BH quiz #21
An almighty bumper edition of the BH quiz with some bloody huge questions since I decided to empty my latest notebook of all the interest-piquing trivia jottings that need transcription and bulking out with extra factage. Man, it didn't seem like I wrote 47 questions. Please accept my apologies if they make your eyes ache and your mind wander on to what you might be having for tomorrow's dinner.
I could be gaining a predilection for huge things. It may be something to do with Robin dropping by the flat with his spare copy of Rising Up, Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means by William T Vollmann. Some thoughts?!! Merely some? This 17-year magnum opus labour of love huge giant doorstop, which I can't even lift all at once, is seven-volumes and 3,352 pages gigantic. Thus I suspect it may teach me something. Or at least give me the chance to write a blog just dedicated to read it (book-specific blogs are becoming all the rage). Vollmann is after all the total literary genius and lover of dangerous things, and a prodigious word factory non-pareil. Even if his photos make him look like Stephen King's nerdy and thicky brother (those glasses - ack!). He certainly does not conform to the appearance of someone who has smoked crack for the purpose of befriending prositutes and extracting choice material. Nor does he look like someone who travelled to war zones like Somalia or went to Afghanistan during the Soviet Invasion. Yet he's done all of that and written some 60 books. Undying respect is due.
The weird thing is that Robin ordered one set from Amazon but ended up getting two. Robin may be a very lucky man. Unless, of course, they realise their mistake and set the Bezos bloodhounds on his trail. I have been pondering this since it is no longer being offered for new on the site. Instead, the cheapest used copy currently goes for £367.34. And since Robin has gave it to me gratis - a gesture I'm only starting to appreciate as I type these words - the complete guilt of such a serendipitous addition to my library demands I give him some money. So I gave into the guilt. I offered him £15. Please, no comments about my Bill Gatesian generosity. And no, I haven't though of sticking it on Marketplace for £250. I have morals. Can't exactly name them, but I assure you that reside in me and guide me ... most of the time.
Oh, and if you want to get the authorised abridgement, don't expect a pleasant and accommodating length either. It is 752 pages long. I suppose that Vollmann didn't want to give up too much. Any small mercies? The print isn't tiny.
Here's two random links I like the look of. One is on sauces and the other is the Wikipedia page on the father and mother of something and so forth. I mean, of course, stuff like nuclear physics (Ernest Rutherford) and social work (Jane Addams), not chestnuts concerning whichever off-their-rocker musician fathered Moon Unit and Chastity.
Did you know Philip Abelson is the father of the nuclear submarine (yeah, cheers for that Phil, I bet you gave Thatcher the horn when she was PM), Edward Bernays fathered PR or spin (well done, mate, well done; the world thanks you for giving us the likes of Alastair Campbell and a legion of White House press puppets, or 'spokesmen', spouting daily geysers of deranged and maddening nonsense), and James Busby birthed the Australian wine industry, possibly after he had run out of both VB and money, and had some grapes growing in his yard he thought could be somehow made into a beverage containing alcohol. Do you reckon it's safe to say we will never get a question on Busby? Knowing quiz-setters... hmm.
Anyway, I accord this material vital status. As Sven Goran Erikksson, Daniel Amokachi and any number of foreigners say (and no native English speakers): "For sure".
(PS When I mentioned yesterday that I had seen actor David Warner, I meant in the flesh. He was walking up Regent Street at about 11.30am. That's for all you nutty Titanic fans who might want to stake out a spot on future Saturdays and give him a clip on the ear for being so nasty to poor Leo.)
1 Peggy Appiah, who wrote illustrated books such as 1966's Ananse the Spider that retold Ashanti stories and died in February 2006, was the daughter of which Labour politician?
2 Known as white cedar elsewhere, what is Japan's most prized softwood and is the only wood used to build Japanese emperors' coffins?
3 Which German energy corporation will sponsor the FA Cup during the 2006/7 season?
4 Famed for its knitted diamond-patterned and checked-clothes, which factory in the town of Innerleithen was founded in 1821 and was bought by the Italian company Charme Investments?
5 Which actress was so ashamed of her topless scene in the 1970 film The Owl and the Pussycat that she bought up all the prints and had it deleted?
6 With reference to DNA, there are five kinds of what that are commonly referred to by the identity of their bases and which are adenine, thymine, uracil, cytosine and guanine?
7 Known for designing such buildings as the Salk Institute Building in La Jolla, California, which American architect, then a bankrupt, died in the men's toilet of Penn Station in New York City in 1974?
8 A Giorgio Armani hotel and Palazzo Versace are to be built in which rapidly growing city?
9 "My legal name is Alexander Perchov" is the first line of which 2002 novel?
10 Much coveted by a number of countries, what mooted astronomy project has the acronym SKA?
11 The title of which recent million-selling album is a tribute to its maker's physicist father who used to take her to the observatory at St Andrews University?
12 Located in Hindhead, Surrey, a place styled "the Little Switzerland of Surrey" in the novel Arthur and George, what was the name of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's home in which he took up residence in 1897?
13 Which bad boy of German art, who died of cancer aged 44, is known for such installations as Heavy Heart, which featured a skip filled with the fragments of 51 paintings, The Happy End of Franz Kafka's "Amerika", which arranged 40 tables and 80 chairs in various positions, and the life-sized sculpture that was partly titled ...Into the Corner, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself?
14 Perhaps founded in 1407 by a German pilgrim whose surname became its name or founded in 46 AD when an Alexandrian gnostic called Ormus was converted, along with six followers, by Mark, which Christian alchemists of the Rhenish palatinate anonymously published the order's first manifesto Fama Fraternitatis in 1614 in the German city of Kassel?
15 Where in South Africa is the site of the largest meteorite crater in the world, some 168 miles in diameter?
16 What did John Betjeman call "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England"?
17 Which American horitculturist and agricultural science pioneer (1849-1926) developed more than 800 strains of plants over a 55-year career, producing such varieties as the Shasta daisy and the Freestone peach, also breeding the white blackberry and nectarine?
18 The oldest known celebration that commemorates the end of slavery in the US, which official state holiday in Texas dates back to the 1865 when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and announced the enslaved were now free, and is so named because the freed people didn't know which day it exactly was?
19 What four-word slogan of the sixties pop music show Ready Steady Go was its original title?
20 Which artist, born in what is now Belarus in 1893, horrified his Parisian neighbours by keeping the carcass that he would paint in Carcass of Beef in his studio? One of his paintings recently fetched £7.8 million at Christie's.
21 Which Swiss-French composer married the pianist and teacher (of such figures as Pierre Boulez) Andree Vaurabourg in 1926 on the condition that they live in separate apartments because he needed space to compose?
22 Blizzard Entertainment the makers of which massive multiplayer online role-playing game, the fourth in its series and centred on the online world of Azeroth, recently stoked controversy by banning (then rescinding the ban) a gay guild called Oz?
23 Claimed by some to be over 3000 years old and an ancestor of bastketball, what favoured game of the Aztecs saw players put a rubber ball through a stone hoop and was a ritual honouring the game's twin deities Amapan and Uappatzin, as well Huitzilopochtli, the god of war?
24 What is the full name of Barbie, the toy doll?
25 In the 1980 film, Flash Gordon was quarterback for which American football team?
26 The mindbending futuristic drug Substance D and its effects on Bob Actor feature in which sci-fi novel and forthcoming film?
27 In which Munich prison did Hitler write Mein Kampf?
28 Meaning "to mash meat", what ancient Japanese invention involves the blanching and processing of fish protein, the modern day results being seen in crabsticks?
29 If you are born with craniopagus parasiticus, what do you have?
30 Known by the acronym UGLE, which body regulates Freemasonry in this country?
31 Which Milanese photographer is known for his Site Specific projects in which he takes pictures of familiar cities and landmarks from helicopters and makes them look like model miniatures?
32 As used by Ricky Ponting, which Kookaburra bat design has been declared illegal due to the graphite strip on the back that bears the makers' logo?
33 Seen as the creator of the modern still life and known for such works as Scouring Maid (1738) and The Benediction (1740), legend states that which Frenchman's ability to make his paintings appear so real began when he decided to sit in front of a dead rabbit and just paint what he saw?
34 Greg Dyke is the chairman of which football club?
35 The breakdown of George III's youngest sister Princess Caroline's marriage to which country's monarch almost caused war with Great Britain?
36 From the Latin for "precursor", what name is given in medicine to an early symptom indicating the onset of an attack or disease?
37 Producers of Cohiba cigars since the late 1960s, which Havana cigar factory is considered the most famous of them all, legend having it that Che Guevara announced that a post-revolution cigar be created, so that the cigar-rolling school that was founded in 1961 was converted for such a purpose?
38 The centermost of the seven hills of Rome, which hill was the first to be built on and was the mythological site of the discovery of Romulus and Remus by the shepherd Faustulus?
39 Born in Stuttgart in 1770, which philosopher stated in 1821 that "Education is the art of making man ethical"?
40 Apparently the most popular team in France, which football team plays at the Stade Gerland?
41 Born in 1821, which pioneer of professional golf came second in the first ever Open Championship in 1860 and won it the following year, and was Prestwick Golf Club's "Keeper of the Green, Ball and Club Maker" for many years?
42 The great uncle of scientist Rosalind Franklin, who was the first practicing Jew to serve in the British cabinet when he became Home Secretary in 1916?
43 The simplest aldehyde, what chemical compound has the formula H2CO and was first synthesised by Russian chemist Aleksandr Butlerov in 1859, though it was correctly identified by August von Hoffman in 1867?
44 What cut of meat, especially ham, comes from the front or hind leg directly above the foot?
45 A Tangled Skein was the original name of which story, written in 1886?
46 Also the name of snake with species called Coastal and Western, what term for a foreign businessman in China is derived from the Mandarin for "big class"?
47 Starring Aidan Quinn in the title role, in which film can you see Frasier star Kelsey Grammer play US president George Washington?
Answers to BH quiz #20
1. Glycine 2. Jean Christophe Novelli (Did he do The Games? Oh, why oh why... did you do it for the ladies Jean?) 3. Georg Lukacs 4. Themis 5. James T Russell 6. Obscure 7. Twilight Zone 8. Natchez 9. 60 10. Climbs 11. James E Sullivan award 12. Argentina 13. Roach 14. Elizabeth Bonaventure 15 James IV (at Flodden) 16. Gresford Colliery 17. Difference Engine 18. Erich von Stalhein 19. Zoser or Djoser 20. Kielbasa
I could be gaining a predilection for huge things. It may be something to do with Robin dropping by the flat with his spare copy of Rising Up, Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means by William T Vollmann. Some thoughts?!! Merely some? This 17-year magnum opus labour of love huge giant doorstop, which I can't even lift all at once, is seven-volumes and 3,352 pages gigantic. Thus I suspect it may teach me something. Or at least give me the chance to write a blog just dedicated to read it (book-specific blogs are becoming all the rage). Vollmann is after all the total literary genius and lover of dangerous things, and a prodigious word factory non-pareil. Even if his photos make him look like Stephen King's nerdy and thicky brother (those glasses - ack!). He certainly does not conform to the appearance of someone who has smoked crack for the purpose of befriending prositutes and extracting choice material. Nor does he look like someone who travelled to war zones like Somalia or went to Afghanistan during the Soviet Invasion. Yet he's done all of that and written some 60 books. Undying respect is due.
The weird thing is that Robin ordered one set from Amazon but ended up getting two. Robin may be a very lucky man. Unless, of course, they realise their mistake and set the Bezos bloodhounds on his trail. I have been pondering this since it is no longer being offered for new on the site. Instead, the cheapest used copy currently goes for £367.34. And since Robin has gave it to me gratis - a gesture I'm only starting to appreciate as I type these words - the complete guilt of such a serendipitous addition to my library demands I give him some money. So I gave into the guilt. I offered him £15. Please, no comments about my Bill Gatesian generosity. And no, I haven't though of sticking it on Marketplace for £250. I have morals. Can't exactly name them, but I assure you that reside in me and guide me ... most of the time.
Oh, and if you want to get the authorised abridgement, don't expect a pleasant and accommodating length either. It is 752 pages long. I suppose that Vollmann didn't want to give up too much. Any small mercies? The print isn't tiny.
Here's two random links I like the look of. One is on sauces and the other is the Wikipedia page on the father and mother of something and so forth. I mean, of course, stuff like nuclear physics (Ernest Rutherford) and social work (Jane Addams), not chestnuts concerning whichever off-their-rocker musician fathered Moon Unit and Chastity.
Did you know Philip Abelson is the father of the nuclear submarine (yeah, cheers for that Phil, I bet you gave Thatcher the horn when she was PM), Edward Bernays fathered PR or spin (well done, mate, well done; the world thanks you for giving us the likes of Alastair Campbell and a legion of White House press puppets, or 'spokesmen', spouting daily geysers of deranged and maddening nonsense), and James Busby birthed the Australian wine industry, possibly after he had run out of both VB and money, and had some grapes growing in his yard he thought could be somehow made into a beverage containing alcohol. Do you reckon it's safe to say we will never get a question on Busby? Knowing quiz-setters... hmm.
Anyway, I accord this material vital status. As Sven Goran Erikksson, Daniel Amokachi and any number of foreigners say (and no native English speakers): "For sure".
(PS When I mentioned yesterday that I had seen actor David Warner, I meant in the flesh. He was walking up Regent Street at about 11.30am. That's for all you nutty Titanic fans who might want to stake out a spot on future Saturdays and give him a clip on the ear for being so nasty to poor Leo.)
1 Peggy Appiah, who wrote illustrated books such as 1966's Ananse the Spider that retold Ashanti stories and died in February 2006, was the daughter of which Labour politician?
2 Known as white cedar elsewhere, what is Japan's most prized softwood and is the only wood used to build Japanese emperors' coffins?
3 Which German energy corporation will sponsor the FA Cup during the 2006/7 season?
4 Famed for its knitted diamond-patterned and checked-clothes, which factory in the town of Innerleithen was founded in 1821 and was bought by the Italian company Charme Investments?
5 Which actress was so ashamed of her topless scene in the 1970 film The Owl and the Pussycat that she bought up all the prints and had it deleted?
6 With reference to DNA, there are five kinds of what that are commonly referred to by the identity of their bases and which are adenine, thymine, uracil, cytosine and guanine?
7 Known for designing such buildings as the Salk Institute Building in La Jolla, California, which American architect, then a bankrupt, died in the men's toilet of Penn Station in New York City in 1974?
8 A Giorgio Armani hotel and Palazzo Versace are to be built in which rapidly growing city?
9 "My legal name is Alexander Perchov" is the first line of which 2002 novel?
10 Much coveted by a number of countries, what mooted astronomy project has the acronym SKA?
11 The title of which recent million-selling album is a tribute to its maker's physicist father who used to take her to the observatory at St Andrews University?
12 Located in Hindhead, Surrey, a place styled "the Little Switzerland of Surrey" in the novel Arthur and George, what was the name of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's home in which he took up residence in 1897?
13 Which bad boy of German art, who died of cancer aged 44, is known for such installations as Heavy Heart, which featured a skip filled with the fragments of 51 paintings, The Happy End of Franz Kafka's "Amerika", which arranged 40 tables and 80 chairs in various positions, and the life-sized sculpture that was partly titled ...Into the Corner, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself?
14 Perhaps founded in 1407 by a German pilgrim whose surname became its name or founded in 46 AD when an Alexandrian gnostic called Ormus was converted, along with six followers, by Mark, which Christian alchemists of the Rhenish palatinate anonymously published the order's first manifesto Fama Fraternitatis in 1614 in the German city of Kassel?
15 Where in South Africa is the site of the largest meteorite crater in the world, some 168 miles in diameter?
16 What did John Betjeman call "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England"?
17 Which American horitculturist and agricultural science pioneer (1849-1926) developed more than 800 strains of plants over a 55-year career, producing such varieties as the Shasta daisy and the Freestone peach, also breeding the white blackberry and nectarine?
18 The oldest known celebration that commemorates the end of slavery in the US, which official state holiday in Texas dates back to the 1865 when Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and announced the enslaved were now free, and is so named because the freed people didn't know which day it exactly was?
19 What four-word slogan of the sixties pop music show Ready Steady Go was its original title?
20 Which artist, born in what is now Belarus in 1893, horrified his Parisian neighbours by keeping the carcass that he would paint in Carcass of Beef in his studio? One of his paintings recently fetched £7.8 million at Christie's.
21 Which Swiss-French composer married the pianist and teacher (of such figures as Pierre Boulez) Andree Vaurabourg in 1926 on the condition that they live in separate apartments because he needed space to compose?
22 Blizzard Entertainment the makers of which massive multiplayer online role-playing game, the fourth in its series and centred on the online world of Azeroth, recently stoked controversy by banning (then rescinding the ban) a gay guild called Oz?
23 Claimed by some to be over 3000 years old and an ancestor of bastketball, what favoured game of the Aztecs saw players put a rubber ball through a stone hoop and was a ritual honouring the game's twin deities Amapan and Uappatzin, as well Huitzilopochtli, the god of war?
24 What is the full name of Barbie, the toy doll?
25 In the 1980 film, Flash Gordon was quarterback for which American football team?
26 The mindbending futuristic drug Substance D and its effects on Bob Actor feature in which sci-fi novel and forthcoming film?
27 In which Munich prison did Hitler write Mein Kampf?
28 Meaning "to mash meat", what ancient Japanese invention involves the blanching and processing of fish protein, the modern day results being seen in crabsticks?
29 If you are born with craniopagus parasiticus, what do you have?
30 Known by the acronym UGLE, which body regulates Freemasonry in this country?
31 Which Milanese photographer is known for his Site Specific projects in which he takes pictures of familiar cities and landmarks from helicopters and makes them look like model miniatures?
32 As used by Ricky Ponting, which Kookaburra bat design has been declared illegal due to the graphite strip on the back that bears the makers' logo?
33 Seen as the creator of the modern still life and known for such works as Scouring Maid (1738) and The Benediction (1740), legend states that which Frenchman's ability to make his paintings appear so real began when he decided to sit in front of a dead rabbit and just paint what he saw?
34 Greg Dyke is the chairman of which football club?
35 The breakdown of George III's youngest sister Princess Caroline's marriage to which country's monarch almost caused war with Great Britain?
36 From the Latin for "precursor", what name is given in medicine to an early symptom indicating the onset of an attack or disease?
37 Producers of Cohiba cigars since the late 1960s, which Havana cigar factory is considered the most famous of them all, legend having it that Che Guevara announced that a post-revolution cigar be created, so that the cigar-rolling school that was founded in 1961 was converted for such a purpose?
38 The centermost of the seven hills of Rome, which hill was the first to be built on and was the mythological site of the discovery of Romulus and Remus by the shepherd Faustulus?
39 Born in Stuttgart in 1770, which philosopher stated in 1821 that "Education is the art of making man ethical"?
40 Apparently the most popular team in France, which football team plays at the Stade Gerland?
41 Born in 1821, which pioneer of professional golf came second in the first ever Open Championship in 1860 and won it the following year, and was Prestwick Golf Club's "Keeper of the Green, Ball and Club Maker" for many years?
42 The great uncle of scientist Rosalind Franklin, who was the first practicing Jew to serve in the British cabinet when he became Home Secretary in 1916?
43 The simplest aldehyde, what chemical compound has the formula H2CO and was first synthesised by Russian chemist Aleksandr Butlerov in 1859, though it was correctly identified by August von Hoffman in 1867?
44 What cut of meat, especially ham, comes from the front or hind leg directly above the foot?
45 A Tangled Skein was the original name of which story, written in 1886?
46 Also the name of snake with species called Coastal and Western, what term for a foreign businessman in China is derived from the Mandarin for "big class"?
47 Starring Aidan Quinn in the title role, in which film can you see Frasier star Kelsey Grammer play US president George Washington?
Answers to BH quiz #20
1. Glycine 2. Jean Christophe Novelli (Did he do The Games? Oh, why oh why... did you do it for the ladies Jean?) 3. Georg Lukacs 4. Themis 5. James T Russell 6. Obscure 7. Twilight Zone 8. Natchez 9. 60 10. Climbs 11. James E Sullivan award 12. Argentina 13. Roach 14. Elizabeth Bonaventure 15 James IV (at Flodden) 16. Gresford Colliery 17. Difference Engine 18. Erich von Stalhein 19. Zoser or Djoser 20. Kielbasa
posted by That Quiz Guy at 1:58 PM
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