Question 1

1. Question 1 “__(1)___ was like a clown figure, benign but wicked, maybe a killer old uncle. He could be funny and make you laugh. ___(2)__'s gone in a completely different direction to __(1)___, he's like a really scary psychopath. He's a lovely guy and his __(3)___ is going to be a hell of a revelation.”

2. Question 2 Robert Rubin was chairman of the National Economic Council under Clinton, Stephen Friedman became chairman of the NEC under George W Bush and Jon Corzine became a US Senator. There is a fourth person in this sequence. Who?

3. Quiz 3 The original, dating back to 1952, is owned by Steven Spielberg, who has no intentions of selling it. Market buzz places the value of this item at $100,000 or higher. It is done largely in blue and has three people cowering up against a wall while a shadow lengthens in their direction. It also contains the immortal lines "That thing, that slithering blob coming towards us... What is it...It's Melvin". What is it?

4. Quiz 4   Which Indian novelist made his film debut as a retired clerk whose dreams of a house are put paid to by a property-developer (played by Amjad Khan) and his slick lawyer (played by Naseeruddin Shah) in the film Mohan Joshi Haazir Ho?

5. Quiz 5 After marrying Ethel Wayman in New York during the year 1914, he found that the only source of income he could count on was the newly-founded Vanity Fair magazine. He wrote for them under his own name as well as under assumed names such as P. Brooke Haven, Melrose Grainger, J. Plum, J. Walker-Williams and C. P. West in order to sustain the household. Who?

6. Her diplomat father went missing during World War II. She traveled to India with her mother Marlene Richardson and eventually made her breakthrough with a number titled ‘Mr. John ya Baba Khan, Lala Roshandaan’ in the film Baarish. Identify this performer. Quiz 6

7. Quiz 7 John was a 16th century French Protestant theologian and Tomas was 17th century English political philosopher known for his book Leviathan. How are their names more popular to us today?

8. Question 8 This popular series was banned in Singapore as it was felt that it promoted wrong or distorted use of English. On the other hand, Crystal City, Texas erected a statue of this character for boosting the commercial sales of their prime vegetable crop. Which series and which vegetable am I talking about?

9. While studying at Somerville College, University of Oxford, England, during the late 1930s, she became a member of the radical pro-independence London based India League. Returning to India in 1941, she became involved in the Indian Independence movement. In September 1942 she was arrested by the British authorities and detained without a charge. In 1964, she was appointed as a member of the Rajya Sabha by the President of India and became a member of Lal Bahadur Shastri's cabinet as Minister of Information and Broadcasting. Question 9

10. While travelling to Rhodes in 75 BC for philosophical and oratorical studies, he was kidnapped by Cilician pirates in the Mediterranean Sea. When they demanded a ransom of twenty talents, he laughed at them and told them to ask for fifty. They accepted, and he sent his followers to various cities to collect the ransom money. As soon as he was ransomed and released after 38 days, he organized a naval force, captured the pirates and crucified them. Who? Question 10

11. In April 1947, this author wrote to a friend saying “I am writing a short novel, and its going to be called ‘Kingdom by the Sea’.” What was this book eventually titled? Question 11

12. According to Greek myth, she was the first human female. She was given beauty by Aphrodite and music by Apollo. Some versions say that she was created in order to punish man for accepting the gift of fire from Promotheus. Who is she? Question 12

13. Robert Luis Stevenson felt that this fictional character closely resembled the Scottish physician Joseph Bell. He wrote to the creator of this fictional character and said … “my compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of ______ _____... can this be my old friend Joe Bell?" (the blanks contain the name of the fictional character). Who is the fictional character and who is the author Robert Luis Stevenson is writing to? Question 13

14. Her original name is Brook Busey. She took her current pen name while listening to a song by the band Arcadia as she was passing through a particular town in Wyoming. During the filming of a particular film she wrote the script for, she wrote another screenplay about a teenage cannibal called “Jennifer’s Body”. Who is she? Question 14

15. Baltasar Garzon issued an international arrest warrant for this political personality in 1998, whereby he was arrested in UK. Some of the charges included 94 counts of torture against Spanish citizen and the 1975 assassination of Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria. Margaret Thatcher and George H.W. Bush made statements wherein they opposed any decision to extradite him to Spain. He was subsequently released in 2000 and then went back to his home country. Who? Question 15

16. This coffeehouse on Tower Street in London shifted to Lombard Street in 1691. The owner of the coffeehouse is immortalized in the world of business somehow. Who is he or how was he immortalized? Question 16

17. This fictional character was referenced in a speech by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in the context of the current financial crisis. The line in his speech read: “It is perhaps time now to admit that we did not learn the full lessons of the greed-is-good ideology. And today we are still cleaning up the mess of the 21st-century children of _____ _____.” Who is this fictional character?

18. This city was established by a Dutch trading company, led by Adrian Block, and originally named Nieuw Amsterdam. The island the city is now located on was purchased from the Lenape Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders. Which city? Question 18

19. At a rare press conference in 2002 called by this important political figure, in which he was introduced as the “President and Prime Minister of _____ ______”, he was repeatedly asked questions about a specific event. He and his aide requested the press “not to dig into an incident that happened 10 years ago." He only called it a “tragic incident”, or, in Tamil, "Thunbiyal Chambavam". Who is he and what event are we talking about? Question 19

20. 6. This famous phrase comes from this poem from Robert Burns in 1786. The missing line below is the phrase. Identify the phrase. This poem also inspired a novel by a famous American author. “But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane In proving foresight may be vain: __________________________ Gang aft a-gley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promised joy.” Question 20

21. Who is the first south asian to win the prestigious jonathan mann award for community health and human rights? Question 21

22. Which term first used by Ernest Hemingway was used for the american writers in exile in paris post world war 1? Question 22

23. Which book often referred to as the Midnights children of Pakistan, with characters based on Mughals to explore the post nuclear era of Pakistan? Question 23

24. It is because I am XXXX, that is, I believe in beatitude and that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son to it... Who knows, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty? Question 24

25. Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity There are many natural scientists, and especially physicists, who continue to reject the notion that the disciplines concerned with social and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute, except perhaps peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive to the idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised or rebuilt in the light of such criticism. Rather, they cling to the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in ``eternal'' physical laws; and that human beings can obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to the ``objective'' procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method. Question 25