2004

  1. Anup
  2. Dinesh Quiz 1
  3. Dinesh Quiz 2
  4. Dinesh Quiz 3
  5. Raghu
  6. Sumedha
  7. Ranga Quiz 1
  8. Ranga Quiz 2

 

Quiz by Anup Mantri

To view the answers select the coloured line that you see. The text is of the same colour as the background

  1. Identify the book:

    Prediction 1:
    In the future, authors will take a long time to get to the point. That way the book looks thicker.
    The Immutable Laws of Human Nature:
    Stupidity
    Selfishness
    Horniness

    The Dilbert Future, consulted upon by Nostradogbert and written by Scott Adams.

  2. A Company founder was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of his product (?) had an appeal to readers to return his hat if found by anyone! Identify the founder and the company which was incidentally named after this?

    Red Hat, Mark Ewing

  3. The British parliament has a guideline saying that all speeches should he relevant, non-repetitive and short. What has evolved from this guideline?

    "Just A Minute" competitions.

  4. A bullet with a soft and hollow point, often used in gaming, produces on impact, a widening of the wound due to an expansion of the bullet itself-a phenomenon called "Mushrooming" in Gunner's parlance. However, mushrooming leads to little penetration of the bullet. So another kind of bullets were invented which offer greater penetration or maximum penetration and zero mushrooming thanks to their clever casing and shape. Name these new varieties of bullets.

    (Hint: The Short Timers)

    Full metal jackets - which is where Stanley Kubrick got the name for his war-classic (based on the novel The Short Timers by Gustav Hasford.)

    From Wikipedia: A full metal jacket bullet (or FMJ) is a bullet that is encased in a copper-coated steel or gilding metal jacket, designed to stop the bullet from fragmenting within its target. The jacket prevents deformation of the bullet in the barrel or feed mechanism, from dirt overpressures or damage outside the gun. This reduces misfires. The jacket also prevents fragmentation, and the coating helps prevent damage to the gun barrel.

  5. Apart from Cassandra in the Homer epics there's one more lady "blessed" with prophetic prowess - Hers was however not a curse and she was quite well known and respected through out the Grecian world for her keen intelligence. The only daughter of Menelaus and Helen, born after the war on Troy, she was not blessed with her mother's beauty...but prophetic powers to compensate for. One version states that, as a child, she offered reasons for the long absence of Odysseus pointing out that he was lost at sea having incurred the wrath of the gods.

    So...Name this lady.
    (Hint: you don’t have to travel back magically in time to get this one…)

    Hermione

    Cassandra, daughter of Priam and Hecuba of Troy, was Agamemnon's war prize whom he brought back home with him. Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo in exchange for her favors, but when Cassandra reneged, he punished her by letting her keep the gift, but preventing anyone from believing her. The utterances of Cassandra were thought the ravings of a mad woman.

  6. A British company called Wire & Plastic Products Ltd. is the world no. 1 in its field. What field?

    (Hint: … is like blinking in the dark,…)

    Advertising. It's the core of the WPP Group that owns O&M, JWT and other companies.

    (Starting a business w/o advertising is like blinking in the dark, you know what you are doing, but nobody else does)

  7. How was the death of two persons who died in an accident at Badstone Hill in Kilmersdon village, Somerset, England in the late 16th century commemorated?
    The name "Badstone" comes from the fact that the hill was flooded with loose boulders.

    Jack and Jill, the nursery rhyme.

  8. A Scotsman, Jock Campbell learnt that Ian Fleming, an old friend of his and golf partner, was given not more than a year to live. Fleming asked his friend Jock about the way he could secure his estate for his family by selling his interest in the James Bond novels. The two made a deal through the Campbell’s company and the result was the start of …

    The Booker prize

    http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/399/cu3.htm

  9. "Take a quantity of Urine (not less for one Experiment than 50 or 60 Pails full); let it lie steeping in one or more Tubs, ...till it putrify and breed Worms, as it will do in 13 or 14 days. Then, in a large Kettle, set some of it to boil on a strong Fire, and, as it consumes and evaporates, pour in more, and so on, till, at last, the whole Quantity be reduced to a Paste...then evaporate all in warm Sand, and there will remain a red, or reddish, Salt. Take this Salt, put it into a Retort, and, for the first Hour, begin with a small Fire; more the next, a greater the 3d, and more the 4th; and then continue it, as high as you can, for 24 Hours. Sometimes, by the Force of the Fire, 24 Hours proves enough; for when you see the Recipient white, and shining with Fire, and that there are no more Flashes, or, as it were, Blasts of Wind, coming from Time to Time from the Retort, then the Work is finished. And you may, with Feather, gather the Fire together, or scrape it off with a Knife, where it sticks."

    What is this a description of?

    Phosphorous.
    This account of Brand's procedure for producing phosphorus is taken from W. Derham's 1726 edition of Philosophical Experiments and Observations of the Late Eminient Dr. Robert Hookes, F.R.S. and Geom Prof. Gresh and Other Eminent Viruoso's in His Time and as presented in Weeks and Leicester's Discovery of the Elements (1968).

    http://www.sweethaven.com/chemele/excpts01.html

  10. Identify the product advertised alongside Aspirin in this 1897 ad.. This product name (blanked out) too became a generic name.

    Heroin - Bayer registered heroin (meaning 'heroic treatment' from the German word heroisch) as a trademark. See Image

  11. This company, famous for its profit records is also known for its humorous corporate identity. Allentown in Pennsylvania was trying hard to include its Lehigh Valley International Airport into the flying chart of this famous airlines. However the airlines could not be wooed in. The Airport staffs were disappointed and they sent a box of grinch dolls to the airlines headquarter. The joke however backfired. The Lehigh Valley Airport received a spirited rhyme, along with a copy of Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham.

    We will not go from here to there.
    We would not go there on a dare.
    We will not go there on a boat.
    We would not go there with a goat.
    We would not go there if we drove trains.
    You will not get our Air-O-Planes.
    You will not see us in your air.
    You will not get our great low fare.

    Which Airlines, am I talking about ?

    Southwest Airlines

  12. Dr. Seuss book "Green eggs and ham" was written when the editor made a bet of $50 saying that he couldn't do something. What?

    The editor made a bet saying that Seuss can't write an entire book using 50 words. But Seuss wrote "Green eggs and ham" using only 50 words and won the bet. That the editor didn't pay him is an entirely different issue.

  13. In 1992, a US based shareholder activist Robert Monks funded an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal. The caption "The non-performing assets of ______" was accompanied by a picture of the company's board of directors. Some good did come of this: The board of this company accepted many of Mr. Monks's suggested changes in policy, and the board was forced to increase shareholder value amongst other things. Which American company's Board of directors were humiliated like this?

    Sears

  14. He's written a book of reportage called "The Jaguar Smile-A Nicaraguan Journey". He's also published an essay volume titled "Imaginary Homelands" and a film criticism called "The Wizard of Oz". He was Germany's author of the year in 1989 and is
    MIT's first Honorary Visiting Professor of Humanities, besides being a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Quite a dude, eh?

    So what's his name?

    Salman Rushdie

    Mr. Rushdie is MIT's first honorary visiting professor. Four men have been named honorary lecturers: Winston Churchill, when he spoke at MIT in 1949, and later, philanthropists Cecil Green, Eugene McDermott and Carl Mueller.

  15. A friend of the radical Robespierre, in her "Memoirs" of 1838, she, recounts how she earned the friendship of both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The french revolution forced her into prison-declared her a fake artist- and publicly ridiculed her by making her practice her "art" on the remains of the royal couple and others of the Noblesse. With her head shaved, she awaited her own execution with the beautiful Josephine Beauharnais, future Empress of France. Fortunate to survive, she fled to England and started life anew. Who?

    Madame Tussaud