Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Times to Share

Before i begin my latest Quiz i just wanted to share a little news with the readers .
My House , Kaveri came First at the Inter-House School Quiz Competition yesterday ( 10 th July 2007) .
It was a memorable quizzing experience with a fine array of questions asked and some truly nice rounds of quizzing .

The result:

Kaveri (89)
Ganga (69)
Krishna (63)
Godavari (55)

I shall include a few questions from the quiz in future posts.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

The Lone A

The Answer to the earlier Conection question is Max Payne , a third-person shooter computer game developed by the Finnish company Remedy Entertainment, produced by 3D Realms and published by Gathering of Developers in July, 2001 .

The links

  • The Valkyr drug is a military performance enhancer that turns its users into adrenaline-charged killers who experience hallucinatory images of death.
  • Project Valhalla is the government-funded conspiracy that developed Valkyr to enhance the combat effectiveness of US soldiers.
  • The computer network in the military base is named Yggdrasil.
  • The Aesir Corporation, mentioned frequently in the game and the primary source of the Valkyr drug.
  • The nightclub Ragna Rock is a play on the word Ragnarök.
  • DEA agent Alex Balder, Max's partner, was shot by an assassin.Alex is killed by his partner BB. In norse myth Baldur's death is set up by Loki, god of chaos and deception, just as BB deceived Alex and Max.
  • Alfred Woden's surname (the evil mastermind in the game) refers to Woden, the Anglo-Saxon version of Odin.
  • Max meets Woden and the Inner Circle in the Asgard Building.
  • Jack Lupino's (the psychotic devil worshipping villain) surname refers to the Fenris Wolf, Lupino being a reference to the Latin name for wolf, Lupus.


The game's allusion to the norse myth was not intended to downcast the legends and heros (with almost all the terms being related to the villains) ,but rather to reinstate their iconic status .
The game's and character's name itself was a pun on a common economic indicator known as the maximum pain theory, casually referred to by investors as "Max-Pain".

Friday, July 6, 2007

A lone Q

I allude this question to Mr.Kaushik Ramajayam who runs an excellent quiz blog .There have been some modifications made though and a lot more details have been included . Hope u enjoy .

So lets begin,


The Valkyries of Norse mythology were warrior-women who watched over battlefields, 'choosers of the slain' who took those who died with valor to Valhalla.



Valhalla was the afterlife of those selected by the Valkyries. From then on, they spent their days fighting and their nights feasting, every morning finding their injuries completely healed so they could spend another day fighting. Ultimately, those who populated Valhalla would fight for the Norse gods in their wars.



Yggdrasil was the tree that connected the nine worlds in Norse cosmology.

Thor

The Aesir

Aesir ,the primary pantheon of Norse gods.




Ragnarök, the Norse apocalypse,is a battle between the Aesir and the giants that results in the death of many deities and the rebirth of the world.


Balder (or Baldur) a figure in the Norse mythology was killed when a sprig or arrow of mistletoe was shot or thrown into his chest, by Loki, god of chaos and deceptionWoden is the Anglo-Saxon version of Odin , one of the chief Norse deities.

Asgard was the Norse realm in which the gods lived.


The Fenris Wolf is a large wolf bound by the gods, but it will eventually grow to large for its bonds and escape during Ragnarok.


Now the question is , apart from the Norse mythical connection what links the above list ?
I ll give you a clue : The link in question in a way owes its origin to a common economic indicator known as the "maximum pain theory".

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

The Stroke of Genius Unravelled

Answers to the previous quiz on artists.



1.Sir Joshua Reynolds

Sir Joshua Reynolds was the most important and influential of 18th century English painters, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy. George III appreciated his merits and knighted him in 1769.

2.Tintoretto or Jacopo Robusti

Tintoretto (real name Jacopo Comin) was one of the greatest painters of the Venetian school and probably the last great painter of the Italian Renaissance.For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso, and his dramatic use of perspectival space and special lighting effects make him a precursor of baroque art.


3.Fransisco Josede Goya y Lucientes ,the Spanish painter and printmaker .



The Naked Maja

Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown .Two of Goya's best known paintings are The Nude Maja (La maja desnuda) and The Clothed Maja (La maja vestida). They depict the same woman in the same pose, naked and clothed, respectively. He painted La maja vestida after outrage in Spanish society over the previous Desnuda. Without a pretense to allegorical or mythological meaning, the painting was "the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art". He refused to paint clothes on her, and instead created a new painting.


4.John Zoffany

Zoffany was a German neoclassical painter, active mainly in England.He was known for being very arrogant with his art. He had been known to have an outstanding argument with many artists, he would often draw caricatures of other artists he did not like in his art. Zoffany became especially noted for producing huge paintings with large casts of people and objets d'art, all readily recognizable.



His "The Tribuna of the Uffizi" is one such hell of a work



5. Raphael Sanzio ,the Italian master painter and architect of the Florentine school in High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings.

The inscription on his marble sarcophagus, written by Pietro Bembo, reads: "Ille hic est Raffael, timuit quo sospite vinci, rerum magna parens et moriente mori." Meaning : "Here lies Raffaello who, when alive, Nature was afraid to be won by him, when he died, she wanted to die herself".
Raphael was highly admired by his contemporaries. When compared to Michelangelo and Titian, he was sometimes considered inferior; at the same time, it was maintained that none of them shared all the qualities possessed by Raphael, "ease" in particular.

6. Maqbool Fida Husain ,the actress of course Madhuri Dixit

He actually made the film Gaja Gamini with his muse Madhuri Dixit, who was also the subject of a series of paintings which he signed Fida.

7.Amedeo Clemente Modigliani

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani as an Italian artist, practicing both painting and sculpture, who pursued his career for the most part in France. He died in Paris of tubercular meningitis— penniless and destitute—managing only one solo exhibition in his life and giving his work away in exchange for meals in restaurants. Had he lived through the 1920s when American buyers flooded Paris, his fortunes might well have changed. Since his death his reputation has soared. Nine novels, a play, a documentary and three feature films have been devoted to his life.

8. Leonardo Da Vinci

9. Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix

Eugene Delacroix was the most important of the French Romantic painters. Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement.

1 0. Hans Holbein ,the German artist and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. He is best known for his numerous portraits and his woodcut series of the Dance of Death.

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Srtokes of an Artist

I have been coming across quite a few quizes on artists and painters, so i did a little research on the subject and managed to carve out some fine questions . So here is a compilation on some of the greatest artists in history.

1. Thoams Gainsborough ,the English painter is said to have painted his famous 'The Blue Boy' to prove another painter wrong.This painter had said in a lecture that blue should not be 'massed' in a painting .Name him.

The Blue Boy -
2. Which great sixteenth century painter hung this sign on the door of his studio ' The design of Michaelangelo and the colouring of Titian ' ?

3.Which great painter, regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and as the first of the moderns and also "the Father of Modern Art",escaped arrest by running away to Italy with a band of bullfighters?He was nearly hanged in Italy but returned,and later ,became a national hero.

4. Who painted ' The Last Supper in India ' and gave it to St.John's Church ,Kolkata,in 1787 ?Christ was modelled after a greek priest ,Father Parthenio ,St John after a magisterate, and Judas Iscariot after a local auctioneer.He did a similar painting in England.

5.In the Vatican hangs this famous painting - The School of Athens.It was painted in the early sixteenth century and was commissioned by the Pope.The painting has Plato,Aristotle ,Socrates ,Euclid ,Pythagoras and Epicurus in it. Who is the painter?

The School of Athens -

6.This artist has portrayed a Bollywood actress as Europa being gored by 'McBull'- a take-off on an incident in Greek mythology .The 'McBull' is a pun on the artist's name.Name the actress and the artist.

7.Name this great painter who died in 1920 , only thirty five ,after selling very few paintings at a good price and living a riotous life in Paris .He once peeled potatoes to make a living but what are remembered are his portraits of women ,many of them nudes.All of them have oval faces and swan necks.

8.Pope Leo X banned him from the mortury in Rome after he dissected some thirty odd cadavers. Who was this greusome genius? No points for guessing.
9.When Gericault's 'Raft of the Medusa ' was first displayed ,this painter was so excited that he 'ran like a madman through the streets of Paris'.Shortly afterwards ,his first major painting - Dante's Bark - made waves.Name the painter.

Dante's Bark -
10.This famous painter was born in Germany but lived in Switzerland and later moved to England where he became King Henry VIII's court painter .His famous paintings include 'The Ambassadors' and 'The Merchants of Steelyar'.He died during the plague in 1543.Who is the painter.?
The Ambassadors -