The History of Ideas quiz under the auspices of Karnataka Quiz Association. The original presentation was lost due to technical glitches, this presentation might have some typos/errors in it.

1. The HISTORY OF IDEAS QUIZ
- Varun
January 10, 2016

2. “In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the
following definition of the nation: it is an
____X____ political _____Y_____ - and
____X____ as both inherently limited and
sovereign. It is ________ because the members
of even the smallest nation will never know
most of their fellow-members, meet them, or
even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives
the image of their communion.”
Identify X, Y and The author(who was in the
news in December 2015.)

4. Imagined Communities
Benedict Anderson

5. In the speech titled “Britain Awake” at The
Kensignton Hall, Maggie Thatcher starts with the
following quote “The first duty of any Government is
to safeguard its people against external aggression.
To guarantee the survival of our way of life.” Mid-way
into the speech Mrs. Thatcher refers to a classic
example of production-possibility frontier and says
“The men in the Soviet politburo don't have to worry
about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put _ _
_ _ before _ _ _ _ _ _, while we put just about
everything before _ _ _ _. Fill in the blanks

6. Answer

7. Guns and butter

8. In the excellent blogpost “Obstacles for Games as a
Storytelling Medium”, the author Alessandro Ituarte,
cites “fail state”, “ludonarrative dissonance”, and _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _as obstacles for Games
as a Storytelling Medium. “In games, the XY is usually
broken in order to prompt action from the player. Eg., objects
you can interact with in a game tend to have a magical glow or
sparkle around them. These indicators help the player assimilate
the interaction boundaries of the game faster, as opposed to
having to poke at everything all the time in order to figure out
the limitations of the interaction system. Violating the _____
_____ causes the player to distance herself from the experience
and compels the player to focus on grokking the game,
effectively dismissing the game’s story as secondary or
irrelevant.
Fill in the blank(Hint: This about theatre, and aesthetics)

9. Answer

10. Aesthetic Distance

11. What 10 letter word with Greek origins– the scientific
study of which emerged sometime in the 1940s as a
consequence of the growing realisation that technical
equipment became increasingly complex – is often used
to refer to Human Factors Engineering?
The term “Human factors engineering” is more
prevalent in the US. The word in question is prevalent
in the UK.

12. Answer

13. Ergonomics

14. An excerpt from the Harvard historian’s book. “The
mechanical _ _ _ _ _ was self-contained, and once
horologists learned to drive it by means of a coiled
spring rather than a falling weight, it could be
miniaturized so as to be portable, whether in the
household or on the person. It was this possibility of
widespread private use that laid the basis for ‘____
discipline,’ as against ‘____ obedience.’ One can … use
public _ _ _ _ _ to sumon people for one purpose or
another.”
According to the author, the _ _ _ _ _ drove the
economic development of the West, leading it into
the Industrial Revolution and eventually into
an advanced form of capitalism. FITB

15. Answer

16. Clock

17. The image shows the Cannaregio area of Venice. The
use of this area (for a particular purpose) first started in
1513 and was mandated in 1516.
This exercise has lent a word(6-letters) to the English
language that evokes “a forbidding image of people
who lived locked behind walls from dusk to dawn in
crowded, narrow streets, under their own authorities”

18. Answer

19. Ghetto

20. In her review of Bajirao Mastani, Ranjita Ganesan,
says “The songs, which span nearly 30 minutes, could
have been curtailed. The track ‘Malhari’, a celebratory
jig with Singh and his battalion stomping and
shimmying, is especially avoidable. In _______
fashion, during this song the dancers look directly at
an aerial camera, shaking viewers out of their
fantasy.”
What is the adjective used?
Hint: Think German Epic Theater

21. Brechtian
named after Bertolt Brecht.

22. In the book Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for
Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, the author advocates
______ ______. A reviewer from the American Libraries
magazine had the following to say about ______ _____.
“These disconnected spaces inspired by ________’s (19th
century author, poet, naturalist etc) experiment to withdraw
from society while remaining within it. We suggest that this
idea would be a perfectly natural one for libraries. These safe
harbors would be free of the external distractions of
computers, cellphones, and social networking tools, allowing
sustained focus and contemplation.”
The idea and the 19th century character, please.

24. Walden Zone
Thoreau

25. What resulted in the passage of Representation of
People Act of 1981 in Britain? The act provides:
(a) for the disqualification from membership of the
House of Commons of any person who is detained
anywhere in the British Islands or the Republic of
Ireland (or who is unlawfully at large at any time when
he would otherwise be detained) for more than a year
for any offence,
(b) that the election or nomination of such persons
shall be void, and
(c) that the seat of a Member who becomes so
disqualified shall be vacated?

26. Death of Bobby Sands – member of IRA who was
fasting(actually unto death)

27. A Los Alamos Research laboratory— a multidisciplinary
research institution engaged in strategic science on
behalf of national security— report in December 2014
concluded that “One in Five articles suffer from
reference rot”. What is reference rot?

28. 404
Loss of web references

30. This Japanese word means “buying books and not
reading them; letting books pile up unread on shelves
or floors or nightstand”. Its literally translates to
‘reading pile’. The good word please

31. Tsundoku

32. An excerpt from Magha’s Sishupalavadhanam.
sakāra-nānāra-kāsa-kāya-sādada-sāyakā
rasāhavā vāhasāra-nāda-vādada-vādanā.
The army, whose arrows (sāyakā) were the destroyers
(sādada) of the movements and troops (kāsa-kāya) of their
various striving enemies (sakāra-nānā-ara), and which carried
triumphal war music (vāhasāra-nāda) instruments (vādanā),
relished the battle (rasa-āhavā)“
This verse is often described as sarvatobhadra. What is
sarvatobhadra?

33. It's a super-palindrome that reads the same in any direction --
left, right, top or bottom!
sa kā ra nā nā ra kā sa
kā ya sā da da sā ya kā
ra sā ha vā vā ha sā ra
nā da vā da da vā da nā
(mirrored)
nā da vā da da vā da nā
ra sā ha vā vā ha sā ra
kā ya sā da da sā ya kā
sa kā ra nā nā ra kā sa

34. The fourth largest town and municipal
council(according to Wikipedia) in Gurdaspur District of
Punjab(India) is a cause of major disagreements and
hate in the neighbouring country.
Name the town. And the reason for hate and
disagreements.

36. Qadian
Ahmaddiya

37. Karlheinz Brandenburg and his other colleagues at the
Fraunhofer Society in the 1990s spent long hours under
the hypothesis that most of the content was ‘a
maximalist repository of irrelevant information often
ignored by the ear’.
What resulted thus?

38. Mp3

39. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ is a method of market
segmentation based on personality, lifestyle, and
geodemographics. These techniques promise to offer
marketers the ability to define their target buyers by
their beliefs, values, and self-perception.

40. Psychographics

41. This speech in 1901 by a certain Mr. Edward Barton
“The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to
apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman.
There is deep-set difference, and we see no prospect and no
promise of its ever being effaced. Nothing in this world can
put these two races upon an equality. Nothing we can do by
cultivation, by refinement, or by anything else will make some
races equal to others”
What parliamentary action was this speech a precursor(many
believe, at least) to?

42. White Australia Immigration policy

43. The idea of “a state of affairs in which resources are
distributed such that it is not possible to improve a
single individual without also causing at least one other
individual to become worse off than before the
change” is a microeconomic dream.
The idea, named after the Italian Economist, please?

44. Pareto Efficiency

45. What ’boundary’ is the comic depicting?

46. Iron curtain

47. A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ fund is a type of financial instrument
where the strategy is to buy sovereign debt
instruments when a country is most vulnerable, which
enables the funds to purchase the debt at a deep
discount from its face value and attempt to enforce the
full claims. Hence named after the scavenging avian.

49. Vulture Fund

50. The South by South West is a set of media, film and
music festivals conference. The 2012 conference led to
the coining of the term ___ _________ by James Birdle,
which is described by The Atlantic as an “art movement
obsessed with the otherness of computer vision and
information processing”.
The Atlantic piece went onto say “You know that art has
changed when a ___ _________movement announces
itself not with a manifesto, but with a tumblr”
The term please.

51. New Aesthetic

52.  Let’s Learn metrology 
a) 11 letter word referring to comparison of two measurement devices or
systems, one of known standard and one of unknown uncertainty?
B) 10 letter resolute word referring to the smallest interval that can be read
between two readings?
C) 8 letter word that states the closeness of a measured value to a known
reference value
D) 9 letter word, something that was a matter of great debate recently in another
context, is a design feature that defines limits within which a quality
characteristic is supposed to be on individual parts. It represents the maximum
allowable deviation from a specified value.
E) 10 letter words referring to deviation in output at any point within the
instrument’s sensing range, when first approaching this point with increasing
values, and then with decreasing values.

53. a) 11 letter word referring to comparison of two measurement devices or systems, one of known
standard and one of unknown uncertainty?
Calibration
B) 10 letter determined word referring to the smallest interval that can be read between two
readings?
Resolution
C) 8 letter word that states the closeness of a measured value to a known reference value
Accuracy
D) 9 letter word, something that was a matter of great debate recently in another context, is a
design feature that defines limits within which a quality characteristic is supposed to be on
individual parts. It represents the maximum allowable deviation from a specified value.
Tolerance
E) 10 letter words referring to deviation in output at any point within the instrument’s sensing
range, when first approaching this point with increasing values, and then with decreasing values.
Hysteresis

54. The practice of placing an appendage around a
castrated ram that leads a flock lends its name to a 10
letter term that is often used to describe a trend. The
good sounding word, please.

55. Bellwether

56. What speculative geopolitical term is described here?

57. String of pearls

58. The definition of this legal principle according to World Justice
Project: _ _ _ _ / _ _ / _ _ _ is a system in which the following
four universal principles are upheld:
1) The government and its officials and agents as well as
individuals and private entities are accountable under the law.
2) The laws are clear, publicized, stable, and just; are applied
evenly; and protect fundamental rights, including the security
of persons and property.
3) The process by which the laws are enacted, administered,
and enforced is accessible, fair, and efficient.
4)Justice is delivered timely by competent, ethical, and
independent representatives and neutrals who are of
sufficient number, have adequate resources, and reflect the
makeup of the communities they serve.

59. Rule of law

60. Excerpt from a paper by Aqa Raza.
The _ _ _ _ _ / _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ doctrine is a judge-
made doctrine which was propounded by the Indian
Judiciary on 24th April 1973 in Keshavananda Bharati
Sripadagalvaru case to put a limitation on the
amending powers of the Parliament so that the ‘_ _ _ _
_ / _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ of the basic law of the land’ cannot
be amended in exercise of its ‘constituent power’
under the Constitution.

61. Basic Structure

62. The word _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _(X), according to the the
Webster Dictionary is
1) military supplies including weapons, ammunition,
combat vehicles, and maintenance tools and
equipment
2) a service of the army charged with the procuring,
distributing, and safekeeping of _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.
Vocabulary.com says that the word The word_ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _(Y) , meaning “command” lost an i in the 1500’s
and became _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _, meaning “military
materials.”

63. Ordnance
Ordinance

64. The McArthur’s Universal Corrective version was launched
on 26-Jan-1979, to challenge the casual acceptance of
European perspectives as global norm.
An article on Al Jazeera said, “The orientation of our _ _ _ _,
like so many other features of the modern world, arose from
the interplay of chance, technology and politics in a way that
defies our desire to impose easy or satisfying narratives. But
at a time when the global south continues to suffer more than
its share of violence and poverty, let’s not dismiss McArthur’s
Universal Corrective version too quickly. It continues to
symbolize a noble wish: that we could overturn the unjust
political and economic relationships in our world as easily as
we can flip the _ _ _ _ on our walls.
The blank and the idea please

65. Maps
Why do maps always show the north as up?

66. According to the author, James Boyce, author of “Born
Bad: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ / _ _ _ and the Making of the
Western World” the doctrine of _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ / _ _ _
has now morphed into the “selfish gene” of
evolutionary psychologists. The science of Richard
Dawkins, Steven Pinker and others essentially
repurposes the notion of hereditary depravity.
The Christian doctrine, please?

67. Original Sin