BH quiz #12

I have already been chancing my arm at the board of truth this very morning. We reached the magic combined target of 101 more often that not, so it would be tempting to gamble. But how would we hold up. I've never had a problem with TV nervousness (though, I don't think bursts of choking really count, not when seen in the context of the big picture), but chucking sharp metal objects at a board in front of a crowd, which might be whooping or baying depending on if I've offended anyone with the utter drivel that comes out of my mouth in the 'getting to know' you part, may be an entirely different matter. I'm detecting the possibility I may have a weak arm. I have the right line, but it is more of a V-2 missile arc rather than air-to-air missile projection done Dart Vader-style. If we get called up for audition, this may have to be rectified with hours of training (I'm being serious, yet feel odd for writing that).

But of course, there is no point in hanging on the telephone. I'm emptying my mind of expectations that involve iPods and tropical holidays, and am filling it with pessimist expectation that deems our bid to be on the show an abject failure. It's better this way. Mebbe, the researchers will take a shine to us and my strange short sentences (yes, I do those on application forms too.) Did I tell you how much I love people who work in TV and all the great work they do? I love them so much I'll say anything to make them happy. Anyway, enough dreaming, on with the next quiz...

1. Which Bond villain, also known as the Number of the Cypher, is rumoured to have been inspired by occultist Aleister Crowley?
2 Which US President was born on July 4, Independence Day, in 1872?
3 Sickly and weak infants were left to die of exposure at the foot of which mountain by the Spartans?
4 Who designed the Uffizi in Florence?
5 What blood-rich area of the kidney is surrounded by Bowman's capsule?
6 Which Frenchman was the founder or originat the field of algebraic topology, and may have laid the foundations for Chaos theory too?
7 At 515km-long, what glacier in Antarctica is the longest in the world?
8 What is the longest bone in the body after the femur?
9 Which architect designed Vienna's Secession Building in the Art Nouveau style?
10 Called Strigopa habroptilus, what endangered nocturnal, flightless bird from New Zealand lives in burrows and is brown, green and yellow and keeps still as its main mode of defence?
11 Which Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest, who died in 1966, proposed the Big Bang theory in 1933, but called it the hypothesis of the primeval atom instead?
12 Also the name of a national park, which mountain looms over the Venezuelan capital Caracas and the narrow valley it is situated in?
13 What kind of eating establishments are parillas in Spanish-speaking countries?
14 Reputedly half-man and half-serpent, which mythological figure is seen as the traditional founder of Athens, as well as the first King of Attica, and was supposed to have sprung from the earth?
15 In which room in the Senate House was Julius Caesar assassinated?
16 Leo Colston is the title character in which 1953 novel?
17 Which Swiss theologian published his commentary of St Paul's Epistle to the Romans in 1919?
18 The Bagrati Cathedral and Gelati Monastery are world heritage sites in which country?
19 What was the name of Reg Varney's character in On the Buses?
20 Birthplace of Pythagoras, which island reached the peak of prosperity in the 6th century under a tyrant called Polycrates?

Answers to BH quiz #11
1. Paper/Rock Scissors Stone 2. 33 3. William Makepeace Thackeray 4. Noam Chomsky 5. Actor Julian McMahon (son of PM William and former husband of Danni, as well as star of Nip/Tuck) 6. Mikhail Frunze 7. John Lewis 8. Alan Napier 9. What's New Pussycat? 10. "The bastards" 11. Lawrence Summers 12. Jimmy Peters 13. Urine therapy or drinking wee as some people might say 14. Jack White 15. One push 16. Niels Bohr 17. TV Dinners 18. Bleigiessen 19. Lyssa 20. Simon Agdestein 21. Rosemoor