Reading Compreh...

[passage-header]Read the paragraph and complete the sentence given below:[/passage-header]Insects, by far the most abundant creatures on earth, might have taken over long ago if hordes of them weren't eaten away every day by birds, frogs or spiders. But these tiny, six-legged invertebrates have many ways of protecting themselves: a speedy get away, venomous stings, repugnant odours, poisonous flesh or irritating hairs. However, camouflage is the most spectacular form of insect trickery. Some deceive their enemies by taking on the appearance of a dreaded species. This is called mimesis. It's how small wasp moths imitate wasps, thanks to the black and yellow rings on their armour, their diaphanous wings and irregular flight. Some butterflies simply disappear by becoming exactly the colour of their host plant. Others disguise, their shape with disruptive patterns of colours -the principle used to design military uniforms.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:
[/passage-header]What car makers often mean when they say a car is well-designed, is that it appeals to men, particularly to their less noble instinct. 'Beautiful body'. 'She must move like a dream'. But auto-macho is going out of style. In America, 47% of new private cars are bought by women, up from 36% in 1989. Add the influence women have on a family's car-buying, and it is probable that women are more influential overall in choosing cars than men. So, car makers are learning to create designs that appeal to them. Women tend to buy cheaper cars, largely because working women tend to have lower income. In America, they buy 55% of the small cars, 44% of medium-sized ones, but only 28% of large and luxurious models. They put more store on reliability than men do, probably a hidden reason for the rise in Japanese imports. American car makers are now tailoring certain versions of their cars with women in mind. And they are learning that design can sway even normally pragmatic women as a comparison between Ford's Thunderbird and Mercury Cougar demonstrates. The Thunderbird is a high-performance car - i.e., it goes fast and is styled to look aggressive. Less than 40% of Thunderbirds are bought by women. But the same car with a more sedate body, a different name (The Cougar) and different advertising is as popular with women as it is with men.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and accordingly, fill in the blank:
[/passage-header]When we perceive an object, we automatically tend to label it (like nice, bad, wet, dry, light, dark, etc). And our mind reacts on the basis of our own mental labeling of an object. No wonder we tend to react to situations in a subjective manner. All perceived objects are conditioned by our senses and our own mind. This leads to the dramatic conclusion that we are not and, by definition, can never be objective. Our labeling leads not only to problems like anger and attachment but also to the most basic problem: that we think we are somehow separate from the outside world. But are we separate from the outside world? When we see something, for example, a table, it appears to be separate from the rest of the world, just standing there by itself. But is that correct? How could the table stand there without the ground supporting it? How could the table exist without a carpenter making it from pieces of wood? The pieces of wood come from a tree, which comes from a seed, water, soil, air, the sun and its nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms, etc. Every object needs causes and conditions to exist, just like we need our parents, food, air, clothes and many more things to exist. In this way, it becomes impossible to maintain that 'I' am separate from the outside world, however much it feels that way.

[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Current feminist theory, in validating women's own stories of their experience, has encouraged scholars of women's history to view the use of women's oral narratives as the methodology, next to the use of women's written autobiography, that brings historians closest to the "reality" of women's lives. Such narratives, unlike most standard histories, represent experience from the perspective of women, affirm the importance of women's contributions, and furnish present-day women with historical continuity that is essential to their identity, individually and collectively. Scholars of women's history should, however, be as cautious about accepting oral narratives at face value as they already are about written memories.
Oral narratives are no more likely than are written narratives to provide a disinterested commentary on events or people. Moreover, the stories people tell to explain themselves are shaped by narrative devices and storytelling conventions, as well as by other cultural and historical factors, in ways that the storytellers may be unaware of. The political rhetoric of a particular era, for example, may influence women's interpretations of the significance of their experience. Thus a woman who views the Second World War as pivotal in increasing the social acceptance of women's paid work outside the home may reach that conclusion partly and unwittingly because of wartime rhetoric encouraging a positive view of women's participation in such work.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:
[/passage-header]So wonderfully is the plane shaped that in flight it will largely take care of itself. It always wants to do the right thing, whatever is necessary to keep itself flying. Many people think that on the slightest lapse of the pilot's attention an airplane will go into a spin. Actually, a stall or a spin is brought on only by heavy misuse of the controls. Generally speaking, an airplane left to itself does not want to drop, it wants to fly. A careless pilot sometimes leaves his airplane standing on the airport with the engine idling while he goes for a cup of coffee-and it has happened that such an airplane has run away, taken off and flown itself, pilotless, for a couple of hours.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Rahul Dravid is not merely India's most dependable, most consistent or most valuable batsman. He is all of these. But the time has come to recognize that on the basis of his performances in the last three years he is, quite simply, India's best batsman. He is not merely the fortress providing India's dazzling batsmen with a cushion, he has become the pivot around which the Indian batting revolves. Sachin Tendulkar was India's batsman of the 90s. Rahul Dravid has made this decade his very own. To see a good ball hit for four is a spectacle; surviving a great ball requires no less skill, but it rarely elicits a sense of wonderment. It is easy to be agog over a batsman responding to a sharp short ball with an explosive hook, but we often miss the artfulness and skill involved in leaving a bouncer.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Culture is not merely learning. It is discrimination, understanding of life. Liberal education aims at producing moral gifts as well as intellectual, sweetness of temper as much as sanity of outlook. Into the art of living, the cultured man carries a certain grace, a certain distinction which redeems him from the sterile futility of aimless struggle. Culture is not a pose of intellect or a code of convention, but an attitude of life which finds nothing human, alien, common or unclean. An education that brings up a young man in entire indifference to the misery and poverty surrounding him, to the general stringency of life, to the dumb pangs of tortured bodies and the lives submerged in the shadows, is essentially a failure. If we do not realize the solidarity of the human community, nor have human relations with those whom the world passes by as the lowly and lost, we are not cultured.

[passage-header]Read the passage and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Rahul Dravid is not merely India's most dependable, most consistent or most valuable batsman. He is all of these. But the time has come to recognize that on the basis of his performances in the last three years he is, quite simply, India's best batsman. He is not merely the fortress providing India's dazzling batsmen with a cushion, he has become the pivot around which the Indian batting revolves. Sachin Tendulkar was India's batsman of the 90s. Rahul Dravid has made this decade his very own. To see a good ball hit for four is a spectacle; surviving a great ball requires no less skill, but it rarely elicits a sense of wonderment. It is easy to be agog over a batsman responding to a sharp short ball with an explosive hook, but we often miss the artfulness and skill involved in leaving a bouncer.

[passage-header]"To My Own Soul"[/passage-header]Hold yet a while, Strong 17986Heart,
Not part a lifelong yoke
Though blighted looks the present, future gloom.
30494And age it seems since you I began our
March up hill or down. Sailing smooth o'er

84383Seas that are rare-
53215Thou nearer unto me, than oft-times I myself-
Proclaiming mental moves before they were!
46958Reflector true-Thy pulse so timed to mine,
33461Thou perfect note of thoughts, however fine-

Shall we now part, 62846Recorder, say?
In thee is friendship, 76723faith,
For thou didst warn when evil thoughts were
29960brewing-
And though, alas, thy warning thrown away,
Went on the same as ever-good and true.
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[passage-header]Read the passage given below and answer the question that follows:[/passage-header]Among the myths taken as fact by the environmental managers of most corporations is the belief that environmental regulations affect all competitors in a given industry uniformly. In reality, regulatory costs- and therefore compliance- fall unevenly, economically disadvantaging some companies and benefiting others. For example, a plant situated near a number of larger non-compliant competitors is less likely to attract the attention of local regulators than is an isolated plant, and less attention means lower costs. Additionally, large plants can spread compliance costs such as waste treatment across a larger revenue base; on the other hand, some smaller plants may not even be subject to certain provisions such as permit or reporting requirements by virtue of their size. Finally, older production technologies often continue to generate toxic wastes that were not regulated when the technology was first adopted. New regulations have imposed extensive compliance costs on companies still using older industrial coal-fired burners that generate high sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide outputs, for example, whereas new facilities generally avoid processes that would create such waste products. By realizing that they have discretion and that not all industries are affected equally by environmental regulation, environmental managers can help their companies to achieve a competitive edge by anticipating regulatory pressure and exploring all possibilities for addressing how changing regulations will affect their companies specifically.