Fill in the blank in the first picture with a variation on a famous quote related to the second picture.
It was the 1980’s. The American gaming industry was cashing it in. Arcades were everywhere and Atari ruled the roost. However it all went belly side up in 1983. This was due to a lot off reasons- Atari not crediting its designers, bad business strategy, but mainly due to badly made identical games flooding the market with no way of telling which were good. There were landfills in the New Mexico desert where unsold consoles and cartridges were dumped and paved over. Sales went down from 3 billion to 100 million in 3 years. This never risked gaming as a medium as this was uniquely an American phenomenon, but it did kill the American console gaming industry for 2 years.
Then something happened in 1985. A company hitherto unknown in the states released a system that looked like a VCR as the cartridge was loaded through the front, and came with a robot like toy and another one that looked like a gun and a game about an Italian plumber.
And the rest as they is history.
What was this system and why am I asking this question today?
The seal of the U.S. state of Virginia depicts the figure of Virtue standing over the fallen figure of Tyranny, with her foot on Tyranny’s throat and a quote underneath thus leading to one of the oldest jokes saying that it really means “Get your foot off my neck.” The quote is however attributed to Brutus, who supposedly said it after assassinating Caesar.
John Wilkes Booth also said it after assassinating Abraham Lincoln.
However Virginia did send a letter to Washington condemning his use of their motto.
Also, the guy involved in the Oklahoma bombing was arrested wearing a t-shirt with this quote.
What quote?
Excerpt from a Yes Minister script. Which famous person wrote it?
PM: Yes. It’s all very simple. I want you to abolish economists.
JH: [Mouth open] Abolish economists, Prime Minister?
PM: Yes, abolish economists ….. quickly.
SH: [Silkily] All of them, Prime Minister?
PM: Yes, all of them. They never agree on anything. They just fill the heads of politicians with all sorts of curious notions, like the more you spend, the richer you get.
JH: [Coming around to the idea] I see your point, Prime Minister. Can’t have the nation’s time wasted on curious notions, can we? No.
SH: [Sternly] Minister.
PM: Quite right, Jim. Absolute waste of time. Simply got to go.
JH: [Uncertain] Simply got to go?
PM: [Motherly] Yes Jim. Don’t worry. If it all goes wrong I shall get the blame. But if it goes right – as it will – then you’ll get the credit for redeploying a lot of underused and misapplied resources. Probably get promotion too.
SH: [Indignantly] Resources? Resources, Prime Minister? We’re talking about economists.
PM: Were, Sir Humphrey. Were.
JH: [Decisively] Yes Humphrey, were. We’re going to get rid of them.
PM: Well, its all settled then. I’ll look forward to receiving your plan for abolition soon. Tomorrow, shall we say? I’d like you to announce it before it all leaks.
JH: [Brightly] Tomorrow then, Prime Minister.
PM: Yes. Well, go and sort it out. Now, Sir Humphrey ….. what did you say your degree was?
The X are a collection of 972 texts discovered between 1946 and 1956 that consist of biblical manuscripts from what is now known as the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents. They were discovered in a series of twelve caves around the site known as Wadi Qumran near what is now the West Bank, between 1946 and 1956 by the Bedouin people and archaeologists. The texts themselves comprise of a variety of religious documents written in Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew and date from 250 BCE to 68 AD. Almost all of the Hebrew Bible is represented in the X as they include fragments from every book of the Old Testament except for the Book of Esther. One of the most intriguing manuscripts however is the Copper Scroll, a sort of ancient treasure map that lists dozens of gold and silver caches. While the other texts are written in ink on parchment or animal skins, this curious document features Hebrew and Greek letters chiseled onto metal sheets—perhaps, as some have theorized, to better withstand the passage of time.
What are we talking about here?
Found this poem randomly. A fairly workoutable question – Who wrote this poem, and what is it about? 🙂
Fake bonus points if you explain the title reference. 😛
I’ve grown a goitre by dwelling in this den–
As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy,
Or in what other land they hap to be–
Which drives the belly close beneath the chin:
My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in,
Fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly
Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery
Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin.
My loins into my paunch like levers grind:
My buttock like a crupper bears my weight;
My feet unguided wander to and fro;
In front my skin grows loose and long; behind,
By bending it becomes more taut and strait;
Crosswise I strain me like a Syrian bow:
Whence false and quaint, I know,
Must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye;
For ill can aim the gun that bends awry.
Come then, Giovanni, try
To succour my dead pictures and my fame;
Since foul I fare and painting is my shame.
X is generally regarded as the national poet of Y and also as “the thinker of Y”. He was a lecturer at the Government College, Lahore at that time, and was invited by student Lala Har Dayal to preside over a function. Instead of delivering a speech, he sang Z. It represented a yearning and attachment towards India, essentially a Hindu state. X was still in his idealistic phase and hoped for a secular society in India.
However his sojourn in Europe transformed his outlook and then he wrote another similar poem with the same rhyming scheme, but with a more Muslim centric view. Two decades later he proposed the creation of a separate nation state Y.
India however loves the poem. Prime minister Manmohan Singh and India’s first cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma have both referenced this .
Answer everything.