Twenty questions covering the usual wide range of subjects, so hopefully there will be one or two that you find easy and one or two that you find a lot more difficult.
But remember, as always if you get stuck, you can find the answers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down below, but please NO cheating!
Enjoy and good luck.
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Q. 1: According to a survey conducted by Citrix, what percentage of people thought that stormy weather affects cloud computing?
a) 1% b) 15% c) 51% d) 85%
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Q. 2: What city is known as ‘The Harbor City’ ?
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Q. 3: What is another name for the prairie wolf?
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Q. 4: If your boss cuts your salary by 10% but offers to let you work 10% more to make up for it, should you accept?
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Q. 5: Six men are widely accepted to be the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. What were their names? (You get a point for each correctly named and a bonus point if can correctly name all six.)
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Q. 6: A follow-up question to # 5, which one of these Founding Fathers once wrote a scientific piece called ‘Fart Proudly’ ?
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Q. 7: What percentage of the Earth’s volcanoes are underwater?
a) 10 % b) 30 % c) 50 % d) 70 % e) 90 %
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Q. 8: In Greek mythology who attempted to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax, but flew too close to the Sun and perished when the wax melted?
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Q. 9: And when we’re on the subject of flying, what area code would you use if you wanted to call the Kennedy Space Center in Florida?
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Q. 10: What do you call the three sides of a right-angled triangle? (Hint, you get zero points for answering ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’.)
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Q. 11: This one is the name of a famous Shakespeare tragedy and a multiplayer board game based on the popular game Reversi. What is it?
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Q. 12: What nationality is the famous musician Richard Clayderman and what instrument is associated with him? (A point for each correct answer.)
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Q. 13: ‘Equatorial’, ‘Gulf Stream’ and ‘Humboldt’ are names give to what?
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Q. 14: Russians consume about 6 times as much what as Americans?
a) milk b) coffee c) tea d) beer e) spirits
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Q. 15: Which paper format has the largest area, the ‘International A4’ as used for example in the UK or the ‘Letter’ format used in the United States?
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Q. 16: There are seven main weight divisions used in professional boxing, what are they? (You get a point for each one you can name correctly and three bonus points if you get all seven correct.)
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Q. 17: What is the link between something to eat, something to drink, somewhere to go and something to call your daughter?
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Q. 18: What was the name of the cat that survived the sinking of the Bismark, HMS Cossack and HMS Ark Royal?
a) Kit Kat b) Wet Willie c) Unsinkable Sam
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Q. 19: What is the largest country in South America (a) by area and (b) by size of population? (A point for each correct answer.)
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Q. 20: Who had a ‘Manic Monday’ and went on to ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ ?
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ANSWERS
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Q. 1: According to a survey conducted by Citrix, what percentage of people thought that stormy weather affects cloud computing?
a) 1% b) 15% c) 51% d) 85%
A. 1: Unbelievably the correct answer is c) 51%.
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Q. 2: What city is known as ‘The Harbor City’ ?
A. 2: Sydney, Australia.
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Q. 3: What is another name for the prairie wolf?
A. 3: Coyote.
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Q. 4: If your boss cuts your salary by 10% but offers to let you work 10% more to make up for it, should you accept?
A. 4: You should NOT accept the offer. This is a percentage question. For example, if you made $10 per hour, a 10% cut in your salary would leave you with $9 per hour. Adding 10% back would only be 10% of $9, or 90 cents so you would end up with only $9.90.
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Q. 5: Six men are widely accepted to be the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. What were their names? (You get a point for each correctly named and a bonus point if can correctly name all six.)
A. 5: The six men are widely accepted to be the Founding Fathers of the United States of America are George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and, of course, Benjamin Franklin.
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Q. 6: A follow-up question to # 5, which one of these Founding Fathers once wrote a scientific piece called ‘Fart Proudly’ ?
A. 6: Benjamin Franklin wrote a scientific piece called Fart Proudly. It was all about farts.
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Q. 7: What percentage of the Earth’s volcanoes are underwater?
a) 10 % b) 30 % c) 50 % d) 70 % e) 90 %
A. 7: The correct answer is e) 90% of all volcanoes are underwater.
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Q. 8: In Greek mythology who attempted to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax, but flew too close to the Sun and perished when the wax melted?
A. 8: Icarus.
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Q. 9: And when we’re on the subject of flying, what area code would you use if you wanted to call the Kennedy Space Center in Florida?
A. 9: The telephone area code for the Kennedy Space Center in Florida is ‘321’ which imitates the countdown before liftoff. It was assigned to the area, instead of suburban Chicago in November 1999 after a successful petition led by local resident Robert Osband. Try it out, call the Kennedy Space Center on (321) 867-5000.
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Q. 10: What do you call the three sides of a right-angled triangle? (Hint, you get zero points for answering ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’.)
A. 10: They are called ‘opposite’, ‘adjacent’ and ‘hypotenuse’.
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Q. 11: This one is the name of a famous Shakespeare tragedy and a multiplayer board game based on the popular game Reversi. What is it?
A. 11: Othello.
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Q. 12: What nationality is the famous musician Richard Clayderman and what instrument is associated with him? (A point for each correct answer.)
A. 12: Richard Clayderman is French and he is a pianist.
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Q. 13: ‘Equatorial’, ‘Gulf Stream’ and ‘Humboldt’ are names give to what?
A. 13: Ocean currents.
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Q. 14: Russians consume about 6 times as much what as Americans?
a) milk b) coffee c) tea d) beer e) spirits
A. 14: The correct answer is c) tea, Russians also consume about 6 times as much tea as Americans.
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Q. 15: Which paper format has the largest area, the ‘International A4’ as used for example in the UK or the ‘Letter’ format used in the United States?
A. 15: A4 has the largest area. (A4 is 210 mm (8.25”) wide and 297 mm (11.75”) long or 62,370 m2, and US Letter is 216 mm (8.5”) wide by 279 mm (11”) long or 60,264 m2.)
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Q. 16: There are seven main weight divisions used in professional boxing, what are they? (You get a point for each one you can name correctly and three bonus points if you get all seven correct.)
A. 16: Although modern additions have been added, the seven main weight divisions used in professional boxing are ‘Flyweight’, ‘Bantamweight’, ‘Featherweight’, ‘Lightweight’, ‘Welterweight’, ‘Middleweight’ and ‘Heavyweight’.
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Q. 17: What is the link between something to eat, something to drink, somewhere to go and something to call your daughter?
A. 17: Margarita.
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Q. 18: What was the name of the cat that survived the sinking of the Bismark, HMS Cossack and HMS Ark Royal?
a) Kit Kat b) Wet Willie c) Unsinkable Sam
A. 18: The correct answer is c) Unsinkable Sam.
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Q. 19: What is the largest country in South America (a) by area and (b) by size of population? (A point for each correct answer.)
A. 19: The correct answers are (a) Brazil with an area of 8,514,877 Km2, and (b) Brazil with a population of more than 195.5 million.
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Q. 20: Who had a ‘Manic Monday’ and went on to ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ ?
It’s not so long ago that I was getting bombarded with emails about how great an investment oil would be.
At that time the predictions by those in the ‘know’, who really know nothing, was that oil would hit $200 per barrel – maybe much, much more!
Well, they almost got the number correct, except that oil actually hit $20 per barrel, not $200. As these things go it was a pretty good guess!!!
So why has the oil price declined and, although it has recovered a bit, why are the predictions for today’s low prices to hold long term?
The simple layman’s answer of course is that the oil price has declined because supply is greater than demand. When there is a surplus of a commodity the price falls and when it is scarce the price rises.
The supply of oil has increased relative to demand for a number of reasons.
The most obvious one is the vast reserves of oil found and now being recovered in the massive shale-oil fields in the United States of America and the tar-sands in Canada that have added more than 5 million barrels per day to domestic oil production since 2008. Able to produce more at home, North America has been able to reduce its demand for imported oil.
The effect of this, of course, is that the OPEC countries have seen their annual revenues fall sharply during the same period. To try to rectify this fall in income, which they need to provide for their own citizens, they have been trying to replace lost revenue from North America by increasing production of their own oil supplies.
In other words, they have created even more over supply in the market, which helps to keep the oil price down.
Then there was the ISIS or ISIL terrorists in Iraq who had taken control of most of the oil fields and were dumping oil on the black market as fast as they could to help finance their war. Recently they’ve lost control of a lot of those oil fields so that part of the equation may no longer be in play to the same extent.
However, if there is a deal ever done with the Iranians and they are able to trade without restriction again, no doubt they will be adding their oil to the market glut which will also help to keep the market over-supplied and the price suppressed.
Then there is the increasing use of compressed natural gas or CNG. This is the natural gas that used to be burned off at the oil wells, but that is now collected, compressed into tanks and used to power vehicles and in drilling equipment, meaning less diesel is purchased.
Despite all these over-supply pressures, the thing that is keeping the oil price from collapsing completely is the continued demand from China. This is a good thing because a long-term collapse in the oil price, whilst it may make life a bit easier financially for many with decreased heating and fuel bills, also has detrimental secondary effects on some parts of the country where the oil industry provides a living for a great many people.
I haven’t had an email about investing in oil for a long time and I don’t expect them to start again soon. Now you know why.
Mark Twain is famous for having said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”
Well, just to prove you can have a bit of fun with statistics have a look at this set of nonsense that came to me in an email a while ago.
They are a complete reversal of the usual figures which continually highlight the increasing world population and the problems that will cause in the future.
These numbers look at the world if it was scaled down to just one hundred people.
It might make you think or it might not.
But it is a new way of looking at population statistics, so I hope you enjoy them anyway.
fasab 