Question for 26th Feb, 2010

This is courtesy xkcd. What's the image making fun of.

Question for February 25, 2010

Walter Frederick Morrison conceived and developed X in the 1950s, and hundreds of millions have been sold worldwide since. Mr Morrison and his future wife, Lu, got the idea from playing with a metal cake pan on the beach in California. He originally called it the Pluto Platter and sold it at local fairs. n 1957 Mr Morrison sold the rights to the California firm Wham-O, which discovered that youngsters were calling X by a name, which has been adapted to give X its current name. X is now a cultural icon and many games have evolved around it.

Mr. Morrison died at his home in Monroe on Feb. 9th this year. Identify X.

Question for Feb 24, 2010

X is a plot device that moves a story forward. Sometimes it is fundamental to the entire story itself. The specific nature of X is not important to the plot, as long as it serves as a motivation for characters to behave the way they do. X can be a tangible object that is desired by the characters, or it can even be something generic, or left open to the audience interpretation. Regardless, without X, the entire reason for the plot wouldn't exist. X (both, the name and the technique) was popularized by Alfred Hitchcock, who once stated that in crook stories, X is almost always the necklace, and in spy stories, the papers. One of the most famous examples of X are the letters of transit from the movie, Casablanca.

Identify X.

QOTD - 23 Feb - Hari

What am I talking about?

1) The essence - "The root of wealth is economic activity and lack of it brings material distress. In the absence of fruitful economic activity, both current prosperity and future growth will be destroyed".

2) The Contents -
I Concerning Discipline
II The Duties of Government Superintendents
III Concerning Law
IV The Removal of Thorns
V The Conduct of Courtiers
VI The Source of Sovereign States
VII The End of the Six-Fold Policy
VIII Concerning Vices and Calamities
IX The Work of an ......
X Relating to War
XI The Conduct of Corporations
XII Concerning a Powerful Enemy
XIII Strategic Means to Capture ......
XIV Secret Means
XV The Plan of a Treatise

3) An Excerpt:

First 1 1/2 hrs. after sunrise - Receive reports on defence, revenue, expenditure
Second 1 1/2 hrs. after sunrise - Public audiences, to hear petitions of city & country people
Third 1 1/2 hrs. after sunrise & Last 1 1/2 hrs. before noon - Receive revenues & tributes; appoint ministers and other high officials & allot tasks to them
First 1 1/2 hrs. after noon - Write letters & dispatches, confer with councillors, receive secret information from spies
Second 1 1/2 hrs. after noon - Personal: recreation, time for contemplation
Third 1 1/2 hrs. after noon & Last 1 1/2 hrs. before sunset - Inspect & review forces; Consult with Chief of Defence

Reader Question

This is a reader question, courtesty Varsha.

"G" is a radical form of news reporting, where the journalist throws conventional methods of news delivery out of the window and gives a subjective yet accurate narration of the event. It often tends to favor style of delivery over facts. Use of quotes, emotions, sarcasm, humor, exaggeration and profanity are common in "G", in order to engage the reader and convey the underlying message. For example, a traditional journalist might interview drug addicts for an expose on the local drug trade, while the journalist favoring "G" may actually participate in the shady deals of a local gang to gather information. Another example could be news reporting of a hurricane or tornado where the journalist experiences the actual event. "G" was first made popular by "H". "H" was portrayed by Johnny Depp in 1998 film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a cult classic.

Identify "G" and "H"

Question for Feb. 22nd - Identify X.

X was a Moroccan scholar and traveler who is known for the account of his travels and excursions called the Rihla ("The Journey") in Arabic. His journeys lasted for a period of nearly thirty years and covered almost the entirety of the known Islamic world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in the West, to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China in the East, a distance readily surpassing that of his predecessors and his near-contemporary Marco Polo. X also served as a Qazi (judge) in the Delhi Sultanate under Sultan Muhammad bin Tuglaq.

There is a famous hindi poem about X by the late poet Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena. The poem was recently in the center of a plagirism controversy involving a famous Bollywood songwriter.

Reader Question- Ancestry

A softball for the weekend! Identify X in the genealogy above. (Courtesy Unni)

Question for Feb 19th, 2010

In X, the medieval society was represented through concepts related to the church, military, merchants, and peasantry. The French method of using stencils dominated the German and eventually became de-facto standard throughout Europe. A certain set in X was initially represented by Solomon, Augustus, Clovic and Constantine. But during the 16th century, they became standardized to Charlemagne, David, Caesar, and Alexander. Another set was represented by La Hire, Ogier, Hector and Lancelot. However, the French revolution brought an end to all such representations. What is X.

Question for February 18, 2010

The ships (used during WW-1) used this coloring scheme (see examples below) after the Allied Navy's failure to develop effective means to disguise ships in all weather. I should mention that the colors were bright and bold (but shown in black & white here). What was the reason/logic behind it? Bonus points for providing the name for it.

Is it the wolf or is it hunger?

United States is the nation with the largest per capita rate of X in the world. Religious opinions have often shaped views towards X. Opposition to X was perhaps best expressed as early as 1461 by Francois Villon in his Le Testament, and I quote in part, ".... and because of hunger wolves leave the woods".

"Human Rights Watch believes the extraordinary rate of X in the United States wreaks havoc on individuals, families and communities, and saps the strength of the nation as a whole."

X?

Hint: The quote implies that those who are against X condone the wolves' acts once they leave the woods. The argument being that the wolves are forced into committing the acts as a result of hunger.

Question for Feb 16, 2010 - PS

1) Lewis Carrol's "Through the Looking-Glass" Final chapter "A Boat, Beneath A Sunny Sky":

http://www.research.rutgers.edu/~spravin/quiz-02-15-10/lewis_carrol.txt

2) San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano had sponsored a bill which passed unanimously granting the Port of San Francisco financial power to redevelop a former shipyard for a new neighborhood known as Pier 70. Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger's office's veto message reply to this bill:

http://www.research.rutgers.edu/~spravin/quiz-02-15-10/arnold.jpg

3) Jonathan Schwartz's internal memo to Sun employees, on its acquisition by Oracle:

http://www.research.rutgers.edu/~spravin/quiz-02-15-10/sun.txt

The list is not exhaustive, but these are some of the famous examples of what is called an "acrostic". What is an "acrostic"?

Question for Feb 15

The lists shown in the visual are in alphabetical order and are recycled after six years, although some names can be retired on request. All letters of the alphabet are used except Q, U, X, Y and Z. Gender alternates both between adjacent names in a list and between initial names of the lists. Greek alphabets (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc) are used if a particular list is exhausted. 2005, saw the first ever use of Greek letters, since the system of using 21 names in a list was established in 1933.

Identify the lists.

Question for 12th Feb, 2010

X was first announced in March 2007, it was launched in March 2008 and saw a spike in usage after the 2009 Super Bowl.

The company blog says:

"In Mandarin, X has two interesting meanings, each highly relevant to our mission. The primary meaning interested us because it is used in an ancient Chinese proverb that describes X as the holder of precious things. It literally translates to "gourd", and in ancient times, [it] was hollowed out and used to hold precious things. The secondary meaning is "interactive recording." We saw both definitions as appropriate bookends and highly relevant to the mission of X."

What's X? What's its relation to the 2009 Super Bowl?

Pole of X- February 11th

The following list of maps, the green anchor in the maps in particular, is in the descending order of a geographical criterion, X. Identify it! The list, although finite, is not exhaustive.

1. X = 2645.

View Larger Map

2. X = 1650.

View Larger Map

3. 1200 < X < 1500

View Larger Map

4. X = 920

View Larger Map

EDIT*- Zooming and Panning are halaal!

Question for Feb 10, 2010

X was an American agronomist, also known as the father of the green revolution. He is widely credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation. X first came into prominence due to his work on wheat research in Mexico. Using new breeding techniques, he helped Mexico, India and Pakistan dramatically improve their wheat yields and become self-sufficient in wheat production. For his efforts, X was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1970, the Padma Vibhushan in 2006 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007. His death in September 2009 led to tributes from all over the world for his work on increasing food production worldwide. Identify X.

Question for Feb. 9th. - Dev

X is a phenomenon that is estimated to be twice the size of Texas. Despite its size and density, X is not visible from satellite photography because it consists of very small pieces, almost invisible to the naked eye, and most of its contents are suspended beneath the surface.

X is especially harmful to the wildlife and ecosystem of the area where it resides.

What is X?

Question for Feb 8, 2010 - PS

X was born on May 14, 1970 in Denver, CO and raised in Jerusalem. He came to MIT for his Masters and co-authored several papers in algorithms and complexity theory, one of which led to the startup, Y, that he became famous for. In the Fall of 1997, X got the idea of writing a business plan based on his thesis work and entering it in MIT's $50K Contest. He lost the contest, but nonetheless formed the company Y the next year. Y is a Hawaiian word meaning smart or intelligent. While Y is hardly a household name, it handles about 15% of all Internet traffic today.

In September, 2001, he was on American Flight 11 on his way to meetings in California when his plane was hijacked.

The award given to the best student-authored paper at the premier computer science conference, ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) is named after X.

Identify X and Y.

What's the phrase?

X refers to a dilemma first described by Garrett Hardin and published in the journal Science in 1968. Typical solutions to X include government regulation and privatization.

Ostrom, the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics, in her work has showed that X was not a given whenever people shared resources, which had no owners or were publically owned, and that resources can be successfully managed by groups using it and without government regulation or privatization.

X has relevance to varied fields like that of economics, pshychology, game theory, sociology and etc.

What's the phrase that X is a placeholder for?

Question for Feb 4

X is a phrase originating from cricket. The visual provides a pictorial description of the origin of the phrase. The first recorded use of the phrase is commonly credited to Geoffrey Boycott whilst commentating on England's 1990 tour of the West Indies. The phrase is also the name, or part of the name, of several online cricket forums and at least two fanzine-type cricket publications.

The phrase has also been used in other sports commentary. For example in football it is commonly used to describe a cross or pass which is delivered into the area in front of the goalkeeper and behind the last line of defence.

Identify X.

Question for 3rd Feb, 2010

One of the famous papers in computer science/programming is Edsger Dijkstra's 1968 paper X Considered Harmful. An alternative viewpoint is presented in Donald Knuth's Structured Programming with X which analyzes many common programming tasks and finds that in some of them X is the optimal language construct to use. Frank Rubin published a criticism of Dijkstra's paper in the March 1987 CACM where it appeared as 'X Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful. The May 1987 CACM printed further replies, both for and against, as '"X Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful?. Dijkstra's own response to this controversy was titled On a somewhat disappointing correspondence.

You have probably encountered X if you have learnt any kind of computer programming. What's X?

350 years of X- February 2nd

On 28 November 1660, a group of scientists including Robert Hooke formed a "College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning", which would meet weekly to discuss science and run experiments. On 15 July 1662, a Charter was signed which created from the group, X. X is arguably the oldest of its kind in existence.

Identify the three pictures and connect them to X.

Question for 1st February

X is a character from a play written in the late 16th century, and was involved in a profession that the majority thought was sinful. X and his community (who were minorities) were repeatedly insulted by the majority and this served to antagonize X against them, especially Y, who is one of the main protagonists of the play. Initial depictions of the play potrayed X as a straight villian and Y as a man with honour. However, starting from the 19th century, a tradition of playing X more sympathetically evolved, and X was frequently shown as a more complicated character who was justified in seeking revenge against Y. For example, a 2004 movie based on the play starring Al Pacino developed the character and settings to show how X's community was abused by the majority population. Indeed, one of the more poignant passages of the play is a famous speech by X (speech edited for this question):

"Hath not we eyes? Hath not we hands, organs; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases as you are? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

Identify X.