Today’s Tough Trivia question: Scales: fish wear them for protection, humans step on them to fret about their diets. We love to measure, rank, and grade things. Your question for today: what do we measure with the following scales: Fujita, Mohs, Richter, Scoville. Bonus points if you know what measures on those scales are for the least intense, and for the most.
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Yesterday’s question was: More so than most artists, Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s (1881–1973) paintings are frequently categorized by period, during which the paintings bear striking similarities. How many of those periods can you name? Bonus point if you can name them in order.
And the answer is:
Blue Period: 1901–04
Rose Period: 1904–06
African-influenced Period: 1907–09
Analytic Cubism: 1909–12
Synthetic Cubism: 1912–19
For the next decade, most of his work is considered necoclassical and Surreal. His later work amalgamated his earlier styles.
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Ian’s Tough Trivia is a daily feature of this blog (Monday’s category is History; Tuesday is Arts; Wednesday is Science; Thursday is Entertainment; and Friday is Grab Bag). Each day, I post a tough question, as well as the answer to the previous day’s question. Simply comment on this post with your answer. I’ll approve the comments after the next question is posted. Sure, you can probably find the answers by searching the web, but what’s the fun in that?
And if you’ve got a favorite trivia question—or even just a topic for which you’d like to see a question—let me know! Reader participation is warmly encouraged.
Fantastic Books is honored to be publishing On Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren, edited by Bill Wood, put together with a great deal of assistance from Delany himself.
Yesterday’s question was: The entertainment industry gives a slew of awards. We have the Oscar and the Emmy for movies and television, the Tony for stage plays, the Grammy for music, the Hugo, Edgar, and Pulitzer for literature, and scores more. Do you know who (or what) those seven are named for? And which organizations, specifically, do the awarding? How about when they were first awarded?
Emmy: The Emmy Award is presented by three related organizations: the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. They were first awarded in 1949. The name is a derivation of the word “immy,” itself a nickname for the image orthicon tube, which was a key piece of television cameras from the 1940s until the 1960s.
Tony: More formally known as the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, they are presented by the American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League, and have been since 1947. The awards were founded by producer and director Brock Pemberton (1885–1950) and named for Mary Antoinette “Tony” Perry (1888–1946), who was an actress, director, and co-founder of the American Theatre Wing.
Grammy: Originally called the Gramophone Award (named for the early record player which the award trophy depicts), they have been presented by the Recording Academy since 1959.
Hugo: Originally and more formally known as the Science Fiction Achievement Awards (in the early 1990s, they dropped the longer title), they are awarded by vote of the members (attendees) of the World Science Fiction Convention. They were first handed out in 1953, and then every year since 1955. Their namesake, Hugo Gernsback (1884–1967), was born as Hugo Gernsbacher in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg. He emigrated to the United States in 1904, and founded the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926.
Edgar: More formally known as the Edgar Allan Poe Awards, they were named after the American writer (1809–1849), and have been awarded by the members of the Mystery Writers of America since 1946.
Pulitzer: The Pulitzer Prize was established in 1917 under the provisions of Joseph Pulitzer’s will. Pulitzer (1847–1911) was born in Hungary, and immigrated to the US in 1864. He is best remembered as the publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World. He also served two brief terms in the House of Representatives. The Pulitzer Prizes (for journalism, literature, and musical composition) are administered by Columbia University.
I haven’t talked about business in a long time (pandemic and such), but now that I’m fully vaccinated, and see lots of people around me are as well, it’s time to look forward to a world where our first thought every day isn’t the pandemic. Toward that end, I’m getting Fantastic Books back into gear (I’ll be announcing a new book in a few days, as soon as the author and I agree on the cover, with another novel following on its heels, as soon as the author finishes going through the copy-edited manuscript). In addition to those, I’m planning our next Kickstarter campaign. I’m setting my sights a little higher this time: we’re going to try to fund two anthologies with one campaign (and trust me, you’ll know ALL about them in the coming days and weeks).
Lanes, roads, streets, avenues, boulevards, turnpikes, highways: the American road system is one of the iconic representations of the country. But it wasn’t always so; they were a creation of the automobile, which itself is barely more than a century old. Before the coming of our modern interstate highway system (about which there will be a question in the future), the two most famous roadways were the Lincoln Highway and Route 66. The Lincoln Highway was conceived in 1912, and formally dedicated on October 31, 1913. Route 66—also known as the Will Rogers Highway—was one of the original highways in the US Highway System. It was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected in 1927. Which states were crossed by the Lincoln Highway, and which by Route 66? (Bonus points if you know which states hosted both highways.) Further bonus if you know which of the two was longer (and can guess how many miles they covered).
Ian Randal Strock 