The Tenth Entry

On one of the Thursdays....Quiz master was Supriyo Saha [He started with this quote and even the idea of beginning quiz with question number 0 was his idea.]

A quiz is a conglomeration of several wise fools presided over by the wisest fool trying to convince the rest how foolishly unwise they are.

- H.E., St Supriyo, 2006 AD

0.

As the head of an advertising agency, a certain Martin Speckter believed that advertisements would look better if advertising copywriters conveyed surprised queries using a single mark. He proposed the concept of a single punctuation mark in an article in the magazine TYPEtalks in 1962. Speckter solicited possible names for the new character. Contenders included rhet, exclarotive, and exclamaquest, but he settled on X. The French equivalent is "point exclarrogatif". Graphic treatments for the new mark were also submitted in response to the article. In 1966, Richard Isbell of American Type Founders issued the Americana typeface and included X as one of the characters. X was in vogue for much of the 1960s, with the word X appearing in some dictionaries and the mark itself being featured in magazine and newspaper articles. The symbol failed to amount to much more than a fad, however and couldn’t become a standard punctuation mark. Although most fonts do not include the symbol, it has not disappeared appearing in some places.

1.
Rapid Dominance is defined by its authors, Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, as attempting "to affect the will, perception, and understanding of the adversary to fit or respond to our strategic policy ends through imposing a regime of X." Further, Rapid Dominance will "impose this overwhelming level of X against an adversary on an immediate or sufficiently timely basis to paralyze its will to carry on . . . [to] seize control of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary's perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at the tactical and strategic levels."
Introduced in a report to the United States' National Defense University in 1996, Ullman and Wade describe it as an attempt to develop a post-Cold War military doctrine for the United States. Rapid Dominance and X, they write, may become a "revolutionary change" as the United States military is reduced in size and information technology is increasingly integrated into warfare. X is most consistently used by Ullman and Wade as the effect which Rapid Dominance seeks to impose upon an adversary. It is the desired state of helplessness and lack of will. It can be induced, they write, by direct force applied to command and control centers, selective denial of information and dissemination of disinformation, overwhelming combat force, and rapidity of action.

2.
When X died, a particular newspaper of his country carried this obituary of him on a black-rimmed (and otherwise blank) editorial page:
X has been killed by his own people for whose redemption he lived. The second crucifixion in the history of the world has been enacted on a Friday- the same day Jesus was done to one thousand nine hundred and fifteen years ago. Father, forgive us."

3.
Maharana Chetak
Alexander Bucephalus
Siddhartha Kantaka
X Rosinante

4.
X’s composer was Lieutenant F J Ricketts (1881-1945), a military bandmaster who was Director of Music for the Royal Marines at Plymouth. As Service personnel were not encouraged to have professional lives in world outside, Ricketts published X and his other compositions under the pseudonym Kenneth Alford.
The story goes that there was this fiery colonel (in the 1914 war), nicknamed Y while Ricketts was stationed at Fort in Scotland. One of the composer's recreations was playing golf and it was on the local course that he sometimes encountered the eccentric colonel. One of the latter's peculiarities was that instead of shouting 'Fore' to warn of an impending drive, he preferred to whistle a descending minor third. This little musical tag lingered in the mind of the receptive Ricketts, and thus got created X.

5.
This yogic siddhi helps the sadhu to see things/events happening at another place in all 3 worlds (illustrated by Sanjay in Mahabharata). What is the name of the power brought to one by this siddhi?

6.
Music/Lyrics: Cole Porter
MIKE: Who has an itch to be filthy rich?
LIZ: Who gives a hoot? For a lot of loot?
MIKE: who longs to live. A life of perfect ease.
LIZ: And be swamped by necessary luxuries?
MIKE: __________________
......
MIKE: Who wants to wallow in champagne?
LIZ: I don't.
MIKE: Who wants a marble swimming pool too?
LIZ: I don't.
BOTH:
And I don't
'Cause all I want is you. …………….

7.
X is loosely a Sufi term for extinction. It means to annihilate the self, while remaining physically alive. Persons having entered this state are said to have no existence outside of and unity with Allah. X may be attained by constant meditation and by contemplation on the attributes of God, coupled with the denunciation of human attributes. It is a sort of mental, yet real, death. It is the final passage which leads to the summit of the Stages. It liberates man from all contingency outside of his spiritual quest; his ultimate aim is the Truth. That implies perfect control of himself: in words, deeds and thoughts. It is at this price that he attains an interior spiritual state where he becomes the pure and clear mirror in which the lights of Truth are reflected in all their splendour. Perfection is reached by the regular practice of concentration, passing through three grades of development: X-fi-Shaikh (annihilation in the astral plane), X-fi-Rasul (annihilation in the spiritual plane) and X-fi-Allah (annihilation in the abstract).After passing through these 3 grades, the highest state is attained of Baqaa-bi-Allah, annihilation in the eternal consciousness

8.
X was originally southern and Irish slang for homemade whiskey, or poitín as it is called in Ireland. An
1882 song from Ireland "The Rare Old _____ _____" (Lyrics: Edward Harrigan; Music: Dave Braham) begins thus
Let grasses grow and waters flow
In a free and easy way,
But give me enough of the rare old stuff,
That’s made near Galway Bay,
Come gougers all from Donegal, Sligo and Leitrim too,
And we’ll give them the slip and we'll take a sip,
Of the rare old ____ _____.

9.
Space Captain Lyrics (Joe Cocker and Leon Russell)
Once I was traveling across the sky
This ____ _____ caught my eye
And being curious I flew close by
And non I'm caught here
Until I die
Until we die
Learning to live together ………
Somebody misheard the above song and chose the mistaken name to name something. What?

10.
X developed Y as an independent project while working at Z, the outgrowth of a company policy whereby all employees at Z can spend 20% of their time working on personal interests. Z follows the principle where each employee can divide his time in 70:20:10. 70% on his/her core business, 20% on some stuff of their interest but related to Z’s core business of search and 10% time on absolutely anything. Originally from the Turkish city of Konya, he obtained a B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering and Information Science from Bilkent University in Ankara, and earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Research papers
Exploiting Geographical Location Information of Web Pages
Focused Web Searching with PDAs
Power Browser: Efficient Web Browsing for PDAs
Efficient Query Subscription Processing in a Multicast Environment
Research paper: Accordion Summarization for End-Game Browsing on PDAs and Cellular Phones
Efficient Web Form Entry on PDAs
Seeing the Whole in Parts: Text Summarization for Web Browsing on Handheld Devices
Power Email: Efficient Email Entry on Pen-Based Handheld Devices

11.
What is celebrated every year on March 14th, at exactly one minute before two o'clock in the afternoon?

12.
Print ad:
Kaun Hai Yeh X?
X saw you flirting with the new girl in marketing.
X knows you play Solitaire on the computer.
X put a firewall on your Yahoo messenger.
X could be standing right behind you and watching you read this.

13.
Member of Parliament (11th Lok Sabha NOMINATED)
Date of Birth : 10 May 1934
Place of Birth : Calcutta (West Bengal)
Marital Status : Married on 23 May 1959
Children : Three sons
Educational Qualifications: MA, Calcutta University
Profession: Publisher and Educationist
Permanent Address: 7/2Y, Jamir Lane, Calcutta-700019, Tel. (033) 4404126
Positions Held
1977-91 Member, West Bengal Legislative Assembly
1987-91 Member, Library Committee, West Bengal Legislative Assembly
1996 Elected to Lok Sabha (Eleventh)
Literary, Artistic and Scientific Accomplishments
Chairman (i) Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination; and (ii) Inter State Board of Anglo-Indian Education; columnist in English/language newspapers viz. "Asian Age" and "The Statesman"
Social and Cultural Activities
Member, Governing body of several leading schools; received several awards including National Literacy Employees Award for service to the youth
Special Interests
Anglo-Indian history, collecting interesting Trivia information, social work, and travelling

14.
The success of a prior operation at Durango on 31Mar 1937 compelled Col Von Ricthofen to authorise this opn. on 26apr. The mission was carried out using 3 Junker 52 squadrons and 1 Heinkel 111 squadron and was particularly successful in its objectives. This episode spurred X to create Y which he once rather poetically described as "...cries of children, cries of women, cries of birds, cries of flowers, cries of timbers and of stones, cries of bricks, cries of furniture, of beds of chains of curtains of pots and of papers, cries of odors which claw at one another cries of smoke pricking the shoulder of cries..."

15.
X was purportedly inspired by the social situation in Belfast. The creator(s) put it thus:
"X ...is like a sketch — I was just trying to sketch a location, maybe a spiritual location, maybe a romantic location. I was trying to sketch a feeling. I often feel very claustrophobic in a city, a feeling of wanting to break out of that city and a feeling of wanting to go somewhere where the values of the city and the values of our society don’t hold you down. An interesting story that someone told me once is that in Belfast, by what street someone lives on you can tell not only their religion but tell how much money they're making — literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further up the hill the more expensive the houses become. You can almost tell what the people are earning by the name of the street they live on and what side of that street they live on. That said something to me, and so I started writing about a place X..."

16.
A gravestone in Yorkshire, erected in 1247, bore the following inscription:
Here underneath dis laihl stean
las Robert ________________
neer arcir yer az hie sa geud
And pipl kauld im __________
Sick utlawz as he an iz men
Il England nivr si agen
Obit 24 kal Decembris 1247?

17.
The origin meaning of this phrase meaning to make up one’s mind to go through an unpleasant situation/experience’ dates back to the days when the wounded had to be treated without anaesthetics/painkillers. The victim would then be given an object to help him brace himself for the impending pain. What phrase?