Chapter 21: COMPREHENSION

Passage 2

In an essay called 'Why I Write' written in 1947, Orwell says that his desire has been to make political writing into an art. He starts to write a book, he says, from 'a sense of injustice, not from the idea that he is going to produce a great work of art: I write it because there is some lie I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. From the sketch of the political background to Animal farm it will be quite clear that one of the purposes of the book is to expose the lie which (it seemed to Orwell) Stalinist Russia had become. It was supposed to be a Socialist Union of States, but it had become a dictatorship. Not only that. There were socialists in Britain and in the West generally who were so eager to advance the cause that everything the Soviet Union did had to be accepted. The Soviet Union, in fact, damaged the cause of true socialism. In a preface he wrote to Animal farm he says that for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the 'socialist movement'.

Animal farm attempts, through a simplification of Soviet history, to clarify in the minds of readers what Orwell felt Russia had become. The clarification is to get people to face the facts of injustice, of brutality. And hopefully to get them to think out for themselves some way in which a true and democratic socialism (in Orwell's phrase) will be brought about. But Orwell's purpose goes beyond the particular example of the Russia Revolution. In Animal Farm he criticizes something inherent in an all revolutions and he himself was conscious of this. Russia is the immediate example, but the book, Orwell himself said, is intended as a satire on dictatorship in general. The time will come when the details of Russian history that roused Orwell's anger will be forgotten, and Animal Farm will be read for its bitter, ironic analysis of the stages all revolutions tend to go through. In Animal Farm Orwell is thinking of the French Revolution and of the Spanish Civil War as well as the Bolshevik Rebellion of 1917. After the initial excitement and enthusiasm, when personal interests are almost forgotten, Orwell seems to say, the hard facts of life begin to make themselves felt again.

To survive one must produce food, and to produce food one must organize. To organize one needs administrators,and they will be among the most intelligent and the most ambitious. Administrative authority gradually becomes power and power becomes tyranny. Authority gradually becomes power and power becomes tyranny. Orwell sees this process as something that is almost inevitable in human affairs, Revolution among them. In Animal Farm this process works itself out with a logic that is simple and effective. Was it Orwell's purpose then to present the reader with a view of man's inability to change himself?

Such a view would be directly contrary to Orwell's own, very personal brand of socialism, but there is no doubt that part of him, at least, felt that there was something wrong with human nature and that political systems, because human, had a tendency towards corruption and tyranny. Animal Farm is a powerful parable of that tendency. It would also be possible to take the view that Animal Farm confronts its readers with the tendencies towards tyranny in Revolution so that they may be warned. Such things having happened before, they may very well happen again if care is not taken to avoid them, next time. The reader will have to make up his own mind as to whether Orwell was a moral pessimist or a moralistic socialist. It may be that they are the same thing. Animal Farm is a work that raises questions not just about political systems, but about human nature itself. Can man change, or is he condemned to a see-saw of systems that all end up the same? Because one of Orwell's deepest purposes was primarily moral, it is not surprising that he chose a form traditionally associated with the moral as a means of achieving his purpose: the animal fable.

Questions

1. As per the passage, all of the following statements indicates Orwell's purpose(s) in writing Animal Farm except-

(1) To expose the 'Soviet myth'. As he saw that the mindless acceptance of everything that Stalin did in the name of socialism was damaging socialism itself.

(2) To expose the nature of revolution itself. As he saw the revolutions decaying into rules of terror.

(3) To expose the inherent frailties of the human nature to usurp and misuse power for corrupt motives.

(4) To forewarn his readers of the tyranny in revolution that may endanger the future of socialism and their society.

(5) To draw the attention of the oppressed and get a hearing from the ideologues and the socialists for having produced a great work of art.

2. Which of the following statements does not represent the image of Orwell which the author wants to create in the minds of the readers?

(1) That Orwell despite being an Englishman upheld and advocated the principles of socialism.

(2) That he belongs to that breed of intellectuals who make use of their art as a weapon against injustice, corruption, and tyranny.

(3) Inspite of his cognizance of human tendencies to get corrupt amidst blanket power, he was hopeful that he could make people think out for themselves to bring about democratic socialism.

(4) That he had an exaggerated notion of himself as the representative of the social and moral conscience in a world that was bereft and oblivious of the same sublime virtues.

(5) None of the above.

3. A suitable title for the passage is

(1) A criticism of 'Animal Farm'
(2) Orwell and Dictatorship.
(3) Russia- A lie which needed to be exposed.
(4) Political writing and its impact.
(5) The purpose behind writing 'Animal Farm'.

4. 'Animal farm' can be best categorized as:

(1) A political analysis of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.
(2) A socio-politico and ideological account of the erstwhile Soviet Union.
(3) A political satire on the Russian brand of socialism and its rule of terror.
(4) A moral fable a la Aesop's mode narrated through animals.
(5) An exposition of corruption in people.

5. Why did Orwell choose animals to relate his account and thoughts to his readers?

(1) To remind us that though we have been accepting the tradition of the animal fable the moral of the fable relates to us as humans.

(2) Because, relating humans with animals and vice versa was a novel literary practice in the genre of satire writing.

(3) It's easier to arouse the sympathy of the reader with animal characters than that with the human ones.

(4) He probably wanted to escape any counterattack by the soviet dictators.

(5) He despite his will to expose the lie did not have the audacity to put his mind straight.

Solution

1) Option 5 says that Orwell wrote his book for getting personal accolades but nowhere in this passage this is reflected.

2) Option 2 contradicts the authors purpose of writing this passage - A critique of Orwell.

3) Option 5 is the apt title as the author has focused more on Orwell's assumptions about human nature as given in the passage. Also Orwell's pessimism about revolutions expressed in animal farm too is criticized.

4) Animal farm uses satire to criticize Russian brand of socialism so option 3.

5) The last line gives the answer to this question i.e. option 1

Passage

In 1787, the twenty-eighth year of the reign of King George III, the British Government sent a fleet to colonize Australia. Never had a colony been founded so far from its parent state, or in such ignorance of the land it occupied. There had been no reconnaissance. In 1770 Captain James Cook had made landfall on the unexplored east coast of this utterly enigmatic continent, stopped for a short while at a place named Botany Bay and gone north again.

Since then, no ship had called – not a word, not an observation, for 17 years, each one of which was exactly like the thousands that had preceded it, locked in its historical immensity of blue heat, blush, sandstone and the measured booming of glassy pacific rollers. Now, this coast was to witness a new colonial experiment, never tried before, not repeated since. An unexplored continent would become a jail. The space around it, the very air and sea, the whole transparent labyrinth of the South pacific, would become a wall 14,000 miles thick. century abounded in schemes of social goodness thrown off by its burgeoning sense of revolution. But here, the process was to be reversed: not utopia, but Dystopia; not Rousseaus natural man moving in moral grace amid free social contract, but man coerced, deracinated, in chains. Other parts of the Pacific, especially Tahiti, might seem to conform Rousseau. But the intellectual patrons of Australia, in its first colonial years, were Hobbes and Sade.

The late 18 th In their most sanguine moments, the authorities hoped that it would eventually swallow a whole class-the “criminal class”, whose existence was one of the prime sociological beliefs of late Georgian and early Victorian England. Australia was settled to defend English property not from the frog-eating invader across the Channel but from the marauder within. English lawmakers wished not only to get rid of the “Criminal class” but if possible to forget about it. Australia was a Cloaca, invisible, its contents filthy and unnamable. To most Englishmen this place seemed not just a mutant society but another planet-an exiled world, summed up in its popular name, “Botany Bay”. It was remote and anomalous to its white creators.

It was strange but close, as the unconscious to the conscious mind. There was as yet no such thing as “Australian” history or culture. For its first forty years, everything that happened in the thief-colony was English. In the whole period of convict transportation, the Crown shipped more than 160,000 men, women and children (due to defects in the records, the true number will never be precisely known) in bondage to Australia. This was the largest forced exile of citizens at the behest of a European government in pre-modern history. Nothing in earlier penology compares with it.

In Australia, England drew the sketch for our own centurys vaster and more terrible fresco of repression, the Gulag. No other country had such a birth, and its pangs may be said to have begun on the afternoon of January 26, 1788, when a fleet of eleven vessels carrying 1,030 people, including 548 male and 188 female convicts, under the command of captain Arthur Phillip in his flagship Sirius, entered Port Jackson or, as it would presently be called, Sydney Harbor.

Q.When the author refers to “the marauder within”, he is referring to:

1. the working class.
2. the lower class
3. the criminal class.
4. the Loch Ness monster.

Ans.c

Q.According to the passage, the intellectual mentors of Australia could be

1. Hobbes and Cook
2. Hobbes and Sade
3. Phillip and Jackson
4. Sade and Phillip

Ans.b

Q.Which of the following does not describe what the English regarded Australia to be :

1. a mutant society.
2. an exiled world
3. an enigmatic continent
4. a new frontier.

Ans.d

Q.Elsewhere, according to the author, the late eighteenth century saw a plethora of:

1. moral grace
2. social welfare programs
3. free social contracts
4. social repression

Ans.b

Q.The word “sanguine” means:

1. wise
2. pessimistic
3. shrewd
4. confident

Ans.d

Q.The primary theme of the passage is

1. the colonization of Australia
2. the first forty years of Australian history.
3. the rise of the “criminal class” and its impact on the life of Georgian England.
4. the establishment of Australia as a penal colony.

Ans.d

Q.One of the hallmarks of the late Georgian and early Victorian England was the belief in:

1. repression of the “criminal class”
2. convict transportation
3. colonization as a solution to social problems.
4. the existence of a “criminal” class of people.

Ans.d

Q.What is penology?

1. The study of transportation of criminals.
2. The study of punishment in its relation to crime
3. The study of pens.
4. The study of ink flow of pens.

Ans.b

Q.According to the passage, which of the following statements is not true?

1. During the seventeen years after Captain James Cook made landfall at Botany Bay, the British made several observation trips to Australia.
2. Australia was settled by the British to protect their property from some of their own kin
3. The author implies that while Rousseau was vindicated in the functioning of the society of Tahiti, the process in Australia presented a contrary picture.
4. Both (a) and (b).

Ans.a

Q.Sydney Harbor was earlier known as:

1. Port Jackson
2. Botany Bay
3. Storm Bay
4. Norfolk Bay

Ans.a

Passage

The fact is often obscured by the widespread confusion about the nature and role of emotions in mans life. One frequently hears the statement, “Man is not merely a rational being, he is also an emotional being”, which implies some sort of dichotomy, as if, in effect, man possessed a dual nature, with one part in opposition to the other. In fact, however, the content of mans emotions is the product of his rational faculty;

his emotions are a derivative and a consequence, which, like all of mans other psychological characteristics, cannot be understood without reference to the conceptual power of his consciousness. As mans tool of survival, reasons has two basic functions: cognition and evaluation. The process of cognition consists of discovering what things are, of identifying their nature, their attributes and properties. The process of evaluation consists of man discovering the relationship of things to himself, of identifying what is beneficial to him and what is harmful, what should be sought and what should be avoided. “A value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep.”

It is that which one regards as conducive to ones welfare. A value is the object of an action. Since man must act in order to live, and since reality confronts him with many possible goals, many alternative courses of action, he cannot escape the necessity of selecting values and making value judgements. “Value” is a concept pertaining to a relation – the relation of some aspect of reality to man (or to some other living entity). If a man regards a things (a person, an object, an event, mental state, etc.) as good for him, as beneficial in some way, he values it and, when possible and appropriate, seeks to acquire, retain and use or enjoy it; if a man regards a thing as bad for him, as inimical or harmful in some way, he disvalues it – and seeks to avoid or destroy it. If he regards a thing as of no significance to him, as neither beneficial nor harmful, he is indifferent to it – and takes no action in regard to it.

Although his life and well-being depend on a man selecting values that are in fact good for him, i.e., consonant with his nature and needs, conducive to his continued efficacious functioning, there are no internal or external forces compelling him to do so. Nature leaves him free in this matter. As a being of volitional consciousness, he is not biologically “programmed” to make the right value-choices automatically. He may select values that are incompatible with his needs and inimical to his well-being, values that lead him to suffering and destruction. But whether his values are life-serving or life-negating, it is a mans values that direct his actions. Values constitute mans basic motivational tie to reality. In existential terms, mans basic alternative of “for me” or “against me”, which gives rise to the issue of values, is the alternative of life or death.

But this is an adult, conceptual identification. As a child, a human being first encounters the issue of values through the experience of physical sensations of pleasure and pain. To a conscious organism, pleasure is experienced, axiomatically, as a value; pain, as disvalue. The biological reason for this is the fact that pleasure is a life-enhancing state and that pain is a signal of danger, of some disruption of the normal life process. There is another basic alternative, in the realm of consciousness, through which a child encounters the issue of values, of the desirable and the undesirable. It pertains to his cognitive relations to reality.

Passage

When you first arrive in a new culture, there is a period of confusion that comes from the new situation and from a lack of information. It leaves you quite dependent and in need of help in the form of information and above. The second stage begins as you start to interact with the new culture. It is called the stage of small victories. Each new encounter with the culture is fraught with peril. It is preceded by anxiety and information collection and rehearsal. Then the even occurs and you return home either triumphant or defeated.

When successful, the feelings really are very much as though a major victory has been won. A heightened roller coaster effect is particularly characteristic of this stage. The support needed is emotional support, people who appreciate what you are going through and who can cheer you onward. It often happens that once some of the fundamentals of life are mastered, there is time to explore and discover the new culture. This is the honeymoon stage of wonder and infatuation, in it there is a heightened appreciation of the new, the different, the aesthetic. Depending on the degree of cultural immersion and exploration it may continue for a considerable period of time. During this time there is no interest in attending to the less attractive downsides of the culture.

After a while, a self-correction takes place. No honeymoon can last forever. Irritation and anger begin to be experienced. Why in the world would anyone do it that way? Cant these people get their act together? Now the deficits seem glaringly apparent. For some people, they overwhelm the positive characteristics and become predominant.Finally, if you are lucky enough to chart a course through these stages and not get stuck (and people do get stuck in these stages), there is a rebalance of reality. There is the capacity to understand and enjoy the new culture without ignoring those features that are less desirable. This cultural entry and engagement process is both cognitive and affective. New information is acquired and remembered; old schema and perceptions are revised and qualified. An active learning process occurs.

At the same time, anxiety arises in reaction to uncertainties and the challenges of the learning processes. It must be managed, as must the extremes of feeling that occur in this labile period. Thus, I am describing a learning process that results in valuing and affirming the best in the culture while at the same time seeing it in its completeness, seeing it whole. The capacity to affirm the whole- including those aspects that are less desirable yet are part of the whole – is critically important.

An appreciative process, “appreciative inquiry” is proposed as a way of helping members of different cultures recognize and value their differences and create a new culture where different values are understood and honoured. Executives - those who must lead this culture–change projects – need to understand that equal employment opportunity, affirmative action and sexual harassment policies, as viewed and implemented in organizations, are problem oriented change strategies. They focus on correcting what is wrong rather than creating a valued future. Executives themselves will need to inquire appreciatively into cultures that are not known to them before they are equipped to lead cultural change in their own organizations.

Q.Which of the following statements is not true?

1. A particular effect of interaction with a new culture is an opportunity to enjoy a roller coaster ride.
2. Entering a new culture brings about a shift in processes of thinking and feeling
3. An initial sense of wonder and awe makes a new entrant oblivious to the less pleasant side of the new culture
4. Some people can forever remain angry and dissatisfied with the new culture.

Ans.a

Q.Entering new cultures can predominantly help the entrant in

1. understanding the appreciative process.
2. appreciating stages in cultural development
3. appreciating diversity.
4. understanding the problem solving process.

Ans.c

Q.Opening a bank account in a new culture is an example of which stage?

1. Confusion.
2. Small victories.
3. Honeymoon.
4. (b) and (c).

Ans.b

Q.According to the passage, entering a culture that is very different from your own is overall

1. an infatuating process
2. a learning process.
3. an exhausting process.
4. a depressing process.

Ans.b

Q.Which of the following statements cannot be inferred from the above passage?

1. Acts that are meaningful in the familiar culture cannot be taken for granted in a new one.
2. Social interaction becomes less predictable in a new culture
3. Seeing someone in completeness means accepting him with his strengths and weaknesses.
4. Modifications in organization culture must result in appreciative inquiry

Ans.d

Q.Which of the following is true?

1. Infatuation and heightened appreciation with a new culture can be maintained forever.
2. Entry to a new culture evokes an extremely negative feeling.
3. Affirmation of a new culture involves viewing it in its entirety with its strengths as well as weak points.
4. Organizational policies to deal with sexual harassment can bring about a change in the organizational culture.

Ans.c

Passage

In 1787, Jeremy Bentham published a lengthy pamphlet entitled, “Defense of Usury: showing the Impolicy of the Present Legal Restraints on the Terms of pecuniary bargains he was concerned with loans between individuals or business enterprises. The legal restraints were limits on interest rates paid or received. Usury was and is the popular term for charging interest rates in excess of legal limits. Bentham makes an overwhelmingly persuasive case for the proposition he sets forth at the beginning of the pamphlet, “viz. that no man of ripe years and sound mind, acting freely, and with his eyes open, ought to be hindered, with a view of his advantage from making such bargain, in the way of obtaining money, as he thinks fit; and nor (what is necessary consequence) nobody is hindered from supplying him upon any terms he thinks proper to accede to”. During the nearly two centuries since Benthams pamphlet was published his arguments have been widely accepted by economists and as widely neglected by politicians. I know of no economist of any standing from that time to this who has favored a legal limit on the rate of interest that borrowers could pay or lenders receive though there must have been some. I know of no country that does not limit by law the rates of interest and I doubt that there are any.

As Bentham wrote, “in great political questions wide indeed is the distance between conviction and practice.” Benthams explanation of the “grounds of the prejudices against usury” is as valid today as when he wrote: “The business of a money lender has no where, nor any time, been a popular one. Those who have the resolution to sacrifice the present to the future, are natural objects of envy to those who have sacrificed the future to the present. The children who dont have their cake to eat are the natural enemies of the children who have theirs. While the money is hoped for, and for a short time after it has been received, he who lends it is a friend and benefactor: by the time the money is spent, and the evil hour of reckoning has come, the benefactor is found to have changed his nature, and to have put on the image of the tyrant and the oppressor. It is an oppression for a man to reclaim his money: it is none to keep it from him.” Benthams explanation of the “mischief of the anti-usurious laws” is also as valid today as when he wrote that these laws preclude “many people altogether, from getting the money they stand in need of, to answer their respective exigencies.” For still others, they render “he terms so much the worse – While, out of loving kindness, or whatsoever other motive, the law precludes the man from borrowing, upon terms which it deems too disadvantageous, it does not preclude him from selling, upon any terms, howsoever disadvantageous.” His conclusion : “The sole tendency of the law is to heap distress upon distress.” Developments since Benthams days have increased the mischief done by usury legislation. Economic progress has provided the ordinary man with the means to save. The spread of banks, savings-and-loan associations, and the like has given the ordinary man the facilities for saving. For the first time in history, the working class may well be net lenders rather than net borrowers. They are also the ones who have fewest alternatives, who find it hardest to avoid legal regulations, and who are therefore hardest hit by them. Under the spur of (Congressman) Wright Patman and his ilk, the Federal Reserve (1970) now limits the interest rate that commercial banks may pay to a maximum of 4 percent for small savers but to 7 percent for deposits of $100,000 or more. And the deposits of small savers have been relatively stable or growing, while those of large depositors have been declining sharply because they have still better alternatives. That is the way the self-labeled defenders of the “people” look after their interests – by keeping them from receiving the interests they are entitled to. Along with Bentham, “I would wish to learn why the legislator should be more anxious to limit the rate of interest one way, than the other? Why he should make it his business to prevent their getting more than a certain price for the use of it than to prevent their getting less? — Let any one that can, find an answer to these questions: it is more than I can do.”

Q.The author is making a case for

1. varying interest rates on loans
2. withdrawing the legislation on usury.
3. reducing the interest rate difference on large deposits as against small.
4. ensuring that owners get interest rates, which are determined by free market operations.

Ans.b

Q.The lament of the author is that the mischief that the law makes is that

1. it puts a ceiling on interest rates
2. it overlooks economic theory
3. it accepts the selling of a product at an exorbitant price while lending at high interest rates as illegal.
4. many needy people do not get money.

Ans.c

Q.The author suggests that

1. usury is desirable.
2. there should be no legal restrictions on interest rates.
3. one should have ones cake and eat it too
4. he has no answer to the question of usury legislation.

Ans.b

Q.How is usury defined?

1. Charging interest rates in excess of legal limits.
2. Charging exorbitant interest rates.
3. Allowing any amount to be borrowed
4. None of the above.

Ans.a

Q.Bentham was primarily concerned with

1. all loans in the economy.
2. loans by money lenders.
3. loans by individuals and businesses.
4. loans by banks and financial institutions.

Ans.c

Q.To reclaim his own money, man becomes an oppressor because

1. he will reclaim it with high interest.
2. the borrower cannot repay
3. borrowers do not like to part with money.
4. the critical need being over, the money lent is of less value to the borrower.

Ans.c

Q.Who should be allowed to borrow and lend at any interest rate?

1. Individuals and businesses.
2. Money lenders.
3. Sane men acting freely and with full knowledge.
4. Small lenders and borrowers.

Ans.c

Q.The author is

1. a politician
2. a plutocrat.
3. a reformed post glasnost Marxist.
4. a staunch supporter of free market operations.

Ans.d

Q.Mischief of usury legislation has increased as

1. loans have increased.
2. more people have become lenders.
3. small lenders are hardest hit by the legislation.
4. more people, among the working class, are net lenders.

Ans.c

Passage

Long before I disbanded formally, the Eclipse Group, in order to assist the company in applying for patents on the new machine, had gathered and had tried to figure out which engineers had contributed to Eagles patentable features. Some who attended found those meetings painful. There was bickering. Harsh words were occasionally exchanged. Alsing, who during the project had set aside the shield of technical command, came in for some abuse – why should his name go on any patents, what had he done? Someone even asked that question regarding West. Ironically, perhaps, those meetings illustrated that the building of Eagle really did constitute a collective effort, for now that they had finished, they themselves were having a hard time agreeing on what each individual had contributed. But, clearly, the team was losing its glue. It has no function anymore. Its like an afterbirth, said one old hat after the last of the patent meetings. Shortly after those meetings, Wallach, Alsing, Rasala and West received telegrams of congratulations from North-Carolinas leader.

That was a classy gesture, all agreed. The next day Eagle finally went out the Companys door. In New York City, in faded elegance of the Roosevelt Hotel, under gilded chandeliers, on April 29, 1980, Data General announced Eagle to the world. On days immediately following, in other parts of the country and in Canada and Europe, the machine was presented to salesmen and customers, and some members of the Eclipse Group went off on so-called road shows. About dozen of the team attended the big event in New York. There was a slick slide show. There were speeches. Then there was an impressive display in a dining hall-128 terminals hooked up to a single Eagle. The machine crashed during this part of the program, but no one except the company engineers noticed, the problem was corrected so quickly and deftly. Eagle – this one consisted of the boards from Gollum –looked rather fine in skins of off – white and blue, but also unfamiliar. A surprising large number of reporters attended, and the next day Eagles debut was written up at some length in both the Wall Street Journal and the financial pages of the New York Times. But it wasnt called Eagle anymore. Marketing had rechristened it the Eclipse MV/8000. This also took some getting used to.

The people who described the machine to the press had never, of course, had anything to do with making it. Alsing -who was at the premiere and who had seen Marketing present machines before, ones hes worked on directly-said : After Marketing gets through, you go home and say to yourself, “Wow! Did I do that?” And in front of the press, people who had not even been around when Eagle was conceived were described as having had responsibility for it. All of that was to be expected – just normal flak and protocol. As for the machines actual inventors-the engineers, most of whom came, seemed to have a good time, although some did seem to me a little out of place, untutored in this sort of performance. Many of them had brought new suits for the occasion. After the show, there were cocktails and then lunch, they occupied a table all their own. It was a rather formal luncheon, and there was some confusion at the table as to whether it was proper to take first the plate of salad on the right or the one on the left.

West came, too, He did not sit with his old team, but he did talk easily and pleasantly with many of them during the day. “I had a great talk with West!”. Remarked one of the Microkids. He wore a brown suit, conservatively tailored. He looked as though hed been wearing a suit all his life. He had come to this ceremony with some reluctance, and he was decidedly in the background. At the door to the show, where name tags were handed out, West had been asked what his title was. “Business Development” hed said. At the cocktail party after the formal presentation, a reporter came up to him: “You seem to know something about this machine. What did you have to do with it?” West mumbled something, waving a hand, and changed the subject. Alsing overheard this exchange. It offended his sense of reality. He couldnt let the matter stand there. So he took the reporter aside and told him, That guy was the leader of the whole thing. I had the feeling that West was just going through emotions and was not really present at all. When it was over and we were strolling down a busy street towards Penn Station, his mood altered. Suddenly there was no longer a feeling of forbidden subjects, as there had been around him for many months. I found myself all of a sudden saying to him: “Its just a computer. Its really a small thing in the world, you know.” West smiled softly. I know it. None of it, he said later, had come out the way he had imagined it would, but it was over and he was glad. The day after the formal announcement, Data Generals famous sales force had been introduced to the computer in New York and elsewhere. At the end of the presentation for the sales personnel in New York, the regional sales manager got up and gave his troops a pep talk. What motivates people? he asked. He answered his own question, saying, Ego and the money to buy things that they and their families want? It was a different game now. Clearly, the machine no longer belonged to its makers.

Q.Bickering during the meetings were indicative of the fact that

1. there was heavy competition among the engineers.
2. everyone wanted to take credit for Eagle
3. Eagle constituted a collective effort.
4. it was hard to decide on the leader.

Ans.c

Q.In this passage, the author seems to suggest that

1. hard work does lead to grand results.
2. some individuals stand out in scientific programmes.
3. those who get credit earn it.
4. once a new product is launched, the pains and pleasure that preceded it are lost.

Ans.d

Q.The afterbirth, a simile expressed by an old hand was with reference to

1. the Eclipse MV/8000
2. the Eagle
3. Mr. Alsing
4. the Eclipse Group

Ans.d

Q.It appears from Mr. Wests conversation with the author that

1. he was quite upset over the way things turned out
2. he was glad to forget all about it.
3. he preferred to keep his thoughts to himself.
4. nothing motivated him.

Ans.b

Q.A telegram by the North Carolina leader

1. implicitly identified those who deserved credit for Eagle
2. was a worthy gesture before the launch.
3. was an implicit invitation to Wallach, Alsing, Rasala and West to be at the dinner.
4. indicated that Eagle would be launched the next day.

Ans.b

Q.Apparently, one of the things that the younger computer professionals considered an honour was

1. to be invited to the party
2. to talk to Mr. West.
3. to be part of the Eclipse group
4. to sell Eagle.

Ans.b

Q.The launching of Eagle in New York was a gala affair

1. but for the fact that the machine crashed during the programme
2. in spite of the fact that the machine crashed during the programme.
3. because 128 terminals were hooked up to a single Eagle
4. because a new machine was being launched.

Ans.b

Q.According to the passage, even as the premiere of the Eagle launch seemed a grand success among those who appeared incongruous were

1. people from the Wall Street Journal and New York times.
2. the marketing people.
3. people who were never around when Eagle was conceived.
4. the engineers responsible for Eagle

Ans.d

Q.“Just normal flak and protocol” refers to

1. the grandeur of the launching ceremony
2. giving credit for Eagle to even those who werent responsible for it.
3. the marketing people who rechristened the machine.
4. Mr. Alsing who was present at the premiere.

Ans.b

Q.The author states that the machine no longer belonged to its makers

1. because the marketing people had changed its name.
2. because the engineers seemed to have lost interest in the machine.
3. because of the expressed attitude towards what motivated people.
4. because Mr. West refused to get involved.

Ans.c

Passage

Atmospheric jet streams were discovered towards the end of World War II by U.S. bomber pilots over Japan and by German reconnaissance aircraft over the Mediterranean. The World Meteorological Organization defines a jet stream as a strong, narrow air current that is concentrated along nearly horizontal axis in the upper troposphere or stratosphere (10 to 50 km altitude), characterized by wind motions that produce strong vertical lateral shearing action and featuring one of more velocity maximum. Normally a jet stream is thousands of kilometers long, hundreds of kilometers wide and several kilometers deep.

The vertical wind shear is of the order of 5 to 10 m/sec per kilometer, and the lateral shear is of the order of 5 m/ sec per 100 km. An arbitrary lower limit of 30m/sec is assigned to the speed of the wind along the axis of a jet stream. With abundant radio-sonic data now available over the Northern Hemisphere it is possible to map the jet streams in the upper troposphere (near 10 to 12 km) in their daily occurrence and variation and to forecast them reasonably well with numerical prediction techniques. Upper-air information from the Southern Hemisphere is still sparse.

Constant-level balloons (the so-called GHOST balloons) and satellite information on temperature structure and characteristic cloud formations in the atmosphere are serving to close the data on the global jet stream distribution. The strongest winds known in jet streams have been encountered over Japan, where speeds up to 500 km/ hr (close to 300 knots) occur. A persistent band of strong winds occurs during the winter season over this region, flowing from the southwest and leading tropical air northern India into juxtaposition with polar and arctic air from Siberia. A similar region of confluence of air masses with vastly different temperatures exists over the central and eastern United States, leading to a maximum frequency of occurrence of jet streams during winter and spring.

The main impact on weather and climate comes from two distinct jet stream system: the Polar - Front Jet Stream, which is associated with the air mass contracts (the fronts) of middle latitudes and which gives rise to the formation of squalls, storms, and cyclones in this latitude belt; and the Subtropical Jet Stream, which lies over the subtropical high-pressure belt, and which is characterized by predominant subsidence motions and, hence, with fair weather. During summer, a belt of strong easterly winds is found over Southeast Asia, India, the Arabian Sea, and tropical Africa, this tropical, easterly jet streams is tied in with the weather disturbances of the Indian and African summer monsoons and their heavy rainfalls.

Because of their strong winds, jet streams play an important role in the economy of air traffic. Head winds must be outlasted by extra fuel, which takes up useful cargo space. Clear air turbulence (CAT) is often associated with the strong vertical wind shears found in the jet stream region. It is a hazard to passenger and crew safety, and, because of the increased stresses on the air frame, it decreases the useful life of the aircraft.

Q.An atmospheric jet stream is

1. a rare phenomenon
2. three dimensional.
3. concentrated in the northern hemisphere.
4. more common in summer

Ans.b

Q.Detailed studies of atmospheric streams have been made over

1. South Africa
2. Europe
3. Australia
4. Antarctica

Ans.b

Q.The atmospheric jet stream consists of

1. cumulous clouds bearing saturated moisture.
2. debris caused by meteorites.
3. air currents
4. effluents from speeding aircraft.

Ans.c

Q.According to present knowledge, jet streams are caused when

1. polar and Arctic air meet.
2. air masses with considerably different temperatures meet.
3. winds with different speeds meet.
4. squalls, storms and cyclones get dispersed

Ans.b

Q.Jet streams affect air-traffic by
I. delaying flights.
II. Increased fuel consumption.
III. Their propensity to cause accidents.
IV. Damaging the air frame.

1. I, II, III & IV
2. II & IV only
3. II, III & IV only
4. II & III only

Ans.c

Q.The summer monsoon over India is caused by

1. the rotation of the earth.
2. jet streams from the subtropical regions.
3. juxtaposition of tropical air with Arctic air in the upper atmosphere.
4. a tropical and easterly jet stream.

Ans.d

Q.The result of the Subtropical Jet Stream is

1. the occurrence of cyclones.
2. the prevalence of fair weather
3. head winds which affect air traffic.
4. high wind speed over Japan.

Ans.b

Passage

A conservation problem equally as important as that of soil erosion is the loss of soil fertility. Most agriculture was originally supported by the natural fertility of the soil; and, in areas in which soils were deep and rich in minerals, farming could be carried on for many years without the return of any nutrients to the soil other than those supplied through the natural breakdown of plant and animal wastes. In river basins, such as that of the Nile, annual flooding deposited a rich layer of silt over the soil, thus restoring its fertility.

In areas of active volcanism, such as Hawaii, soil fertility has been renewed by the periodic deposition of volcanic ash. In other areas, however, natural fertility has been quickly exhausted. This is true of most forest soils, particularly those in the humid tropics. Because continued cropping in such areas caused a rapid decline in fertility and therefore in crop yields, fertility could be restored only by abandoning the areas and allowing the natural forest vegetation to return.

Over a period if time, the soil surface would be rejuvenated by parent materials, new circulation channels would form deep in the soil, and the deposition of forest debris would restore minerals to the topsoil. Primitive agriculture in such forests was of shifting nature: areas were cleared of trees and the woody material burned to add ash to the soil; after a few years of farming, the plots would be abandoned and new sites cleared. As long as populations were sparse in relation to the area of forestland, such agricultural methods did little harm. They could not, however, support dense populations or produce large quantities of surplus foods.

Starting with the most easily depleted soils, which were also the easiest to farm, the practice of using various fertilizers was developed. The earliest fertilizers were organic manures, but later, larger yields were obtained by adding balanced combinations of those nutrients (e.g. potassium, nitrogen, phosphorus and calcium) that crop plants require in greatest quantity. Because high yields are essential, most modern agriculture depends upon the continued addition of chemical fertilizers to the soil. Usually these substances are added in mineral form, but nitrogen is often added as urea, an organic compound.

Early in agricultural history, it was found that the practice of growing the same crop year after year in a particular plot of ground not only caused undesirable changes in the physical structure of the soil, but also drained the soil of its nutrients. The practice of crop rotation was discovered to be a useful way to maintain the condition of the soil, and also to prevent the buildup of those insects and other plant pests that are attracted to a particular kind of crop. In rotation systems, a grain crop is often grown the first year, followed by a leafy-vegetable crop in the second year, and pasture crop in the third. The last usually contains legumes (e.g. clover, alfalfa), because such plants can restore nitrogen to the soil through the action of bacteria that live in nodules on their roots.

In irrigation agriculture, in which water is brought in to supply the needs of crops in an area with insufficient rainfall, a particular soil-management problem that develops is the salinization (concentration of salts) of the surface soil. This most commonly results from inadequate drainage of the irrigated land; because the water cannot flow freely, it evaporates, and the salts dissolved in the water are left on the surface of the soil. Even though the water does not contain a large concentration of dissolved salts, the accumulation over the years can be significant enough to make the soil unsuitable for crop production. Effective drainage solves the problem; in many cases, drainage canals must be constructed, and drainage tiles must be laid beneath the surface of the soil.

Drainage also requires the availability of an excess of water to flush the salts from the surface soil. In certain heavy soils with poor drainage, this problem can be quite severe; for example, large areas of formerly irrigated land in the Indus basin, in the Tigris-Euphrates region, in the Nile Basin, and in the Western United States, have been seriously damaged by salinization.

Q.The areas most prone to salinization are

1. those irrigated with well-water.
2. those in which crop rotation is not practiced.
3. sub-tropical forests.
4. flat land irrigated from reservoirs.

Ans.d

Q.The most appropriate title to this passage is

1. Problems of soil erosion
2. Agriculture in Volcanic islands.
3. The importance of chemical fertilizers.
4. Causes of and remedies of soil-infertility.

Ans.d

Q.Natural fertility exhausts most quickly in

1. river valley lands
2. humid tropical forests
3. volcanic areas
4. lands near urban areas

Ans.b

Q.The factor that can restore fertility to the soil not mentioned in the passage is

1. alluvium brought by rivers
2. bacterial action
3. fertilizer fixation through lightning
4. organic manure

Ans.c

Q.Crop rotation helps to
I. increase the farmers seasonal income.
II. preserve soil condition.
III. desalinize the soil.
IV. destroy pests.

1. I, II, III & IV
2. I, II & IV only.
3. II & IV only
4. II, III & IV only

Ans.c

Q.One of the characteristics of agricultural land in Nile basin is

1. it contains a lot of bacteria
2. it consists of heavy soil with poor drainage properties
3. the Nile water contains an excess of salts.
4. it contains nutritive minerals.

Ans.b

Q.Plants with nodules on their roots are known as

1. debris
2. leafy-vegetables
3. legumes
4. grain crop

Ans.c

Passage

Scientism has left humanity in our technical mastery of inanimate nature, but improvised us in our quest for an answer to the riddle of the universe and of our existence in it. Scientism has done worse than that with respect to our status as social beings, that is, to our life with our fellow human beings. The quest for the technical mastery of social life, comparable to our mastery over nature, did not find scientism at a loss for an answer: reason suggested that physical nature and social life were fundamentally alike and therefore proposed identical methods for their domination. Since reason in the form of causality reveals itself most plainly in nature, nature became the model for the social world and the natural sciences the image of what the social sciences one day would be.

According to scientism, there was only one truth, the truth of science, and by knowing it, humanity would know all. This was, however, a fallacious argument, its universal acceptance initiated an intellectual movement and a political technique which retarded, rather than furthered, human mastery of the social world. The analogy between the natural and social worlds is mistaken for two reasons. On the one hand human action is unable to model the social world with the same degree of technical perfection that is possible in the natural world. On the other hand, the very notion that physical nature is the embodiment of reason from which the analogy between natural and social worlds derives, is invalidated by modern scientific thought itself.

Physical nature, as seen by the practitioner of science consists of a multitude of isolated facts over which human action has complete control. We know that water boils at a temperature of 212 degrees Fahrenheit and, by exposing water to this temperature, we can make it boil at will. All practical knowledge of physical nature and all control over it are essentially of the same kind. Scientism proposed that the same kind of knowledge and of control held true for the social world.

The search for a single cause, in the social sciences, was but a faithful copy of the method of the physical sciences. Yet in the social sphere, the logical coherence of the natural sciences finds no adequate object and there is no single cause by the creation of which one can create a certain effect at will. Any single cause in the social sphere can entail an indefinite number of different effects, and the same effect can spring from an indefinite number of different effects, and the same effect can spring from an indefinite number of different causes.

Q.The authors attitude towards the application of scientism to the social sciences is best described as one of

1. committed scrutiny
2. dismissal
3. criticism
4. approval

Ans.c

Q.According to the author, causes and effects in the social world are

1. unrelated to each other
2. difficult to identify or predict.
3. subject to manipulation at will.
4. reducible to a single cause for each effect.

Ans.b

Q.Which of the following statements about scientism is best supported by the passage?

1. Scientism provides the basis for mastery of the social world.
2. Scientism is only superficially concerned with cause-and –effect relationships
3. Scientism is poorly suited to explain social behaviour.
4. Scientism is no longer applicable to the study of the natural sciences.

Ans.c

Q.As is used in the passage, the term scientism can best be defined as

1. belief that the methods of the physical sciences can be applied to all fields of enquiry
2. faith that human beings can master their own physical limitations.
3. desire to keep the social sciences separate from the physical sciences
4. opinion that scientists must take moral responsibility for their actions

Ans.a

Q.In the passage, the author is most concerned with doing which of the following?

1. Upholding the primacy of reason over superstition.
2. Attacking a particular approach to the social sciences.
3. Describing a method for achieving control over human social behaviour.
4. Demonstration the superiority of the social sciences over the natural sciences.

Ans.b

Passage

From a vantage point in space, an observer could see that the Earth is engaged in a variety of motions. First, there is its rotation on its own axis, causing the alternation of day and night. This rotation, however, is not altogether steady. Primarily because of the moons gravitational action, the Earths axis wobbles like that of an ill-spun top.

In this motion, called precession, the North and South Poles each traces out the base of a cone in space, completing a circle every 25,800 years, In addition, as the Sun and the Moon change their positions with respect to the Earth, their changing gravitational effects result in a slight nodding of the earths axis, called mutation, which is superimposed on precession. The Earth completes one of these nods every 18.6 years.

The earth also, of course, revolves round the Sun, in a 6-million mile journey that takes 365.25 days. The shape of this orbit is an ellipse, but it is not the center of the Earth that follows the elliptical path. Earth and Moon behave like an asymmetrical dumb-bell, and it is the center of mass of this dumb-bell that traces the ellipse around the sun.

The center of the Earth-Moon mass lies about 3000 miles away from the center of the Earth, and the Earth thus moves in an S-curve that crosses and re-crosses its orbital path. Then too, the Earth accompanies the sun in the suns movements: first, through its local star cloud, and second, in a great sweep around the hub of its galaxy, the Milky Way that takes 200 million years to complete.

Q.The passage is most likely directed towards an audience of

1. geologists.
2. astronauts.
3. meteorologists interested in weather prediction.
4. person with little technical knowledge of astronomy.

Ans.d

Q.Which of the following best describes the main subject of the passage?

1. The various types of the Earths motions
2. Past changes in the Earths position
3. The moon gravitational effect on the earth
4. Oddities of the Earths rotation of its axis.

Ans.a

Q.The passage indicates that a single cycle of which of the following motions is completed in the shortest period of time

1. Mutation.
2. Precession
3. The Earths rotation on its axis
4. The movement of the dumb-bell formed by the center of mass of Earth-Moon

Ans.c

Q.Which of the following techniques does the author use in order to make the descriptions of motion clear?
I. Comparison with familiar objects.
II. Reference of geometric forms.
III. Allusions to the works of other authors.

1. I only
2. II only
3. I and II only
4. II and III only

Ans.c

Passage

The connective tissues are heterogeneous group of tissues derived from the mesenchyme, a meshwork of stellate cells that develop in the middle layer of the early embryo. They have the general function of maintaining the structural integrity of organs, and providing cohesion and internal support for the body as a whole. The connective tissues include several types of fibrous tissue that vary only in their density and cellularity, as well as more specialized variants ranging from adipose tissue through cartilage to bone.

The cells that are responsible for the specific function of an organ are referred to as its parenchyma, while the delicate fibrous meshwork that blinds the cells together into functional units, the fibrous partitions or septa that enclose aggregations of functional units, and the dense fibrous capsule that encloses the whole organ, collectively make up its connective-tissue framework, or stroma. Blood vessels, both large and small, course through connective tissues, which is therefore closely associated with the nourishment of tissues and organs throughout the body.

All nutrient materials and waste products exchanged between the organs and the blood must traverse peri-vascular spaces occupied by connective tissue. One of the important functions of the connective – tissue cells is to maintain conditions in the extra-cellular spaces that favour this exchange. Some organs are suspended from the wall of a body cavity by thin sheets of connective tissues called mesenteries; others are embedded in adipose tissue a form of a connective tissue in which the cells are specialized for the synthesis and storage of energy-rich reserves of fat, or lipid.

The entire body is supported from within by a skeleton composed of bone, a type of connective tissue endowed with great resistance to stress owing to its highly ordered, laminated structure and to its hardness, which results from deposition of mineral salts in its fibres and amorphous matrix. The individual bones of the skeleton are held firmly together by ligaments, and muscles are attached to bone by tendons, both of which are examples of dense connective tissue in which many fibre bundles are associated in parallel array to provide great tensile strength.

At joints, the articular surfaces of the bones are covered with cartilage, a connective tissue with an abundant intercellular substance that gives it a firm consistency well adopted to permit smooth gliding movements between the opposed surfaces. The synovial membrane, which lines the margins of the joint cavity and lubricates and nourishes the joint surfaces, is also a form of connective tissue.

Q.The passage has most probably been taken from a book on

1. neurology
2. nutrition
3. physiology
4. calisthenics

Ans.c

Q.Mesenteries are

1. adipose tissue in which some organs are embedded.
2. referred to as parenchyma, and are responsible for specific functions of an organ
3. thin sheets from which some organs are suspended
4. cells through which blood flows.

Ans.c

Q.Through peri-vascular spaces exchange takes place between

1. blood and organs.
2. cells and embryo
3. nutrients and waste products
4. septa and stroma.

Ans.c

Q.The connective tissue in which fat is stored is called

1. adipose tissue
2. mesenteries
3. ligaments
4. adipose tissue

Ans.d

Q.The connective tissues originate in the

1. cartilage
2. bone
3. embryo
4. nutrients.

Ans.c

Q.Some instances of connective tissues are
I. Cartilage
II. Stroma
III. Lipid
IV. Synovia

1. I, II, III & IV
2. I, III & IV only
3. I, II, & IV only
4. I and II only

Ans.c

Q.The tissue which enables smooth gliding movements of neighbouring surface is

1. adipose tissue
2. cartilage
3. synovial membrane
4. stellate cells

Ans.b

Passage

Emile Durkheim, the first person to be formally recognized as a sociologist and the most scientific of the pioneers, conducted a study that stands as a research model for sociologists today. His investigation of suicide was, in fact, the first sociological study to use statistics. In suicide (1964, originally published in 1897) Durkheim documented his contention that some aspects of human behaviour – even something as allegedly individualistic as suicide – can be explained without reference to individuals. Like all of Durkheims work, suicide must be viewed within the context of his concern for social integration. Durkheim wanted to see if suicide rates within a social entity (for example, a group, organization, or society) are related to the degree to which individuals are socially involved (integrated and regulated). Durkheim describes three types of suicide: egoistic, anomic, and altruistic.

Egoistic suicide is promoted when individuals do not have sufficient social ties. Since single (never married) adults, for example, are not heavily involved with the family life, they are more likely to commit suicide than are married adults. Altruistic suicide on the other hand, is more likely to occur when social integration is too strong. The ritual suicide of Hindu widows on their husbands funeral pyres is one example. Military personnel, trained to lay down their lives for their country, provide another illustration. Durkheims third type of suicide – anomic suicide increases when the social regulation of individuals is disrupted. For example, suicide rates increase during economic depressions. People who suddenly find themselves without a job or without hope of finding one are more prone to kill themselves. Suicides may also increase during period of prosperity. People may loosen their social ties by taking new jobs, moving to new communities, or finding new mates.

Using data from the government population reports of several countries (much of it from the French Government Statistical Office), Durkheim found strong support for his line reasoning. Suicide rates were higher among single than married people, among military personnel than civilians, among divorced than married people, and among people involved in nationwide economic crises.

It is important to realize that Durkheims primary interest was not in the empirical (observations) indicators he used such as suicide rates among military personnel, married people, and so forth. Rather, Durkheim used the following indicators to support several of his contentions: (1) Social behavior can be explained by social rather than psychological factors; (2) suicide is affected by the degree of integration and regulation within social entities; and (3) Since society can be studied scientifically, sociology is worthy of recognition in the academic world. Durkheim was successful on all three counts.

Q.Higher suicide rate during rapid progress in a society is a manifestation of

1. altruistic suicide
2. anomic suicide
3. egoistic suicide
4. None of the above

Ans.b

Q.In his study of suicide Durkheims main purpose was

1. to document that suicide can be explained without reference to the individual.
2. to provide an explanation of the variation in the rate of suicide across societies
3. to categorize various types of suicides
4. to document that social behavior can be explained by social rather than psychological factors.

Ans.a

Q.Increase in the suicide rate during economic depression is an example of

1. altruistic suicide
2. anomic suicide
3. egoistic suicide
4. Both a and c

Ans.b

Q.Single adults not heavily involved with family life are more likely to commit suicide. Durkheim categorized this as

1. anomic suicide
2. altruistic suicide.
3. egoistic suicide
4. Both (b) and (c)

Ans.c

Q.According to Durkheim, suicide rates within a social entity can be explained in terms of

1. absence of social ties
2. disruption of social regulation
3. nature of social integration
4. All of the above

Ans.d

Q.According to Durkheim, altruistic suicide is more likely among

1. military personnel than among civilians.
2. single people than among married people.
3. divorcees than among married people.
4. people involved in nationwide economic crises

Ans.a

Q.Basing himself on his own indicators. Durkheim was

1. right on some counts, not others.
2. vindicated on all counts
3. wrong but did not realize that he was right.
4. substantially correct but formally wrong

Ans.b

Q.To support his contentions, Durkheim relied on the following indicators

1. social behaviour is explicable predominantly through social factors.
2. suicide is contingent upon the degree of regulation and interaction
3. recognizing sociology is to acknowledge that society is susceptible to scientific investigation
4. All of the above

Ans.d

Q.Ritual suicide of Hindu widows on their husbands funeral pyres is

1. a manifestation of strong social integration.
2. an example of brutality against women
3. an example of anomic suicide
4. an example of egoistic suicide.

Ans.a

Passage

How quickly things change in the technology business! A decade ago, IBM was the awesome and undisputed king of the computer trade, universally feared and respected. A decade ago, two little companies called Intel and Microsoft were mere blips on the radar screen of the industry, upstart start-ups that had signed on to make the chips and software for IBMs new line of personal computers. Though their products soon became industry standards, the two companies remained protected children of the market leader. What happened since is a startling reversal of fortune. IBM is being ravaged by the worst crisis in the companys 79 year history. It is undergoing its fifth restructuring in the past seven years as well as seemingly endless rounds of job cuts and firings that have eliminated 100,000 jobs since 1985. Last week IBM announced to its shell-shocked investors that it lost $4.97 billion last year – the biggest loss in American corporate history.

And just when IBM is losing ground in one market after another, Intel and Microsoft have emerged as the computer industrys most fearsome pair of competitors. The numbers on Wall Street tell a stunning story. Ten years ago, the market value of the stock of Intel and Microsoft combined amounted to about a tenth of IBMs. Last week, with IBMs stock at an 11-year low Microsofts value surpassed its old mentors for the first time ever ($26.76 billion to $26.48 billion) and Intel ($24.3 billion) is not far behind. While IBM is posting losses, Intels profits jumped 30% and Microsofts rose 44%.

Both Intel, the worlds largest supplier of computer chips, and Microsoft, the worlds largest supplier of computer software, have assumed the role long played by Big Blue as the industrys pacesetter. What is taking place is a generational shift unprecedented in the information age – one recalls a transition in the US auto industry 70 years ago, when Alfred Sloans upstart General Motors surpassed Ford Motor as Americas No. 1 car maker. The transition also reflects the decline of computer manufacturers such as IBM. Wang and Unisys and the rise of companies like Microsoft, Intel and AT&T that create the chips and software to make the computers work. “Just like Dr. Frankenstein, IBM created these two monster competitors, “says Richard Shaffer publisher of the Computer Letter “Now even IBM is in danger of being trampled by the creations it unleashed.” Although Intel and Microsoft still have close relationships with Big Blue, there is little love lost between IBM and its potent progeny.

IBM had an ugly falling-out with former partner Microsoft over the future of personal- computer software. Microsoft developed the now famous disk operating system for IBM-PC – called DOS – and later created the operating software for the next generation of IBM personal computers, the Personal System/2. When PS/2 and is operating system, OS/2, failed to catch on, a feud erupted over how the two companies would upgrade the system. Although they publicly patched things up, the partnership was tattered. IBM developed its own version of OS/2, which has so far failed to capture the industrys imagination. Microsofts competing version, dubbed New Technology, or NT, will debut in a few months and will incorporate Microsofts highly successful Windows program, which lets users juggle several programs at once. Windows NT, however, will offer more new features, such as the ability to link many computers together in a network and to safeguard them against unauthorized use.

IBM and Intel have also been parting company. After relying almost exclusively on the Santa Clara, California company for the silicon chips that serve as computer brains, IBM has moved to reduce its dependence on Intel by turning to competing vendors. In Europe, IBM last year began selling a low-cost line of PCs called Ambra, which runs on chips made by Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices. IBM also demonstrated a sample PC using a chip made by another Intel enemy, Cyrix. And that October IBM said it would begin selling the companys own chips to outsiders in direct competition with Intel.

IBM clearly fells threatened. And the wounded giant still poses the biggest threat to any further dominance by Intel and Microsoft. Last year, it teamed up with both companies most bitter rivals – Apple Computers and Motorola – to develop advanced software and microprocessors for a new generation of desktop computers. In selecting Apple and Motorola, IBM bypassed its longtime partners. Just as Microsofts standard operating system runs only on computers built around Intels computer chips, Apples software runs only on Motorolas chips. Although IBM has pledged that the new system will eventually run on a variety of machines, it will initially run only computer programs written for Apples Macintosh or IBMs OS/ 2. Its competitive juice now flowing, IBM last week announced that it and Apple Computer will deliver the operating system in 1994 – a year ahead of schedule.

Q.As a result of greater competition in the US Computer industry

1. some computer companies are expanding while others are contracting
2. employment in the industry is going down.
3. the industry is becoming more monopolized.
4. the share value of IBM is going up relative to that of Intel and Microsoft

Ans.a

Q.Which of the following statements is not implied by the passage?

1. The market of microchips and softwares are becoming leaders in the computer industry
2. Wang and Unisys are primarily manufacturers of computers.
3. IBM laying off workers in the biggest job cut in American corporate history.
4. Intel is based in California

Ans.c

Q.The personal computer called Ambra is marketed by

1. Cyrix
2. IBM
3. Intel.
4. Microsoft.

Ans.b

Q.Why is something that happened 70 years ago in the US auto industry being mentioned here?

1. General Motors broke away from Ford Motors.
2. A new company went ahead of an established market leader
3. Like Dr. Frankenstein, Ford Motor created a monster in General Motors.
4. Microsoft, Intel and AT & T were originally created by IBM

Ans.b

Q.Who is mentioned as the principal supplier of silicon chips to IBM?

1. AT&T
2. Microsoft.
3. Cyrix
4. Intel

Ans.d

Q.One possible conclusion from the passage is that

1. share prices are not a good indicator of a companys performance.
2. firing workers restores a companys health.
3. all companies ultimately regret being a Dr. Frankenstein to some other company.
4. consumers gain as a result of competition among producers.

Ans.c

Q.Which of the following statements is true?

1. IBM plans to introduce a new system that will run on a variety of machines
2. IBMs new generation desk top computers will run only on Motorolas chips
3. IBM is working out a joint strategy with Apple to force Motorola to supply chips at a lower price
4. IBM is going to sell its own chips to Apple and Motorola

Ans.a

Q.Many computers will be linked together through a network in a system developed by

1. IBM
2. Apple.
3. Microsoft
4. None of the above

Ans.c

Q.What was the original reason for the feud between IBM and Microsoft?

1. The two companies developed competing softwares
2. Microsoft and Intel teamed up against IBM.
3. IBM began to purchase microchips from Intel instead of Microsoft
4. IBM made loses while Microsoft made profits.

Ans.a

Read the passage

The Republican Party has lost its mind. To win elections, a party obviously needs votes and constituencies. However first, it needs an idea. In 1994-95, the Republican Party had after a long struggle advanced a coherent, compelling set of political ideas expressed in a specific legislative agenda. The political story of 1996 is that this same party, within the space of six weeks, became totally, shockingly intellectually deranged. Think back. The singular achievement of the House Speaker Newt Gingrich's 1994 revolution was that it swept into power united behind one comprehensive ideological goal: dismantling the welfare state.

Just about anything in the contract with America and the legislative agenda of the 104th Congress is a mere subheading: welfare reform, tax cuts, entitlement reform, returning power to the states, the balanced budget (a supremely powerful means for keeping the growth of government in check). The central Republican idea was that the individual, the family, the church, the schools — civil society — were being systematically usurped and strangled by the federal behemoth Republicans who were riding into Washington to slay it.

With this idea they met Clinton head-on in late 1995. And although they were tactically defeated — the government shutdown proved a disaster for Republicans — they won philosophically. Clinton conceded all their principles. He finally embraced their seven year balanced budget. Then, in a State of the Union speech that might have been delivered by a moderate Republican, he declared, "The era of Big Government is over," the dominant theme of the Gingrich Revolution. It seems so long ago.

Because then, astonishingly, on the very morrow of their philosophical victory, just as the Republicans prepared to carry these ideas into battle in November, came cannon fire from the rear. The first Republican renegade to cry Wrong! and charge was Steve Forbes. With his free-lunch, tax-cutting flat tax, he declared the balanced budget, the centrepiece of the Republican revolution, unnecessary. Then, no sooner had the Forbes mutiny been put down then Pat Buchanan declared a general insurrection.

He too declared war on the party's central ideology in the name not supply side theory but of class welfare, the Democratic weapon of choice against Republicanism. The enemy, according to Buchanan, is not the welfare state. It is that conservative icon, capitalism, with its ruthless captains of industry, greedy financiers and political elite (Republicans included, of course). All three groups collaborate to let foreigners — immigrants, traders, parasitic foreign-aid loafers — destroy the good life of the ordinary American worker. Buchananism holds that what is killing the little guy in America is the Big Guy, not Big Government.

It blames not an overreaching government that tries to insulate citizens from life's buffeting to the point where it creates deeply destructive dependency, but an uncaring government that does not protect its victim-people enough from that buffeting. Buchanan would protect and wield a mighty government apparatus to do so, government that builds trade walls and immigrant — repelling fences, that imposes punitive taxes on imports, that policies the hiring and firing practices of business with the arrogance of the most zealous affirmative action enforcer. This is Reaganism standing on its head. Republicans have focused too much on the mere technical dangers posed by this assault. Yes, it gives ammunition to the Democrats. Yes, it puts the eventual nominee through a bruising campaign and delivers him tarnished and drained into the ring against Bill Clinton.

But the real danger is philosophical, not tactical. It is axioms, not just policies, that are under fire. The Republican idea of smaller government is being proud to dust — by Republicans. In the middle of an election year, when they should be honing their themes against Democratic liberalism, Buchanan's rise is forcing a pointless rearguard battle against a philosophical corpse, the obsolete Palaeo conservatism — a mix of nativism, protectionism and isolationism of the 1930s. As the candidates' debate in Arizona last week showed, the entire primary campaign will be fought on Buchanan's grounds, fending off his Smoot-Hawley-Franco populism. And then what? After the convention, what does the nominee do?

Try to resurrect the anti-welfare state themes of the historically successful 1994 congressional campaign? Well, yes, but with a terrible loss of energy and focus — and support. Buchanan's constituency, by then convinced by their leader that the working man's issues have been pushed aside, may simply walk on election day or, even worse, defect to the Democrats. After all, Democrats fight class war very well. Political parties can survive bruising primary battles. They cannot survive ideological meltdown. Dole and Buchanan say they are fighting for the heart and soul of the Republican Party, heart and soul, however, will get you nowhere when you've lost your way — and your mind

Q.Which broad ideology helped Newt Gingrich lead the Republican revolution of 1994?

1. Tax cuts
2. Entitlement reform
3. Welfare reform
4. Welfare state dismantling

Ans.d

Q.Assuming the passage to be truthful, what does a party not need to win elections?

1. Votes
2. Money
3. Constituencies
4. Ideas

Ans.b

Q.Which of the following is not a Republican?

1. Newt Gingrich
2. Pat Buchanan
3. Bob Dole
4. None of these

Ans.d

Q.The Republicans were tactically defeated by the Democrats because

1. of the shutdown of the government.
2. the balanced budget plan failed.
3. Steve Forbes led a revolution
4. Bill Clinton pre-empted them.

Ans.a

Q.Which of the following would be a suitable title for the passage?

1. The Democrats: Victory in Sight
2. Follies and Foibles of the Republican Party
3. Republicans — Are You Crazy?
4. Mutinies on the Republican Party.

Ans.b

Q.The word 'obsolete' in the context of the passage means

1. antiquated
2. absolute.
3. boring.
4. miasmic

Ans.a

Q.What, according to the author, is the real danger for Republicans?

1. The fact that small government is being ground to dust.
2. The fact that Bill Clinton is gaining popularity.
3. The fact that it is axioms, and not just policies that are under fire.
4. The fact that the eventual nominee would be too tired to fight an election against Clinton

Ans.c

Q.Which of the following, according to Buchanan, is not an enemy?

1. Big government
2. Immigrants
3. Captains of industry
4. Foreign-aid requesters

Ans.a

Read and Answer Passage - Reading comprehensions RC

Icicles — two metres long and, at their tips, as bright and sharp as needles — hang from the caves: wild ice stalactites, dragon's teeth. I peer through them to see the world transformed to abstract. Little snow tornadoes twirl across the blank. The car is out there somewhere, represented by a subtle bump in the snow-field. The old geep truck, a larger beast, is up to its door handles, like a sinking remnant: dinosaur yielding to ice age. The town's behemoth snow-plow passes on the road, dome light twirling, and casts aside a frozen doe that now lies, neck broken, upon the roadside snow-bank, soon to vanish under the snowfall still to come.

There is double-jointed consciousness at work in the dramatics of big weather. Down in the snowstorm, we are as mortal as the deer. I sink to my waist in a drift; I panic, my arms claw for an instant, like a drowning swimmer's, in the powder. Men up and down the storm collapse with coronaries, snow shovels in their hands, cheeks turned into a deathly colour, like frost-bitten plums. Yet when we go upstairs to consult the Weather Channel, we settle down, as cosy gods do, to hover high above the earth and watch the play with a divine perspective.

Moist air labelled L for low rides up the continent from the Gulf of Mexico and collides with the high that has slid down from the North Pole. And thus is whipped up the egg-white fluff on the studio map that, down in the frozen, messy world, buries mortals. An odd new metaphysics of weather: It is not that weather has necessarily grown more apocalyptic. The famous Winter of the Blue Snow of 1886-87 turned rivers of the American West into glaciers that when they thawed, carried along inundation of dead cattle.

President Theodore Roosevelt was virtually ruined as a rancher by the weather that destroyed 65 per cent of his herd. In 1811 Mississippi river flowed briefly because of the New Madrid earthquake. What's new in America is the theatre of it. Television does not create weather; any more than it creates contemporary politics. However, the ritual ceremonies of televised weather have endowed a subject often previously banal with an amazing life as mass entertainment, nationwide interactive preoccupation and a kind of immense performance art.

What we have is weather as electronic American Shintoism, a casual but almost mystic daily religion, wherein nature is not inert but restless, stirring alive with kinetic fronts and meanings and turbulent expectations (forecasts, variables, prophecies). We have installed an elaborate priesthood and technology of interpretation: acolytes and satellites preside over snow and circuses. At least major snowstorms have about them an innocence and moral neutrality that is more refreshing than the last national television spectacle, the O. J. Simpson trial.

One attraction is the fact that these large gestures of nature are political. The weather in the mirabilis mode can, of course, be dragged onto the opened page to start a macro-argument about global warning or a microspat over a mayor's fecklessness in deploying snowplows. Otherwise, traumas of weather do not admit of political interpretation. The snow Shinto reintroduces an element of what is almost charmingly uncontrollable in life.

And, as shown last week, surprising, even as the priests predict it. This is welcome — a kind of ideological relief- in a rather stupidly politicised society living under the delusion that everything in life (and death) is arguable, political and therefore manipulable — from diet to DNA. None of the old earthbound Marxist WhoWhom here in meteorology, but rather sky gods that bang around at higher altitudes and leave the earth in its misery, to submit to the sloppy collateral damage. The moral difference of weather, even when destructive, is somehow stimulating.

Why? The sheer levelling force is pleasing. It overrides routine and organises people into a shared moment that will become a punctuating memory in their lives (Lord, remember the blizzard in 1996?). Or perhaps one's reaction is no more complicated than a child's delight in dramatic disruption. Anyone loves to stand on the beach with a hurricane coming — a darkly lashing Byronism in surf and wind gets the blood up. The God's, or child's, part of the mind welcomes big weather — floods and blizzards.

The coping, grown-up human part curses it, and sinks. The paradox of big weather, it makes people feel important even while it, dramatises their insignificance. In some ways, extreme weather is a brief moral equivalent of war — as stimulating as war can sometimes be, through without most of the carnage. The sun rises upon diamond-scattered snow-fields and glistens upon the lucent dragon's teeth.

In the distance, three deer, roused from their shelter under pines, venture forth. They struggle and plunge undulously through the opulent white. Upstairs, I switch on the Shinto Weather Channel and the priests at the map show me the next wave — white swirls and eddies over Indiana, heading ominously east.

Q.How many vehicles does the author mention in the passage?

1. One
2. Two
3. Three
4. Four

Ans.c

Q.The author compares the weather bulletin channel reportage to

1. a war
2. the O. J. Simpson trial
3. a ritual ceremony
4. a theatre

Ans.c

Q.Which of the following was not the result of the Winter of Blue Snow?

1. It almost ruined Theodore Roosevelt
2. It made the Mississippi flow northward
3. It turned rivers into glaciers
4. It killed a lot of cattle

Ans.b

Q.The moral indifference of the weather is stimulating in spite of being destructive because

1. it shows no mercy
2. it organises people into a shared moment.
3. Both (a) and (b)
4. Neither (a) nor (b)

Ans.b

Q.The author's reaction to the snowstorm may be said to be

1. fascinated
2. scared
3. cynical
4. deadpan

Ans.a

Q.According to the author, one of the greatest attractions of the weather is that

1. it is politicized
2. it is apolitical
3. it is reckless
4. it is beautiful

Ans.b

Q.What is most probably the physical position of the author of the passage?

1. In his house
2. In a snowstorm
3. In his office
4. In a bunk

Ans.a

Q.Which of the following is not true of the weather?

1. It is a moral equivalent of war
2. It is pleasantly manipulable
3. It is a levelling force
4. It dramatises man's insignificance

Ans.b

Q.The word 'undulously' in the context of the passage means

1. unduly
2. indomitably
3. powerful
4. curved

Ans.d

Reading comprehension RC

Among those who call themselves socialists, two kinds of persons may be distinguished. There are, in the first place, those whose plans for a new order of society, in which private property and individual competition are to be superseded and other motives to action substituted, are on the scale of a village community or township, and would be applied to an entire country by the multiplication of such self-acting units; of this character are the systems of Owen, of Fourier, and the more thoughtful and philosophic socialists generally.

The other class, which is more a product of the continent than of Great Britain and may be called the revolutionary socialists, has people who propose to themselves a much bolder stroke. Their scheme is the management of the whole productive resources of the country by one central authority, the general government.

And with this view some of them avow as their purpose that the working classes, or somebody on their behalf, should take possession of all the property of the country, and administer it for the general benefit. Whatever may be the difficulties of the first of these two forms of socialism, the second must evidently involve the same difficulties and many more.

The former, too, has the great advantage that it can be brought into operation progressively, and can prove its capabilities by trial. It can be tried first on a select population and extended to others as their education and cultivation permit. It need not, and in the natural order of things would not, become an engine of subversion until it had shown itself capable of being also a means of reconstruction. It is not so with the other;

the aim of that is to substitute the new rule for the old at a single stroke, and to exchange the amount of good realised under the present system, and its large possibilities of improvement, for a plunge without any preparation into the most extreme form of the problem of carrying on the whole round of the operations of social life without the motive power which has always hitherto worked the social machinery.

It must be acknowledged that those who would play this game on the strength of their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental verification — who would forcibly deprive all who have now a comfortable physical existence of their only present means of preserving it, and would brave the frightful bloodshed and misery that would ensue if the attempt was resisted — must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom on the one hand and the recklessness of other people's sufferings on the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the typical instances of those united attributes, scarcely came up to. Nevertheless this scheme has great elements of popularity which the more cautious and reasonable form of socialism has not; because what it professes to do, it promises to do quickly, and holds out hope to the enthusiastic of seeing the whole of their aspirations realised in their own time and at a blow.

Q.Who among of the following is not a socialist?

1. Robespierre
2. Fourier
3. Owen
4. All are socialists

Ans.d

Q.Which of the following, according to the author, is true?

1. The second form of socialism has more difficulties than the first.
2. The second form of socialism has the same difficulties as the first.
3. The second form of socialism has less difficulties than the first.
4. The author has not compared the difficulties of the two.

Ans.a

Q.According to the author, the difference between the two kinds of socialists is that

1. one consists of thinkers and the others are active people.
2. the first have a definite philosophy and the second don't have any definite philosophy.
3. the first believe in gradual change while the others believe in revolutionary change.
4. the first are the products of Britain, while the others are products of Russia.

Ans.c

Q.Which of the following were characteristics of St. Just and Robespierre?

1. Unconcern for other's suffering
2. Full confidence in their own wisdom
3. Both (a) and (b)
4. Neither (a) nor (b)

Ans.c

Q.Which of the following according to the author, may not be the result of not verifying the desirability of socialism experimentally first?

1. Bloodshed
2. Deprivation of current comfortable existence
3. Corruption in high places
4. Misery caused by resisting the change

Ans.c

Q.According to the philosophy of revolutionary socialism,

1. the government takes over the villages first, and then gradually the whole country.
2. the government takes over all productive resources of the country at one stroke.
3. the government declares a police state and rules by decree.
4. there is no government as such: the people rule themselves by the socialist doctrine.

Ans.b

Q.The word 'avow' in the context of the passage means

1. proclaim
2. vow
3. affirm
4. deny

Ans.a

Q.It may be inferred from the passage that the author's sympathies are for

1. neither side.
2. the side of the socialist doctrine.
3. the second type of socialism.
4. the first type of socialism.

Ans.a

Reading comprehension RC

Whatever philosophy may be, it is in the world and must relate to it. It breaks through the shell of the world in order to move into the infinite. But it turns back in order to find in the finite its always unique historical foundation. It pushes into the furthest horizons beyond being-in-the-world in order to experience the present in the eternal. But even the profoundest meditation acquires its meaning by relating back to man's existence here and now.

Philosophy glimpses the highest criteria, the starry heaven of the possible, and seeks in the light of the seemingly impossible the way to man's dignity in the phenomenon of his empirical existence. Philosophy addresses itself to individuals. It creates a free community of those who rely on each other in their will for truth. Into this community the philosophic man would like to enter. It is there in the world all the time, but cannot become a worldly institution without losing freedom of its truth. He cannot know whether he belongs to it. No authority decides on his acceptance. He wants to live in his thinking in such a way as to make his acceptance possible.

But how does the world relate to philosophy? There are chairs of philosophy at the universities. Nowadays they are an embarrassment. Philosophy is politely respected because of tradition, but despised in secret. The general opinion is: it has nothing of importance to say. Neither has it any practical value. It is named in public but does it really exist? Its existence is proved at least by the defence measures it provokes. We can see this in the form of comments like: Philosophy is too complicated. I don't understand it. It's beyond me.

It's something for professionals. I have no gift for it. Therefore it doesn't concern me. But that is like saying : I don't need to bother work or scholarship without thinking or questioning its meaning, and, for the rest, have opinions and be content with that. The defence becomes fanatical. A benighted vital instinct hates philosophy. It is dangerous. If I understood it I would have to change my life. I would find myself in another frame of mind, see everything in a different light, have to judge anew. Better now think philosophically! Then come the accusers, who want to replace the obsolete philosophy by something new and totally different.

It is mistrusted as the utterly mendacious end product of a bankrupt theology. The meaninglessness of philosophical propositions is made fun of. Philosophy is denounced as the willing handmaiden of political and other powers. For many politicians, their wretched trade would be easier if philosophy did not exist at all. Masses and functionaries are easier to manipulate when they do not think but only have a regimented intelligence. People must be prevented from becoming serious.

Therefore, it is better for philosophy to be boring. Let the chairs of philosophy rot. The more piffle is taught, the sooner people will be blinkered against the light of philosophy. Thus philosophy is surrounded by enemies, most of whom are not conscious of being such.

Bourgeois complacency, conventionality, the satisfactions of economic prosperity, the appreciation of science only for its technical achievements, the absolute will to power, the bonhomie of politicians, the fanaticism of ideologies, the literary self-assertiveness of talented writers — in all these things people parade their anti-philosophy. They do not notice it because they do not realise what they are doing. They are unaware that their anti-philosophy is in itself a philosophy, but a perverted one, and that this anti-philosophy, if elucidated, would annihilate itself.

Q.A suitable title for the passage would be

1. Man and Philosophy
2. Philosophical Angst
3. A Defence of Philosophy
4. The Enemies of Philosophy

Ans.c

Q.Which of the following is true, keeping the passage in mind?

1. Philosophy is evidently respected
2. Philosophy is secretly despised
3. Both (a) and (b)
4. Neither (a) nor (b)

Ans.c

Q.Which of the following is not a charge against philosophy?

1. That it is obsolete
2. That it is mendacious
3. That it is the handmaiden of political powers
4. That it is immoral

Ans.d

Q.Which of the following is not mentioned as a function of philosophy in the passage?

1. It shows the way to man's dignity in the face of his empirical existence.
2. It breaks through the shell of the world in order to move into the infinite.
3. It pushes into the furthest horizons beyond being in the world
4. It makes the world a better place to live in.

Ans.d

Q.Why according to the passage, would the politicians be happy if philosophy did not exist?

1. Masses would be easier to manipulate as they would not think for themselves.
2. They would not have to make false allegiances to ideologies.
3. They would not have to face allegations of ignoring philosophy.
4. They would not have to be philosophical about losing an election

Ans.a

Q.The word 'chairs', in the context of the passage, means

1. wooden-faced people.
2. departments.
3. separate chairs for philosophers
4. reserved seats for students of philosophy.

Ans.b

Q.According to the author, the existence of philosophy is proved by

1. the fact that there are still chairs of philosophy in universities
2. the defence measures it provokes.
3. the polite respect it gets.
4. the fact that it answers the fundamental questions of life.

Ans.b

Reading comprehensions

Even if we're a bit snooty about them, we should go down on our knees and thank heaven for movies like Jurassic Park and directors like Steven Spielberg who make them. They fill the cinemas, if only because the hype is virtually irresistible. And because they do so, hundreds of maniacs all over the world continue to finance films.

But is this is an example of a worldwide jackpot movie? Yes and no. Yes, because it delivers dinosaurs by the dozen, in as weird a fashion as have been seen on the screen before. And no, because the accompanying story, courtesy Michael Crichton, has little of the real imagination that made Spielberg's ET and Close Encounters into the jackpot movies of their time. Technically, it works like a dream but, as a cinematic dream, it's unmemorable.

This may be because of its cardboard human characters, dwarfed by the assemblage of their prehistoric ancestors and serviced by a screenplay that makes the abortive mating calls of this weirdly asexual zoo seem eloquent in comparison. What kind of park is this?, enquiries Sam Neil. “Oh, it's right up your alley”, says Richard Attenborough. More likely, though it has something to do with the development of the story which at no point engages us properly on the human level, except perhaps to hope that the kids and Neil's grumpy scientist who learns to love them will finally escape from the grasp of the velociraptors chasing them.

We're looking at nothing but stunts, and they get tiresome laid end to end. Crichton's book was scarcely much better but at least it had a convincing villain in John Hammond, Jurassic Park's billionaire developer, whereas Attenborough's approximation seems merely enthusiastically misguided. And Crichton's warning of what might happen if we muck about with nature becomes weaker in the film. What we actually have in Jurassic Park is a non-animated Disney epic with affiliations to Jaws which seems to amuse and frighten but succeeds in doing neither well enough to count.

Its real interest lies in how Spielberg's obsession with childhood now manifests itself in his middle age. It looks like being on automatic pilot — gestural rather than totally convinced but determined to remain the subject of analytical study. The whole thing, of course, is perfectly adequate fun once the ludicrously simplistic explanation of DNA has been traversed in Hammond's costly futuristic, computerised den.

Even I could understand it. Thereafter, the theme park's creaky inability to deal with an ordinary old typhoon as its VIPs travel around hoping the investment will work, leads to predictable disasters, proficiently worked out but never truly frightening. But then this is a film for children of all ages, except perhaps those under 12, and one shouldn't expect sophistication on other than the technological level. Jurassic Park is more of a roller-coaster ride than a piece of real cinema.

It delivers, but only on a certain plane. Even the breaking of the barriers between our civilization and a monstrous past doesnt have the kick it could have had. Possibly one is asking for a different film which in the end would not have appealed across the box-office spectrum as well as this obviously does. But still one leaves it vaguely disappointed. All that work and just a mouse that roars. It's wonderful story, but told with more efficiency than inspiration — possibly a sign of the times, along with the merchandising spree which follows it so readily.

Q.Which of the following has not been mentioned as a Steven Spielberg movie in the passage?

1. Jaws
2. ET
3. Close Encounters
4. Jurassic Park

Ans.a

Q.In which way does the author find the film inferior to the original book?

1. The book is more interesting.
2. The book had a more convincing villain
3. The book is easier to understand.
4. The story had a good author but a bad director.

Ans.b

Q.The passage is most probably

1. a book review
2. a film critic's comments.
3. a film review.
4. a magazine article.

Ans.c

Q.The book Jurassic Park is written by

1. Crichton
2. Attenborough
3. Hammond
4. Neil

Ans.a

Q.Which of the following does the author say of the film?

1. The film is technically inferior and does not have a good storyline.
2. The film is technically inferior but has a good storyline.
3. The film is technically slick but does not have a good storyline.
4. The film is technically slick and has a good storyline.

Ans.c

Q.The writer's opinion of the film Jurassic Park may be said to be

1. very favourable.
2. very depressing
3. excellent.
4. not very favourable.

Ans.d

Q.Why according to the author, should we thank heaven for movies like Jurassic Park, even though they may not be very good aesthetically?

1. Because they fill the halls, and thus people will finance more films.
2. Because it is one of the major hits of the year.
3. Because the film has brilliant technical wizardry.
4. Because of the hundreds of films being produced, this is one of the few excellent ones.

Ans.a

Q.According to the author, Jurassic Park

1. is very amusing.
2. is very frightening.
3. Both (a) and (b)
4. Neither (a) nor (b)

Ans.d

Q.The phrase 'muck about', in the context of the passage, means

1. make dirty
2. interfere with
3. be frivolous about
4. to mask

Ans.b

Reading comprehensions - CAT

The opinion polls had been wrong. Although they were signalling a weakening in Labour's lead in the days before the general election — which pointed to a hung parliament — many working-class voters had been embarrassed to tell middle-class pollsters that they were intending to vote Labour. The final result on April 9, 1992, which gave Neil Kinnock a working majority of 30, was a turnaround of the century.

As John Major cleared his desk in Downing Street, pundit after pundit lined up to criticise his lacklustre campaign. The trouble was, they all agreed, that the Conservative Party no longer had a message or political purpose. Its representation in the north of England was decimated; its future as a national party doubtful. For Kinnock the victory was a sweet reward for nine years of Herculean labour in making his party electable.

Not only had he a working majority, but the divisions in Conservative ranks — between anti-Europeans, free marketers and moderates — threatened to split the party. Having set himself the objective of heading a two or three term government, Kinnock made his cabinet appointments with the long haul in mind. There were few surprises. John Smith, with whom he coexisted uneasily, was made chancellor; Roy Hattersley became home secretary; Gerald Kaufmann went to the foreign office; inveterate Euro-sceptic Bryan Gould took over environment; and Gordon Brown went to trade.

It was, as many commentators conceded, a much more heavyweight cabinet than any of the Conservatives could have mustered. But the new cabinet was to have its first trial of strength very soon. The problem was the foreign exchange markets. Although both Kinnock and Smith had, throughout, the election campaign, reaffirmed their commitment to hold the pound's parity at 2.95DM inside the ERM, the foreign exchange markets simply did not believe them. Every previous Labour government had devalued; what reason was there to suppose this one would be different?

The pressure built up immediately. On Friday, April 10, the Bank of England managed to hold the line only by spending £4 billion — around a sixth of its total reserves — to support the exchange rate. But late that night, as the New York markets closed, the Governor of the Bank of England led the deputation to a meeting at 11, Downing Street with Smith and the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Terence Burns. If, said the governor, the pound was to survive the coming week inside the ERM, then Smith would have to demonstrate his resolve by raising interest rates — by at least 2 per cent. It would also help, added the officials, if the government were to commit Britain to full monetary union and to meet the Maastricht criteria for a single currency.

This would mean that both the taxation from Smith's first budget would have to be used to reduce government borrowing and the manifesto promises to raise child benefit and pensions be postponed. Smith listened to Eddie George — number two at the Bank of England and the arbiter of British exchange rate policy — explain that, at the current rate of reserve loss, Britain's reserves would have run out by the following weekend. The markets needed decisive action. And they needed to know, by the night of Sunday, April 12, at the very latest, what the government would do when the far-eastern markets opened after the weekend. Sir Terence advised that once the markets recognised the government was resolved to hold the exchange rate, pressure would quickly subside and the interest rate increases could be reversed. The name of the game was earning credibility.

Although Smith had been warned to expect a Treasury/Bank of England move to assert the cannons of economic orthodoxy, he had hoped to have been more than a few hours into his chancellorship before the pressures started to mount. As it stood, he felt like the victim of a coup and wondered to what extent the foreign exchange market selling had been prompted by the Bank of England's ham fisted intervention — almost designed to manufacture a run on the pound.

In any case, he could do nothing without conferring with the prime minister. In fact Kinnock had asked Smith to have the preliminary Bank of England meeting without him. Although he was not at one with his chancellor over economic policy and distrusted his judgement, he wanted to complete his cabinet appointments — and confer with his own advisers about how to react to what he knew the bank and treasury recommendations would be. He was determined to avoid being bounced into decisions before he had decided his line.

The alternative was to apply to the EC for a realignment conference, in which many more currencies would be devalued. But that could hardly be done then; it would have to wait until the following weekend. And it was not clear if the pound would be devalued sufficiently, or if other countries would follow the British lead. Not only might Britain have to devalue alone, it might not secure a devaluation large enough to make a difference; and be accompanied by higher interest rates.

Q.The word 'pundit', in the context of the passage, means

1. a religious leader
2. a psychologist
3. an expert
4. a paleontologist

Ans.c

Q.What was the main problem facing the new cabinet?

1. The dissension in the ranks of the party
2. The devaluation of the currency.
3. The foreign exchange market problem.
4. The monetary union problem.

Ans.c

Q.Who, according to the passage, is the leader of the Labour Party?

1. Neil Kinnock
2. John Smith
3. Gerald Kaufmann
4. Roy Hattersley

Ans.a

Q.What, according to the treasury secretary, was the only way out of the exchange problem?

1. Devaluation of the currency
2. Rise in interest rates
3. Government spending
4. Raising taxes

Ans.b

Q.It may be inferred from the passage that

1. the Bank of England would go along with whatever the government decided.
2. the prime minister was a puppet in the hands of the Bank of England.
3. the Bank of England was completely independent of the government.
4. the Bank of England could put enormous pressure on the government to formulate policy.

Ans.d

Q.Why did Kinnock ask Smith to attend the Bank of England meeting without him?

1. Because he did not get along with Smith
2. Because he wanted to use that time to confer with others.
3. Because he already met them and did not want to meet them again.
4. Because he was afraid of being censured by them.

Ans.b

Q.Why, according to the author, was the realignment conference not a viable option for the government?

1. Because other countries may not follow the British lead in devaluation.
2. Because the higher interest rates to be given by Britain may deplete resources further.
3. Both (a) and (b)
4. Neither (a) nor (b)

Ans.a

Q.Which of the following do not belong to the Labour cabinet?

1. Mr John Smith
2. Mr Bryan Goul
3. Mr Maastricht
4. Mr G. Brown

Ans.c

Q.What, according to the passage, was not a reason for the defeat of the Conservative Party?

1. A lacklustre campaign
2. Wrong policies
3. No special message
4. No political purpose

Ans.b

Reading comprehension

The World Trade Organization (WTO) was formed in the early 1990s as a component of the Uruguay Round negotiation. However, it could have been negotiated as part of the Tokyo Round of the 1970s, since that negotiation was an attempt at a constitutional reform of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Or it could have been put off to the future, as the US Government wanted. What factors led to the creation of the WTO in the early 1990s? One factor was the pattern of multilateral bargaining that developed late in the Uruguay Round.

Like all complex international agreements, the WTO was a product of a series of trade-offs between principal actors and groups. For the United States, which did not want a new organization, the dispute settlement part of the WTO package achieved its longstanding goal of a more effective and more legal dispute settlement system. For the Europeans, who by the 1990s had come to view GATT dispute settlement less in political terms and more as a regime of legal obligations, the WTO package was acceptable as a means to discipline the resort to unilateral measures by the United States.

Countries like Canada and other middle and smaller trading partners were attracted by the expansion of a rules-based system and by the symbolic value of a trade organization, both of which inherently support the weak against the strong. The developing countries were attracted due to the provisions banning unilateral measures. Finally, and perhaps most important, many countries at the Uruguay Round came to put a higher priority on the export gains than on the import losses that the negotiation would produce, and they came to associate the WTO and a rulesbased system with those gains.

This reasoning — replicated in many countries — was contained in US Ambassador Kantors defence of the WTO, and it amounted to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rules-based environment. A second factor in the creation of the WTO was pressure from lawyers and the legal process. The dispute settlement system of the WTO was seen as a victory of legalists over pragmatists but the matter went deeper than that.

The GATT, and the WTO, are contract organizations based on rules, and it is inevitable that an organization created to further rules will in turn be influenced by the legal process. Robert Hudec has written of the momentum of legal development, but what is this precisely? Legal development can be defined as promotion of the technical legal values of consistency, clarity (or, certainty) and effectiveness: these are values that those responsible for administering any legal system will seek to maximize.

As it played out in the WTO, consistency meant integrating under one roof the whole lot of separate agreements signed under GATT auspices; clarity meant removing ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions or to undertake waivers: and effectiveness meant eliminating exceptions arising out of grandfather-rights and resolving defects in dispute settlement procedures and institutional provisions. Concern for these values is inherent in any rules-based system of cooperation, since without these values, rules would be meaningless in the first place.

Rules, therefore, create their own incentive for fulfilment. The momentum of legal development has occurred in other institutions besides the GATT, most notably in the European Union (EU). Over the past two decades the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has consistently rendered decisions that have expanded incrementally the EUs internal market, in which the doctrine of mutual recognition handed down in the case Cassis de Dijon in 1979 was a key turning point. The court is now widely recognized as a major player in European integration, even though arguably such a strong role was not originally envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, which initiated the current European Union.

One means the court used to expand integration was the teleological method of interpretation, whereby the actions of member states were evaluated against the accomplishment of the most elementary community goals set forth in the Preamble to the [Rome] Treaty. The teleological method represents an effort to keep current policies consistent with stated goals, and it is analogous to the effort in GATT to keep contracting party trade practices consistent with stated rules.

In both cases legal concerns and procedures are an independent force for further cooperation. In large part, the WTO was an exercise in consolidation. In the context of a trade negotiation that created a near-revolutionary expansion of international trade rules, the formation of the WTO was a deeply conservative act needed to ensure that the benefits of the new rules would not be lost.

The WTO was all about institutional structure and dispute settlement: these are the concerns of conservatives and not revolutionaries, which is why lawyers and legalists took the lead on these issues. The WTO codified the GATT institutional practice that had developed by custom over three decades, and it incorporated a new dispute settlement system that was necessary to keep both old and new rules from becoming a sham. Both the international structure and the dispute settlement system were necessary to preserve and enhance the integrity of the multilateral trade regime that had been built incrementally from the 1940s to the 1990s.

Q. What could be the closest reason why the WTO was not formed in the 1970s?

1. The US government did not like it.

2. important players did not find it in their best interest to do so.

3. Lawyers did not work for the dispute settlement system.

4. The Tokyo Round negotiation was an attempt at constitutional reform.

Ans . B

Q. The most likely reason for the acceptance of the WTO package by nations was that

1. it had the means to prevent the US from taking unilateral measures.

2. they recognized the need for a rule-based environment to protect the benefits of increased trade.

3. it settles disputes more legally and more effectively.

4. its rule-based system leads to export gains.

Ans . B

Q. According to the passage, WTO promoted the technical legal values partly through

1. integrating under one roof the agreements signed under GATT

2. rules that create their own incentive for fulfilment.

3. grandfather-rights exceptions and defects in dispute settlement procedures.

4. ambiguities about the powers of contracting parties to make certain decisions.

Ans . A

Q. in the method of interpretation of the European Court of Justice,

1. current policies needed to be consistent with stated goals.

2. contracting party trade practices needed to be consistent with stated rules.

3. enunciation of the most elementary community goals needed to be emphasised.

4. actions of member states needed to be evaluated against the stated community goals.

Ans . B

Q. In the statement " . . . it amounted to a recognition that international trade and its benefits cannot be enjoyed unless trading nations accept the discipline of a negotiated rules-based environment", 'it' refers to

1. Ambassador Kantors defence of the WTO.

2. the higher priority on export gains placed by many countries at the Uruguay Round.

3. the export gains many countries came to associate with a rule-based system.

4. the provision of a rule-based system by the WTO.

Ans . C

Q. The importance of Cassis de Dijon is that it

1. gave a new impetus to the momentum of legal development at the European Court of Justice.

2. resulted in a decision that expanded incrementally the EUs internal market.

3. strengthened the role of the court more than envisaged in the Treaty of Rome

4. led to a doctrine that was a key turning point in European integration

Ans . D

Reading comprehension

Have you ever come across a painting, by Picasso, Mondrian, Miro, or any other modern abstract painter of this century, and found yourself engulfed in a brightly-coloured canvas which your senses cannot interpret? Many people would tend to denounce abstractionism as senseless trash. These people are disoriented by Miros bright, fanciful creatures and two-dimensional canvases. They click their tongues and shake their heads at Mondrians grid works, declaring that the poor guy played too many scrabble games. They silently shake their heads in sympathy for Picasso, whose gruesome, distorted figures must be a reflection of his mental health.

Then, standing in front of a work by Charlie Russell, the famous western artist, theyll declare it a work of God. People feel more comfortable with something they can relate to and understand immediately without too much thought. This is the case with the work of Charlie Russell. Being able to recognize the elements in his paintings — trees, horses and cowboys — gives people a safety line to their world of reality. There are some who would disagree when I say abstract art requires more creativity and artistic talent to produce a good piece than does representational art, but there are many weaknesses in their arguments.

People who look down on abstract art have several major arguments to support their beliefs. They feel that artists turn abstract because they are not capable of the technical drafting skills that appear in a Russell: therefore, such artists create an art form that anyone is capable of and that is less time consuming, and then parade it as artistic progress. Secondly, they feel that the purpose of art is to create something of beauty in an orderly, logical composition. Russells compositions are balanced and rational: everything sits calmly on the canvas, leaving the viewer satisfied that he has seen all there is to see.

The modern abstractionists, on the other hand, seem to compose their pieces irrationally. For example, upon seeing Picassos Guernica, a friend of mine asked me, “Whats the point?” Finally, many people feel that art should portray the ideal and real. The exactness of detail in Charlie Russells work is an example of this. He has been called a great historian because his pieces depict the lifestyle, dress, and events of the times. His subject matter is derived from his own experiences on the trial, and reproduced to the smallest detail. I agree in part with many of these arguments, and at one time even endorsed them. But now, I believe differently. Firstly, I object to the argument that abstract artists are not capable of drafting.

Many abstract artists, such as Picasso, are excellent draftsmen. As his work matured, Picasso became more abstract in order to increase the expressive quality of his work. Guernica was meant as a protest against the bombing of that city by the Germans. To express the terror and suffering of the victims more vividly, he distorted the figures and presented them in a black and white journalistic manner. If he had used representational images and colour, much of the emotional content would have been lost and the piece would not have caused the demand for justice that it did. Secondly, I do not think that a piece must be logical and aesthetically pleasing to be art. The message it conveys to its viewers is more important.

It should reflect the ideals and issues of its time and be true to itself, not just a flowery, glossy surface. For example, through his work, Mondrian was trying to present a system of simplicity, logic, and rational order. As a result, his pieces did end up looking like a scrabble board. Miro created powerful, surrealistic images from his dreams and subconscious. These artists were trying to evoke a response from society through an expressionistic manner. Finally, abstract artists and representational artists maintain different ideas about reality.

To the representational artist, reality is what he sees with his eyes. This is the reality he reproduces on canvas. To the abstract artist, reality is what he feels about what his eyes see. This is the reality he interprets on canvas. This can be illustrated by Mondrians Trees series. You can actually see the progression from the early recognizable, though abstracted Trees, to his final solution, the grid system. A cycle of abstract and representational art began with the first scratchings of prehistoric man.

From the abstractions of ancient Egypt to representational, classical Rome, returning to abstractionism in early Christian art and, so on up to the present day, the cycle has been going on. But this day and age may witness its death through the camera. With film, there is no need to produce finely detailed, historical records manually; the camera does this for us more efficiently.

Maybe, representational art would cease to exist. With abstractionism as the victor of the first battle, maybe, a different kind of cycle will be touched off. Possibly, some time in the distant future, thousands of years from now, art itself will be physically nonexistent. Some artists today believe that once they have planned and constructed a piece in their mind, there is no sense in finishing it with their hands; it has already been done and can never be duplicated.

Q. The author argues that many people look down upon abstract art because they feel that

1. modern abstract art does not portray what is ideal and real.

2. abstract artists are unskilled in matters of technical drafting.

3. abstractionists compose irrationally.

4. All of the above

Ans . D

Q. The author believes that people feel comfortable with representational art because

1. they are not engulfed in brightly-coloured canvases

2. they do not have to click their tongues and shake their heads in sympathy

3. they understand the art without putting too much strain on their minds

4. paintings like Guernica do not have a point.

Ans . C

Q. In the authors opinion, Picassos Guernica created a strong demand for justice since

1. it was a protest against the German bombing of Guernica.

2. Picasso managed to express the emotional content well with his abstract depiction

3. it depicts the terror and suffering of the victims in a distorted manner.

4. it was a mature work of Picasso, painted when the artists drafting skills were excellent.

Ans . B

Q. The author acknowledges that Mondrians pieces may have ended up looking like a scrabble board because

1. many people declared the poor guy played too many scrabble games.

2. Mondrian believed in the grid-works approach to abstractionist painting.

3. Mondrian was trying to convey the message of simplicity and rational order.

4. Mondrian learned from his Tree series to evolve a grid system.

Ans . C

Q. The main difference between the abstract artist and the representational artist in matter of the ideal and the real, according to the author, is

1. how each chooses to deal with reality on his or her canvas.

2. the superiority of interpretation of reality over production of reality.

3. the different values attached by each to being a historian.

4. the varying levels of drafting skills and logical thinking abilities

Ans . A

Reading comprehensions

Each one has his reasons: for one, art is a flight; for another, a means of conquering. But one can flee into a hermitage, into madness, into death. One can conquer by arms. Why does it have to be writing? Because, behind the various aims of authors, there is a deeper and more immediate choice which is common to all of us. We shall try to elucidate this choice, and we shall see whether it is not in the name of this very choice of writing that the engagement of writers must be required. Each of our perceptions is accompanied by the consciousness that human reality is a revealer.

That is, it is through human reality that there is being , or, to put it differently, that man is the means by which things are manifested. It is our presence in the world which multiplies relations. It is we who set up a relationship between this tree and that bit of sky. Thanks to us, that star which has been dead for millennia, that quarter moon, and that dark river are disclosed in the unity of a landscape. It is the speed of our auto and our airplane which organizes the great masses of the earth. With each of our acts, the world reveals to us a new face.

But, if we know that we are directors of being, we also know that we are not its producers. If we turn away from this landscape, it will sink back into its dark permanence. At least, it will sink back: there is no one mad enough to think that it is going to be annihilated. It is we who shall be annihilated, and the earth will remain in its lethargy until another consciousness comes along to awaken it. Thus, to our inner certainty of being revealers is added that of being inessential in relation to the thing revealed. One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world.

If I fix on canvas or in writing a certain aspect of the fields or the sea or a look on someones face which I have disclosed, I am conscious of having produced them by condensing relationships, by introducing order where there was none, by imposing the unity of mind on the diversity of things. That is, I think myself essential in relation to my creation. But this time it is the created object which escapes me; I cannot reveal and produce at the same time. The creation becomes inessential in relation to the creative activity. First of all, even if it appears to others as definitive, the created object always seems to us in a state of suspension; we can always change this line, that shade, that word. Thus, it never forces itself . A novice painter asked his teacher, When should I consider my painting finished?

And the teacher answered, “When you can look at it in amazement and say to yourself Im the one who did that!” Which amounts to saying never. For, it is virtually considering ones work with someone elses eyes and revealing what has been created. But it is self-evident that we are proportionally less conscious of the thing produced and more conscious of our productive activity. When it is a matter of poetry or carpentry, we work according to traditional norms, with tools whose usage is codified; it is Heideggers famous they who are working with our hands. In this case, the result can seem to us sufficiently strange to preserve its objectivity in our eyes. But if we ourselves produce the rules of production, the measures, the criteria, and if our creative drive comes from the very depths of our heart, then we never find anything but ourselves in our work.

It is we who have invented the laws by which we judge it, it is our history, our love, our gaiety that we recognize in it. Even if we should regard it without touching it any further, we never receive from it that gaiety or love. We put them into it. The results which we have obtained on canvas or paper never seem to us objective. We are too familiar with the processes of which they are the effects. These processes remain a subjective discovery: they are ourselves, our inspiration, our ruse, and when we seek to perceive our work, we create it again, we repeat mentally the operations which produced it; each of its aspects appears as a result. Thus, in the perception, the object is given as the essential thing and the subject as the inessential.

The latter seeks essential in the creation and obtains it, but then it is the object which becomes the inessential. The dialectic is nowhere more apparent than in the art of writing, for the literary object is a peculiar top which exists only in movement. To make it come into view a concrete act called reading is necessary, and it lasts only as long as this act can last. Beyond that, there are only black marks on paper. Now, the writer cannot read what he writes, whereas the shoemaker can put on the shoes he has just made if they are of his size, and the architect can live in the house he has built. In reading, one foresees: one waits.

He foresees the end of the sentence, the following sentence, the next page. He waits for them to confirm or disappoint his foresights. The reading is composed of a host of hypotheses, followed by awakenings, of hopes and deceptions. Readers are always ahead of the sentence they are reading in a merely probable future which partly collapses and partly comes together in proportion as they progress, which withdraws from one page to the next and forms the moving horizon of the literary object. Without waiting, without a future, without ignorance, there is no objectivity.

Q. The author holds that

1. there is an objective reality and a subjective reality.

2. nature is the sum total of disparate elements.

3. it is human action that reveals the various facets of nature.

4. apparently disconnected elements in nature are unified in a fundamental sense.

Ans . C

Q. it is the authors contention that

1. artistic creations are results of human consciousness.

2. the very act of artistic creation leads to the escape of the created object.

3. man can produce and reveal at the same time.

4. an act of creation forces itself on our consciousness leaving us full of amazement.

Ans . B

Q. The passage makes a distinction between perception and creation in terms of

1. objectivity and subjectivity.

2. revelation and action.

3. objective reality and perceived reality.

4. essentiality and non-essentiality of objects and subjects.

Ans . D

Q. The art of writing manifests the dialectic of perception and creation because

1. reading reveals the writing till the act of reading lasts.

2. writing to be meaningful needs the concrete act of reading.

3. this art is anticipated and progresses on a series of hypotheses.

4. this literary object has a moving horizon brought about by the very act of creation.

Ans . A

Q. A writer, as an artist,

1. reveals the essentiality of revelation

2. makes us feel essential vis-à-vis nature.

3. creates reality.

4. reveals nature in its permanence

Ans . B

Reading comprehensions

Since Second World War, the nation state has been regarded with approval by every political system and every ideology. In the name of modernization in the West, of socialism in the Eastern Bloc, and of the development in the Third World, it was expected to guarantee the happiness of individuals as citizens and of people as societies. However, the state today appears to have broken down in many parts of the world.

It has failed to guarantee either security or social justice, and has been unable to prevent either international wars or civil wars. Distributed by the claims of communities within it, the nation state tries to repress their demands and to proclaim itself as the only guarantor of security of all. In the name of national unity, territorial integrity, equality of all its citizens and non-partisan secularism, the state can use its powerful resources to reject the demands of the communities; it may even go so far as genocide to ensure that order prevails.

As one observes the awakening of communities in different parts of the world, one cannot ignore the context in which identity issues arise. It is no longer a context of sealed frontiers and isolated regions but is one of the integrated global systems. In a reaction to this trend towards globalization, individuals and communities everywhere are voicing their desire to exist, to use their power of creation and to play an active part in national and international life.

There are two ways in which the current upsurge in demands for the recognition of identities can be looked at. On the positive side, the efforts by certain population groups to assert their identity can be regarded as liberation movements, challenging oppression and injustice. What these groups are doing — proclaiming that they are different, rediscovering the roots of their culture or strengthening group solidarity — may accordingly be seen as legitimate attempts to escape from their state of subjugation and enjoy a certain measure of dignity. On the downside, however, militant action for recognition tends to make such groups more deeply entrenched in their attitude and to make their cultural compartments even more watertight.

The assertion of identity then starts turning into self-absorption and isolation, and is liable to slide into intolerance of others and towards ideas of ethnic cleansing, xenophobia and violence. Whereas continuous variations among people prevent drawing of clear dividing lines between the groups, those militating for recognition of their groups identity arbitrarily choose a limited number of criteria such as religion, language, skin colour, and place of origin so that their members recognize themselves primarily in terms of the labels attached to the group whose existence is being asserted .

This distinction between the group in question and other groups is established by simplifying the feature selected. Simplification also works by transforming groups into essences, abstractions endowed with the capacity to remain unchanged through time. In some cases, people actually act as though the group has remained unchanged and talk, for example, about the history of nations and communities as if these entities survived for centuries without changing, with the same ways of acting and thinking, the same desires, anxieties, and aspirations.

Paradoxically, precisely because identity represents a simplifying fiction, creating uniform groups out of disparate people, that identity performs a cognitive function. It enables us to put names to ourselves and others, form some idea of who we are and who others are, and ascertain the place we occupy along with the others in the world and society. The current upsurge to assert the identity of groups can thus be partly explained by the cognitive function performed by identity. However, that said, people would not go along as they do, often in large numbers, with the propositions put to them, in spite of the sacrifices they entail, if there was not a very strong feeling of need for identity, a need to take stock of things and know who we are, where we come from and where we are going. Identity is thus a necessity in a constantly changing world, but it can also be a potent source of violence and disruption.

How can these two contradictory aspects of identity be reconciled? First, we must bear the arbitrary nature of identity categories in mind, not with a view to eliminating all forms of identification — which would be unrealistic since identity is a cognitive necessity — but simply to remind ourselves that each of us has several identities at the same time. Second, since tears of nostalgia are being shed over the past, we recognize that culture is constantly being recreated by cobbling together fresh and original elements and counter-cultures. There are in our own country a large number of syncretic cults wherein modern elements are blended with traditional values or people of different communities venerate saints or divinities of particular faiths.

Such cults and movements are characterized by a continual inflow and outflow of members which prevent them from taking on a self-perpetuating existence of their own and hold our hope for the future, indeed, perhaps for the only possible future. Finally, the nation state must respond to the identity urges of its constituent communities and to their legitimate quest for security and social justice. It must do so by inventing what the French philosopher and sociologist, Raymond Aron, called peace through law. That would guarantee justice both to the state as a whole and its parts, and respect the claims of both reason and emotions. The problem is one of reconciling nationalist demands with exercise of democracy.

Q. According to the author, happiness of individuals was expected to be guaranteed in the name of

1. development in the Third World.

2. socialism in the Third World.

3. development in the West.

4. modernization in the Eastern Bloc.

Ans . A

Q. Demands for recognition of identities can be viewed

1. positively and negatively.

2. as liberation movements and militant action.

3. as efforts to rediscover cultural roots which can slide towards intolerance of others.

4. All of the above

Ans . D

Q. Going by the authors exposition of the nature of identity, which of the following statements is untrue?

1. Identity represents creating uniform groups out of disparate people.

2. Identity is a necessity in the changing world.

3. Identity is a cognitive necessity.

4. None of the above

Ans . D

Q. According to the author, the nation state

1. has fulfilled its potential.

2. is willing to do anything to preserve order.

3. generates security for all its citizens

4. has been a major force in preventing civil and international wars.

Ans . B

Q. Which of the following views of the nation state cannot be attributed to the author?

1. It has not guaranteed peace and security.

2. It may go as far as genocide for self-preservation.

3. it represents the demands of communities within it.

4. It is unable to prevent international wars.

Ans . C

Reading comprehension

The persistent patterns in the way nations fight reflect their cultural and historical traditions and deeplyrooted attitudes that collectively make up their strategic culture. These patterns provide insights that go beyond what can be learnt just by comparing armaments and divisions. In the Vietnam War, the strategic tradition of the United States called for forcing the enemy to fight a massed battle in an open area, where superior American weapons would prevail.

The United States was trying to re-fight Second World War in the jungles of South-east Asia, against an enemy with no intention of doing so. Some British historians describe the Asian way of war as one of indirect attacks, avoiding frontal attacks meant to overpower an opponent. This traces back to Asian history and geography: the great distances and harsh terrain have often made it difficult to execute the sort of open field clashes allowed by the flat terrain and relatively compact size of Europe. A very different strategic tradition arose in Asia. The bow and arrow were metaphors for an Eastern way of war.

By its nature, the arrow is an indirect weapon. Fired from a distance of hundreds of yards, it does not necessitate immediate physical contact with the enemy. Thus, it can be fired from hidden positions. When fired from behind a ridge, the barrage seems to come out of nowhere, taking the enemy by surprise. The tradition of this kind of fighting is captured in the classical strategic writing of the East. The 2,000 years worth of Chinese writings on war constitutes the most subtle writing on the subject in any language. Not until Clausewitz, did the West produce a strategic theorist to match the sophistication of Sun-tzu, whose Art of War was written 2,300 years earlier.

In Sun-tzu and other Chinese writings, the highest achievement of arms is to defeat an adversary without fighting. He wrote: “To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence.” Actual combat is just one among many means towards the goal of subduing an adversary. War contains too many surprises to be a first resort. It can lead to ruinous losses, as has been seen time and again. It can have the unwanted effect of inspiring heroic efforts in an enemy, as the United States learned in Vietnam, and as the Japanese found out after Pearl Harbour.

Aware of the uncertainties of a military campaign, Sun-tzu advocated war only after the most thorough preparations. Even then, it should be quick and clean. Ideally, the army is just an instrument to deal the final blow to an enemy already weakened by isolation, poor morale, and disunity. Ever since Sun-tzu, the Chinese have been seen as masters of subtlety who take measured actions to manipulate an adversary without his knowledge. The dividing line between war and peace can be obscure. Low level violence often is the backdrop to a larger strategic campaign. The unwitting victim, focused on the day-to-day events, never realizes whats happening to him until its too late. History holds many examples.

The Viet Cong lured French and US infantry deep into the jungle, weakening their morale over several years. The mobile army of the United States was designed to fight on the plains of Europe, where it could quickly move unhindered from one spot to the next. The jungle did more than make quick movement impossible; broken down into smaller units and scattered in isolated bases, US forces were deprived of the feeling of support and protection that ordinarily comes from being part of a big army. The isolation of US troops in Vietnam was not just a logistical detail, something that could be overcome by, for instance, bringing in reinforcements by helicopter.

In a big army reinforcements are readily available. It was Napoleon who realized the extraordinary effects on morale that come from being part of a larger formation. Just the knowledge of it lowers the soldiers fear and increases his aggressiveness. In the jungle and on isolated bases, this feeling was removed. The thick vegetation slowed down the reinforcements and made it difficult to find stranded units. Soldiers felt they were on their own. More important, by altering the way the war was fought, the Viet Cong stripped the United States of its belief in the inevitability of victory, as it had done to the French before them. Morale was high when these armies first went to Vietnam.

Only after many years of debilitating and demoralizing fighting did Hanoi launch its decisive attacks, at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and against Saigon in 1975. It should be recalled that in the final push to victory the North Vietnamese abandoned their jungle guerrilla tactics completely, committing their entire army of twenty divisions to pushing the South Vietnamese into collapse. This final battle, with the enemys army all in one place, was the one that the United States had desperately wanted to fight in 1965. When it did come out into the open in 1975, Washington had already withdrawn its forces and there was no possibility of re-intervention. The Japanese early in Second World War used a modern form of the indirect attack, one that relied on stealth and surprise for its effects.

At Pearl Harbour, in the Philippines, and in South-east Asia, stealth and surprise were attained by sailing under radio silence so that the navys movements could not be tracked, Moving troops aboard ships into South-east Asia made it appear that the Japanese army was also invisible. Attacks against Hawaii and Singapore seemed, to the American and British defenders, to come from nowhere. In Indonesia and the Philippines the Japanese attack was even faster than the German blitz against France in the West. The greatest military surprises in American history have all been in Asia. Surely, there is something going on here beyond the purely technical difficulties of detecting enemy movements.

Pearl Harbour, the Chinese intervention in Korea, and the Tet offensive in Vietnam all came out of a tradition of surprise and stealth. US technical intelligence — the location of enemy units and their movements — was greatly improved after each surprise, but with no noticeable improvement in the American ability to foresee or prepare what would happen next. There is a cultural divide here, not just a technical one. Even when it was possible to track an army with intelligence satellites, as when Iraq invaded Kuwait or when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel, surprise was achieved. The United States was stunned by Iraqs attack on Kuwait even though it had satellite pictures of Iraqi troops massing at the border. The exception that proves the point that cultural differences obscure the Wests understanding of Asian behaviour was the Soviet Unions 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. This was fully anticipated and understood in advance. There was no surprise because the United States understood Moscows world view and thinking.

It could anticipate Soviet action almost as well as the Soviets themselves, because the Soviet Union was really a western country. The difference between the eastern and the western way of war is striking. The Wests great strategic writer, Clausewitz, linked war to politics, as did Sun-tzu. Both were opponents of militarism, of turning war over to the generals. But there, all similarity ends. Clausewitz wrote that the way to achieve a larger political purpose is through destruction of the enemys army. After observing Napoleon conquer Europe by smashing enemy armies to bits, Clausewitz made his famous remark in On War (1932) that combat is the continuation of politics by violent means.

Morale and unity are important, but they should be harnessed for the ultimate battle. If the eastern way of war is embodied by the stealthy archer, the metaphorical western counterpart is the swordsman charging forward, seeking a decisive showdown, eager to administer the blow that will obliterate the enemy once and for all. In this view, war proceeds along a fixed course and occupies a finite extent of time, like a play in three acts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end, the final scene, decides the issue for good. When things dont work out quite this way, the western military mind feels tremendous frustration.

Suntzus great disciples, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, are respected in Asia for their clever use of indirection and deception to achieve an advantage over stronger adversaries. But in the West their approach is seen as underhanded and devious. To the American strategic mind, the Viet Cong guerilla did not fight fairly. They should have come out into the open and fought like men, instead of hiding in the jungle and sneaking around like a cat in the night.

Q. According to the author, the main reason for the US losing the Vietnam War was

1. the Vietnamese understood the local terrain better

2. the lack of support for the war from the American people.

3. the failure of the US to mobilize its military strength

4. their inability to fight a war on terms other than those they understood well.

Ans . D

Q. Which of the following statements does not describe the Asian way of war?

1. Indirect attacks without frontal attacks.

2. The swordsman charging forward to obliterate the enemy once and for all.

3. Manipulation of an adversary without his knowledge.

4. Subduing an enemy without fighting.

Ans . B

Q. Which of the following is not one of Sun-tzus ideas?

1. Actual combat is the principal means of subduing an adversary.

2. War should be undertaken only after thorough preparation.

3. War is linked to politics.

4. War should not be left to the generals alone.

Ans . A

Q. The difference in the concepts of war of Clausewitz and Sun-tzu is best characterized by

1. Clausewitzs support for militarism as against Sun-tzus opposition to it.

2. their relative degrees of sophistication.

3. their attitude to guerilla warfare.

4. their differing conceptions of the structure, time and sequence of a war.

Ans . D

Q. To the Americans, the approach of the Viet Cong seemed devious because

1. the Viet Cong did not fight like men out in the open.

2. the Viet Cong allied with Americas enemies.

3. the Viet Cong took strategic advice from Mao Zedong

4. the Viet Cong used bows and arrows rather than conventional weapons

Ans . A

Q. According to the author, the greatest military surprises in American history have been in Asia because

1. the Americans failed to implement their military strategies many miles away from their own country.

2. the Americans were unable to use their technologies like intelligence satellites effectively to detect enemy movements

3. the Americans failed to understand the Asian culture of war that was based on stealth and surprise

4. Clausewitz is inferior to Sun-tzu

Ans . C

Read and Answer

The production of histories of India has become very frequent in recent years and may well call for some explanation. Why so many and why this one in particular? The reason is a two-fold one: changes in the Indian scene requiring a re-interpretation of the facts and changes in attitudes of historians about the essential elements of Indian history. These two considerations are in addition to the normal fact of fresh information, whether in the form of archeological discoveries throwing fresh light on an obscure period or culture, or the revelations caused by the opening of archives or the release of private papers.

The changes in the Indian scene are too obvious to need emphasis. Only two generations ago British rule seemed to most Indian as well as British observers likely to extend into an indefinite future; now there is a teenage generation which knows nothing of it. Changes in the attitudes of historians have occurred everywhere, changes in attitudes to the content of the subject as well as to particular countries, but in India there have been some special features. Prior to the British, Indian historiographers were mostly Muslims, who relied, as in the case of Sayyid Ghulam Hussain, on their own recollection of events and on information from friends and men of affairs. Only a few like Abul Fazl had access to official papers. These were personal narratives of events, varying in value with the nature of the writer. The early British writers were officials.

In the 18th century they were concerned with some aspect of Company policy, or like Robert Orme in his Military Transactions gave a straight narrative in what was essentially a continuation of the Muslim tradition. In the early 19th century the writers were still, with two notable exceptions, officials, but they were now engaged in chronicling, in varying moods of zest, pride, and awe, the rise of the British power in India to supremacy. The two exceptions were James Mill, with his critical attitude to the Company and John Marchman, the Baptist missionary. But they, like the officials, were anglo-centric in their attitude, so that the history of modern India in their hands came to be the history of the rise of the British in India. The official school dominated the writing of Indian history until we get the first professional historians approach.

Ramsay Muir and P. E. Roberts in England and H. H. Dodwell in India. Then Indian historians trained in the English school joined in, of whom the most distinguished was Sir Jadunath Sarkar and the other notable writers: Surendranath Sen, Dr Radhakumud Mukherji, and Professor Nilakanta Sastri. They, it may be said, restored India to Indian history, but their bias was mainly political. Finally have come the nationalists who range from those who can find nothing good or true in the British to sophisticated historical philosophers like K. M. Panikker. Along the types of historians with their varying bias have gone changes in the attitude to the content of Indian history. Here Indian historians have been influenced both by their local situation and by changes of thought elsewhere.

It is this field that this work can claim some attention since it seeks to break new ground, or perhaps to deepen a freshly turned furrow in the field of Indian history. The early official historians were content with the glamour and drama of political history from Plassey to the Mutiny, from Dupleix to the Sikhs. But when the raj was settled down, glamour departed from politics, and they turned to the less glorious but more solid ground of administration. Not how India was conquered but how it was governed was the theme of this school of historians. It found its archpriest in H. H. Dodwell, its priestess in Dame Lilian Penson, and its chief shrine in the Volume VI of the Cambridge History of India.

Meanwhile, in Britain other currents were moving, which led historical study into the economic and social fields. R. C. Dutt entered the first of these currents with his Economic History of India to be followed more recently by the whole group of Indian economic historians. W. E. Moreland extended these studies to the Mughal Period. Social history is now being increasingly studied and there is also of course a school of nationalist historians who see modern Indian history in terms of the rise and the fulfillment of the national movement. All these approaches have value, but all share in the quality of being compartmental.

It is not enough to remove political history from its pedestal of being the only kind of history worth having if it is merely to put other types of history in its place. Too exclusive an attention to economic, social, or administrative history can be as sterile and misleading as too much concentration on politics. A whole subject needs a whole treatment for understanding. A historian must dissect his subject into its elements and then fuse them together again into an integrated whole. The true history of a country must contain all the features just cited but must present them as parts of a single consistent theme.

Q. Which of the following may be the closest in meaning to the statement restored India to Indian history?

1. Indian historians began writing Indian history.

2. Trained historians began writing Indian history.

3. Writing India-centric Indian history began.

4. Indian history began to be written in India.

Ans . C

Q. Which of the following is the closest implication of the statement to break new ground, or perhaps to deepen a freshly turned furrow?

1. Dig afresh or dig deeper.

2. Start a new stream of thought or help establish a recently emerged perspective.

3. Begin or conduct further work on existing archeological sites to unearth new evidence

4. Begin writing a history free of any biases.

Ans . B

Q. Historians moved from writing political history to writing administrative history because

1. attitudes of the historians changed.

2. the raj was settled down.

3. politics did not retain its past glamour.

4. administrative history was based on solid ground.

Ans . C

Q. According to the author, which of the following is not among the attitudes of Indian historians of Indian origin?

1. Writing history as personal narratives.

2. Writing history with political bias.

3. Writing non-political history due to lack of glamour.

4. Writing history by dissecting elements and integrating them again.

Ans . D

Q. In the table given below, match the historians to the approaches taken by them

1. A

2. B

3. C

4. D

Ans . A

Read and Passage

There are a seemingly endless variety of laws, restrictions, customs and traditions that affect the practice of abortion around the world. Globally, abortion is probably the single most controversial issue in the whole area of womens rights and family matters. It is an issue that inflames womens right groups, religious institutions, and the self-proclaimed guardians of public morality. The growing worldwide belief is that the right to control ones fertility is a basic human right. This has resulted in a worldwide trend towards liberalization of abortion laws. Forty per cent of the worlds population live in countries where induced abortion is permitted on request. An additional 25 per cent live in countries where it is allowed if the womens life would be endangered if she went to full term with her pregnancy.

The estimate is that between 26 and 31 million legal abortions were performed in that year. However, there were also between 10 and 22 million illegal abortions performed in that year. Feminists have viewed the patriarchal control of womens bodies as one of the prime issues facing the contemporary womens movement. They observe that the defintion and control of womens reproductive freedom have always been the province of men. Patriarchal religion, as manifest in Islamic fundamentalism, traditionalist Hindu practice, orthodox Judaism, and Roman Catholicism, has been an important historical contributory factor for this and continues to be an important presence in contemporary societies. In recent times, governments, usually controlled by men, have given women the right to contraceptive use and abortion access when their countries were perceived to have an overpopulation problem. When these countries are perceived to be underpopulated, that right had been absent. Until the 19th century, a womans rights to an abortion followed English common law;

it could only be legally challenged if there was a quickening, when the first movements of the fetus could be felt. In 1800, drugs to induce abortions were widely advertised in local newspapers. By 1900, abortion was banned in every state except to save the life of the mother. The change was strongly influenced by medical profession, which focussed its campaign ostensibly on health and safety issues for pregnant women and the sancity of life. Its position was also a means of control of non-licensed medical practitioners such as midwives and women healers who practiced abortion.

The anti-abortion campaign was also influenced by political considerations. The large influx of eastern and southern European immigrants with their large families was seen as a threat to the population balance of the future United States. Middle and upper-classes Protestants were advocates of abortion as a form of birth control. By supporting abortion prohibitions the hope was that these Americans would have more children and thus prevent the tide of immigrant babies from overwhelming the demographic characteristics of Protestant America. The anti-abortion legislative position remained in effect in the United States through the first 65 years of the 20th century.

In the early 1960s, even when it was widely known that the drug thalidomide taken during pregnancy to alleviate anxiety was shown to contribute to the formation of deformed flipper-like hands or legs of children, abortion was illegal in the United States. A second health tragedy was the severe outbreak of rubella during the same time period, which also resulted in major birth defects. These tragedies combined with a change of attitude towards a womans right to privacy led a number of states to pass abortionpermitting legislation. On one side of the controversy are those who call themselves pro-life. They view the foetus as a human life rather than as an unformed complex of cells; therefore, they hold to the belief that abortion is essentially murder of an unborn child.

These groups cite both legal and religious reasons for their opposition to abortion. Pro-lifers point to the rise in legalised abortion figures and see this as morally intolerable. On the other side of the issue are those who call themselves pro-choice. They believe that women, not legislators or judges, should have the right to decide whether and under what circumstances they will bear children. Pro-choicers are of the opinion that laws will not prevent women from having abortions and cite the horror stories of the past when many women died at the hands of backroom abortionists and in desperate attempts to self-abort. They also observe that legalized abortion is especially important for rape victims and incest victims who became pregnant.

They stress physical and mental health reasons why women should not have unwanted children. To get a better understanding of the current abortion controversy, let us examine a very important work by Kristin Luker titled Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Luker argues that female pro-choice and prolife activists hold different world views regarding gender, sex, and the meaning of parenthood. Moral positions on abortions are seen to be tied intimately to views on sexual bahavior, the care of children, family life, technology, and the importance of the individual. Luker identified pro-choice women as educated, affluent, and liberal. Their contrasting counterparts, pro-life women, support traditional concepts of women as wives and mothers.

It would be instructive to sketch out the differences in the world views of these two sets of women. Luker examines California, with its liberalized abortion law, as a case history. Public documents and newspaper accounts over a 26-year period were analysed and over 200 interviews were held with both pro-life and pro-choice activists. Luker found that pro-life and pro-choice activists have intrinsically different views with respect to gender. Pro-life women have a notion of public and private life. The proper place for men is in the public sphere of work; for women, it is the private sphere of the home. Men benefit through the nurturance of women; women benefit through the protection of men. Children are seen to be the ultimate beneficiaries of this arrangement of having the mother as a full-time loving parent and by having clear role models. Pro-choice advocates reject the view of separate spheres. They object to the notion of the home being the womens sphere. Womens reproductive and family roles are seen as potential barriers to full equality.

Motherhood is seen as a voluntary, not a mandatory or natural role. In summarizing her findings, Luker believes that women become activists in either of the two movements as the end result of lives that centre around different conceptualizations of motherhood. Their beliefs and values are rooted to the concrete circumstances of their lives, their educations, incomes, occupations, and the different marital and family choices that they have made. They represent two different world views of womens roles in contemporary society and as such the abortion issues represent the battleground for the justification of their respective views.

Q. According to your understanding of the authors arguments, which countries are more likely to allow abortion?

1. India and China

2. Australia and Mongolia

3. Cannot be inferred from the passage

4. Both (1) and (2)

Ans . A

Q. Which amongst these was not a reason for banning of abortions by 1900?

1. Medical professionals stressing the health and safety of women

2. Influx of eastern and southern European immigrant

3. Control of unlicensed medical practitioners

4. A tradition of matriarchal control

Ans . D

Q. A pro-life woman would advocate abortion if

1. the mother of an unborn child is suicidal.

2. bearing a child conflicts with a womans career prospects.

3. the mother becomes pregnant accidentally

4. None of these

Ans . D

Q. Pro-choice women object to the notion of the home being the womens sphere because they believe

1. that home is a joint sphere shared between men and women.

2. that reproduction is a matter of choice for women

3. that men and women are equal

4. Both (2) and (3)

Ans . D

Q. Two health tragedies affecting the US society in the 1960s led to

1. a change in attitude to womens right to privacy

2. retaining the anti-abortion laws with some exceptions.

3. scrapping of anti-abortion laws.

4. strengthening of the pro-life lobby.

Ans . B

Q. Historically, the pro-choice movements has got support from, among others

1. major patriarchal religions.

2. countries with low population density.

3. medical profession.

4. None of these

Ans . D

Read and Answer

The conceptions of life and the world which we call philosophical are a product of two factors: one inherited religious and ethical conceptions; the other, the sort of investigation which may be called scientific, using this word in its broadest sense. Individual philosophers have differed widely in regard to the proportions in which these two factors entered into their systems, but it is the presence of both, in some degree, that characterizes philosophy. Philosophy is a word which has been used in many ways, some wider, some narrower. I propose to use it in a very wide sense, which I will now try to explain. Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge so I should contend belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to thelogy. But between theology and science there is a No Mans Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Mans Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries. Is the world divided into mind and matter, and if so, what is mind and what is matter? Is mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers? Has the universe any unity or purpose? Is it evolving towards some goal? Are there really laws of nature, or do we believe in them only because of our innate love of order? Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of carbon and water impotently crawling on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both at once? Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living merely futile? If there is a way of living that is noble, in what does it consist, and how shall we achieve it? Must the good be eternal in order to deserve to be valued, or is it worth seeking even if the universe is inexorably moving towards death? Is there such a thing as wisdom, or is what seems such merely the ultimate refinement of folly? To such questions no answer can be found in the laboratory. Theologies have professed to give answers, all too definite; but their definiteness causes modern minds to view them with suspicion. The studying of these questions, if not the answering of them, is the business of philosophy. Why, then, you may ask, waste time on such insoluble problems? To this one may answer as a historian, or as an individual facing the terror of cosmic loneliness. The answer of the historian, in so far as I am capable of giving it, will appear in the course of this work. Ever since men became capable of free speculation, their actions in innumerable important respects, have depended upon their theories as to the world and human life, as to what is good and what is evil. This is as true in the present day as at any former time. To understand an age or a nation, we must understand its philosophy, and to understand its philosophy we must ourselves be in some degree philosophers. There is here a reciprocal causation: the circumstances of mens lives do much to determine their philosophy, but, conversely, their philosophy does much to determine their circumstances. There is also, however, a more personal answer. Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we may become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge, where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

Q. The purpose of philosophy is to

1. reduce uncertainty and chaos.

2. help us to cope with uncertainty and ambiguity.

3. help us to find explanations for uncertainty

4. reduce the terror of cosmic loneliness.

Ans . B

Q. Based on the passage, what can be concluded about the relation between philosophy and science?

1. The two are antagonistic.

2. The two are complementary.

3. There is no relation between the two

4. Philosophy derives from science.

Ans . B

Q. From reading the passage, what can be concluded about the profession of the author? He is most likely not to be a

1. historian

2. philosopher.

3. scientist.

4. theologian.

Ans . D

Q. According to the author, which of the following statements about the nature of universe must be definitely true?

1. The universe has unity.

2. The universe has a purpose

3. The universe is evolving towards a goal.

4. None of these

Ans . D

Read and Answer

Cells are the ultimate multi-taskers: they can switch on genes and carry out their orders, talk to each other, divide in two, and much more, all at the same time. But they couldnt do any of these tricks without a power source to generate movement. The inside of a cell bustles with more traffic than Delhi roads, and, like all vehicles, the cells moving parts need engines. Physicists and biologists have looked under the hood of the cell and laid out the nuts and bolts of molecular engines. The ability of such engines to convert chemical energy into motion is amazing nanotechnology researchers are looking for ways to power molecule-sized devices.

Medical researchers also want to understand how these engines work. Because these molecules are essential for cell division, scientists hope to shut down the rampant growth of cancer cells by deactivating certain motors. Improving motor-driven transport in nerve cells may also be helpful for treating diseases such as Alzheimers, Parkinsons or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrigs disease. We wouldnt make it far in life without motor proteins. Our muscles wouldnt contract. We couldnt grow, because the growth process requires cells to duplicate their machinery and pull the copies apart. And our genes would be silent without the services of messenger RNA, which carries genetic instructions over to the cells protein-making factories.

The movements that make these cellular activities possible occur along a complex network of threadlike fibers, or polymers, along which bundles of molecules travel like trams. The engines that power the cells freight are three families of proteins, called myosin, kinesin and dynein. For fuel, these proteins burn molecules of ATP, which cells make when they break down the carbohydrates and fats from the foods we eat. The energy from burning ATP causes changes in the proteins shape that allow them to heave themselves along the polymer track. The results are impressive: In one second, these molecules can travel between 50 and 100 times their own diameter.

If a car with a five-foot-wide engine were as efficient, it would travel 170 to 340 kilometres per hour. Ronald Vale, a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the University of California at San Francisco, and Ronald Milligan of the Scripps Research Institute have realized a long-awaited goal by reconstructing the process by which myosin and kinesin move, almost down to the atom. The dynein motor, on the other hand, is still poorly understood. Myosin molecules, best known for their role in muscle contraction, form chains that lie between filaments of another protein called actin. Each myosin molecule has a tiny head that pokes out from the chain like oars from a canoe. Just as rowers propel their boat by stroking their oars through the water, the myosin molecules stick their heads into the actin and hoist themselves forward along the filament.

While myosin moves along in short strokes, its cousin kinesin walks steadily along a different type of filament called a microtubule. Instead of using a projecting head as a lever, kinesin walks on two legs. Based on these differences, researchers used to think that myosin and kinesin were virtually unrelated. But newly discovered similarities in the motors ATP-processing machinery now suggest that they share a common ancestor — molecule. At this point, scientists can only speculate as to what type of primitive cell-like structure this ancestor occupied as it learned to burn ATP and use the energy to change shape.

“Well never really know, because we cant dig up the remains of ancient proteins, but that was probably a big evolutionary leap,” says Vale. On a slightly larger scale, loner cells like sperm or infectious bacteria are prime movers that resolutely push their way through to other cells. As L. Mahadevan and Paul Matsudaira of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explain, the engines in this case are springs or ratchets that are clusters of molecules, rather than single proteins like myosin and kinesin. Researchers dont yet fully understand these engines fueling process or the details of how they move, but the result is a force to be reckoned with.

For example, one such engine is a spring-like stalk connecting a single-celled organism called a vorticellid to the leaf fragment it calls home. When exposed to calcium, the spring contracts, yanking the vorticellid down at speeds approaching three inches (eight centimetres) per second. Springs like this are coiled bundles of filaments that expand or contract in response to chemical cues. A wave of positively charged calcium ions, for example, neutralizes the negative charges that keep the filaments extended. Some sperm use spring-like engines made of actin filaments to shoot out a barb that penetrates the layers that surround an egg. And certain viruses use a similar apparatus to shoot their DNA into the hosts cell.

Ratchets are also useful for moving whole cells, including some other sperm and pathogens. These engines are filaments that simply grow at one end, attracting chemical building blocks from nearby. Because the other end is anchored in place, the growing end pushes against any barrier that gets in its way. Both springs and ratchets are made up of small units that each move just slightly, but collectively produce a powerful movement.

Ultimately, Mahadevan and Matsudaira hope to better understand just how these particles create an effect that seems to be so much more than the sum of its parts. Might such an understanding provide inspiration for ways to power artificial nano-sized devices in the future? “The short answer is absolutely,” says Mahadevan. “Biology has had a lot more time to evolve enormous richness in design for different organisms. Hopefully, studying these structures will not only improve our understanding of the biological world, it will also enable us to copy them, take apart their components and recreate them for other purpose.”

Q. According to the author, research on the power source of movement in cells can contribute to

1. control over the movement of genes within human systems.

2. the understanding of nanotechnology.

3. arresting the growth of cancer in a human being

4. the development of cures for a variety of diseases.

Ans . D

Q. The author has used several analogies to illustrate his arguments in the article. Which of the following pairs of words are examples of the analogies used?
A. Cell activity and vehicular traffic
B. Polymers and tram tracks
C. Genes and canoes
D. Vorticellids and ratchets

1. A and B

2. B and C

3. A and D

4. A and C

Ans . A

Q. Read the five statements below: A, B, C, D, and E. From the options given, select the one which includes a statement that is not representative of an argument presented in the passage.
A. Sperms use spring like engines made of actin filament.
B. Myosin and kinesin are unrelated.
C. Nanotechnology researchers look for ways to power molecule-sized devices.
D. Motor proteins help muscle contraction.
E. The dynein motor is still poorly understood.

1. A, B and C

2. C, D and E

3. A, D and E

4. A, C and D

Ans . A

Q. Read the four statements below: A, B, C and D. From the options given, select the one which includes only statements that are representative of arguments presented in the passage.
A. Protein motors help growth processes.
B. Improved transport in nerve cells will help arrest tuberculosis and cancer.
C. Cells, together, generate more power than the sum of power generated by them separately.
D. Vorticellid and the leaf fragment are connected by a calcium engine.

1. A and B but not C

2. A and C but not D

3. A and D but not B

4. C and D but not B

Ans . B

Q. Read the four statements below: A, B, C and D. From the options given, select the one which includes statements that are representative of arguments presented in the passage.
A. Myosin, kinesin and actin are three types of protein.
B. Growth processes involve a routine in a cell that duplicates their machinery and pulls the copies apart.
C. Myosin molecules can generate vibrations in muscles.
D. Ronald and Mahadevan are researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

1. A and B but not C and D

2. B and C but not A

3. B and D but not A and C

4. A, B and C but not D

Ans . A

Read and Answer

If translated into English, most of the ways economists talk among themselves would sound plausible enough to poets, journalists, businesspeople, and other thoughtful though non-economical folk. Like serious talk anywhere — among boat desingers and baseball fans, say — the talk is hard to follow when one has not made a habit of listening to it for a while. The culture of the conversation makes the words arcane. But the people in the unfamiliar conversation are not Martians. Underneath it all (the economists favourite phrase) conversational habits are similar. Economics uses mathematical models and statistical tests and market arguments, all of which look alien to the literary eye. But looked at closely they are not so alien.

They may be seen as figures of speech-metaphors, analogies, and appeals to authority. Figures of speech are not mere frills. They think for us. Someone who thinks of a market as an invisible hand and the organization of work as a production function and his coefficients as being significant, as an economist does, is giving the language a lot of responsibility. It seems a good idea to look hard at his language. If the economic conversation were found to depend a lot on its verbal forms, this would not mean that economics would be not a science, or just a matter of opinion, or some sort of confidence game. Good poets, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about symbols; good historians, though not scientists, are serious thinkers about data.

Good scientists also use language. What is more (though it remains to be shown) they use the cunning of language, without particularly meaning to. The language used is a social object, and using language is a social act. It requires cunning (or, if you prefer, consideration), attention to the other minds present when one speaks. The paying of attention to ones audience is called rhetoric, a word that I later exercise hard. One uses rhetoric, of course, to warn of a fire in a theatre or to arouse the xenophobia of the electorate. This sort of yelling is the vulgar meaning of the word, like the presidents heated rhetoric in a press conference or the mere rhetoric to which our enemies stoop.

Since the Greek flame was lit, though, the word has been used also in a broader and more amiable sense, to mean the study of all the ways of accomplishing things with language: inciting a mob to lynch the accused, to be sure, but also persuading readers of a novel that its characters breathe, or bringing scholars to accept the better argument and reject the worse. The question is whether the scholar- who usually fancies himself an announcer of results or a stater of conclusions free of rhetoric — speaks rhetorically. Does he try to persuade? It would seem so. Language, I just said, is not a solitary accomplishment. The scholar doesnt speak into the void, or to himself. He speaks to a community of voices. He desires to be heeded, praised, published, imitated, honoured, en-Nobeled. These are the desires. The devices of language are the means. Rhetoric is the proportioning of means to desires in speech. Rhetoric is an economics of language, the study of how scarce means are allocated to the insatiable desires of people to be heard.

It seems on the face of it a reasonable hypothesis that economists are like other people in being talkers, who desire listeners whey they go to the library or the laboratory as much as when they go to the office or the polls. The purpose here is to see if this is true, and to see if it is useful: to study the rhetoric of economic scholarship. The subject is scholarship. It is not the economy, or the adequacy of economic theory as a description of the economy, or even mainly the economists role in the economy.

The subject is the conversation economists have among themselves, for purposes of persuading each other that the interest elasticity of demand for investment is zero or that the money supply is controlled by the Federal Reserve. Unfortunately, though, the conclusions are of more than academic interest. The conversations of classicists or of astronomers rarely affect the lives of other people. Those of economists do so on a large scale. A well known joke describes a May Day parade through Red Square with the usual mass of soldiers, guided missiles, rocket launchers. At last come rank upon rank of people in gray business suits. A bystander asks, “Who are those?” “Aha!” comes the reply, “Those are economists: you have no idea what damage they can do!” Their conversations do it.

Q. According to the passage, which of the following is the best set of reasons for which one needs to look hard at an economists language?
A. Economists accomplish a great deal through their language.
B. Economics is an opinion-based subject.
C. Economics has a great impact on others lives.
D. Economics is damaging

1. A and B

2. C and D

3. A and C

4. B and D

Ans . C

Q. In the light of the definition of rhetoric given in the passage, which of the following will have the least element of rhetoric?

1. An election speech

2. An advertisement jingle

3. Dialogues in a play

4. Commands given by army officers

Ans . D

Q. As used in the passage, which of the following is the closest meaning to the statement The culture of the conversation makes the words arcane?

1. Economists belong to a different culture.

2. Only mathematicians can understand economists

3. Economists tend to use terms unfamiliar to the lay person, but depend on familiar linguistic forms

4. Economists use similes and adjectives in their analysis.

Ans . C

Q. As used in the passage, which of the following is the closest alternative to the word arcane?

1. Mysterious

2. Secret

3. Covert

4. Perfidious

Ans . A

Q. Based on your understanding of the passage, which of the following conclusions would you agree with?

1. The geocentric and the heliocentric views of the solar system are equally tenable

2. The heliocentric view is superior because of better rhetoric.

3. Both views use rhetoric to persuade.

4. Scientists should not use rhetoric.

Ans . C

A game of strategy, as currently conceived in game theory, is a situation in which two or more “players” make choices among available alternatives (moves). The totality of choices determines the outcomes of the game, and it is assumed that the rank order of preferences for the outcomes is different for different players.

Thus the “interests” of the players are generally in conflict. Whether these interests are diametrically opposed or only partially opposed depends on the type of game. Psychologically, most interesting situations arise when the interests of the players are partly coincident and partly opposed, because then one can postulate not only a conflict among the players but also inner conflicts within the players.

Each is torn between a tendency to cooperate, so as to promote the common interests, and a tendency to compete, so as to enhance his own individual interests. Internal conflicts are always psychologically interesting. What we vaguely call “interesting” psychology is in very great measure the psychology of inner conflict.

Inner conflict is also held to be an important component of serious literature as distinguished from less serious genres. The classical tragedy, as well as the serious novel reveals the inner conflict of central figures. The superficial adventure story on the other hand, depicts only external conflict;

that is, the threats to the person with whom the reader (or viewer) identifies stem in these stories exclusively from external obstacles and from the adversaries who create them. On the most primitive level this sort of external conflict is psychologically empty. In the fisticuffs between the protagonists of good and evil, no psychological problems are involved or, at any rate, none are depicted in juvenile representations of conflict. The detective story, the “adult” analogue of a juvenile adventure tale, has at times been described as a glorification of intellectualized conflict.

However, a great deal of the interest in the plots of these stories is sustained by withholding the unraveling of a solution to a problem. The effort of solving the problem is in itself not a conflict if the adversary (the unknown criminal) remains passive, like Nature, whose secrets the scientist supposedly unravels by deduction. If the adversary actively puts obstacles in the detective’s path toward the solution, there is genuine conflict.

But the conflict is psychologically interesting only to the extent that it contains irrational components such as a tactical error on the criminal’s part or the detective’s insight into some psychological quirk of the criminal or something of this sort. Conflict conducted in a perfectly rational manner is psychologically no more interesting than a standard Western.

For example, Tic-tac-toe, played perfectly by both players, is completely devoid of psychological interest. Chess may be psychologically interesting but only to the extent that it is played not quite rationally. Played completely rationally, chess would not be different from Tic-tac-toe. In short, a pure conflict of interest (what is called a zero-sum game) although it offers a wealth of interesting conceptual problems, is not interesting psychologically, except to the extent that its conduct departs from rational norms.

Q. According to the passage, internal conflicts are psychologically more interesting than external conflicts because

1. internal conflicts, rather than external conflicts, form an important component of serious literature as distinguished from less serious genres

2. only juveniles or very few “adults” actually experience external conflict, while internal conflict is more widely prevalent in society.

3. in situations of internal conflict, individuals experience a dilemma in resolving their own preferences for different outcomes.

4. there are no threats to the reader (or viewer) in case of external conflicts.

Ans . C

Q. Which, according to the author, would qualify as interesting psychology?

1. A statistician’s dilemma over choosing the best method to solve an optimization problem.

2. A chess player’s predicament over adopting a defensive strategy against an aggressive opponent.

3. A mountaineer’s choice of the best path to Mt. Everest from the base camp

4. A finance manager’s quandary over the best way of raising money from the market.

Ans . B

Q. According to the passage, which of the following options about the application of game theory to a conflict-of-interest situation is true?

1. Assuming that the rank order of preferences for options is different for different players.

2. Accepting that the interests of different players are often in conflict.

3. Not assuming that the interests are in complete disagreement.

4. All of the above.

Ans . B

Q. The problem solving process of a scientist is different from that of a detective because

1. scientists study inanimate objects, while detectives deal with living criminals or law offenders

2. scientists study known objects, while detectives have to deal with unknown criminals or law offenders.

3. scientists study phenomena that are not actively altered, while detectives deal with phenomena that have been deliberately influenced to mislead.

4. scientists study psychologically interesting phenomena, while detectives deal with “adult” analogues of juvenile adventure tales.

Ans . C

Crinoline and croquet are out. As yet, no political activists have thrown themselves in front of the royal horse on Derby Day. Even so, some historians can spot the parallels. It is a time of rapid technological change. It is a period when the dominance of the world’s superpower is coming under threat. It is an epoch when prosperity masks underlying economic strain.

And, crucially, it is a time when policy-makers are confident that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Welcome to the Edwardian Summer of the second age of globalisation. Spare a moment to take stock of what’s been happening in the past few months. Let’s start with the oil price, which has rocketed to more than $65 a barrel, more than double its level 18 months ago. The accepted wisdom is that we shouldn’t worry our little heads about that, because the incentives are there for business to build new production and refining capacity, which will effortlessly bring demand and supply back into balance and bring crude prices back to $25 a barrel. As Tommy Copper used to say, ‘just like that’.

Then there is the result of the French referendum on the European Constitution, seen as thick-headed luddites railing vainly against the modern world. What the French needed to realize, the argument went, was that there was no alternative to the reforms that would make the country more flexible, more competitive, more dynamic. Just the sort of reforms that allowed Gate Gourmet to sack hundreds of its staff at Heathrow after the sort of ultimatum that used to be handed out by Victorian mill owners.

An alternative way of looking at the French “non” is that our neighbours translate “flexibility” as “you’re fired”. Finally, take a squint at the United States. Just like Britian a century ago, a period of unquestioned superiority is drawing to a close. China is still a long way from matching America’s wealth, but it is growing at a stupendous rate and economic strength brings geo-political clout. Already, there is evidence of a new scramble for Africa as Washington and Beijing compete for oil stocks. Moreover, beneath the surface of the US economy, all is not well.

Growth looks healthy enough, but the competition from China and elsewhere has meant the world’s biggest economy now imports far more than it exports. The US is living beyond its means, but in this time of studied complacency a current account deficit worth 6 perfect of gross domestic product is seen as a sign of strength, not weakness. In this new Edwardian summer, comfort is taken from the fact that dearer oil has not had the savage inflationary consequences of 1973-1974, when a fourfold increase in the cost of crude brought an abrupt end to a postwar boom that had gone on uninterrupted for a quarter of a century. True, the cost of living has been affected by higher transport costs, but we are talking of inflation at 2.3 per cent and not 27 per cent.

Yet the idea that higher oil prices are of little consequence is fanciful. If people are paying more to fill up their cars it leaves them with less to spend on everything else, but there is a reluctance to consume less. In the 1970s unions were strong and able to negotiate large, compensatory pay deals that served to intensify inflationary pressure. In 2005, that avenue is pretty much closed off, but the abolition of all the controls on credit that existed in the 1970s means that households are invited to borrow more rather than consume less.

The knock-on effects of higher oil prices are thus felt in different ways – through high levels of indebtedness, in inflated asset prices, and in balance of payments deficits. There are those who point out, rightly, that modern industrial capitalism has proved mightily resilient these past 250 years, and that a sign of the enduring strength of the system has been the way it apparently shrugged off everything – a stock market crash, 9/11, rising oil prices – that have been thrown at it in the half decade since the millennium. Even so, there are at least three reasons for concern. First, we have been here before. In terms of political economy, the first era of globalisation mirrored our own.

There was a belief in unfettered capital flows, in free migration. Eventually, though, there was a backlash, manifested in a struggle between free traders and protectionists, and in rising labour militancy. Second, the world is traditionally as its most fragile at times when the global balance of power is in flux. By the end of the nineteenth century, Britain’s role as the hegemonic power was being challenged by the rise of the United States, Germany, and Japan while the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires were clearly in rapid decline.

Looking ahead from 2005, it is clear that over the next two or three decades, both China and India – which together account for half the world’s population – will flex their muscles. Finally, there is the question of what rising oil prices tell us. The emergence of China and India means global demand for crude is likely to remain high a t a time when experts say production is about to top out. If supply constraints start to bite, any decline in the prices are likely to be short-term cyclical affairs punctuating a long upward trend.

Q. By the expression ‘Edwardian Summer’, the author refers to a period in which there is

1. unparalleled luxury and opulence.

2. a sense of complacency among people because of all-round prosperity.

3. a culmination of all-round economic prosperity.

4. an imminent danger lurking behind economic prosperity.

Ans . B

Q. What, according to the author, has resulted in a widespread belief in the resilence of modern capitalism?

1. Growth in the economies of Western countries despite shocks in the form of increase in levels of indebtedness and inflated asset prices.

2. Increase in the prosperity of Western countries and China despite rising oil prices

3. Continued growth of Western economies despite a rise in terrorism, an increase in oil prices and other similar shocks.

4. The success of continued reforms aimed at making Western economies more dynamic, competitive and efficient.

Ans . C

Q. Which of the following best represents the key argument made by the author?

1. The rise in oil prices, the flux in the global balance of power and historical precedents should make us question our belief that the global economic prosperity would continue.

2. The belief that modern industrial capitalism is highly resilient and capable of overcoming shocks will be belied soon.

3. Widespread prosperity leads to neglect of early signs of underlying economic weakness, manifested in higher oil prices and a flux in the global balance of power.

4. A crisis is imminent in the West given the growth of countries like China and India and the increase in oil prices.

Ans . A

Q. What can be inferred about the author’s view when he states ‘As Tommy Cooper used to say “just like that”?

1. Industry has incentives to build new production and refining capacity and therefore oil prices would reduce.

2. There would be a correction in the price levels of oil once new production capacity is added.

3. The decline in oil prices is likely to be short-term in nature

4. It is not necessary that oil prices would go down to earlier levels.

Ans . D