November’s Quizzes Begin Here.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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First Monday of November and the first quiz of November.

It may be a different month but the format remains the same. Twenty random questions to test you general knowledge.

And as usual, if you get stuck, you can find the answers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down below, but please NO cheating!

Enjoy and good luck.

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Q.  1:  How are you related to the sister-in-law of your dad’s only brother?

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Q.  2:  There has been a TV series and a movie named “The Equalizer”, which actors played the leading characters in each?

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Q.  3:  What are the names the capital city of New Zealand and its most populous city and on which island are they situated? (A point for each correct answer.)

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Q.  4:  If a doctor gave you 5 pills and asked you to take 1 pill every 30 minutes, how many hours would it take you to consume all the pills?

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Q.  5:  In what country was the game ‘Chinese Checkers’ (or ‘Chinese Chequers’) invented?

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Q.  6:  What are the three main types of Whiskey, defined by how they are distilled?

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Q.  7:  Where were the first modern Olympic Games held?

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Q.  8:  If 5/8 of the children in a school are boys and the school consists of 2400 students, how many girls are there?

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Q.  9:  How many meters, yards or feet are there in a ‘nautical mile’?

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Q. 10:  ‘Marble’ is a form of which type of rock?

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Q. 11:  Where would you find a chicken’s ‘oysters’?

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Q. 12:  In what US city was the original TV series ‘NCIS’ based, and what are the locations for the two spin-off series? (A point for each correct answer.)

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Q. 13:  A related question to the previous one, what do the letters ‘NCIS’ stand for?

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Q. 14:  Approximately what proportion of the continental land mass is located in the Northern Hemisphere?

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Q. 15:  Which chemical element has the highest melting point at normal pressure?

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Q. 16:  What artist was famous for his paintings of matchstick men?

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Q. 17:  What is the study of birds called?

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Q. 18:  What metal, often used by sculptors, is an alloy of copper and tin?

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Q. 19:  What is produced by the rapid expansion of atmospheric gases suddenly heated by lightning?

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Q. 20:  Finally one for all you vintage gamers, where did you find cherry strawberry orange apple grape bird?

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ANSWERS

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Q.  1:  How are you related to the sister-in-law of your dad’s only brother?

A.  1:  She’s your mom.

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Q.  2:  There has been a TV series and a movie named “The Equalizer”, which actors played the leading characters in each?

A.  2:  Edward Woodward in the TV series and Denzil Washington in the recent movie.

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Q.  3:  What are the names the capital city of New Zealand and its most populous city and on which island are they situated? (A point for each correct answer.)

A.  3:  Wellington is the capital of New Zealand and Auckland is its most populous city with approximately 1.4 million inhabitants. Both are situated on the North Island.

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Q.  4:  If a doctor gave you 5 pills and asked you to take 1 pill every 30 minutes, how many hours would it take you to consume all the pills?

A.  4:  2 hours. You took the first pill as soon as the doctor gave them to you.

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Q.  5:  In what country was the game ‘Chinese Checkers’ (or ‘Chinese Chequers’) invented?

A.  5:  Germany (in 1892, called Stern-Halma, a variation of earlier American game Halma.

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Q.  6:  What are the three main types of Whiskey, defined by how they are distilled?

A.  6:  They are ‘Scotch’, ‘Irish’ and ‘Bourbon’.

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Q.  7:  Where were the first modern Olympic Games held?

A.  7:  They were held in Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England in 1850 and annually for a while afterwards, inspiring the Athens Olympiad of 1896 and the Olympic movement. (You get a point if you said ‘England’ and three points if you knew the exact location.)

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Q.  8:  If 5/8 of the children in a school are boys and the school consists of 2400 students, how many girls are there?

A.  8:  900 (If 5/8 of the children in a school are boys, then 3/8 of the children in that school are girls. (5/8 + 3/8 = 1) 3/8 of 2400 = 3/8 * 2400 = 900)

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Q.  9:  How many meters, yards or feet are there in a ‘nautical mile’?

A.  9:  A nautical mile is a unit of distance that is approximately one minute of arc measured along any meridian and by international agreement has been set at 1,852 metres exactly, or approximately 2,025 yards or 6,076 feet.

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Q. 10:  ‘Marble’ is a form of which type of rock?

A. 10:  Limestone.

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Q. 11:  Where would you find a chicken’s ‘oysters’?

A. 11:  Chicken Oysters are two small, round pieces of dark meat on the back of poultry near the thigh. Some regard the “oyster meat” to be the most flavorful and tender part of the bird, while others dislike the taste and texture.

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Q. 12:  In what US city was the original TV series ‘NCIS’ based, and what are the locations for the two spin-off series? (A point for each correct answer.)

A. 12:  The original NCIS TV series was set in Washington DC and the spin-off shows are set in Los Angeles and New Orleans.

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Q. 13:  A related question to the previous one, what do the letters ‘NCIS’ stand for?

A. 13:  They stand for ‘Naval Criminal Investigative Service’.

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Q. 14:  Approximately what proportion of the continental land mass is located in the Northern Hemisphere?

A. 14:  Approximately two-thirds.

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Q. 15:  Which chemical element has the highest melting point at normal pressure?

A. 15:  ‘Tungsten’ is the chemical element with the highest melting point, at 3687 K (3414 °C, 6177 °F)[4] making it excellent for use as filaments in light bulbs. The often-cited carbon does not melt at ambient pressure but sublimes at about 4000 K; a liquid phase only exists above pressures of 10 MPa and estimated 4300–4700 K.

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Q. 16:  What artist was famous for his paintings of matchstick men?

A. 16:  Laurence Stephen Lowry, better known as ‘L.S. Lowry’ (Nov 1st 1887 to Feb 23rd 1976).

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Q. 17:  What is the study of birds called?

A. 17:  The study of birds is called ‘Ornithology’.

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Q. 18:  What metal, often used by sculptors, is an alloy of copper and tin?

A. 18:  Bronze.

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Q. 19:  What is produced by the rapid expansion of atmospheric gases suddenly heated by lightning?

A. 19:  Easier than you thought, it’s ‘thunder’.

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Q. 20:  Finally one for all you vintage gamers, where did you find cherry strawberry orange apple grape bird?

A. 20:  Pac Man. Want to have a go?

http://www.knowledgeadventure.com/games/pac-man/

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Did You Know? More Interesting Facts To Ponder

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Another delve into the fasab fact file today.

If you are interested in facts, information or trivia there will hopefully be something in here for you.

Enjoy.

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The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.

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The oldest known goldfish lived to 43 years of age.

Its name was Tish.

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There are only thirteen blimps in the world.

Nine of them are in the United States.

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In 1967, the IMAX film system was invented by Canadians

Graeme Ferguson, Roman Kroitor, Robert Kerr, and William C. Shaw

and premiered at Expo 67.

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Texas is also the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag

at the same height as the U.S. flag.

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The typical lead pencil can draw a line

that is thirty five miles long

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Pollsters say that 40 percent of dog and cat owners

carry pictures of the pets in their wallets.

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A meteor has only destroyed one satellite,

which was the European Space Agency’s Olympus in 1993.

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The average American drinks about 600 sodas a year.

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When Queen Elizabeth I of England died

she owned over 3,000 gowns

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The smallest man ever was Gul Mohammed (1957-1997) of India,

who measured 1 feet, 10 inches

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Before the fur trade had started in Canada,

it was estimated that there were over 6 million beavers

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In 1962, the first Wal-Mart opened up in Rogers, Arkansas

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The Saguaro Cactus, found in South-western United States

does not grow branches until it is 75 years old.

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Japan has approximately 200 volcanoes

and is home to 10% of the active volcanoes in the world

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The Dutch people are known to be

the tallest people in Europe

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The word Nike comes from Greek Mythology.

Nike is the goddess of victory and was often depicted

as a small winged figure carried by the goddess Athene.

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The long fibers that are found in the banana plant

can make paper approximately 3000 times stronger than regular paper.

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The city of Seoul has been the capital city of Korea

for more than 600 years

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In Ivrea, Italy, thousands of citizens celebrate the beginning of Lent

by throwing oranges at one another.

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The Primary Responsibility For A Child’s Education Is Apparent.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Yes, that’s right, The primary responsibility for a child’s education is apparent.

But everyone’s education would not be complete without a healthy dose of puns.

Always here to help, here’s today’s selection.

Enjoy!

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I went into a fancy dress shop and asked the woman

working there if they had any ghost costumes.

She said “We don’t sell those, I’m afraid.”

Stupid woman. They’re not that scary.

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ABC NEWS:

French Chef commits suicide after critic’s attack.

After further investigation it turns out

he simply lost the huile d’olive.

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I went to a really posh school.

In fact, the school was so posh that the Gym was called James.

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I have a friend who’s half Indian.

Ian.

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Cleavage is the only thing that you can look down on

and approve of at the same time.

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My girlfriend broke up with me yesterday because of my obsession.

She said, “I’m sick of it. You actually believe that you’re a Transformer.

It’s stupid. I’ve had enough and I’m leaving you.”

I said, “But, Baby, I can change.”

She said, “There you go again!”

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I put a couple of ‘t’s in my beer last night.

I think it made it better.

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Shouldn’t the Air and Space museum be empty?

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I put a wooden desk and a blackboard in my bedroom.

You know, to make it more classy.

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I was only young when I learned to count.

It was odd at first, even then.

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In a cave, I found pictures of women’s breasts,

but when I picked them up, a giant net fell on me.

Damn booby trap.

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I make £1,000,000 a month cleaning Windows.

I invented Norton Anti-virus.

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My parents gave me a really cheap dictionary for my birthday yesterday.

I couldn’t find the words to thank them.

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I never let my children watch big band performances on TV.

Too much sax and violins.

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There’s one thing I can’t stand when I’m drunk.

Up!

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Einstein eventually developed a theory about space.

And it was about time too.

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I’m so broke at the moment that all I can

afford to eat are herbs my mate has lent me.

I’m living on borrowed thyme.

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I’ve just seen a group on Facebook called, ‘I hate feet’.

Obviously these people are fans of the metric system.

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Talking to her about computer hardware,

makes my mother board.

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My wife has packed her bags and gone –

just because of my fetish with touching pasta.

I’m feeling cannelloni right now.

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Funny Animal Fotos

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Time to relax for the weekend.

Here are a few funny animal fotos to help.

Some are natural shots, others have been helped a little with human input but I hope you find most of them amusing.

Enjoy.

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Foreclosure!

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Strange Rooms

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Just a short post this Sunday. Something that a friend emailed to me a little while ago that I thought was worth sharing. If you have seen it before, my apologies, if you haven’t, I think it is worth a look.

Enjoy.

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PUBLIC TOILET

This is a picture of a public toilet

in Houston

…. from the outside it looks like this:

(scroll down.)

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Now that you’ve seen the outside view

take a look at the inside view…

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It’s

made

entirely of one-way glass!

No one

can see you

from the outside,

but

when you are inside

it’s like sitting in a clear glass box!

Now

would you…

COULD YOU….???
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NEXT

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A  PAINTED  BATHROOM  FLOOR!!!

The tenth floor of a hi-rise building………

IMAGINE

YOU ARE AT A PARTY ..

AND THEN

YOU HAVE TO VISIT THE BATHROOM….

You open the door….

NOW, REMEMBER

THE FLOOR IS JUST A PAINTED FLOOR ! 

Scroll 

sloooooooowly.

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Would this mess up your mind???

Would you be able to

walk into this bathroom???

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FINALLY!!

THIS

IS A CEILING MURAL……

IN A SMOKER’S LOUNGE.
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Clever Celebrity Caricatures

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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As most of you know, the main focus of this blog is on the stupidity of the politicians and bureaucrats who do all that they can to make our lives less enjoyable and free than they could be without such unwanted and idiotic interference.

Occasionally, however, I like to feature quite the opposite, things and people who are exceptional in their chosen field, whether that be science, sport, engineering, music or whatever.

Today’s post is one of the latter and is a wonderful selection of caricatures that I received in a recent email. Unfortunately I don’t know the names of the exceptional artists who did these drawings, otherwise I would be more than happy to acknowledge them. Nonetheless I think as wide an audience as possible deserves to be able to view their work and what follows I hope will be a small part of that.

Enjoy, I think you will. And if you feel the urge please let me know you favorite or favorites.

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THE END

(Copyright to all drawings belong to the original artists)

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It Always Surprises Me How One Thing Leads To Another!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

 

I have no idea why that should be, I mean why it always surprises me how one thing leads to another. After all, where else can one thing go? It’s the logical sequence, it has to happen that way. I think what I really mean is, the surprise is what you are led to. It is hardly ever the thing you were expecting.

Every one of us knows from hours of experience how difficult it is to switch on the computer or log on to the internet on a smart phone or other device and be self-disciplined enough to just search for the thing we initially wanted to look for. Countless times in my experience I have gone on to the internet with the sole purpose of maybe checking some stats or looking up some information relating to a business problem, or a health issue perhaps, only to find an hour or so later that I’m on a completely different tack, forgotten completely about why I started, and now absorbed in some other information that has nothing to do with the job originally at hand.

Entertaining it certainly is. Enjoyable too, without a doubt. Informative, yes it can be (although you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet – unless it appears in this blog of course). And a waste of time? That one is debatable. I think not. Nothing is a waste of time if it is providing any or all of the above attributes – entertainment, enjoyment or information.

One of my favorite sayings is, “It’s a sad day you don’t learn something,” and I am glad to report that in that regard I do not have any sad days. Every day I learn something, usually not what I expected and sometimes the lessons can be very harsh, but it all counts towards bettering oneself and providing valuable experience for the future.

So when I looked at my blog today I had a very different subject in my head to write about. Then I read a comment from my blog-friend coastalcrone on yesterdays blog post “Today Is A Beautiful Day”, part of which sparked off what you are now reading.

Coastalcrone said, “For me words are so visual… they have to look right for me too.”

Now one can analyze any writing from a grammatical viewpoint, or the construction of sentences and paragraphs, or the balance and rhythm of the words, or on its aesthetic content, or on many other different levels. That’s what they do when they study literature at universities, tearing apart and analyzing writing and writers. Sometimes I think that is valuable and informative; at other times I think that they don’t have a clue what they are talking about and have read far, far more into a piece than the writer originally intended. (Most writers, though, are happy to go along with such academic pronouncements because it makes them appear a bit more clever that they would be if they denied them.)

However, all that academic stuff aside, the part of coastalcrone’s comment that promoted all this was really the first part,

“… words are so visual”.

Words are visual. Indeed they are. A good description of a person, or a scene, or an incident, conjures up the image in the reader’s mind, and so it should. The better the writing and the writer, the better the visuals the reader experiences.

But, and it’s a big bold BUT, the visual experience is not the writer’s, it always belongs to the reader. The writer is simply the catalyst.

No matter how precise and detailed a description is, if it is a description of something we have not personally witnessed (in other words someone describing a fictitious person or place, or even for example a valley or lake in Australia or India which most of will never have seen, as opposed to a $10 bill or a laptop computer) a different image will be conjured up in the minds of each individual.

I’m sure you have read a book and then later gone to see the movie. Very seldom if ever does your own visual image agree with the film maker’s. At the moment I can only think of one occasion when my own visual interpretation of a book almost exactly matched the movie interpretation. That was Alastair MacLean’s “Where Eagles Dare”, an excellent World War II espionage thriller and an equally excellent movie. That was probably because MacLean wrote the book and movie screenplay more or less at the same time. (Btw, I don’t mean that I had Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood in my visual picture – that would have been too crazy, even for me!)

Of course the converse is easier to come to grips with. If you see the movie and then read the book, the movie-maker’s visuals, rather than your own, are already in your head. Sometimes that’s okay, if the movie has been a reasonably close interpretation of the book. If they don’t gel well then the one can easily spoil the enjoyment of the other.

Visual interpretations also hold for the spoken as well as the written word. If one hears something described on the radio, for example, it produces visual images in one’s mind. Not only that, however, but one often gets an imaginary picture of what the person speaking looks like. It can sometimes come as a bit of shock when you see the person on tv or in real life. I’ve heard people remarking on more than one occasion that so-and-so “isn’t like his voice”.

Even when you meet people, you can have preconceived ideas about them in the few seconds between seeing them and hearing them speak. Some say that that is conclusive proof that light travels faster than sound, i.e. that most people seem bright until you hear them speak.

Of course one should be mature enough to accept people as they are. What one should definitely not do is laugh at some unfortunate with a voice that doesn’t fit them. Admittedly it can be funny, as this talk show host found out when carrying out a tv interview some years ago.

Let’s have a little experiment and see how good you are. You know you shouldn’t laugh but I rather think you might. I did! Quite a lot 😦  But at the show host, naturally 🙂

Enjoy!