THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
70 Falmouth Street Portland, Maine 04103
43.6667° N 70.2667° W
Altitude: 10 feet below sea level
Founded January 1970
2021-2022: LXXXVI
"Books are beautiful, but please destroy 'The Elements of Style.' Burn it to ashes, stomp it down into the mantle, shred it into an aerosol, anoint it with rancid oils and sacrifice it to the deity for whom you have the least regard. Stack copies into high piles on retreating ice floes; inter them in un-consecrated ground and let them become the devil's headache. Of all the insulting books ever foisted onto any community, 'The Elements of Style' is the worst. It is the hymnal of death worship. The murder of creativity and the constriction of growth. A book that seeks to craft a barren wasteland out of one of the world's richest languages. Thin gruel in place of fragrant wines; cheerless conformity instead of prodigious invention.
"Apollo bestowed language onto mortals so that we could know the sacred truth once understood only on Olympus: that the rapture of words is the finest of all harmonies. We have words so all people can express their innermost poetry; expound on their profoundest philosophies; convey their most inspired ideas. Language should be as free and flowing as a vast network of riverlets meandering off in all directions. With an excess of a million words and the capability of incorporating words from all the globe's myriad languages, English is, like Olympus itself, boundless. Be extravagant with it; embellish richly, embroider unnecessarily; and lavish it fully. Your language is your world; your realm of volcanoes and pomegranates. It is far too rich and expansive; far too broad and exquisite to be folded neatly or cut into slices or rendered bereft of passion and beauty."
THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Friday, March 4, 2022
Quiz # 20: Brain of Portland V
Greetings!
Yes, it is that time of the month again: the first Friday and therefore it's time for another "Brain of Portland" quiz!
These quizzes include a wide array of topics: from mathematics to mythology; astronomy to zoology and anything above, below and in-between.
This month, we've decided to make it a bit trickier by not including choices.
After all, "Brain of Portland" is based on the "Brain of Britain" quiz on BBC 4 which, itself, doesn't offer answer choices.
Maybe we'll revert back to the previous format in April's "Brain of Portland" quiz. For now, enjoy!
1. Who was/is Britain longest serving monarch?
2. Mercury is one of two chemical elements with names ending in "y." Which is the other element with that ending?
3. Which is the largest landlocked country in the world?
4. Which planet is surrounded by the Van Allen belt?
5. Which Dickens novel features the characters Miss Pross, CJ Stryver and Madame Defarge?
6. Which dinosaur is believed to have been the largest?
7. Mount Everest is the highest mountain; K2 is the second highest. Which mountain is the third highest?
8. Can you name three of the six noble gases?
9. Which 13th century mathematician is often credited as having brought the Arabic numeral system to Europe?
10. Casablanca is which country's largest city?
11. Who was the Egyptian god of war and the sky and was also the son of Isis and Osiris?
12. Which is the only Dutch speaking South American country?
13. Which infamous book, banned in Germany since 1945, is due to return to German bookstores by early next year?
14. "Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress." was the first line of which Victorian era novel?
15. "Marsh gas" is another name for which substance?
16. Whose forge was said to have been under Mt. Aetna?
17. In golf, what bird name is used to denote the very rare score of 4 under par?
18. What is the next century year that will include a leap day?
19. With a height of 979 meters, Angel Falls is the world's highest waterfall. In which country is it located?
20. According to Greek mythology, which god gave language to the mortals?
21. "Fill power" is measurement of the volume per unit weight of what?
22. What is the name of the Platonic solid that contains six sides?
23. Edward Teach is the given name of the early 18th century pirate better known by which name?
24. Which 19th century composer wrote "The Sorceress?"
25. Under the constellation Ursa Major one will find three star pairs said to be the three leaps of which animal?
26. Only four people have won two Nobel Prizes. Can you name two of them?
27. "IBEX" is a spacecraft collecting particles from the outer part of the solar system. What does IBEX stand for?
28. What is the northernmost (country) capital city? (Not including Greenland)?
29. With four known copies still extant, which document is celebrating its 800th anniversary this year?
30. Sought by alchemists, what object was believed capable of bestowing immortality onto any human who found and used it?
ANSWERS
1. Queen Victoria
2. Antimony.
3. Kazakhstan
4. Earth
5. "A Tale of Two Cities."
6. Argentinosaurus huinculensis (Argentinosaurus is also acceptable.)
7. Kangchenjunga (28,169 feet)
8. helium, neon, argon, krypton , xenon, radon
9. Fibonacci (Leonardo of Pisa is also acceptable.)
10. Morocco
11. Horus
12. Suriname
13. Mein Kampf
14. "Middlemarch" by George Eliot
15. Methane
16. Vulcan's
17. Condor
18. 2400
19. Venezuela
20. Apollo
21. Duck or goose down.
22. A cube
23. Blackbeard
24. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
25. Gazelle
26.
Maria Sklodowska-Curie (1903 Physics; and 1911 Chemistry)
John Bardeen (1956 Physics; 1972 Physics)
Linus Pauling (1954 Chemistry; 1962 Peace)
Frederick Sanger (1958 Chemistry; 1980 Chemistry)
27. Interstellar Boundary Explorer
28. Reykjavík, Iceland (64 degrees N)
29. The Magna Carta
30. The Philosopher's Stone.
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