VARC Practice Test 4

TIME - 45 Minutes

RC-1
When Parliament decided, in 1709, to create a law that would protect books from piracy, the
London-based publishers and booksellers who had been pushing for such protection were
overjoyed. When Queen Anne gave her assent on April 10th the following year to “An act for
the encouragement of learning” they were less enthused. Parliament had given them rights,
but it had set a time limit on them: 21 years for books already in print and 14 years for new
ones, with an additional 14 years if the author was still alive when the first term ran out. After
that, the material would enter the public domain so that anyone could reproduce it. The
lawmakers intended thus to balance the incentive to create with the interest that society has
in free access to knowledge and art. The Statute of Anne thus helped nurture and channel
the spate of inventiveness that Enlightenment society and its successors have since
enjoyed.

Over the past 50 years, however, that balance has shifted. Largely thanks to the
entertainment industry's lawyers and lobbyists, copyright's scope and duration have vastly
increased. In America, copyright holders get 95 years' protection as a result of an extension
granted in 1998, derided by critics as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act”. They are now
calling for even greater protection, and there have been efforts to introduce similar terms in
Europe. Such arguments should be resisted: it is time to tip the balance back.

Lengthy protection, it is argued, increases the incentive to create. Digital technology seems
to strengthen the argument: by making copying easier, it seems to demand greater
protection in return. The idea of extending copyright also has a moral appeal. Intellectual
property can seem very like real property, especially when it is yours, and not some faceless
corporation's. As a result people feel that once they own it – especially if they have made it –
they should go on owning it, much as they would a house that they could pass on to their
descendants. On this reading, protection should be perpetual. Ratcheting up the time limit on
a regular basis becomes a reasonable way of approximating that perpetuity.

The notion that lengthening copyright increases creativity is questionable, however. Authors
and artists do not generally consult the statute books before deciding whether or not to pick
up pen or paintbrush. And overlong copyrights often limit, rather than encourage, a work's
dissemination, impact and influence. It can be difficult to locate copyright holders to obtain
the rights to reuse old material. As a result, much content ends up in legal limbo (and in the
case of old movies and sound recordings, is left to deteriorate – copying them in order to
preserve them may constitute an act of infringement). The penalties even for inadvertent
infringement are so punishing that creators routinely have to self-censor their work. Nor does
the advent of digital technology strengthen the case for extending the period of protection.
Copyright protection is needed partly to cover the costs of creating and distributing works in
physical form. Digital technology slashes such costs, and thus reduces the argument for
protection.
The moral case, although easy to sympathise with, is a way of trying to have one's cake and
eat it. Copyright was originally the grant of a temporary government-supported monopoly on
copying a work, not a property right. From 1710 onwards, it has involved a deal in which the
creator or publisher gives up any natural and perpetual claim in order to have the state
protect an artificial and limited one. So it remains.

The question is how such a deal can be made equitably. At the moment, the terms of trade
favour publishers too much. A return to the 28-year copyrights of the Statute of Anne would
be in many ways arbitrary, but not unreasonable. If there is a case for longer terms, they
should be on a renewal basis, so that content is not locked up automatically. The value
society places on creativity means that fair use needs to be expanded and inadvertent
infringement should be minimally penalised. None of this should get in the way of the
enforcement of copyright, which remains a vital tool in the encouragement of learning. But
tools are not ends in themselves.

1. Why were London-based publishers and booksellers less enthused by the Statute of
Anne?
a) The Statute of Anne would not let them reap the benefits of the protection rights forever.
b) The Statute of Anne only offered them minimum protection and they wanted more rights.
c) The main objective of the Statute of Anne was to ensure that all books entered the public
domain.
d) The Statute of Anne helped nurture and channel the spate of inventiveness that
Enlightenment society enjoyed.

2. The balance, which the author refers to in the second paragraph of the passage, is
between
a) fostering creativity and copyright infringement.
b) enforcing copyright and encouraging learning.
c) penalizing inadvertent infringement and incentivizing creativity.
d) the ease of accessing copyrighted works and works that are in the public domain

3. Which of the following statements will most weaken the case for lengthy protection of
books from piracy?
a) Digital technology has made copying easier and encourages piracy.
b) Lengthy protection may help in covering the costs of creating and distributing books in
their physical form.
c) Lengthy protection may make the creators more inaccessible and less influential.
d) Lengthy protection may discourage the work's circulation and hamper its influence.

4. According to the passage, which of the following statements about digital technology can
be understood to be true?
a) Because of digital technology, there is a serious need for a lengthier copyright protection.
b) Plagiarism and infringement have become an exception instead of the norm due to the
advent of digital technology.
c) Digital technology enables works which are digital in form to be created and distributed
without incurring much cost.
d) Digital technology will lead us to a future where works of art will not be in physical forms.
5. What does the last sentence of the passage 'But tools are not ends in themselves' imply?
a) Creativity should not get in the way of the copyright enforcement as it might come in the
way of achieving the end goal.
b) Copyrights should protect the creators but protecting them is not the end goal. c)
Creativity should not be constrained by protection rights that never seem to end.
d) Copyright enforcement is necessary so as to encourage learning, which is the end goal.

RC-2
You have thoughts, feelings and desires. You remember your past and imagine your future.
Sometimes you make a special effort, other times you are content to simply relax. All of
these things are true about you. But do you exist? Is your sense of self an illusion, or is there
something in the world that we can point to and say: ‘Ah, yes – that is you’? If you are
familiar with the contemporary science of mind, you will know that the concept of a
substantive self, separate from the mere experience of self, is unpopular. But this stance is
unwarranted. Research on attention points to a self beyond experience, with its own powers
and properties.

So what is attention? Attention is what you use to drown out distracting sights and sounds, to
focus on whatever it is you need to focus on. You are using attention to read this, right now.
It is something that you can control and maintain but it is also strongly influenced by the
world around you, which encourages you to focus on new and different stimuli. Sometimes
being encouraged to change focus can be good – it is good that you look up from your cell
phone when a bike comes barrelling down the sidewalk, for example. But this
encouragement can also keep you from completing tasks, as when you get caught in a spiral
of mindless click bait. You might think of your powers of attention as what you use to control
the focus of your attention, away from distractions and toward your favoured point of focus.

This same power of attention – what you use in everyday life to stay on task – is what helps
you in moments of conflict more generally – moments when you are caught between two (or
more) options, both of which appeal to you, and you are torn on which option to choose. The
philosopher Robert Kane has a way of talking about these life-defining moments: they are
‘self-forming actions’. Kane’s ideais that our truest expressions of ourselves come at
moments in which our will is divided. At such moments, we could go either of two ways, but
we go one way, and in doing so we help set in place some feature of ourselves – the feature
that aligns with the chosen path.

For Kane, the effort of choosing between these two halves of yourself – the half that is
concerned about security and the half that desires change – creates conflict in the brain that
can be resolved only through a combination of quantum indeterminacy and chaotic
amplification. While this might seem implausible on its face, Kane’s proposed mechanism
has some evidentiary support. The result is a self-forming action in two respects. We are
responsible for forming the action, whatever the outcome, by putting our efforts behind each
of two opposing outcomes and forcing a resolution. And the outcome helps to shape our
future self, in that it favours one of two hitherto conflicting motivations.
Although Kane does not explicitly mention attention, it is clear that attention is an essential
part of this picture. When faced with conflicting options, we attend to them in turn. You turn
your attention from the security of one job to the excitement of the other.

6. Which of the following is not a characteristic of attention?

1. It is used to eliminate distracting sounds and visions.
2. It can be controlled by the will of the person.
3. It helps us to focus on new and different stimuli.
4. It helps one maintain one’s focus.

7. Why has Robert Kane termed life-defining moments as self-forming actions?

1 Because our actions during such moments define our future.
2 Because the decisions made at such moment help us to build some corresponding
personality trait.
3 Because we show our true selves only when our will is divided.
4 Because a scope of self evaluation and introspection is available only when we are
conflicted between two choices.

8. Why does the author ask if one’s sense of self is an illusion?

1 To show that one has thoughts, feelings, and desires
2 To highlight that the sense of self makes one exist
3 To show how one’s illusory self can help one take decisions about one’s future
4 To raise the topic of substantive self and attention

9. According to Kane, how can conflict in the brain be resolved?

1 By the method of quantum indeterminacy
2 By the method of chaotic amplification
3 By the combination of quantum indeterminacy and chaotic amplification
4 By changing our focus from security to excitement

10. What is the central idea of the passage?

1 The importance of attention in the determination of self forming actions
2 The ways to solve the dilemmas of life
3 The evolution of self forming actions in a human psyche
4 The art of self consciousness as propagated by Kane
RC-3
A major part of decision-making involves the analysis of a finite set of alternatives described
in terms of evaluative criteria. Then the task might be to rank these alternatives in terms of
how attractive they are to the decision-maker(s)when all the criteria are considered
simultaneously. Another task might be to find the best alternative or to determine the relative
total priority of each alternative when all the criteria are considered simultaneously. Solving
such problems is the focus of multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). This area of
decision-making, although very old, has attracted the interest of many researchers and
practitioners and is still highly debated as there are many MCDA methods which may yield
very different results when they are applied on exactly the same data. This leads to the
formulation of a decision-making paradox.

Logical decision-making is an important part of all science-based professions, where

specialists apply their knowledge in a given area to make informed decisions. But naturalistic
decision-making research shows that in situations with higher time pressure, higher stakes,
or increased ambiguities, experts may use intuitive decision-making rather than structured
approaches. They may follow a recognition primed decision that fits their experience and
arrive at a course of action without weighing alternatives.

The decision-maker's environment can play a part in the decision-making process. For
example, environmental complexity is a factor that influences cognitive function. A complex
environment is an environment with a large number of different possible states which come
and go over time. Studies done at the University of Colorado have shown that more complex
environments correlate with higher cognitive function, which means that a decision can be
influenced by the location. One experiment measured complexity in a room by the number of
small objects and appliances present; a simple room had less of those things. Cognitive
function was greatly affected by the higher measure of environmental complexity making it
easier to think about the situation and make a better decision.

11. Which of the following would not fall in the category of naturalistic decision making?
1 The Captain of a cricket team, deciding whether to bat or field first after winning the toss.
2 A driver deciding which route to take to reach his destination at the earliest.
3 An MBBS deciding the ranking of various medical institutes.
4 A surgeon deciding which type of surgery to perform on a patient.

12. Which of the following leads to the decision making paradox mentioned in the last line of
the 1st paragraph?
1 The multiplicity of methods, which makes it di£cult to zero in on the optimum.
2 The same method may result in multiple outcomes when applied on the same data.
3 The multiplicity of results because of the multiplicity of methods when applied on the same
data.
4 Many methods are there which yield the same result when applied on the same data.

13. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

1 Complex environments confuse people and hamper the decision making process.
2 The decision making process has very little to do with the environment.
3 The simpler the environment the better the decision making process.
4 People tend to make better decisions in complex environments.
RC-4
In The War of the World, British historian Niall Ferguson offers a novel analysis of the
causes of 20th-century violence. For him, the "war of the world" begins with the Japanese
defeat of the Russian navy in 1905 and doesn't end until the conclusion of the Korean War in
1953. Seen this way, World War I and II become peaks in a series of eruptions around the
globe, all fueled by the incendiary confluence of three developments.

The first factor was economic. The 20th century was marked by rapid changes in prices and
growth rates, and such volatility triggered social and political instability. The second
development was social. Ethnic tensions, already growing, were heightened by the century's
economic ups and downs. And the third factor was the decline of traditional empires.
Anti-liberal empires such as Russia, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, with many
ethnic groups on their borders, have disintegrated and devolved into relatively stable and
racially homogenized nation-states such as Poland, Italy, Japan and Germany.

These aggressive new powers also embraced race theories that trumpeted the natural
superiority of some ethnic groups. Earlier imperial powers had accepted interbreeding and
the resulting racial melting pots as a natural characteristic of empire, but the supposedly
scientific racism demanded an end to such mixing. Brutal conquest, ethnic cleansing and
even genocide were more easily inflicted on so-called subhumans. Such racist thinking was
prevalent in the first three decades of the 20th century, and as a result attacks against
minorities occurred throughout the unstable, racially mixed communities of Eastern and
Central Europe. ....

In Germany, assimilation's protective covering was torn away by the Nazi belief that the
mixing of blood degraded the master race. "Hitler's determination to exclude Jews from
thVeolksgemeinschaft [the Nazi term for a racially pure community] meant identifying and
persecuting a tiny minority that was inextricably interwoven into the fabric of German
society," Ferguson writes.

To Ferguson, the outbreak of war was an "avoidable political error," and its massive
destruction represented "nothing more than the most terrific train crash." But he concludes
that a military confrontation with the Axis powers was unavoidable, given their determination
to expand their living space, control vital strategic resources and found a new world order.

The Axis powers' aggressive intentions in the 1930s should have convinced the Western
allies to nip Hitler's aggrandizing moves in the bud, thus avoiding the all-out conflagration of
World War II. Instead, Britain and France responded as if paralyzed and chose the worst
option: They embraced appeasement, perhaps out of exhaustion from the century's previous
great conflict. Or they may have been trying to buy time, which they squandered by failing to
use it to rearm. To compensate for this lack of judgement, the Western allies threw their
entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort as the war gained
momentum, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources.
14. The British historian Niall Ferguson holds responsible which of the following factors for
the cataclysmic conflicts of the 20th century?
a. With their powers waning, old empires lost control over their ethnically mixed borderlands
and gave rise to new aggressive powers such as Japan, Italy and Germany.
b. The world's major economies were vulnerable to sudden changes in prices and growth
rates.
c. Ethnic tensions increased in direct proportion to the economic boom or bust.
d. Racist ideologies were encouraged and enforced by the newly formed nationstates.

a) a, b, c and d
b) b and c
c) a, b and c
d) a and c

15. Which of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?
a) Rather than forestalling the Second World War, appeasement led to it.
b) Hitler's objective in persecuting the Jews was a counter to the Jewish assimilation into
Germany.
c) The Second World War obscured the line between civilians and combatants.
d) All of the above.

16. All of the following can be said to be features of the Axis Powers mentioned in the
passage EXCEPT?
a) They rose to power after traditional empires such as Russia, Austria-Hungary and the
Ottoman Empire declined.
b) They resorted to genocide to eradicate the Jews and other minorities.
c) They accepted miscegenation and propagated racial mixing.
d) They were aggressive in expanding their territories and controlling vital resources.

OMO-1
1.At the very end of America's industrial boom, a black single mother from Ohio with many
problems but a strong work ethic got a job assembling car parts for General Motors.
2.With each passing year, she gained in wages, benefits, holidays and pension rights.
3.Thanks to agreements between her employer and the local chapter of the Electrical
Workers Union, she received 80% of her pay even when doing nothing in quiet months.
4.The year was 1988, and Tammy Thomas became one of the last Americans to know the
security of a post-war, union-crafted factory contract.
5.A diligent sort, she found she could cover two assembly-line stations at once, allowing her
to collect an occasional $ 20 from a colleague who needed an hour to sober up after lunch.

OMO-2
1. But, for the child of a village policeman who had left school at 13, the poetry of past lives
suddenly seemed a revelation – and led to his eventual vocation.
2. When he was ten years old, he was given a Victorian anthology of English poetry, an
award to mark his punctilious attendance at the Sunday school of his local church.
3. As with all vocations, or indeed love affairs, it was often difficult.
4. It was filled with the kind of high-flown, sentimental stuff he would later scorn.
5. It was, Geoffrey Hill said, like falling in love.
PS-1
That ruling was grounded in a revolutionary string of rulings by the United States Supreme
Court, all of which have found that young people are “constitutionally different” from adults —
their brains are still developing, their impulse control is weaker and their ability to change
over time is greater. This means that they are less guilty than adults and that their
punishment must be different, especially in the case of life sentences for those convicted of
murder. The “imposition of a state’s most severe penalties on juvenile offenders cannot
proceed as though they were not children,” the court said in 2012. They must be given “a
meaningful opportunity” to get out; actual life sentences should be reserved for those few
who exhibit “irretrievable depravity.”

1. The US Supreme Court has ruled that young people deserve second chances more than
adults do.
2. The US Supreme Court has ruled that young people who have committed crimes should
be given opportunities to reform as their brains are still in a developing process.
3. The US Supreme Court has exonerated young people from life sentences due to their
biological lack of impulse control.
4. US Supreme Court is much more sensitive while treating a juvenile which is the reason
why it has altered the criminal laws and decided to give meaningful opportunities to children.

PS-2
African elephants are well-known to love bathing, spraying, and mud-wallowing. These
behaviours are not just for fun. Indeed, African elephants lack the sweat and sebum glands
that allow many other mammals to keep their skin moist and flexible. Furthermore, because
of their huge body size, and their warm and dry habitat, African elephants can avoid
over-heating only by losing calories through evaporation of the water they collect in and on
their skin. By covering themselves with mud, African elephants also avoid the attacks of
relentless parasites and the excessive exposure of their skin to solar radiations. Very close
inspection of the African elephant skin indicates that, in addition to its characteristic
well-visible wrinkling, the integument is deeply sculptured by an intricate network of
minuscule interconnected crevices. This beautiful fine pattern of millions of channels
prevents shedding of applied mud and allows spreading and retention of 5 to 10 times more
water than on a flat surface.

1. African elephants cover their bodies with mud in order to keep their skin moist, avoid
over-heating, and prevent the attacks of parasites and also excessive exposure to solar
radiations.
2. African elephants cover their bodies with mud to retain moisture, lose calories through
evaporation, and avoid exposure to solar radiation.
3. African elephants cover their bodies to keep their skin moist and flexible, and protect
themselves from the attacks of parasites and exposure to the heat of the sun.
4. African elephants love bathing, spraying, and mud-wallowing because these behaviours
help them to protect themselves from over-heating, parasite attacks and the sun.
PJ-1
1. They believed we had passed the point when we had to write memoirs to counter hostile
coverage, especially as this seemed to encourage journalists to focus on our personal
stories instead of our political concerns.
2. I agreed, but I wrote it nonetheless. It eventually ran for 30 instalments and formed the
basis of my book, Trans: A Memoir.
3. At the time, some trans people felt it was backward-looking to use this autobiographical
framing
4. Ten years ago, I began writing a series for the Guardian called A Transgender Journey,
documenting my gender reassignment process.

PJ-2
1. Cities are in a constant state of evolution, forever changed by the technology of their time.
2. Today they are not even in the top 10 – overtaken by a superleague of mega-cities,
mostly in continental Asia.
3. The history of civilisation is the history of cities and civic spaces – the words are
intertwined. Cities are the future, statistically more so today than ever before.
4. In 1920, New York and London were the largest cities in the world.