say that, she's gonna say the other. And if she's really pissed, whoever she said it to is gonna spread the rumor, and if the wrong people get ahold of that rumor, that's gonna come out. If that come out, I gotta get a lawyer, and once I get that lawyer, that lawyer gonna tell me to shut up. Because no matter what you say, you're gonna look bad. Okay, so now it goes from that to ‘Oh, they're really serious, they want to sue you.’ What the lawyers tell me? ‘You should settle. Your album's coming out. You have a GQ front cover coming out, you have BET next week, you have the Grammys coming up. Wrong or right, you can win the battle and lose the war. It's on you, but that's what we advise you to do.’ I go home, I think about all my hard work, I look at my studio, I look at my kids, I look at my wife at the time, or any other time, and I say, ‘I don't want to settle.’ I want to fight because I know I'm right, I know I'm innocent, have nothing to hide—she wanted me, I wanted her, she was of age, I'm of age. But she'll say, ‘Well, I didn't meet him here, I met him then.’ That's what they're saying.”
Oh, so you're saying the people that were underage knew you, but they knew you later?
“Not all of them—some of them I didn't even know! I got people suing me right now, man, saying they wrote ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ with me.”
But was it a mistake to settle? Because people think, well, he wouldn't have settled if he wasn't guilty.
“I think that's how normal people think who don't know and understand the life of a celebrity.”
Would you agree that one of these two things has to be true: Either you did things that were wrong and illegal, or you've suffered a horrible injustice?
“That second one you said, I don't understand it quite well, so I'm not gonna be able to answer it unless you make me understand it.”
Okay. Either the first thing's true, or something really unfair has happened to you.
“Oh well, that's great. I'm glad you put it like that!”
No, I'm saying it's either that or that.
“Abso-effing-lutely.”
I'm saying it's one or the other.
“I think, man, abso-effing-lutely I've been treated unfair. Yes. I'm not, you know, this innocent guy with a halo over his head. No, I love women. Do I like to sleep with underage girls? Absolutely not. I've said it a million times. But do I have people trying to destroy my career? Absolutely.”
The conversations we have this final evening at the cigar club, in which he works up a head of steam about the ways in which he has been betrayed and misunderstood, appear to leave Kelly in good cheer. He seems to feel as though I am now convinced by what he has said—or perhaps it makes him feel so convinced by the righteousness of his position that it amounts to much the same thing. If you feel persecuted enough, it's easier to bury what you might have done wrong in the first place.
From our vantage point, Kelly seems to live in some kind of strange celebrity half-shadow where his dazzling musical legacy is tainted and his company is not always welcome. But he is also correct in observing that, within his bubble, a different reality exists: one in which he still gets plenty of invitations and approval, his records still sell, and the crowds still turn up. I can think of no plausible reason for some of the answers he has given me over the past three days, other than that he's shielding himself from some unpalatable guilty truths. But he seems oblivious to this, perhaps because his life gives him no particular reason to confront them. I wonder whether he's been around so many people for so long who either pretend to believe him, or who simply don't care, that he's learned to take that as evidence of his own innocence. (As he would observe, it's ass-backward.)
Either way, when he gets up to leave, off for a Thanksgiving celebration that won't even start on Thanksgiving, he insists on giving me a warm hug.
A good deal of how we come away thinking of R. Kelly must hang on what we think of R. Kelly's relationship with the truth. Kelly's mother, Joann, died of cancer in 1993, just as Kelly's career was taking off. The week before we meet, Kelly was in New York for his GQ photo shoot. At the end, he was asked to sit in front of a video camera and to maybe sing a few lines about his life. A minute or two would have been great. But Kelly does something remarkable—he begins to tell huge swathes of his life story, sometimes talking conversationally, sometimes turning it into song, all made up on the spot. When he steps out of the frame, over 45 minutes has passed. It's an incredible performance. Here is a transcript of one of the most memorable sequences, when Kelly, seemingly on the verge of tears, describes his mother's final moments:
“I got back from overseas and my mom passed the day I got back three weeks later.… I had no idea she had cancer.… I went straight to Roseland hospital.… And the first thing my mom said is, she screamed, ‘Get out, Robert, I don't want you to see me like this.’… All I can say is, ‘I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry.’… I walked up to her bedside, I asked the doctor and pastor to excuse us, even my brothers and them, they excused us, it was me and my mom. She said, ‘Please leave, please.’ I said, ‘Momma, please don't make me leave—there's something I've got to tell you.’ I said, ‘First of all, I love you, and I thank you for everything you have done, everything…and I'm sorry for every time I've been bad or did something I wasn't supposed to do. And I promise you…’—and she died right there on the ‘I promise you.’ I called the doctor, they came in and they pronounced her dead, I was still holding her hand. But I finished my sentence. I said, ‘I promise you, Momma, no matter what, by any means necessary, I will be one of the best singers, songwriters, this world has ever seen.’ I made my mom that promise, and I am still on a journey today to fulfill that promise.”
It is deeply moving. But when I watched him say this, something troubled me, and it was this: In R. Kelly's 2012 autobiography, Soulacoaster, there is another account of his mother's death, and while parts of it are similar to this more recent account for GQ, it also includes some fundamental details that are very, very different. In this version, after a conversation with his still-conscious mother, Kelly left the hospital room with tears in his eyes.
I didn't know what to do or where to go—so I went to the studio. I had to be around music. I had to sing. To me, singing is like praying. It's the most powerful prayer I can send up. I was playing “A Song for You” when the call came in. Joann Kelly was gone.
I stopped playing, put my head down, and just sat there. There were people around trying to comfort me, but I didn't hear the words. At that moment I heard a new melody. I didn't have the words for it, but the melody was strong. It had my mother's spirit on it.
It feels awkward to bring this up, but Kelly seems quite unruffled when I describe this discrepancy. He can explain this one easily. He tells me his mother's death happened the way he explained in the GQ video, and that his co-writer David Ritz simply got it wrong. “He didn't get everything on point, just like no one ever does. When you say things, you know they'll get them misconstrued. I've read a couple of things in the book that wasn't exactly how I said it, but whatever.”
This still bothers me a little, though—the version in the book is so detailed and specific that it seems hard to imagine how Ritz could have misunderstood it. But it seems even harder to imagine that Kelly does not remember whether or not he was present when his mother died. Even with the best of intentions, things can get twisted, and perhaps something went awry and Kelly's problems with reading prevented him from scrutinizing the manuscript as most subjects would.
I'm pretty sure I believe him. To not believe him would mean that he is now lying about what happened at his mother's deathbed. And that he is doubling down on the lie to my face. Or that his memory of his mother's death—which, again, happened in 1993—could somehow have shifted in his mind since his 2012 memoir. Either of which would be very weird and disturbing. His explanation—that his collaborator made a mistake—seems the most plausible. And it's a big thing to cast doubt on someone's account of such a deeply sensitive and personal event. So I decide not to write about it.
But it's still nagging at me, so I do one further piece of checking. I just want to make absolutely sure that Kelly hadn't ever given another detailed account of his mother's passing.
It turns out that he had. In June 2004, eight years before his book was published, 11 years before he sat in front of *GQ'*s video camera, he was on the cover of Vibe magazine. Here is the relevant excerpt from that story:
…I kept telling her I was sorry, I didn't know. She begged me to get out and I did.
Reeling, he went to the one place where he always felt comfortable: the studio—his womb, protecting him, keeping him safely away from the world. He sat at a piano by himself singing and playing “A Song for You.” While he was playing, he got the call. His mother had passed away. |||||
Summary: | – For what may be the first time, R. Kelly agreed to a (mostly) no-holds-barred interview in which everything was on the table—his rumored marriage, at age 27, to 15-year-old Aaliyah; the accusations of child porn and sexual offenses against other underage girls; and his own sexual abuse as a child, which he first revealed in his 2012 memoir. He says in the GQ interview that a female relative molested him "every other day, every other week" from the time he was 7 or 8 until he was 14 or 15. "As I'm older, I look at it and I know that it had to be not just about me and them, but them and somebody older than them when they were younger, and whatever happened to them when they were younger," he says. "I looked at it as if there was a sort of like, I don't know, a generational curse, so to speak, going down through the family. Not just started with her doing that to me." But when it comes to the accusations against him, Kelly is less forthcoming: He won't confirm whether he and Aaliyah were married or in a sexual relationship (because she's no longer here to speak for herself) and he won't confirm whether it's him in the 2002 sex tape that got him put on trial for child porn (his lawyers have advised him not to say anything about it, all these years later). He does offer two unequivocal "absolutely not" answers—once when asked whether he enjoys urinating on a woman as part of sex, as the man in the aforementioned sex tape is shown doing, and once when insisting, "Do I like to sleep with underage girls? Absolutely not." Circling back to his comment about child molestation being a "generational curse," Kelly insists he managed to break the curse in his own life. Oh, and he mentions the Bill Cosby scandal, too. The full interview is here. | 0 | Flan2021 | multi_news:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Something caught my eyes when I was walking down the street. Two silver coins were shining in a melting snow bank, so I dug through the snow looking for more. Of course, I just ended up with really cold hands. I slipped the two coins into my pocket and went home, colder but richer. I began to think about how to spend the money... Two days later, Mary and her little sister were searching the snow banks. "Finders are keepers" was my first thought. I didn't want to hand them out even though Susy was already crying. " I dropped them right here," she said between tears. Her hands were cold and red for digging in the snow. Maybe they slid down the street with the melting snow. Let's dig over here." Mary's voice sounded confident. "They'll never know" was my second thought, and I walked past them. " Phil, have you seen two sliver coins?" asked Mary. Susy looked up from digging. _ . "Tell a lie" was my third thought. "As a matter of fact," I hesitated ,"I dug two coins out of that snow bank just a few days ago. I wondered who might have lost them." Susy hugged me with a big smile, "Oh, thank you, thank you."
Now, provide a numbered list of answers to these questions:
1. Who was walking down the street?
Numbered answers: | 1. I | 5 | Flan2021 | coqa:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
National Geographic, formerly the National Geographic Magazine, is the official magazine of the National Geographic Society. It has been published continuously since its first issue in 1888, nine months after the Society itself was founded. It primarily contains articles about science, geography, history, and world culture. The magazine is known for its thick square-bound glossy format with a yellow rectangular border and its extensive use of dramatic photographs. Controlling interest in the magazine has been held by 21st Century Fox since 2015.
The magazine is published monthly, and additional map supplements are also included with subscriptions. It is available in a traditional printed edition and through an interactive online edition. On occasion, special editions of the magazine are issued.
As of 2015, the magazine was circulated worldwide in nearly 40 local-language editions and had a global circulation of approximately 6.5 million per month according to data published by "The Washington Post" (down from about 12 million in the late 1980s) or 6.7 million according to National Geographic. This includes a US circulation of 3.5 million.
The current Editor-in-Chief of the "National Geographic Magazine" is Susan Goldberg. Goldberg is also Editorial Director for National Geographic Partners, overseeing the print and digital expression of National Geographic’s editorial content across its media platforms. She is responsible for News, Books (with the exception of National Geographic Kids books), "National Geographic Traveler" magazine, "National Geographic History" magazine, Maps, and all digital content with the exception of National Geographic Kids. Goldberg reports to Declan Moore, CEO of National Geographic Partners.
Now, provide a numbered list of answers to these questions:
1. What is the name of the magazine?
2. What did it used to be called?
3. Where is it published?
4. How many per month?
5. How many in the US?
6. What was it's peak?
7. How many languages does it support?
8. In how many mediums is the magazine available?
9. Is it a bi-monthly publication?
10. How often is it published?
11. When was it first published?
12. Has publication ever been ceased since then?
13. What organization produces it?
14. Does it contain cultural information?
15. Who does the Editor-in-Chief report to?
16. What is her name?
17. Is she responsible for National Geographic Kids?
18. What other position does she hold?
19. What is Moore's position?
Numbered answers: | 1. National Geographic
2. National Geographic Magazine
3. a global circulation
4. approximately 6.5 million
5. 3.5 million.
6. 12 million in the late 1980s
7. nearly 40 local-language editions
8. two
9. no
10. monthly
11. in 1888
12. No
13. the National Geographic Society
14. yes
15. to Declan Moore
16. Susan Goldberg
17. Not it's books
18. Editorial Director for National Geographic Partners
19. CEO of National Geographic Partners | 5 | Flan2021 | coqa:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Please write a short summary for the following article:
Nadal’s Bad Year Gets Worse at Wimbledon
WIMBLEDON, England— Rafael Nadal’s miserable 2015 season followed him to Southwest London on Thursday evening as he exited Wimbledon at the hands of Germany’s Dustin Brown, in what may have been the most entertaining match of the tournament so far.
Brown’s swashbuckling tennis earned the Wimbledon qualifier, ranked No. 102 in the world, a 7-5, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 second-round victory, in which he sucked the slow and methodical Nadal into a high-tempo slugfest of booming drives and circus shots.
Nadal, who thrives on rhythm, was unable to find any against Brown, who uses an unusual and disruptive style. Brown won 77% of his first serve points and 38% of his receiving points, compared with Nadal’s 31%. Brown is now 2-0 against Nadal in his career. He won their last meeting, also on grass, in Halle, Germany, last year.
“It’s easy for me to play my game against someone like him because I have nothing to lose,” Brown told the BBC after the match.
Nadal has two Wimbledon titles, one of which was won in five-set thriller over Roger Federer in 2008, a match many consider the best ever played. He reached the final in five straight appearances at Wimbledon, but his recent history has been a bust as he has lost to an opponent ranked No. 100 or worse four straight years. Nadal hasn't advanced past the fourth round here since 2011, when he lost in the final to Novak Djokovic.
Since returning from several injuries last year, Nadal hasn’t moved as well or played with the unflinching confidence that had been his trademark. He went out in the quarterfinals in the Australian Open to Tomas Berdych and didn’t show as much progress as he’d hoped during the clay court season. Djokovic dealt him his second defeat at Roland Garros in 11 years in the quarterfinals. After this defeat, Nadal sounded as down as he has ever sounded after a loss.
“It’s not the end,” Nadal said. “I have to keep going and working more than ever to try to change that dynamic.”
Brown was born in Germany and spent the early part of his career representing Jamaica (he switched allegiances when he realized he needed more support from a national federation than Jamaica could offer). Brown has long dreadlocks and a giant tattoo of his father on the left side of his body. He once lived out of a camper as he tried to win enough matches to improve his ranking and earn a living as a pro.
“All that led to this day today which is obviously a great day, probably the best day of my life so far,” Brown said.
Before Thursday, Brown had never stepped on Centre Court. When the All England Club offered to let him visit the court before the match, he declined for fear that he would panic.
The Centre Court crowd—traditionally lovers of stylish, attacking tennis—adored Brown from the start. He serves and volleys. He charges the net whenever he can. He smashes returns in hopes of hitting winners, but sometimes returns serves with drop shots.
In the fourth set, Brown jumped ahead with an early break. Within 30 minutes, he had earned two match points on Nadal’s serve, pounding his chest with his racket as he set them up. Brown failed to convert either one, watching as Nadal hit the line on the first and failing to return a Nadal serve on the second.
When Brown served for the match, Nadal seemed far away. The Spaniard watched Brown’s winning ace swerve away from him and, without a word, removed his headband and trudged off.
Brown dropped his racket and covered his face with both hands. He couldn’t quite believe that he’d beaten the 14-time Grand Slam champion here. Nadal, glum for most of his news conference, managed to crack one joke when asked if he would stay in London for a while, since he had rented a house near the tournament with his family.
“I don’t have more work here in London, so if you want to use the house, [it’s] going to be free tomorrow,” he said. Maybe Nadal should ask Brown if he wants to move in. He has more than earned it.
Write to Joshua Robinson at joshua.robinson@wsj.com
Summary: | Two-time champion Rafael Nadal was ousted in second round of Wimbledon by Dustin Brown, a qualifier ranked No. 102 in the world. | 1 | Flan2021 | newsroom:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Milaciç, onun devlete zarar veren çok sayıda özelleştirmede avukat ve arabulucu olarak yer aldığını belirtti.
Translate this to English? | He says she's participated as a lawyer and mediator in numerous privatisations that were harmful to the state. | 3 | Flan2021 | wmt16_translate/tr-en:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Translate the following sentence to Czech:
Then it's a private operation.
Czech: | Potom je to soukromá operace. | 5 | Flan2021 | wmt16_translate/cs-en:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Context:Tatyana managed two guitars and a bag , and still could point out the Freemans : "Isn't it nice that *they* have come, Mama!"
Is "they" the same as "the Freemans"? Possible answers:Options are: a. no; b. yes;
Answer: | b. | 5 | Flan2021 | super_glue/wsc.fixed:1.0.2 | zs_opt |
Write an ordered list of reviews about "atlas shrugged part i". | 1. Atlas Shrugged. I arched eyebrow, scrunched forehead, yawned.
2. [A] DIY megaproduction... whose ambition vastly exceeds its technical command.
3. Ayn Rand's monumental 1,168-page, 1957 novel gets the low-budget, no-talent treatment and sits there flapping on screen like a bludgeoned seal.
4. The first in a proposed trilogy, "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1" is nearly as stilted, didactic and simplistic as Rand's free-market fable.
5. Let's say you know the novel, you agree with Ayn Rand, you're an objectivist or a libertarian, and you've been waiting eagerly for this movie. Man, are you going to get a letdown.
6. This movie is crushingly ordinary in every way, which with Rand I wouldn't have thought possible.
7. Not all books should be made into movies, and this is one of them.
8. The shame of "Atlas Shrugged: Part I," irrespective of politics and prose, is that a work so long-discussed has been so blatantly bastardized in the name of a quick buck.
9. Part one of a trilogy that may never see completion, this hasty, low-budget adaptation would have Ayn Rand spinning in her grave.
10. Flubbed, under-produced representation of the first third of Ayn Rand's still controversial novel bodes ill for parts two and three. | 7 | Flan2021 | opinion_abstracts_rotten_tomatoes | zs_opt |
Write an article based on this summary:
President Donald Trump has threatened to withhold key Obamacare subsidies for health insurers in order to force Democrats to negotiate a new deal.
Article: | Insurers say if the reimbursements to help cover out-of-pocket medical expenses for the poor are cut, it could send Obamacare into a death spiral.
But Mr Trump said the move might force Democrats to the negotiating table.
His comments come three weeks after Republicans failed to secure a bill to overhaul the US healthcare system.
"I don't want people to get hurt," he told the Wall Street Journal in an interview on Wednesday.
It's complicated: Trump's steep learning curve
The rise of Obamacare: Why is the ACA so popular?
"What I think should happen and will happen is the Democrats will start calling me and negotiating."
Mr Trump vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, during the presidential election.
But he failed to do so during his first months in officer after a bill to overhaul the system was rejected by the Republican-controlled Congress due to a lack of support.
Mr Trump could cancel cost-sharing reductions (CSRs), which reimburse insurers for giving deep discounts to low-income Obamacare policyholders, by dropping the federal government's appeal in a contested legal battle with House Republicans.
Republican lawmakers sued the Obama administration over CSRs, arguing it was unconstitutionally spending money that Congress had not formally appropriated.
House Republicans won the legal challenge in April 2016 and the Obama administration appealed the decision. The lawsuit is ongoing.
If Mr Trump drops the appeal and cuts the payments, it would cause health insurers to hike premiums or leave the Obamacare market altogether.
Top Democratic Senator Charles Schumer responded to the president's remarks on Wednesday, saying he was "threatening to hold hostage healthcare for millions of Americans".
"This cynical strategy will fail," he added.
But Mr Trump also told the newspaper he would consider continuing the payments so he would not be blamed for the market chaos.
"The longer I'm behind this desk and you have Obamacare, the more I would own it." | 8 | Flan2021 | huggingface:xsum | zs_opt |
If "Since it was raining, I carried the newspaper in my backpack to keep it dry.", is "I carried the newspaper in my backpack to keep the backpack dry." correct?
a). no.
b). yes.
Answer: | a). | 2 | Flan2021 | glue/wnli:2.0.0 | zs_opt |
What is the debate topic for the following sentences?
1. There is a strong connection between the presence of natural resources and conflict within Africa .
2. Natural resources , especially those with a high commodity price such as diamonds , are a useful means of funding rebellions and governments .
3. The 1991 civil war in Sierra Leone became infamous for the blood diamonds which came from mines with forced slavery .
4. These diamonds were used to fund the Revolutionary United Front -LRB- RUF -RRB- for eleven years , extending the blood-shed .
5. Continued conflict in the Congo is also attributed to the control of mineral wealth and exemplifies how resources have negatively impacted Africa .
6. Pandergast , 2008 , Kharlamov , I. Africas Resource Wars Assume Epidemic Proportions 24 November 2014 | This House believes Africans are worse off due to natural resources | 7 | Flan2021 | opinion_abstracts_idebate | zs_opt |
Here is a goal: What should you do to avoid bringing in bedbugs with your shoes?
Which way makes more sense to accomplish this goal?
Available options:
1). Wash them with detergent and cold water. Do not leave them outside in the sunlight.
2). Wash them with detergent and hot water. Leave them outside in the sunlight for a couple of hours. | 2). | 1 | Flan2021 | piqa:1.0.0 | zs_opt |
Generate a context and a hypothesis. | Context: Bosch is an American police procedural web television series produced by Amazon Studios and Fabrik Entertainment. It stars Titus Welliver as Los Angeles Police detective Harry Bosch. The show was developed for Amazon by Eric Overmyer and the first season takes its inspiration from three of Michael Connelly’s novels: "City of Bones", "Echo Park", and "The Concrete Blonde".
Hypothesis: Harry Bosch is a white Los Angeles police detective. | 9 | Flan2021 | anli/r2:0.1.0 | zs_opt |
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