General Knowledge Questions

Which one of the following is not a borderline element?

An advantage of the corporate form of business is that

Who discovered Pluto?

A passage is given with five questions following it. Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.

Teaching about compassion and empathy in schools can help deal with problems of climate change and environmental degradation,” says Barbara Maas, secretary,
Standing Committee for Environment and Conservation, International Buddhist Confederation (IBC). She was in New Delhi to participate in the IBC’s governing
council meeting, December 10-11, 2017. “We started an awareness campaign in the year 2005-2006 with H H The Dalai Lama when we learnt that tiger skins were
being traded in China and Tibet. At that time, I was not a Buddhist; I wrote to the Dalai Lama asking him to say that ‘this is harmful’ and he wrote back to say, “We
will stop this.” He used very strong words during the Kalachakra in 2006, when he said, ‘If he sees people wearing fur and skins, he doesn’t feel like living. ‘This sent
huge shock waves in the Himalayan community. Within six months, in Lhasa, people ripped the fur trim of their tubba, the traditional Tibetan dress.

The messenger was ideal and the audience was receptive,” says Maas who is a conservationist. She has studied the battered fox’s behavioral ecology in Serengeti, Africa. She heads the endangered species conservation at the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) International Foundation for Nature, Berlin. “I met Samdhong Rinpoche, The Karmapa, HH the Dalai Lama and Geshe Lhakdor and I thought, if by being a Buddhist, you become like this, I am going for it, “says Maas, who led the IBC initiative for including the Buddhist perspective to the global discourse on climate change by presenting the statement, ‘The Time to Act is Now: a Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change,’ at COP21 in Paris.

“It was for the first time in the history of Buddhism that leaders of different sanghas came together to take a stand on anything! The statement lists a couple of important things: the first is that we amass things that we don’t need; there is overpopulation; we need to live with contentment and deal with each other and the environment with love and compassion,” elaborates Maas. She is an ardent advocate of a vegan diet because “consuming meat and milk globally contributes more to climate change than all "transport in the world.”

Turning vegetarian or vegan usually requires complete change of perspective before one gives up eating their favorite food. What are the Buddhist ways to bring about this kind of change at the individual level? “To change our behavior, Buddhism is an ideal vehicle; it made me a more contented person,” says Maas, who grew up in Germany, as a sausage chomping, meat-loving individual. She says, “If I can change, so can anybody”.

According to the passage, how can studying compassion and empathy in schools help?

Read the following passage carefully and choose the most appropriate answer to the question out of the four alternatives.

To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman brain is required. A few simple rules will keep you free, not from all errors, but from silly errors. If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself. Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted. Thinking that you know when in fact you do not is a bad mistake, to which we are all prone. I believe myself that hedgehogs eat black beetles, because I have been told that they do; but if I were writing a book on the habits of hedgehogs, I should not commit myself until I had seen one enjoying this diet. Aristotle, however, was less cautious. Ancient and medieval writers knew all about unicorns and salamanders; not one of them thought it necessary to avoid dogmatic statements about them because he had never seen one of them.

The author portrays mankind as

In the following question, out of the four alternatives, select the alternative which best expresses the meaning of the idiom/phrase.

Rome was not built in a day

In the following question, the sentence given with blank to be filled in with an appropriate word. Select the correct alternative out of the four and indicate it by selecting the appropriate option.

Environmental protection and management is ______attracting a lot of attention these days.

In the following question, a sentence / a part of sentence is underlined. Below are given alternatives to the underlined part which may improve the sentence. Choose the correct alternative. In case no improvement is required, choose "No Improvement" option.

We are withnessing not triumph but the breakdown of democracy.