qc meet #1 vishal katariya 17 august 2016

1.• This word (slightly corrupted) means “all put

together” in Swahili, and is the official motto of Kenya.

• The word is also the name of someone/something famous who was famously killed a day after his 17th birthday. Advocates on social media are asking for justice for him, with a dedicated hashtag.

• Who/what is this?

2.

• The image shows the flag of a newly formed ‘group’. The colour scheme and design of the flag is inspired by something that you would associate with members of this ‘group’. This flag is currently being used in an event that is scheduled from the 5th to the 21st of August 2016.

• Whose flag is this? What inspired the design?

3.

• In a fictional piece of writing, a certain magazine talks of ETSPN, an organisation whose abbreviation can be thought of as an abbreviation of two other abbreviations. What are those abbreviations, and what fictional setting is the magazine discussing?

• ET + ESPN

4.• This age-old disease was called Y back in the days.

The modern name by which we know it, X, was coined in 1839 and is derived from a word meaning “small, swelling bump or pimple.” The actual bacterium that caused the disease was discovered in 1905.

• The disease was called Y because it seemed to _______ the patient’s bodies, and they very swiftly lost a lot of weight.

• Tuberculosis

• Consumption

5.

• Fans of the movie Suicide Squad have taken to online forums and social media to support a movement called ‘Crush the ______’, which talks about how unfair a certain aggregation-service portal is to the movie. Which portal?

• Rotten Tomatoes

6.• The estimated due date is calculated as 40 from the last cycle.

Doctors are wary of, and urge people to not use a certain smaller unit that people tend to use more often.

• As an example, a certain doctor says that 7 in the not so right unit could refer to a number between 28 and 32. He then says

• Thus, in the interests of both morale and more accurate medical care, I have tried to get my patients to divest themselves of _.

• What is the unit that should be used, and what is being spoken of?

• Use weeks and not months when talking about pregnancy

7.

• In censorship-ridden Soviet Russia, ingenious people used discarded X-ray plates to store something. The used a lathe on the discarded plates salvaged from hospitals and repurposed them. These modified plates then were the rage in the Russian black market. What did the law-breaking Russians doing to the X-ray plates?

• They inserted music records onto the X-ray plates.

8.• A website called Consumer Reports gives the ‘Black

Hole Award’ to such products. There is legislation in the USA that is supposed to not allow ‘slack fill’ that creates an illusion of excess. However, this ‘slack fill’ is allowed if it does double-duty (as a dispenser or tray, for example) or if it keeps a product from breaking.

• What are we talking about? Also, one particular class of products is infamous for ‘slack fill’, and they can get away with it. Which class of products?

9.• This company has multiple jobs that are open. From the

description of some of them, identify the company.

• Head of Large Scale Model Design - you are responsible for the creation of things like a full-size Batman, or a scaled-down version of the Sphinx.

• Senior Concept Artist - you work with playset designers and scriptwriters to create new product lines.

• Freeform Designer - you make sure that the artist’s creations can be manufactured correctly and efficiently, and digitally design the product to be made.

• So, if you were Head of Large Scale Model Design, you’d make something like this.

10.

• This variety of tea is brewed for use on a certain something. The reason that a special batch of teabags was produced was because of the conditions on this something. What is this certain something?

• For onboard ships, with the blanked out word being HMS

11.• In 1967, in the midst of the Cold War, multiple radar

installations of the US went dark in the Arctic. The US thought that Russia managed to disable its early warning system and armed itself ready to strike.

• The radar installations actually went out because of a certain phenomenon, which was intimated to the US just before they launched their missiles. If those missiles had been launched, the same phenomenon would have made it impossible to recall or divert the missiles, which would’ve made the world a very different place from what it is now.

• What is this phenomenon, which nearly caused catastrophe?

• Solar flares/Solar wind

12.• The new scheme, called the Code of Points, allows

for two separate numbers to be awarded. The first is the standardised number, and the second is an entirely subjective number that the judges award that are based on the difficulty of the task attempted.

• The introduction of the second number is captured in the title of the book The End of __, by a certain Dvora Meyers. The first of these blanks was seen in 1976. What is this scheme designed for, or FITB.

13. FUQ• The X Y Gymnastic Championships is a major

regional biennial gymnastics competition that is open to countries such as Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, USA.

• The word Y was first “Alliance”, but was changed to Y in 2008. X Y is also the name of a 2013 movie. Given that the criterion for participating in these championships is purely geographic, what is X Y?

14.

• It’s a nice example of how our entire skin is a sensing, guessing, logic-seeking organ of perception, a blanket with a brain in every micro-inch.

• He goes on to say that any _________ near the regular area is interpreted as a buzz. A scientist talking about which modern phenomenon?

• Phantom Vibration Phenomenon

15.• Some people follow carefully engineered, low-calorie diets in

order to mitigate, or at least slow down, the affects of rapid ______. Their belief is that if they live long enough to see major breakthroughs in this field, a little sacrifice now is worth it.

• They hope to live long enough to reach a situation called ‘_________ escape velocity’, says Dave Gobel, the boss of the Methuselah Foundation, a charity that does research in this field.

• What are they hoping to do? Also, given what an escape velocity is, what ‘escape velocity’ situation do they wish to attain?

• They basically don’t want to age/die

• The escape velocity is when their expected age increases by more than one year per year of their life

16.• There exists in the USA a group of people called the

‘Arlington Ladies’ who believe that nobody should be ______ alone. There are roughly 30 of these that happen at Arlington everyday, and the ladies make it a point to attend each and every one.

• The ladies are very familiar with the 624 acre campus of Arlington, and are always elegantly dressed, often in hats or gloves. Additionally, they are always standing at a respectful distance, mindful of history.

• What is the self-proclaimed duty of these ‘Arlington Ladies’, or what do they believe in?

• They make sure that nobody is buried alone.

17.

• France has divided its provinces into ‘zones’, a map of which is on the next slide. The zones have no differences over the summer, but over the winter, the sessions are divided per region to maximise the time for limited winter sports facilities.

• What is the purpose for dividing the country into these zones?

• To free up resorts in the winter, with the thing being broken up being school holidays.

18.• Censorship works, or at least it does most of the

time. Here’s when it doesn’t.

• “doesn’t count as a world record, because it was run with the help of a too-strong tailwind. Here’s what does matter : Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he’s certainly someone to watch in Beijing.”

• “It means a lot to me,” the 25-year-old Homosexual said. “I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.”

• What happened here?

• Tyson Gay became Tyson Homosexual

19.• This is a phrase/idiom that refers to the congregation

around something. In modern urban lives however, the idiom is beginning to not be true in its literal sense.

• In a study conducted by Swiss scientists in Biology Letters, the propensity of the subjects of the idiom were seen in two cities, one with high levels of some pollution, and the other with low levels. This was also expected from natural selection, because the action of these subjects in urban areas hasn’t really ever helped them. What idiom?

• Like a moth to the fire

• Moths in urban areas aren’t drawn to lights as much anymore, because they die.

20.• An enterprising 19-year old in London Joshua Browder

has created a service called donotpay.co.uk, which people have said saves them hours of time writing letters of appeal. The service also studies previously successful letters and uses the characteristic features of them, thereby increasing the success rate of the appeal.

• The creator says that town councils issue first and ask questions later. Many of the recipients don’t have the time, legal knowledge or energy to appeal. What is the service used for?

• To generate appeal letters to protest against unfair parking tickets.

21.• A Wired article called The X and Y2 Problem talks

about making a certain procedure less harmful for the subjects involved. The X and Y Problem is something that’s been on people’s minds for ages, and one tongue-in-cheek remark rebuke is that dinosaurs lived before X’s, and they produced Y’s.

• The procedure described in the article talks about fitting Y2 devices to the subjects to monitor their brain waves. What is the X and Y Problem, and what is Y2?

• The Chicken and Egg Problem

• EEG

22.• Birds have recently been found to be similar to dolphins

in a certain aspect. The fact about dolphins has been known to scientists for over a decade. People have expected certain species of birds to be doing this too to manage some astonishing tasks of endurance.

• The researchers attached to each bird a sensor designed for homing pigeons that detects brain-wave activity using an EEG test, as well as an accelerometer to measure the bird's head movements. They then tracked the birds for 10 days. What did they find in the birds?

• Birds sleep while migrating, something like how dolphins sleep with either half of the brain at a time.

23.• This method came into popularity in the mid-20th

century, replacing another method called ‘deconstruction’, where specifically assigned men called ‘barmen’ would go at it with crowbars and pickaxes. The advantage of the deconstruction method was that it enabled ready salvage of materials; however, the process itself took too long. In the 1960s, due to stricter regulatory processes regarding dangerous materials being sent into the air as well as the impact noise, this method went back into ubiquity.

• Googling this method now will give you something from the world of music.

24.• Peter Davies, a highly unpopular mayor of the UK, in 2009

ditched the agreements that his town, Lancaster, had with five entities in China, France, the US, Germany and Poland. He claimed that he was saving roughly 4000 pounds a year. On a more serious note, there have been moves across the world to break off such relationships. There are roughly 4000 of these around the world, and at worst, they are just seen as an expensive perk for politicians. Peter Davies himself says, “Only about a dozen people ever benefited from these trips. I can see that it arose out of altruistic motives after the war, but it just became about junkets.”

• What relationships are being talked about?

• Sister cities

25.

• In her memoir Just Kids, Patti Smith talks about Mexico being the land of two of her favourite things, coffee and X. As a child, Smith was given a book called The Fabulous Life of X by her mother, which kickstarted her fascination with X. She claims that she imagined herself “as Y to X, both muse and maker”. Who is X?

• Diego Riviera

• Frieda Kahlo

26.• The answer to the riddle “One day a girl celebrated her

birthday. Two days later, her elder twin brother celebrated his. How is this possible?” could be one of many answers.

• She lives in Kiritimati and her brother lives in American Samoa.

• She is the _.

• The second possibility arises due to the fact that the weather is quite unpredictable in England and it’s a lot more convenient to hold events in the summer. What is the other answer to the riddle?

• The Queen of England

• She has two birthdays, one is her real one, and she celebrates her ‘official’ one on June 11.

27.

• This device is used to eliminate any error in a certain act. What act?

• Lets you shoot pokéballs in the right direction in Pokémon Go

28.• The de Havilland Comet was the first plane to use a

certain concept which enabled it to fly at greater heights. It was, however, a failure. Once in 1954, the plane just crumpled mid-air and fell down, killing all on board.

• A revised version of the plane was released soon later which fixed the problem of crumpling in mid-air by applying scientific principles to the windows. Apparently aesthetic isn’t as important as fatigue.

• What feature did this plane introduce?

• Pressurised cabins

29.• NASA is using something that looks like what you see in the

next slide. The objective of this mission is to discover more Earth-like planets. Right now, the Kepler satellite looks for the dip in starlight as a planet passes in front of its star. That, however, doesn’t let us deduce much about the chemical composition of the planet etc. Light from larger planets can be seen directly, but not from Earth-size planets.

• To counteract this, and to enable better planetspotting, NASA has developed this appendage to its satellite/telescope that will ‘unfurl’ and detach in front of the telescope itself. What is its use?

30.• A book that talks about why quantum theory is the best theory ever (or

something to that effect), its name is a play on an old, epic piece of literature.

• On Springer’s (its publisher) website, the blurb reads

• Arguing that quantum theory as it stands is perhaps the most comprehensive, well-verified, and successful theory in the history of science, the author clears

away the impression that it is an incomplete, philosophically flawed, and self-contradictory theory. In simple terms accessible to anyone with a little prior knowledge of science, Wallace examines the numerous “_________” and "difficulties" claimed for quantum mechanics, and shows that they are due to excesses of interpretation that have been imposed on the theory.

• What is the two-word name of this book, of which the blank is the first word?

I