Quiz Week 20

Answers May Be Given A Few Days From Now... Meanwhile Drop Down Your Answers...
PS: DON'T POST YOUR ANSWERS AS ANON


1) It first had three of em pointing northwards like in the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich till the early 1920s. After 1922, there was only one and it pointed towards West. Since 2002, it is pointing Eastwards.  What is this about?

Answer: The Arsenal FC logo


2)  In 1841, C. J. Fritzsche showed that, by treating indigo with caustic potash, it yielded an oil, which he named ______ from the name of one of the indigo-yielding plants, which was named ultimately from the Sanskrit word for dark-blue. Identify the chemical.

Answer: Aniline (from Nilam, Anila)


3) Identify what's drawn. Who's artwork?

Answer: The Statue of Liberty by Gustav Eiffel




4) The guy in image 1 was the first to move towards East while the other guy fell down. Explain.

That one was pretty tough. You must probably ask your guardian for help.

Answer: Very hard one. These people were one across and one down in the first newspaper crossword of United Kingdom. In the first Manchester Guardian puzzle, one across, "One of our Elder Statesmen", was BALFOUR and one down, "The head of the Government", was BALDWIN.

5) This one's about a certain group that left me wonderstruck when I was young. I will tell you more about this when I give the answer a few days from now.
Connect LVC like (non exhaustive)

Answer: These are plays by The Temple of Fine Arts, Malaysia ...they aren't performing all that frequently now. Each of their plays is a masterpiece...really superb stuff. If I have to write about their perfectness, I'd have to be writing for days. Here is their website : http://tfa.org.my/bday/


6) Identify whats in the box.

 

Answer: Keiko the orca that portrayed Free Willy

7) This question is contributed by K K Shashank.
X was a cousin of Adam Smith , the renowned philosopher and economist. He is said to have won a number of contracts to supply food and whiskey to the the Royal Navy. Hence the term meal man on his grave stone. X has been made really famous for a completely different reasons, in the world of literature. Id X and the character that was based on him.
This was written on X's grave stone. 

Answer: Ebenzer Lennox Scrooge. Dickens read 'meal man' as the 'mean man'. Surprised that someone was remembered for their meanness, Dickens used this name for the character.
 

8) And an arbit connect to finish off an arbit week.

Answer: Crystal Palace. First pic: Dinosaurs in crystal palace, 2nd: the ruins of Crystal Palace, 3rd: Crystal Palace FC, 4th: Robert Baden-Powell first noticed the interest of girls in Scouting while attending a Boy Scout meeting at Crystal Palace in 1909. This observation would later lead to the formation of Girl Guides, then Girl Scouts 5th: Infomart a building in Dallas, Texas modelled after the Crystal Palace.

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Fact File #2 NATURAL DISASTERS

With the huge earthquake that sent tremors(quite literally) today,11/4/2012 ,
and the talks of tsunamis that bring us the memories of Dec 26,04 back,
I decided to post something about natural Disasters that you are unlikely to have heard of before.

1) Let us start of with a relatively common thing,
the tsunami
the name derives from Japanese for harbour waves , and are often refered to as tidal waves which is wrong.
they are oft triggered by earth quakes near or under the sea.
Tsunamis cause damage by two mechanisms: the smashing force of a wall of water travelling at high speed, and the destructive power of a large volume of water draining off the land and carrying all with it, even if the wave did not look large.

Damage caused by a tsunami

LOL

2)
Limnic eruption
Never heard of it right?
thats probably because this has happened only twice in recorded history

A limnic eruption, also referred to as a lake overturn, is a rare type of natural disaster in which  CO₂ suddenly erupts from deep lake water, suffocating wildlife, livestock and humans. Such an eruption may also cause tsunamis in the lake as the rising CO₂ displaces water. Scientists believe lanslides,volcanic activity, or explosions can trigger such an eruption. Lakes in which such activity occurs may be known as limnically active lakes or exploding lakes. Some features of limnically active lakes include:

• CO₂-saturated incoming water
• A cool lake bottom indicating an absence of direct volcanic interaction with lake waters
• An upper and lower thermal layer with differing CO₂ saturations
• Proximity to areas with volcanic activity

For a limnic eruption to occur, the lake must be nearly saturated with gas.
Once the lake is saturated with CO₂, it is very unstable. A trigger is all that is needed to set off an eruption.
Once an eruption occurs, a large CO₂ cloud forms above the lake and expands to the neighbouring region. Because CO₂ is denser than air, it has a tendency to sink to the ground while pushing breathable air up. As a result, life forms that need to breathe oxygen suffocate once the CO₂ cloud reaches them, as there is very little oxygen in the cloud. The CO₂ can make human bodily fluids very acidic, potentially causingCarbon di oxide poisoning . As victims gasp for air they actually hurt themselves more by inhaling the CO₂ gas.
(the thing abt limnic explosion was from wiki,for more details search it on wiki)

3)
Gamma-ray bursts
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are flashes of gamma rays associated with extremely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the most luminous electromagetic events known to occur in the universe. Bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several minutes; a typical burst lasts 20–40 seconds. The initial burst is usually followed by a longer-lived "afterglow" emitted at longer wavelengths 


The sources of most GRBs are billions of light years away from EARTH, implying that the explosions are both extremely energetic (a typical burst releases as much energy in a few seconds as the sun will in its entire 10-billion-year lifetime)
All the bursts astronomers have recorded so far have come from distant galaxies and have been harmless to Earth, but if one occurred within our galaxy and were aimed straight at us, the effects could be devastating. Currently orbiting satellites detect an average of about one gamma-ray burst per day.
More Details

4)
1918 flu pandemic The 1918 flu pandemic (the "Spanish flu") was an influenza pandemic, and the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus (the second was the 2009 flu pandemic, an outbreak of swine flu). It was an unusually severe and deadly pandemic that spread across the world. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin. Most victims were healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks, which predominantly affect juvenile, elderly, or weakened patients. The flu pandemic was implicated in the outbreak ofencephalitis lethargica in the 1920s.

The pandemic lasted from January 1918 to December 1920, spreading even to theArctic and remote Pacific islands. Between 50 and 100 million died, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. Even using the lower estimate of 50 million people, 3% of the world's population (which was 1.86 billion at the time) died of the disease. Some 500 million, or 27%, were infected.

the cause

5)
HAIL STORMS
Hail is a form of solid precipitation. It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is referred to as a hail stone. Hail stones generally fall at higher speeds as they grow in size, though complicating factors such as melting, friction with air, wind, and interaction with rain and other hail stones can slow their descent through Earth's atmosphere. Severe weather warnings are issued for hail when the stones reach a damaging size, as it can cause serious damage to man-made structures and, most commonly, farmers' crops.
During the Middle Ages, people in Europe used to ring church bells and fire cannons to try to prevent hail, and the subsequent damage to crops. Updated versions of this approach are available as modern hail cannons. Cloud seeding after World War II was done to eliminate the hail threat, particularly across Russia - where it was claimed a 50 to 80 percent reduction in crop damage from hail storms was achieved by deploying silver iodide in clouds using rockets and artillery shells. Their results have not been able to be verified. Hail suppression programs have been undertaken by 15 countries between 1965 and 2005.
But ,to this day, no hail prevention method has been proven to work.

PS
Hope you are all safe and don't get affected by any of these :D
Oh yeah and I also hope that the mayas were wrong

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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.

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FACT FILE 1 #SPACE

Howdy??
Those  <fill in adjective yourself> exams had kept us away for a while


Owing to some popular demand ,we have decided to post a bunch of facts now and then regarding a particular theme
This Week's theme is space...so here we go

Before We Get Started,set the tone by simultaneously playing this space rock song.....

(and btw that is the only Pink Floyd Song where all the 5 band members have contributed)

1)
In 2008, Doritos were promoted by an "out-of-this-world" advertising campaign, literally beaming a 30 second advertisement for Doritos brand tortilla chips into a planetary system 42 light years away. 
The project was in collaboration with EISCAT Space Center in Svalbard, Norway. 
The "You Make It, We'll Play It" contest chose the winning advertisement that was transmitted on June 12, 2008. The ad was beamed towards a distant star within the Ursa Major constellation that is orbited by planets which may harbor life. 


2)
NASA began a tradition of playing music to astronauts during the Gemini Program, and first used music to wake up a flight crew during Apollo 15. Each track is specially chosen, often by the astronauts' families, and usually has a special meaning to an individual member of the crew, or is applicable to their daily activities


Here's a famous one

other famous songs songs include Coldplay's Viva La Vida,
Oh yeah the song which you are supposed to be playing now(I know you arent),
the one at the top of the post was also played on the Phobos mission.

3. The Tungaska event
Tungaska is a river somewhere in Soviet Russia(yes,the place where the blog reads you)
where an extremely bizarre event took plae about a century ago.

It was a huge explosion believed to be caused deu to a powerfule meteor or comet burst.
For comparison the blast 1000 times as powerful the Hiroshima explosion.
Heres an eyewitness report

• Krasnoyaretz newspaper, July 13, 1908

Kezhemskoe village. On the 17th an unusual atmospheric event was observed. At 7:43 the noise akin to a strong wind was heard. Immediately afterwards a horrific thump sounded, followed by an earthquake that literally shook the buildings, as if they were hit by a large log or a heavy rock. The first thump was followed by a second, and then a third. Then the interval between the first and the third thumps were accompanied by an unusual underground rattle, similar to a railway upon which dozens of trains are travelling at the same time. Afterwards for 5 to 6 minutes an exact likeness of artillery fire was heard: 50 to 60 salvoes in short, equal intervals, which got progressively weaker. After 1.5–2 minutes after one of the "barrages" six more thumps were heard, like cannon firing, but individual, loud and accompanied by tremors. The sky, at the first sight, appeared to be clear. There was no wind and no clouds. However upon closer inspection to the north, i.e. where most of the thumps were heard, a kind of an ashen cloud was seen near the horizon, which kept getting smaller and more transparent and possibly by around 2–3 p.m. completely disappeared.

Oooh...Scary

4)

If two pieces of metal touch in space, they become permanently stuck together

This may sound unbelievable, but it is true.

Two pieces of metal without any coating on them will form in to one piece in the vacuum of space. This doesn’t happen on earth because the atmosphere puts a layer of oxidized material between the surfaces. 

This might seem like it would be a big problem on the space station but as most tools used there have come from earth, they are already coated with material. In fact, the only evidence of this seen so far has been in experiments designed to provoke the reaction. This process is called cold welding.

 For those who still don’t believe it, here is the Wikipedia article on Cold Welding.

5)
Interested in spotting  a comet yourself??
Here's a table that might come in handy
LIST OF COMETS VISIBLE SOON


Too Be Continued...

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Quiz Week 18

We're turning 18!

This is the simplest set so far.

ANSWERS AT THE END OF THE POST

1) There is this Finnish epic called Kalevala (pretty small compared to Ramayana and about the same size as the Odyssey). These were sung and each line had a specific tune and were in a local Finnish dialect. They were passed down from generation to generation but the lineage of the original story tellers came to a halt. But due to the efforts of few other Finnish experts many parts of the original still remain. Among the few people fascinated by these stories was X.
X was also fascinated by 13^th century Norse legend called Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks. In these stories, Odin (Thor's dad) disguises himself as Gestumblindi, a powerful man who had angered King Heidrek by refusing to pay him tribute.
Upon meeting the king, he challenges him to a battle of wits in the form of riddles. Heidrek eventually figures out it's Odin posing the question and moves to attack him. Odin quickly turns into a hawk and flies away, but not before Heidrek's sword cuts off a piece of the bird's tail. And that, according to Norse legend, is why the hawk has a stubby tail today.

Both these had a pronounced effect on X's works. X please. 



2) What was the main reason for her being awarded the Nobel prize?

3)The English alphabet once consisted of 27 alphabets : a,b,...,y,z and __________ . The symbol for this letter came from a certain roman-latin cursive style writing of the letters e and t. When school children recited the alphabet, they would add a phrase along with the last word to avoid confusion. So , what was that letter and how was it recited in schools?

4) Charles Wreford-Brown was one of Association football’s early heroes. Brown was fond of a slang fad called an Oxford-er (like a vintage version of today’s “izzle” craze.) It works like this: you shorten a word and add “-er” on the end. Breakfast becomes “brekker.” Rugby is “rugger.” So football must have been called 'footer' (and it is called so, but that is very uncommon). But he didn't, he called it something else...what? and why?


5) What comes in place of the blank?

New Zealand:

• Christian: 58.9%
• No religion: 29.6%
• Object to answering: 6.9%
• _____: 1.5%
• Hindu: 1.2%
• Buddhism: 1.2%

The UK

• Christian: 70.0%
• No religion: 14.7%
• Chose not to respond: 7.8%
• Muslim: 3.1%
• Hindu: 2.1%
• _____: 0.7%

Australia: about 70,000 (0.37%)
Scotland: about 14,000 people (0.277 %)
Canada: about 21,000 people

and btw if you think that 70,000 people is a huge number, let me tell you that the population of TNagar alone is above 100000  :P


6) "cooperation" ...there . Now what would have happened if I had typed this word and used spell check in some old Word processer?
A few other words / phrases faced a similar consequences...what happened to these 2?
Voldemort
Muttahida Qaumi Movement (a Pakisthani political party)  


7) Jacques "Jakie" Fehr was a tiny (4'8") irascible Swiss-born shopkeeper in the village of Occidental, California. One summer day in 1908, Fisher, a member of San Francisco's Bohemian Club, was riding the North Pacific Coast narrow-gauge railway passenger train northbound to the Bohemian Grove, the club's summer campsite. During a stop in Occidental, Bud Fisher got off the train to stretch his legs and observed the diminutive walrus-moustached Fehr in heated altercation with the tall and lanky "candy butcher," who sold refreshments on the train and also distributed newspapers to shops in towns along the train route.
So what was this an inspiration for?


8) Apasmara is a disorder described in the ayurveda and is a very close equivalent of epilepsy.
Apasmara also known as Muyalaka was also a demon who represented ignorance. I'm pretty sure you must have seen Apasmara. Where ?

And with this I take a break for a few weeks.

Answers:

1) JRR Tolkien, inspiration for LOTR

2) Nobel peace prize for helping set up the Nobel peace prize

3) & . Students read it as and per se and which became ampersand.

4) Association - remove A and tion, and add the er to get soccer.

5) Jedi

6) Cupertino effect , voldemort became voltmeter etc

7) Mutt and Jeff comic strip

8) The demon-dwarf on whom Nataraja dances.

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Quiz Week 17

Answers Will Be Given Next Week... Meanwhile Drop Down Your Answers... PS: DON'T POST YOUR ANSWERS AS ANON


ANSWERS POSTED AT THE END OF THE POST

Hey all....
I am back
1) lets us get started with a sitter
Connect

2)“Geckos inspire wall-climbing robot made by. researchers.”

It is a tank-like robot that can scale vertical walls and crawl over ledges without using suction cups, glue or other liquid bonds to adhere to the surface.

This was In the news a few days  months ago.

There are pictures in the next slide.

Tell me how they work??

3) What weapon was given its unusual name by the Finns when(following their refusal to surrender some strategic ports) their country was invaded by the Soviets in November 1939 in what came to be known as the Winter War during World War II?

4) A simple one again

—Which philosopher spoke of marriage thus: "by all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll become happy, if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.”

— The name of his wife by the way became epitomous for a constantly nagging wife.

—Whose the philosopher? 

5) all right,ID

6)

Connect,

also tell when,why,where etc:-

7)

This word derived from Sanskrit for, a small dot or a drop, is “sported” by worn mainly in Southern Asia.

It is supposed to be worn in the place where the 6th chakra point, Is located…

It is often used purely as a decorative purpose too many a times and was in fact very popular with teenage women in the early 90’s and was popularized in the west by Gwen Stefani & Madonna.

Simple ,What is the word??

8)

Claim to flame of this HOTEL ??

9) okay ,my last question here connects back to the firs question of this post(That by itself should serve a clue)

ID the person depicted here

For older questions,  CLICK HERE


ANSWERS

       1) Troll\Meme characters
2)The gecko feets work on the principle of van der wall's forces
          ,the hair on the feet of the gecko is so thin that the molecules of this are attracted to the molecules of the wall
3)Molotov Cocktails
4)Socrates
5) Neem Karoli Baba
6)That's david shepard and the whenever 111(a Nelson ) comes or a multiple of it comes  he lifts his leg thanks to his belief,and the second is picture of king  Nelson
7)Bindi
8)Hotel California Album Art
9)Leonidas (From the movie meet the spartans,"This is Sparta...",and hence connects back to the first question)

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