LET’S BROADEN OUR MINDS

Questions of 2009

1

This is a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

Say not of me that weakly I declinedThe Labours of my sires, and fled to the sea,The towers we founded and the bumps we lit.To play at home with paper as a child.But rather say, __ ___ _________ __ ____A strenuous family dusted from its handsThe sound of granite, and beholding farAlong the sounding coast its pyramidsAnd tall memorials catch the dying sun,Smiled well content, and to this childish taskAround the fire addressed the evening hours

The missing words make up the title of the English translation of the autobiography of an Indian litterateur. Name the person and the title?

1

“In The Afternoon of Time”; Harivanshrai Bachchan

2

In Greek thought, __A__ and __B__ are two words that always go together. __A__ means a break in the natural order of things. __B__ means a reversal of fortune that brings back the natural order.

The meaning of __A__ took a further connotation with reference to a particular event. Persian supremo Xerxes tried to bridge the Hellespont. After a storm, Xerxes punished the sea with 300 lashes and threw fetters into it. He also had the sea branded with red hot irons. Later another storm brought down the bridge.

This show of Xerxes influenced the meaning of the word __A__ to what we know today

What is the word (A) and what is the companion word (B)?

2

Hubris & Nemesis

3 N

Jain Mandir

Hindu Temple

Gurudwara

Fatehpuri

Townhall

Boatmen

Gardeners

?

What is at the East end?

Church

3

Lal Qila (Red Fort)

4

He was the editor of Reform. He was also an academic in political research as well as a polytechnic lecturer. According to the obituary in Politico’s Book of the Dead, he was born on 18th June 1927 and died 4th November 1995. (Coincidentally, these are also the birth and death dates of a certain British television actor).

He stood for election from Birmingham East (he was an Aston Villa supporter) and served as Shadow Minister of Agriculture when in opposition.

Name?

4

Rt Hon James Hacker

5

This flower is called the Four o’clock Flower. It is _________ jalapa . The _________ is also the name of an Israeli company which in 1996 introduced an Internet application. It was bought over by AOL in 1998. This product has over 50 million accounts registered.

Name the Internet product?

5

ICQ (from Mirabilis)

6

In his only ever first class match on Indian soil, he scored 84 and 38 playing for the Hindus against the Parsees in 1924. In this match, according to the non-striker LP Jai, he

“without changing the grip on the bat, he tried to hit the wide ball backwards towards the third-man with his bat turned and facing the wicket-keeper”

From this description, it seems this was the reverse sweep usually credited to Mushtaq Mohammad.

Name the Ranji team that this player founded in 1936? (and they won in their inaugural year itself). The team does not exist anymore.

6

Nawanagar (Duleepsinhji)

7

Sept 8th 1975, Time magazine had this obituary

“Conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah, King of Kings, Elect of God: in the end, the royal epithets had a hollow, mocking ring.”

In 1936, he addressed the impotent League of Nations at Geneva “I am here to claim justice that is due to my people…” As he stepped down from the pulpit, he murmured “It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.”

He spent his last days in a three room mud hut under easy house arrest and died in his sleep at the age of 83.

Name.

7

Emperor Haile Selassie

8

On the right is an ancient Corinth helmet discovered in Germany in 1875. It was presented to the winning athlete shown on the left on March 7th 1987 and is officially recognised as Korea’s 904th National Treasure.

What is the story?

8

Sohn Kee-Chung won the marathon at 1936 Berlin Olympics. Korean ran for Japan (as Korea was under Jap rule). The Japs prevented the Germans from giving him the helmet (meant for the marathon winner). Korean team mate Nam Sung-yong took bronze

9

In 1861, a man suffering from a speech defect (following an injury, he was not able to speak coherently) approached a French doctor. On examination, the doctor found that the injury had caused damage to an area of the left frontal lobe. This was the first empirical evidence of connecting behaviour with the brain (specific regions of the brain).

Further research led to understanding of human language and speech.

What is this area of the brain called?

9

Broca’s Area (after Paul Broca)

10

September 25th 1877, Takamori Saigo and his remaining 40 warriors drew their swords and made a suicidal charge into an armored infantry. This ended the 9 month long Satsumo Rebellion. It effectively ended the age of the Samurai as Japan under Emperor Meiji now had a new army made up of conscripts and trained in modern weapons and armory.

Name this significant battle?

10

The Battle of Shiroyama, Kagoshima

11

Study this list (exhaustive) by a person excommunicated at the age of 24 from his community

On the Improvement of the Intellect (1660)Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated (1665) but published posthumously in 1677Tractatus Politicus (unfinished, published posthumously)Treatise on the Rainbow (posthumously published)A Short Treatise on God and Man (written in Dutch and discovered in 1852 by Van Vloten)The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy (1663)A Treatise on Religion and the State (1670) (anonymously)

All the books are in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Will Durant says “at once honoured with a place in the Index Expurgatorius”

Who?

11

Benedict de Spinoza

12

The glossary of Robert Thurman’s translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead explains the following word.

______ : “This literally means an essence protecting environment. _______ are most well known as geometrical paintings or drawings that look like the floor plans of a building or the orbit of a planet. They are three-dimensional perfected environments, Buddhaverses or Buddha-lands, created by the enlightenment of an individual that expresses his or her enlightenment. They are realms through which other beings can be incorporated into that enlightenment perspective.”

What is the good word?

12

Mandala

13

Known as God’s Banker, Roberto Calvi of Banco Ambrosiano was involved in a major fraud (exposed in 1982) when the bank went into debt of between $700 million – $1.5 billion. Much of the money was siphoned off through one of its main shareholders The Institute of Religious Works.

Calvi fled Italy but shortly was found dead, hanging from one of the planks of Blackfriars Bridge in London, possibly killed by some branch of the freemasons (called Blackfriars), the Mafia or the _____

What is the Institute of Religious Works better known as?

13

The Vatican Bank

14

Meteor Eject! A memoir of a RAF pilot published in 2000 and Brotherhood, an autobiography of a popular boy band singer are often erroneously included in a 260 long series of books featuring a secret agent. The first of these books came out in 1964 in Run Spy Run.

The character itself first appeared in a dime novel called The Mysterious Crime at Madison Square written by John R Coryell and Ormond Smith in 1886, making it a contemporary of Sherlock Holmes.

Name the character which has evolved over time with influence from Holmes, Doc Savage and James Bond?

14

Nick Carter

15

An excerpt from a Pulitzer Prize winning series

Fort Benning, Ga. – November 13: Lt William J Calley, Jr, 26 years old, is a mild mannered boyish looking Vietnam combat veteran with the nickname “Rusty”. The Army is contemplating investigation of charges that he deliberately murdered [… deliberately snipped …] in March 1968 in a Vietcong stronghold named as “Pinkville”

…

“There’s this question – I think anyone who goes to Nam asks it. What’s a civilian? Someone who works for us in the day and puts on VietCong pajamas at night?”

Name the correspondent (5 points) and the particular incident (5 points)?

15

Seymour Hersh, My Lai Massacre

16

DN Khatri (1861 – 1913) was born in Samastipur, Bihar. Later he found employment with the Raja of Benares. Here he founded his own printing press called Lahari.

Through his press, he helped revive and spread a new consciousness in the Hindi language, removing the Islamic influence of Persian / Turkish and incorporating more Sanskrit as well as local dialects.

He would write novels in installments called “Bayaans”, with each bayaan published one after another in regular intervals.

Name his first novel?

16

Chandrakanta

17

Born in Assam, she was referred to as “the most poetic of all actresses” by Al Pacino. For a 1981 film by former lover Warren Beatty, she accompanied him for the entire pre-production. Beatty wrote the lead actress role for her. But she finally turned it down saying an American should play the part. In the end, Beatty’s current girlfriend played the role. The film was nominated for all the four acting categories.

The film is dedicated to her.

Side trivia, it was the film being broadcast on British national television when the news of Princess Diana’s car crash broke through.

Name the actress (5 points) and the film (5 points)?

17

Julie Christie; Reds

18

Possibly exhaustive

Virilis – Roman men of legal age (14 – 18 years); celebrations on reaching majority

Candida – bleached by chalk, dazzling white; origin of the word candidate

Praetexta – white with purple stripe

Pulla – dark, mourning; a form of protest

Picta – generals in their triumph

Trabea – for gods, for kings and for augurs.

What are these?

18

Toga. They are also classic Latin terms to describe Roman citizens by the togas that they wore

19

I once heard him (A) discuss the topic of economy after the following manner. Addressing Critobulus, he said: Tell me, Critobulus, is "economy," like the words "medicine," "carpentry," "building," "smithying," "metal-working," and so forth, the name of a particular kind of knowledge or science?Crit: Yes, I think so.A: And as, in the case of the arts just named, we can state the proper work or function of each, can we (similarly) state the proper work and function of economy?Crit: It must, I should think, be the business of the good economist at any rate to manage his own house or estate well.A: And supposing another man's house to be entrusted to him, he would be able, if he chose, to manage it as skillfully as his own, would he not? since a man who is skilled in carpentry can work as well for another as for himself: and this ought to be equally true of the good economist?Crit: Yes, I think so.

Name book / author (5 points) and who is A (5 points)?

19

The Economist by Xenophon. Socrates. Probably the first formal book on economics

20

“The end of an unclouded day. Almost a happy one. Just one of the 3653 days of his sentence.

The extra 3 days were for leap years.”

What is this?

20

The last lines of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

21

Ramchandra Guha’s Bengal All-Time XI reads like this. Name the missing player

1. ??2. Pankaj Roy3. Arun Lal4. Sourav Ganguly (Captain)5. Ambar Roy6. Shute Bannerjee7. P Sen (wk)8. SK Girdhari9. Kamal Bhattacharjee10. Subroto Guha11. Dilip Doshi

Brief Profile:

1906 – 1984He lived at 52 Amherst Street, Kolkata

Career Stats :Batting: M: 44 R: 1659 A: 24.76 C: 1

Never played Test Cricket

21

Kartik Bose

22

The following is an exhaustive series (in the form of clues). What is the series?

1. A Walloon (Belgian French) portmanteau of the Caspian Sea and Azerbaijan2. The Goddess of Dawn3. The Dog Star

22

The 3 ships of Captain Haddock – Karaboudjan, Aurora and Sirius

23

Isaac Asimov in his "Asimov's New Guide to Science“ writes

"The ______ can be considered the first digital computer"

The exact source of this invention is unknown. However it was widely used for thousands of years from China to Mesopotamia to Greece right up to Medieval times. It's utility was reduced due to further inventions in mathematical notations originating from India.

Fill in the blank (one word)

23

The Abacus

24

The “waka” or “tanka” is a Japanese 31-syllable fixed poem. In Japanese society, waka captures the “The Way of Shikishima” or the Japanese spirit. One such waka is given below.

May our countryTaking what is goodAnd rejecting what is badBe not inferiorTo any other

This particular waka was written for a specific event by “The Sage of Poetry” in Japan, a person who wrote over 100,000 wakas in his lifetime

Name the poet and the occasion

24

Emperor Meiji (formerly Prince Matshushita), The Meiji Restoration

25

This town in UP has a population of about 16, 731 (2001 census). In Indian history and culture, it has a key place as given below

• Hundreds of civil servants in the British Indian government offices• Main abode of the two Hashemite (descendents of Mohammad) clans of the

Quraish tribe – the Alvi and the Abbasi• Seat of the Qafuri Kalandaria Sufi silsila• A crater on Mars is named after this town• Something (A) that happened on August 9th 1925• Something (B) that was created for the benefit of the Nawab who suffered from

tooth decay

Name the place (A and B will follow automatically)

25

Kakori in Uttar Pradesh

26

Established in the 14th Century, it was the first standing army in Europe since the Roman Praetorian Guard. It was abolished in 1826. In the over 500 years of existence, it grew from being “door slaves” to becoming a powerful militia with a law onto themselves deposing monarchs at will.

The original meaning of its name is “new soldier”. Its marching music has been incorporated in many compositions by composers like Mozart and Beethoven.

Name the army

26

Janissaries

27

AAA served in WW1 both in the trenches and, after an accident that gave him a permanent limp, in various desk jobs in the war ministries. He returned from the war to join the Tories. He was elected MP at the age of 21. One year later he crossed over to become independent opposing the Irish policy (the use of the Black and Tans). He joined the Labour Party in 1924 and was part of Ramsay MacDonald’s government in 1929. However, his various proposals were blocked and he quit the Left to form his own New Party (which would later go on to have a far more radical incarnation).

He was the son-in-law of Lord Curzon, having married his second daughter Cynthia. He also had affairs sometimes short sometimes extended with his wife’s sisters Mary and Alexandra as well as with Curzon’s second wife / widow Grace.

He had three children with Cynthia who died in 1933. He then married his mistress Diana Guinness in 1936 at the home of Joseph Goebbels. Hitler was one of his guests.He had two sons with Diana.

Name the second son with Diana (his youngest kid overall).

27

Max Mosley, son of Sir Oswald Mosley

28

Name the author on the extreme left

28

Paul Theroux

29

This form of rhetoric was first exhibited by Demosthenes who delivered a series of verbal attacks, fiery damning speeches on King Philip II of Macedon (father of Alexander). The most famous instance of this rhetoric was by Cicero who made fourteen such speeches against Marcus Antonius called the Antonian Orations.

Name this style of rhetoric used by both?

29

Philippic

30

Some names of people who were in the coffins

Fritz Erdman, Col, LuftwaffeOtto Ernst, Cotton BrokerErich Knocher, ImporterOtto Reichold, ManufacturingErnst Lehmann, CaptainWilly Speck, Radio OfficerFranz Echelmann, Radio Officer… (around 26 in all)

Who be they?

30

Germans killed in the Hindenburg air disaster. Coffins are at New York harbour waiting to be shipped back to Germany

31

The Condor Legion was an adjunct of the Luftwaffe. It was a test bed of sorts – where tactics could be experimented and perfected before actual use in war (specifically the blitzkreigs that happened in 1939 and 1940s).

What was their first experiment involving 6 Henkel 52 fighters?

31

Bombing of Guernica

32

It is Persian for “strong water”. Hobson-Jobson says it was used as a name of a particular tax. The name still exists in certain parts of the country like Kerala and Sikkim. A recent citation

Sikkimonline, 15th April 2007The DOP has created history of a dubious kind by notifying two Excise Commissioners instead of the usual one in the Excise ____ Department of Sikkim.

What is the good word?

32

Abkari

33

An estimated population of about 115,000 today, this African city sits on the equator, the exact coordinates being 00.04N, 32.28E. It is on the north shore of Lake Victoria.

It gets its name from the Lugandan (an African language) word for “a seat”, a reference to the rocky seats on the shores of Lake Victoria, carved by Mugala, the chief of the Mugandan tribe in early 18th century. From this seat, he would adjudicate legal cases and the death penalty was simple – to be thrown into Lake Victoria. It became administrative capital under the British. (From UN Habitat Profile Report)

In 20th century post war conflict / terrorism history, which landmark of this city is most famous?

33

Entebbe, outside Kampala, Uganda

34

Old chestnut. You have the guy in the middle. No clues. Name the two wizards to make up the trio

34

Three people involved in the War of the Currents. Edison on one side and Tesla financed by Westinghouse on the other

35

In 1900, Scottish chemist James Dewar was working on strategies to liquefy Hydrogen. It required special compartments which prevented even the slightest of heat. Using Joule-Thomson Effect (where gases can be cooled by letting them expand and preventing heat from outside), Dewar built a set of equipment including bottles that blocked off heat. This included a bottle to store superfrigid hydrogen which involved a double layer of silver coating with a vacuum in between. In chemical labs, these bottles are called Dewar Bottles.

How do we know them commercially?

35

Thermos Flasks

36

I was reading “The Mafia – The First 100 Years” by William Balsamo & George Carpozi Jr. and I came across this word. On researching it, I picked up this passage from “The City in Slang – New York” by Irving Lewis Allen.

“We often associate American ____ with Prohibition, though it is decades older, dating in print to 1889. A Philadelphia journalist, Samuel Hudson, claimed that in 1889 he picked up the new expression in Pittsburgh, introduced and popularised it in Philadelphia, whence it spread to New York. ____-____ (it was originally hyphenated) is probably of Irish-American dialectical origin, possibly from an utterance (such as Hudson suggested) : “ ____ ____ , now, the police are at the dure.” HL Mencken concluded that “the Irish gave American very few words: shillelagh, smithereens, and possibly ____ almost exhaust the list. At any rate, the idea behind ____ is clearly silence with regard to the police.”

What is the good word?

36

Speakeasy

37

From a landmark judgement on obscenity, Judge Potter Stewart of the US Supreme Court ruled on Jacobellis v State of Ohio, 1964. This concerned the petition to ban the French film The Lovers.

“I shall not today attempt to further define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shortened description(1). Perhaps I could never succeed in intelligently doing so.But _ ____ __ ____ _ ___ __ , and the motion picture involved in this case is not that”

(1) Earlier descriptions of obscenity which were considered vague. (2) The phrase is considered to be a description of the threshold of obscenity (though

it is not used regularly)

Fill in the blank?

37

I Know It When I See It

38

There are three primary custodians of this shrine – the Eastern Orthodox (Greeks), the Armenian Apostolic and the Roman Catholics. The minor custodians are the Coptic Orthodox, the Egyptian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox.

Marco Polo took some oil from this shrine on his second trip to China as requested by the Great Khan.

(Visual in the next slide)

Name the place

CLOCK: 26

CLOCK: 26

39

Taken from Wikipedia

According to Jewish folklore, a “_____” is an animated being created entirely from inanimate matter. In modern Hebrew the word literally means “cocoon” but can also mean “fool” “silly” or even “stupid”. In the Bible it is a metaphor for an embryionic or incomplete substance.

During the anti-Semitic pogroms in Prague, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalal created a “_____” to protect the Jews in the ghetto. There are many versions to this legend. Many of them refer to the _____ becoming a monster and turning on its own creator. This theme later influenced amongst others Czech Karel Capek’s R U R. It is a popular theme in Czech pop culture

What

39

Golem

40

Alan Turing, Jack Good and Hugh Alexander were in Hut-8 at Bletchley Park as part of the Golf Club and Chess Society (GCCS = Government Code and Cipher School). They were working on breaking the German naval Enigma codes. Turing developed an algorithm based on a particular X theory in maths / statistics.

After the war, Jack Good along with Turing and Max Newman were at U of Manchester working on mathematical and statistical computing. Jack Good took the X theory and developed it into a full field which has applications across the board from medicine to defence strategy

If it helps, Jack Good was an accomplished chess player and he and Turing were chess buddies. He was also involved with Mark 1 ( first digital programmable computer at U of Manchester). He was also advisor for the design of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey

Name the X theory / field of study (in mathematics / statistics)

40

Bayesian Probability / Statistics

41

He is the popular author of detective best sellers featuring the ace sleuth Prakhar Rudra like the following (translated titles)

The Antarctic Anthropophagi (dedicated to Robert Scott)The Gorilla’s Grasp (dedicated to David Livingstone)The Atomic Demon (dedicated to Albert Einstein

Besides these his stories are set in exotic locations like Vancouver, Honduras, the Sahara desert and even deep under the Atlantic Ocean.

His name at birth (give by his grandfather) was Swarbhogya. But he took up a more simpler name

Name the author

41

Jatayu; Lal Mohan Ganguly