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?

Read More

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.

Read More

Quiz Week 19 (THEMED)

Themed week 1

This new blogger layout and interface is not good at all. Not as if the earlier one was good but the current version is much more uncomfortable. Anyway, this is a themed week, where the answers of each individual question are connected by a theme. Some of them may lead to the theme directly while you may have to do a little manipulation for a few. The names of those who get the theme within a week will have their names appearing at the end of the post due to which it is recommended you don't post as anon.
The answer has been posted below the post as a bulk.


1) In 1995, owner Abe Pollin announced he was changing the team's name because Bullets had acquired violent overtones that had made him increasingly uncomfortable over the years, particularly given the high homicide and crime rate in the early 1990s in Washington, D.C. The final straw was the assassination of his longtime friend, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. A contest was held to choose a new name for the team and the choices were narrowed to the Dragons, Express, Stallions, Sea Dogs, or ________.
The change generated some controversy because Washington is a predominantly African-American city and _______ is a rank in the Ku Klux Klan.
Fill up those blanks with the same word.

{main theme hint: nobody knows for sure which ____ but it is speculated that it is the scrivener and manuscript seller}


2) In 2006, anti-virus company Sophos discovered a computer worm known as "W32/Hoots-A", which sends a graphical image with the letters "O RLY?" to a print queue when it infects a Windows-based computer. The  image macro is based on a photo taken by nature photographer John White, which he posted to the newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.animals in 2001. According to White, the expression in the photo was due to the creature panting to cool off, similar to a dog.

What is the creature we are talking about?
{main theme hint: the birthday present}


3) This is a genus in the legume family and comprises of around 280 flowering plants. The yellow legume seeds of these plants, were popular with the Romans, who spread the plant's cultivation throughout the Roman Empire. Their name derives from a Latin word and was given with regard to the fact that many found that the plant has a tendency to ravage the land on which it grows. The peas, which appear after the flowering period, were also said to be fit only for the consumption of savage creatures. The beans beans are commonly sold in a salty solution in jars (like olives and pickles) and can be eaten with or without the skin.

Identify the genus.
{main theme hint : double meaning }


4) The plot is a light-hearted tribute to Al Jolson's film The Jazz Singer. The title and climax a song written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg for the 1936 Warner Bros. feature-length film The Singing Kid. Identify what all this about and then, the name the lead character bills himself.

 {main theme hint: the jazz singer }



5) The origin of this phrase is  from the general custom in some cultures, of a warrior adding a new item to their head-gear for every enemy slain or in other cases from the custom of establishing the success of a hunter as being the first to bag a game bird. An example of the use of these can be found in the traditional cultures of the Meunitarris of Alberta; and the Mandan people (present-day North and South Dakota). Identify the phrase.
{main theme hint: the epidermal covering }



6) Identify the album which was later re released. The title track tells of a lover waiting all alone by the telephone for the object of their desire to call.

 {main theme hint: square root}



7) Consider an equilateral triangle ABC and let S be its incircle. Let AD be the median from A , D lying on BC. What is the resultant geometrical figure ?
{main theme hint: let B lie on the origin with C on the positive X axis and A in the first quadrant. }


Right. Thats all. Hope it wasn't too hard.

Read More