Question: Passage: The film presents itself as an off-air recording of television station WNUF's Halloween special that aired on October 31, 1987. The movie's main plot centers upon Frank Stewart, a television reporter that has decided to broadcast himself live as he and four other people (including the cameraman) investigate the Webber House, the site of the brutal murder of a husband and wife. Donald Webber, the suspected murderer and the couple's son, claims that he was commanded to murder his parents by demonic entities that he accidentally summoned using a Ouija board. Since that day, the house has been reported to be haunted and an anonymous police officer testifies that he and other fellow police officers have witnessed paranormal activity at the house. Frank initially treats the broadcast as a novelty, even going so far as to dismiss the concerns of paranormal investigators Louis and Claire Berger (Brian St. August and Helenmary Ball), as Claire immediately states that the house contains a menacing presence and that they are in danger as long as they are in the house. He tries to dissuade fears by bringing in Father Joseph Matheson, who Frank claims is versed in Catholic exorcism rites, despite the priest's assertion that he only has a perfunctory knowledge of the rites and has never actually performed an exorcism.

Passage: Elliot Guilespie is a smalltown twentysomething with aspirations of stardom in television news as his alter-ego, Lance Windchaser.  He idolises the local TV news anchor, Rod Reel, who is intermittently shown reporting on the spree of a local serial killer known as the Rubik's Cube Killer, or "RCK".
Elliot's home life is less than ideal; he still lives with his mother and never knew his father, who was killed in a "freak hospital accident". Compounding Elliot's frustrating
life is Roy-Henry Ringold, who terrorized Elliot in high school, but is now a recovering alcoholic and desperately seeks his forgiveness. Roy-Henry's quest for forgiveness is conflicted with the fact that he is sleeping with Elliot's mother and feels compelled to act as a father figure to the aimless Elliot. As if that weren't enough, Elliot works for Roy-Henry's landscaping company.
Elliot does not own a car and is unwilling to ingratiate himself to Roy-Henry for transportation, so his main mode of transportation comes from Toby's Taxi Service, driven by Toby, a depressed family man who vents to an unwilling Elliot about the horrors of his hen-pecked homelife.
After a disastrous attempt at handling the filming and the reporting simultaneously, Elliot enlists Toby as his cameraman. Desperate for friendship and an opportunity to escape his horrible marriage, Toby happily agrees and the two begin a whirlwind escapade of freelance journalism marked largely by failure, ridicule, and numerous injuries.

Passage: A farmer and his wife are attacked in their remote home by what appears to be zombies. At a horror convention, filmmaker Alfonso Betz is onstage discussing media being blamed for real-life violence. Russell and Duane listen in the audience, but Duane is disinterested and talks over the speaker. In the cafeteria later, Russell and Duane are invited to a private party by a seductive goth girl.
Russell and Duane go to a secluded farmhouse for the party, along with other horror fans. The partiers drink keg beer and get to know each other before seemingly passing out.
Russell awakens with a girl named Karen in a cemetery, dressed as two leads from "Night of the Living Dead" and without a memory of how they got there. A zombie approaches and bites Russell's throat while Karen runs away. She finds Duane, who has just awoken inside of a truck. She takes refuge in the farmhouse and tells Duane what happened. Disbelieving, Duane looks for Russell and then carries him back to the farmhouse after seeing the zombie. Karen hears voices coming from a vent leading to the house's basement. Duane explores the top floor and finds a room where all modern technology has been stored. The rest of the house is made to look like it is the 1960's. Duane also finds the dead bodies of the farmer and his wife.
Duane decides to take Russell to a hospital in the truck but retreats to the house after three zombies approach. Duane has to leave Russell outside and the zombies tear him apart.
In the basement, Duane finds Karl with his wife and daughter, as well as Keith and Judith. The group discusses their situation and what to do next. Keith points out that they are unwitting participants in a recreation of "Night of the Living Dead.".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: In late 1833 Etty was commissioned by Williams-Wynn to paint a portrait of two of his seven children. Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball depicts Williams-Wynn's daughters Charlotte and Mary, dressing up in lavish Italian-style costume. Although their dress is generally described as Italian, Dennis Farr's 1958 biography of Etty speculates that elements of the costumes were possibly intended to be Russian, based on Charlotte's headdress. The Italian-style clothing likely represents the high level of interest in Italian culture in early 19th-century England. The popularity of the style of music now known as bel canto, widely associated with Italy, was at its peak; likewise, the Italian plays of William Shakespeare had become extremely popular in the period. Etty, who had spent a good deal of time in Venice and other Italian cities, would have been very familiar with Italian clothing designs, and the costumes worn by the Williams-Wynn sisters closely resemble those of women in Venetian scenes painted by Etty, such as 1831's Window in Venice, During a Fiesta. As art historian Leonard Robinson points out, despite the title the sisters are not in fact shown preparing for the ball, but are fully dressed. The style of the work reflects that of Thomas Lawrence, who had been Etty's teacher in 1807–08, as well as that of Joshua Reynolds, of whom Etty was a great admirer and of whose works Etty had often made copies as an exercise.

Passage: In mid-1833 Etty began a portrait of the daughters of Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn, the long-serving Conservative Member of Parliament for Montgomeryshire, shown Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball . Etty was then little-known for portraits, but had recently completed Elizabeth Potts, a portrait of the daughter of a family friend, which although poorly received by some critics was technically highly accomplished. He said at the time that he hoped his portrait of the Williams-Wynn children would be "one of my best".In February 1834, Etty became seriously ill, and was incapacitated for four months. Unable to paint, he exhibited only two already-completed paintings in the 1834 Summer Exhibition, Elizabeth Potts and The Cardinal. In June of that year he left London to convalesce, renting a cottage in York. Weak and unable to concentrate, Etty painted very little, and spend the next few months visiting friends and touring the sights of Yorkshire. Gradually regaining his health, he returned to London in December 1834, and resumed work on those paintings he had left incomplete on the onset of his illness.
We must, indeed, be more serious with this gentleman [Etty] than is our wont, for the "Society for the Suppression of Vice" are not to be excused for their prosecutions in cases of obscene publications, and the Lord Mayor himself deserves at once to be sent to the tread-mill for imprisoning a little Italian boy for hawking about the streets a naked Cupid, if such lascivious scenes, such gross insults to morality and decency, are allowed to be exhibited at the Roy. Acad. with impunity. A Brothel on fire, which had driven all the Paphian Nymphs out from their beds into the court-yard, would be a modest exhibition compared to this—for they would at least exhibit en chemise. Several ladies, we know, were deterred from going into this corner of the room to see Leslie's, Webster's, and other pictures of great merit there, to avoid the offence and disgrace Mr. E. has conferred on that quarter ... Really, really, if Mr. E., with all his power of colour, turn his drawings of the human figure to no honester purpose—if the absence of all taste and decency is to mark his Academical studies, it is high time that he had a hint from an authority which neither he nor the Council of the Academy will dare to treat slightly. The Archbishop of Canterbury and some of our Bishops are fond of the arts—what say they to them in this shape?
In August 1835 Etty spent a brief holiday in Shropshire, where he delivered Venus and Her Satellites to Owen. While en route back he made a detour to Manchester to visit an art exhibition; while there he made the acquaintance of wealthy cotton merchant Daniel Grant.

Passage: In February 1828, shortly before his 41st birthday, Etty soundly defeated John Constable by 18 votes to five to become a full Royal Academician, at the time the highest honour available to an artist. By this time, complaints about his supposed indecency were beginning to resurface. All but one of the 15 paintings Etty exhibited at the Royal Academy in the 1820s had included at least one nude figure, and Etty was acquiring a reputation for using respectable themes as a pretext for nudity.For the 1828 Summer Exhibition Etty exhibited three pictures; The World Before the Flood, Venus, the Evening Star and Guardian Cherubs. (The latter was a portrait of the children of Welbore Ellis Agar, 2nd Earl of Normanton, and was the only non-nude painting exhibited by Etty at the RA in the 1820s.) Although similar to his earlier works, they were technically more accomplished. Both The World Before the Flood and Venus attracted positive reviews in the press and were sold during their exhibition for substantial sums, although the purchase by the Marquess of Stafford of The World Before the Flood—a work containing scantily clad figures of both sexes—drew a pointed comment in The Gentleman's Magazine that it "will serve to accompany the private Titians of that nobleman". Despite the increasing number of complaints in the press about his use of nudity, respect for Etty from his fellow artists continued to rise, and in 1828 the British Institution awarded him £100 in recognition of his talent.
As soon as the 1828 Summer Exhibition was over, Etty stopped work on other projects to concentrate on a diploma piece, without which he could not become a Royal Academician. This piece, Sleeping Nymph and Satyrs, was presented to the Academy in October, and in December 1828 Etty became a Royal Academician.
It appears to me then that virtuous happiness being our lawful aim in life, that having Academic Rank and Fame the next thing to be considered (if God approve) is to seek that Decent Competency which shall make my latter days comfortable and happy, which I hope if it please Him, to be able to do by the time I am fifty—by occasionally mixing with my historic pictures a Portrait or two, and to vary and extend my sphere—a classic Landscape or two so that if I can get about 100 a year I may be enabled to retire to my dear native city and spend my latter days in peace.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Under Canadian law, a person has the constitutional right to a jury trial for all crimes punishable by five years of imprisonment or more. The Criminal Code also provides for the right to a jury trial for most indictable offences, including those punishable by less than five years' imprisonment, though the right is only constitutionally enshrined for those offences punishable by five years' imprisonment or more. Generally, it is the accused person who is entitled to elect whether their trial will proceed by judge alone or by judge and jury; however, for the most severe criminal offences—murder, treason, alarming Her Majesty, intimidating Parliament, inciting to mutiny, sedition, and piracy—trial by jury is mandatory unless the prosecution consents to trial by judge alone.
Jury panel exhaustion
Criminal Code Section 642(1): If a full jury and alternate jurors cannot be provided, the court may order the sheriff or other proper officer, at the request of the prosecutor, to summon without delay as many people as the court directs for the purpose of providing a full jury and alternate jurors.
Section 642(2): Jurors may be summoned under subsection (1) by word of mouth, if necessary.
Section 642(3): The names of the people who are summoned under this Section shall be added to the general panel for the purposes of the trial, and the same proceedings with respect to calling, challenging, excusing and directing them shall apply to them.
According to the case of R v Mid-Valley Tractor Sales Limited (1995 CarswellNB 313), there are limitations on the powers granted by Section 642. These powers are conferred specifically upon the judge, and the section does not confer a further discretion to delegate that power to others, such as the sheriff's officer, even with the consent of counsel. The Court said that to hold otherwise would nullify the rights of the accused and the prosecution to object to a person being excused inappropriately, and may also interfere with the rights of the parties to challenge for cause. The selection of an impartial jury is the basis of a fair trial.
The Supreme Court of Canada also held in Basarabas and Spek v The Queen (1982 SCR 730) that the right of an accused to be present in court during the whole of his trial includes the jury selection process.
In Tran v The Queen (1994 2 SCR 951), it was held that an accused only has to show that they were excluded from a part of the trial that affected their vital interests, they do not have to demonstrate actual prejudice, just the potential for prejudice. As well, a valid waiver of such a right must be clear, unequivocal and done with full knowledge of the rights that the procedure was enacted to protect, as well as the effect that the waiver will have on those rights.

Passage: In Sweden, juries are uncommon; the public is represented in the courts by means of lay judges (nämndemän). However, the defendant has the right to a jury trial in the lower court (tingsrätt) when accused of an offense against the fundamental laws on freedom of expression and freedom of the press. If a person is accused of e.g. libel or incitement to ethnic or racial hatred, in a medium covered by the fundamental laws (e.g. a printed paper or a radio programme), she has the right to have the accusation tried by a jury of nine jurors. This applies also in civil (tort) cases under the fundamental laws. A majority of at least six jurors must find that the defendant has committed the alleged crime. If it does not, the defendant is acquitted or, in a civil case, held not liable. If such a majority of the jurors hold that said crime has in fact been committed, this finding is not legally binding for the court; thus, the court (three judges) can still acquit the defendant or find him/her not liable. A jury acquittal may not be overruled after appeal. In Swedish civil process, the "English rule" applies to court costs. Earlier, a court disagreeing with a jury acquittal could, when deciding on the matter of such costs, set aside the English rule, and instead use the American rule, that each party bears its own expense of litigation. This practice was declared to violate the rule of presumption of innocence according to article 6.2. of the European Convention on Human Rights, by the Supreme Court of Sweden, in 2012.

Passage: Middle-aged Mrs. Livingston Baldwin Crane (Edna May Oliver) is selected to serve on a jury for the murder trial of French ex-showgirl Yvette Gordon, accused of killing her rich, much older husband. The prosecutor calls only two witnesses, a doctor and Mrs. Gordon's maid, Evelyn Snow. Snow testifies that after she found Mrs. Gordon kneeling beside the body of her husband holding the murder weapon, a gun, her employer offered to pay her to say that Mr. Gordon committed suicide. Mrs. Gordon, on the other hand, claims that Snow demanded money to tell the police that story. On the witness stand, Mrs. Gordon says she went away for a week to get away from Mr. Gordon for a while, then returned to an angry, suspicious husband who threatened her with a gun. She states they struggled, and the gun went off by accident. During the testimony, Mrs. Crane asks several questions of the witnesses, much to the annoyance of Judge Henry Fish. She discovers that Snow was recommended to Mrs. Gordon by Chauncey Gordon, Mr. Crane's nephew and sole relative (and heir if Mrs. Gordon is convicted).
When the jury retires to consider a verdict, Mrs. Crane casts the sole "not guilty" vote. When asked why, she replies, "Woman's intuition." After lots of convincing and several votes, the count is ten to two in favor of acquittal. During the deliberations, the wealthy Mrs. Crane manages to (illegally) pass a note to her maid Suzanne, instructing her to hire a detective agency to investigate further.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Nearing the end of the 18th century, Napoleon's vast army is sailing towards the Irish coast. The national poet and freedom fighter who goes by the name of "The O'Flynn" is traveling back to the castle where he was born, when he encounters a coach being robbed by rogues. The leader of the outlaws is a man named Hendrigg. The robbery fails thanks to O'Flynn's efforts. He invites the passenger, Lady Benedetta, to take refuge in his castle.
Lady Benedetta eventually agrees to take up the invitation from the elegant O'Flynn, who rode ahead to prepare the castle. When O'Flynn arrives at the castle, Dooley is waiting to arrest him for unpaid debts. O'Flynn gets off by telling the man of a treasure buried inside the castle.
O'Flynn is unaware that Lady Benedetta is really the daughter of the Viceroy of Ireland. She is in turn unaware that agents have been sent out by Napoleon to spy on her, disguised as travelers. They have been informed that Lady Benedetta has Napoleon's plans to invade Britain and is to deliver them to her father. Both Lady Benedetta and the agents arrive to the castle in the night.
Dooley fends off the agents and saves both Lady Benedetta and the unsuspecting O'Flynn. Napoleon's men attack them on their way to Dublin, but again they escape. They manage to give the plans to Lady Benedetta's father. Because of his leadership qualities, O'Flynn is made a captain in the Irish Army.
O'Flynn is attracted to Lady Benedetta, and when he finds out that her fiancé, Lord Sedgemouth, is in favor of Napoleon, he challenges his rival to a duel. Being a swordsman, he wins the duel quite easily, and decides to win Lady Benedetta's heart. The lord counters by letting Lady Benedetta believe that O'Flynn is involved with a courtesan named Fancy Free, which leads the lady to denounce him.

Passage: Freckles Winslow is on his way home from college. On the bus he encounters a crook, "Muggsy" Dolan who calls himself Jack Leach. Jack is on the run from the law, and is looking for a safe place to hide. The two men come to talking and Freckles mentions his serene home town to Jack, having only good things to say about it. Jack decides to tag along and take his refuge in Freckles home town. With Freckles help he gets to stay at the local hotel, owned by Danny Doyle, who is Freckles' friend. Danny is about to rerun the road through town, so that it runs over a number of worthless lots of land he has bought. Danny bought the real estate because he thought he could find gold on them, using a new expensive device he has bought. Danny needs Freckles to help him get a favorable decision by Freckles' father, who is one of the two road commissioners.

Passage: Lucie Manette and her servant and companion Miss Pross (Edna May Oliver) are informed by banker Mr. Jarvis Lorry that her father, Dr. Alexandre Mannette is not dead, but has been a prisoner in the Bastille for eighteen years before finally being rescued. She travels with Mr. Lorry to Paris to take her father to her home in England. Dr. Manette has been cared for by a former servant, Ernest Defarge, and his wife. The old man's mind has given way during his long ordeal, but Lucie's tender care begins to restore his sanity.
On the return trip across the English Channel, Lucie meets Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat who, unlike his tyrannical uncle, the Marquis de St. Evremonde, is sympathetic to the plight of the oppressed and impoverished French masses. He has denounced his uncle, relinquished his title and going to England to begin a new life. The vindictive Marquis has Darnay framed for treason, but he is saved by the highly proficient but cynical lawyer Sydney Carton. Carton goes drinking with Barsad, the main prosecution witness, and tricks him into admitting that he lied. When Barsad is called to testify, he is horrified to discover that Carton is one of the defense attorneys, and suddenly realizes that his testimony was wrong. Darnay is acquitted.
Carton is thanked by Lucie, who had been a witness at the trial. He quickly falls in love with her, but comes to realize that it is hopeless. Carton is jealous of Darnay and the obvious attraction Darnay and lucie have for each other. Nevertheless, Carton and Lucie become close friends. Lucie and Darnay are eventually married and they have a daughter, also named Lucie.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Immediately after Aaliyah's death, there was uncertainty over whether the music video for "Rock the Boat" would ever air. It made its world premiere on BET's Access Granted on October 9, 2001. She won two posthumous awards at the American Music Awards of 2002; Favorite Female R&B Artist and Favorite R&B/Soul Album for Aaliyah. Her second and final film, Queen of the Damned, was released in February 2002. Before its release, Aaliyah's brother, Rashad, re-dubbed some of her lines during post-production. It grossed US$15.2 million in its first weekend, ranking number one at the box office. On the first anniversary of Aaliyah's death, a candlelight vigil was held in Times Square; millions of fans observed a moment of silence; and throughout the United States, radio stations played her music in remembrance. In December 2002, a collection of previously unreleased material was released as Aaliyah's first posthumous album, I Care 4 U. A portion of the proceeds was donated to the Aaliyah Memorial Fund, a program that benefits the Revlon UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program and Harlem's Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. It debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, selling 280,000 copies in its first week. The album's lead single, "Miss You", peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. In August of the following year, clothing retailer Christian Dior donated profits from sales in honor of Aaliyah.In 2005, Aaliyah's second compilation album, Ultimate Aaliyah was released in the UK by Blackground Records. Ultimate Aaliyah is a three disc set, which included a greatest hits audio CD and a DVD. Andy Kellman of AllMusic remarked "Ultimate Aaliyah adequately represents the shortened career of a tremendous talent who benefited from some of the best songwriting and production work by Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and R. Kelly." A documentary movie Aaliyah Live in Amsterdam was released in 2011, shortly before the tenth anniversary of Aaliyah's death. The documentary, by Pogus Caesar, contained previously unseen footage shot of her career beginnings in 1995 when she was appearing in the Netherlands.In March 2012, music producer Jeffrey "J-Dub" Walker announced on his Twitter account that a song "Steady Ground", which he produced for Aaliyah's third album, would be included in the forthcoming posthumous Aaliyah album. This second proposed posthumous album would feature this song using demo vocals, as Walker claims the originals were somehow lost by his sound engineer. Aaliyah's brother Rashad later refuted Walker's claim, claiming that "no official album [is] being released and supported by the Haughton family.".

Passage: In 1996, Aaliyah left Jive Records and signed with Atlantic Records. She worked with record producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott, who contributed to her second studio album, One in a Million. Missy Elliott recalled Timbaland and herself being nervous to work with Aaliyah, since Aaliyah had already released her successful début album while Missy Elliott and Timbaland were just starting out. Missy Elliott also feared she would be a diva, but reflected that Aaliyah "came in and was so warming; she made us immediately feel like family."
The album yielded the single "If Your Girl Only Knew", which topped the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs for two weeks. It also generated the singles "Hot Like Fire" and "4 Page Letter". The following year, Aaliyah was featured on Timbaland & Magoo's debut single, "Up Jumps da Boogie". One in a Million peaked at number 18 on the Billboard 200, selling 3 million copies in the United States and over eight million copies worldwide.
The album was certified double platinum by the RIAA on June 16, 1997, denoting shipments of two million copies. The month prior to One in a Millions release, on May 5, 1997, music publisher Windswept Pacific filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Aaliyah claiming she had illegally copied Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do for Love" for the single "Age Ain't Nothing but a Number".Aaliyah attended the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts, where she majored in drama and graduated in 1997 with a 4.0 GPA. Aaliyah began her acting career that same year; she played herself in the police drama television series New York Undercover. During this time, Aaliyah participated in the Children's Benefit Concert, a charity concert that took place at the Beacon Theatre in New York. Aaliyah also became the spokesperson for Tommy Hilfiger Corporation. During Aaliyah's campaign for Tommy Hilfiger the company had sold all 2,400 of the red, white and blue baggy jeans emblazoned with the Hilfiger name that Aaliyah wore in their 1997 advertisements and they were constantly restocking those jeans.
In 1997 Aaliyah performed the Christmas carol What Child Is This at the annual holiday special Christmas in Washington. She contributed on the soundtrack album for the Fox Animation Studios animated feature Anastasia, performing a cover version of "Journey to the Past" which earned songwriters Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Aaliyah performed the song at the 1998 Academy Awards ceremony and became the youngest singer to perform at the event. The song "Are You That Somebody?" was featured on the Dr. Dolittle soundtrack, which earned Aaliyah her first Grammy Award nomination. The song peaked at number 21 on the Hot 100.

Passage: Aaliyah Dana Haughton (; January 16, 1979 – August 25, 2001) was an American singer, actress, and model. Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Detroit, Michigan, she first gained recognition at the age of 10, when she appeared on the television show Star Search and performed in concert alongside Gladys Knight. At the age of 12, Aaliyah signed with Jive Records and her uncle Barry Hankerson's Blackground Records. Hankerson introduced her to R. Kelly, who became her mentor, as well as lead songwriter and producer of her debut album, Age Ain't Nothing but a Number. The album sold 3 million copies in the United States and was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). After facing allegations of an illegal marriage with Kelly, Aaliyah ended her contract with Jive and signed with Atlantic Records.
Aaliyah worked with record producers Timbaland and Missy Elliott for her second album, One in a Million, which sold 3 million copies in the United States and more than 8 million copies worldwide. In 2000, Aaliyah appeared in her first film, Romeo Must Die. She contributed to the film's soundtrack, which spawned the single "Try Again". The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 solely on airplay, making Aaliyah the first artist in Billboard history to achieve this goal. "Try Again" also earned Aaliyah a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female R&B Vocalist. After completing Romeo Must Die, Aaliyah filmed her role in Queen of the Damned, and released her self-titled third and final studio album in 2001.
On August 25, 2001, Aaliyah and eight others were killed in a plane crash in the Bahamas after filming the music video for the single "Rock the Boat". The pilot, Luis Morales III, was unlicensed at the time of the accident and toxicology tests revealed that he had traces of cocaine and alcohol in his system. Aaliyah's family later filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Blackhawk International Airways, which was settled out of court. Aaliyah's music continued to achieve commercial success with several posthumous releases, and has sold an estimated 24 to 32 million albums worldwide. She has been credited for helping redefine contemporary R&B, pop and hip hop, earning her the nicknames the "Princess of R&B" and "Queen of Urban Pop". Billboard lists her as the tenth most successful female R&B artist of the past 25 years, and the 27th most successful in history.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Taapaca is part of the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes, which along with the Northern Volcanic Zone, the Southern Volcanic Zone and the Austral Volcanic Zone is one of the four volcanic belts of the Andes; these volcanic belts are separated by areas where no recent volcanism has occurred.The Central Volcanic Zone has about 44 active volcanoes and several other caldera/ignimbrite and volcanic field centres. Older volcanoes are often well preserved owing to the dry climate. This volcanic zone features the highest volcanoes in the world, which reach elevations of 5,000–7,000 metres (16,000–23,000 ft) here. The largest historical eruption in the Central Volcanic Zone occurred at Huaynaputina in 1600 and Lascar is the most active volcano in the region; otherwise volcanic activity is poorly recorded as most edifices are remote from human habitation.Taapaca is located on the western margin of the Altiplano, where the Western Cordillera has developed since the Oligocene. The basement beneath the volcano is formed by several principally volcanic formations, including the Lupica and sedimentary Huaylas formations and the Lauca ignimbrite (2.72 million years old); this basement is of Oligocene to Pliocene age. In some places, a Proterozoic basement formed by amphibolites, gneisses and serpentinites crops out. The volcanoes of Condoriri, Pomerape, Larancagua and Parinacota lie to the east of Taapaca. The area of the volcano is subject to contractional tectonics, with a major thrust fault passing close by, but their relationship to Taapaca's volcanism is not clear.

Passage: The islands are composed of Tertiary igneous formations of granites and gabbro, heavily weathered by the elements. The archipelago represents the remnants of a long-extinct ring volcano rising from a seabed plateau approximately 40 metres (130 ft) below sea level.At 670 hectares (1,700 acres) in extent, Hirta is the largest island in the group and comprises more than 78% of the land area of the archipelago. Next in size are Soay (English: "sheep island") at 99 hectares (240 acres) and Boreray ('the fortified isle'), which measures 86 hectares (210 acres). Soay is 0.5 kilometres (0.31 mi) north-west of Hirta, Boreray 6 kilometres (4 mi) to the northeast. Smaller islets and stacks in the group include Stac an Armin ('warrior's stack'), Stac Lee ('grey stack') and Stac Levenish ('stream' or 'torrent'). The island of Dùn ('fort'), which protects Village Bay from the prevailing southwesterly winds, was at one time joined to Hirta by a natural arch. MacLean (1972) suggests that the arch was broken when struck by a galleon fleeing the defeat of the Spanish Armada, but other sources, such as Mitchell (1992) and Fleming (2005), suggest that the arch was simply swept away by one of the many fierce storms that batter the islands every winter.
The highest point in the archipelago, Conachair ('the beacon') at 430 metres (1,410 ft), is on Hirta, immediately north of the village. In the southeast is Oiseval ('east fell'), which reaches 290 metres (950 ft), and Mullach Mòr ('big hill summit') 361 metres (1,185 ft) is due west of Conachair. Ruival ('red fell') 137 metres (449 ft) and Mullach Bi ('pillar summit') 358 metres (1,175 ft) dominate the western cliffs. Boreray reaches 384 metres (1,260 ft) and Soay 378 metres (1,240 ft). The extraordinary Stac an Armin reaches 196 metres (643 ft), and Stac Lee, 172 metres (564 ft), making them the highest sea stacks in Britain.
In modern times, St Kilda's only settlement was at Village Bay (Scottish Gaelic: Bàgh a' Bhaile or Loch Hiort) on Hirta. Gleann Mòr on the north coast of Hirta and Boreray also contain the remains of earlier habitations. The sea approach to Hirta into Village Bay suggests a small settlement flanked by high rolling hills in a semicircle behind it. This is misleading. The whole north face of Conachair is a vertical cliff up to 427 metres (1,401 ft) high, falling sheer into the sea and constituting the highest sea cliff in the UK.The archipelago is the site of many of the most spectacular sea cliffs in the British Isles. Baxter and Crumley (1988) suggest that St Kilda: "...is a mad, imperfect God's hoard of all unnecessary lavish landscape luxuries he ever devised in his madness. These he has scattered at random in Atlantic isolation 100 miles from the corrupting influences of the mainland, 40 miles west of the westmost Western Isles. He has kept for himself only the best pieces and woven around them a plot as evidence of his madness.".

Passage: In 1525 Pedro de Alvarado sent a small company to conquer Mixco Viejo (Chinautla Viejo), the capital of the Poqomam. At the Spanish approach, the inhabitants remained enclosed in the fortified city. The Spanish attempted an approach from the west through a narrow pass but were forced back with heavy losses. Alvarado himself launched the second assault with 200 Tlaxcalan allies but was also beaten back. The Poqomam then received reinforcements, possibly from Chinautla, and the two armies clashed on open ground outside of the city. The battle was chaotic and lasted for most of the day but was finally decided by the Spanish cavalry, forcing the Poqomam reinforcements to withdraw. The leaders of the reinforcements surrendered to the Spanish three days after their retreat and revealed that the city had a secret entrance in the form of a cave leading up from a nearby river, allowing the inhabitants to come and go.Armed with the knowledge gained from their prisoners, Alvarado sent 40 men to cover the exit from the cave and launched another assault along the ravine from the west, in single file owing to its narrowness, with crossbowmen alternating with soldiers bearing muskets, each with a companion sheltering him from arrows and stones with a shield. This tactic allowed the Spanish to break through the pass and storm the entrance of the city. The Poqomam warriors fell back in disorder in a chaotic retreat through the city, and were hunted down by the victorious conquistadors and their allies. Those who managed to retreat down the neighbouring valley were ambushed by Spanish cavalry who had been posted to block the exit from the cave, the survivors were captured and brought back to the city. The siege had lasted more than a month and because of the defensive strength of the city, Alvarado ordered it to be burned and moved the inhabitants to the new colonial village of Mixco.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: The gang is driving through a desert in Roswell, New Mexico when a sandstorm forces Shaggy to make a wrong turn onto government property. Soon after, a UFO causes Shaggy to crash the car, and the gang find themselves on the outskirts of a small town. While Scooby and Shaggy stay with the van, Fred, Daphne, and Velma go to a local diner to ask for directions. Shaggy and Scooby then see a mythical animal called a jackalope , which takes their last Scooby Snack. Scooby and Shaggy chase the jackalope into a cave, where they encounter aliens. They flee the cave and run into the diner in a panic.
Scooby and Shaggy tell the people inside the diner about their encounter, but the gang is skeptical. The waitress, Dottie, says that multiple people claimed to have seen aliens, but that she has never seen them, but she has noticed strange lights and sounds at night. The chef, Sergio, says that a month earlier local cattle vanished without a trace, after which many people left town. A man named Lester, who claims to have been abducted, believes Scooby and Shaggy. He also claims to have pictures from his abduction; however, they turn out to be nothing more than paintings. He then tells the gang that ever since the installation of SALF (Search for Alien Life Forms, similar to SETI) satellite dishes, there have been numerous reports of UFO sightings and disappearing livestock.

Passage: Three neighborhood teens and childhood friends, Alex, Tuck, and Munch, are upset by the fact that their neighborhood, Mulberry Woods, Nevada, is going to be demolished, allegedly for a new highway construction project, and they all have to move away because of it.
While at Tuck's house, their phones start to glitch out, displaying seemingly random graphical patterns. They soon find out, through Munch, that the patterns are actually a map to a spot in the desert 17.6 miles away. They decide to go to the desert on their bikes and disguise it as a sleepover, recording the experience on various cameras because it's their last night together.
Tuck, Alex, and Munch eventually make it to the desert, and they follow the map to a dusty, rusted object under an electrical tower. Tuck, confused, decides to abruptly call it off when the object starts to copy Alex's ringtone, and they follow another map to a barn. There the object telekinetically starts to repair itself, and the boys find it contains an alien that can answer questions with "Yes" or "No" answers, from which they learn it is from outer space, has crash landed after being shot down by an unknown force, and is seriously injured.
They follow another map to a pawn shop, where the object further repairs itself, allowing the alien to reveal itself, using Alex's phone camera to "see" and befriend the three. While in an alley, they decide to name the alien "Echo." Looking for more parts to repair Echo, they again follow another map to a house where Emma, a girl who goes to their high school, lives and finds out about Echo. Emma soon joins the team, as they go to a bar, then an arcade, and she finds out the object Echo is in is a key to a spaceship hidden in Mulberry Woods.

Passage: Daphne Blake is a high school student who has a semi-popular web show discussing the possibility of aliens and supernatural occurrences. Velma Dinkley is Daphne's supportive yet critical online friend, who believes there is a logical explanation for everything. After Velma web chats Daphne following her latest episode, she reveals to Velma that her parents will be moving to Ridge Valley, where Velma currently goes to high school.
After having a perfect morning at home, Daphne embarks on her first day at Ridge Valley High. She quickly meets Carol, her senior advisor, who shows her the school's expansive collection of advanced technology from Bloom Innovative, a famous technology company. While on her tour, Daphne runs into Velma, who does not speak to her. Later that afternoon, Daphne sees a student named Spencer walk into an open locker as if he were in a trance.
At home, Daphne's father reveals that he has sheltered Daphne all her life, going to extreme lengths to follow her around everywhere in an attempt to make Daphne's life "perfect". Shocked and frustrated at her father, Daphne vows to do everything on her own without her father's assistance. The next day, Daphne gets into a heated argument with Velma over their science project, which Velma intentionally sabotaged. The argument results in the girls getting sent to the principal's office, who puts them on "the best couch for conflict resolution". The couch helps the girls put aside their differences, and Velma reveals she was protecting Daphne because she knew of the strange happenings at the school. Daphne and Velma vow to solve the mystery of the disappearing students.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Another reason for the gradual decline in the development of Sicily's Baroque and building in general was that the money was running out. During the 17th century, the aristocracy had lived principally on their landed estates, tending and improving them, and as a result their income also increased. During the 18th century, the nobility gradually migrated towards the cities, in particular Palermo, to enjoy the social delights of the Viceroy's court and Catania. Their town palazzi grew in size and splendour, to the detriment of the abandoned estates, which were still expected to provide the revenue. The land agents left to run the estates over time became less efficient, or corrupt, often both. Consequently, aristocratic incomes fell. The aristocracy borrowed money using the estates as surety, until the value of the neglected estates fell below the money borrowed against them. Moreover, Sicily was by now as unstable politically as its nobility were financially. Ruled from Naples by the weak Ferdinand IV and his dominant wife, Sicily had declined to the point of no return long before 1798 and again in 1806 when the King was forced by the invading French to flee Naples to Sicily. The French were kept at bay from Sicily only by an expeditionary force of 17,000 British troops, and Sicily was now ruled by Britain in effect if not in name. King Ferdinand then in 1811 imposed the first taxes, at a single stroke alienating his aristocracy.
The tax was rescinded by the British in 1812, who then imposed a British style constitution on the island. One legal innovation of this time of particular consequence for the aristocracy was that creditors, who had previously only been able to enforce repayments of the interest on a loan or mortgage, could now seize property. Property began to change hands in smaller parcels at auctions, and consequently a land-owning bourgeoisie immediately began to flourish. Revolts against the Bourbons in 1821, and 1848 divided the nobility, and liberalism was in the air. These factors coupled with the social and political upheaval of the following Risorgimento in the 19th century meant the Sicilian aristocracy was a doomed class. Furthermore, because of their neglect and dereliction of noblesse oblige, an essential element of the feudal system, the countryside was often ruled by bandits outside the enclosed villages, and the once grand country villas were decaying. The building mania of the Sicilian upper class was over.

Passage: In Western Europe, some of the older Roman elite families died out while others became more involved with ecclesiastical than secular affairs. Values attached to Latin scholarship and education mostly disappeared, and while literacy remained important, it became a practical skill rather than a sign of elite status. In the 4th century, Jerome (d. 420) dreamed that God rebuked him for spending more time reading Cicero than the Bible. By the 6th century, Gregory of Tours (d. 594) had a similar dream, but instead of being chastised for reading Cicero, he was chastised for learning shorthand. By the late 6th century, the principal means of religious instruction in the Church had become music and art rather than the book. Most intellectual efforts went towards imitating classical scholarship, but some original works were created, along with now-lost oral compositions. The writings of Sidonius Apollinaris (d. 489), Cassiodorus (d. c. 585), and Boethius (d. c. 525) were typical of the age.Changes also took place among laymen, as aristocratic culture focused on great feasts held in halls rather than on literary pursuits. Clothing for the elites was richly embellished with jewels and gold. Lords and kings supported entourages of fighters who formed the backbone of the military forces. Family ties within the elites were important, as were the virtues of loyalty, courage, and honour. These ties led to the prevalence of the feud in aristocratic society, examples of which included those related by Gregory of Tours that took place in Merovingian Gaul. Most feuds seem to have ended quickly with the payment of some sort of compensation. Women took part in aristocratic society mainly in their roles as wives and mothers of men, with the role of mother of a ruler being especially prominent in Merovingian Gaul. In Anglo-Saxon society the lack of many child rulers meant a lesser role for women as queen mothers, but this was compensated for by the increased role played by abbesses of monasteries. Only in Italy does it appear that women were always considered under the protection and control of a male relative.

Passage: Baroque eventually went out of fashion. In some parts of Europe, it metamorphosed into the rococo, but not in Sicily. No longer ruled by Austria, Sicily, from 1735 officially the Kingdom of Sicily, was ruled by the King of Naples, Ferdinand IV. Hence Palermo was in constant association with the principal capital Naples, where there was architecturally a growing reversion to the more classical styles of architecture. Coupled with this, many of the more cultured Sicilian nobility developed a fashionable obsession with all things French, from philosophy to arts, fashion, and architecture. Many of them visited Paris in pursuit of these interests and returned with the latest architectural engravings and theoretical treatises. The French architect Léon Dufourny was in Sicily between 1787 and 1794 to study and analyse the ancient Greek temples on the island. Thus Sicilians rediscovered their ancient past, which with its classical idioms was now the height of fashion. The change in tastes did not come about overnight. Baroque remained popular on the island, but now Sicilian balconies, extravagant as ever, would be placed next to severe classical columns. Dufourny began designing in Palermo, and his "Entrance Temple" (1789) to the Botanical Gardens was the first building in Sicily in a style based on the Greek Doric order. It is pure neoclassical architecture, as established in England since 1760, and it was a sign of things to come.
It was Dufourny's great friend and fellow architect Giuseppe Marvuglia who was to preside over the gradual decline of Sicilian Baroque. In 1784 he designed the Palazzo Riso-Belmonte, the finest example of this period of architectural transition, combining both Baroque and Palladian motifs, built around an arcaded courtyard providing Baroque masses of light and shade, or chiaroscuro. The main façade, punctuated by giant pilasters, also had Baroque features, but the skyline was unbroken. The pilasters were undecorated, simple, and Ionic, and supported an undecorated entablature. Above the windows were classical unbroken pediments. Sicilian Baroque was waning.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: As The Primitives, Tweedy and Farrar were highly influenced by punk bands such as The Ramones and The Sex Pistols. However, they began to listen to country music because punk rock was not well received in the Belleville and St. Louis music scenes. While they originally were introduced to country by their parents, it wasn't until this time that they began to listen to it for leisure. Farrar typically wrote songs about Middle America, while Tweedy wrote about more mainstream topics such as relationships. Farrar took influence from authors such as Kurt Vonnegut and Jack Kerouac, whom he read while working at his mother's bookstore. As the lead singer of Uncle Tupelo, Farrar's lyrics would be front-and-center during performances, but the band's musical style was mostly driven by Tweedy and Heidorn (seen in the music's Minutemen-influenced start-stop arrangement). Jeff Tweedy said in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
We probably have more influences than we know what to do with. We have two main styles that have been influences. For instance, we like Black Flag as much as early Bob Dylan and Dinosaur Jr. as much as Hank Williams ... To us, hard-core punk is also folk music. We draw a close parallel between the two. We'll play both in the same set if we get a chance. We don't have any biases as far as music is concerned.
Tweedy in particular was inspired by the Minutemen, and wrote a song about D. Boon following Boon's death in a van accident. The band has released songs originally performed by Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Carter Family, Lead Belly, Gram Parsons, The Soft Boys, The Louvin Brothers, Texas Tornados, and The Stooges. Releasing March 16–20, 1992 when alternative music was breaking through was a move inspired by Neil Young's decision to release the challenging albums On the Beach and Tonight's the Night immediately after the commercially successful Harvest. Critic Michael Corcoran likened the band's musical style to "Bob Mould fronting Soul Asylum on a speeded-up version of a Gram Parsons song.".

Passage: Love has been candid about her diverse musical influences, the earliest being Patti Smith, The Runaways, and The Pretenders, artists she discovered while in juvenile hall at age fifteen. As a child, her first exposure to music was records that her parents retrieved each month through Columbia Record Club. The first record Love owned was Leonard Cohen's Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), which she obtained from her mother: "He was so lyric-conscious and morbid, and I was a pretty morbid kid," she recalled. As a teenager, she named Flipper, Kate Bush, Soft Cell, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Lou Reed, and Dead Kennedys among her favorite artists. She has also spoken of her appreciation for new wave and post-punk bands she became acquainted with while living as a teenager in the United Kingdom, such as Echo and the Bunnymen, The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Television, Bauhaus, and Joy Division.While in Dublin at age fifteen, Love attended a Virgin Prunes concert, an event she credited as being a pivotal influence: "I had never seen so much sex, snarl, poetry, evil, restraint, grace, filth, raw power and the very essence of rock and roll," she recalled. "[I had seen] U2 [who] gave me lashes of love and inspiration, and a few nights later the Virgin Prunes fucked–me–up." Decades later, in 2009, Love introduced the band's frontman Gavin Friday at a Carnegie Hall event, and performed a song with him.Love's diverse genre interests were illustrated in a 1991 interview with Flipside, in which she stated: "There's a part of me that wants to have a grindcore band and another that wants to have a Raspberries-type pop band." Discussing the abrasive sound of Hole's debut album, she said she felt she had to "catch up with all my hip peers who'd gone all indie on me, and who made fun of me for liking R.E.M. and The Smiths." She has also embraced the influence of experimental artists and punk rock groups, including Sonic Youth, Swans, Big Black, Diamanda Galás, the Germs, and The Stooges. While writing Celebrity Skin, she drew influence from Neil Young and My Bloody Valentine. She has also cited her contemporary PJ Harvey as an influence, saying: "The one rock star that makes me know I'm shit is Polly Harvey. I'm nothing next to the purity that she experiences." In 2014, she named "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by The Verve as one of her favorite songs.Literature and poetry have often been a major influence on her songwriting; Love said she had "always wanted to be a poet, but there was no money in it." She has named the works of T.S. Eliot and Charles Baudelaire as influential, and referenced works by Dante Rossetti, William Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling, and Anne Sexton in her lyrics.

Passage: In January 1980, Michael Stipe met Peter Buck in Wuxtry Records, the Athens record store where Buck worked. The pair discovered that they shared similar tastes in music, particularly in punk rock and protopunk artists like Patti Smith, Television, and the Velvet Underground. Stipe said, "It turns out that I was buying all the records that [Buck] was saving for himself." Through mutual friend Kathleen O'Brien, Stipe and Buck then met fellow University of Georgia students Mike Mills and Bill Berry, who had played music together since high school and lived together in Georgia. The quartet agreed to collaborate on several songs; Stipe later commented that "there was never any grand plan behind any of it". Their still-unnamed band spent a few months rehearsing in a deconsecrated Episcopal church in Athens, and played its first show on April 5, 1980, supporting The Side Effects at O'Brien's birthday party held in the same church, performing a mix of originals and 1960s and 1970s covers. After considering Twisted Kites, Cans of Piss, and Negro Eyes, the band settled on "R.E.M." (which is an acronym for rapid eye movement, the dream stage of sleep), which Stipe selected at random from a dictionary.The band members eventually dropped out of school to focus on their developing group. They found a manager in Jefferson Holt, a record store clerk who was so impressed by an R.E.M. performance in his hometown of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that he moved to Athens. R.E.M.'s success was almost immediate in Athens and surrounding areas; the band drew progressively larger crowds for shows, which caused some resentment in the Athens music scene. Over the next year and a half, R.E.M. toured throughout the Southern United States. Touring was arduous because a touring circuit for alternative rock bands did not then exist. The group toured in an old blue van driven by Holt, and lived on a food allowance of $2 each per day.During April 1981, R.E.M. recorded its first single, "Radio Free Europe", at producer Mitch Easter's Drive-In Studios in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Initially distributing it as a four-track demo tape to clubs, record labels and magazines, the single was released in July 1981 on the local independent record label Hib-Tone with an initial pressing of 1,000 copies—600 of which were sent out as promotional copies. The single quickly sold out, and another 6,000 copies were pressed due to popular demand, despite the original pressing leaving off the record label's contact details. Despite its limited pressing, the single garnered critical acclaim, and was listed as one of the ten best singles of the year by The New York Times.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: The song was performed during the Hard Candy Promo Tour and Sticky & Sweet Tour (2008–2009). At the promotional tour, "4 Minutes" was performed as the third song of the setlist. Madonna wore a shiny black outfit with black tails, Adidas track pants and high-heeled, lace-up boots for the performance. Justin Timberlake made an appearance alongside Madonna, at the Roseland Ballroom in New York, to perform the song. As Timbaland appeared on the video screens, the beat of the song started. The four side-stage video screens began to glide across the stage, and swiveled around to reveal Timberlake behind one and Madonna behind the other. They performed the song in a similar choreography from the music video.During the "4 Minutes" performance on the Sticky & Sweet Tour, Madonna wore a futuristic robotic outfit designed by Heatherette. She coupled it with metallic plates on her shoulder and a wig with long curled hair. Madonna and her dancers emerged from behind backdrops, on which Timbaland and Timberlake appeared, to perform their lines. An apparent duet between Madonna and Timberlake ensues, with Timberlake singing and dancing his part from the screens. He joined Madonna in person, for the show at Los Angeles's Dodger Stadium on November 6, 2008, the same show in which Britney Spears appeared alongside Madonna to perform "Human Nature". They performed "4 Minutes" in similar fashion to the promotional tour choreography. Timbaland sang his part of the song in person on November 26, 2008 at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. "4 Minutes" was also used as mashups during the performance of songs like "Vogue" and "Hung Up". On July 27, 2017, Madonna made a special appearance at Leonardo DiCaprio's annual fundraising gala, which took place on Saint-Tropez, France, and performed "4 Minutes" dressed in a green suit with feathers.

Passage: The configuration of the band has evolved since first touring in 1988. Early incarnations of the band had three people playing guitars, drums, keyboards, and samplers.  Later incarnations replaced the keyboards and samplers with an additional guitarist, and incarnations after that added a multi-instrumentalist whose main role was as a bassist but also played guitars and keyboards on a number of songs. Finally, the live component of Nine Inch Nails has settled as a five-piece band since the Self Destruct tour from 1994. On the Performance 2007 tour, some songs from the Year Zero album were performed as a 3 piece band, featuring Reznor, keyboard player Alessandro Cortini and guitarist Aaron North, using a combination of live guitars and triggered loops. In September 2007, Reznor expressed his interest in moving away from the "rock band configuration" to explore "other ways [to] present the material in concert", though once again the 2008 incarnation consisted of five positions, but adding a variety of instruments not normally used in Nine Inch Nails such as double bass, various percussion instruments, steel guitar, vibraphone and other acoustic instruments as well as sampled sounds triggered from a variety of electronic instruments. No replacement was hired for keyboard player Alessandro Cortini after he left the band in late 2008, and the 2009 live band is a four-piece, with the role of keyboard player being shared between all members.
Describing the selection process, early contributor Chris Vrenna told Gannett News "coming from the same emotional background, I feel, is more important than how well you can play your instrument. That's one reason that makes our shows more intense when we're up there ... We found people that understood that. It makes us stronger".  Reznor described his selection of the earliest incarnations of the live band by saying "I'm not in the position to offer somebody a thousand dollars a week to rehearse ... So I took some young guys who were malleable, who would basically do what I want them to do but expand on it.  The only context I've worked with them in so far is, 'Here are the songs, here are your parts, learn them.' "Between major tours, live band members have on occasion contributed instrumental performances to official Nine Inch Nails releases, though creative control and direction has always been the responsibility of Reznor.  Live-band members who have contributed to major Nine Inch Nails studio releases are denoted by a "#" below.  Most members provide backing vocals during live performances.
Personnel
Live guestsMike Garson# – piano (September 2009 at the Henry Fonda Theater for the song "Just Like You Imagined").

Passage: "4 Minutes" is an uptempo dance-pop song, composed in an urban, hip hop style. It incorporates the effect of a marching band, a clanging beat and instrumentation from a brass that is played in a "scale-like riff", as described by Caryn Ganz from Rolling Stone. Other musical instruments used are foghorns and cow bells. In "4 Minutes", Madonna and Timberlake sing and trade verses, the rhythm moves towards a hard clanging beat as Madonna sings the lines that the "road to hell is paved with good intentions."  Madonna and Timberlake start singing the chorus with Timberlake singing the line of "We've only got four minutes to save the world". The track continues in the same momentum in the second verse and second chorus whence the track ends where every beat ceases except for Timbaland's characteristic bhangra beats, the brass riffs and Madonna singing the words "tick-tock" repeatedly, after which it ends.According to the sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Alfred Publishing, the song is written in the key of G minor and is set in time signature of common time with a tempo of 115 beats per minute. Timbaland's bhangra beats are featured at the start and the end of the song. Madonna and Timberlake's vocal range spans two octaves, from F3 to Bb5. The song has a sequence of D–G–C–F–B♭–D in the verses and E♭5–D5–C5–D5 in the chorus, as its chord progression. The lyrics of "4 Minutes" carry a message of social awareness, inspired by Madonna's visit to Africa and the human suffering she witnessed. Jon Pareles of The New York Times stated that "[h]owever, the song sounds as if four minutes is the time taken for a song to be a guaranteed pop hit or the time required for a quickie; in reality it is the only song from Hard Candy album which contains a message of social awareness in it." The sound of a clock ticking away emphasizes this message further. Madonna explained in New York magazine that the line "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" did not relate to her charity work. Instead it was her question to herself: "Do I understand this opinion that I've adopted or this Zeitgeist that I've allowed myself to be swept up in? Because you could have the best intentions but not have enough information and make huge mistakes." Regarding the line "Sometimes I feel what I need is a you intervention", Madonna explained, "[y]eah, meaning, sometimes I think you need to save me.".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: The most promising but also the most challenging method of isotope separation was gaseous diffusion. Graham's law states that the rate of effusion of a gas is inversely proportional to the square root of its molecular mass, so in a box containing a semi-permeable membrane and a mixture of two gases, the lighter molecules will pass out of the container more rapidly than the heavier molecules. The gas leaving the container is somewhat enriched in the lighter molecules, while the residual gas is somewhat depleted. The idea was that such boxes could be formed into a cascade of pumps and membranes, with each successive stage containing a slightly more enriched mixture. Research into the process was carried out at Columbia University by a group that included Harold Urey, Karl P. Cohen and John R. Dunning.In November 1942 the Military Policy Committee approved the construction of a 600-stage gaseous diffusion plant. On 14 December, M. W. Kellogg accepted an offer to construct the plant, which was codenamed K-25. A cost plus fixed fee contract was negotiated, eventually totaling $2.5 million. A separate corporate entity called Kellex was created for the project, headed by Percival C. Keith, one of Kellogg's vice presidents. The process faced formidable technical difficulties. The highly corrosive gas uranium hexafluoride had to be used, as no substitute could be found, and the motors and pumps would have to be vacuum tight and enclosed in inert gas. The biggest problem was the design of the barrier, which would have to be strong, porous and resistant to corrosion by uranium hexafluoride. The best choice for this seemed to be nickel, and Edward Adler and Edward Norris created a mesh barrier from electroplated nickel. A six-stage pilot plant was built at Columbia to test the process, but the Norris-Adler prototype proved to be too brittle. A rival barrier was developed from powdered nickel by Kellex, the Bell Telephone Laboratories and the Bakelite Corporation. In January 1944, Groves ordered the Kellex barrier into production.

Passage: The breakthrough with plutonium was by Bretscher and Norman Feather at the Cavendish Laboratory. They realised that a slow neutron reactor fuelled with uranium would theoretically produce substantial amounts of plutonium-239 as a by-product. This is because uranium-238 absorbs slow neutrons and forms a short-lived new isotope, uranium-239. The new isotope's nucleus rapidly emits an electron through beta decay producing a new element with an atomic mass of 239 and an atomic number of 93. This element's nucleus also emits an electron and becomes a new element with an atomic number 94 and a much greater half-life. Bretscher and Feather showed theoretically feasible grounds that element 94 would be fissile—readily fissioned by both slow and fast neutrons, with the added advantage of being different from uranium, and therefore could be chemically separated from it. Bretscher even devised a chemical method to separate.This new development was also confirmed in independent work by Edwin M. McMillan and Philip Abelson at Berkeley Radiation Laboratory also in 1940. Nicholas Kemmer of the Cambridge team proposed the names neptunium for the new element 93 and plutonium for 94 by analogy with the outer planets Neptune and Pluto beyond Uranus (uranium being element 92). The Americans fortuitously suggested the same names. The production and identification of the first sample of plutonium in 1941 is generally credited to Glenn Seaborg, using a cyclotron rather than a reactor at the University of California. In 1941, neither team knew of the existence of the other.Chadwick voiced concerns about the need for such pure plutonium to make a feasible bomb. He also suspected that the gun method of detonation for a plutonium bomb would lead to premature detonations due to impurities. After Chadwick met Robert Oppenheimer at the Los Alamos Laboratory in 1943, he learned of a proposed bomb design which they were calling an implosion. The sub-critical mass of plutonium was supposed to be surrounded by explosives that were arranged to detonate simultaneously. This would cause the plutonium core to be compressed and become supercritical. The core would be surrounded by a depleted uranium tamper which would reflect the neutrons back into the reaction, and contribute to the explosion by fissioning itself. This design solved Chadwick's worries about purity because it did not require the level that would be needed for the gun-type fission weapon. The biggest problem with this method was creating the explosive lenses. Chadwick took this information with him and described the method to Oliphant who then took it with him to England.

Passage: The centrifuge process was regarded as the only promising separation method in April 1942. Jesse Beams had developed such a process at the University of Virginia during the 1930s, but had encountered technical difficulties. The process required high rotational speeds, but at certain speeds harmonic vibrations developed that threatened to tear the machinery apart. It was therefore necessary to accelerate quickly through these speeds. In 1941 he began working with uranium hexafluoride, the only known gaseous compound of uranium, and was able to separate uranium-235. At Columbia, Urey had Karl Cohen investigate the process, and he produced a body of mathematical theory making it possible to design a centrifugal separation unit, which Westinghouse undertook to construct.Scaling this up to a production plant presented a formidable technical challenge. Urey and Cohen estimated that producing a kilogram (2.2 lb) of uranium-235 per day would require up to 50,000 centrifuges with 1-meter (3 ft 3 in) rotors, or 10,000 centrifuges with 4-meter (13 ft) rotors, assuming that 4-meter rotors could be built. The prospect of keeping so many rotors operating continuously at high speed appeared daunting, and when Beams ran his experimental apparatus, he obtained only 60% of the predicted yield, indicating that more centrifuges would be required. Beams, Urey and Cohen then began work on a series of improvements which promised to increase the efficiency of the process. However, frequent failures of motors, shafts and bearings at high speeds delayed work on the pilot plant. In November 1942 the centrifuge process was abandoned by the Military Policy Committee following a recommendation by Conant, Nichols and August C. Klein of Stone & Webster.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Eight-year-old Ardal Travis has a crush on his second class teacher, Ms. Purdy. He demonstrates his affections by giving her a toy ring. While shopping with his mother, Ardal sees Ms. Purdy, who happily explains that she has just been proposed to by her boyfriend Pierce and is engaged to be married. Pierce appears to be a jerk: he refuses to take Ms. Purdy for lunch to celebrate the hour-old engagement, instead insisting on going home to watch football.
Ardal sees his dad put a gun carefully in the closet; he stares into the closet contemplating his options.
Ardal confronts Pierce while Pierce is impatiently waiting for Ms. Purdy outside of the school.  Ardal challenges Pierce to a duel to the death, which Pierce mockingly accepts.
The next day, Ardal meets Pierce in the school yard. Pierce forgets his gun on purpose and Ardal pulls a gun on him. Pierce at first believes it is a toy, but Ardal insists it is not. Ms. Purdy attempts to intervene but Ardal refuses to back down. Pierce, reduced to a crying mess says he never loved Ms. Purdy but only proposed to her to "shut her up." Ardal shoots Pierce and he falls to the ground.
It is revealed that the gun was a toy after all, one that Ardal's father was saving in the closet until his birthday. Ms. Purdy angrily calls off the engagement and breaks up with Pierce. She walks Ardal home, agreeing to "keep this between ourselves." Ardal then tells Ms. Purdy that he doesn't deserve to marry her as well because he is "financially unstable and can't cater to all [her] needs" and that a woman like his teacher should get everything she wants. They then continue to walk hand in hand.
At the beginning of the movie Ms. Purdy asked her students to look up the three words (Reveal, Pretend and Love), these three words summarize the whole film .

Passage: Sometime after 4 p.m. on December 6, 1989, Marc Lépine arrived at the building housing the École Polytechnique, an engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal, armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife. Lépine purchased a rifle on November 21, 1989, in a Checkmate Sports store in Montreal. He had told the clerk that he was going to use it to hunt small game. Lépine had been in and around the École Polytechnique building at least seven times in the weeks leading up to December 6.
Lépine first sat in the office of the registrar on the second floor for a while. While there, he was seen rummaging through a plastic bag. He did not speak to anyone, even when a staff member asked if she could help him. Lépine left the office and was subsequently seen in other parts of the building before entering a second-floor mechanical engineering class of about sixty students at about 5:10 p.m. After approaching the student giving a presentation, he asked everyone to stop everything and ordered the women and men to opposite sides of the classroom. No one moved at first, believing it to be a joke until he fired a shot into the ceiling.Lépine then separated the nine women from the approximately fifty men and ordered the men to leave. He asked the remaining women whether they knew why they were there, and when one student replied "no," he answered: "I am fighting feminism." One of the students, Nathalie Provost, said, "Look, we are just women studying engineering, not necessarily feminists ready to march on the streets to shout we are against men, just students intent on leading a normal life." Lépine responded, "You're women, you're going to be engineers. You're all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists." He then opened fire on the students from left to right, killing six, and wounding three others, including Provost.  Before leaving the room, he wrote the word shit twice on a student project.Lépine continued into the second-floor corridor and wounded three students before entering another room where he twice attempted to shoot a female student. When his weapon failed to fire, he entered the emergency staircase where he was seen reloading his gun. He returned to the room he had just left, but the students had locked the door; Lépine failed to unlock it with three shots fired into the door. Moving along the corridor, he shot at others, wounding one, before moving towards the financial services office where he shot and killed a woman through the window of the door she had just locked.

Passage: On their 35th wedding anniversary, we hear the story of how the couple met in college.
P. J. "Petey" Simmons is a wealthy newcomer, so rival fraternities fight over him. His ego swells as frat boys and comely co-eds alike bid for his time. Petey keeps getting into trouble, too, including an arrest.
At a school dance, Petey's shy roommate has worked up the nerve to invite campus beauty Mirabel Allstairs to be his date. The increasingly arrogant Petey ignores his own date, Martha Scroggs, dancing with other girls instead.
Petey pulls pranks on campus, going so far as to change a professor's clocks to delay an exam. A later act of vandalism leads to yet another arrest. This time the judge threatens to throw the book at Petey, sentencing him to six months in jail. Petey asks for a week's continuance before sentencing, then uses the time to court Martha, having discovered her to be the daughter of the judge.
Once his scheme is revealed, Petey is locked in the town jail by the angry judge. Martha is smitten with him now, however, throws a rock to get arrested so she can end up in the next cell, holding hands with Petey between the bars.
Back in the present, the old judge still can't believe how his daughter and son-in-law ended up together. They also hear that Petey Jr. has just been placed under arrest, which doesn't surprise the judge a bit.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Like his predecessor Rafael Kubelík, and his successor Colin Davis, Solti found his early days as musical director marred by vituperative hostility from a small clique in the Covent Garden audience. Rotten vegetables were thrown at him, and his car was vandalised outside the theatre, with the words "Solti must go!" scratched on its paintwork. Some press reviews were strongly critical; Solti was so wounded by a review in The Times of his conducting of The Marriage of Figaro that he almost left Covent Garden in despair. The chief executive of the Opera House, Sir David Webster, persuaded him to stay with the company, and matters improved, helped by changes on which Solti insisted. The chorus and orchestra were strengthened, and in the interests of musical and dramatic excellence, Solti secured the introduction of the stagione system of scheduling performances, rather than the traditional repertory system. By 1967 The Times commented that "Patrons of Covent Garden today automatically expect any new production, and indeed any revival, to be as strongly cast as anything at the Met in New York, and as carefully presented as anything in Milan or Vienna".The company's repertory in the 1960s combined the standard operatic works with less familiar pieces. Among the most celebrated productions during Solti's time in charge was Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron in the 1965–66 and 1966–67 seasons. In 1970, Solti led the company to Germany, where they gave Don Carlos, Falstaff and Victory, a new work by Richard Rodney Bennett. The public in Munich and Berlin were, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "beside themselves with enthusiasm".Solti's bald head and demanding rehearsal style earned him the nickname "The Screaming Skull". A music historian called him "the bustling, bruising Georg Solti – a man whose entire physical and mental attitude embodied the words 'I'm in charge'." Singers such as Peter Glossop described him as a bully, and after working with Solti, Jon Vickers refused to do so again. Nevertheless, under Solti, the company was recognised as having achieved parity with the greatest opera houses in the world. Queen Elizabeth II conferred the title "the Royal Opera" on the company in 1968. By this point Solti was, in the words of his biographer Paul Robinson, "after Karajan, the most celebrated conductor at work". By the end of his decade as music director at Covent Garden Solti had conducted the company in 33 operas by 13 composers.In 1964 Solti separated from his wife. He moved into the Savoy Hotel, where not long afterwards he met Valerie Pitts, a British television presenter, sent to interview him. She too was married, but after pursuing her for three years, Solti persuaded her to divorce her husband. Solti and Valerie Pitts married on 11 November 1967. They had two daughters.

Passage: In 1960 Solti signed a three-year contract to be music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1962. Even before he took the post the Philharmonic's autocratic president, Dorothy Chandler, breached his contract by appointing a deputy music director without Solti's approval. Although he admired the chosen deputy, Zubin Mehta, Solti felt he could not have his authority undermined from the outset, and he withdrew from his appointment. He accepted an offer to become musical director of Covent Garden Opera Company, London. When first sounded out about the post he had declined it. After 14 years of experience at Munich and Frankfurt he was uncertain that he wanted a third successive operatic post. Moreover, founded only 15 years earlier, the Covent Garden company was not yet the equal of the best opera houses in Europe. Bruno Walter convinced Solti that it was his duty to take Covent Garden on.The biographer Montague Haltrecht suggests that Solti seized the breach of his Los Angeles contract as a convenient pretext to abandon the Philharmonic in favour of Covent Garden. However, in his memoirs Solti wrote that he wanted the Los Angeles position very much indeed. He originally considered holding both posts in tandem, but later acknowledged that he had had a lucky escape, as he could have done justice to neither post had he attempted to hold both simultaneously.Solti took up the musical directorship of Covent Garden in August 1961. The press gave him a cautious welcome, but there was some concern that under him there might be a drift away from the company's original policy of opera in English. Solti, however, was an advocate of opera in the vernacular, and he promoted the development of British and Commonwealth singers in the company, frequently casting them in his recordings and important productions in preference to overseas artists. He demonstrated his belief in vernacular opera with a triple bill in English of L'heure espagnole, Erwartung and Gianni Schicchi. As the decade went on, however, more and more productions had to be sung in the original language to accommodate international stars.

Passage: After further work as a répétiteur at the opera in Budapest, and with his standing enhanced by his association with Toscanini, Solti was given his first chance to conduct, on 11 March 1938. The opera was The Marriage of Figaro. During that evening, news came of the German invasion of Austria. Many Hungarians feared that Hitler would next invade Hungary; he did not do so, but Horthy, to strengthen his partnership with the Nazis, instituted anti-semitic laws, mirroring the Nuremberg Laws, restricting Hungary's Jews from engaging in professions. Solti's family urged him to move away. He went first to London, where he made his Covent Garden debut, conducting the London Philharmonic for a Russian ballet season. The reviewer in The Times was not impressed with Solti's efforts, finding them "too violent, for he lashed at the orchestra and flogged the music so that he endangered the delicate, evocative atmosphere." At about this time Solti dropped the name "György" in favour of "Georg".After his appearances in London Solti went to Switzerland to seek out Toscanini, who was conducting in Lucerne. Solti hoped that Toscanini would help find him a post in the US. He was unable to do so, but Solti found work and security in Switzerland as vocal coach to the tenor Max Hirzel, who was learning the role of Tristan in Wagner's opera. Throughout the Second World War, Solti remained in Switzerland. He did not see his father again: Mor Stern died of diabetes in a Budapest hospital in 1943. Solti was reunited with his mother and sister after the war. In Switzerland he could not obtain a work permit as a conductor, but earned his living as a piano teacher. After he won the 1942 Geneva International Piano Competition he was permitted to give piano recitals, but was still not allowed to conduct. During his exile, he met Hedwig (Hedi) Oeschli, daughter of a lecturer at Zürich University. They married in 1946. In his memoirs he wrote of her, "She was very elegant and sophisticated. ... Hedi gave me a little grace and taught me good manners – although she never completely succeeded in this. She also helped me enormously in my career".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Ghosts I–IV is the sixth studio album by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, released on March 2, 2008 by The Null Corporation. It was the band's first independent release, following their split from longtime label Interscope Records the prior year. The album's production team included Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, studio collaborators Atticus Ross and Alan Moulder, and instrumental contributions from Alessandro Cortini, Adrian Belew, and Brian Viglione.
Reznor described the music of Ghosts as "a soundtrack for daydreams", a sentiment echoed by critics, who compared it to the work of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. The tracks are unnamed, identified only by their track listing and group number, and is an almost entirely instrumental album. Although initially intended to be a five-track EP, the final release consisted of four nine-track EPs, totaling 36 tracks. The album was released under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-SA) and in a variety of differing packages and price points, including a US$300 "Ultra-Deluxe Limited Edition", without prior announcement. A user-generated "film festival" was also announced, inviting fans to visually interpret the music and post their submissions.
The album received a favorable reception from critics, who complimented its experimental nature and unorthodox release method, although some viewed the former as its weak point. The album reached number 14 in the US, and was nominated for two Grammy Awards (Best Rock Instrumental Performance and Best Box Set or Limited Edition Package) representing the first time music released under a Creative Commons license had been nominated for a Grammy Award.

Passage: The seventh and eighth major Nine Inch Nails studio-releases, Ghosts I–IV and The Slip, were released in March and May 2008 respectively. Both albums feature contributions from live-band member Alessandro Cortini.  Since the release of Ghosts I–IV, a 25-date tour was announced in several North American cities.  Cortini and Freese returned as members from the previous tour, while Robin Finck rejoined the band.  The lineup was initially to include Rich Fownes, but before any scheduled performances it was revealed that Justin Meldal-Johnsen would instead be contributing on bass guitar.
Supporting acts for the tour include Deerhunter, Crystal Castles, Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Ghostland Observatory, A Place to Bury Strangers, and White Williams. In early June, a tour EP was released for free on the Nine Inch Nails website featuring four songs from the supporting artists and one from Nine Inch Nails.  The files are DRM-free MP3s that are fully tagged, and included with the download are desktop wallpapers and a printable tour poster.
The band headlined the 2008 Lollapalooza festival, the 2008 Virgin Festival, and the first Pemberton Music Festival.
In May 2008, Nine Inch Nails announced that premium seating for all the upcoming 2008 tour shows would be offered in a pre-sale for fans who registered at the official Nine Inch Nails website. In an effort to combat ticket scalpers, each concert ticket will list the purchaser's legal name.  The ticketing process was previously used for smaller pre-sales and was available exclusively to fan club members.
On July 26, Reznor introduced an "unplugged" portion into the live show in which the band steps to the front of the stage about an hour into the show, with Reznor on vibraphone and bassist Meldal-Johnsen playing an upright bass. The 20-minute jazzy, acoustic set is taken mostly from Ghosts I - IV.  The stage show also featured mesh LED curtains that projected various visuals, ranging from falling rain to static to a ruined city, and made the band appear to be playing on "a stage that appeared to be constructed entirely out of lights." Nine Inch Nails later confirmed that the tour was to extend to South America  and it was thought this would be the last Americas set of dates but soon after Reznor announced yet more North American dates including two dates in tourist capital Florida.
On October 8, 2008, after finishing up their last show in South America, Reznor posted on the official Nine Inch Nails website blog that Josh Freese would be leaving the band following the completion of the current tour. Shortly after, it was announced that Alessandro Cortini would also be leaving the band. On November 15, 2008, Reznor announced via the official Nine Inch Nails website that Ilan Rubin of Lostprophets would be replacing Freese after his departure at the end of 2008. No replacement was announced for Cortini, and the band subsequently toured as a 4-piece without a full-time keyboard player.

Passage: A remix album, titled Year Zero Remixed, was released in November 2007. Due to the expiration of his contract with Interscope Records, the album's release, marketing, and promotion were completely in Reznor's control. The album features remixes from artists including The Faint, Ladytron, Bill Laswell, Saul Williams, Olof Dreijer of The Knife, and Sam Fogarino of Interpol. Reznor himself strongly supports fan-made remixes of songs from the album, as evidenced by his decision to upload every song in multi-track form to the then-newly launched Nine Inch Nails remix website.  Instrumental versions of the songs on Year Zero are available at the site for download in multiple formats, including MP3, WAV, GarageBand, and Ableton Live formats.
A planned film adaption of Year Zero became a television project in 2007. Reznor met with various writers and pitched the idea to television networks. The 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike affected the pre-production stage. Nevertheless, Reznor commented in 2008 that the project is "still churning along", and that he had begun working with American film producer Lawrence Bender. In 2010, Reznor started developing the Year Zero miniseries with HBO and BBC Worldwide Productions. Reznor and Bender collaborated with Carnivàle writer Daniel Knauf to create the science fiction epic. When asked about the miniseries during an "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit on November 13, 2012, Reznor said it was "currently in a holding state" and explained, "We [Reznor and Sheridan] didn't find the right match with a writer, and really have been avoiding doing what we should have done from the beginning: write it ourselves. [...] This project means a lot to me and will see the light of day in one form or another." In 2017, during an interview promoting new Nine Inch Nails EP Add Violence, Reznor said that "They got so far as hiring a writer for it, but then it fell to shit because we never had the right writer. I should have just done it [myself].".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.