Wednesday, August 31, 2011

The Wednesday Quiz is keeping the puppy

It's:



The Wednesday Quiz, in its third incarnation, is basically the same old weekly game of knowledge, intuition, inductive reasoning, and willingness to risk public embarrassment in a friendly and moderately supportive environment!!  With a minor twist that will probably make it rather difficult at first!  


Traditionally, it is a closed-book quiz.

It is very possible that answers will come out over the weekend.


1. Who painted this one?



2. Some of the earliest ones are said to have started in Bologna in 1088, in Paris around 1150, in Salamanca in 1218, and in a couple of English towns in 1167 and 1209.

3. It is "the tendency of a force to rotate an object about an axis," or "a twisting force that tends to cause rotation." The Brits often call it "moment," apparently.

4. "There is no patent," he said of his most famous achievement. "Could you patent the sun?" Who led the team that developed the vacine for polio?

5. Among his 39 operas are The Barber of Seville, Cinderella, Moses and Pharaoh, and William Tell.

6. This flag, which I believe was discussed recently in these very pages, represents what country?



7. It is the sixth most populous country in the world, has the second largest Muslim population (after Indonesia), and has the world's second highest mountain on its northern border. What's this country?

8. If you were going to be famous for just one thing, you probably wouldn't want it to be spilling [your] seed on the ground. But because he resisted his father's command to get his sister-in-law pregnant, this Biblical character was killed by God. Who is he?

9. While a Vice-Presidential candidate, what American politician went on television to defend himself against charges of corruption by bravely stating that he would never return the puppy, Checkers, that had been given to his children?

10. What are these?





--

Put your answers in Bologna, in 1088.  

12 comments:

UnwiseOwl said...

1. Various artists.
2. Universities?
3. Torque provides the moment, I think, if first-year Statics taught me anything...But maybe you count us as Brits.
4. Mr. Somesuch?
5. Mr. Rossini
6. Qatar? Oh dear...I don't know.
7. The Phillipines
8. Was reading this yesterday...it's Onan. Must have been inspired by the blogging Gods.
9. Mr. Nixon
10. Mirror Images?

Hrmm...I'm not great at this stuff.

Christine M. said...

1. Diego Velazquez
2. universities
3. torque
4. Jonas Salk
5. Rossini
6. Qatar
7. Pakistan
8. Onan
9. Nixon
10. dunno

Chance said...

1. vermeer?
2. universities
3. torque
4. salk
5. rossini
6. qatar
7. philippines
8. onan
9. nixon
10. mercurys - where's the car?

Elaine said...

1. Velasquez-- 'Las Meninas' was in a previous quiz (and I missed it, I think.)
2. Urban sprawl?
3. Torque
4. Jonas Salk
5. Rossini
6. Qatar
7. P...Peru, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea...I'm short of P Places...Have to go with the latter.
8. Onan
9. Richard Milhous Nixon
10. The Moon and Sixpence? ha ha, Moon, Money, Mudpuddle?

gS49 said...

1. Velasquez
2. Universities
3. Torque
4. Salk
5. Rossini
6. Qatar
7. Pakistan
8. Onan
9. Nixon
10. Mumblemuble

There's always one question!

Voron X said...

1.Looks Spanish, and 17th Century. Go to Google/Wiki, find a list of painters starting with V, and find a Spanish one born between 1550 and 1640. Valdez, Veracruz, Vega, Velasquez, Valencia, Villalobos, Valenzuela, etc.
2. Unions? No, I think those were later, -- they grew out of Guilds and Fellowships quite a while after the Rennaissance. This looks to be at the end of the so-called "Dark Ages". Could it be the light of education spreading once again illumnating the world? Universities, I think. Btw, the oldest continuously existing brewery was started in 1040. And both grew out of monasteries!

3. Torque!

4. I don't know, Howard Stark, if he was a biochemist and not an inventor/engineer, and, oh yeah, not fictional.

5. Rachmoninoff?
6. Rockin out with Qatar (Hero)!
7. The great civilization of the Indus Valley, i.e. Pakistan. (The land of the pure and the home of Acronyms!)
8. Onan!
9. Nixon?
10. Mercury (Trismegistus, apparently!)

Ben said...

Hopefully I'm on the right sequence of letters...

1. The guy on the far left of the painting. Vermeer?
2. Universities
3. Torque
4. Ssss... Science Man? Schweizer?
5. Rossini
6. Qatar
7. Pakistan
8. O boy... I just encountered this biblical reference recently while watching Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life." While I know that "every sperm is sacred," I don't know the biblical character.
9. Nixon
10. Metals

Elaine said...

Wow. Jonas Salk was a national hero...and people don't know his name now? Kind of makes me sad.

They lined all of us 3rd graders up and gave us shots. (Virginia Cooper cried before, during, and after; what a wimp.) As an Army kid, I'd been punctured plenty, and the polio vaccine was nothing (unlike typhoid and typhus shots, that made you run a fever for a week.) When Sabin came up with the oral vaccine, they lined all of us 10th graders up and marched us in to eat sugar cubes. I guess Virginia Cooper considered HIM the national hero.

mrs.5000 said...

1 Velazquez
2 Universities
3 torsion
4 Jonas "My love is something like the sun" Salk
5 Rossini
6 Qatar
7 Pakistan
8 Onan
9 Nixon. Ah, that puppy!
10 mirror images
I think I'll just leave it as a comment, thank you. But thanks for reminding me of my childhood fondness for making bologna snowflakes!

Eavan said...

1. Looks so familiar....
2. Universities
3. Torque
4. I have no idea.
5. I have no idea.
6. Qatar
7. Pakistan
8. How did something this salacious escape my attention?
9. Nixon
10. Do not know!

cecil said...

1 Velazquez
2 Universities
3 torque
4 Salk
5 Rossini
6 Qatar
7 Philipines
8 Oscar
9 Nixon
10 mars

Voron X said...

@Elaine- They made a much bigger deal out of the vaccine than the guy who invented it. I've lived my life knowing that "they" used to come up with a vaccines and wiped out smallpox and polio, but medical cures were a thing of the past, and nobody really cured anything anymore. <\snark> Though I hear they've got a promising lead on some type of leukemia. I guarentee I was never forced to remember Salk's name. Watson and Crick were a MUCH bigger deal in my education. And I watched a movie about the two Canadian dudes who were attributed with the discovery of insulin, but who were actually just copying a Romainian's work. "Enough Glory for All" it was named. Apparently not, however, for poor Nicolae Paulescu. He was an Anti-Semite, and as such, is pretty much hated/ignored/shunnned, even by the International Diabetes Federation. \tangent