First woman to set foot on North Pole ?->(Show Answer!)

1. First woman to set foot on North Pole

Answer: Ann Bancroft, USA (1986)

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MCQ-> The passage below is accompanied by a set of six questions. Choose the best answer to each question.Understanding where you are in the world is a basic survival skill, which is why we, like most species come hard-wired with specialised brain areas to create cognitive maps of our surroundings. Where humans are unique, though, with the possible exception of honeybees, is that we try to communicate this understanding of the world with others. We have a long history of doing this by drawing maps — the earliest versions yet discovered were scrawled on cave walls 14,000 years ago. Human cultures have been drawing them on stone tablets, papyrus, paper and now computer screens ever since.Given such a long history of human map-making, it is perhaps surprising that it is only within the last few hundred years that north has been consistently considered to be at the top. In fact, for much of human history, north almost never appeared at the top, according to Jerry Brotton, a map historian... "North was rarely put at the top for the simple fact that north is where darkness comes from," he says. "West is also very unlikely to be put at the top because west is where the sun disappears."Confusingly, early Chinese maps seem to buck this trend. But, Brotton, says, even though they did have compasses at the time, that isn't the reason that they placed north at the top. Early Chinese compasses were actually oriented to point south, which was considered to be more desirable than deepest darkest north. But in Chinese maps, the Emperor, who lived in the north of the country was always put at the top of the map, with everyone else, his loyal subjects, looking up towards him. "In Chinese culture the Emperor looks south because it's where the winds come from, it's a good direction. North is not very good but you are in a position of subjection to the emperor, so you look up to him," says Brotton.Given that each culture has a very different idea of who, or what, they should look up to it's perhaps not surprising that there is very little consistency in which way early maps pointed. In ancient Egyptian times the top of the world was east, the position of sunrise. Early Islamic maps favoured south at the top because most of the early Muslim cultures were north of Mecca, so they imagined looking up (south) towards it. Christian maps from the same era (called Mappa Mundi) put east at the top, towards the Garden of Eden and with Jerusalem in the centre.So when did everyone get together and decide that north was the top? It's tempting to put it down to European explorers like Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Megellan, who were navigating by the North Star. But Brotton argues that these early explorers didn't think of the world like that at all. "When Columbus describes the world it is in accordance with east being at the top, he says. "Columbus says he is going towards paradise, so his mentality is from a medieval mappa mundi." We've got to remember, adds Brotton, that at the time, "no one knows what they are doing and where they are going."Which one of the following best describes what the passage is trying to do?
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MCQ-> Before the internet, one of the most rapid changes to the global economy and trade was wrought by something so blatantly useful that it is hard to imagine a struggle to get it adopted: the shipping container. In the early 1960s, before the standard container became ubiquitous, freight costs were I0 per cent of the value of US imports, about the same barrier to trade as the average official government import tariff. Yet in a journey that went halfway round the world, half of those costs could be incurred in two ten-mile movements through the ports at either end. The predominant ‘break-bulk’ method, where each shipment was individually split up into loads that could be handled by a team of dockers, was vastly complex and labour-intensive. Ships could take weeks or months to load, as a huge variety of cargoes of different weights, shapes and sizes had to be stacked together by hand. Indeed, one of the most unreliable aspects of such a labour-intensive process was the labour. Ports, like mines, were frequently seething pits of industrial unrest. Irregular work on one side combined with what was often a tight-knit, well - organized labour community on the other.In 1956, loading break-bulk cargo cost $5.83 per ton. The entrepreneurial genius who saw the possibilities for standardized container shipping, Malcolm McLean, floated his first containerized ship in that year and claimed to be able to shift cargo for 15.8 cents a ton. Boxes of the same size that could be loaded by crane and neatly stacked were much faster to load. Moreover, carrying cargo in a standard container would allow it to be shifted between truck, train and ship without having to be repacked each time.But between McLean’s container and the standardization of the global market were an array of formidable obstacles. They began at home in the US with the official Interstate Commerce Commission, which could prevent price competition by setting rates for freight haulage by route and commodity, and the powerful International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) labour union. More broadly, the biggest hurdle was achieving what economists call ‘network effects’: the benefit of a standard technology rises exponentially as more people use it. To dominate world trade, containers had to be easily interchangeable between different shipping lines, ports, trucks and railcars. And to maximize efficiency, they all needed to be the same size. The adoption of a network technology often involves overcoming the resistance of those who are heavily invested in the old system. And while the efficiency gains are clear to see, there are very obvious losers as well as winners. For containerization, perhaps the most spectacular example was the demise of New York City as a port.In the early I950s, New York handled a third of US seaborne trade in manufactured goods. But it was woefully inefficient, even with existing break-bulk technology: 283 piers, 98 of which were able to handle ocean-going ships, jutted out into the river from Brooklyn and Manhattan. Trucks bound‘ for the docks had to fiive through the crowded, narrow streets of Manhattan, wait for an hour or two before even entering a pier, and then undergo a laborious two-stage process in which the goods foot were fithr unloaded into a transit shed and then loaded onto a ship. ‘Public loader’ work gangs held exclusive rights to load and unload on a particular pier, a power in effect granted by the ILA, which enforced its monopoly with sabotage and violence against than competitors. The ILA fought ferociously against containerization, correctly foreseeing that it would destroy their privileged position as bandits controlling the mountain pass. On this occasion, bypassing them simply involved going across the river. A container port was built in New Jersey, where a 1500-foot wharf allowed ships to dock parallel to shore and containers to be lified on and off by crane. Between 1963 - 4 and 1975 - 6, the number of days worked by longshoremen in Manhattan went from 1.4 million to 127,041.Containers rapidly captured the transatlantic market, and then the growing trade with Asia. The effect of containerization is hard to see immediately in freight rates, since the oil price hikes of the 1970s kept them high, but the speed with which shippers adopted; containerization made it clear it brought big benefits of efficiency and cost. The extraordinary growth of the Asian tiger economies of Singapore, Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong, which based their development strategy on exports, was greatly helped by the container trade that quickly built up between the US and east Asia. Ocean-borne exports from South Korea were 2.9 million tons in 1969 and 6 million in 1973, and its exports to the US tripled.But the new technology did not get adopted all on its own. It needed a couple of pushes from government - both, as it happens, largely to do with the military. As far as the ships were concerned, the same link between the merchant and military navy that had inspired the Navigation Acts in seventeenth-century England endured into twentieth-century America. The government's first helping hand was to give a spur to the system by adopting it to transport military cargo. The US armed forces, seeing the efficiency of the system, started contracting McLean’s company Pan-Atlantic, later renamed Sea-land, to carry equipment to the quarter of a million American soldiers stationed in Western Europe. One of the few benefits of America's misadventure in Vietnam was a rapid expansion of containerization. Because war involves massive movements of men and material, it is often armies that pioneer new techniques in supply chains.The government’s other role was in banging heads together sufficiently to get all companies to accept the same size container. Standard sizes were essential to deliver the economies of scale that came from interchangeability - which, as far as the military was concerned, was vital if the ships had to be commandeered in case war broke out. This was a significant problem to overcome, not least because all the companies that had started using the container had settled on different sizes. Pan- Atlantic used 35- foot containers, because that was the maximum size allowed on the highways in its home base in New Jersey. Another of the big shipping companies, Matson Navigation, used a 24-foot container since its biggest trade was in canned pineapple from Hawaii, and a container bigger than that would have been too heavy for a crane to lift. Grace Line, which largely traded with Latin America, used a foot container that was easier to truck around winding mountain roads.Establishing a US standard and then getting it adopted internationally took more than a decade. Indeed, not only did the US Maritime Administration have to mediate in these rivalries but also to fight its own turf battles with the American Standards Association, an agency set up by the private sector. The matter was settled by using the power of federal money: the Federal Maritime Board (FMB), which handed out to public subsidies for shipbuilding, decreed that only the 8 x 8-foot containers in the lengths of l0, 20, 30 or 40 feet would be eligible for handouts.Identify the correct statement:
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MCQ-> Read Ito’ following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering sonic of the questions. Once upon a time. there was a shrewd shopkeeper called Makitrand. He had a friend called Mihir, who had saved a lot of money. Mihir was keen on going on a pilgrimage. But he did not know where to leave his precious savings. So he came to Makarand’s shop and said, ‘my friend, I trust you more than anyone. Could you please look after my life’s savings till i return from my pilgrimage Makarand pretended to be deep in thought, and then said, ‘1 would rather not. Money spoils relationships. What if something hap • pens to your money while you are away ? You will no longer be my friend.’ As Mihir stood there by his shop thinking about what his friend had just said, an old woman entered the shup and bought some things. One of the boys helping Makarand, gave her less change than he should have. Makaranc saw this and pretended to scold the boy, he then ordered him to return the remaining money to the woman. Mihir not knowing that this was an act put up by Makarand to make him believe that he was honest, was convinced about his decision and said to Makarand, ‘I have decided. I will leave the money only with you.’ Makarand smiled. Then let us do something. Let’s take the bag of coins and bury it in a place that only you and I will know of. That way, even if something happens to me while you are away, you will know where your money is: Mihir, simple that he was. thought this was a good idea and the two went and hid the bag in a secret place. Mihir left the next day on his pilgrimage. happy his savings Were in safe hands. Six months later, Mihir returned. He dumped his luggage at home and went to dig out his bag of savings. But even though he searched and searched for his valuables, there was no sign of the bag anywhere. In panic, he ran in Makarand, who was busy in his shop. When Mihir asked him about the bitg, Makarand pretended to be surprised. ‘But I did not go that way in all these months. Why don’t you search for it again ?’ he said, putting on his most innocent look. Mihir had no choice but to believe him. Sadly, he went home. On the way, as luck would have it, he met the old woman he had seen in Makarand’s shop. Seeing him sad. she asked him what the matter was. Mihir told her the whole story, Then she smiled and whispered a plan to him. Not long after, the woman came to Makarand’s shop, carrying a big box. ‘Brother, I heard you are a good and honest man. My son went on a pilgrimage many months ago and has still not returned. 1 am worried and have decided to go and loo for him. Will you look after my box of two hundred gold coins while I am away ?Makarand could not believe his luck. He was about to launch into his idea about- hiding the box, when an angry Mihir entered the shop, ‘Where is but before he could complete his sentence, Makarand, afraid of being accused in front of the old woman, said quickly, ‘I forgot. I had seen some pigs digging around there and had removed the bag just to keep it safe. Here it is.’ And he handed Mihir the bag he had stolen many months ago. Now the old woman pretended she was seeing Mihir for the first time, Son, did you also go on a pilgrimage? Could you tell me if you met my son anywhere? His name is Jahangir.’ Mihir, clutching onto his precious bag, said, ‘Yes, Auntie, I met him on the road a few villages away. He was on his way home. He should be here in a week.’ The old woman leaned over and took her box away from Makarand. Thank you. Brother, you have saved me an unnecessary trip. Now, I will need some money to prepare for my son’s welcome,’ she added and the two left the shop. Makarand could only stare at them Open-mouthed,What incident in the passage convinced Mihir that Makarand was indeed an honest man? (A) The incident where he scolded his helper boy for returning less change to the old woman who was a customer in his shop. (B) The fact that Makarand refused to keep Mihir’s money, in the event that it might destroy their friendship. (C) The incident where Makarand told Mihir that he had kept his hag with him as he saw pigs digging at the very spot where the treasure was buried....

MCQ-> The teaching and transmission of North Indian classical music is, and long has been, achieved by largely oral means. The raga and its structure, the often breathtaking intricacies of talc, or rhythm, and the incarnation of raga and tala as bandish or composition, are passed thus, between guru and shishya by word of mouth and direct demonstration, with no printed sheet of notated music, as it were, acting as a go-between. Saussure’s conception of language as a communication between addresser and addressee is given, in this model, a further instance, and a new, exotic complexity and glamour.These days, especially with the middle class having entered the domain of classical music and playing not a small part ensuring the continuation of this ancient tradition, the tape recorder serves as a handy technological slave and preserves, from oblivion, the vanishing, elusive moment of oral transmission. Hoary gurus, too, have seen the advantage of this device, and increasingly use it as an aid to instructing their pupils; in place of the shawls and other traditional objects that used to pass from shishya to guru in the past, as a token of the regard of the former for the latter, it is not unusual, today, to see cassettes changing hands.Part of my education in North Indian classical music was conducted via this rather ugly but beneficial rectangle of plastic, which I carried with me to England when I was a undergraduate. Once cassette had stored in it various talas played upon the tabla, at various tempos, by my music teacher’s brother-in law, Hazarilalii, who was a teacher of Kathak dance, as well as a singer and a tabla player. This was a work of great patience and prescience, a one-and-a-half hour performance without my immediate point or purpose, but intended for some delayed future moment who I’d practise the talas solitarily.This repeated playing our of the rhythmic cycles on the tabla was inflected by the noises-an hate auto driver blowing a horn; the sound bf overbearing pigeons that were such a nuisance on the banister; even the cry of a kulfi seller in summer —entering from the balcony of the third foot flat we occupied in those days, in a lane in a Bombay suburb, before we left the city for good. These sounds, in turn, would invade, hesitantly, the ebb and flow of silence inside the artificially heated room, in a borough of West London, in which I used to live as an undergraduate. There, in the trapped dust, silence and heat, the theka of the tabla, qualified by the imminent but intermittent presence of the Bombay subrub, would come to life again. A few years later, the tabla and, in the background, the pigeons and the itinerant kulfi seller, would inhabit a small graduate room in Oxford.cThe tape recorder, though, remains an extension of the oral transmission of music, rather than a replacement of it. And the oral transmission of North Indian classical music remains, almost uniquely, testament to the fact that the human brain can absorb, remember and reproduces structures of great complexity and sophistication without the help of the hieroglyph or written mark or a system of notation. I remember my surprise on discovering the Hazarilalji- who had mastered Kathak dance, tala and North Indian classical music, and who used to narrate to me, occasionally, compositions meant for dance that were grant and intricate in their verbal prosody, architecture and rhythmic complexity- was near illustrate and had barely learnt to write his name in large and clumsy letters.Of course, attempts have been made, throughout the 20th century, to formally codify and even notate this music, and institutions set up and degrees created, specifically to educate students in this “scientific” and codified manner. Paradoxically, however, this style of teaching has produced no noteworthy student or performer; the most creative musicians still emerge from the guru-shishya relationship, their understanding of music developed by oral communication.The fact that North Indian classical music emanates from, and has evolved through, oral culture, means that this music has a significantly different aesthetic, aw that this aesthetic has a different politics, from that of Western classical music) A piece of music in the Western tradition, at least in its most characteristic and popular conception, originates in its composer, and the connection between the two, between composer and the piece of music, is relatively unambiguous precisely because the composer writes down, in notation, his composition, as a poet might write down and publish his poem. However far the printed sheet of notated music might travel thus from the composer, it still remains his property; and the notion of property remains at the heart of the Western conception of “genius”, which derives from the Latin gignere or ‘to beget’.The genius in Western classical music is, then, the originator, begetter and owner of his work the printed, notated sheet testifying to his authority over his product and his power, not only of expression or imagination, but of origination. The conductor is a custodian and guardian of this property. IS it an accident that Mandelstam, in his notebooks, compares — celebratorily—the conductor’s baton to a policeman’s, saying all the music of the orchestra lies mute within it, waiting for its first movement to release it into the auditorium?The raga — transmitted through oral means — is, in a sense, no one’s property; it is not easy to pin down its source, or to know exactly where its provenance or origin lies. Unlike the Western classical tradition, where the composer begets his piece, notates it and stamps it with his ownership and remains, in effect, larger than, or the father of, his work, in the North India classical tradition, the raga — unconfined to a single incarnation, composer or performer — remains necessarily greater than the artiste who invokes it.This leads to a very different politics of interpretation and valuation, to an aesthetic that privileges the evanescent moment of performance and invocation over the controlling authority of genius and the permanent record. It is a tradition, thus, that would appear to value the performer, as medium, more highly than the composer who presumes to originate what, effectively, cannot be originated in a single person — because the raga is the inheritance of a culture.The author’s contention that the notion of property lies at the heart of the Western conception of genius is best indicated by which one of the following?
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MCQ-> Study the following information to answer the given questions.Eight Mends — A, B, C, D, L, M, N and O are seated in a straight line, but not necessarily in the same order. Some of them are facing north while some are facing south. Only three people sit to the left of N. B sits second to the right of N. C sits third to the left of O. O is not an immediate neighbour of B. O does not sit at any of the extreme ends of the line. C and O face same direction (i.e., if C faces north then O also faces north and vice versa.) Both the immediate neighbours of D face north. D does not sit at any of the extreme ends of the line. Person sitting at extreme ends face opposite directions (i.e., if one person faces north then the other faces south and vice-versa.) Both the immediate neighbours of N face same direction (i.e., if one neighbour faces north then the other also faces north and vice versa.) A sits second to the left of L. D faces a direction opposite to L. (i.e. if L faces north then D faces south and vice-versa.)How many people sit exactly between B and O ?
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