Question for Dec 22-Gaurav Kane

Identify the artist

Question for Dec 21

What does the map depict ?

Question for December 20, 2009

This is from a famous web-comic. Just tell me what it is talking about (click for the full size)

Right-Wing Activism

When James O'Keefe was at X university, he started Y magazine, whose motto is "veritas vos liberabit", after he was fired from the college newspaper. Y attempts to counterbalance "that which its staff perceive as a predominant orthodoxy of Social Liberalism and Political Progressivism of the professors and staff at the university" (quote from Wikipedia). Y is known for giving out awards like "Liberal of the month".

After leaving X, O'Keefe began working with pro-life activist Lila Rose. He came up with the idea for her to pose as an underaged pregnant teenager seeking help from Planned Parenthood and taping the exchanges. This led to Planned Parenthood losing much funding in Tennessee and California.

In July and August 2009, O'Keefe partnered with Hannah Giles and used similar tactics against another organisation, Z. After the videos were publicised, Z's participation in the 2010 United States census was terminated. Barack Obama, who once acted as an attorney for Z, stated the video content was "certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated."

Identify X, Y and Z.

Question for December 18, 2009

X is an indoor game played a a set of discs (called Y) lying on a flat surface. Players use a larger disc to press down on the smaller disc and send it into flight, the objective being to land the disc on the opponent's disc, and ultimately inside a pot or cup. While played by both adults and children initially, it later came to be regarded as a children's game, but made a comeback in 1955 in Cambridge University. Today, the game is run by the English Association for X and the North American Association for X. In modern day usage, the name of this game has come to be associated with pointless activity. Identify the game.

Car & Car

Today's question is regarding automotive history, namely two early cars that had an immense influence on car design and production.


X (shown above) was the first automobile having a petrol-powered internal combustion engine that entered production. Its main selling point was practicality and ease of use, as exemplified famously by a road trip taken in it by the wife of the inventor of X.


Y (shown above), on the other hand, became famous for bringing automobiles to the masses. Y was the first automobile mass produced on assembly lines with completely interchangeable parts. It also remained in production for almost 20 years.

The companies started by the inventors of X and Y are very much in the automotive scene even today. Identify X and Y, or at least their inventors.

Question for Dec 16th, 2009

X is a form of fiction that got its name because of the involvement of companies like P&G, Colgate Palmolive and Lever Brothers. Each part of X typically ends on some sort of cliffhanger. The earliest popular instances of Xs are The Coronation Street in UK and Guiding Light in USA, the longest X, that began in 1937 and ended just a few weeks ago, in 2009. Id X.

Question for December 15

X was born to a Parsi family in Navasari, Gujarat. His father was the first businessman in a family of Parsi Zoroastrian priests. X joined his father's business soon after graduating from the Elphinstone College in 1858. In 1868, he started his own trading company with a seed capital of Rs. 21,000. In 1869, he acquired a bankrupt oil mill in Chinchpokli, converted it into a cotton mill and renamed the mill to Alexandra Mill. He sold the mill two years later for a healthy profit. Thereafter he set up a cotton mill in Nagpur in 1874. He christened it Empress Mill on 1 January 1877 when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. He devoted himself to bringing to fruition four of his key ideas: Y, a world class learning institution, a one of a kind Hotel and a hydro electric plant. Only one of the ideas became a reality during his lifetime. The Taj Mahal Hotel was inaugrated on the 3rd of December 1903.

Identify X and Y. Bonus points for identifying what the other 2 ideas led to.

The original prince...

He was famous for his riches. An Indian cricketer, his invention changed cricket from being a predominantly one-side game.

The prince amongst batsmen. Who was he and what did he invent? What else is famous and currently named after him?

Question for Dec 13

The first recorded kidnapping of Bill in modern times was accomplished only a week before the X-Y football game 1953. A group from West Point snuck onto the Annapolis grounds and kidnapped Bill. Bill was finally returned back to Y under orders from President Eisenhower.

Inspite of a truce being made between X and Y, the kidnappings have continued (the last of which being in November 2007). All the instances of Bill being kidnapped by groups from X have taken place in November-December, just week(s) prior to the X-Y football game, which is traditionally the last regular season game played in Division 1-A football.

In light of these kidnappings, Team Bill (see visual) was formed. Team Bill is a group from Y who volunteer to take care of Bill and transport Bill to and from events.

Identify X,Y.

Question for December 12-Gaurav Kane

In 1888, Ludwig X also known as the oil king of Baku died of a heart attack. Some European newspapers,however, erroneously reported the death of his brother Alfred X in their newspapers.

Reading his own premature death, Alfred was distressed to find himself condemmed as a munitions

maker, the 'the _______ king', a merchant of death who made a huge fortune by finding new ways to maim and kill. He eventually re wrote his will which led to what?

What happened next? (For bonus points, identify the blanked out word)

Question for Dec 11 - PS

Connect the following 3 images:

1)


2)



3)

Question for December 10th, 2009

Who/what is #1 on this list? The list is ordered and not exhaustive.

7.




6.





5.




4.





3.






2.





1. ?

50 and 500

Today's question is a double bill (or whammy depending on how you look at it!). They are unconnected except for this month being the 50th anniversary of X and this year the 500th anniversary of Y.

X was a lecture given by a famous scientist to the American Physical Society meeting in Caltech, Pasadena, CA in 1959 which is widely considered to have given birth to the field of nanotechnology. Although the scientist in question was very popular in his field, his seminal contributions being in the 40s, he didn't then enjoy the public status he achieved after his nobel prize in the 60s and a famous autobiography in the 80s. In the lecture, which was only cited 7 times till the 70s but is now found in the first paragraph of numerous nanatechnology papers, he described possibilities like computers that wouldn't fill entire rooms and all the information of the world on a small slab of material as well as nano-assembly and robots in the blood stream, which are still just dreams.

Y was a famous emperor who presided over the most glorious period of his dynasty. Coronated in 1509, he expanded his empire in size, repulsed attacks from Timurid invaders and was a great patron of the arts. His capital, in ruins today, is a world heritage site and his legacy is claimed by many language groups. Much information about his reign comes from Portuguese travellers. Timmurusu was to him what Kautilya was to Chandragupta Maurya.

Enjoy finding the scientist in X and Y!

Question for Dec 8, 2009

Connect the following images. Provide not just the answer, but also the connections.

Question for Dec. 7th, 2009

Today's question is regarding a 125 year old industry/business - X. It is essentially a delivery system, taking "items" from one point to another. But there are some surprising facts about X that make it one of a kind:

• More than 175,000 to 200,000 "items" get moved every day by an estimated 4,500 to 5,000 "operators".
• The service is renowned for its punctuality, and according to a recent survey, there is only one mistake in every 6,000,000, statistically equivalent to a Six Sigma rating.
• There are only three layers of management.
• The unique ID for an "item" involves a simple color coding system.
  

Identify X, as usual.

Question for Dec 6th, 2009

In the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1878, British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (a Conservative) gave a speech in which he referred to W. E. Gladstone (a Liberal) as a - "sophisticated rhetorician inebriated by the exuberance of your own verbosity".
In India, we have (most probably) heard the same words in a completely different context. Identify its use.

Question for December 5

He is a politician, entrepreneur, real estate and insurance tycoon, bank and media proprietor and a sports team owner. He is the proprietor of three analogue television channels, various digital television channels, as well as some of the larger-circulation national news magazines. Together these account for nearly half the country's market. He also wrote the anthem for the sports team that he owns. He has a very successful business career though funding sources have always been a bit fishy. Of course he had his share of legal problems. He said of his legal problems, "I'm the universal record-holder for the number of trials in the entire history of man -- and also of other creatures who live on other planets."

On his entering politics he said,

"----- is the country I love. Here I have my roots, my hopes, my horizons. Here I have learned, from my father and from life, how to be an entrepreneur. Here I have also acquired the passion for liberty.

I have chosen to enter the field and become a public servant because I do not want to live in an illiberal country, ruled by immature forces and by people who are well and truly bound to a past that proved both a political and economic failure."

Who am I talking about?

King of the world

"He changed the world of sports and went on to change the world.... He would become the most recognized face on the planet"

During a famous fight he kept asking his oponent, and I quote, "What's my name, Uncle Tom ... What's my name?"

Who is he? What did he want his opponent to call him and what had the opponent called him?

Reader Question

This question is courtesy Anuj.

Mix and match – Identify the people and also what the 4 of them
achieved in pairs which is unique.

Bonus: Identify the grounds where the unique feat happened.

Question for Dec 3

Identify X.

Question for December 2-Gaurav Kane

Which famous sports celebrity often refers to his ethnic make-up as “Cablinasian” (a syllabic abbreviation he coined from Caucasian, Black, (American) Indian,and Asian). He is one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter African American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch.

Question for Dec 1 - PS

Farrokh Bulsara was born on Thursday September 5th 1946 on the small island of Zanzibar. At the age of 8, he went to boarding school in St. Peter’s, a public school in Panchgani, a beautiful hill station near Poona. At the age of 17, Farrokh and his family fled from Zanzibar for safety reasons due to the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution. He went on to earn a Diploma in Art and Graphic Design at Ealing Art College. Due to racial abuse he had suffered in his early teens, he legally changed his name to X in 1972. In April 1970 he met Y.

Y is an accomplished scholar. He studied astronomy and physics at Imperial College in London. He then proceeded to study for a PhD degree, also at the Imperial College London departments of Physics and Mathematics, and was part way through this PhD programme, studying reflected light from interplanetary dust and the velocity of dust in the plane of the Solar System. And then he met X, and discontinued his PhD program.

Epilogue:
- Eventually, on 23 November 1991, X made the the following announcement to the press:

Following the enormous conjecture in the press over the last two weeks, I wish to confirm that I have been tested HIV positive and have AIDS. I felt it correct to keep this information private to date to protect the privacy of those around me. However, the time has come now for my friends and fans around the world to know the truth and I hope that everyone will join with me, my doctors, and all those worldwide in the fight against this terrible disease. My privacy has always been very special to me and I am famous for my lack of interviews. Please understand this policy will continue.

A little over 24 hours after issuing the statement, X died on 24 November 1991 at the age of 45.

- Eventually Y went on to earn his PhD in Astrophysics in 2007 and is currently the Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University. Announcing Y's appointment, Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Board, Sir Malcolm Thornton said:

"On behalf of the governing body of Liverpool John Moores University, I am delighted to announce that Y will be the new Chancellor of LJMU. Not only is Y an icon in his own sphere but he is a real academic star as well. He perfectly embodies the 'can do' attitude of LJMU; he is going to be a great Chancellor for the students and a wonderful figurehead for the University."

Identify X and Y. (Question partly inspired by today being the World AIDS day.)