Monday, July 23, 2007

Navratna

Well, I doubt many of you have been waiting with bated breath for the resumption of this quizzing blog. Those of you who have, owe this posting to one man alone - no, it's not me - it's
Mr. " I KNOW YOU'RE SEEING THIS, SO BE WARNED. UPDATE THE BLOG OR BE WARNED INFIDEL
:)" Varma.

Of course, after he was so persuasive (and polite - did you see the smiley?), how could I refuse??

I do apologize, however, for keeping all of you waiting so long. I can't promise to return to regular updates - I'm a delicate stage in my PhD at the moment. I can also say that when I do (return), they won't necessarily be 'hard to google' questions. However I do miss quizzing, and the cat and mouse game between quizzer and quizmaster. So, in the words of Arnold, .... oh, wait, we have a question about that! Well, here are the answers to Set Nine.

If you're new to XQZ, check out the first posting Ground Zero for an idea of how this quiz blog works. Your can always try answering the previous sets and sending in your rating of them. But for now,

The answers!!

9.1
It's degrees of separation. Kevin Bacon is famous for 'Six degrees of Kevin Bacon' - i.e., you can connect any Hollywood star, dead or alive, to Kevin in 6 steps or less. Will Smith starred in the movie Six Degrees of Separation, which was partly based on the life of David Hampton, who is the conman shown in the first photo.

9.2
It used to be that camel jockeys were kids, because they were light and wouldn't slow down their mounts in the camel races. Obviously there was a bit of hue and cry raised over this child exploitation, especially since the children used to be starved to make them as light as possible. So, moving with the ages, they have started using robot jockeys instead, with Qatar in fact completely banning using child riders.

9.3
Unfortunately this question is no longer completely correct. It was a list of famous directors who had multiple Oscar nominations but no wins. However, with Martin Scorsese having won the award for The Departed, this no longer quite holds. The others are:

Robert Altman (5 nominations, received an honorary award in 2006)
Stanley Kubrick (4 nominations)
Federico Fellini (4 nominations)
Alfred Hitchcock (5 nominations)
(Martin)
Ingmar Bergman (3 nominations)

9.4
He won the Nobel Prize for Physics. While unusual by today's standards, it can be understood if one reads the words that Alfred Nobel used while setting up the Prize:

... shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; ....

9.5
Ooh, Green Patches !! Well, the idea here is that all the portions in green were bought by the United States. The major one in the middle was the Louisiana Purchase (530 million acres (828,000 sq mi or 2,100,000 km²) of French territory in 1803, at the cost of about 3¢ per acre (7¢ per ha); totaling $15 million or 80 million French francs), Alaska was of course known as Seward's Folly ($7,200,000 at about 1.9¢ per acre; Jeffrey Archer based a book on the Alaska treaty/lease called 'A Matter of Honour') and there's Gadsden Purchase and a few cessions. Well, if I had known that somebody had made this map, I wouldn't have had to go to so much trouble!


MSQ: Umm, looks like I goofed up a little here. Turns out there are several times he used the phrase.... or something approaching it. What I had in mind was The Running Man, but you can see the full list here.

9.6
War of 1812, and believe it or not, it was the Canadians! There's even a hilarious song about it:
And the White House burned, burned, burned.
And we’re the ones that did it,
It burned, burned, burned.
While the president ran and cried,
It burned, burned, burned.
And things were very historical,
And the Americans ran and cried like a bunch of little babies WaWaWa

In the war of 1812.
9.7
The connection is 'The Treaty of Paris'. All these conflicts were resolved by a treaty signed in Paris - which is why, in a quiz, if you are ever asked for the name of a treaty, when in doubt, go with Paris (or Versailles, which is now, after all, a suburb of Paris :) ). The last pic is for the European Coal and Steel Community, the forerunner of the EU.


9.8
Weird, eh?

9.9
The Dalai Lama, Jake LaMotta, Jesus Christ, Howard Hughes, and Bob Dylan. See the connect yet? No? All right - they all had biopics directed by Martin Scorsese. Ha! You can't escape me, Martin! I'll make a question out of you yet!

9.10
Jules Verne. Lovely parade, wasn't it?

Till next time, my friends!