List of top Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) Questions

The Nostradamus fad might have been just that, a short-lived blip that would evaporate when the next big thing came along. And it might have been dismissed as nothing more than a few whackos' nutty obsession with doomsday. But a lot of un-nutty Japanese take it seriously and it's influence has persisted for nearly three decades. The most alarming development occurred when certain cults including Shoko Asaharas Aum got in the act. Aum which allegedly masterminded the deadly sarin gas attacks to attract followers alreadygnialbitten by the Nostradamus bug. Other groups did likewise while also providing avenues for surviving doomsday.Writers like Goto fanned a sense of fear. The books sells but they do not have any answer and the cult steps in and generates followers in mere sensationalism. These days Nostradamus has become such an ingrained part of Japanese pop culture that most people are well versed with his doomsday scenario. Even many skeptics pause to consider his predictions when confronted with the real world dangers. Ever since pyongyang sent a missile flying over Japan last August, North Korea has been considered as the most plausible source of apocalyptic of the yen, Martina Hingis loss atWimbledon would suffice among the faithfulas aidoncee that Nostradamus was on to something. This fever in Japan tends to skew towards young people like 18 year old Inoue, who wanted to feel as if she had achieved something before the world ends. The goal she decided would be to create fashion. She promoted beach clothes, cosmetics and drugs that would enhance a woman's bust. Here it is not sure whether she was using Nostradamus to promote a career in marketing And she is a perfect example of how fact and fantasy can coexist in today's Japan. Nishimoto on other hand has made full preparations and needs no convincing. He has outfitted his home in Habikino, a suburb of Osaka with a personal bomb shelter. It has 30 cm thick concrete walls reinforced with steel escape hathes, a hand cranked battery operated generator and a ventilation system that pumps in air while filtering out radioactive elements and biological and chemical contaminants.

This fever in Japan tends to skew towards young people like 18 year old Inoue, who wanted to feel as if she had achieved something before the world ends. The goal she decided would be to create fashion. She promoted beach clothes, cosmetics and drugs that would enhance a woman's bust. Here it is not sure whether she was using Nostradamus to promote a career in marketing And she is a perfect example of how fact and fantasy can coexist in today's Japan. Nishimoto on other hand has made full preparations and needs no convincing. He has outfitted his home in Habikino, a suburb of Osaka with a personal bomb shelter. It has 30 cm thick concrete walls reinforced with steel escape hathes, a hand cranked battery operated generator and a ventilation system that pumps in air while filtering out radioactive elements and biological and chemical contaminants.

Last November, I organized a seminar about terrorism in aviation. In order to drive home the potential hazards to the students, we visited a large eastern U.S airport with the intention of acting like a terrorist group looking for targets of opportunity. What we discovered was, at times fascinating and at other frightening. In general US airports have two areas where the visitors have access: a a public area with little active security measures and a more secure area in the airport waiting and boarding areas. The less secure areas usually contain ticket counters, baggage claim, gift shops, restaurants and other airport services. Getting into the main areas involves going through a screening process that includes X-ray inspection of carry-on items and walking through metal detectors. Other security measures include limiting curbside parking at the terminal, securing unattended luggage and requiring that all passengers be identified by the airlines by use of a picture identification. In the academic exercise, the group made several notable security observations. Most of the trash bins in the terminal areas were set within larger concrete containers. An explosive set within one of these containers would likely be directed upward. However, in several cases there were metal and fiberglass containers, sometines adjacent to the concrete ones; also located around the terminal. During visit, there were numerous announcements about how unttended baggage would be collected by the airport authority. At one point, our party observed an unattended umbrella propped against a wall near one of the screening areas. The umbrella was plain in view and in close proximity to constant foot traffic. It was over 45 minutes before an airport staff member removed the umbrella. Most areas of the terminal were designed such that it was difficult to leave a bag unattended in heavily travelled areas of the terminal without it being seen. Our group specifically observedcustodial staff going about their duties to see they were security conscious.In general, we were quite impressed with the level of security. The most worrisome aspects of what we saw were that the effectivenesss a-е security measures varied greatly, and that a group ofpeople unschooled in the ways of terrorism could very quickly discover numerous opportunities for committing mayhem without being detected.

Three trains-Rajdhani Express, Shatabdi Express and Taj Mahal Express-travel between two stations without stopping anywhere in between. No two trains have the same starting station or the same terminating station or the same travel fare. Also, the following known about these trains.

Given below is a paragraph whose last line is missing. Choose the line which completes the paragraph most logically from the options given below.
The real change in corporate culture began with the personal computer. With the PC, any empolyee could have a computer of his or her very own and use if for real work. It simplified applications that were cumbersome with a mainframe even without taking into account the problem of gaining access. A mainframe required a skilled programmer to do things that a non-technical user eventually could easily do with a spreadsheet on a PC. The forms and macros required to solve problems on PCs were trivial compared to traditional programming in COBOL or other computer languages.

Given below is a paragraph whose last line is missing. Choose the line which completes the paragraph most logically from the options given below.
So the unpleasant shocks that used to affect other people now affect us. Few of us have not been touched on the shoulder lightly or, in some cases, heavily, by the hand of failure. A dozen or more years ago, failure was for the untalented, or the unlucky. Today, no one is safe.

In the following question, four different sentences are given. Choose the option that contains the grammatically incorrect sentence/s. I. He is feeling that this relocation is nothing but the kick upstairs.
II. Consensus is now emerging at our state and national levels.
III. A more and more rigorous circle is formed from which one is more and more unlikely to escape.
IV. It happened up on a system that worked.

Given below is a paragraph whose last line is missing. Choose the line which completes the paragraph most logically from the options given below. The remake the world (including Nature), Fourier mobilised: an intolerance (for civilisation), a form (classification), a standard (pleasure), an imagination (the ‘scene’), a discourse (his book), all of which pretty well define the action of the signifier or the signifier in action. This action continually makes visible on the page a glaring lack, that of science and politics, that is, of the signified.

Analyse the following passage and answer the questions.

Some words are highly inflammable. Fusion is one of them. You can get two sets of people into a war mode by just uttering the words “fusion music”. One set will breathe fire and say it violates the purity of music: the other set will tell you earnestly that it opens the borders of music.

Analyse the following passage and provide an appropriate answer for the questions that follow.

When we speak of the “probability of death”, the exact meaning of the experience can be defined in the following way only. We must not think of an individual, but of a certain class as a whole, e.g., “all insured men forty-one years old living in a given country and not engaged in certain dangerous occupations.”

A probability of death is attached to the class of men or to another class that can be defined in a similar way. We can say nothing about the probability of death of an individual even if we know this condition of life and health in detail. The phrase “probability of death”, when it refers to a single person, has no meaning at all.

Analyse the following passage and provide an appropriate answer for the questions that follow.

One key element of Kantian ethics is the idea that the moral worth of any action relies entirely on the motivation of the agent: human behaviour cannot be said good or bad in light of the consequences it generates, but only with regard to what moved the agent to act in that particular way. Kant introduces the key concept of duty to clarify the rationale underpinning of his moral theory, by analysing different types of motivation. First of all, individuals commit actions that are really undertaken for the sake of duty itself, which is, done because the agent thinks they are the right thing to do. No consideration of purpose of the action matters, but only whether the action respects a universal moral law. Another form of action (motivation) originates from immediate inclination: Everyone has some inclinations, such as to preserve one's life, or to preserve honour. These are also duties that have worth in their own sake. But acting according to the maxim that these inclinations might suggest, such as taking care of one's own health - lacks for Kant true moral worth. For example, a charitable person who donates some goods to poor people might do it following her inclination to help the others - that is, because she enjoys helping the others. Kant does not consider it as moral motivation, even if the action is in conformity with duty. The person acting from duty would in fact do it to the other because she recognizes that helping the others is her moral obligation. Final type of motivation suggested by Kant include actions that can be done in conformity with duty, yet are not done from duty, but rather as a mean to some further end. In order to illustrate this type of motivation, Kant provides the following example. A shopkeeper who does not overcharge the inexperienced customer and treats all customers in the same way certainly is doing the right thing - that is, acts in conformity with duty - but we cannot say for sure that he is acting in this way because he is moved by the basic principles of honesty: “It is his advantage that requires it”. Moreover, we cannot say that he is moved by an immediate inclination toward his customers since he gives no preference to one with respect to another. Therefore, concludes Kant, “his action was done neither from duty nor from immediate inclination but merely for purposes of self-interest”.