|
Post by HStorm on Jul 31, 2006 8:41:41 GMT
The answer to my above bracketed question appears to be, "Yes. Naselus can't beat it." He score -38. Thanatos is currently leading on +7, which I think is the first positive score we've had since the first quiz last Autumn.
Deadline for any other entries is Saturday.
|
|
|
Post by Thanatos on Aug 1, 2006 0:47:14 GMT
I'd like to be the quizmaster for the next one. Is that all right?
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Aug 1, 2006 6:36:44 GMT
Of course, be my guest. The more quizmasters we have, the less workload I have. Besides, it'll be fun for me to get to play the quiz rather than host it for once.
|
|
|
Post by Thanatos on Aug 4, 2006 13:46:10 GMT
The deadline for the first quiz hasn't passed yet, but I'm posting the questions for mine now as I'm going away tomorrow and can't rely on access to a computer.
1. Which Greek epic depicted the wooden horse trick? (There's a subtle clue in the question.)
2. Who was the first Greek philosopher?
3. Which Roman emperor made his horse Consul?
4. In what year did the Romans conquer Britain?
5. Who succeeded John as King of England?
6. Who was the first leader of the Labour Party?
7. Which general devised the British plan of attack at the Battle of the Somme?
8. What is the nearest external land to the United Kingdom excluding any which borders it by land?
9. What was the first James Bond film not based on an Ian Fleming story?
10. What is the best selling book of all time?
11. What was adopted as the Russian national anthem when the Tsar fell?
Deadline: Friday 11th
|
|
|
Post by Thanatos on Aug 4, 2006 23:15:21 GMT
ATTENTION
So far only HStorm has replied. He inadvertently drew my attention to an error in question eight, which I have now corrected, and has been given bonus points for it. If by any chance any of the rest of you have prepared that answer but not yet sent it, you may need to revise it. Don't worry, the change doesn't really give anything away.
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Aug 5, 2006 20:28:50 GMT
Okay, here are the full answers to the sci-fi quiz. ------------------------ 1. What planet was Doctor Who born on?
As I said before, this one's possibly a little unfair. It also takes a bit of explaining. The cliche answer is 'Gallifrey'. The correct answer for 1 point is 'Earth'.
The first thing that has to be understood is that the lead character in the BBC TV series of Doctor Who is not himself called 'Doctor Who'. He is just 'The Doctor'. (I know in the credits of most episodes his name was given as 'Doctor Who', but production staff and writers have all been pretty consistent about this; it's not a name, it's an ironic question to emphasise the fact that he doesn't really have a name, and that in fact we know very little about him at all.)
The only version of the character who went by the name 'Doctor Who' was the one played by Peter Cushing in the Dalek movies in the 1960's, which are not part of official continuity. In that, it is clearly established that he is not an alien at all, but the archetypal dotty English inventor.
Therefore, Doctor Who is from Earth, even though the Doctor is not.
(As I say, it's a harsh one, but then I did give plenty of warning.)
2. What is the race of beings that the Doctor was born to?
The correct answer for 1 point is 'Gallifreyans'. 'Time Lords' is the cliche; the Time Lords are, in effect, the aristocracy of Gallifrey, not a race.
3. What does TARDIS stand for?
The margin between accuracy and cliche is very narrow here. The correct answer is 'Time And Relative Dimension In Space', for 1 point. 'Dimension' has to be singular to be correct. Far more often, the term is wrongly given as 'Time And Relative Dimensions In Space', which actually makes more sense, but is nonetheless a mistranslation and therefore a cliche.
4. What phrase does Captain Kirk tend to say into his communicator when he wants to be transported back up to the USS Enterprise?
If you answered, "Beam me up, Scotty!" may you forever curl your little toes in embarrassment, and lose 10 points to remind you of it ever after. This is one of those little ironies of US culture, in that the most common catchphrase associated with Kirk is one he never actually said. He did say, "Scotty! Beam me up!" in one of the Star Trek films, but that was the closest he ever came to it. The most common phrase he used for it was probably, "Energize."
5. Who became Decepticon leader when Megatron died in 2005?
Cliche answer is 'Galvatron'. 'Starscream' is the correct answer, as he overthrew Megatron and took command before Galvatron emerged to overthrow him in turn. (Bonus points are available for pointing out that Megatron didn't really die - although he was only moments from it - and that he actually is Galvatron.)
6. What planet did Jabba the Hutt come from?
Cliche answer is 'Tatooine'; Jabba ran his crime empire from there but it wasn't where he came from. I wouldn't penalise you for saying 'Nar Shadaa' as it's close by, but it's not the correct answer. (Nar Shadaa isn't even a planet in fact, it's a moon.) The correct answer is the planet that Nar Shadaa orbits; 'Nal Hutta'.
7. What was the name of Anakin Skywalker's owner when he was a baby on Tatooine?
Cliche answer is 'Watto'. The Toydarian took up ownership of Anakin when he was around 3 years old. Until then he was the property of 'Gardulla The Hutt'.
8. What is the title given to all Sith?
The correct answer is 'Dark Lord of the Sith', given to both Masters and Apprentices. Cliche answer is 'Darth'. It was used by many of the Dark Lords, especially the later generations, but there were many prominent exceptions from thousands of years before the rise of the Galactic Empire, such as Marka Ragnos, Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma.
As far as I can tell, the "Darth..." codenames were only made compulsory after the Sith Civil War, as a way of hiding the Sith's true identities from the Jedi, part of Darth Bane's shift of philosophy from militancy to infiltration. ------------------------ Congratulations to the winner Thanatos with a score of +7. Doesn't sound like much, but it's actually the highest-ever score to this date.
|
|
|
Post by Thanatos on Aug 16, 2006 11:05:02 GMT
Still only HStorm has replied (score: minus thirteen). Hurry up!
|
|
|
Post by modeski on Aug 16, 2006 23:50:33 GMT
My answers sent now.
|
|
|
Post by Thanatos on Aug 17, 2006 20:50:32 GMT
I've also had Naselus's. Anyone else, you've got until Sunday.
|
|
|
Post by Thanatos on Aug 20, 2006 17:18:54 GMT
I prepared the mark scheme in advance (though I'm happy to say I wasted much less time and typing over it than the average chief examiner), so forgive the bits that don't apply to you:
1. The "Odyssey" briefly narrates it in retrospect, so one point for that. The lost "Little Iliad" covered it in the main narrative and earns three points. Lose ten points for the "Iliad", which ends with Troy intact, or the "Aeneid", which gives the most famous surviving account but is in Latin.
2. Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle costs you ten points. The correct answer is Thales.
3. Gaius Caligula, who will lose you ten points, didn't. That he was planning to costs you five points. He merely told the consuls in a moment of exasperation that his horse could to a better job than they.
4. 55 BC, 54 BC, 43, 51, -10 pts. Those are respectively the dates of Caesar's first and second invasions, the invasion under Claudius and the triumph of the latter campaign. The answer is "never"; what is now northern Scotland was at no stage under Roman rule.
5. Henry III...succeeded King Louis, a French prince who at the Pope's behest deposed John shortly before he died. "...", by the way, was the sound of a klaxon.
6. It's obviously Keir Hardie, so lose ten points. There was no Leader of the Labour Party until 1922, only a Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party. The first to hold the former title was Ramsay MacDonald.
7. Answering "Douglas Haig" is almost as disastrous as the plan was. It was actually General Sir Henry Rawlinson.
8. Lose ten points for answers concerning France, Belgium or Netherlands. It's the Isle of Man, which although a British Crown dependency is not part of the United Kingdom. The same is true of the Channel Islands but they're further away, so lose ten points for them or any individual among them. Lose ten points for the Isle of Wight, which is part of England. Lose twenty points for Sealand, which is codswallop [note: no one did].
9. "Licence to Kill" triggers the klaxon. "The Spy Who Loved Me", though it takes its title from a Fleming novel, is a completely original story (Fleming didn't like the novel and only granted the rights to the title).
10. The "Bible" has been sold in innumerable editions, many of which are different enough to be different books (if people have fought wars over it that's good enough for me) and is therefore greeted by a klaxon, as does the "Guinness Book of Records", which (quite apart from application of the editions argument) has sold only about a tenth of the number of "Quotations From Chairman Mao Zedong". "The Little Red Book" is a mere nickname and therefore wrong but will not cost you points.
11. It wasn't "Hymn of the Soviet Union" until 1944, so lose ten points. The "Internationale" also sounds the klaxon, as before that it was the "La Marseillaise".
The scores are: in first place HStorm, with minus thirteen; in second place Modeski, with minus twenty-nine; and in third place Naselus, with minus thirty-eight.
A Covent Garden ticket to our winner, an Easyjet ticket to our losers.
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Oct 19, 2006 15:28:20 GMT
Hey, Thanatos, that ticket only got people as far as Grimsby bus station! It's my solemn, heavy duty to report that the disappointment people felt at not staying aboard an Easyjet beyond the east coast was completely nonexistent.
Anyway, high time we had another QI session methinks. History be the subject, rules be the usual ones...
1. What was the name of the man widely held to be King Arthur's courtly wizard?
2. Why was Merlin the magician's name muck?
3. Name the military base that controlled the settled border between the Roman Empire and northern Britain.
4. What is the collective racial name for the peoples of Scotland, Ireland and Wales?
5. What was the first battle of the Scottish War Of Independence against Edward I of England?
6. What class of English society did the Peasants' Revolt emerge from?
7. What was the birthname of the founder of the Royal House of Tudor?
8. Who was the 16th Century King who reformed the Church of England away from Roman Catholic practises?
9. How many wives did Henry VIII have?
10. What illness did Edward VI die of?
11. Who was effectively England's first Prime Minister?
12. Which Parliamentary troops were the decisive force at the Battle Of Marston Moor in 1644?
13. Who was the King of Scotland overthrown in the Glorious Revolution?
14. When was the first Jacobite uprising?
Please IM your answers to me by Sunday 29th of October.
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Oct 24, 2006 7:56:08 GMT
Naselus has provided the first entry, and has achieved a whopping -33 points. Can anyone fail to beat that?
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Oct 27, 2006 17:33:54 GMT
Thanatos has taken the lead, with a mighty -17 points.
Game closes on Sunday. Any other takers?
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Oct 29, 2006 21:24:44 GMT
Okay, game over. Here are the answers...
1. The correct answer is Leilocen. One cliche answer is of course 'Merlin', which is essentially a made-up name (see question 2), but the other cliche is, "He didn't exist" or equivalent. Leilocen was a genuine historical figure, a madman from near the forest of Caledon in the sixth century, and his ravings are what the Phrophecies of Merlin ('Prophetiae Merlini') are based on.
2. Any suggestion to do with a soiled reputation is a cliche here. The rather amusing reason was that his Welsh name literally translated as muck. To explain; in the Welsh legends of King Arthur, Merlin's name was Myrddin (approximately pronounced "Moo-er-finn"). When the scribe, Geoffrey of Monmouth, translated the legends into Latin so that a wider audience could understand it, he naturally decided to Latinise the names. The problem was, Myrddin latinised would be Merdinus, which, to put it politely, was Latin for 'excrement'. ('Merdinus' is where the French expletive 'Merde!' is derived from.) This is why Geoffrey modified the name to Merlinus, or Merlin as it evolved to in English.
3. The cliche is 'Hadrian's Wall'. That was the original frontier base, but eventually the border was pushed further north, and for a long while the Antonine Wall was the front line. (Parts of the wall can still be seen today in Bearsden near Glasgow.)
4. Cliche answer is 'Celts'. In truth, there isn't a collective racial name for the three 'smaller' races of the British Isles. The longstanding idea that they are Celtic is one of those Victorian myths, alas. The Celts could once be found dominant in every corner of Europe except Britain, and the resemblance the Iron Age culture of the British Isles had towards Celticism was largely a result of mimickry and movement of ideas, rather than mass migration of people from the continent.
5. This one may get a reaction, particularly from Modeski.
The cliche answer, which almost every Scotsman ever born would give out on outraged reflex, is 'The Massacre at Berwick', where Edward I's army brutally slaughtered the natives and overran the town. What Scottish historians are awfully reluctant to acknowledge, however, is that the conflict began weeks earlier, and - surprising though it may be - it was actually the Scots who started it.
One of the great ironies of the war was that the Bruces, the future great heroes who would win Scotland its freedom, were at the outset pretty much English sympathisers. In 1295, the Bruces were in conflict with the Comyn/Balliol faction that held the throne over their decision to form an alliance with France, and in fact had to flee into refuge in England when their lives were endangered. In pursuit, John Comyn led an army of about five thousand over the border and laid siege first to Wark Castle and then to Carlisle, where the Bruces were in hiding. The siege of Carlisle lasted for several weeks until Edward's army arrived to lift it. Having laid waste to every bit of the city that was outside the walls, Comyn and his forces bravely chose to scarper in a hurry. It was only from there that Edward chose to attack Berwick.
(You may be wondering, by the way, why, when he had a substantial army of his own in the vicinity, Comyn didn't use it to defend Berwick from Edward's marauders. The reason - another moral black mark that Scottish historians are remarkably good at not being aware of - was he was too busy leading his army on a simultaneous and equally violent burn-rape-pillage-and-plunder spree through Northumberland. Places like Hexham and Lanercost suffered just as hideously as Berwick, and for longer.)
6. Cliche answer is 'peasantry', 'serfs', or equivalent. The Peasants' Revolt is another of those bizarre misnomers of history, as Wat Tyler and most of his improvised army were largely drawn from the Yeomanry. The reason they rebelled was because of new tax laws introduced by John of Gaunt, which, if enforced, would have made them so destitute that they would have become peasants.
7. The correct answer is Henry Ap Maradudd Ap Tydir. 'Henry Tudor' is a cliche, as that was a mispronounced Anglicism of his Welsh family name. 'Henry VII' is also a cliche, as he wasn't born King, and indeed it wasn't until shortly before he overthrew Richard III that it even looked possible that he ever would succeed to the throne. The name Tudor only became official after Henry became King. Henry Tudor would therefore have been his son, Henry VIII.
8. The answer is not Henry VIII, and shame on anyone who suggested it was. It is true that Henry revoked the authority of Rome over the English church, and that he made himself Supreme Head. But he did not reform the church to any significant degree at all. The correct answer is his son, the boy King, Edward VI. A fanatical and pompous young Protestant, he tore Catholicism to pieces during his brief reign and replaced it with the far more Bible-based practises of Martin Luther's philosophy.
9. The correct answer is five, not six. Henry's 'fourth marriage', to Anne of Cleeves, was never consummated; he simply found Anne so repulsive that he refused to have sex with her. By the Law of the land as it stood in the 16th Century, marriage was only achieved once man and wife had had sex (after the wedding of course). Therefore, Henry and Anne were never married, therefore Henry only had five wives.
(By the way, the assertion of the TV series of QI, that the answer is four, is incorrect. It was only by Papal law that Henry was not divorced from Katherine of Aragon, and by the time that the divorce went through, Papal law in England was officially void. Therefore Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn was legal, if tenuous.)
10. Edward died of a pulmonary abcess. He did not contract tuberculosis, which is the cliche.
11. (We haven't had this one in a previous quiz, in case you're wondering, although there was one that was very similar.) Cliche answer is 'Robert Walpole' again. He was effectively Britain's first Prime Minister, but England on its own had one of a sort during the English Civil Wars. With the King running a rival court and mock-Parliament in Oxford, the House Of Commons needed some kind of chairman. The figurehead for all Parliamentary activity in the build-up to War breaking out remained the leader figure during the first couple of years of the conflict as well. He was the arch-Puritan and political-genius-without-peer, John Pym. (His death from bowel cancer in 1644 can be seen as one of the reasons the Interregnum Goverments of the next fifteen years were to fail, as without his visionary guidance, Parliamentary and Army leaders were always at a loss as to how to run the country).
As an alternative, I might accept that Simon de Montfort is a possible answer, although his leadership during the Provisions of Oxford was not really Parliamentary, and therefore not really Prime Ministerial.
12. One cliche answer is 'New Model Army', as that didn't exist yet. The other cliche is 'Ironsides', the troop of cavalry led by Oliver Cromwell during the battle. Although they undoubtedly played a large role in the victory, the Ironsides were less crucial to the outcome than the central regiment of the Scottish Covenanter forces, led by David Leslie. At a key early stage in the battle, most of the Parliamentary regiments - both English and Scottish - were on the brink of folding and collapsing under a Royalist cavalry charge. Leslie's regiment held their ground though, soaking up the Royalist cavalry charge, and staving off the advance of the Royalist foot, stemming the tide of the whole battle and buying the Ironsides the extra time they needed to spearhead the counterattack.
13. If you said 'James II', oh dear, how could you fall for that old trick? The question specifies King of Scotland, and although he was James II of England and Great Britain, north of the border he was James VII.
14. The cliche answer is 1715. It's often referred to as the First Jacobite Uprising, because it was the first since Jacobitism had been so named, as well as the first Jacobite rising against the House of Hanover. However, the first recognisably Jacobite insurrection of all happened as far back as 1689 against William II of Scotland (III of England) of the Protestant wing of the House of Stuart. This army of rebels from the Scottish Highlands successfully destroyed a Williamite Garrison at the Battle of Killicrankie, before being frightened into submission by the brutal Glencoe Massacre of January 1690.
Thanatos has offered a good alternative answer to this one, however, which I've accepted. He suggests the Battle Of The Boyne a year earlier in Ireland, where Irish Jacobin supporters fought against the troops of King William. This happened in 1688, and while it's debatable whether they were truly Jacobites, it's really just a question of nametags. (Point of curiosity; the King at this time was William I of Ireland, William II of Scotland, William III of England, and William IV of Holland.)
So Thanatos wins; a night in bed with Gillian Anderson for him, and a night on the town with Jim Hacker for our losers.
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Nov 10, 2007 20:53:54 GMT
You knew it was coming! Yes, the latest stage in the, so far somewhat-ineffective, attempt to revive the Critique... after just over a year, Q.I. returns!!! If you want to play, usual rules apply.
1. What was the name of King Arthur's sword?
2. Why did King Canute sit on the beach and tell the tide not to come in?
3. Who invented the lightbulb?
4. What is the national sport of India?
5. In which religion is it a practise to inflict harm on people by sticking needles into a doll of their likeness?
6. When did Father Christmas die?
7. What was Mozart's middle name?
8. Which deity was born on December 25th?
9. What is the national language of Jamaica?
10. What fraction is to be found precisely halfway between one half and one quarter?
Please IM your answers to me by November 25th (don't put your answers in the thread itself, please).
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Nov 12, 2007 10:52:54 GMT
First entry is from Thanatos, who scores a respectable minus 2. Any more takers?
|
|
|
Post by modeski on Nov 13, 2007 7:13:48 GMT
PM sent. In the interest of fairness, I didn't google at all; which is probably why I'll be the Alan Davies of this round
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Nov 13, 2007 10:59:28 GMT
Ladies, gentlemen and others, your attention please.
With an unprecedented eight cliche answers, including seven in a row, just one correct answer, and zero Quite Interesting supplementary details, Modeski has achieved a spectacular new all-time low of minus 70!
Congratulations to you Modeski, you have beyond doubt succeeded in your aim of being the Alan Davies of this round! Take a bow!!!
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Nov 14, 2007 7:45:53 GMT
Thanatos has highlighted an error in the answer to question 9, which means his and Modeski's answers are correct. Their scores are revised as follows; -
Thanatos now has precisely zero, the first time we've ever had a score that would be exactly the same if he'd simply not played the quiz, and Modeski's is now minus 68, which means it's now merely the joint-all-time-low. This treasured position Modeski shares with... er, Modeski in the first round.
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Nov 23, 2007 20:37:38 GMT
Ruzl has joined in and achieved a fantastic +6 points - the second highest score ever on this forum, and a complete vindication of his clever strategy of deliberately giving ridiculous, irrelevant answers when he isn't at all sure what the cliche answer is!
|
|
|
Post by modeski on Nov 24, 2007 0:14:13 GMT
Congratulations to you Modeski, you have beyond doubt succeeded in your aim of being the Alan Davies of this round! Take a bow!!! *Takes a bow* Thank you, thank you. It is indeed a great honour, and I'm pleased my five minutes of glib, drunken answers resulted the way it did. I would point out that when I answered Jesus to who was born on Dec 25th, I knew that this was mere myth and legend, however I could not be arsed writing anything else. Regardless, I would still be in this exalted position had I put more effort in, so I remain a happy imbecile.
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Nov 30, 2007 19:24:51 GMT
Sorry for the delay in offering up the answers, the contest is over. Here be the ultimate truth... 1. The cliche is 'Excalibur'. No source in the Welsh legends or in Geoffrey of Monmouth's works mentions any such name, which is assumed to have been coined in late medieval times by Sir Thomas Malory (although this is not certain). The correct name is Caliburn (or Caliburnus), roughly translating as 'steel'. 'Excalibur', by contrast, very loosely translates as 'steel-cutter', and it's not even certain that this is the origin of the name; some scholars have theorised that it is in fact a mangling of the latin phrase Ex calce liberatus, which translates as 'liberated from stone'. In the earliest Welsh legends, incidentally, the sword was named as Caledfwlch - very approximately pronounced 'Kall-edd-foo-sh' - which I would also accept. 2. There are two cliches here. The first is merely to suggest that he didn't, as there is little doubt that the bizarre gesture was performed. The second is to suggest what we are usually taught in Primary School... "He wanted to prove his power was so great that he could even command the elements." (This famous myth probably says more about our modern disdain for the monarchy than it does about monarchs themselves.) The correct answer is in fact the opposite of the cliche. He wanted to demonstrate that he couldn't control the tide, to prove to his awe-struck subjects that although he was a King, he was still just a man.3. Three cliches this time, aren't I extravagant? First is the most obvious one, which is 'Thomas Edison', which is not even close. The bulb was invented decades before Edison designed one, he was simply the first one to patent it. The other two are 'Joseph Swan' and 'Heinrich Gobel'; interestingly, Gobel was credited as the inventor in the TV series... wrongly!!! *Diabolical laugh.* Take that, Stephen Fry! The correct answer is Warren de la Rue. Even though electric lights were developed nearly twenty years beforehand, de la Rue developed the first bulbed filament in the 1840's, by sealing a platinum coil inside a vacuum tube. It was the most efficient design for an electric light to that point, but the cost of the platinum made it commercially unviable. However, it paved the way for more economic designs in later years. 4. Another three cliches available here. First is 'Kabbadi', which may have been invented in India, but is played by only a small number of people. Another cliche is 'Polo', which is little-known in India, despite the fondness British Imperial officials had for playing it there. Third is probably the most obvious one, which is 'Cricket'. By far the most popular sport in India - indeed far more so there than back in the country that invented it - it is still not the national sport. The correct answer is Field Hockey, a sport in which both India and old rivals Pakistan are among the world's elite, and have been for a very long time. 5. Cliche is of course 'Voodoo', which has nothing whatsoever to do with curses. It is purely a form of healing magic. Curses using needles-in-dolls is in fact a form of European witchcraft that evolved from an obscure branch of Christianity. 6. Cliche is 'He isn't dead' or any variation on that theme. The key thing to remember is that we are not necessarily talking about dear old Saint Nick, because it's always possible for more than one person to have the same name, even if one of those people happens to be mythological. Father Christmas was in fact the name of a sixteenth century clergyman in Dedham, Essex. He actually died in 1564. 7. 'Amadeus' was categorically not his middle name. In fact, it wasn't even part of his name, but a kind of nickname he bestowed upon himself. His real full name was Johanne Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. Wolfgang was therefore not his forename, but his middle name, and the real correct answer. 8. Given all the chaos we went through over this on the Beliefs threads a couple of years back, I was sorely-tempted to give a triple-strength cliche penalty to anyone who gave the obvious answer, but in the end I resisted. Cliche is - of bloody course - 'Jesus Christ'. The date chosen for Christmas was meant purely to 'blot out' the older Pagan festivals. Jesus' real birthdate is unknown. (Islamic tradition maintains that Jesus was born in the summer, making December 25th a phenomenally-remote possibility, and Jehovah's Witnesses believe he was born on October 1st.) Insofar as there is a correct answer at all - keeping in mind that technically none were born on December 25th as we are discussing nonexistent beings - it would be the Roman sun God, Mithras (or Sol). The following details make amusing reading, but I recommend Ooohcarrots and Liquidus have a shot of brandy before they ever dare to read them; - According to the legend, which pre-dates the birth of Christianity by over two hundred years, Mithras was a divine saviour sent to Earth to live as a mortal, who died for human sins and was then reborn the following Sunday into immortal life. He was born of a virgin on the 25th December in a manger, attended by shepherds. He had twelve disciples, with whom he shared his last meal before dying, where they symbolically consumed his flesh and blood. Being a Sun God, he was traditionally worshiped on Sundays, and was usually depicted with a halo round his head. Worshipers traditionally gave each other gifts on 25th December, and the headquarters of the religion was the Vatican. But we can be sure it's all just a coincidence, right Liquidus? 9. This is the one I've been convinced to reverse. The cliche answer I originally chose as English but in fact Thanatos has shown me proof that it genuinely is the official language of Jamaica. The answer I originally selected was 'Patois'. (But as that's a dialect of English in any event, the whole question is probably a bit moot.) 10. The cliche answer is 'one-third'. It's easy to jump to this conclusion by following the logic that, as three is halfway between two and four, a third must be halfway between a half and a quarter. But you see, it isn't. When assessing fractional proportions, you always need to focus on the numerator, not the denominator. One half is equivalent to four-eighths, and one quarter to two-eighths. Halfway between them is three-eighths. And as one-third is three- ninths, it cannot be halfway between. So there you have it. A stunning victory for Naselus with 6 points. He wins a two-hundred-year supply of lavatory descaler, which has a handy secondary function for topping up lines of crack when stocks are running thin.
|
|
|
Post by The Tommunist on Dec 1, 2007 0:40:09 GMT
Ah yes, another wonderful game of poke-the-Christian . It actually surprises me that you're still bringing it up, even though... well, I can't remember the last time I posted here ;D. Yes indeed, one can find similarities between old pagan religions and the early Christian church, in fact I'll bet you that there were plenty of groups or other religions appearing with similar theology as Christianity. But hey, who am I kidding? I'm not here to try and convert you HStorm, we all know how badly that went back in the day - to be quite honest with you I was being an over-zealotish prick, something I've probably said on here many times, and have apologised for. I was relatively young and immature at the time and to be quite honest, I didn't know my own doctrine. I've grown up since then, and I've got better things to do than spend my time getting my faith unfairly and effectively picked apart and ridiculed. Good luck with the forum guys, it still seems pretty good, even though there's only three of you.
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Dec 1, 2007 17:34:14 GMT
Well, no one's picking your faith apart or ridiculing it, and as has been pointed out to you many times in the past, there's nothing 'unfair' about stating solid facts that just happen to be at odds with your worldview.
It is indeed true that there were many early faiths whose myths had a close resemblance to the Christmas story. That's kind of the point I was making. The key thing is, they all pre-date the start of Anno Domini by a long time.
Refreshing that you're not kicking up a stink this time though. And by the way, there are presently four of us - me, Modeski, Naselus and Thanatos - not three.
|
|
|
Post by HStorm on Apr 8, 2008 14:47:32 GMT
Well, the forum is now abandoned once more, but I thought it would be a shame just to go out without one last game. So here we have one final - well, probably final - round of QI. Normal rules apply.
1. Why did Japan offer unconditional surrender to the Allies in 1945?
2. Who was at the head of the Protestant army from the British mainland that massacred three thousand natives when storming an Irish town in the 1640's?
3. Who was formally crowned King of England in 1272?
4. With which battle did the Wars of the Roses come to an end?
5. Why did Edward I choose John Balliol to be King of Scotland in 1292?
6. How long was Charles II's reign as King of Great Britain?
7. How many female rulers of England were there between the Norman Conquest and the succession of the House of Stuart?
8. Why was Edward VIII forced to abdicate over his marriage to Wallis Simpson?
9. What is the Duke of Edinburgh's surname?
10. Which premier of the Soviet Union was responsible for the Red Terror?
Competition closes on 1st May.
|
|