Quiz week 27

Themed week. LVCish. Not an Olympics one.

1) The PGM 17 Thor was the first operational ballistic missile of the U.S. Air Force (USAF).  Subsequent satellite and space probe flights soon followed, using a Thor first stage with several different upper stages with each getting a greek letter as a name.
What was the name given to the fourth stage of the Thor? (Let the name be X)
Eventually the entire Thor-X launch vehicle came to be called simply X. NASA intended X as "an interim general purpose vehicle" to be "used for communication, meteorological, and scientific satellites and lunar probes during '60 and '61". Now there have been more than 300 Xs launched, with a 95 percent success rate.

This is the Thor
#No reason why this pic should be here

2) This fellow was was an Egyptian polymath. Don't believe the polymath part? Well, he was

Chancellor of the King of Egypt, Doctor, First in line after the King of Upper Egypt, Administrator of the Great Palace, Hereditary nobleman, High Priest of Heliopolis, Builder, Chief Carpenter, Chief Sculptor, and Maker of Vases in Chief.

Anyway he was the architect who developed the first pyramids in ancient Egypt, His ability was such that he was later said to have descended from the gods. Several scholars regard him to be the real father of medicine.
His name means "one who comes in peace" (I'm not sure people now would think of him when someone says "peace").
What is it?

Another fellow has a name that is an anagram of Death By Ra, is the name of a fictional sworn protector of mankind from the guy above.


Identify both these people.

the polymath dude

3) This is a nickname that has been given to several women. Some of them are

• Indira Gandhi
• Margaret Thatcher
• Benazir Bhutto
• Angela Merkel
• Golda Meir ( Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974 ) 

There is also a movie about one of the above with the same name. What is that nickname?

And which man-made structure is also called the La dame de fer which is French for the above nickname?


4) Starting in the late 1860's, two of America's most prominent paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, had a falling out. Personal attacks between the men, thinly veiled as "scientific criticism," followed in articles that they wrote for publication. Later, each would send teams into the fossil fields of the West where they would fight over digging rights amid claims that the other side had destroyed or damaged fossils in order to block their rivals from getting a hold of them.
In their rush to beat each other to the next find, the scientists often based their claims on incomplete or inaccurate data.

In 1877 Marsh wrote a short two-paragraph article for the American Journal of Science that included only a description of the animal's vertebral column, but he named the creature anyway. Marsh estimated that the X, meaning "deceptive lizard", was fifty feet in length.
In that same year, in another short article in American Journal of Science, Marsh claimed finding another dinosaur based on a description of the pelvis and vertebrae. He named this one Y meaning "thunder lizard" and estimated it to be seventy to eighty feet in length. Y is in the logo of a petroleum company.
Y please and if possible, X.


5) From the logo, identify this organization that is often referred to as "GAP".

6) He is a sea giant, god of the ocean, king of the sea creatures and a party freak in Norse mythology. A phenomenon in which the leading edge of the incoming tide forms a wave of water that travels up a river or narrow bay against the direction of the river or bay's current is named after the god who used to go all crazy like this.
Identify the god or the popular word for this phenomenon.

7)  Gray goo is a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario known as ecophagy ("eating the environment"). They were originally described by mathematician John von Neumann, and are sometimes referred to as von Neumann machines. The term grey goo was coined by nanotechnology pioneer Eric Drexler in his 1986 book Engines of Creation.
What things would be responsible for the grey goo?




8) This is a term that Isaac Asimov coined for the fear of mechanical men. It  is not a fear of roboticists, scientists, or even mad scientists, but rather, a fear of artificial human beings. This fear gets its name from a character in M W Shelly's The Modern Prometheus. What is this fear called?


9) This is the Nicobar Pigeon, the only living member of the genus Caloenas.  Based on several tests, it is sensible to believe that the Nicobar Pigeon is  the closest living relative of the extinct didines (Raphinae) family. The Rodrigues Solitaire is one of the two birds in that family. Which was the other?

10) Carl Diem, president of the Organizing Committee of the 1936 Summer Olympics, wanted to hold a torchbearers' ceremony in the stadium at Delphi, site of the famous oracle, where the Pythian Games were also held. For this reason he ordered construction of a milestone with the _______ carved in the sides, and that a torchbearer should carry the flame along with an escort of three others from there to Berlin. The ceremony was celebrated but the stone was never removed. Later, two British authors Lynn and Gray Poole when visiting Delphi in the late 1950s saw the stone and incorrectly reported in their "History of the Ancient Games" that the ________ design came from ancient Greece.

The thing in question was probably inspired by an ad for Dunlop tyres. What are we talking about? And what are the things in it supposed to represent?

The overall theme?

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Quiz week 23 (themed week 3)

Quiz Week 23

Please do leave your answers as comments.
This is a themed week with all the answers vaguely leading to a theme. Get the theme to get a special mention when we give the answers.
There was a request to make it very simple. Here is an attempt at that.  I have also tried to make the questions short.


1) This two word term originated in racing; as an entity that was not known to gamblers and thus was difficult to place betting odds on. What?



2) This is one of the most iconic sculptures in Hampi - the statue of Ugra Narasimha. But the statue itself was not meant to be an angry Narasimha. The Narasimha became ugra(angry) when a part of the original statue fell down. What fell down?
If it helps, whatever fell down is now in a nearby museum. 


3) They were invented in 1704 for use in watches by Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, Peter Debaufre, and Jacob Debaufre, who received an English patent for the idea. Originally natural ____ were used, such as diamond, sapphire, ruby, and garnet. In 1902, a process to make synthetic sapphire and ruby was invented by making ______ much cheaper.
_____ are advantageous due to their high accuracy, very small size and weight, low and predictable friction, including good temperature stability, and the ability to operate without lubrication and in corrosive environments.
What?


4) What are these?


5) Here's this week's hard question:



Mr.____ was conceived by Dr. Richard Moriarty of Pittsburgh to help children learn to avoid ingesting poisons.

Why did Dr. Dr. Richard Moriarty want to choose an alternative to the original label for poison?



6) The original name of this Disney Princess is Badroulbadour (Arabic بدر البدور, badru l-budūr, "full moon of full moons") in the One Thousand and One Night's 'tale of the enchanted lamp'. But the guys at Disney gave her a different name.

What name?


7) Connect Gujarat, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Lakshadweep (exhaustive).



8) The term derives from the story that the kings of Siam were accustomed to make a present of one of these animals to courtiers who had rendered themselves obnoxious, in order to ruin the recipient by the cost of its maintenance. In modern usage, it is an object, scheme, business venture, facility, etc., considered to be without use or value.
Ironically, some of Thailand's highest civilian awards are also named with the same phrase.
Identify the phrase.


9) slightly used but still...
X is the first nuclear reactor in all of Asia. The characteristic “blue glow” of nuclear reactors is due to Čerenkov radiation. Nehru was highly impressed with its beauty and he decided to name the reactor as X, after mythical damsels. Identify.

 10)  In 1833, the company's father, founded an import business to sell seashells to London collectors. When collecting seashell specimens in the Caspian Sea area in 1892, the founders realised there was potential in exporting lamp oil from the region and commissioned the world's first purpose-built oil tanker, the Murex (Latin for a type of snail), to enter this market; by 1907 the company had a fleet. 
X's logo is one of the most familiar commercial symbols in the world.
The company's official name is Koninklijke Nederlandsche ______ Maatschappi.
i) Which company are we talking about?
ii) Based on what creature is their logo designed?
iii) What were the colours of the logo meant to relate to?




11) Connect

 

12) The work was initially done by  the person shown below which gave the structure its popular name.

Maharaja Ranjit Singh

This person rebuilt and decorated the interiors of the structure.

Jassa Singh Ahluwalia

  

What?



Right. I guess that would do. Now connect.

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Quiz Week 21

Leave your answers as comments if you want us posting questions very frequently.

1) The seven Rishis (Sapta Rishis) became quite proud because they believed that they were extremely pious people and they were always detached because of their penance. Their wives had the idea that there were no women more virtuous than they, and there could be no wives so loyal as they were. Such pride would be inexcusable in anyone, and for sages and their wives to have such pride was unthinkable. So Shiva and Vishnu decided to teach them a lesson. Shiva took the form of a Bikshandar while Vishnu came as Mohini.
Now, the sages took a look at Mohini's beauty and forgot themselves, and about their penance.
As for their wives, the moment Siva as Bikshandar made His appearance before them, they too began to admire His good looks, forgetting that they had not so long ago claimed that they were among the most virtuous in the land!
But among the sages, X was not tempted by Mohini. And among the women, Y, the wife of X was not tempted by Bikshandar.
Due to this Y was given an exalted position, beside X.
 i Where?
This is the story behind a certain marriage ritual.
 ii Which?


2) The guy standing next to MJ is a mystic and psychic who claims that he is doing the stuff he does by using actual psychic powers. Now this guy tried to sue Nintendo over a certain pokemon.
He claimed that the pokemon was an unauthorised appropriation of his identity The katakana for the character's name, ユンゲラー, is visually similar to the transliteration of this psychic's own name into Japanese (ユリゲラー). He is quoted as saying: "Nintendo turned me into an evil, occult Pokémon character. Nintendo stole my identity by using my name and my signature image." The lawsuit was thrown out of court.
Identify the pokemon and this dude.

guy on left

3) Explain  (apologies to the non Madras fellows )
how this guy

this guy

became a barber  because of this (and local Tamils) :

barber maker

4) Sitter. What is this providing an explanation for?

funda

5) Born in Nagoya, Japan, the guy in the image began taking lessons in the electronic organ from the age of five. He improved his skills in the instrument in a cover band that played jazz and rock music. He was never classically-trained or particularly dedicated to music. However, he gained some experience in composing and arranging pieces, using both the piano and a computer to assist him.
He cites rock bands Deep Purple and Emerson, Lake & Palmer as major musical influences. He has also cited as influences the works of the Russian romantic composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, particularly his four piano concertos.
Identify this legend or any of his major works.

identify his major work

 
6) On March 31st, 2012, computer programmer Will King took photographs of runners at the annual Cooper River Bridge Run in Charleston, South Carolina. King uploaded a set of almost 100 photos to Flickr and Facebook, where one of his friends dubbed a certain man as a “Ridiculously _____ Guy.” On April 3rd, 2012, King submitted the Flickr photo to the /r/pics subreddit in a post titled “My friend calls him ‘Mr Ridiculously ________ Guy’”, which received over 40,000 up votes.
According to an interview with King published by Charleston City Paper, King posted it to Flickr around lunchtime and within an hour, it had reached 300,000 views.
The day after the image was posted to Reddit, the man in the photo was identified as 25-year-old New York resident ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, by the Charleston City Paper. The article went on to claim that they were looking for ,,,,,,,,,,,, in order to conduct an interview about his newfound Internet fame. On April 5th, The Daily Mail reported that they spoke with ,,,,,,,,,,,,’s father, who revealed that his son was in a committed relationship of five years and was seeking a job in the public relations industry in New York.
Fill up the ______s and ,,,,,,,,,,,s .


7 a) A connect. Unsure if the list is exhaustive.

$1 million prize winner in Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

elegant universe

Jr. Sagan.
Though he looks like someone with Indian origins, is not.

 And a fourth scientist you'll have to get from question 7b.

7b) X and Y had a bet. If X won the bet, he would get four years of the magazine Private Eye. If X loses, Y will get one year of Penthouse. When X made the bet in 1975, we were 80% certain that Cygnus was a ____ _____.
X later said that "although the situation with Cygnus X-1 has not changed much since we made the bet in 1975, there is now so much other observational evidence in favour of ____ ____ that I have conceded the bet. I paid the specified penalty, which was a one year subscription to Penthouse, to the outrage of Y's liberated wife."
X is what I want. Fill up the blanks and give me Y if you want.

    

8) Its most striking feature is the ____ which is actually its intestines showing through its semi transparent skin. The _____ looks clearer after it eats, and the skin is very elastic so that it will not break the creature is bitten.
As the creature evolves, the direction of the _____ on its abdomen, created by its internal organs showing through the skin, reverses. The skin on most of its body is moist, due to an oily fluid; however, the skin on its belly spiral feels smooth.
The creature gets its name from a term for a certain creature in larval stage. 
The blank and the creature(s) being spoken about.

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