The 1st Question 47 - 7 Apr 09

Quotes

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy to be called an idea at all.
Elbert Hubbard

Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
Doris Lessing

Questions

For the answers go to The 1st Question blog at SLCN

1) In 2006, this company announced the intention of digging up the garden of the parents of spammer Davis Wolfgang Hawke in search of buried gold and platinum. They had been awarded a $ 12.8 million judgment against Hawke, who had gone into hiding. The permission for the search was granted by a judge after this company proved that the spammer had bought large amounts of gold and platinum. The next year, they decided not to proceed. What well known company had originally planned to do the digging?

2) The term literally means "love of life or living systems." It was first used by Erich Fromm to describe a psychological orientation of being attracted to all that is alive and vital. Edward Wilson used the term in the same sense when he suggests that it describes "the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.” He proposed the possibility that the deep affiliations humans have with nature are deeply rooted. What is this term?

3) When he was almost ready to enter Yale , sumac poisoning weakened his eyes and he gave up college plans. He got a farm in Staten Island after his stint as a seaman. He had a great career in journalism; his dispatches to the Times were collected into multiple volumes which remain vivid first-person social documents of the pre-war South. Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom were published during the first six months of the American Civil War. It helped inform and galvanize antislavery sentiment in the Northeast. In 1865, he co founded The Nation. Thankfully, he believed that the common green space must always be equally accessible to all citizens. This principle is now fundamental to the idea of a "public park". His tenure as park commissioner in New York was a long struggle to preserve that idea. Unpopular at the time. One of The greatest landscapers of all time, who was he?

4) He came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularized the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he made a widely cited contribution to evolutionary biology with the theory, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that the phenotypic or observable effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms. Who is this prominent critic of creationism and intelligent design?

5) The human body is a veritable powerhouse. Every minute of everyday it generates energy. What if this energy could be harnessed to do something really useful – like charge your iPod or mobile phone? Technology that does just that - converting mechanical energy from body movements or even the flow of blood in the body into electric energy is here by converting the low-frequency vibrations generated into electricity by using zinc oxide nanowires. These nanowires are able to produce electricity as they are piezoelectric - they generate an electric current when subjected to mechanical stress. The diameter and length of these wires are the diameter of what?

6) The last Antarctic expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton and the final episode in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration took place onboard this ship, a small converted Norwegian whaler. Before the expedition's work could properly begin, Shackleton died aboard ship. What was the name of this ship upon which he died?

7)Not quite the Rosetta stone, but still very fascinating, There have been numerous attempts to decipher this script of Easter Island since its discovery in the late nineteenth century. As with most undeciphered scripts, many of the proposals have been fanciful. Apart from a portion of one tablet which has been shown to deal with a lunar calendar, none of the texts are understood, and even the calendar cannot actually be read. What is the name of these texts written on pacific rosewood?

8) He presented a useful tool for astronomical calculations in his Handy Tables, which tabulated all the data needed to compute the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets, and which provided the model for later astronomical tables. He wrote famously, “Almagest” and he wrote in Ancient Greek and is known to have utilized Babylonian astronomical data. He also wrote on geography, music, optics and astrology. He was the most influential of Greek astronomers and geographers of his time. He propounded the geocentric theory that prevailed for 1400 years. Who was he?
P: 9) This U.S. Senator announced that in spring 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment. This occurred during a time of great concern about overpopulation and when there was a strong movement towards "Zero Population Growth." Rising concern about the environmental crisis was also sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity that matched discontent over the war in Vietnam. So a national day of observance of environmental problems began as a. nationwide environmental 'teach-in'.Who was this Senator who coordinated Earth Day?
10) The 1960s had been a very dynamic period for ecology in the US, in both theory and practice. It was in the mid-1960s that Congress passed the sweeping Wilderness Act, Who was this man who asked, "Who speaks for the trees?"

11) Pre-1960 grassroots activism against DDT in Nassau County, New York, had inspired Rachel Carson to write her shocking bestseller. What was it called?
.
12) Genius, dancer, bohemian and original, she is considered the mother of modern dance. When the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was built in 1913, her likeness was carved in its bas-relief over the entrance. In 1922, she acted on her sympathy for the social and political experiment being carried out in the new Soviet Union and moved to Moscow.
In her last United States tour in the early twenties, she waved a red scarf and bared her breast on stage in Boston, proclaiming, "This is red! So am I!" She died tragically at 50, and yes, a scarf was involved. Who was she?

13) Psychology is what he thought directly linked on to biology, for sensibility, the fundamental fact, is the highest grade of life and the lowest of intelligence. All the intellectual processes are evolved from sensibility he wrote, and sensibility itself is a property of the nervous system. The soul is not an entity, but a faculty; thought is the function of the brain. Just as the stomach and intestines receive food and digest it, so the brain receives impressions, digests them, and has as its organic secretion, thought. Who was this very early pioneer of Psychology?

14) Now this exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around 5 million. The various forms all share moral and metaphysical ideals, which include, in most cases, a constitutional declaration of belief in a Supreme Being. It uses the metaphors of operative stonemasons' tools and implements, against the allegorical backdrop of the building of what, to convey what has been described by both Masons and critics as "a system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols?”

15) The structural model was first discussed in his 1920 essay "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" Freud is perhaps best known for his tripartite model of the mind, consisting of the id, ego, and what?

16) The Super-ego strives for perfection. The Super-ego strives to act in a socially appropriate manner, whereas this just wants instant self-gratification. The Super-ego controls our sense of right and wrong and guilt. It helps us fit into society by getting us to act in socially acceptable ways. What works in contradiction to the super ego?