I Think I’ll Call This One The Vestal Virgin Quiz.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Hello and welcome to the latest fasab quiz.

I’ve called it the “Vestal Virgin Quiz”, you’ll find out why later, but even if you’re not a vestal virgin please feel free to take part.

As usual you can find the answers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down below, but please NO cheating!

Enjoy and good luck.

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Quiz 07

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Q.  1.  What number does the Roman numeral ‘D’ stand for?

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Q.  2. What are the young of Squirrels called?

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Q.  3.  In which country are the Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake?

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Q.  4.  This word can mean a card game, a structure spanning a river or other chasm, the place where you usually find a ship’s captain, an artificial replacement of a missing tooth or teeth, or a thin, fixed wedge or support raising the strings of a musical instrument above the sounding board. What is it?

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Q.  5.  What would a galvanometer be used to measure?

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Q.  6.  Whose “Laughable Lyrics” included “The Quangle Wangle’s Hat” and “The Dong with a Luminous Nose” ?

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Q.  7.  What  was the name of the star-packed movie depicting World War II’s ‘Operation Market Garden’, an unsuccessful Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany?

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Q.  8.  Which astronomical distance is about 3.26 light years?

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Q.  9.  How many Vestal Virgins served as Priestesses of the goddess Vesta at any one time?

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Q. 10.  Tashkent is the capital of which one of the Asian “stans”?

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Q. 11.  By what name is a meal consisting of sausages and mashed potatoes better known as in the UK?

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Q. 12.  What is the currency used in the Dominican Republic?

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Q. 13.  How many movies did John Wayne star in with the word ‘Rio’ in their title? (A bonus point for each one you can name correctly.)

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Q. 14.  What city is also known as ‘The Little Paris’ ?

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Q. 15.  What sort of structure is DNA?

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Q. 16.  What is the name of the main actress who played ‘Olivia Walton’ (Mammy Walton) in seasons 1 thru 7 of the long running TV series?

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Q. 17. If you multiplied the number in the title of George Orwell’s most famous novel, by the highest number you can score on a dartboard with one dart, and divide that total by the number of nickels in a dollar, what number would you be left with?

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Q. 18.  What is a ‘ziganka’ and what nationality is it? (A point for each correct answer.)

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Q. 19.  ‘General Mariano Escobedo’ and ‘General Abelargo L Rodriguez’ are international airports in which country?

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Q. 20.  What is the surname or last name of the actors who played the ‘Shooter’ and ‘Det. Danny Reagan’ in the TV series ‘Blue Bloods’ ?

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ANSWERS

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Q.  1.  What number does the Roman numeral ‘D’ stand for?

A.  1.  500.

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Q.  2. What are the young of Squirrels called?

A.  2. Kittens

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Q.  3.  In which country are the Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake?

A.  3.  Canada.

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Q.  4.  This word can mean a card game, a structure spanning a river or other chasm, the place where you usually find a ship’s captain, an artificial replacement of a missing tooth or teeth, or a thin, fixed wedge or support raising the strings of a musical instrument above the sounding board. What is it?

A.  4.  Bridge.

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Q.  5.  What would a galvanometer be used to measure?

A.  5.  Detecting and measuring small electric currents. (electricity).

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Q.  6.  Whose “Laughable Lyrics” included “The Quangle Wangle’s Hat” and “The Dong with a Luminous Nose” ?

A.  6.  Edward Lear.

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Q.  7.  What  was the name of the star-packed movie depicting World War II’s ‘Operation Market Garden’, an unsuccessful Allied military operation, fought in the Netherlands and Germany?

A.  7.  A Bridge Too Far. (The cast included Dirk Bogarde, Ryan O’Neal, James Caan, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Edward Fox, Elliott Gould, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Hardy Krüger, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, Maximilian Schell and Liv Ullmann.)

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Q.  8.  Which astronomical distance is about 3.26 light years?

A.  8.  A parsec.

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Q.  9.  How many Vestal Virgins served as Priestesses of the goddess Vesta at any one time?

A.  9.  The correct answer is ‘six’ (although they served along with 6 in training and 6 retired ones as tutors).

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Q. 10.  Tashkent is the capital of which one of the Asian “stans”?

A. 10.  Uzbekistan.

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Q. 11.  By what name is a meal consisting of sausages and mashed potatoes better known as in the UK?

A. 11.  Bangers & Mash.

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Q. 12.  What is the currency used in the Dominican Republic?

A. 12.  It is the Dominican Peso (DOP), although you can have the point if you just said ‘peso’.

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Q. 13.  How many movies did John Wayne star in with the word ‘Rio’ in their title? (A bonus point for each one you can name correctly.)

A. 13.  The correct answer is three (Rio Grande  (1950), Rio Bravo (1959) and Rio Lobo (1970))

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Q. 14.  What city is also known as ‘The Little Paris’ ?

A. 14.  Bucharest.

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Q. 15.  What sort of structure is DNA?

A. 15.  It is known as a ‘double helix’.

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Q. 16.  What is the name of the main actress who played ‘Olivia Walton’ (Mammy Walton) in seasons 1 thru 7 of the long running TV series?

A. 16.  Michael Learned.

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Q. 17. If you multiplied the number in the title of George Orwell’s most famous novel, by the highest number you can score on a dartboard with one dart, and divided that total by the number of nickels in a dollar, what number would you be left with?

A. 17.  5952.  (1984 x 60) = 119040 / 20 = 5952

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Q. 18.  What is a ‘ziganka’ and what nationality is it? (A point for each correct answer.)

A. 18.  A ‘ziganka’ is a Russian country dance.

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Q. 19.  ‘General Mariano Escobedo’ and ‘General Abelargo L Rodriguez’ are international airports in which country?

A. 19.  Mexico (in Monterrey and Tijuana respectively).

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Q. 20.  What is the surname or last name of the actors who played the ‘Shooter’ and ‘Det. Danny Reagan’ in the TV series ‘Blue Bloods’ ?

A. 20.  Walberg, specifically Mark Walberg in ‘Shooter’ and his older brother Donnie Walberg in ‘Blue Bloods’.  

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The Only Way Is Up, Unless It’s Sideways.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Federal-Reserve-Seal-logo

It has been nine years since the ‘Fed’ put up interest rates in the US. Not a day goes by when some pundit or other is explaining why an interest rate rise is imminent whilst yet another is warning that the US dollar is about to collapse in a heap.

There’s even a fed funds futures market for people to bet which way they think it is going to go.

For what it’s worth, I think the US dollar will weaken from its current position because a lot of the support it is getting lies solely in the belief that interest rates are about to start going up.

Much of that dollar support is created by continual talk from Yellen and the Fed about raising rates. But the fact is that every time they reach the point at which they said interest rates would rise, they chicken out.

us dollar

So why does the Fed keep making big promises that it hasn’t the nerve to keep?

Good question, I’m glad you asked.

Although it might make them look a bit foolish, what their continual rate rise threats also do is to help to discourage speculation in US stocks and bonds – not a healthy thing for any economy.

If they do, do it, I don’t think they will until very late in 2015 – maybe not until 2016.

2016?

But wait.

2016 is an election year.

2016 US Election year

Will Obama deliberately burst Hilary’s Democrat Party bubble by allowing interest rates to rise? He might do it out of spite I suppose. There’s no love lost between them since Obama beat her for the candidacy and then won the Presidential election eight years ago.

But I think the election year may mean we are looking at 2017 for those rate hikes.

So who is right, me and people who think like me or the great unwashed of the media who are still predicting an imminent rate hike.

I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, but I think I might risk a few zero interest dollars that they are wrong and I’m not.

Stay tuned for some gloating or a big spoonful of humble pie come June this year.

humble pie

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100,000 And Counting.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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100000 page views

I missed marking my first year anniversary of this blog with an appropriate post and then not to be outdone by that, I also managed to miss the second year anniversary too. I guess I had other things on my mind at the time.

However this post marks another significant milestone in my blogging career, if I can call it that, because earlier today the fasab blog managed to push its way through the 100,000 page views threshold. Certainly a lot more than the humble beginnings when literally only a handful of people turned up!

I know it’s not a world shaking internet statistic, not even in the blogsphere either, but for me and this blog I think it is remarkable. Even more so since I have a tendency to sometimes write about people I know, so I can’t really publicize my blog via the usual “friends and family” route.  

Before I started my blog I’d obviously heard about them, but I’d never even read one. I had a bit of time on my hands and I thought I would give it a go. As I’ve probably said before, I wasn’t really into social networking sites like “Myface” or “Spacebook” or whatever, not that there’s anything wrong with them if you like that sort of thing and many people I know do.

But I thought blogging might be my thing.

So I read blogs and I read about blogging and I created my own little niche of “Fighting Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”, which I found I was doing every day anyway, and mixed it with a bit of humor, politics and so forth – and here we are 100,000 views later, and counting.

It has been an interesting time.

Apart from a handful of hopefuls who think they’ll make a fortune out of it, I think most people are like me, blogging for themselves. But it is also very nice and very rewarding when other people stop by to read the posts and even better when they acknowledge them with a “like”, a “follow”, or a “comment”.

I am delighted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has visited the fasab blog and particularly those who have decided to follow whether on WordPress, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter, or whatever. Some bloggers and readers, who I like to call my “blog-friends” have become regulars here. I very much appreciate your support. I have tried to reciprocate by visiting your blogs too when time permits.

One or two others  –  who I have no doubt are thoroughly ashamed of themselves 🙂  –  have fallen by the wayside, but most visitors I do not even know. Which brings me to another thing that I wasn’t expecting, and that was the variety of countries visitors come from. The bulk are from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and India – which is more or less what you could expect for an English language blog. But interestingly there have also been visitors from many other parts of Europe, South and Central America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa too. And all are very welcome.

So what does the future hold for the fasab blog?

I don’t exactly know the answer to that. Probably more puns, and factoids. Maybe a few more quizzes. Definitely the odd rant about things that annoy me (that’s a lot of things, the list grows every day!). But hopefully a lot of humor too.

A smile never does any harm  –  unless some big stupid bloke thinks you’re laughing at him  –  so prepare yourself for more.

My sincere thanks to everyone who has visited and who reads this.

And don’t forget the “Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy!”

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