Norway Of The Year

 “November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
― Emily Dickinson

Oh, time does move so decidedly and, suddenly, the end of November is here, as if a stealthy shadow sneaked behind a building when you were not watching and now it has enveloped you fully and for an escape, there is none.  And temperatures tell you so, too, and not in a shy way.  The first snow is here and so is the early evening darkness.

The night is freezing fast,
To-morrow comes December;
And winterfalls of old
Are with me from the past...
― A.E. Hausman

But this blog is not about Norway and not about November, either.  There is a lot to write about that fascinating country, its history and all that happened in it and because of it. There is a lot to write about that fascinating penultimate oddly named month, too, how it came to be and all those world-changing events which happened during that month.  But I don't have time for much writing right now - maybe later.

My time is short and my stress levels high,

I will cut to Hecuba

and simply continue now on the quiz theme from my previous blog.

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Quiz 4 Questions:
(MeltyMoji, BitchyVicki, GolfyCruisy, LakeyBrakey, ShampyDamny)

• Which of the following feelings is meant to be expressed by the new emoji, "melted face"?
  
  
  • "... it's hot today"
  • "... a slowly sinking sense of dread"
  • "... putting on a good face despite pain"
  • "... the best we can do is smile as we melt away"
  • All of the above
• What could "standing bitch" mean in Victorian slang (besides the literal meaning of an upright female dog)?
• How does Tom Cruise go for lunch at a local golf club?
• What does gold, Lake Baikal and nuclear rectors have in common?
  
• Where does the word shampoo come from? Hindi, Chinese or Arabic?
  Hint: do you give a damn?

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Quiz 5 Questions:
(LuckyTurki, CarmaMola, BrandyChanty, PillowTalky, Old'n'eary)

• What was the unusual circumstance of Mr. Beyhan Mutlu recently going missing in Turkish forest?
• Carmen Mola is the literary pseudonym of a successful Spanish writer, presented to be a 40-year old Madrid professor, mother of three, who wrote in her spare time. But when her book was recently awarded a €1,000,000 literary prize, the real author turned out to be someone else. Who was it?
• Why are Trump's fans using the line "Let's go, Brandon" to express their opposition to Biden?
  
• What unusual thing did Ruth Hamilton, of British Columbia, recently discover on her bed pillow?
• Is it true that older men have bigger ears?

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Quiz 6 Questions:
(ScorpyScorpies, SacréBleu, KickyBucket, CryptoCheugy, PrimyBlimey)

• Recently, scorpions (and snakes) showed up on the streets of Aswan, Egypt.  Three people were killed and hundreds were injured by scorpion stings.  What brought the scorpions into the city's streets?
• The blue in the French flag became lighter in 1976.  The French President Emmanuel Macron has now switched his hoisted flag back to the darker blue.  What was the reason the blue got lighter in 1976?
• A 55-year-old terminally-ill UK man in Worcestershire fulfilled a wish on his "bucket list".  In response, UK police kicked in his backyard gate and 5 police officers forced him to the ground and arrested him.  He had to recover in a hospital.  What was the wish he got to fulfill?
• Which of the following words did Collins Dictionary make "The word of the year"?
  1) cheugy 2) NFT 3) neopronoun 4) double-vaxxed 5) hybrid working
• What do the these Prime Ministers have in common?  How did the last one beat them all?
  Golda Meir (Israel), Margaret Thatcher (UK), Brian Mulroney (Canada), Silvio Berlusconi (Italy), Romano Prodi (Italy), Kevin Rudd (Australia), David Cameron (UK), Magdalena Andersson (Sweden).
  

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Quiz 4 Answers:

• The new emoji "melted face" is meant to express the feeling of:
  • "... it's hot today"
  • "... a slowly sinking sense of dread"
  • "... putting on a good face despite pain"
  • "... the best we can do is smile as we melt away"
  • All of the above
  
  
• The correct answer is (5): all of the above (i.e. any one of those feelings, not all of them at the same time, even though that's possible, too...)
  
                     

• What could "standing bitch" mean in Victorian slang (besides the literal meaning of an upright female dog)?
  
  
• To host a tea party.  This was also referred to as "bitch the pot".  As women were excluded from coffee houses, tea drinking become very much a female affair, with its own rules and etiquette.  College students appropriated the term "bitch party" for tea drinking and the one who "bitched the pot" gracefully was called "an excellent bitch".
  

 

• 
  

• How does Tom Cruise go for lunch at a local golf club?
  
  
• In a helicopter.  He landed at a Richmond Golf Club and went for lunch at their Georgian clubhouse.  He is a certified pilot and often flies himself.  Sometimes, when airports are closed, he also lands in people's private gardens.

• What does gold, Lake Baikal and nuclear rectors have in common?
  
  
• A rumor that, in 1972, some of the lead shielding of the Soviet experimental nuclear reactor at the Lake Baikal has transmuted to gold.  Note: producing gold artificially from other, less valuable elements, has always been the dream of alchemists and their search for the "philosopher's stone".
  
  
  
  
  But turning lead to gold by transmutation is actually possible, if very expensive.  The first feat of such nature was done by chemist/nobelist Glenn T. Seaborg.

• Where does the word shampoo come from?  Hindi, Chinese or Arabic?
• Hint: do you give a damn?
  
  
• It is Hindi: in Hindi "champo" means "to press, kneed, massage", perhaps derived from Sanskrit capayati/chapati/चपति (of similar meaning).
• About the hint: The common phrase "give a damn" (or not ) also has an Indian origin.  It is a misspelling of the original "give a dam", where the word dam refers to a small Indian copper coin called Dam, introduced in the 16th century.  It was of a very small value, later standardized to 1/40th of a Rupee.  The coin's name is used due to the coin's small worth.  If you "don't give a Dam", you value the thing in question even less than the "worthless" coin.
  
  
  
  
  

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Quiz 5 Answers:

• What was the unusual circumstance of Mr. Beyhan Mutlu recently going missing in Turkish forest?
  
  
• He ended up in the search party, searching the forest for himself.
  
  
  
  
  

• Carmen Mola is the literary pseudonym of a successful Spanish writer, presented to be a 40-year old Madrid professor, mother of three, who wrote in her spare time.  But when her book was recently awarded a €1,000,000 literary prize, the real author turned out to be someone else.  Who was it?
  
  
• Carmen Mola is not a 40-year old woman, but three middle-aged men, who are Spanish television scriptwriters.
  
  
  
  
  
• Why are Trump's fans using the line "Let's go, Brandon" to express their opposition to Biden?
  
  
• Because to them it means "F*** Joe Biden".  During the NBC interview of the NASCAR racer Brandon Brown, the fans behind him are heard shouting those expletives.  However, the NBC reporter (perhaps) tried to recover from the embarrassing situation and claimed that the chant was, in fact, a cheerful "Let's go, Brandon" and not the crude, offensive words being heard. 
• The meme is now popular with the Trump's crowd, in many forms, including being printed on T-shirts.
  
  
  
  
  
• Note: in 1971, when Pierre Trudeau (the Canadian Prime Minister) was accused of mouthing the word "F*** off" by the opposition MPs, he responded by claiming that the words were "Fuddle duddle" and not the expletive.
• The ski resort of Mont Tremblant , where Trudeau was a regular visitor, has a ski run named Fuddle Duddle.  The run (#78) is rated green=easy.  However, the top portion is blue=intermediate, typically left as un-groomed moguls.  When the snow is fresh and the troughs are deep, the difficulty will border on black=expert.  The resort claims that Trudeau considered #78 to be his personal favourite. 
  
  
  
  
  
• What unusual thing did Ruth Hamilton, of British Columbia, recently discover on her bed pillow?
  
  
• A meteorite.  Reportedly, it crashed through her roof into her bedroom and ended up on her pillow. 
  
  
  
  
  
• Is it true that older men have bigger ears?
• Yes, it is. The correlation is about 2 mm per decade, as reported here.  Interestingly, as recently reported, due to climate change, many warm-blooded animals are now getting bigger ears, too, to help them regulate their body temperature in warmer temperatures.
  
  
  
  
  

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Quiz 6 Answers:

• Recently, scorpions (and snakes) showed up on the streets of Aswan, Egypt.  Three people were killed and hundreds were injured by scorpion stings.  What brought the scorpions into the city's streets?
  
  
• Storm. A rare, violent storm of rain, dust and snow drove the scorpions out of their hiding places.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The blue in the French flag became lighter in 1976.  The French President Emmanuel Macron has now switched his hoisted flag back to the darker blue.  What was the reason the blue got lighter in 1976?
  
  
• It was changed by then-president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing for his televised speeches to match the color of the flag of the European Union.  (Those were the years when the EU was struggling to get recognized and accepted as an established political entity, so a lot of enthusiastic speeches were needed.)
  
• Macron indicated that this should not be interpreted as a sign that France is distancing itself from the EU.
• The darker blue is RBC (0,35,149).  The lighter one is  RBC (0,85,164).
  
  
  
  
  
• A 55-year-old terminally-ill UK man in Worcestershire fulfilled a wish on his "bucket list".  In response, UK police kicked in his backyard gate and 5 police officers forced him to the ground and arrested him.  He had to recover in a hospital.  What was the wish he got to fulfill?
  
  
• He decided to "moon" the speed camera near his village (i.e. to show his exposed buttocks to the camera).  He found the camera particularly annoying because it was catching people at "silly", low speeds.
• In support of the man, a mural appeared shortly afterward showing Bart Simpon mooning the police.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Which of the following words did Collins Dictionary make "The word of the year"? 1) cheugy 2) NFT 3) neopronoun 4) double-vaxxed 5) hybrid working
  
  
  
  
  
• It was NFT.  But, TBH, some find those lists cheugy, amirite? 
  
  
  
  
  
• Note: NFT is Non-fungible token,  It is a certificate of "ownership" of a digital object (without any rights to intellectual property).  Some consider it a modern equivalent of what a tulip bulb was at the time of Tulipmania.
  
  
  
  
  
  Like many other modern digital things, NFT's use blockchains; some of such uses are stupid, but others can be actually practical, rational, and useful.
  
  
• (TBH="to be honest", cheugy="the opposite of trendy", amirite="
  am I right?")
  
  
• Note: People that use the NFT acronym for that blockchain thing live in the world of memes, not math:  so NFT, in this context, does not refer to Nonlinear Fourier Transform (also known as Inverse Scattering Transform), as I would have guessed.  NFT (the transform) is a very useful, if difficult subject, worth the time of genius-level people like Terence Tao. (Other collaborators on that, like Christoph Thiele, are super-smart and super-accomplished, too, excelling internationally even when they were still in high school.)
  
• Note: Terence Tao, nicknamed "the Mozart of Math" by his colleagues, is considered one of the greatest living mathematicians today.  He was a child prodigy - the youngest-ever winner of the International Math Olympiad.  He's is a Fields Medal winner (among other achievements) and is now an prof at UCLA.  His IQ is estimated to be 210-230.
  
  
  
  
  
• What do the these Prime Ministers have in common?  How did the last one beat them all?
• Golda Meir (Israel), Margaret Thatcher (UK), Brian Mulroney (Canada), Silvio Berlusconi (Italy), Romano Prodi (Italy), Kevin Rudd (Australia), David Cameron (UK), Magdalena Andersson (Sweden).
  
  
• They all resigned after their policies failed.  But Andersson did so much sooner than the others: she resigned on the very first day of her tenure.
  
  
  
  
  

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Note:  In the U.S. (only), the end of November is traditionally the time of American Thanksgiving, when families share a turkey dinner on Thursday and then go shopping on Friday, which is a BIG shopping day, (possibly) called Black Friday because it starts the Christmas shopping season and will bring the "bottom line" (the total of an account) of many stores back to "black" (net positive, rather than "red" - net negative).  But "Black Friday" has now become such a big shopping phenomenon that "Black Friday Shopping" is a "thing" in many other countries that have nothing to do with the U.S. November Thanksgiving tradition.

Most people view the time of Thanksgiving positively.  But not the turkeys.