|
|
|
| ||||
|
Tuesday, 3 January 2012 |
|
|
|
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (1877 - 1947) was a Renaissance Man who excelled in many fields of arts and science. Born in Ceylon and educated in England, he was one of the great art historians of the Twentieth Century whose multifaceted research covered visual art, aesthetics, literature and language, folklore, mythology, religion and metaphysics. He was a pioneering historian and philosopher of Indian art, particularly art history and symbolism and an early interpreter of Indian culture to the West. More than 60 years after his death, he is still regarded very highly in scholarly circles in both the East and the West and credited as "the groundbreaking theorist who was largely responsible for introducing ancient Indian art to the West." A contemporary German scholar, Heinrich Robert Zimmer who was an Indologist and historian of South Asian art, called Coomaraswamy “That noble scholar upon whose shoulders we are still standing”. Ananda Coomaraswamy is also one of the very few Lankans who has had postage stamps issued in their honour by more than one country. Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) placed him on a stamp in 1971, and India issued a stamp in 1977 to mark his birth centenary. The Indian stamp featured, alongside a portrait of Coomarswamy, an image of the dancing Shiva, subject of a well-known study by him. Today’s Wiz Quiz pays tribute to this great son of Lanka. 1. Ananda Coomaraswamy was originally trained in geology and botany, he carried out doctoral research in Ceylon on the island’s mineralogy. Which scientific arm of the state was formed during the first decade of the Twentieth Century that Coomaraswamy initially headed, before his research interests were directed to a study of the traditional arts and crafts of Ceylon and of the social conditions under which they had been produced?
2. In 1904, during his mineralogical studies in Ceylon, Ananda Coomaraswamy discovered a new mineral -- an oxide of Thorium and Uranium. The world’s leading chemist of the day, Madame Marie Curie, suggested in a letter to Coomaraswamy that the new mineral ought to be named after him as ‘Coomarite’, in view of a prevailing practice the minerals were named after their discoverers. However, in his characteristic self-effacement and scientific modesty, he preferred to name it differently. What name was adopted for this mineral, which is found in Sri Lanka in stream gravels in the Galle district and Balangoda area? 3. Ananda Coomaraswamy is best known in Sri Lanka for his first book on art, ‘Mediaeval Sinhalese Art’, published in London in 1908. Now considered a classic and based on his studies and observations during several years spent in Ceylon at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, it is a record of the work and the life of the craftsman in a feudal society similar to what existed in early Mediaeval Europe. While Coomaraswamy wrote the text, it was his first wife, an Englishwoman and professionally trained photographer, who took all the photos for it and collaborated in the compilation of the book. Who was she? 4. In 1917, Ananda Coomaraswamy moved to the United States to serve as the first Keeper of Indian art in the Museum of Fine Arts at a major city on the American East Coast. He spent the last three decades of his life anchored in this city, where he later became curator in the Museum of Fine Arts, bringing Indian, Persian and other Eastern art to the West. At the Museum of Fine Arts, he built the first large collection of Indian art in the United States. What is this American city with a strong historical association with Coomaraswamy? 5. ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ is a fantastic musical film produced in 1968 by MGM about a car that could fly and travel on water in addition to running on the road. It starred Dick Van Dyke as the eccentric inventor named Caractacus Potts and Sally Ann Howes as heiress Truly Scrumptious. Its script was written by the well known children’s writer Roald Dahl and Ken Hughes, and songs were sung by the Sherman Brothers. The producer was Albert R. Broccoli, better known as co-producer of the James Bond series of films. The movie was loosely based on a novel called “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car”, first published in 1964. Who was the author? 6. A certain sub-atomic particle is popularly nicknamed as the ‘God particle’, and its existence is not yet proven. It is a hypothetical massive elementary particle that is predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics. Experiments to find the particle are currently being performed using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Centre for Particle Physics, or CERN. What is the more scientific name given to this particle? 7. ‘The Iron Lady’ is a 2011 movie which takes a closer look at the life of Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (who held that office from 1979 to 1990), with a focus on the price she paid for power. This 105 minute long film is to be theatrically released in January 2011. The film’s depiction of older Baroness Thatcher has been criticised by some of her former colleagues, but the accomplished actress has defended it. Who plays Margaret Thatcher in the film?
8. Christopher Hitchens, the British-American political writer and well known atheist who died on December 15, 2011 aged 62, was noted for his confrontational style of debate which made him both a lauded and controversial figure. Which American political leader did he once describe as follows: “He is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated -- and apparently quite proud of all these things.” 9. "Don't be evil" is the informal corporate motto (or slogan) of Google, which has been used in various forms since 2000, though not officially a part of the company’s corporate philosophy. Originally coined in 1999 by Amit Patel, one of Google's first engineers, in a collaborative resistance against the company's hiring policies, it was proposed as Google motto the following year by a Google computer programmer and entrepreneur who was creator and lead developer of Gmail, and also created the prototype of Google AdSense. This person "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out," adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies.” Who is this person? 10. When electricity flows through materials that allow such conduction, there is an inevitable loss of energy due to resistance at molecular level. But when cooled down to very low temperatures, this resistance disappears in certain materials. This is known as Superconductivity, a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance where magnetic fields also occur. Superconductors require very cold temperatures, on the order of 39 kelvins (minus 234 C, or minus 389 F) for conventional superconductors. This was discovered a century ago in April 1911 by a Dutch physicist who was awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize for physics. Who was he? 11. When Václav Havel, Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician, died on December 18, 2011, tributes poured in from all over the world and from across the political spectrum for his enormous intellectual, artistic and political contributions. He wrote more than 20 plays and numerous non-fiction works, and was a leading dissident voice against Communism in Eastern Europe. After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, he became president of Czechoslovakia (1989–1992) and was also elected the first President of the Czech Republic (1993–2003). However, his literary output overshadowed his political accomplishments, which prompted a well known Czech expatriate novelist to remark: "Václav Havel's most important work is his own life." Who said this? 12. The Czech writer, dramatist and political leader (who became president of his country) Václav Havel (1936 – 2011) was one of the finest writer-activists of the Twentieth Century. Disturbed by the excesses of a regime that lies to its own people, Havel started writing plays that exposed the absurdities of Communism. His plays showed the Communist regime for what it was. He endured decades of state harassment, including multiple imprisonments as a political prisoner. One of his most famous for essays was written in 1978, which was particularly noted for his articulation of "Post-Totalitarianism", a term used to describe the modern social and political order that enabled people to "live within a lie." What was the title of this seminal essay that continues to inspire people living in societies with repressive regimes all over the world? 13.. The Mona Lisa, probably the world’s best known painting, was stolen from The Louvre museum in Paris in August 1911 by a former museum worker who knew the system well and identified its security weaknesses. The painting was missing for over two years, during which time the thief smuggled it to Florence, Italy, where it was recovered undamaged. Name the Italian who was charged with the greatest art theft of the 20th Century. 14. Established in 1951, this early US Civil Defense system was designed to prevent enemy bombers from using the signals from radio and TV stations to target American cities during the Cold War. It was established in 1951 by President Harry S Truman. When activated, most radio and TV stations would stop broadcasting so their signals could not be used as homing beacons by enemy bombers. Selected stations would remain on the air to provide emergency information to the general public. What was the name of that system? 15. Only six batsmen in the world have the distinction of scoring over 10,000 (ten thousand) runs in both One Day Internationals and Test Cricket formats. Five of them are: Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Ponting, Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis and Brian Lara. Who is the sixth player, the only Lankan cricketer to feature in this elite list? Last week’s answers1. Fram |
|
