Queuriest - VIII

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QUEURIEST - VIII
Keep Guessing - Johnnie Guesser
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1. Eminently workoutable one for starters, especially if you read this aloud! What is echolalia? echolalia. . .
*

2. Who made his debut in the 1934 film `The Wise Little Hen'? Cryptic Clue: Bradman gets out for zero!
*

3. "Asking the ignorant to use the incomprehensible to decide the unknowable." Who defined what thus?
*

4. Question framed with a purpose?...What is chindogu?
*

5. USSR / Russia: Cosmonaut :: USA: Astronaut :: China:: ________?
*

6. Who or what is a Lazy Susan? Clue: Pass!
*

7. BeeGees, as in the pop band, was actually (obviously?) an abbreviation. What does it stand for? They were the . . .
*

8. Asterix question, or . . . is it? What was the codename for the spy Vitriolix?
*

9. Not so comical question, I swear, by Apollo! What is a nosocomical infection?
*

10. The name adopted by which dictator literally meant "Glorious Sun"? Direct Clue (for a change!) : He had Chinese blood in him.
*

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Fear is only a preference.
When one's enemies are
too strong, one chooses
weaker ones!
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From: "SonOfDelphi"
Date: Fri Feb 7, 2003 6:49 pm
Subject: Queuriest - VIII

hi everybody!

welcome to episode 8 of Queuriest.

answers in a week's time.

luv
thomas


ANSWERS
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From: "SonOfDelphi"
Date: Tue Feb 11, 2003 8:49 pm
Subject: Answers to Queuriest - VIII

hi folks!

23 responses in all.

am out with the answers early 'cos answers've stopped coming...what with so many quizzes being posted in the previous 2 days...and most of the regular respondents having sent their post in... WHY WAIT?

apologies to anyone who was planning to send in answers today. but hey, you can check out Queuriest-IX.

In the previous answers post, I'd queried:

>I wonder if this is the only flag with a bird on it...(Papua New Guinea)
Sreeram: Flag of Mexico has an eagle
Peter: Guatemala's flag has a quetzal
...there may be many more...futile search for a new question...:-(

>Moonraker is the term for a native of _______
got no responses for this one. but found out that this is applied to residents of Wiltshire, England

...thanx for the responses.

luv
thomas

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QUEURIEST - VIII
Keep Guessing - Johnnie Guesser
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1. Eminently workoutable one for starters, especially if you read this aloud! What is echolalia? echolalia. . .
* Echolalia is a condition in which one tends to repeat words one has heard, usually the last word or sentence. So it pays to follow instructions. . . So it pays to follow instructions. . . So it pays to follow instructions....;-)

2. Who made his debut in the 1934 film `The Wise Little Hen'? Cryptic Clue: Bradman gets out for zero!
* Donald Duck
Many of you worked it out from the clue which made it pretty obvious, I guess. I don't know whether this is true, but I've heard this story that Walt Disney was in the stadium during this match / heard commentator exclaiming "Donald Duck"! --> name of Mr. Donald Fauntleroy Duck.

3. "Asking the ignorant to use the incomprehensible to decide the unknowable." Who defined what thus?
* Judge Hiller Zobel of the US (yeah the Louise Woodward/Mathew Eappen "nanny" case judge) criticizing/defining the jury system.
He mentioned this after the OJ Simpson case.
Nobody cracked this one fully. AS & TU got as far as "juries" but couldn't get the person right
Not too many attepts either...was waiting to be flooded with imaginative

4. Question framed with a purpose?...What is chindogu?
* It is the Japanese art of making "useless inventions" or devices that seem to be useful but actually are not. Like this question perhaps...totally useless information!...but hey I'm not Japanese!

5. USSR / Russia: Cosmonaut :: USA: Astronaut :: China:: ________?
* Taikonaut is what you would call a Chinese space-traveller
AS: taikong is the actual Chinese word

6. Who or what is a Lazy Susan? Clue: Pass!
* A revolving tray placed on a dining table. Pass...if you can't reach the pudding!

7. BeeGees, as in the pop band, was actually (obviously?) an abbreviation. What does it stand for? They were the . . .
* Brothers Gibb. They were literally a "Band of Brothers". :-)

8. Asterix question, or . . . is it? What was the codename for the spy Vitriolix?
* H2SO4 (echh-too-es-o-four)
(Oil of) Vitriol is sulphuric acid which has the formula h2so4... Z.Z.Z.Z....?
Workoutable one even if you are not an Asterix fanatic. I believe he features in Asterix and the Legionary (not too sure...) Dubbelosix, another spy, a caricature of Sean Connery features in Asterix & The Black Gold.

9. Not so comical question, I swear, by Apollo! What is a nosocomial infection?
* An infection you get from a hospital.
I apologise for a mistake in the question, it is nosocomial, without the second 'c'. (not nosocomical) Sory foks four thi bad speling. ;-)
About the clue: Swearing by Apollo --> Hippocratic Oath --> Doctors --> Hospitals
+I: Apollo is also the god of healing
Many of you worked it out as Apollo--> space, moon, sun etc. Good work but hey, where was the need to interpret it as a clue? I could've been just stating a fact (though I was not! ), nosocomial infections are pretty serious after all. . .and who else can Son Of Delphi swear by, but Apollo! ;-)

10. The name adopted by which dictator literally meant "Glorious Sun"? Direct Clue (for a change!) : He had Chinese blood in him.
* Ne Win of Myanmar. His real name was Shu Maung. He was of mixed Chinese-Burmese descent. He died in December 2002...
Current affairs in Queuriest! I'm SHOCKED!

------------------------------------
Fear is only a preference.
When one's enemies are
too strong, one chooses
weaker ones!
------------------------------------

The scores (in chronological order):

1. Debashree Mitra - 4 (nice going)
2. Prasenjit Sengupta - 2 (la la la liya)
3. Indraneel Sikdar - 1 (Tennyson is my guess)
4. Shobhana Balakrishnan - 2 (More tries please m'lady!)
5. Sreeram - 4 (ex-amnesiac!)
6. Shashi Thutupalli - 4 (nice guessing!)
7. Arjun Siva - 9.5 (Robert Burton's not the guy)
8. CoolDude9456 - 1 (100% cool)
9. Venkateswar KR - 2 ( u light up my quiz!)
10. Prithwiraj Mukherjee - 3 (so do u!)
11. Kunal Malhotra - 6 (good show boss)
12. Vittal Avinash - 2 (guess more)
13. Nilesh Sinha - 1 (what's the ureasusan connection?)
14. Shom Biswas - 2 (hope exams went great)
15. Pauline Daniel - 1 (use the clues more)
16. Sandeep Unni - 4 (I love my X-words too!)
17. Rinks S - 3.5 (Stalin & Chinese blood!)
18. Shrinath Nagarajan - 2 ( nice working out)
19. Bharat Jayakumar - 3.5 (It's not Queriest!)
20. Narayan Vinay - 8 (going great guns)
21. Thejaswi Udupa - 7.5 (solid effort)
22. Kensy Joseph - 2 (nice guesses though)
23. Partha Sengupta - 1 (Hollies was great)

--------STATS ----------------------------------------------

Funnest! -
Bill Gates on Linux for JuryQuote!
Answering Queuriest on JuryQuote!
Unuseless inventions on Chindogu
Nomanout on Taikonaut

Ridiqulest! -
Singing in the bathroom on Echolalia
Dogs leading with their chins on Chindogu
Question framed to get correct answer always on Chindogu
Urinal on Lazy Susan

Guessest!- nice guessing
006, 000 on Vitriolix
"Sun"Yat Sen on Glorious Sun
Chinonaut on Chinese Astronaut
Doubleohsix on Vitriolix
Infection from sunlight on Nosocomial infection

* Most popular wrong answer: Pol Pot on Ne Win
* All questions except 3 were cracked fully
* Arjun Siva tops the quiz with 9.5 points
* Average score : 3.3
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Fahrenheit 451 - Review

Here's a review of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 that I posted on epinions.com Diamond Is Carbon. Apr 26 '04 Pros *Powerful ideas *Compelling dialogue *Imaginative storyline Cons *Weak prose at times *A bit raw, lacks polish *Strong, but one-dimensional characters The Bottom Line A good read. Find some wisdom here. But it fades in comparison to other dystopia-novels like 1984 or Brave New World.

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is a gem of a book; but it has a few flawed edges that mar the brilliance. On more than one occasion, I was reminded of the Saddest Words of Man- What could have been and If only... On to the story. F451's is a dystopic world in which books have been banned. There is even a Fire-Force whose duty is to burn books. Guy Montag, the protagonist, is a satisfied member of the Force, who enjoys his work. Meet Beatty, his know-it-all boss and the Mechanical Hound, the ruthless instrument of horror, that hunts down wrong-doers. It's a bad, bad world in which people betray their closest friends to the Force just to watch their house burning bright at night! The seeds of unrest and doubt are planted in Montag when he gets influenced by Clarisse, a sweet young girl who still lives life the old-fashioned and happy way. Montag also meets Faber, an old professor, in a park. The professor quite literally becomes the Voice in Montag's head (He gets a radio-receiver implanted), and our hero becomes just the person he must not be. A lover of books!. Montag is torn between what now seems to him to be the truth and what he has stood for all his life. Montag's crisis deepens with his ultra-materialistic wife Mildred dragging him down with her constant demands, his Mentor egging him on and his Boss tugging at him to return to the normal, routine life, all of which lead to interesting situations. The main characters are strong-as-rum and are also powerfully developed by the author. The confrontations between Montag and Beatty form the highlights of the book. The conversations Montag has with the Professor, though good, are not as impressive. Even though Bradbury is known primarily as a scienc-fiction writer , Fahrenheit 451 is more than just another sci-fi novel. It has substance: nourishing brain-food, in the form of original thoughts and delicious, albeit well-known quotes. A little learning is a dangerous thing/Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. F451 will help you findyour thinking cap - the philosophical interludes are written powerfully and of course, proverb-fully. Bradbury even has a sure-fire way to get through life all guns blazing! If you don't like them, burn them! These nuggets of wisdom are thought-provoking and entertaining. Things go from the sublime to the ridiculous at times in Fahrenheit 451. But it is definitely worth its paper, even if only for those sublime parts, and there are many of those. Sci-fi writers have true, original and even brilliant ideas at times, but are often brutally so! They are perfectly capable of calling cute babies human-larvae! Or of calling diamonds glorified clarified carbon-blocks! Metaphors mixed, readers vexed! Take, for example, the opening sequence of the novel. It describes the protagonist Montag's daily routine of burning books. The author describes the fireman's hose as "...the great python spitting its venomous kerosene..." The python-hose comparison is okay, even good. But... pythons spitting venom??? From wheat to corn! (Just in case you didn't know, pythons are not poisonous. Sorry, but that's just not how pythons kill!) Such segments abound. The prophet in Bradbury shines through occasionally. His words about books becoming less popular and people getting addicted to TV ring alarmingly true. Fahrenheit 451 is most often termed a wannabe-1984. Where Orwell's 1984 was a masterpiece, Fahrenheit 451, though pretty good cannot be placed in the same league because it has more than a few flaws. It has as much substance but lacks the style. But all said, Fahrenheit 451 is a book that you would want to re-read. Some of the concepts are left abstract (purposefully?) and are worth chewing over. Or maybe ponder over some of those similes? There! Again I am reminded of those sad words...if only Ending with some mandatory bits of trivia. As Bradbury reminds us in an Afterword, Faber is a maker of pencils and Montag is a paper-manufacturer! And Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns. Feel the mercury rising! All the way to 233 degrees Celsius...

Goose With The Golden Eggs

Never kill the goose that lays golden eggs. The fable of the 'golden-egg-laying goose', on the face of it, tells us about the folly of greed. But the story also gives us two other important lessons when we analyze it from the modern-day perspective.

The Golden Eggs are the favours that you receive (and need) whereas the Goose is the favour-broker or whoever that is useful to you.

1. A relationship will deteriorate when one of the persons realizes that he is just being used by the other.
If the goose realizes that you are taking care of it only for the eggs, it will, sooner than later, stop giving you eggs.

2. Being cultured means having the ability to say no when you have the opportunity of having more and you actually want more.
You could kill the goose by taking too many eggs. Exploit the resources too much and the land becomes fallow. Learn when to say no.


- Thomas Jay Cubb

Today is Pi Day

Today is 3/14 (March 14) and at 1:59 pm, if you string the date and time together, we would get the sequence 314159 or pi, the magic number. Hence the trivially inclined mathematicians(?) celebrate it as Pi Day!

Exercise for the reader: July 22 is also celebrated as Pi Approximation Day. Work out why.

Another interesting celebration is that of Mole Day. In honour of Avogadro's constant, 6.023 x 10^23. That is celebrated on October 23, between 6.02 am and 6.02 pm. Same logic.

But I believe June 02(6/02), 10:23 would have been a more appropriate choice for Mole Day! Just a trifle better...How trivial can one get, huh?

Cocktail Notes

Some notes from a one-day session on cocktails (January 2006).

Tall glass- for soft-drinks based/soda-based.
Whisky glass - for on the rocks
Martini glass only small difference with Margarita glass

Thinner glass - better
Champagne glass - Tulip, Flute

How to tell the difference between glass and crystal
Glass pings, Crystal rings.

Hot cocktails - put a spoon in the glass while serving

Shakers - Stainless steel best; neutral does not
Silver - EPNS, keep in
Boston shaker - steel, plastic, glass on top

Holtain strainer

30 ml = 1 small
Prefer ice-scoop to ice-tong
Long spoon
Bar-blade
Hand-blender

Martinis - the litmus test of a bar-tender
Insider joke
dry=not sweet
Stirred is the classic one, not shaken.

Alcohol does not freeze if kept in freezer
Level of ice should be above that of alcohol

Balalaika- first cousin of margarita - vodka + orange liqueur (originally)