- DI & DS
- English Language
-
Intelligence & CR
- Alphabet & Number Ranking
- Analytical Reasoning
- Blood Relations Test
- Coding - Decoding
- Comparision of Ranks
- Direction Sense Test
- Mathematical Operation / Number Puzzles
- Series
- Sitting Arrangement
- Statement and Arguement
- Statement and Conclusion
- Statement and Course of Action
- Statement-Assumption
- Syllogism
-
Mathematical Skills
- Average
- Calender
- Clocks
- Geometry
- Height and Distance
- Logarithms
- Mensuration
- Mixtures and Alligations
- Number System
- Percentage
- Permutation and Computation
- Probability
- Profit and Loss
- Ratio and Proportion
- Set Theory
- Simple calculations
- Simple Equations
- Simple Interest and Compound Interest
- Time and Work
- Time, Speed and Distance
-
181.
-
182.
-
183.
-
184.
A remarkable aspect of art of the present century is the range of concepts and ideologies which it embodies. It is almost tempting to see a pattern emerging within the art field – or alternatively imposed upon it a posteriori – similar to that which exists under the umbrella of science where the general term covers a whole range of separate, though interconnecting, activities. Any parallelism is however – in this instance at least – misleading. A scientific discipline develops systematically once its bare tenets have been established, named and categorized as conventions. Many of the concepts of modern art, by contrast, have resulted from the almost accidental meetings of groups of talented individuals at certain times and certain places. The ideas generated by these chance meetings had twofold consequences. Firstly, a corpus of work would be produced which, in great part, remains as a concrete record of the events. Secondly, the ideas would themselves be disseminated through many different channels of communication – seeds that often bore fruit in contexts far removed from their generation. Not all movements were exclusively concerned with innovation. Surrealism, for instance, claimed to embody a kind of insight which can be present in the art of any period. This claim has been generally accepted so that a sixteenth century painting by Spranger or a mysterious photograph by Atget can legitimately be discussed in surrealist terms. Briefly, then, the concepts of modern art are of many different (often fundamentally different) kinds and resulted from the exposures of painters, sculptors and thinkers to the more complex phenomena of the twentieth century, including our ever increasing knowledge of the thought and products of earlier centuries. Different groups of artists would collaborate in trying to make sense of rapidly changing world of visual and spiritual experience. We should hardly be surprised if no one group succeeded completely, but achievements, through relative, have been considerable. Landmarks have been established – concrete statements of position which give a pattern to a situation which could easily have degenerated into total chaos. Beyond this, new language tools have been created for those who follow – semantic systems which can provide a springboard for further explorations.
The codifying of art is often criticized. Certainly one can understand that artists are wary of being pigeon-holed since they are apt to think of themselves as individuals – sometimes with good reason. The notion of self-expression, however, no longer carries quite the weight it once did; objectivity has its defenders. There is good reason to accept the ideas codified by artists and critics, over the past sixty years or so, as having attained the status of independent existence – an independence which is not without its own value. This time factor is important here. As an art movement slips into temporal perspective, it ceases to be a living organism – becoming, rather, a fossil. This is not to say it becomes useless or uninteresting. Just as a scientist can reconstruct the life of a prehistoric environment from the messages codified into the structure of a fossil, so can an artist decipher whole webs of intellectual and creative possibility from the recorded structure of a ‘dead’ art movement. The artist can match the creative patterns crystallized into this structure against the potentials and possibilities of his own time. AS T.S Eliot observed, no one starts anything from scratch; however consciously you may try to live in the present, you are still involved with a nexus of behaviour patterns bequeathed from the past. The original and creative person is not someone who ignores these patterns, but someone who is able to translate and develop them so that they confirm more exactly to his – and our – present needs.[1] Many of the concepts of modern art have been the product of
(1) ideas generated from planned deliberations between artists, painters and thinkers.
(2) the dissemination of ideas through the state and its organizations.
(3) accidental interactions among people blessed with creative muse.
(4) patronage by the rich and powerful that supported art.
(5) systematic investigation, codification and conventions.[2] In the passage, the word ‘fossil’ can be interpreted as
(1) an art movement that has ceased to remain interesting or useful.
(2) an analogy from the physical world to indicate a historic art movement.
(3) an analogy from the physical world to indicate the barrenness of artistic creations in the past.
(4) an embedded codification of pre-historic life.
(5) an analogy from the physical world to indicate the passing of an era associated with an art movement.[3] In the passage, which of the following similarities between science and art may lead to erroneous conclusions?
(1) Both, in general, include a gamut of distinct but interconnecting activites.
(2) Both have movements not necessarily concerned with innovation.
(3) Both depend on collaborations between talented individuals.
(4) Both involve abstract thought and dissemination of ideas.
(5) Both reflect complex priorities of the modern world.[4] The range of concepts and ideologies embodied in the art of the twentieth century is explained by
(1) the existence of movements such as surrealism.
(2) landmarks which give a pattern to the art history of the twentieth century.
(3) new language tools which can be used for further explorations into new areas.
(4) the fast changing world of perceptual and transcendental understandings.
(5) the quick exchange of ideas and concepts enabled by efficient technology.[5] The passage uses an observation by T.S. Eliot to imply that
(1) creative processes are not ‘original’ because they always borrow from the past.
(2) we always carry forward the legacy of the past.
(3) past behaviours and thought processes recreate themselves in the present and get labeled as ‘original’ or ‘creative’.
(4) ‘originality’ can only thrive in a ‘greenhouse’ insulated from the past biases.
(5) ‘innovations’ and ‘original thinking’ interpret and develop on past thoughts to suit contemporary needs.[6] According to the passage, which of the following best represents the factor that has been cited by the author in the context of Rwanda and Haiti?
(1) Various ethnic groups competing for land and other resources
(2) Various ethnic groups competing for limited land resources
(3) Various ethnic groups fighting wit each other
(4) Various ethnic groups competing for political power
(5) Various ethnic groups fighting for their identity[7] By an anthropogenic drought, the author means
(1) A drought caused by lack of rains.
(2) A drought caused due to deforestation
(3) A drought caused by failure to prevent bracken ferns from overrunning the fields.
(4) A drought caused by actions of human beings.
(5) A drought caused by climate changes.[8] According to the passage, the drought at the time of Maya collapse had a different impact compared to the droughts earlier because
(1) The Maya kings continue to be extravagant when common people were suffering.
(2) It happened at the time of collapse of leadership among Mayas.
(3) It happened when the Maya population had occupied all available land suited for agriculture.
(4) It was followed by internecine warfare among Mayans.
(5) Irreversible environmental degradation led to this drought.[9] According to the author, why is it difficult to explain the reasons for Maya collapse?
(1) Copan inhabitants destroyed all records of that period.
(2) The constant deforestation and hillside erosion have wiped out all traces of the Maya kingdom.
(3) Archaeological sites of Mayas do not provide any consistent evidence.
(4) It has not been possible to ascertain which of the factors best explains as to why the Maya civilization collapsed.
(5) At least five million people were crammed into a small area.[10] Which factor has not been cited as one of the factors causing the collapse of Maya society?
(1) Environmental degradation due to excess population
(2) Social collapse due to excess population
(3) Increased warfare among Maya people
(4) Climate change
(5) Obsession of Maya population with their own short-term concerns.asked in CAT
View Comments [0 Reply]
-
185.
When I was little, children were bought two kinds of ice cream, sold from those white wagons with the canopies made of silvery metal: either the two-cent cone or the four-cent ice cream pie. The two-cent cone was very small, in fact it could fit comfortably into a child's hand, and it was made by taking the ice cream from its container with a special scoop and piling it on the cone. Granny always suggested I eat only a part of the cone, then throw away the pointed end, because it had been touched by the vendor's hand (though that was the best part, nice and crunchy, and it was regularly eaten in secret, after a pretense of discarding it).
The four-cent pie was made by a special little machine, also silvery, which pressed two disks of sweet biscuit against a cylindrical section of ice cream. First you had to thrust your tongue into the gap between the biscuits until it touched the central nucleus of ice cream; then, gradually, you ate the whole thing, the biscuit surfaces softening as they became soaked in creamy nectar. Granny had no advice to give here: in theory the pies had been touched only by the machine; in practice, the vendor had held them against his hand while giving them to us, but it was impossible to isolate the contaminated area.
I was fascinated, however, by some of my peers, whose parents bought them not a four-cent pie but two two-cent cones. These privileged children advanced proudly with one cone in their right hand and one in their left; and expertly moving their head from side to side, they licked first one, then the other. This liturgy seemed to me so sumptuously enviable, that many times I asked to be allowed to celebrate it. In vain. My elders were inflexible: a four-cent ice, yes; but two two-cent ones, absolutely no.
As anyone can see, neither mathematics nor economy nor dietetics justified this refusal. Nor did hygiene, assuming that in due course the tips of both cones were discarded. The pathetic, and obviously mendacious, justification was that a boy concerned with turning his eyes from one cone to the other was more inclined to stumble over stones, steps, or cracks in the pavement. I dimly sensed that there was another secret justification, cruelly pedagogical, but I was unable to grasp it.
Today, citizen and victim of a consumer society, a civilization of excess and waste (which the society of the thirties was not), I realize that those dear and now departed elders were right. Two two-cent cones instead of one at four cents did not signify squandering, economically speaking, but symbolically they surely did. It was for this precise reason, that I yearned for them: because two ice creams suggested excess. And this was precisely why they were denied me: because they looked indecent, an insult to poverty, a display of fictitious privilege, a boast of wealth. Only spoiled children ate two cones at once, those children who in fairy tales were rightly punished, as Pinocchio was when he rejected the skin and the stalk. And parents who encouraged this weakness, appropriate to little parvenus, were bringing up their children in the foolish theater of "I'd like to but I can't." They were preparing them to turn up at tourist-class cheek-in with a fake Gucci bag bought from a street peddler on the beach at Rimini.
Nowadays the moralist risks seeming at odds with morality, in a world where the consumer civilization now wants even adults to be spoiled, and promises them always something more, from the wristwatch in the box of detergent to the bonus bangle sheathed, with the magazine it accompanies, in a plastic envelope. Like the parents of those ambidextrous gluttons I so envied, the consumer civilization pretends to give more, but actually gives, for four cents, what is worth four cents. You will throw away the old transistor radio to purchase the new one, that boasts an alarm clock as well, but some inexplicable defect in the mechanism will guarantee that the radio lasts only a year. The new cheap car will have leather seats, double side mirrors adjustable from inside, and a paneled dashboard, but it will not last nearly so long as the glorious old Fiat 500, which, even when it broke down, could be started again with a kick.
The morality of the old days made Spartans of us all, while today's morality wants all of us to be Sybarites.[1] Which of the following cannot be inferred from the passage?
(1) Today’s society is more extravagant than the society of the 1930s.
(2) The act of eating two ice cream cones is akin to a ceremonial process.
(3) Elders rightly suggested that a boy turning eyes from one cone to the other was more likely to fall.
(4) Despite seeming to promise more, the consumer civilization gives away exactly what the thing is worth.
(5) The consumer civilization attempts to spoil children and adults alike.[2] In the passage, the phrase “little parvenus” refers to
(1) naughty midgets.
(2) old hags.
(3) arrogant people.
(4) young upstarts.
(5) foolish kids.[3] The author pined for two-cent cones instead of one four-cent pie because
(1) it made dietetic sense.
(2) it suggested intemperance.
(3) it was more fun.
(4) it had a visual appeal.
(5) he was a glutton.[4] What does the author mean by “nowadays the moralist risks seeming at odds with morality”?
(1) The moralist of yesterday have become immoral today.
(2) The concept of morality has changed over the years.
(3) Consumerism is amoral.
(4) The risks associated with immorality have gone up.
(5) The purist’s view of morality is fast becoming popular.[5] According to the author, the justification for refusal to let him eat two cones was plausibly
(1) didactic.
(2) dietetic.
(3) dialectic.
(4) diatonic.
(5) diastolic.asked in CAT
View Comments [0 Reply]
-
186.
Language is not a cultural artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time or how the federal government works. Instead, it is a distinct piece of the biological makeup of our brains. Language is a complex, specialized skill, which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from more general abilities to process information or behave intelligently. For these reasons some cognitive scientists have described language as a psychological faculty, a mental organ, a neural system, and a computational module. But I prefer the admittedly quaint term "instinct." It conveys the idea that people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders know how to spin webs. Web-spinning was not invented by some unsung spider genius and does not depend on having had the right education or on having an aptitude for architecture or the construction trades. Rather, spiders spin spider webs because they have spider brains, which give them the urge to spin and the competence to succeed. Although there are differences between webs and words, I will encourage you to see language in this way, for it helps to make sense of the phenomena we will explore.
Thinking of language as an instinct inverts the popular wisdom, especially as it has been passed down in the canon of the humanities and social sciences. Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture. It is not a manifestation of a general capacity to use -symbols: a three year old, we shall see, is a grammatical genius, but is quite incompetent at the visual arts, religious iconography, traffic signs, and the other staples of the semiotics curriculum. Though language is a magnificent ability unique to Homo sapiens among living species, it does not call for sequestering the study of humans from the domain of biology, for a magnificent ability unique to a particular living species is far from unique in the animal kingdom. Some kinds of bats home in on flying insects using Doppler sonar. Some kinds of migratory birds navigate thousands of miles by calibrating the positions of the constellations against the time of day and year. In nature's talent show we are simply a species of primate with our own act, a knack for communicating information about who did what to whom by modulating the sounds we make when we exhale.
Once you begin to look at language not as the ineffable essence of human uniqueness but as a biological adaption to communicate information, it is no longer as tempting to see language as an insidious shaper of thought, and, we shall see, it is not. Moreover, seeing language as one of nature’s engineering marvels – an organ with “that perfection of structure and co-adaption which justly excites our admiration, “in Darwin’s words – give us a new respect for your ordinary Joe and the much-maligned English language (or any language). The complexity of language, from the scientist’s point of view, is part of our biological birthright; it is not something that parents teach their children or something that must be elaborated in school – as Oscar Wilde said, “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” A preschooler’s tacit knowledge of grammar is more sophisticated than the thickest style manual or the most state-of-the-art computer language system, and the same applies to all healthy human beings, even the notorious syntax-fracturing professional athlete and the, you know, like, inarticulate teenage skateboarder. Finally, since language is the product of a well-engineered biological instinct, we shall see that it is not nutty barrel of monkeys that entertainer-columnists make it out to be.[1] According to the passage, which of the following does not stem from popular wisdom on language?
(1) Language is a cultural artifact.
(2) Language is a cultural invention.
(3) Language is learnt as we grow.
(4) Language is unique to Homo sapiens
(5) Language is a psychological faculty.
[2] Which of the following can be used to replace the “spiders know how to spin webs” analogy as used by the author?
(1) A kitten learning to jump over a wall
(2) Bees collecting nectar
(3) A donkey carrying a load
(4) A horse running a Derby
(5) A pet dog protecting its owner’s property[3] According to the passage, which of the following is unique to human beings?
(1) Ability to use symbols while communicating with one another.
(2) Ability to communicate with each other through voice modulation.
(3) Ability to communicate information to other members of the species.
(4) Ability to use sound as means of communication.
(5) All of the above.[4] According to the passage, complexity of language cannot be taught by parents or at school to children because
(1) children instinctively know language.
(2) children learn the language on their own.
(3) language is not amenable to teaching.
(4) children know language better than their teachers or parents.
(5) children are born with the knowledge of semiotics.[5] Which of the following best summarizes the passage?
(1) Language is unique to Homo sapiens.
(2) Language is neither learnt nor taught.
(3) Language is not a cultural invention or artifact as it is made out.
(4) Language is instinctive ability of human beings.
(5) Language is use of symbols unique to human beings.asked in CAT
View Comments [0 Reply]