divyanshu s. gandhi (17-2-2016)

“Ohh shit”

By Divyanshu Surya Gandhi

Rules1. 30 Questions in the quiz.2. +10/-10 on pounce. +10 on direct.

+10 on pass. Part pounce not allowed.

3. One can double the points of pounce if they say it before seeing the question. -20 if they are wrong then.

Q.1.In 1994, X founded the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual

History and Education, originally called the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, a nonprofit organization established to record testimonies in video format of survivors and other witnesses of the Shoah. He did not accept any earnings from a certain project he undertook before this, stating that it would have been “blood money”, and rather proceeds from the project went towards setting up the foundation a year later. USC: University of Southern California. Shoah is a Franco British documentary directed by Claude Lanzmann released in 1985.

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Q.2.Castellammare del Golfo, literally the Sea Fortress on the Gulf, is

a town in the province of ______. It is a relatively popular tourist destination, and one of the places you might have seen it is as part of the film Ocean’s Twelve.

The Castellammarese War, was a bloody power struggle in the early 1930’s, named so because one of the heads involved, Salvatore Maranzano, was based in that region of _____. At the end of it, where Maranzano was assassinated, the parties involved established a power sharing arrangement called The Commission, which created a system of five equally powerful entities to avoid any such future wars, and the system remained in place for a great many years after.

What do we know the Commission as more popularly as?

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Q.3.

“Dresden China snuff-boxes, mechanical engines, electro-plated fish slicers, musical boxes and gilt blown glass Christmas balls do not go well with the splendors of a Palace that might have been built by Titans and coloured by the morning sun”

Is an excerpt from a work of Rudyard Kipling, in which he references a certain Indian monument, whose name quite literally means “The Fort of the Sun”. It’s construction was started under the rule of the Rathore ruler Rao Jodha, after whom a city has (quite evidently) been named too.

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Mehrangarh Fort

Q.4.X started out by writing short stories for men’s magazines like Cavalier. His first book, an epistolary novel, Y, released in 1974 is one of his most notable works

with three different film adaptations and one Broadway musical adaptation. When asked about it’s origin he commented-

“Some woman said, ‘You write all those macho things, but you can’t write about

women.’ I said, ‘I’m not scared of women. I could write about them if I wanted to.’ So I got an idea for a story about this incident in a girls’ shower room….

….Anyway I did the shower scene but I hated it and threw it away, My wife fished it out of the waste-basket and read it. She said, ‘I think this is pretty good’…”And so Y is dedicated to his wife, another author in the same genre, though nowhere near as famous: “This is for Tabby, who got me into it. -and then bailed me out of it.”

ID X, Y.

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Q.5.

When David Lynch released his epic Sci Fi adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune in 1984, he gave credit to the film to another prolific director, _____ _______, in the Television cut and some international cuts of the film, because of the kind of films he used to work with and direct. The said director has a very wide range of works from as early as 1968 ( The Death of a Gunfighter being his first ) till the year 2000, in both cinema and television. An urban legend with regards to the director is that his name anagrams to “The Alias Men”, which, although apocryphal at best, does give an idea of the way he worked and the films he was associated with.

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Alan Smithee

Q.6.A term that most of us have never given a second thought about, The idea of a ______

_____ was perhaps first mentioned in Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land –

“They went to the living room; Jill sat at his feet and they applied themselves to

martinis. Opposite his chair was a stereovision tank disguised as an aquarium; he switched it on, guppies and tetras gave way to the face of the well-known winchell Augustus Greaves.”

The phrase itself originated out of something quite literal – It was used to protect a

certain aspect of the computer from Burning Out due to excess heat and reactions with phosphorus.

What two word phrase, something that we no longer really need like we might have

back then.

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SCREENSAVER

Q.7.

The Indian Post office (Amendment) Bill was tabled and passed by both houses in the year 1982. This bill, once fully implemented, would have given the Indian Government the power to view all forms of personal correspondence and take action or censor as and when necessary. However, the then President, G.Zail Singh, used a power given to his post that has never been used since. What did he use to stop the Bill from becoming law? The name would be nice, general funda would do to.

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Pocket Veto

A pocket veto is a legislative maneuver that allows a president or other official with veto power to exercise that power over a bill by taking no action (instead of affirmatively vetoing it).

Q.8.

“Notes towards the Complete Works of Shakespeare” is a manuscript published in the year 2002, and the six authors are only known by their first names – Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan. It was an initiative by the staff and students of the University of Plymouth to demonstrate something in what they called, was part science experiment part performance art. The text itself shows a strong disposition to the S key, and the entire manuscript, about five pages long, represents the combined work of all six authors over the period of a month in which they were, quite literally, locked up in a cage. What is this all about, really?

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Give six monkeys a computer.

Q.9.In the year 2007, a certain Hollywood actor outbid another Hollywood actor

in an auction of a very rare dinosaur fossil. And that’s something you could very readily associate from one of his most famous roles in film. The one who won, was actually on a spending rampage that spanned seven years and saw him burn through 150 million dollars, on things ranging from bungalows to castles to islands and jets. Now however, his star value has significantly reduced, and he had to painfully part with his Action Comics #1 at a record selling price of 2.16 million. On 24 December 2015, he agreed to return the fossil skull to the authorities after it was found that it was illegally transported from the discovery site in Mongolia. The actor who lost the bid, is now in a position where he might realistically get something he’s never gotten so far. And the world would feel really sorry if he had to return it, especially if it were a host gaffe. ID both.

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Nicholas Cage and Leonardo di Caprio

Q.10.

SBS Prince Beverages Pvt. Ltd. seeking to cash in on the popularity of X launched the product Y earlier in February this year. Launched in four flavours — cola, lemon, orange and surprise — a 400ml pet bottle costs Rs.15

Jitender Keswani who owns the company, said the product is for the “common man” who cannot afford to buy costly soft drinks. He also said the slogan for the drink was the best — “Drink and fight for your right”.

ID Y

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Q.11.

X’s first autobiography’s title claimed that he wasn’t someone (Y) whom he portrayed in a certain series. The book, which came out in 1975 was criticized by some fans because of the perception that X was rejecting the character Y. He maintained he was only clarifying the difference between himself and Y, whom he always enjoyed playing. However, he later published his second autobiography in an attempt to address the misconceptions. Give X, Y and the titles of the two autobiographies, which are functionally very similar to each other, and a whole host of titles in popular media.

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X: Leonard Nimoy Y: Spock

Q.12.X, a Major League Baseball legend, has to his name one of the most enduring streaks in

professional sports history, and what, after some thought and calculation by a Nobel Prize winning physicist Edward Purcell, who was also a Sabermetrician (cool name for a hardcore Baseball analyst), was called “the most extraordinary thing that ever happened in American sports”.

That is arguably his most famous achievement. His popularity during his career was such that he was referenced in film, television, literature, art, and music both during his career and decades after he retired, in places like “We didn’t start the fire” and a really famous Hemingway work too.

But he is also known for courting and marrying Y, who was equally, if not more popular in the US and all over the world back then. They fell out, and he re-entered her life years later as another one of her marriages was failing. He quit his day job to ask her to marry him again, but he never got the chance to ask her, and he sent a dozen roses, thrice a week, for the next twenty years, to her grave, never marrying again.

ID X, and well, Y is who she is.

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X: Joe Di Maggio Y: Marilyn Monroe

Q.13.X was a French police officer and biometrics researcher who

created anthropometry, an identification system based on physical measurements. Anthropometry was the first scientific system used by police to identify criminals. Before that time, criminals could only be identified based on unreliable eyewitness accounts. The method was eventually supplanted by fingerprinting. X is also credited with contributions like the mug shot and the systematisation of crime-scene photography which remain in place to this day.

X is referenced in the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles, in which one of Holmes’s clients refers to Holmes as the “second highest expert in Europe” after X.

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ALPHONSE BERTILLION

Q.14.

An app was created by a group of software engineering students at the University of Iceland named Sad Engineer Studios. The app has proved to be very popular in Iceland with thousands downloads from the Google Play Store.

Called Íslendingabók (The Book of Icelanders), one of the main features of this app is something called the Bump. It is particularly important given Iceland’s small population, and generational naming traditions.

What is the main function of this app?Their tagline is “Bump in the app before you bump in X”

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Q.15.

These are the recipients of a very specific award/honour. As you can see, there is a name blanked out next to the date 19 May 1990. Whose?

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Nishan-e-Pakistan; Morarj Desai

Q.16.The Ecuadorian national team figured they were going to need some help if

they were going to win the 2006 World Cup.And so they did what we all do in their situation. They opened up the yellow

pages and found a X. A man named Tzamarenda Naychapi, a X from Ecuador’s Shuar tribe, answered the call and visited each of the 12 stadiums the Cup would be played in.

An official from the Ecuadorian Tourist Office said, “When Ecuador qualified for the World Cup, we thought about what we could bring to Germany. It is a big present from this little country to be in the World Cup and they wanted to bring a present back, so we thought about what Germany is missing. Tzamarenda said he could bring Germany peace and lots of positive energy”

So what is X?

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SHAMAN/WITCH DOCTOR

Q.17.The picture in the next slide has been widely claimed as a “first”

of sorts. The four women in it are part of a doo-wop music band, called the Les Horribles X-ettes . One of them actually worked at X, and her husband, who also worked at X, wrote and composed the first few songs for the group. At their first few performances, they dubbed themselves “the one and only High Energy Rock Band”.

When you replace X with the actual word, the initials of the name of the band form something that is inextricably linked to X.

What you need to do, is give us X, and also what “first” this picture is supposed to have achieved.

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Les Horribles Cernettes; First picture uploaded on the web.

Q.18.Perhaps the most “intriguing” of all epidemics in history, The X plague has

occurred at different points of time across the world, with cases in France, Netherlands, and even Madagascar. But the most prominent case of the plague took place in the early 1500’s in Strasbourg, France. The first victim, a woman, fell prey to the disease in a narrow street, and over the course of the next few weeks, it had spread to about 400 people in various different stages of the affliction, and leading to as many deaths. While the event is bizarre to read about, most historians agree that it did indeed happen, though the reasons behind it are still unclear. Possible theories include Mushrooms containing natural equivalents of LSD, supernatural compulsions, and stress due to the period of famine and other communicable diseases that were prevalent in that period.

Here is an excerpt from an article on it, the operative word blanked out –By the end of the week, 34 others had joined her and, within a month, the

number of X individuals had swelled to 400.Authorities prescribed “more X” to cure the tormented movers but, by

summer’s end, dozens in the Alsatian city had died of heart attacks, strokes and sheer exhaustion due to X.

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DANCING PLAGUE of 1518

Q.19.

X is a rather unusual man in his sport. While most of his peers are, shall we say, “colourful” X has a penchant for being systematic and ordered. Apart from his considerable achievements in ____________, X also speaks 4 languages, has a PhD, and plays chess.X was one of the first ever Summer Olympic gold medallists of this country in 1996. In 2012, he auctioned off his medal to a bidder for USD 1 Million, to use the money to ‘help the dreams’ of thousands of children in his country. After the sale, the bidder immediately returned the medal back to X out of respect for him. So who is X?

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VLADIMIR KLITSCHKO

Q.20

While shooting this scene, the production team wondered what to use in place of a certain substance. The final composition was a mixture of chocolate and peanut butter of unknown proportions. The resultant was very realistic, and became one of the most talked about scenes of that movie, even earning a special place in the Oscar’s opening sequence the next year.

What movie, and which scene are we talking about?

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Q.21.

The above notice was against a certain kind of music that was being created at the time in America. X and Y were genres of music prevalent in those times, with the sole point of difference being related to the above notice. Eventually, Y ( the notice being against it ) became part of a wider musical movement, one that we know as Z today.

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X: Rhythm Y: Blues Z: Rock n roll Blank: Negro

Q.22.

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The novel is The Cuckoo’s Calling, written by a writer called Robert Galbraith.

This tweet led to an investigation to find out more about Robert Galbraith. However, investigations revealed thata) Robert Galbraith was not living; andb) Someone was impersonating this nobody to sell books.

There was then an investigation to find out who was impersonating the late Robert Galbraith., and writing books in his name. They found out that the impersonator was J.K. Rowling!

Q.23.

• Music directors – Vinayak Salvi, Rohan Utpat• Lyricist – Vikas Dubey• Singer – Alamgir KhanWhat am I talking about?

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MAUKA MAUKA AD

Q.24.

Palantir Technologies, Inc. is a private American software and services company, co-founded by Peter Thiel, which specializes in data analysis. It is known for 2 softwares in particular: Palantir X which is used by counter-terrorism analysts and fraud investigators, and Palantir Y, used by hedge funds, banks and financial service firms. ID X and Y, which are the names of 2 cities, and (unrelated) say what the name of the company is a reference to, from the world of literature

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X: Gotham Y: Metropolis

Q.25.

The current director of the FBI, James Comey, recently admitted that their cyber crimes division was was severely understaffed. Most of the world’s top ethical hackers, geeks and out-of-the-box programmers were ineligible for employment due to a very specific FBI criteria. Which criteria?

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Anti Marijuana Policy

Q.26.

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There is no seat in Lok Sabha numbered 420.

Q.27.

“The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a ______, an ordinary, smallish _____, and I chose that one. Base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought ‘__ will do’. I typed it out. End of story.”

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How Douglas Adams chose “42”

Q.28.The Summy Company registered for copyright of the song X, in

1935. In 1988, Warner/Chappell Music purchased the company owning the copyright for $25 million, with the value of X estimated at $5 million.

Based on the 1935 copyright registration, Warner claims that the United States copyright will not expire until 2030, and that unauthorised public performances of the song are technically illegal unless royalties are paid to Warner. In 2008, Warner collected about $5,000 per day in royalties for the song. However, as of now the copyright claims are under legal dispute.

Name the song.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU

Q.29.

Designed at Google with the help of volunteers from Hack4good, this new tablet can be operated with gloves on and in regions of high humidity. It is meant to help a certain group of skilled people.

The sharp edges were removed so that the clothing would not be pierced.

The tablet has been put in waterproof casing, and can be dunked into a 0.5% solution of chlorine without suffering abrasions.

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EBOLA PROOF TABLET

Q.30.

There are multiple reasons as to why this is so-• 1.Worshippers of Shiva used to do this to

demarcate their homes and to separate themselves form people who worshipped other deities.

• 2.It happens to keep the houses cool.• 3.The copper compound involved is effective

against mosquitoes and termites too.• What are we talking about ?

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Blue houses in Jodhpur