Ides of October
It's that time of the year again. Do I mean Canadian Thanksgiving? Or American Columbus Day? Or perhaps German Oktoberfest? Ah, it is the Feast of St.Abraham then? No, not even that.
It is the time just before the Ides of October, Virgil's birthday. October 13 is "National Train Your Brain Day". (Please pick your nation.)
Even though not quite recognized by the U.N. and such, it is still promoted heavily enough to leave a mark ... mostly by websites that sell vitamins and junk
🔗. So be it. It is time I contribute to this worthwhile trend as well.
“Audaces fortuna iuvat”
“Fortune favors the bold.”
―
―
Please pay no attention to doctors and studies that try tell you that you can't really train you brain all that much and that moderate physical exercise, like a daily walk, will help your brain far more than all the pills and phone apps can. They know nothing - them witch doctors!
So, what to do? Well, given that I'm stressed for time, yet compelled to write something, to calm my brain for the workweek ahead, I'll resort to cheating. (Good call 👍.) I'll simply cut-n-paste here all those "weekly quizzes" that I've been peppering my co-workers with in the weeks past. It was (and still is) meant to entertain them, but it really is to mostly entertain me.
By the way, where does the word "quiz" come from? Well, nobody really knows. But in the past it may have referred more to an odd person than a series of questions. For example, in The London Magazine, in November 1783, they wrote:
A Quiz, in the common acceptation of the word, signifies one who thinks,
speaks, or acts differently from the rest of the world in general. But,
as manners and opinions are as various as mankind, it will be difficult
to say who shall be termed a Quiz, and who shall not: each person
indiscriminately applying the name of Quiz to every one who differs from
himself ...
So here it is. Enjoy.
Quiz 1 Questions:
- Why are figs not considered to be vegan?
- How does the most massive, most luminous star that we know compare to the sun?
- What is the relation of that star's name, R123a1, to the American historical figure Rosa Parks?
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What was wrong (apparently) with Twitter's new font, Chirp?
- What was the nasty surprise Russian opposition candidate Boris Vishnevky got at the ballot box?
Quiz 2 Questions:
- What was special about the World Cup soccer qualifier match (in September) between Tanzania and Madagascar?
- The tradition of people publicly burning books has a long history since antiquity, with the burning of "degenerate" books by Nazis and German students in 1930's being one of the most striking examples. What is the most recent, rather unexpected example of this trend of "cleansing" society by public burning of "bad" books?
- Why did Spanish bishop Xavier Novell resign? At age 41, in 2010, he became Spain's youngest bishop, who backed "conversion therapy" for gays and performed exorcisms. But now he has suddenly resigned for somewhat unexpected reasons.
- Is it true that countries with fatter ministers are more corrupt?
- What is Covuity?
Quiz 3 Questions:
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What is Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 and how is it pronounced?
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Why do some old houses in the UK have bricked-up spaces in place of windows?
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Does Elon Musk think that we live in a Matrix-like simulation?
-
What is the cause of most power outages in the US around the Great Lakes area?
1) equipment problems 2) trees 3) squirrels 4) storms?
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What do Peeping Tom, Cofa's tree, engineering and Brussels have in common?
- Why are figs not considered to be vegan?
- Because they contain the bodies of dead wasps. Figs are pollinated by fig wasps, which die after laying their eggs inside a fig. The very act of entering the fig will rob the wasp of its wings and the ability to escape. Figs are either female or hermaphrodite. Only female figs are fit for human consumption and only hermaphrodite figs allow a wasp to lay eggs and reproduce. The wasp can't tell the difference, and if it enters a female fig (which we eat), it will simply die and get absorbed into the fruit.
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Note: the wasp-fig mutualism is one of the best examples of reproductive coevolution, which is one of the mechanisms that contributes to species hybridization and thus allows for better adaptation and diversification.
https://www.pnas.org/content/102/suppl_1/6558
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-20957-3
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How does the most massive, most luminous star that we know compare to the sun?
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The baddest known star vs Sun: 350x more massive, 10,000,000x more luminous. But the answer "it is bigger than the Sun" would also be correct.
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What is the relation of that star's name, R123a1, to the American historical figure Rosa Parks?
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That star's ID, 123a1 is the hexadecimal code for 79521, which is the file number of Rosa Park's fingerprints from her arrest record in 1955. That arrest is considered one of the turning points that eventually lead to the end of legally enforced racial segregation in the US.
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What was wrong (apparently) with Twitter's new font, Chirp?
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The new Twitter font, Chirp, seems to give people headaches: physically, not just metaphorically. (This might be caused by mistakes in pixel-related issues, such as font overshoot, which, depending on the device, could make the font more blurry, misaligned and "bouncing")
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What was the nasty surprise Russian opposition candidate Boris Vishnevky got at the ballot box?
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Two other men changed their name and appearance and ran on the same ballot, looking nearly identical to him. This was meant to confuse voters and split the vote.
Quiz 2 Answers:
- What was special about the World Cup soccer qualifier match (in September) between Tanzania and Madagascar?
-
Tanzania earned one of fastest penalties in history, only 5 seconds into the match...
- The tradition of people publicly burning books has a long history since antiquity, with the burning of "degenerate" books by Nazis and German students in 1930's being one of the most striking examples. What is the most recent, rather unexpected example of this trend of "cleansing" society by public burning of "bad" books?
-
The "reconciliation ceremony" book burning in Ontario, Canada. As reported by Radio-Canada (translated here), the burned books were a part of the 5,000 books marked by Ontario's French School Board as being too racist for modern times and scheduled to be removed from libraries, which included books such as Asterix and Tintin. (Note: the social commentary in some of those books was already toned down in previous years.)
- The
story was largely ignored by Canadian English news, but it was reported
internationally (I read it in Czech). It was newsworthy, not just because book-burning is not viewed all that positively in modern times, but also because Asterix and Tintin have been translated into dozens of languages and became a part of international culture for several generations.
- The central person in those
actions has resigned
her government commission position (co-chair) after the story was
reported. However, it was not because of the book burning but because
of her false claims of Indigenous ancestry.
- It is true, however, that some of those books have an unhealthy history. For example, Tintin was conceived as a propaganda tool in 1929 by the editor of the Belgian conservative daily La Vingtième Siècle, Norbert Wallez, who was a Catholic priest, a great admirer of Alberto Mussolini and a rabid anti-semite. The main character, the "newspaperman" Tintin, was meant to portray the Soviet Union in very dark colours. This message was later expanded by portraying dark-skinned Africans as racially inferior to white-skinned Europeans. However, Tintin also traveled all over the world, explored exotic locations and lived through wild adventures. That was the part that attracted readers - not the the darker, nastier stuff.
- The comic was authored and drawn, in a marvelous style, by the very young (21 year old) cartoonist Georges Remi, who used the pseudonym Hergé. The fast-paced adventures of Tintin were so well-drawn and so enjoyable to read, that many soon forgot (or chose to ignore) the darker side of that series. In the 1930's, ignoring the darker tones of public life seemed to be not too difficult for (too) many people.
- Why did Spanish bishop Xavier Novell resign? At age 41, in 2010, he became Spain's youngest bishop, who backed "conversion therapy" for gays and performed exorcisms. But now he has suddenly resigned for somewhat unexpected reasons.
-
He fell in love with a psychologist and an erotic novelist, who promises her readers a"journey into sadism, madness and lust and a struggle between good and evil, God and Satan, to shake one's values and religious beliefs".Pope Francis has accepted his resignation. According to some sources, the pope urged him to undergo an exorcism himself, but Novell refused.
According to canon law, Novell is still a bishop, with all powers, but without a diocese. However, he also holds a degree in agricultural engineering and apparently wants to earn a living that way, so he is now looking for a job.
- Is it true that countries with fatter ministers are more corrupt?
- Yes, it is. Pavlo Blavatskyy won the 2021 Ig Prize in Economics for showing that in the post-Soviet countries there is a measurable correlation between their ministers' Body Mass Index and their Corruption Perception Index.
- Note: the top politicians in High Wycombe, UK, are publicly weighed every year. They get booed for getting fatter, cheered for getting leaner. (I wonder how long that's going to last in these "woker" times.)
- What is Covuity?
- That's one of the names Pfizer considered for their Covid vaccine. They eventually settled on Comirnaty.
- In Canada, the interim order that authorized and regulated the vaccines (known as "ISAD IO") expired on Sep 16, 2021 and new, trademarked names were needed to continue using the vaccines.
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Moderna settled on SpikeVax, but it did consider other names. For example, it trademarked WuhanVax in January..
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What is Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 and how is it pronounced?
- According to Wikipedia, it was a name given, in 1991, to their child by a Swedish couple Elisabeth Hallin and Lasse Diding. It is pronounced Albin. The name was rejected by the Swedish Tax Authority. The couple then tried to change the name to just A, also pronounced Albin, but that was rejected, too.
- Here is a little lame comedy about that.
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Why do some old houses in the UK have bricked-up spaces in place of windows?
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To avoid the so-called Window Tax, which in the past imposed extra payments based on number of windows in the house. The tax was designed to extract more money from the rich, who had bigger houses.
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Another example of this kind of progressive tax on wealth was the Hearth Tax, based on the number of hearths - fireplaces.
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Note: In sub-Saharan Africa, there was a Hut Tax designed for polygamous societies with each wife of a rich(er) polygamous man living in a separate hut. People living with a single wife did not pay the tax. However, the tax has gradually evolved into a way for the colonial governments to supply the mining industry with the needed labour by forcing more African men to work there in order to pay the tax.
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Does Elon Musk (the billionaire owner of Tesla car maker) think that we live in a Matrix-like simulation?
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Yes, he does. As already suggested by some others, he too thinks that there is a good chance that we live in a computer simulation. Such authors warn against running any such world simulations ourselves, because the entities responsible for our simulation could become displeased and turn our simulation off.
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Note: A number of movies besides The Matrix have entertained these kinds of ideas. My favourite was The Thirteenth Floor, which explored the idea of running a simulation inside a simulation - exactly what Elon et al. are warning us not to do.
- What is the cause of most power outages in the US around the Great Lakes area?
1) equipment problems 2) trees 3) squirrels 4) storms?
-
It is 3) squirrels.
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What do Peeping Tom, Cofa's tree, engineering and Brussels have in common?
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The answer is: Lady Godiva.
- There is a legend of a countess of that name (Latinized from Godgyfu) who wanted to persuade her husband to ease up on the oppressive taxation levied on the people of Coventry. He eventually relented, but only if she rode completely naked on a horse through the town. She did, but only after issuing an order for everybody to shut their windows and stay indoors.
- One guy - a tailor - could not help himself and took a single peep (allegedly). His character is now known as Peeping Tom. He was later blinded as a punishment - either by a heavenly strike or a nasty mob of fellow townspeople.
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The story is not based on fact, but has to do with pagan fertility rituals, where a young May Queen was led to the sacred Cofa's tree. (We don't really know who Cofa was, but people meeting next to a tree was a common custom in those times.)
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When a Belgian chocolate maker in Brussels, Joseph Draps, decided to give a more exclusive flair to the brand of his family business, he decided to name his chocolate Godiva, after the legend. In the minds of many people (certainly mine), the name Godiva is now associated primarily with that brand of chocolate.
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Lady Godiva is considered to be an engineering mascot at numerous engineering schools, including University of Toronto, McMaster University, MIT and other places, too, such as the US Army Corps of Engineers. There is a tradition to sing the so-called Godiva's Hymn, also known as the Engineering Drinking Song, which is often adapted for each specific school, but typically starts with the verse:
We are We are We are We are--
We are the engineers--
We can We can We can We can--
Demolish forty beers-- - Here is the MIT Chorallaries a capella group with that song: https://youtu.be/hFbDZyHxL2g
- The legend of Lady Godiva lives on ...
...
Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:
The deep air listen'd round her as she rode,
...
To meet her lord, she took the tax away
And built herself an everlasting name.
-- "Godiva", by Lord Alfred Tennyson
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