Tuesday Trivia on a Saturday

| TravellinPenguin

snip20170121_3Okay, I like to shake things up once in awhile. Before Christmas I came across this book in my local independent indie book shop, Fuller’s.  I saw it on the shelf and made a beeline straight to it. A young woman was holding a copy in her hand and said to me, “Somebody had better get this for me for Christmas!” There were three copies in the shop.

1001 Ideas That Changed The Way We Think.  I do enjoy these 1001 compendiums and have the ones that relate to both books and children’s books. They are great fun to dip into and read a few pages here and there.  I find them both motivating and fascinating.

This one is no different.  I asked for this book for Christmas but of course the people I asked did not rush down to the shop and get one of the three copies. I got a wonderful book voucher for Christmas but alas, the book itself had disappeared. Enter book depository and about three weeks after Christmas my book arrived. (Mr. P should have bought it before because now I still have the book voucher and the book. He could have saved a bit by getting this and foregoing the voucher.)

How does one read such a book? You can’t read it page after page because the information will go in one brain cell and be filed away by another to that forgotten data base in the back of our head. It may or may not ever be seen again.

I decided to go to random.org.  I put in 1 to about 950, the number of pages and came up with: number 866.  I could feel a little wave of anticipation as I thumbed through the pages of this heavy tome looking for the magic number. There are actually two selections on this page.

 

1. Rap Music: United States– I learned that the word “rap” as a verb or noun meaning to talk,  actually dates from the sixteenth century, but its application to a form of music began among African Americans in the 1960’s.  It goes on to explain the various styles of rap music, its structure and uses. There is also a large black and white  photo of ‘Grandmaster Flash’  who is considered to be the grandfather of rap music in the USA. He was a Dee Jay in the 1980’s.  So close the file folder on that bit of trivia and put it into my data base storage unit of brain cells.

2. The second item of trivia relates to Social Networking Service. It states the earliest way people connected to others  (beyond snail mail and telephones) were email and chat programs. They appeared in the 1970’s.  I remember when we immigrated into Australia in 1988 how hard it was to keep in touch with family overseas. I was excited because I bought a new word processor that made writing letters so easy.  When email appeared I thought all of my Christmases had come at once. Instant communication at once. Then Facebook with instant photos of what was happening with family and friends. I do love social media for that reason alone.   The paragraph says that USENET was our first instant messaging system and it developed  as a system between Duke University and the University of North Carolina and went from there.

Okay that was fun. Tomorrow morning when I have my coffee I will have random.org choose another page number for me. Just think, in about 950 more days I will have an encyclopaedic mind of trivia for casually entertaining at dinner party conversations. (Not that I attend many dinner parties, I take comfort in knowing I will be ready.)

Other topics to name just a few from randomly exploring pages are:

*Symbols      *Reformed Epistimology    *Astrology          *Robin Hood          *Islamic State

*Sewer Systems          *Mathematical Function          *Many Worlds Theory (Universes)

*Skepticism        *Expressionism in Music      *Six Thinking Hats     *Beatrice Potter

snip20161225_16If I come across some interesting information about books or authors  I will put them up on Tuesday Trivia.

Next time you are attending a dinner party make sure you are not sitting too close. Unless you are a trivia person like I am.

 

 

17 thoughts on “Tuesday Trivia on a Saturday”

    2. A long black for me, but it must have a decent crema! And half a teaspoon of sugar. Oh, and since mudpuddle is ordering food, I’ll go for a salted caramel macaron. Very kind of you Pam.

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  2. I had to laugh at your dig at poor Mr P. I think you should be careful about looking a gift horse in the mouth, my girl!!

    Oh, and I love your random.org method of choosing what to read. These sorts of compendiums always overwhelm me.

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  3. really, i think this is great, even though i have to smile a bit… i have quite an interest in trivia myself, being an avid crossword puzzle doer -not the british kind, just the american; i do mostly NY Times puzzles; i can usually complete about 9 out 10 of them; actually not very good, considering my addiction began before i was ten; after sixty four years of experience i should be able to get them all, but hey, it’s all the fault of new slang!! anyway, interesting topic for sure…

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        1. I think a bit different to the ones you do – if they are like the LA Times ones which I used to like to do when I live in Orange County. We have two main types – the straight (sometimes called straight or quick), which basically looks for synonyms, and the cryptic for which you have to analyse the clue to work out what is the clue and what is the meaning you are looking for. (I think they originated in England) The clue might be an anagram, or the work might be buried in the clue, or it might be a homophone, or you might be given a double definition. Do you know them? I like doing these cryptics.

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        2. I think a bit different to the ones you do – if they are like the LA Times ones which I used to like to do when I live in Orange County. We have two main types – the straight (sometimes called straight or quick), which basically looks for synonyms, and the cryptic for which you have to analyse the clue to work out what is the clue and what is the meaning you are looking for. (I think they originated in England) The clue might be an anagram, or the work might be buried in the clue, or it might be a homophone, or you might be given a double definition. Do you know them? I like doing these cryptics. They can be a challenge and require a knowledge of words and a general knowledge.

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          1. tx a lot… i do the straight forward ones; i’ve attempted several times over the last fifty years to figure out the cryptic sort but never with much luck… i’ve a huge amount of admiration for people who can do them…

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            1. My Mum taught my husband and I when we were dating. We uald go to a cafe on sunday afternoons , drink coffee , eat waffles and do the crossword. A few decades later and ve still do them over coffee in cafes,

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                  1. what a lovely tradition… i can easily understand how a lifelong interest could develop that way; i found a small book that purported to teach the solving of cryptics, and it seemed pretty easy and logical until i actually tried to do one; then the instructions just didn’t seem to fit what i was looking at… if that makes any sense…

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                    1. Yes it does. Was it a puzzle in the book itself? Or a puzzle you picked up from elsewhere. If the latter I can well understand that. I can struggle a lot with cryptics written by people whose clues I just don’t get. There’s a particularly creator here that many “doers” love to hate. My mother is happy if she gets 2 or 3 out. I can rarely get that many of his out, but the writers we understand we rarely aren’t able to complete. The thing about cryptics is that you can work out the answer from the clues, and then have to check the answer is right e.g. we work out that the answer must be X but we’ve never heard of X, so out comes the smart phone to see if X is a word (and means what we think it means from the clue) and sure enough it is!

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