Asha Quiz 2005 - Elims Questions

On Saturday I conducted an open quiz for the Central NJ chapter of Asha for Education. Here are the questions from the elimination round:

1. Irene and Jose came before her; Lee and Maria came after her. Who am I talking about?

2. During the Great Depression, an unemployed architect called Alfred Mosher Butts spent several months studying the front page of the New York Times, counting letters and words. He used this data to invent something, which he called ‘Lexiko’. His invention is extremely popular today: by what name do we know it?

3. An Italian immigrant named Candido J____ had a family member who suffered from arthritis. He invented a device to treat this person’s symptoms; later, a nephew of Candido’s named Roy J____ took this invention and marketed it to the masses. Today, this invention can be found in millions of homes across the country. What is it?

4. (Visual) Simple and straightforward: identify the structure shown on the right.

5. The first part was a tribute to a famous British military commander from the Second World War. The second part was chosen because it "sounded slippery". What am I talking about?

6. If noble rot is a disease afflicting grapes and a noble gas is one that does not combine with other elements, what is the noble science?

7. This substance was first commercially marketed by Robert Chesebrough, who gave it a name that was a compound of the German word for water and the Greek word for oil. Chesebrough was a great believer in this substance’s healing properties; he lived to the age of 96 and claimed this was because he ate a spoonful of this stuff every day. What?

8. In January 1937, a retired Cleveland motorman named Ernest Ackerman received the grand sum of 17 cents from the government. Why?

9. (Visual) The Minnetaree tribe of Native Americans called the river shown on the right ‘Mitsiadazi’ because of the peculiar rock formations lining its valley. What does ‘Mitsiadazi’ mean?

10. In Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet was the goddess of war; she was usually portayed as a woman with the head of a lioness. Sekhmet was said to be one of twins; who was her sister?

11. On a certain date late in the 19th century, a gentleman named Alexander Grantham Yorke staged an amateur play at Windsor castle. What resulted?

12. In 1970, a young graduate named Paul Orfalea started a company to cater to a widespread need he had observed in his college days. He chose his company’s name based on a nickname he had acquired due to his curly red hair. Today, his firm is the undisputed leader in its field. Can you name it?

13. (Visual) The image to the right is the cover of a Phish album titled ‘Hook, Line and Sinker’. The album itself was never released, but the cover is interesting. Can you name the cover artist?

14. In 1970, a young lady named Norma McCorvey filed a suit against the District Attorney of Dallas County in Texas. The case went up to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments by Sarah Weddington (representing the plaintiff) and Jay Floyd (representing the defendant). The Court found 7-2 in favour of the plaintiff; the final opinion was written by Justice Harry Blackmun. Enough clues; what was this case about?

15. (Visual) Connect the three people pictured on the right. The connection is another person.

16. There are many elements named after countries, such as Francium (named after France) and Polonium (named after Poland). Can you give me an example of a country named after an element?

17. (Audio) The audio clue you just heard ["Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield - ed.] was from the very first album released by a certain recording company. This recording company took its name from the fact that its founders "were all new to business -- just like _______". Fill in the blank with the company name.

18. In 1858, a schoolgirl named Bernadette Soubirous witnessed a miraculous apparition at a certain spot in the French Pyrenees. Soon, large crowds of people were making pilgrimages to this location, in the hope of seeing the apparition. Can you name this spot?

19. Connect the answers to the above four questions. The connection is a personality.

20. (Visual) Identify the location shown on the right, which inspired the poet John Burgon to write:

Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
A rose-red city – half as old as time!

21. This landmark gets its name from the Spanish word for the gannet (a kind of seabird, similar to a pelican). Its period of prominence extended form 1934 to 1963; Al Capone was a famous visitor. In 1969, after it had fallen out of regular use, a group of Native Americans attempted to reoccupy this location as part of their heritage. Their claim was rejected, and today this spot is a tourist favorite. Identify, please.

22. The Berber general Tariq ibn-Ziyad conquered Spain in 711, laying the foundations for the Moorish empire. His armies landed at a spot that was subsequently called ‘Jebel Tariq’, which means ‘Tariq’s Mountain’. How do we know this spot today?

23. Connect the answers to the above three questions. The connection is a common English word.

24. The French word ‘trombone’ has two meanings. One, of course, is the musical instrument. What’s the other?

25. In Oxford and Cambridge, the open space between college buildings is called the ‘quad’, because it’s quadrangular. In Harvard, this space is called the ‘yard’. In Princeton, the corresponding term comes from the Latin word for field. What is this term?

Click here for the answers. Questions from the finals will follow... eventually.

Natural Disasters: Risk Management and Incentives

Another natural disaster, another round of recriminations. When the tsunami hit southeast Asia last December, the talk was all about the absence of early-detection systems and/or effective communication between various entities, leading to a complete lack of warning given to those living in the danger zone. When Mumbai was lashed by rains in July, the knives were out for the authorities who failed to recognize how overloaded the city’s power and transport infrastructure was prior to the event, and how vulnerable it would be to an external disruption. And now, in the aftermath of Katrina, there’s been an orgy of finger-pointing and I-told-you-so-ing from all sides of the political spectrum. The Economist summarizes the situation well:

Pundits explained the government's failure in every way they pleased. Anti-war types blamed Iraq, particularly the fact that thousands of National Guard troops had been sent there. Environmental types blamed Mr Bush's lackadaisical attitude to wetlands. Many Democrats saw it as proof that Mr Bush and the Republicans cared nothing for America's poor and black. Liberals argued that Katrina showed why, as James Galbraith, a vocal leftist economist at the University of Texas, put it, the “government of the United States must be big, demanding, ambitious and expensive.” A Wall Street Journal column, in contrast, argued that the hurricane showed the danger of relying too heavily on inefficient government.

All these criticisms are fine and dandy when made with hindsight, but they miss a fundamental point: democratic societies can never be fully prepared for extreme events. This statement may seem like a reckless generalization, but I believe I can back it up. Read on.

Let’s start by putting the situation into a risk-management framework. It’s axiomatic that in a given situation, and without infinite resources, you cannot guard against each and every negative event. So there’s a tradeoff; you have to choose which events you want to guard against, and which ones you’ll leave ‘unhedged’. How do you make this choice? The usual method used in financial risk management is to estimate the loss arising from a particular event, multiply it by the probability of that event, and then compare that figure with the cost of guarding against that event.

A numerical example might make this clearer. Consider two events: event A leads to a loss of $100, while event B leads to a loss of $20. But there’s only a 1% chance that event A will occur, while event B has a 10% chance of occurring. The ‘expected value’ for A is thus $100 * 1% = $1 (loss), while the E.V. for B is $20 * 10% = $2 (loss). If it costs the same amount of money to prevent A and B, then clearly you’re better off guarding against B. On the other hand if B costs $1 to prevent while A costs $0.01 to prevent, then (assuming perfect scalability) you should be guarding against A.

Now, a natural disaster like Katrina is a perfect instance of a low-probability, high-loss event - call it a type A event. But the risk management framework above should be perfectly capable of including such events in its calculations. (One could argue, of course, that the authorities grossly underestimated the ‘true’ probability of massive damage to New Orleans from a hurricane, but that’s a highly posterior argument). The fault in the system is subtler.

The problem is that the decision of which types of events (A or B) to guard against is made by elected officials. And elected officials do not have the same incentives as society as a whole. For an elected official, the payoff structure is strictly binary: either you get re-elected, or you don’t. As an elected official, you can guard against a type A event (like a hurricane), and on the extremely rare (say 1 in 1000) chance of the event happening, you’re a prescient genius. Or you can spend the same amount of money on schools or hospitals or tax cuts, which may have a worse E.V. for society as a whole, but will, 999 times out of 1000, result in your re-election. Which would you choose?

And there you have it. Politicians will always prefer a small chance of a huge loss, to the certainty of a small loss - even though in E.V. terms such a choice might be sub-optimal for their constituents. And the incompetence on display after Katrina, or for that matter after the tsunami, was thus not the product of political or bureaucratic misfeasance or malfeasance, easy as that explanation would be. No; it was merely the consequence of systematic under-preparation for low-probability outcomes, by rational politicians with short-term electoral goals. A triumph for the dismal science!

Riding the Valuation Wave

Adam Hamilton at Zeal LLC has a great essay on Long Valuation Waves in the stockmarket:

There are periods of history when investors can’t get enough stocks and are willing to buy at any price, regardless of valuations. Thankfully 1999 was not too long ago so we all remember well what these mania periods are like. And there are other periods when investors won’t touch stocks with ten-foot poles. Like a 20-year old trying to imagine the Saturnian winter, unless you were actively investing from 1974 to 1982 you have never experienced one of these.

This herd psychology moves in great waves too, and is actually the underlying driver of the Long Valuation Waves. Early in the 34-year cycles investors are fairly neutral about stocks, but gradually they get interested and a Boom ignites. After maybe a decade of booming, greed festers and a Bubble spawns, pushing prices up far faster than earnings and sending valuations spiraling heavenwards.

Sooner or later this mania psychology fails when all the capital that can be enticed in has been sucked in. Without any new buyers mania prices collapse in the Burst phase. And then over the next half wavelength the Bust manifests itself. The financial markets are perpetually experiencing these Boom Bubble Burst Bust cycles, driven by investor psychology, and empirically measurable by the Long Valuation Waves.

Marc Faber talks about a similar phenomenon in his excellent book "Tomorrow's Gold" (and it's not surprising; the idea of long waves in the market is not new). Interestingly, both authors advise against investing in stocks at the present point in the cycle. So what do they advise? You guessed it -- commodities!

The Demon Drummers of Sado Island

(via Brodie) Australia's ABC News has a very nice 12-minute mini-documentary (win, real) on Japan's Kodo drummers.

Anyone who's seen Kodo (the name means "children of the drum", and is a homophone for "heartbeat") perform live will know how thrilling an experience it is -- exciting and intense and visceral, yet also subtle and elegant and moving. This blend of power and control does not come easily. Candidates for Kodo's drum school go through a 2-year boot camp on Sado island (off the western coast of Japan) before they are allowed to perform in an evaluation/examination for admission to the troupe. During this time, they live in a commune, growing their own food and even carving their own drumsticks. And they drum. From morning till night, "till they get blisters on their fingers, and then till they get blisters on their blisters". At the end of it, only a few students are allowed to join Kodo as 'junior members'; the rest are turned away. It's a harsh process.

Kodo, incidentally, has a special place in my heart; during my stay in Japan, I studied Taiko drumming for nearly 3 years with Miyauchi Yukihiro Sensei and the Waraku Daiko group. They introduced me to Kodo, and since then I've been to over a dozen Kodo concerts, in Tokyo, Kyoto and even Princeton. The highlight was watching Kodo perform in the open air at Sado island, during the Earth Celebration in 2001 -- truly the experience of a lifetime!

Another Question of Sport

My post on Garry Kasparov's retirement prompted a few comments about who the greatest chess player of all time was. Subjective opinions always make for a fun discussion, but it's also worthwhile to do some rigorous statistical analysis, and this is precisely what Jeff Sonas of Chessmetrics has done. Jeff has written a fascinating series of four articles for Chessbase, in which he looks at various measures of dominance:

Longest period as world champion: Emanuel Lasker was world champion for 27 years, though that span was artificially extended by WWI. Alexander Alekhine reigned for 16 years, but his stay was similarly extended by WWII. Kasparov was at the top for 15 years (and retired when he was still demonstrably the best player in the world). Finally, depending on when you consider his reign to have started, Wilhelm Steinitz was world champion for either 8, 22 or 28 years.

Largest ratings gap between first and second: Steinitz in 1876, Fischer in 1971, and Morphy in 1859 are the top three in this category. Fischer's 1971 achievement is especially striking when you reflect that the overall strength and depth of the chess world has (almost certainly) increased considerably since the 19th century. Steinitz's dominance of the 1870s was equally total: he won 25 straight games between 1873 and 1882 (no draws, all wins).

Longest period (non-consecutive) at top of ratings list: Lasker, 24 years, closely followed Kasparov, 22 years. Again, Kasparov could well have overtaken Lasker had he stayed in the game a bit longer.

Longest period (consecutive) at top of ratings list: Kasparov, 20 years, is streets ahead of Lasker, 13 years, and Karpov, 8 years. And for 19 of those 20 years, no other player came within 10 points of Kasparov's rating.

Highest peak rating (adjusted for comparisons across eras): The Chessmetrics ratings list for Oct 1st, 1971 had Fischer at 2895, after he won 19 straight games against strong opposition (including identical 6-0 annihilations of world #9 Mark Taimonov and #3 Bent Larsen). The second highest peak rating of 2886 belongs to Kasparov, after he took Linares 1993 (one of the two strongest tournaments of all time) with a stunning +7 score.

Highest match rating: Not surprisingly, Fischer's 6-0 demolition of Larsen was the strongest match performance of all time. Lasker's +8 win in 1896 over Steinitz (no slouch himself) gives him 2nd place on this list.

Highest tournament rating: Karpov's 11/13, +8, 2899 performance at Linares 1994, against a field including 9 of the top 11 players in the world, was simply astounding. It was the strongest performance by any player in any event in the history of chess.

Best tournament performances: Karpov may have had the single best tournament performance ever (at Linares 1994), but Kasparov was by far the best tournament player of all time. He had 5 of the top 10 tournament performances ever, and no less than 17 tournaments with performance ratings above 2820 (next best on this list is Lasker with 6). Kasparov also won 3 clear 1sts in category 20/21 tournaments (nobody else has won even 1). And he won more tournaments involving each of the top 5 players in the world (6) than everybody else combined.

Best annual performances (aka the Chess Oscar method): wherein we award gold, silver and bronze medals to the best three ratings performers each year, starting every year from zero. Kasparov has 16 golds and 5 silvers; Karpov has 11 golds and 12 silvers. Between them they won all 15 golds and 14 of 15 silvers in the period from 1981 through 1995. The duopoly also won 27 of 30 golds between 1973 and 2002.

This raises an interesting fantasy question. What would have happened if Garry Kasparov had never become a serious chessplayer? Jeff Sonas answers:

If Anatoly Karpov had still maintained his same ability and same overall results that he did in real life, then I think it would be a foregone conclusion by now that Karpov was the most dominant chess player of all time. He would have far surpassed almost all of the accomplishments of Emanuel Lasker, except those that were artificially extended due to the infrequency of play during Lasker's time. In fact, had Karpov defeated Kasparov in their first world championship match, it would almost certainly have eclipsed Fischer's main claim to all-time fame, which was his 6-0 match scores against Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen ... I don't think it seems right to penalize Karpov for happening to be a contemporary of Kasparov. So I would actually place Karpov above both Lasker and Fischer in the all-time annals of who was most dominant.

And of course, once we stop the pretending, and acknowledge that Kasparov did in fact compete, and dominated even the mighty Karpov, then I think it's a no-brainer to answer the overriding question of these articles. If I had to hand out medals for who were the most dominant players of all time, I would give the gold medal to Garry Kasparov, and the silver medal (fittingly) to Anatoly Karpov. And then the bronze medal goes to either Emanuel Lasker or Bobby Fischer, depending on the fine print about whether the most important timeframe is their whole career or their peak year.

And there you have it.

Post Script 1: Kasparov, Karpov, Fischer, Lasker, Steinitz. Could 2005 be the year in which these names are finally superseded on the "strongest ever" list by the name of a computer chess program? Hydra's recent demolition of top-10 player Mickey Adams would certainly seem to imply so.

Post Script 2: How does Hydra work? Like most computer chess programs, it has a position evaluation function (Q=+9, R=+5, P=+1; control of centre is positive, doubled pawns are negative, and so on), and it does extensive (brute force) tree searches to calculate the "expected value" of any candidate move, averaged across all possible paths (with minimax pruning of course). This is somewhat similar to what most human GMs do, except that humans are much better at seeing which lines are important and which can be ignored (ie, their pruning is much more efficient). With one exception: Jose Raul Capablanca was once asked how many moves ahead he looked. He replied, "One move, the best one". In other words, his position evaluation function was so good that he didn't need to do a tree search to simplify the calculation. Amazing.

Would you like some Fry with that?

Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber refers to Stephen Fry as the Greatest Living Englishman, and do you know, I rather think he's right. I can think of very few luminaries who can hold a candle to Mr Fry's multifarious talents -- actor, writer, spokesman for humanism, lover of cricket and voice of the Guide. In recent weeks I've been immersing myself in Fryology (or should that be Fryana?), ever since I acquired the complete Jeeves and Wooster on DVD. Since then I've re-read The Liar and The Hippopotamus, am currently dipping through Paperweight, and plan to re-visit Blackadder soon. Honestly, how can you not worship a man capable of prose such as the following (from Paperweight)?

Lords! The very word is an anagram of 'sordl'. The Headquarters of Cricket. The acre or so of green velvet nestling in the warm folds of St Johnners Wood. The acre (itself an anagram of 'hectare') that is girlfriend, mistress, mother, casual boyfriend, sergeant major, nurse-maid, father-confessor and one-night stand all rolled into one. All rolled into one by the heavy roller of memory, on the square of reminiscence; that square that slopes slightly at one end assisting the deviating swing of recall that causes the ball of thought to cut away from the norm of reality and catch the outside edge of fantasy that is snapped up by the cupped hands of fate.

Home Sweet Home

Mortgage financing is a wonderful thing. The idea is simplicity itself: you take out a loan from a mortgage lender, and use it to buy a house. The house serves as collateral for the loan; this reduces the risk that the lender will be left high and dry if you default, and as a result, he or she (or it) can offer you a dramatically lower rate of interest on your debt.

On the other side of the transaction, the mortgage lender packages several home loans into a single mortgage-backed security or MBS, which can then be sold to an institutional investor (such as a pension fund or university endowment). This MBS offers a rate of return above that of T-bonds, since in theory it's more risky than government debt. In practice, however, the magic of diversification (across many different home-owners and prepayment tranches) means that the MBS investor is shielded from the worst effects of default risk.

So everyone's happy -- the home-owner has borrowed money at a lower rate than would otherwise be possible, the institutional investor has lent money at a higher (risk-adjusted) rate than would otherwise be possible, and the mortgage lender has made a few bucks through securitization fees. If this seems like getting something for nothing, well, that's precisely what it is: when borrowers and lenders are matched efficiently, the system as a whole reaps enormous benefits. And there's no denying that the growth of the mortgage market has been in large part responsible for the dramatic increase in home ownership rates in the US over the last 50 years or so.

Now consider the situation in India. The availability of housing finance has certainly increased in recent years, but it's still not as universal as it is in the US. As a result, the vast majority of wage-earners between the ages of 25 and 40, people with good jobs and steady incomes, who would like nothing better than to own a place of their own, are stuck renting; they have to wait till they've saved a major chunk of the price of the house before they can even consider buying. And on the other side of the ledger, lots of people in their 50s and 60s keep the lion's share of their savings in fixed deposits, in jewellery, even in cash; they would (or should) leap at the chance to earn some extra returns without taking undue risk.

This is an enormous opportunity, just waiting to be seized. Complaints about India's physical infrastructure -- poor roads, unreliable power, dodgy water -- are nothing new, but it seems to me that there are equally big gaps in her financial infrastructure. (Not to mention her legal infrastructure, under which I include clear title to land, efficient dispute resolution, better protection for consumers, less onerous regulations for small businesses, and so on. But as usual, I digress.). Financial intermediation could be the next big thing; the simple mechanism of freeing up dead capital and giving it to those who most need it could, if done right, release a huge amount of prosperity. All you entrepreneurs out there, what are you waiting for?

Further reading: Hernando de Soto's "The Mystery of Capital" is an excellent and thought-provoking study of the immense benefits of having a sound financial infrastructure, especially with respect to property ownership.

Caveat: Mortgage financing is a wonderful thing, but it can also be taken too far. Consider the current state of the housing market in the US. Low long-term interest rates have precipitated a speculative boom in real estate; the availability of cheap financing has prompted significant numbers of people to buy houses they can't really afford, in the expectation that "prices can only go up". Home equity loans and mortgage refis have also helped the US consumer spend ever-increasing sums of money in recent years. How long can it last?

A Question of Sport

A few weeks ago, there was a fairly lengthy discussion on Zoo Station comparing the merits of various sports. As usual, the Economist got there first. First, it demolishes the protests of those lobbying in favour of gridiron and basketball:

Sport is about heroes and the attempt to emulate them, and so these protests camouflage a sadness, namely that there is no point in the average-sized person even dreaming of success on a basketball court or an American football field. By contrast, most normal-sized people can spend their childhoods nursing dreams of hitting a home run or scoring a goal worthy of Pele—hence our assertion that, in this democratic age, the best sports are those where freakish size or shape are not prerequisites for success.

Athletics (including track and field, swimming, gymnastics and so on) misses out because:

... there is one item that it crucially lacks: a ball ... Surely the most complete sportsman is the one whose movements—both of limb and of eye—are the most finely co-ordinated, and surely the best test of co-ordination is the ability to hit a moving ball.

By the same token, golf and snooker, though they may be fine tests of temperament, do not quite make it, involving as they do mere stationary objects to be hit or nudged.

How about the "beautiful game", soccer?

Soccer is an obvious candidate, with the demands that it makes on ball-skills, tactics, speed and endurance. So, too, baseball, field hockey and racket sports such as tennis, squash and badminton. But none of these sports is quite right. For all that they can be played by men and women of average shape and size, they do not demand the element of physical courage which in rugby—or for that matter American football—can compensate for a lack of inches.

So does rugby meet our definition of sporting perfection? Traditionally, it has catered for all shapes and sizes—big prop forwards, small and wiry scrum-halves, tall and elegant wing three-quarters. The trouble is that the tradition is under threat, not so much from giants such as Jonah Lomu as from an evolution of the rules that has made the sport as fast and furious as its cousin, rugby league. The result is that while heights may still vary, the weight and speed of the players is converging.

What does that leave? Hmm, it's funny you should ask.

Only one sport confirms the truth of our heresy while still testing the athlete to the limits of both physique and personality. The game is cricket, played to the highest level (and into middle age) by all shapes and sizes, and from Sri Lanka and South Africa, to England and Australia—indeed, almost anywhere that was once part of Britain’s long-lost empire. The ball is hard and comes off the pitch at speeds and angles determined by the skill of the bowler and the state of the turf. When the bowler is someone like Pakistan’s Shoaib Akhtar, the ball is also coming to the batsman at almost 100mph (161kph). In other words, batsmen like Sachin Tendulkar have to react in a split second—and have to have the courage not simply to duck out of harm’s way. Moreover, they may need to defy the bowlers for a day or more with only brief respite for meals and drinks.

But Mr Akhtar is no giant, nor is England’s Darren Gough. Like the best batsmen, the best fast-bowlers are as much the product of technique as of physique. And yet it is not only fast-bowlers who win matches by swinging the ball through the air or angling it off its seam; there are also slow-bowlers, spinning the ball this way and that or deceiving the batsman with flight.

So we will choose cricket as our paramount sport. Our only regret is that when America won its war of independence, it foolishly discarded its right to play a sport of such skill and temperament. Baseball is indeed a great sport, but by comparison with cricket it is, well, simple stuff.

Hear, hear!

PS: Some of you may already have noticed the striking coincidence that Economist's criteria lead inevitably to the two sports most closely associated with an upper-class English upbringing. Fortunately, we at the Coffee Shack are not cynical enough to entertain the unworthy notion that such an outcome was in any way planned or pre-determined. Your mileage may vary.

One Man's Meat...

From the Sunday Times (UK):

Rich vegetarians in Bombay are turning sections of their city into meat-free zones — to the indignation of meat eaters barred from living there. Housing complexes and whole neighbourhoods in India’s most cosmopolitan city are going vegetarian. Even on Malabar Hill, where foreigners and Indian millionaires live in mansions, some shops owners refuse to stock meat products.

Leading the stealthy enforcement of the meat fatwa are businessmen — diamond merchants, traders, industrialists and clothing exporters. Many are from Gujarat, where vegetarianism is common, or are Jains, vegans who do not even eat root vegetables such as onions, garlic and potatoes.

My initial reaction to this news (which is not really new, anyway; this sort of thing has been going on for some time now) was somewhat ambiguous. The classically liberal part of me says that landlords should have the right to lease their properties to whomever they choose. If they prefer, for example, not to have pot smokers or bond traders living next door to them, that's their business, and I (as an external observer) do not have the right to impose my moral preferences on them. It doesn't matter that I personally consider smoking pot or trading bonds to be venial sins at worst; my preferences do not count. If a landlord considers the eating of meat to be a heinous act, then that's that.

But isn't this just discrimination in disguise? In India, eating meat is widely considered to be a predominantly lower-caste or non-Hindu practice, so banning non-vegetarians could be construed as discriminating against these groups. And while a case could be made for forbidding actions that a landlord finds objectionable, there is no excuse for banning people of a particular type. If a landlord in the US banned "niggers" or "towelheads" there'd be all sorts of outrage, and I'd join the chorus of protest.

(And yes, the said non-Hindus and lower-castes could in theory build apartment complexes where "vegetarians need not apply", but (a) that would hardly be in keeping with my inclusive / non-discriminatory ideal of India and (b) the truth is that even today, the Hindu upper castes dominate India's economy, so this sort of reverse discrimination wouldn't get very far before being defeated by the sheer power of money. This latter point leads to a fundamental critique of libertarianism -- it all too often boils down to "might (ie, money) is right" and the tyranny of the majority. It's no coincidence that many of the staunchest supporters of libertarianism tend to be those already in possession of power, money, influence; I wonder how long Ayn Rand would remain libertarian if she were reincarnated as a lower-caste villager in Rajasthan. But I digress.).

Returning to my main argument, after further reflection I think it is mere sophistry to claim that "one man's meat is another man's poison", and hence landlords should be given free rein to discriminate against anyone they want, regardless of what other people think. I really do think a line can be drawn separating minor peccadilloes from high crimes and misdemeanours. And despite Jain protestations to the contrary, I don't think non-vegetarianism is comparable to child-molestation or rape. One guideline for distinguishing the two kinds of actions that seems to work reasonably well is simple legality -- very few acts are morally reprehensible yet legal. If a tenant's actions are legal, then a landlord should not be allowed to discriminate against him or her; it's as simple as that.

Coda: The crowning irony -- from the same Times article:

The only support for meat eaters comes from the regional Hindu nationalist party, the Shiv Sena. Hostile to Indians moving from other regions, it is indignant that "Bombay wallahs" who eat meat are being excluded from buildings by the Gujarati vegetarians.

It makes sense, of course -- the Shiv Sena's core supporters are Marathas, who are decidedly non-vegetarian. Still, I love it when the fundies start beating up on each other.

A Harmless Drudge?

Today is Leonardo da Vinci's birthday. It is also the 250th anniversary of the publication of one of the most celebrated works in the English language, Dr Samuel Johnson's Dictionary. Beryl Bainbridge describes the importance of this truly remarkable book:

For more than half a century the English intellectual world had been mortified by the lack of a major English dictionary. The great national dictionaries had been produced by Italy and France, the former in 1612 and the latter completed in 1700. It seemed impossible that anyone in England could tackle the magnitude of such a task. A schoolmaster called Nathan Bailey had made a good attempt in 1721, but it dealt primarily with the origin of words. Some definitions were on the casual side, for example, "Horse - beast well-known". Johnson supplies five definitions, including "Joined to another substantive it signifies something large and coarse, as in horse-face".

In all, he defined more than 40,000 words, illustrating their meanings by the inclusion of 140,000 quotations drawn from writings in English from the middle of the Elizabethan period down to his own time.

Apart from the sheer scope of the work, what made Johnson's Dictionary such a landmark in the study of the language? Henry Hitchings answers the question:

One of [the Dictionary's] most important features was the use of illustrative quotations to buttress the definitions. Johnson saw that it was not enough to say what words meant; he had to show them in use.

To make this possible, he scoured the literature of the previous 200 years for suitable passages. In fact, this was where he began. Rather than dreaming up a colossal wordlist and then looking for examples of each word, he began with the illustrations and worked backwards from there. So, for instance, he came across a sentence of John Locke's in which Locke wrote of the "bugbear thoughts" which "once got into the tender minds of children, sink deep, so as not easily, if ever, to be got out again". Drawing on this - and on five other quotations, from four other authors - Johnson could distil the essence of the word and conclude that a "bugbear" was "a frightful object; a walking spectre, imagined to be seen; generally now used for a false terror to frighten babes".

This emphasis on finding source material and using it as evidence was, in British lexicography at least, an innovation, and it has been influential. The practice continues to this day in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Of course, no celebration of Johnson would be complete without mention of his devoted biographer, James Boswell. Here's Bainbridge again:

In any week in the broadsheets, in parliamentary debates, in discussion programmes on both radio and television, the remark "as Dr Johnson once said" frequently occurs, followed by a pithy and erudite quotation. The curious fact is that but for a young and often inebriated Scottish lawyer called James Boswell, the name of Samuel Johnson, Dictionary or not, would have been forgotten long ago; few people have read a word of the poems or essays. Boswell's biography of the "Good Doctor", whom he met in 1763, is a work of genius, so real, so modern in its immediacy, that its subject remains untouchable to this day.

Farewell to a Giant

Garry Kasparov has retired from professional chess. With his retirement, an era has passed.

Was Kasparov the greatest chess player of all time? Comparisons across the ages are bound to be subjective, since the game itself has evolved so much over the years; nonetheless, Kasparov has as good a claim as any (and better than most) to be called the best ever. Francois-Andre Philidor invented ‘modern’ chess strategy in the 1750s, and is considered the first true great of the game. A century later, the American prodigy Paul Morphy destroyed all comers both in the US and on a triumphant European tour. After Morphy, Emanuel Lasker and Jose Raoul Capablanca have both had their share of admirers – Lasker was World Champion for a record 27 years, while Capablanca had a spell of 8 years (from 1916 to 1924) in which he lost just one game. Closer to the present day, Bobby Fischer captured hearts and minds with his victory over Boris Spassky and the ‘Soviet Chess Machine’ at the height of the Cold War.

But nobody ever bought the same combination of strategic insight, tactical precision and above all psychological mastery to the chess arena as did Garry Kimovich Kasparov. His opening repertoire was vast, and few could match the depth of his positional analysis in the middle game. He was a brilliant, audacious attacker – the sharper the line, the better he played – but he could also defend tenaciously and accurately when called to do so. Above all it was his ruthlessness over the board that set him apart from his contemporaries – he had the killer instinct, the appetite for the big occasion, that won him games even before the first pawn was pushed forward. In an era where impregnable defence and the careful accumulation of minute advantages were threatening to destroy the aesthetics of the game for the viewing public (see Karpov, Kramnik, Leko; see also Kramnik’s rebuttal of this argument), Kasparov’s dynamic, aggressive and always exciting style rescued chess.

Political shenanigans and unseemly disputes about prize money have meant that Kasparov is no longer the undisputed world champion – he lost the PCA title to Vladimir Kramnik in 2000, and FIDE has been unable to organize (as yet) the long-awaited match between Kasparov and FIDE champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov that would presage any reunification bout. But there’s little doubt that he remains the strongest player in the world. After a two-year dry spell in which he didn’t play many games (“protecting his rating”, said the critics), he returned triumphantly to action with a runaway win in the 2004 Russian Championship; at times he seemed to be toying with his opponents on his way to a dominating +5 score. He followed that up with an astounding 9th win (in 14 attempts) at the Category 20 Linares tournament, which ended yesterday (no other player has won more than thrice). His ELO rating remains above 2800, higher than any other player in the history of the game. If there is such a thing as going out at the top, then Kasparov is the perfect example.

Coffee Trees Take Time to Grow – an Essay on Commodities, China, and Jim Rogers

Most people are skeptical of efforts to predict the future, and understandably so: fortune-telling has a long and for the most part disreputable history. It is a curious paradox, then, that the same rational individuals who would cavil at paying a psychic five dollars to shuffle a pack of tarot cards are more than happy to trust their life savings to various questionable investment schemes – simply because their financial analyst tells them to. And there’s never a shortage of questionable investment schemes on offer, promoted by a variety of hucksters and conmen (aka ‘Wall Street’) who range from the merely incompetent to the actively unethical. Buyer beware!

Typically, Wall Street predictions involve the extrapolation of recent events to ludicrous extremes; more than most people, the financial industry drives while looking into the rear-view mirror. Equities outperformed bonds in the last 20 years, ergo, they will always outperform bonds. Inflation has been low of late, hence it will always remain low. The Dow goes from 5,000 to 10,000, and pundits rush to predict 36,000 or even 100,000. When it is pointed out to these pundits that economics tends to follow cycles, and that equally strong previous trends have always eventually come to an end, they say "this time it will be different".

Alas, it never is. Human psychology remains the same, in every era and every market. When prices are high, producers rush to increase their production. Meanwhile, consumers strive to reduce their consumption. As supply rises and demand drops, prices invariably head lower, and the savants who predicted a never-ending bull market are left looking silly.

Unfortunately, this does not prevent a new crop of crystal-ball gazers from grabbing the headlines with their next set of zany predictions. Moreover, the mass media ensure that it is always the most outrageous predictions that hog the spotlight; nobody wants to hear that the future will by and large resemble the past.

In all this charlatanry, it’s refreshing to hear the voice of calm reason and common sense. For me, that voice belongs to a poor kid from Alabama who became one of the greatest investors of all time – Jim Rogers.

Who is Jim Rogers? George Soros once called him "the greatest analyst ever", and he should know: in 1973, Soros and Rogers formed an investment partnership that would be the 20th century’s most successful. The Quantum Fund, as their partnership was labelled, would average a return of over 30% a year for nearly 30 years, a remarkable record by any standards. Soros would continue trading into the 90s, but Rogers, having amassed a small fortune, retired in 1980, after less than 10 years at the top table. Since then, he’s been travelling the world, teaching finance at Columbia, and writing the occasional book on investing.

I state the above, not to buttress my argument with an appeal to authority, but merely to point out that – unlike the vast majority of writers on investing – Rogers has actually put his money where his mouth is; furthermore, he’s been more successful at it than almost anybody else in the world. No armchair academic or CNBC quotesmith he.

So what, precisely, is Jim Rogers’ latest thesis? In a nutshell, it is this: we are in the early stages of a multi-year bull market in commodities.

The word ‘commodity’ is a short-hand for a variety of goods, all of which share one important property – they are physical and real. Iron ore is a commodity. Gold is a commodity. Coffee and orange juice are commodities. Oil is a commodity – the most important one of all. The raw materials that go into every industry in the world are all commodities of various kinds.

By way of contrast, stocks and bonds are not commodities – they’re financial assets. Stocks represent a share of the future income of a company; bonds represent a stream of future interest rate payments. By themselves, stock and bond certificates have no intrinsic value; their value is implicit in the future obligations they represent. Commodities, however, represent real present value in themselves.

Real estate is also not considered a commodity, because it’s not fungible; an acre of land in Wyoming is very different from an acre of land in California. Iron ore, however, is pretty much the same no matter where it comes from.

How unglamorous, I hear you say. Iron and steel, nickel and aluminium, coffee and cotton – where’s the excitement in these markets? They’re old news: the inputs into a moribund manufacturing sector that will at best be a bit player in our digital future.

Ah, but it was not always thus. Twenty-five years ago, commodities were the darling of Wall Street. A combination of double-digit inflation and persistent shortages in supply (hint: ‘OPEC embargo’) fuelled a huge speculative boom in the market for real assets. Where today’s analysts wait with bated breath for the non-farm payrolls report, for company earnings numbers, and for the wisdom of Alan Greenspan, their predecessors in the 70s used to wait with equally bated breath for OPEC production quotas, for Florida crop growers’ reports, and for the utterances of Saudi oil ministers. Commodity traders became celebrities. Egged on by the media, teachers and truckdrivers alike quit their day jobs to punt on pork belly futures. In short, it was a mania.

So what happened? How and why did commodities lose their exalted position? What happened was what always happens. The investment boom turned into an investment bust. Tempted by higher prices, producers invested heavily in production infrastructure: the first oil rigs in the North Sea and in Alaska date to this period, as do the first modern ‘industrial’ farms. Meanwhile, consumers adjusted their preferences away from their old habits: gas-guzzling monstrosities from Detroit were outflanked by smaller, cheaper and above all more efficient compacts from Japan. The resultant glut in everthing from oil to orange juice caused commodity prices to fall precipitously. Speculators who had bought at the peak of the market (and there was no shortage of them) were ruined; many vowed never to buy commodities again. Meanwhile, helped by a triple delight of falling input prices, falling inflation and falling interest rates, the financial markets (ie, stocks and bonds) embarked on a spectacular 20-year bull run. The commodity markets languished in obscurity, commodity news was banished to the inside pages of the financial press, and the pork belly traders returned to teaching and driving trucks.

But the tide may be turning. Just like high prices in the 70s caused overinvestment and a glut in production, low prices in the 80s and 90s have resulted in a tremendous shortfall in supply relative to demand. The Commodity Research Bureau’s handbook for 2004 paints a sobering picture. Worldwide production of lead, for instance, has fallen every year since 2000. Global oil production (from existing fields) is forecast to hit Hubbert’s Peak before the decade is out, and no major new oil field has been discovered anywhere in the world for more than 35 years; the US has not built a new oil refinery since 1976. Hurt by low prices for agricultural products, farmers worldwide are leaving the countryside and migrating to cities in greater numbers than at any time in human history, leaving their farms fallow and unproductive. And so on.

A legitimate question at this point is, won’t market forces change the supply dynamic just like they did in the last commodities boom? Won’t high prices stimulate additional production, thus planting the seeds of their own collapse? The answer is yes, they will – but not for some time yet. The crucial point to understand here is that commodities, to a far greater extent than other asset classes, take time to bring to market. Oil fields take years if not decades to develop; OPEC cannot simply wave a magic wand and double global petroleum production instantly, no matter how high crude prices go. Similarly, a newly-planted coffee seedling has to grow for several years before it can yield the beans for your morning latté. Aluminium smelters and steel plants cannot be fabricated ovenight. So while it is true that in the long run rising commodities prices will create their own supply, in the short run there is still tremendous potential for growth in this market. In any case, commodity prices are still well below their previous bull market peak in real terms (ie, after adjusting for inflation); there’s plenty of room to grow.

Another reason to be bullish on commodities, at least for US-based investors, is the issue of valuation. Most international trade in commodities is denominated in dollars, and the greenback is a fundamentally unsound currency. The US government is running a large deficit which appears poised to grow even larger thanks to costly entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, thanks to tax cuts and fiscal indiscipline, and thanks to the ongoing ‘war on terror’. The private savings picture is not much better; America’s savings rate is close to zero. The country also runs the largest trade deficit in history.

At the moment, these multiple deficits are financed by overseas money. Asian central banks buy dollars to keep their own currencies from appreciating (in classic mercantilist practice). They then invest the proceeds in US Treasury bonds, thus plugging the US fiscal deficit and keeping long-term interest rates artificially low. Low long rates help finance private debt via the channel of home equity withdrawal, thus fuelling further American consumption. Alan Greenspan, meanwhile, supports the domestic economy by flooding the system with liquidity: despite the rapid GDP growth of the last couple of years, the real Fed Funds rate remains negative.

This equilibrium will not last. Sooner or later, overseas investors will refuse to finance America’s twin deficits. Interest rates will soar, as no one will want to buy US debt. And the dollar will plummet. Needless to say, both of these developments will be very positive for commodities: real assets tend to do very well in inflationary environments.

You’ve heard about supply, and you’ve heard about valuation. Now it’s time to turn to the 800-lb gorilla in the room: China. In recent years, the Chinese economy has grown at an astonishing clip, and much of this growth has been in the manufacturing and industrial sectors. But China is a relatively resource-poor country; it needs to import most of the raw materials that feed its relentless expansion in every sector from kitchen appliances to plastic toys to cars. It’s no surprise that, with fresh supply still to come on line, much of the recent increase in global commodity prices can be correlated almost perfectly with the growth in Chinese imports. China accounted for 37% of the increase in world oil consumption between 2000 and 2004, putting it second only to the US in total consumption of energy products. And China is already the world’s number one consumer of copper, steel, iron ore and soybeans.

Would a global economic slowdown cramp China’s demand for raw materials? Not likely. China’s domestic growth will prove a sufficiently powerful engine to drive commodities prices higher on its own. The pace of urban migration in China is such that the equivalent of a Houston or a Philadelphia has to be built every month. Can you imagine the demand for coal, steel, cement, glass and asphalt that such fantastic growth would engender? And having moved into these new supercities, the Chinese middle class (estimated to be comfortably twice the size of the entire American population) will soon demand the same creature comforts that their compatriots in Hong Kong and Taiwan already enjoy. China’s per capita consumption of coffee is estimated to be less than 20 cups annually, while the Taiwanese consume close to 100 cups a year. If the Chinese middle class were to increase their coffee-drinking to comparable levels, that alone would necessitate a 10% rise in global coffee production. And as I’ve already mentioned, coffee trees take time to grow.

Postscript: Regular readers of the financial press will know that none of this is particularly ‘new’. Popular measures such as the DowJones-AIG Commodity Index have nearly doubled since the start of 2002, and the supply squeeze – China – inflation story has been receiving a fair bit of coverage of late. I make no assertions of either originality or timeliness in this essay. Jim Rogers, however, can lay claim to both: he launched a raw materials index fund in August 1998, just a few months before the DJAIG hit a multi-year low. Since inception, his has been the best performing index (fund) in the world, bar none. Likewise, he has been writing about supply shortages, incipient dollar inflation and the rising influence of China for several years, both on his website and in his books (which, if you haven’t guessed by now, I strongly recommend).

Purity in Language

Instantaneous conversion is a rare phenomenon. This fact is not remarkable; after all, one's attitudes and beliefs are the product of a myriad different influences which make their effect felt over the course of a lifetime. No single newspaper column, magazine article or television program is likely to outweigh the cumulative impact of years of interaction with friends and family, conversations with classmates and colleagues, events experienced and ideas shared, books read and places visited.

All the more noteworthy, then, when you read an essay which suddenly and dramatically overturns a conviction which you've long held. This happened to me a few years ago. As most people who know me know by now, I'm a linguistic conservative. I value precision, and abhor sloppy usage; by the same token, I can't stand jargon, and I hate dictionaries that include 'secondary' meanings (born of misuse) on descriptivist grounds. I enjoy discovering and using the occasional neologism, but tend to resist 'cute' coinages. I dislike changes to the language that arise from a desire to be politically correct. And I believe that history and tradition are valid reasons to favour one style of writing over another.

But then I read Douglas Hofstadter's remarkable essay "A Person Paper on Purity in Language". While I still hold to many of the views expressed above, on one fairly significant point my stance has completely reversed itself; indeed, I'm willing to countenance sloppiness, awkwardness and much else, to overturn one particular (historical) aspect of the English language. The credit for this goes entirely to the essay, which, without any further preamble, I encourage all of you to read. Here.

IITB Pairs Quiz 1996 - Answers

1. At the 15th to 17th Academy Award ceremonies, the Oscar statuettes were made of plaster instead of metal. Why?

Metal shortages during World War II

2. The Boeing 747 is nicknamed the Jumbo Jet, after a famous elephant at London Zoo named Jumbo. But what does Jumbo mean?

‘Hello’ in Swahili

3. The Ryder Cup is an annual golf competition between Europe and America. What is the corresponding under-21 competition called?

The Walker Cup (bad pun alert!)

4. Whose was the Immaculate Conception?

Mary’s

5. What word is Latin for “I shall please”?

Placebo

6. “Oh Brave New World, that has such people in it”. Where is this quote, which inspired Aldous Huxley, taken from?

The Tempest

7. Where would you find a school newspaper called ‘The Blue and Gold’?

Riverdale High (as in Archie)

8. They were originally called Sotadics after their inventor, Sotades, a scurrilous Greek poet of the 3rd century BC. What?

Palindromes

9. What is peculiar about the dates 5-15 October, 1582?

They didn’t exist – they were lost in the transition from Julian to Gregorian calendars

10. “12 drops of each of the essential oils, bergamot, citron, neroli, orange and rosemary, with one dram of Malabar cardamoms and a gallon of rectified spirits, to be distilled together.” Johann Maria Farina, a German chemist, invented this recipe for… what?

Eau de Cologne (the ‘German chemist’ was the clue)

11. What is the following an example of?
It was a weakness of Voltaire’s
To forget to say his prayers
And one which, to his shame,
He never overcame.

Clerihew, after their inventor Edward Clerihew Bentley

12. What is the official motto of California state?

Eureka (“I have found it!” – meaning gold)

13. Theatre trivia: actors would hastily memorize their lines while having their faces made up. What word derives from this practice?

To mug up

14. Calliope, Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polyhymnia and Urania are collectively known as… what?

The Muses

15. Headed by the Grand Wizard, its local leaders were called Exalted Cyclops. What?

The Ku Klux Klan

16. I was the Sailing Master on Captain Cook’s last voyage, and second-in-command to Nelson at the battle of Copenhagen. I discovered the Fiji islands, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. Who am I?

Captain William Bligh

17. How do we better know Leonardo of Pisa, son of Bonaccio?

Fibonacci

18. The Arabs called it ‘fruit from India’. What do we call it?

Tamarind

19. In a courtroom, what would you call the partition separating the judge, lawyers, bailiffs etc from the general public?

The Bar – hence called to the bar, barristers etc.

20. Which director’s first movie was titled ‘THX 1138’?

George Lucas

21. How do we better know the composer Evangelos Papathanassios?

Vangelis

22. Who lives at Leslie’s House, 25 Barnes Place, Colombo, Sri Lanka?

Arthur C. Clarke

23. Domenikos Theotokopoulus was a great painter. How do we usually refer to him?

El Greco

24. William Bonney committed his first murder at age 12, and before begin killed at age 21, boasted that he had killed a man for every year of his life. How do we better know him?

Billy the Kid

25. Strange and terrifying noises heard at night in wild and mountainous places were once attributed to the god Pan. Word origin?

Panic

26. We all know Aesop’s fable about a bundle of sticks being stronger than one. So, which modern word derives from the Italian for ‘a bundle of sticks’?

Fascist

27. What, specifically, would you call the mark made by a batsman to indicate where to take guard?

The Block (that’s where he tries to block the ball; hence also block-hole)

28. Name the shield of Zeus.

Aegis

29. Lemuria, Lyonesse and Mu are all examples of something. Name the most famous such example.

Atlantis

30. Which term used in popular music derives from the fact that Detroit was the centre of the US automobile industry?

Motown

31. It is called the Suan-Pan in China; however, its English name is from the Greek for a sand-covered tablet. It was also the name of the multiplication table invented by Pythagoras. What?

Abacus

32. Which word derives from the French for “floating in the air”?

Vol-au-vent

33. How does an MP resign from the House of Commons?

He applies for a government job

34. Which word is a transliteration of the Chinese phrase k’wai-tsze, meaning “the quick ones”?

Chopsticks (think of expats asking coolies to do something “chop-chop” ie quickly)

35. W. C. T. Dobson, the head of the Birmingham School of Design, is supposed to have drawn the first one in 1844. The first commercial one was produced in 1846, and it immediately aroused controversy because it showed a family drinking wine. What are we talking about?

Christmas cards

36. What are the following? Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal and Viminal.

The seven hills of Rome

37. What is ‘the cow with the iron tail’?

The water pump (think adulteration of milk)

38. What is common to Juno, Judith, Rachel and Pallas? (Hint: it’s similarly common to Alexander, David, Caesar and Charlemagne)

Queens in a pack of cards (Alex and co. are the Kings)

39. During the American Civil War, the confederate POW camp of Andersonville had a line drawn around it. Any prisoner crossing this line was shot at sight. Word origin?

Deadline

40. This famous road runs from Ludgate Circus to the Strand. It used to be noted for its bookshops and printing presses; now it has a different connotation. Which road?

Fleet Street

41. The Chinese and the Japanese pioneered this technique; Sir Francis Galton wrote two books on it; Sir Edward Henry (commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police from 1903 to 1918) systematized its use. What?

Fingerprinting

42. In Roman mythology, every woman had a personal spirit or Juno (no relation to the Queen of the gods). What did every man have?

A Genius

43. The Saracen leader Tarik defeated King Roderick of Spain in 711, and built a castle called Gebel al Tarik on Spanish territory. What is it called now?

Gibraltar

44. The centre of an archery target is traditionally painted white (not gold). In English, this white circle is called the Bull’s Eye; what is it called in French?

Point Blanc

45. Who was the son of Igraine and Uther Pendragon?

King Arthur

46. It was established in 1479 and terminated in 1834; its first head was Torquemada. What?

The Spanish Inquisition (ha, bet you didn’t expect that!)

47. He has been conjectured to be the Duc de Beaufort; the son of Oliver Cromwell; and the illegitimate elder brother of Louis XIV. He was buried under the name M. de Marchioli. Who?

The Man in the Iron Mask

48. In 1872, Charles T. Russell founded the “International Bible Students” in Philadelphia. In 1931, the organization was renamed… what?

Jehovah’s Witnesses

49. Rommel’s Afrika Korps devised a new kind of container for fluids. What was it called by the British?

Jerrycan

50. In the Middle Ages, what would you call a roaming band of mercenary soldiers, willing to fight for money and maintenance, but providing their own weaponry?

Freelances

51. In 10-pin bowling, what would you call the central skittle which, if knocked down, knocks down all the others?

Kingpin

52. In 1913, Arthur ‘Pop’ Momand started a cartoon strip in the New York Globe, about a young and successful urban couple. Name them.

The Jones family – the strip was called Keeping Up with the Joneses, and was an early depiction of yuppiedom

53. A 12th century Mongol invasion of Japan was destroyed by a typhoon, the ‘divine wind’. What did the Japanese call it?

Kamikaze

54. Moliere and Corneille made plays about him; Byron, Dumas pere, Balzac and Shaw wrote about him; Mozart composed an opera. Who?

Don Juan (Don Giovanni)

55. Pinkerton’s was one of the earliest detective agencies. What was their trademark emblem?

An eye – hence ‘private eye’

56. One of the 7 wonders of the ancient world was a tomb. Whose?

Mausolus – hence mausoleum

57. Who traveled under the name Sigerson?

Sherlock Holmes

IITB Interhostel Main Quiz 1996 - Answers

1. In his classic movie La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini named a particularly irritating character after the sound made by a buzzing mosquito. Name the character.

Paparazzo. He was a press photographer.

2. In horse-racing history, what distinction do the following horses – Darley Arabian, Byerly Turk, Godolphin Arabian – hold?

All ‘thoroughbred’ horses descend from one of these three.

3. What is variously known as the gammadion, the fylfot and the hakenkreusz?

The swastika.

4. In legal parlance, what is the Portsmouth Defence?

When defending a charge of assault, claim that you were provoked into the act by a homosexual advance. (Portsmouth = Royal Navy port, hence).

5. A certain US surface-to-air missile is named after this Greek goddess, the daughter of Pallas and Styx. Name her.

Nike.

6. What contribution to technology was made by the German director Fritz Lang in his 1930 movie Frau im Mond?

He invented the countdown.

7. Aesculapius was a legendary physician, later deified as the God of Healing. Name his daughter.

Panacea.

8. What qualification would you have to have to join the Caterpillar Club?

Abandon a plane and survive. Parachutes are made of silk, hence caterpillar.

9. Complete this rhyme:
We don’t want to fight
But _____________
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men,
We’ve got the money too.

“By Jingo if we do”. Hence jingoism.

10. During the Spanish Civil War, 4 divisions of General Franco’s Nationalist army marched on Madrid, upon which his colleague General Emilio Mola said… what?

A fifth column of our supporters will rise within the city.

11. In 1873, a group of sports enthusiasts met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan to establish a set of rules governing intercollegiate sports, especially football. What resulted?

The Ivy League.

12. In the southern US states, politicians would hire musicians to go through the streets to raise support prior to elections. Phrase origin?

Bandwagon.

13. Which word usage is derived from the proverb “Don’t sell the skin before you’ve caught the bear”?

Bear trading (on the stock market).

14. What, apart from the obvious, is common to the words Bishop, Cardinal and Pope? (nothing to do with religion)

They’re all drinks, made by pouring various kinds of wine (red, white and tokay respectively) over ripe bitter oranges.

15. How do we better know the organization called ‘The Fists of Righteous Harmony’?

The Boxers.

16. A congressman was once asked why he had made such a long, flowery and uncalled-for speech. He replied, “I was not speaking to the House, but to my constituency”. Name his constituency.

Buncombe, North Carolina. Hence Bunkum.

17. What would you call a person appointed by the Roman Catholic Church to rigorously oppose the claims of a candidate for canonization?

Devil’s Advocate.

18. What was made in Cremona in the early 18th century by Nicolo and Andrea A___, and their apprentice Antonio S_____ ?

Violins. Amato and Stradivarius.

19. The following verses by Swinburne are an example of amphigouri.
From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn
Through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower
That flickers with fear of the flies as they float.
So, what are amphigouri?

Intentionally meaningless verses.

20. Complete this quote by Mussolini: “An ____ around which all European states animated by the will to collaboration and peace can assemble.”

Axis.

21. Old Testament Hebrew ritual: two goats are brought to the temple. One is sacrificed. The sins of the people are transferred to the other, and it’s allowed to go free. What was the second goat called?

Scapegoat (contraction of Escape).

22. Before the coming of jazz, a particular type of dance competition was very popular among southern Negroes. What was it called / what prize did the winning couple get?

The cakewalk / a cake.

23. Fill in the blanks in this, the first maxim of the Roman law of sale: “____ _____, quia ignorare non debuit quod ius alienum emit”.

Caveat Emptor.

24. What was invented by the immigrant West Indian cricketer Ellis Achong?

The Chinaman (left-arm wrist-spin that turns into a right-handed batsman).

25. According to Aristotle, the ‘sixth sense’ has nothing to do with the supernatural, but is instead an internal ability that links the other five senses together. What did Aristotle call this sixth sense?

Common sense.

26. What would you call a drink with, canonically, the following five components: spirit, spice, sugar, water and fruit nectar. ? (Hint: British Raj)

Punch (from Hindi paanch for five).

27. The answer is “Venio Romam, iterum crucifigi”. What is the question?

Domine, Quo Vadis? (trans: Lord, where goest thou? To Rome, to be crucified again)

28. It was invented by Thomas Drummond in 1826, and first used in a lighthouse; its main subsequent use was in the theatre. It was produced by burning hydrogen on the surface of a catalyst. Name the catalyst or the invention.

Calcium oxide, Limelight. (This question featured in the 2009 edition as well).

29. Between 1935 and 1945, the Dutch painter Han van Meegeren sold 14 fake paintings (mostly imitation Vermeers) for a total of over 7 million guilders (about 30 million of today’s dollars), and was never once suspected of forgery. Nonetheless he confessed to his crime in 1945. Why?

Meegeren sold one of his paintings to Goering. Treason (selling a national treasure like a Vermeer) was a much worse crime than forgery. Hence.

30. Which place name, usually taken to refer to New York, was coined by Washington Irving in his literary magazine ‘Salmagundi’?

Gotham.

31. What was first cultivated by Maria Ann Smith of Eastwood, NSW, a farmer’s wife?

Granny Smith apples.

32. In the Wild West, how was the start of a formal duel signaled by the arbitrator?

The participants would fight 'at the drop of a hat'.

33. Greek myth: The nymph Salmacis fell in love with the son of Aphrodite and Hermes, and prayed that she be united with him forever. Name the son.

Hermaphroditus.

34. The phrase “stick ‘em up” is supposedly a contraction of a longer phrase. Give the full original phrase.

Stick ‘em up high, Jack. Hence hijack. (Other theories abound).

35. In 1858, Bernadette Soubirous witnessed a supernatural event. Where?

Lourdes.

36. His sword was Calibeorn, his shield was Pridwen, his spear was Ron. Who are we talking about?

Arthur (in the original Welsh legend).

37. Victor Hartmann was a somewhat obscure artist whose paintings include The Gnome, Tuileries, The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks, Two Jews: Rich and Poor, Catacombs, The Hut on Fowl’s Legs, The Great Gate of Kiev. What did he inspire?

Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

38. The herald of the Greek army besieging Troy had a very loud voice. Name him.

Stentor, hence stentorian.

39. Where would you come across Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde?

Pac-man.

40. If you were summoned to the Court of Neptune, where your punishment was to roughly shaved and forced to swallow soap pills, what ‘crime’ would you have committed?

Crossing the equator for the first time on shipboard.

41. Sappho was a Greek poet, famous for her love lyrics, who lived in the 6th century BC. Where did she live?

Lesbos, hence lesbian.

42. What would you call a group of unicorns?

A blessing.

43. What is the best-known symptom of Tourette’s disease?

The uncontrollable urge to spout obscenities.

44. Complete: Pythian, Isthmian, Nemean, ___

Olympic (four sets of games of ancient Greece).

45. He changed his name from the original Greek form, Theophilus, to its Latin equivalent, for reasons of fashion. Posterity knows him as… who?

(Wolfgang) Amadeus (Mozart).

46. He wrote three books: The School for Adults; The Golden Mean; The Book of Maxims. Who?

Confucius.

47. Gheert Cremer’s father was a merchant. This governed Cremer’s choice of pseudonym. What did Cremer publish?

A map. Merchant in Latin is ‘Mercator’.

48. It was established in 1814 at St John’s Wood in London, by Thomas ____ of the White Conduit Club. What?

Lord’s.

49. Who or what has the blood group T- ?

Spock.

Asha Quiz 2006 - Elims Answers

1. A real-life albino who lived near the island of Mocha off the southern coast of Chile was said to have inspired this work of fiction. Which work of fiction am I talking about?.

Moby-Dick. The real-life albino was a sperm whale named Mocha Dick, notorious for its premeditated attacks on whalers in the south Pacific.

2. This gemstone got its name from the Greek for ‘not intoxicating’, due to the medieval superstition that it would protect the wearer from drunkenness. Name it.

Amethyst. The word is linguistically related to ‘methyl’.

3. Identify the martial art shown in the visual on the right.

Capoeira.

4. The largest conventional bombs used in WWII, weighing up to 12000 lbs, were commonly referred to as... what?

Blockbusters, since they were capable of taking out an entire city block. The term was later used to describe anything that's, ermm, a smash hit, so to speak. For what it's worth, a movie that flops is also called a bomb.

5. Complete the set: Reston, Marburg, _____.

Ebola. All three are strains of filovirus, which are named after the locations where they're first discovered.

6. Butch Cassidy’s first crime was committed in this Colorado town, which today is the site of a major indie film festival. The town shares its name with a rare ore of gold and silver. Name it.

Telluride. Sundance was an understandably popular (but incorrect) guess.

7. It was known as Urania in ancient Greece, and Harpaston in ancient Rome. The modern version of this sport dates from 1917; it was included in the 1936 Berlin Olympics at the specific request of Adolf Hitler. Which sport?

Handball. Also known as Fangballspiel in Germany, but that would have made it too easy :)

8. How do we better know the AM General M-998 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle?

The Humvee. Answers of Hummer were also accepted.

9. My middle name is ‘Danger’ (really!). My ostensible profession is ‘fashion photographer’. My favourite car is a 1967 Jaguar SKE. Who am I?

Austin Powers.

10. Which widely used statistical technique gets its name from the fact that its blend of randomness and repetition is very similar to that observed in gambling?

Monte Carlo Simulation, or the Monte Carlo Method.

11. Martin Luther referred to Reason as ‘the great whore’. Jonathan Swift took the Spanish phrase for ‘the whore’, and named an imaginary land after it; the inhabitants of this land are brilliant logicians, fond of mathematics and astronomy, but utterly lacking in common sense. Name this land.

Laputa. Also features in Dr. Strangelove.

12. Rapa Nui was first ‘discovered’ by a Dutchman named Jacob Roggeveen on 5 April 1722. How do we better know him/her/it?

Easter Island. The date is a clue.

13. Connect with a single word: the writer Kurt Vonnegut, the composer Franz Schubert, and the rock musician Captain Beefheart.

Trout. Vonnegut has a fictional alter ego named Kilgore Trout; one of Schubert’s more famous works was the ‘trout’ quintet; Captain Beefheart recorded an obsucre but infuential album called ‘Trout Mask Replica’.

14. This word can be literally translated as ‘the works’, since it refers to a combination of solo and choral singing, declamation and dancing. Which word?

Opera.

15. According to ancient Greek tradition, the poet _____ of Icaria not only invented Tragedy, but was the first person ever to appear on stage as an actor in a play. He lends his name to Gilbert and Sullivan's first-ever collaboration (sadly lost today), and to an English word. Name him.

Thespis, hence the word thespian.

16. Connect with a single word: the largest helicopter ever built, a unit of volume equal to roughly 100 gallons, a bumbling character from contemporary culture, a humbling character from classical culture, and a term commonly used in ‘America’s national pastime’.

Homer. The Soviet Mil Mi-12 helicopter has NATO reporting name Homer; a homer is a Hebrew measure of liquid volume, and the other three connections are obvious.

17. Four ships (the Red Dragon, the Hector, the Susan and the Ascension) under the command of Captain James Lancaster sailed from Woolwich in February 1601. What was this the beginning of?

The English East India Company. Answers of ‘the spice trade’ received partial credit

18. Though some taxonomists place them in their own division, the Mycophycophyta, they are actually symbiotic organisms consisting of algae (or cyanobacteria) and filamentous fungi. What?

Lichens.

19. The vicuña, alpaca, and guanaco are all varieties of... what?

Llama. I gave partial credit to answers of ‘wool’, though really I shouldn't have.

20. Andre 3000 and Big Boi together form... what?

OutKast. Hiphop was not, it would appear, the most popular form of music among the assembled quiz participants.

21. “It was beauty killed the beast” – whose epitaph is this?

King Kong.

22. Connect with a single word: a dye with formula C16H10N2O2, the duo of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, a newly-launched low-cost airline, the plant Isatis tinctoria, and a make of car.

Indigo. Amy Ray and Emily Saliers are the Indigo Girls; the other connections are obvious.

23. I studied grammar, rhetoric and logic (the classical trivium) at the University of Avignon, before studying medicine at the University of Montpellier. I rose to become Physician-in-Ordinary to King Henri II of France, but am now remembered for something quite unrelated to medicine. Who am I?

Nostradamus.

24. Her most famous quote was “I want to be alone”, although she herself always claimed that what she actually said was “I want to be left alone”, which has a very different connotation. Who?

Greta Garbo.

25. North America’s oldest sport is also currently its fastest growing, at all levels from youth to professional. It was invented by Native Americans as a martial yet spiritual pastime for young braves. The Jesuit missionary Jean de Brebeuf was the first European to see this sport played; subsequently it became popular with French pioneers, and then with the English and Americans. Some of the terms used in this sport are ‘box’, ‘crease’, ‘pick’ and ‘pocket’. Which sport is this?

Lacrosse.

26. (Audio) Most examples of this musical form are written as technical exercises for piano students; the audio clip you just heard is an exception, since it's appreciated in itself for its musical qualities. Identify the musical form.

Etude. One of Chopin's, as a matter of fact.

27. Mohammed Al-Fayed bought Harrod’s for £615mm. What did William Seward buy for $7mm?

Alaska. The Harrod's mention was a red herring, of course.

28. Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law created a ‘master thief’ to rival Doyle’s own creation of the master detective Sherlock Holmes. Name him (i.e., name the thief).

Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman. E. W. Hornung married Constance Doyle, Sir Arthur's sister.

29. There is a pattern that connects answers 2 through 29 above. What is it? (This question carries double credit).

The initial letters of the answers spell out MACBETH, HAMLET, OTHELLO and KING LEAR.

The top six scores (out of a maximum of 30) were 22, 17, 17, 15, 12 and 11.5.

Asha Quiz 2005 - Elims Answers

1. Irene and Jose came before her; Lee and Maria came after her. Who am I talking about?

Hurricane Katrina.

2. During the Great Depression, an unemployed architect called Alfred Mosher Butts spent several months studying the front page of the New York Times, counting letters and words. He used this data to invent something, which he called ‘Lexiko’. His invention is extremely popular today: by what name do we know it?

The game of Scrabble.

3. An Italian immigrant named Candido J____ had a family member who suffered from arthritis. He invented a device to treat this person’s symptoms; later, a nephew of Candido’s named Roy J____ took this invention and marketed it to the masses. Today, this invention can be found in millions of homes across the country. What is it?

The Jacuzzi.

4.(Visual) Simple and straightforward: identify this structure.

The Potala Palace (home of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa).

5. The first part was a tribute to a famous British military commander from the Second World War. The second part was chosen because it "sounded slippery". What am I talking about?

Monty Python.

6. If noble rot is a disease afflicting grapes and a noble gas is one that does not combine with other elements, what is the noble science?

Self-defence. (Answers of boxing or fencing are also acceptable).

7. This substance was first commercially marketed by Robert Chesebrough, who gave it a name that was a compound of the German word for water and the Greek word for oil. Chesebrough was a great believer in this substance’s healing properties; he lived to the age of 96 and claimed this was because he ate a spoonful of this stuff every day. What?

Vaseline.

8. In January 1937, a retired Cleveland motorman named Ernest Ackerman received the grand sum of 17 cents from the government. Why?

The very first Social Security payment.

9. (Visual) The Minnetaree tribe of Native Americans called this river ‘Mitsiadazi’ because of the peculiar rock formations lining its valley. What does ‘Mitsiadazi’ mean?

Yellow Stone.

10. In Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet was the goddess of war; she was usually portayed as a woman with the head of a lioness. Sekhmet was one of twins; who was her sister?

The Sphinx.

11. On a certain date late in the 19th century, a gentleman named Alexander Grantham Yorke staged an amateur play at Windsor castle. What resulted?

Queen Victoria attended the play and said, "We are not amused".

12. In 1970, a young graduate named Paul Orfalea started a company to cater to a widespread need he had observed in his college days. He chose his company’s name based on a nickname he had acquired due to his curly red hair. Today, his firm is the undisputed leader in its field. Can you name it?

Kinko's.

13. (Visual) The image to the right is the cover of a Phish album titled ‘Hook, Line and Sinker’. The album itself was never released, but the cover is interesting. Can you name the cover artist?

Kurt Vonnegut.

14. In 1970, a young lady named Norma McCorvey filed a suit against the District Attorney of Dallas County in Texas. The case went up to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments by Sarah Weddington (representing the plaintiff) and Jay Floyd (representing the defendant). The Court found 7-2 in favour of the plaintiff; the final opinion was written by Justice Harry Blackmun. Enough clues; what was this case about?

Abortion; the case was Roe vs Wade.

15. (Visual) Connect these three people. The connection is another person.

The three photos are of James Daugherty, Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller - the three husbands of Marilyn Monroe.

16. There are many elements named after countries, such as Francium (named after France) and Polonium (named after Poland). Can you give me an example of a country named after an element?

Argentina. (from Argentium, the Latin word for silver).

17. (Audio) The audio clue you just heard ["Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield - ed.] was from the very first album released by a certain recording company. This recording company took its name from the fact that its founders "were all new to business -- just like _______". Fill in the blank with the company name.

The speaker was Richard Branson, and the company was Virgin Records.

18. In 1858, a schoolgirl named Bernadette Soubirous witnessed a miraculous apparition at a certain spot in the French Pyrenees. Soon, large crowds of people were making pilgrimages to this location, in the hope of seeing the apparition. Can you name this spot?

Lourdes.

19. Connect the answers to the above four questions. The connection is a personality.

The connection is the pop star Madonna. Here's why. In the video for 'Material Girl', Madonna parodies Marilyn in 'Gentleman Prefer Blondes'. Madonna stars as Eva Peron in the movie version of 'Evita', hence Argentina. Madonna is another name for the Virgin Mary. And finally, Madonna's daughter is named Lourdes.

20. (Visual) Identify this location, which inspired the poet John Burgon to write:
Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
A rose-red city – half as old as time!

Petra of the Nabateans.

21. This landmark gets its name from the Spanish word for the gannet (a kind of seabird, similar to a pelican). Its period of prominence extended form 1934 to 1963; Al Capone was a famous visitor. In 1969, after it had fallen out of regular use, a group of Native Americans attempted to reoccupy this location as part of their heritage. Their claim was rejected, and today this spot is a tourist favorite. Identify, please.

Alcatraz.

22. The Berber general Tariq ibn-Ziyad conquered Spain in 711, laying the foundations for the Moorish empire. His armies landed at a spot that was subsequently called ‘Jebel Tariq’, which means ‘Tariq’s Mountain’. How do we know this spot today?

Gibraltar.

23. Connect the answers to the above three questions. The connection is a common English word.

The word is rock. Petra is a city hewn out of rock, and the name itself derives from the Greek word 'Petros' which means rock. Both Alcatraz and Gibraltar are referred to as 'the Rock'.

24. The French word ‘trombone’ has two meanings. One, of course, is the musical instrument. What’s the other?

Paper clip.

25. In Oxford and Cambridge, the open space between college buildings is called the ‘quad’, because it’s quadrangular. In Harvard, this space is called the ‘yard’. In Princeton, the corresponding term comes from the Latin word for field. What is this term?

Campus.