'The
Fool asks Questions that the Wise Man cannot Answer'
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A
Arts 1: Are there statues or memorials of plants
on a public place somewhere in the world?
Arts 2: Does the issue of the Kronen Zeitung
in which are reports about Tom Pryce's death at the Kyalami race track
on Mar 5th, 1977 and the Vrancea (Romania) earthquake of Mar 4th, 1977
correspond to G. Helnwein's rendition of it?
Arts 3: What are the (barely visible) words
on the rooftops above Dean's head in G. Helnwein's James Dean II?
Arts 4: Was there an issue of Spiegel
magazine on November 28th, 1993 and if yes, did it have a Helnwein cover?
Arts 5: What happened to Marc Bromley, who
did cover art for the German computer game magazine ASM in the mid-80s?
Arts 6: Is the statue of Lady Justice on Old
Bailey blindfolded or not?
Arts 7: Leonardo da
Vinci's Last Supper was intended to be viewed from a particular
door in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, which was ignorantly
bricked up. Are efforts underway to reopen it?
Arts 8: What happened to the artist who did
the Annette and Webster comics in the Fun Stuff section of
Monsanto's 'old' homepage?
Arts 9: What is the inscription on the statue
that reminds of the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp?
B
Biology 1: Is the aversion against mouldy taste
born or bred? How widespread is it amongst mammals?
Biology 2: Did Parus cyaneus (Azure
Tit) and P. caeruleus (Blue Tit) derive from the same precedessor
species, when did that happen and is the major visual difference between
them that P. cyaneus lacks yellow pigments?
Biology 3: How come that autumn mist seems
to have a slightly bitter taste?
Biology 4: Does anyone have information about
the works of Chonosuke Okamura, in which he claimed to have discovered
microscopic mini-fossils of dragons, princesses, old
men and the like and for which he was awarded the 1996 Ig-Nobel prize?
Biology 5: Did the persons who named orange
juice dyed blue 'bilberry' or 'blueberry' juice say 'blueberry'? If not,
it would have been a simple mistake, for bilberry juice is purple. If they
did, however, it would have been proof that the visual component is very
important in determining how you 'classify' food.
Biology 6: Is there a then-contemporary media
article about the '68 cyclone that devastated the Lake Ellsmere colony
of black swans (Cygnus atratus) in New
Zealand?
Biology 7: Where is comprehensive information
about Biziura lobata, the Australian musk duck, on the web?
Biology 8: Is there an audio (preferrably .wav
or .au ) file of the hagedash(hadada)'s (Bostrychia hagedash) cry?
Biology 9: Are there any species of amphibians
that live in communities that are not mere aggregations for most of the
time?
Biology 10: Is there a color picture of a young
male of the white-backed woodpecker, Dendrocopos leucotos?
Biology 11: What are the reasons for the strange
disjunctive distribution of the horned
lark, Eremophila alpestris and Cyanopica
cyanus (Azure-winged magpie)?
Biology 12: Is ground-level nesting a behavior
that very often prevents a bird's adaptation to human settlements as a
habitat?
Biology 13: Are there studies whether the beaks
of Loxia spec. (crossbills) always cross
in one way (e.g., right-over-left) and if not, are there Mendelian studies
on this subject and if one possibility is favored, but not as a matter
of hereditarity, why then?
Biology 14: Are there estimates how common
are mutations that spread only because the disadvantage by functional loss
or deoptimization is offset by the advantages of a radically new function
(like the 'freeze-protect' proteine in the Antarctic Nothotheniidae
fishes that evolved out of a protease of the trypsine family)?
Biology 15: What is known about how the pigments
turacin and turacoverdin (obviously copper-porphyrine pigments) which only
appear in the bird family Musophagidae (touracos) did evolve? Turacoverdin
seems to be the only green feather coloration based on biochromes (pigments),
not on feather structure.
Biology 16: Is Homo sapiens physiologically
able to achieve a different depth perception with each eye?
Biology 17: What is the name of the fatty cushion
('Winterrolle') around a bunny's neck in winter in scientific terminology?
Biology 18: What is known about the social
structures of the European bunny Oryctolagus cuniculus?
Could it thus be explained that pet bunnies sometimes show a relationship
to their owner as commonly seen in dogs?
Biology 19: When were Latin and Old Greek established
as the languages of Biology? Were any alternatives considered?
Biology 20: Which animal was truly domesticated
(becoming dependant on humans for survival) first?
Biology 21: Why are echidnas (Tachyglossus
aculeatus and Zaglossus spec.)
called 'echidna', as Echidna is the taxonomical name of a genus
of moray eels and originally means 'viper'?
Biology 22: Have we learned anything new about
reproductive behavior and death of eels (Anguilla
spec.)?
Biology 23: In what rhythm do different arthropods
move their legs during locomotion?
Biology 24: Who invented the abbreviation system
in Linnean nomenclature (Cygnus cygnus
is written C. cygnus, not Cygnus c.; Cygnus cygnus cygnus
is written C. c. cygnus, not Cygnus c. c. or C. cygnus
c.)? How come that the last possibility seems to be the strangest?
Biology 25: The cigarette
beetle Lasioderma serricorne is the insect whose larvae
infest stuff like dried chili pepper, cocoa beans, coffee, pet food, tobacco
and most other dried food stuffs, furthermore leather, fabric and other
organic material. Its adult stages sometimes get rolled into cigarettes
with the tobacco, producing little 'bursts' during smoking. This animal
is able to cope with an amazing variety of natural insect-repellent or
toxic compounds, as caffeine, nicotine, theobromine, capsaicine, cocaine,
zingiberine, THC, opiates, arecoline and several other etheric oils and
alcaloids, as well as pyrethrum-type insecticides. How do they cope with
all these compounds, the main purpose of which it is to repel herbivores?
Biology 26: Which mechanisms of metazoans that
live in decaying material do we know that prevent the organism from falling
prey to microorganisms itself?
Biology 27: Which group of vertebrates first
had the social structures necessary for trading information and habits
over the generations (the base of culture)?
Biology 28: Which larger studies on direct
genetic origins of human personality are sponsored directly or by proxy
by persons who dream of 'breeding' a 'superhuman' or shaping future generation's
minds?
Biology 29: How widespread is deliberate consumption
of psychotropic substances amongst animals in their natural habitat? Which
animals, which compounds?
Biology 30: Has anyone already tried to equip
a deep-diving camera sled with about 72 hours of film, low lights, a surfacing
mechanism being triggered after that time and a radio beacon and deployed
it at ~6000 meters depth somewhere in the open sea?
Biology 31: Where does one get additional information
on the tiniest tetrapods of the world, the Cuban frog Eleutherodactylus
iberia (approx. 1 cm) which was discovered in 1996, and the Brazilian
frog Psyllophryne didactylata (approx. 9 mm)?
Biology 32: Are there accounts of deep-sea
species that have arisen in different places in equivalent habitats (e.g.
black smokers)?
Biology 33: Of which origin are the biological
symbols for 'male' and 'female'?
Biology 34: Are there genetical analyses concerning
the missing wild form of the dromedary?
Biology 35: Are there any conclusions on since
when the maidenhair tree (Ginkgo biloba)
is extinct in the wild?
Biology 36: Are there differences on a molecular
level between the ureotelic nitrogen cycles of mammals and some amphibians?
The amphibians' cycle developed out of the fishes' ammonia metabolism and
out of any of these the reptiles' ureic acid metabolism, which we assume
to have given rise to the mammals' urea metabolism.
Biology 37: What does Ia io, probably
the world's shortest taxon (referring to a bat species), mean?
Biology 38: What happened to the supposed metazoan
Salinella salve, described in 1889 from
Argentine salt beds, and to the second placozoan species Treptoplax
reptans, which was described in 1897, both being missing since?
Biology 39: Is Allium
paradoxum the plant referred to as 'Allium' by hermetic magic?
Biology 40: Is it true that fly
agaric (Amanita muscaria) is sometimes edible after skinning
or cooking and discarding the water? If so, is it true for all of them
or only for some subspecies or varieties? If not, how did this rumor arise?
Confusion with A. caesarea?
Biology 41: Are there reasonable guesses at
how many individuals formed the largest driver ant columns?
Biology 42: Are new species' descriptions in
botany still written in New Latin?
Biology 43: In how far is chitine sythesized
differently in fungi than it is in arthropods?
Biology 44: Erythrocytes
possess a concave shape in isotonic medium and a 'gooseberry' shape in
a hypotonic one, despite their lack of a cytoskeleton; one would expect
them to be round to attain the smallest possible surface. How are the differing
shapes maintained?
Biology 45: What is the drag factor of marlins
(Makaira and Tetrapturus spec.)?
Which saltwater species has the smallest?
Biology 46: Are there universal morphological
differences between the brains of male and female humans that cannot be
attributed to the direct influence of society or to sex-linked regulation
mechanisms (e.g. the menstruation cycle or sex hormones that are associated
with neurological processes)?
Biology 47: How does the four number enzyme
classification work?
Biology 48: A Turner woman has one X chromosome
deleted. If a man retains the genes specific to his Y chromosome while
suffering from a deletion of those that appear on the X, too (with or without
translocation of the remaining Y genes to the X chromosome), he could be
termed 'Turner man'. Have such cases been recorded?
Biology 49: Is there a sample of the sound
that is produced by a human stepping on a giant nightcrawler (Megascolides
australis)?
Biology 50: Off what did the ancestors of flour
mites (Tyroglyphus farinae) live?
Biology 51: Do hermit
crabs posses an abdomen that turns clockwise more often than counterclockwise
as an adaptation to the fact that there are more shells that turn clockwise
or does the abdomen simply turn in whatever sense the shell permits?
Biology 52: Are flies the most successful insects,
considering the ecological niches they fill?
Biology 53: Are there new analyses concerning
the molecular structure of floridean starch and laminarin?
Biology 54: In how far does the fact that both
glycogene and floridean starch are stored in the cytosole influence their
molecular structure, which differs from that of starch, which is stored
in plastids?
Biology 55: Where does one get information
on the invertebrate fauna of the Kergueles and Crozet Islands?
Biology 56: Where does one find information
on the 'Crowned Melangena'?
Biology 57: Fern Leafiness is a tomato disease
caused by an infection of both tobacco and cucumber
mosaic viruses at the same time. Do genetically recombinant viruses
occur?
Biology 58: Has someone already researched
the fractal algorithms underlying the growth patterns of early seedless
vascular plants and their further development?
Biology 59: Why do house cats sometimes leave
their prey in their owners' shoes? As cats do not consider their owners
as members of their own species (as dogs do), the common explanation that
the prey is a 'gift' to the user seems hardly satisfying.
Biology 60: The 'red queen' form Alice behind
the Mirrors is used as a metaphor for coevolution: if one species 'runs',
others have to follow or die out. Which other non-biological metaphors
have made their way into biological terminology?
Biology 61: Where does one get information
on rare or extinct reptiles, notably the Mauritius skink Did(i?)osaurus
and the Round Island boas Bolyeria multocarinata and Casarea
dussumieri?
Biology 62: Which snake is the most dangerous
to man as per a) toxicity of its poison, b) toxicity and average dose injected
in one bite and c) number of deaths?
Biology 63: Which species that is alive today
is the oldest?
Biology 64: Why is it that viroid infections
seldom do harm to and normally don't even produce any symptoms of infection
in wild species, but are fatal for crop plants?
Biology 65: Are there color plates with the
world's Uraniidae?
Biology 66: What purpose do the stalked eyes
of Diopsis spec. (stalk-eyed flies) serve?
Biology 67: Is it true that mosquitos rarely
sit down on a spot where one has just slain another mosquito and if yes,
what is the factor that repels them?
Biology 68: What exactly is going on with the
thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus)?
Biology 69: Are there plans to reintroduce
the Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisi)
to the Australian mainland?
Biology 70: What do marine biologists use to
make notes during underwater work?
Biology 71: What does a Hardy plancton collector
cost?
Biology 72: By which means do invertebrate
plant parasites know their host species apart from other plants?
Biology 73: How come that plant cells can survive
in a medium that hypotonic that one would expect their cell walls to rupture?
Biology 74: Are there photos of the 'great
Urschleim' Bathybius haeckeli and its supposed precedessor Protobathybius
spec.?
Biology 75: How deep under the surface of Antarctic
rocks do lichen (the black and white bands on this
photo) occur? How deep into the rock do the green algae reach that grow
under the lichen?
Biology 76: Do sonic waves cause temperature
differences on surfaces? If yes, are they large enough to be perceived
by human skin's thermosensors? If not, can human skin's mechanosensors
detect the vibration caused by sonic waves? In both cases, from which intensity
upwards?
Biology 77: Which DNA strand is the 'codogenic'
one and when and where was this terminology agreed upon?
Biology 78: Which was the first enzyme/signal
receptor proteine/carrier proteine that was discovered to act in active
state also as a gene regulatory proteine and when did this take place?
Biology 79: Caenorhabditis elegans flees
when contacting small quantities of aliphatic compounds. Did someone already
research if this is an electrotactic behavior, as C. elegans, being
a creature which is highly dependant on water (a polar liquid) to maintain
its metabolism and physical stability might show such a behavior when the
concentration of hydrophilic liquid becomes too high.
Biology 80: Is there biology literature from
recent times where it is claimed that rod cells are sensitive to differences
in color and cone cells to differences in brightness? If yes, where?
Biology 81: What is the name of the 'creeping'
plant that moves by growing at the tip and dying at the opposite end? How
large is it and where can one get it?
Biology 82: Is there a photo of the 'vampire
squid' Vampyrotheutis infernalis?
Biology 83: Do light metal ions (except sodium,
magnesium, potassium etc) taste differently to humans that heavy metal
ions?
Biology 84: Which are the mechanisms by which
quasisocial insects, which have partial division of work, yet no castes
(=specialized forms), regulate who does what?
Biology 85: Is there a table which states the
mutual degree of genetic reationship between different castes of honey
bees (Apis mellifera) (e.g., drones have no father, but a grandfather
etc)?
Biology 86: Are there observations on antelope
herds concerning a) how many individuals are watching for carnivores at
any given time and b) the behavior (watching out/grazing) of a single individual?
What patterns does the behavior of a single individual and the herd as
a whole follow?
Biology 87: Has research on the social structures
of cockroaches been conducted? If yes, whith which
results?
Biology 88: Who claimed first that individualized
groups of animals are always 'closed' (i.e., hostile against 'outsiders')?
Is this really true?
Biology 89: Is there a space-filling 3D model
graphic of the virostatic aminoadamantane (aka
amantadine)?
Biology 90: Bongkrek acid, a strong antibiotic
also toxic to humans, is synthesized by the mold Rhizopus oryzae
(others claim by an Pseudomonas spec. bacterium) growing on tempeh
bongkrek, a Javanese dish made from fermented coconut presscake, rendering
the food poisonous (which led to its banning in Indonesia; although there
still is a strong demand for tempeh bongkrek, production and trafficking
nowadays constitute a crime). Is there a picture of R. oryzae in
this habitat? Why is the acid only produced on tempeh bongkrek?
Biology 91: Has the genome of some satellite
viruses already been sequenced? If yes, with which results?
Biology 92: Which species or strains of fermenting
microorganisms are able to tolerate the highest concentration of their
respective fermentation products (lactic, acidid, formic, propionic acid
etc.)?
Biology 93: Is water the substance that most
physical or chemical gradients in organisms are based upon?
Biology 94: Has anyone tried to devise, by
embryologic research, a hypothetical ancestor of vertebrates? First, one
would have to analyze the state, position and structure of organs and tissues
before terminal differentiation and then devise a possible (yet fictious)
way for those primitive structures to develope.
Biology 95: Are there persons who conduct research
on the simulation of biochemical pathways in synthetical cell analoga and
if yes, how far did they come yet?
Biology 96: Is there a means of doting membranes
selectively with single macromolecules?
Biology 97: How far has research on synthetical
genetic systems that mediate their own reproduction advanced as yet?
Biology 98: Is there a means of acquiring a
culture of the 'violet moss' Trentepohlia iolithus, a filamentous
green alga that produces a ionone smelling like violets?
Biology 99: Is there a picture of a female
specimen of the parasitic crustacean Sacculina carcini, both of
the sacculina interna and externa?
Biology 100: Is there research on pets that
ran wild how fast which characteristics of domestication disappear?
Biology 101: How common is the phenomenon that
antheres become positioned in a way to enable transfer of pollen to, but
not its consumption by the animal(s) who are regular pollinators of the
respective flowers in relation to advancing complexity of a flower?
Biology 102: Which 5 metazoan parasites are
the most reduced ones, 'reduced' being defined here as 'being derived from
an advanced precedessor' as well as 'not much termial differentiation,
few tissues, few organs'?
Biology 103: Which substance causes the repulsive
smell of durian (Durio zibethinus) fruits
and what purpose does it serve the plant?
Biology 104: A woman living near a nuclear
plant in Germany made a book with M. S. Merian-style drawings of 'altered'
insects she found in her garden, which was referred to in the Zeit weekly
paper approx. 1994. What is the book's title, by whom is it and what does
it cost?
Biology 105: What is the Drosophila
mutant son of sevenless and who coined the name?
Biology 106: The sand stinkhorn fungus, which
is considerably smaller than the common stinkhorn
Phallus impudicus, bears the scientific name Phallus hadriani.
In English, this means 'Hadrian's dick'. Is the epithet hadriani
an ignorant dedication name referring to someone related to the fungus'
description as a scientific work, or does it rather refer to some Hadrian
who had or allegedly had a remarkably small and/or foul-smelling penis?
If yes, who is he?
Biology 107: Is there a picture of the blind
cave beetle Anophtalmus hitleri and the exact story how it was given
this name?
Biology 108: Which species are named after
Hitler, which after Stalin, which after any other statesman?
Biology 109: Is there a picture compendium
of Drosophila mutants that have phenotypical (including on a microscopic
level) effects?
Biology 110: What do we know about the purpose
of homeotic genes in yeast and Caenorhabditis
elegans?
Biology 111: Did someone devise an algorithm
that, considering the growth patters of every single bone, is able to morph
bone structures in such a way that a likely course of (actual or fictious)
development is shown?
Biology 112: The berries of the miracle
fruit Synsepalum dulcificum have the property to make everything
taste sweet for a few hours. What are the neurobiochemical reasons for
this amazing feat? Where can one get a Synsepalum dulcificum or
a sample of its fruit?
Biology 113: Tomato seeds contain lots of oil.
Is this oil extracted and are there any uses for it?
Biology 114: Are there any reasonably complete
(as per today's standards) books on deep sea fauna?
Biology 115: Are there genetical comparisons
of deep sea- and related shallow-water species?
Biology 116: Are there any photos of the dogfish
relative Squaliolus laticaudatus?
Biology 117: Are there photos of tinamu (Tinamiformes)
eggs?
Biology 118: Are there photos of Cetopsis
sp. catfish, preferrably of specimen taken out of the water?
Biology 119: Which is the highest consecutive
monotypical systematic unit (one subspecies per species - one species per
genus - one genus per family and so on ad nauseam)?
Biology 120: Are there already cultures of
(human) adamantoblasts?
Biology 121: Is there a picture of an old specimen
of Cabo Verde's Macroscincus cocteaui skink?
Biology 122: Which white pigments do occur
in vertebrates (as opposed to structural effects, e.g. in white hair)?
Biology 123: Cellular differentiation in sponges
is readily reversible: every one of the 12+ different cell types in sponges
(save gametes) may change into any other, but this is in vivo limited
to the types that are needed at the respective positions. How is this mediated?
Biology 124: Is there a picture of a larva
of the sponge fly Sisyra fusca(ta?)?
Biology 125: When did the fifth finger first
appear (all recent amphibians have only four)? When did it first occur
that the thumb was set apart from the other fingers? Are there extinct
amphibians with five fingers and if yes, what is their systematical status?
Biology 126: When, how and how fast did reptile
lungs change into bird's air sacs?
Biology 127: What are the air temperatures
on the arctic tern's (Sterna paradisaea)
migration path during migration time?
Biology 128: From which group upwards is all
sexual reproduction in animals oogamous (small, mobile male and large,
immobile female gametes)?
Biology 129: Giganto- as part of animal
names is mostly followed by a reference to a precedessor, related or similar
animal. Which Giganto-species has the greatest enlargement factor
compared to the referred-to animal?
Biology 130: The fossilized rostra
of belemnites were commonly called 'devil's fingers' or 'thunderbolts'
because of their shape, or alternatively 'cat stones'. Why the latter?
Biology 131: What is the taxonomic status of
the fossil salamander Andrias scheuchzeri, closely related to the
hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis),
the first remains of which that were found being described as homo diluvii
testis (testimony of a human drowned in the Deluge)?
Biology 132: The rodent Amblyrhiza inundata,
similar to a rat but up to bear size, lived on Anguilla 125.000 years ago.
Are there accounts, pictures etc.?
Biology 133: How many -ostraca are there
amongst the crustaceans, what are they and what do the respective names
mean?
Biology 134: How are the Passeriformes
subdivided down to but not including family level?
Biology 135: Which is the highest systematical
unit of spermatophytes that has no use whatsoever in human nutrition?
Biology 136: Heteropezini (also classified
as Leptosynini) gall gnats are known to show paedogenesis: their
larvae are able to produce more larvae. How is this possible and how is
it done technically? Fission? Eggs?
Biology 137: Are there good monographies on
the endemitic species of Lake Baikal, Lake Ohrida and Lake Aral (if there
are/were such in the latter)?
Biology 138: Were there multicellular organisms
living in Kara-Bogas-Gol? If yes, which?
Biology 139: Which pigments have been found
in basidiomycetes ('fungi' in colloquial sense)?
Biology 140: Do medium-sized flying insects
without defensive potential like mosquitos or flies watch out for round,
eye-like shapes following their course and flee from them?
Biology 141: What security measures are required
at the different security levels of biotech laboratories? How many of each
type are there worldwide?
Biology 142: The butterfly Lycaena fascista
(Fascist's Copper), described by Turati in 1927, was synonymized. What
is its current name?
Biology 143: The foul-smelling herb-robert
Geranium robertianum was supposedly named by Linné after
a colleague named Robert(s), whom he despised. Is this true?
Biology 144: What kind of birds constitute
the genus Cannabis Blyth 1850 and what does this name mean in this
context - it makes not much sense to call a bird 'hemp'?
Biology 145: Eucosma bobana, E. cocana,
E. dodana, E. fofana, E. hohana, E. kokana, E. lolana, E. momana, E. popana,
E. rorana, E. sosana, E. totana, E. vovana, E. fandana, E. gandana, E.
handana, E. kandana, E. mandana, E. nandana, E. mandana, E. randana, E.
sandana, E. tandana, E. vandana, E. wandana, E. xandana, E. yandana, E.
zandana, E. nomana, E. sonomana, E. vomonana, E. womonana, E. boxeana,
E. canariana, E. f(l?)oridana, E. idahoana, E. miscana, E. subinvicta are
species of olethreutid moths described by Kearfoot in 1907. Solpugarda,
Solpugassa, Solpugeira, Solpugella, Solpugema, Solpugopa, Solpugorna, Solpuguna,
Solpugyla, Solpugelis, Solpugiba, Solpugista are geni of spiders described
by Roewer from 1933-34. Taxonomy rules suggest to give the meaning of a
new taxon in the descriptive article. What did Kearfoot and Roewer write,
or did nobody care?
Biology 146: The aphid Myzocallis kahawaluokalani's
epithet supposedly means 'you fish on your side of the lagoon and I'll
fish on the other, and no one will fish in the middle.' Is this true?
Biology 147: Burying
beetles' (Necrophorus spec.) females feed their larvae at first
with pre-digested cadaver meat additionally to the meat the larvae eat
directly. If one takes away the female before the larvae hatch, they reputedly
develope normally until pupa stage, where they die at some point. If this
is true, at which point do they die and why?
Biology 148: Is the South American longhorn
beetle Titanus giganteus extinct or not? Is there a picture of it?
Biology 149: Is it true that the golden eagle
(Aquila chrysaëtos) has, amongst others, an Alpes (A. c.
fulva) and a Scandinavian (A. c. chrysaëtos) subspecies,
of which the latter is the 'real' golden eagle?
Biology 150: Has anyone already attempted to
write a biochemical user interface that enables you to reproduce complex
biochemical reactions by setting up an environment and giving some starting
variables (similar to a fractal generator)?
Biology 151: Which mechanism enables a 'queen'
of a colony of naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus
glaber) to suppress the drive to mate in the 'workers'?
Biology 152: Leafcutter
bees (Megachile spec.) deposit their eggs, wrapped in a leaf
package together with some food, in hollow plant stalks. Obviously, the
farther down a package lies, the sooner will the bee hatch. Do the hatched
bees gnaw themselves out of the stalk and if not, how do they manage to
get out with the remaining pupae blocking the way?
Biology 153: What is the reason that wild
cherries (Prunus avium) are rather common along the North Sea
coast from the Jade bay area up to Denmark, but rare in Eastern Frisia
and on the Slesvig Baltic Sea coast, the adjoining areas to the west/east?
Biology 154: How do African hunting 'dogs'
(Lycaon pictus) agree upon which animal from a herd they chase they
are going to kill? In the morning, after waking up, they idle around until
they go hunting at some point. How do they agree upon when it is time to
go? Do they simply do what the alpha individual does or do they have other
mechanisms?
Biology 155: How come that the scientific name
of the fossa is Cryptoprocta ferox and not Fossa fossa, which
is the related fanaloka?
Biology 156: Have genetical analyses been conducted
on Persian cats about whether there were manuls
(Felis manul) amongst their ancestors or not?
Biology 157: Leatherback
turtles' (Dermochelys coriacea) main food source are jellyfish.
As they consist mostly of water, probably being the animals with the least
nutritional value per weight, how much of them does a leatherback have
to eat per day?
Biology 158: Which snakes that are commonly
considered harmless produce a mild paralyzing toxin in the mucous membranes
of their mouth?
C
Chemistry 1: What is/are the compound(s) that
give(s) cat feces its repulsive smell?
Chemistry 2: Is a recipe for Greek Fire available
somewhere?
Chemistry 3: What are the altered odorizing
compounds in the feces after a human has drunk large quantities of beer?
Chemistry 4: Are there any reports of right-wing
chemists having tried to synthesize a swastika-shaped molecule, and if
yes, with which success?
Chemistry 5: Have icosahedrane and octahedrane,
carbohydrates that are shaped like 'platonic' bodies, been synthesized?
Chemistry 6: Emolin is a monomere of hypericin,
which alleviates depression, but may cause rashes and skin cancer due to
photosensibilisation. Is emolin a psychotropic substance, too, and if yes,
does it have the same side effects?
Chemistry 7: What happens on a molecular level
in leather that is being hardened by cooking (cuirboulli)?
Chemistry 8: What happens on a molecular level
in ham while pickling?
Chemistry 9: How come that the sweat residues
on computer mice turn dark after some time?
Chemistry 10: The oil contained in cashew
nut shells is poisonous, but can be polymerized into a kind of rubber
that is extremely resistant to heat. Are there technical uses of cashew
oil rubber?
Chemistry 11: Is there a compound that becomes
supercritical (a 'gaseous fluid') at normal pressure and easily-to-accomplish
temperatures?
Chemistry 12: Is research on (bio-)chemical
reactions already being conducted by computer simulation of the respective
molecules and the physical forces that influence them?
Communication 1: What is the meaning of the
U.S. NPR radio station codes (e.g. KOMA)?
Communication 2: What was Radio Zitrone?
Computers 1: How are the Danish special letters
Å Æ and Ø transcribed on a standard keyboard?
Computers 2: What was the name of the Commodore
64 game that was a 'luxury' version of the old 'two gun emplacements
on a mountain range' subject (like MS-DOS Tank Wars) featuring an
animated US flag as wind indicator and marching soldiers after destruction
of the opponent's gun? Can anyone provide this game to run under a PC C
64 emulation?
Computers 3: In which Commodore
64 role playing game (probably by Electronic Arts) was a secret dungeon
where one could slaughter mad (EA?) programmers chained to programming
cells and gain lots of XP and items?
Computers 4: Is there really a possibility
to acquire fuel for the chainsaw in Maniac Mansion, and if yes,
what further developments of the game are made possible thus?
Computers 5: How and why did fast-loading programs
work on the Commodore 64?
Computers 6: Was the Commodore
64 game Alter Ego converted to another computer and is is available
for any OS?
Computers 7: What does the symbol on the Apple
Meta key stand for?
Computers 8: What does the 'Gr' in 'Alt(ernate)
Gr' mean?
Computers 9: Are 386/486-level IBM-compatible
PCs still in production somewhere and if yes, are they available in Europe?
Computers 10: How come that p.
389/390 in the manual of the German OEM version of Corel
Draw 4.0 reads 'Diese Seite absichtlich leer' ('This page deliberatly
left blank')?
Computers 11: Is it possible to fake the parameter
in a UNIX program that shows out of which other program it was started?
Computers 12: The Chaos Computer Club,
in a way the 'good conscience' of the German computer scene, stays rather
silent about the security leaks and assaults on privacy that are 'features'
of Windows 98. Why?
Computers 13: Has anyone already coined SERP
as an acronym for Self-erasable and reprogrammable
ROM (a ROM - for example BIOS - chip that self-optimizes and reprograms
on a hardware level - a kind of 'intelligent' EEPROM)?
Computers 14: Why is a standard Windows font
called Wingdings, which means 'junk' or 'totally useless waste of
(in this case) disk space'?
Computers 15: Does Windows
95 have an overwrite algorithm for Netscape browsers' color preferences/does
Win 95 ignore the color settings of HTML files?
Computers 16: Is there a possibility to acquire
old computer games like El-Fish and Worlds of Ultima 1 - The
Savage Empire today?
Computers 17: Why 'play' in 'plug and play'?
The first PnP hardware was not invented to enhance the PC's gaming capabilities.
Computers 18: There was a C
64 shoot-em-up in the late 80s named Killer Ring, which was
second-rate at best if it were not for a recipe for reputedly rather tasty
Killer Ring Cookies that was included as a 'feelie'. Is the recipe
available?
Computers 19: Is there a PC sound manipulation
program that will calculate a sine wave out of noise with the width between
the extrapolation steps being user definable?
Computers 20: Are or were there considerations
or attempts to build a trinary/ternary computer (+/-/0)? Would this be
technically possible?
Computers 21: Are there morph programs that
do not morph pixel-by-pixel, but with regard to structural elements such
as eyebrows, bone ridges etc?
Computers 22: Are there people who build custom
parallel computers by linking a PC to an Atari ST or Amiga, the latter's
coprocessors being used to reduce the processor load of the PC, and if
yes, how capable are they?
Computers 23: Are there 'cigarette burn' and
'daguerrotype' filter plugins for The GIMP?
Computers 24: How come that GNU
is able to change MS-DOS FATs into extended FATs, but unable to read the
same extended FATs if they were created by Win95/98/NT?
Cosmetics 1: Do the lips really become 'addicted'
to Labello lipstick after long-time use, and if yes, why?
D
Design 1: When did the decline of covered keyholes
in doors start in Germany; are they still manufactured on a considerable
scale?
Design 2: What is the fragance in 'opium'-scented
candles? Does opium really smell like that?
Design 3: When did coating of candles with
heat-proof colored latex paint that will remain and look rather disgusting
when the candle burns start?
Design 4: Are there documented cases of mattresses
filled with different material than announced (like women's hair instead
of horse hair)?
Design 5: Where can one get pictures of Parc
Güell and Sagrada Família
cathedral, the latter preferrably in various stages of non-completion?
Design 6: Where, when and why were rubber
chicken conceived as a comic article?
Design 7: Were can one get pictures of the
interior of Battersea Power Station, which
was designed in the style of a Victorian hotel lobby?
Design 8: German 2 and 5 DM coins bear the
inscription EINIGKEIT UND RECHT UND FREIHEIT on the rim. On commemorative
coins, however, this is sometimes replaced by another slogan (e.g. WAHRHEIT
ALS WIRKLICHKEIT UND MACHT on the '83 Karl Marx 5 DM coin). Did someone
collect all those special inscriptions?
Design 9: McDonald's Big Mac burger
boxes in Germany have an obviously handwritten seven-number code on the
lower right backward flap (e.g. 9711086). While the first six digits could
refer to a date, what does the seventh mean? Designer's tag? If not, what
do they stand for? If so, did someone collect all burger box designs with
respective date and designer?
Design 10: Where, when and by which manufacturer
were long cigarette papers first introduced and are they intended for anything
else but making joints?
Design 11: What is the purpose of flavored
condoms? If one gives head, the attraction will probably not be that
the condom has such a tasty flavor!
Design 12: Were does one get pictures of all
of the fake 'religious action figures' (e.g.
Jesus 'with ninja-messiah throwing nails
death killer-cross pump action over-under shotgun' and the Pope 'with blood
red Vatican Assassin uniform') done by UK St. Martins College of Art student
Oliver Huxter?
Design 13: Does Sagrotan desinfectant
marketed in Germany still smell like it did in ~1980?
Design 14: Are there soluble mineral or vitamine
tablets with genuine lime flavor?
Design 15: What is acajou aroma?
Design 16: Is there a comprehensive acount
of all types of non-microelectronical lab equipment that is manufactured
by German companies?
Design 17: How come that CDs were not produced
double-sided?
Drugs 1: Did someone reputedly use the phrase:
'He just wants to provoke you! Licking South
American toads will make you high, every idiot knows that!'
on his or her automatic answering machine?
Drugs 2: If salt licks for cows are treated
with THC or another hallucinogenic compound with minor side effects, do
the animals get to relish the effect, do they develope symptoms of addiction
or do they refuse the salt altogether?
Drugs 3: Is it possible to acquire the late
50s article by Dr. Dominic Fidler from the Aetherius Society's Cosmic
Voice magazine titled Mescaline and flying saucers?
E
Economy 1: How much money is spent p.a. for
inflatable sex dolls (either worldwide or in any country)?
Economy 2: Why were wooden Native Americans
with tomahawk and pipe ('cigar store indians') a widespread attribute
in U.S. cigar stores in former times?
Economy 3: Since when and why was the acronym
'ECU' (European Currency Unit) pronounced like the french ecu,
which was an ancient French coin and had nothing to do with the ECU at
all, save the spelling?
Economy 4: Which were the first models of plane
engines that were built in large (100+) numbers and who manufactured them?
Economy 5: From when to when was '2000' as
reference to the Y2K a common attribute in product names to suggest general
'sophistication'? Is it still common? If yes, when and by what 'year' will
it be replaced?
Economy 6: Is there a compendium of key adjectives
from German commercials, sorted by the time in which they were common,
like 'frisch', 'rein' or 'natürlich'?
Economy 7: Has someone done an analysis of
the changing supposed effects of over-the-counter- and phytodrugs over
the years, like strengthening of the immune system, prevention of coronary
diseases etc.?
Economy 8: Do chain stores that sell not only
inexpensive produce (Kaisers, Edeka, Stüssgen
as opposed to Aldi or Plus) conduct market analyses and subsequently
adjust the individual store's assortment of goods in that far that those
brands of the lowest price class are only sold in stores that reap considerable
profit from sales of the most expensive brands and not in stores where
most of the customers tend to buy cheap?
Economy 9: What position does McDonald's have
towards Monsanto and vice versa? If McDonald's, which does not produce
its foodstuffs and ingredients itself but from various food companies (including
Nestlé, producing the ice cream sundae mix, which only too happily
embraces 'novel food') would allow employing of gengineered crops or produce
from such, it would be quite a breakthrough for genetech companies, given
McDonald's influence.
Economy 10: What qualification do the actors
in teleshop commercials ('Ginsu 2000') possess, how did they get the job
and what do they earn?
Economy 11: Did the German nuclear technics
company Nukem take into account that in international business, most business
partners would tend to pronounce their name as if it were English?
Economy 12: Has it occurred that, when one
memorizes on the accounts of his/her purse along the lines of 'hmmm...
20$ left', a senior citizen commented on this by saying: 'This is a lot
of money, youngster! In my days, one could nearly get a whole kingdom for
such an amount!'?
F
Fashion 1: Where do you get straightjackets?
Fashion 2: Where do you get white Russian Army
winter camo jackets?
Fashion 3: Is heatable underwear available
somewhere?
Food 1: Is there really an appetizing substance
in McDonald's-style food and if yes, what is it?
Food 2: Why do Thanksgiving
turkeys get little paper crowns put over their leg stumps?
Food 3: Are there studies about how the decrease
in the number of plant species on pastures affects the taste of cheese?
Food 4: Since when is the Gratiné
brand of crisps no longer marketed in Germany and are they available
somewhere today?
Food 5: Since when is minced beef, pork and
poultry meat used in Mexican-style take-away food in Germany instead of
the original chunky one?
Food 6: Since when were numbered menus used
in Italian, Mexican, Asian and other foreign restaurants in Germany?
Food 7: Since when is Rotbäckchen
health drink produced and when was its label
designed?
Food 8: Why is a well-known German brand of
health food named Schneekoppe after
a Silesian mountain (today named Snezhka), when was it named thus and when
was the reverberating 'Schneeee-kop-pe' introduced in its commercials?
Food 9: Are there documentations (preferrably
with pictures) about chocolate or chocolate
produce that is infested by insect larvae?
Food 10: Is it true that the food industry
actively conditions humans to thinking of vanilla smell as 'good' by extensively
employing vanilla fragance in baby food?
Food 11: Which products (food and non-food)
had commercials in Germany that emphasized on the quality 'fresh', even
when totally meaningless for the product they advertise?
Food 12: Which kind of cheese is regularily
infested by mites, which are considered to be part of the cheese? Where
is this cheese available? What kind of mites is it?
Food 13: What is special about Cabua cocoa?
Food 14: How is Joghurt mild defined?
What other kinds of yoghurt are defined by the European food law?
Food 15: Which groups in Germany argued when
why to buy native produce?
Food 16: Are there any substantiated reports
on how 1000-year eggs and the fermented dish prepared in several places
by burying meat for weeks or months taste and what chemical changes are
produced by the respective treatments?
Food 17: The way of consuming tequila by licking
some salt off your hand, swilling the drink and having a bite of lemon,
though seeming very Mexican (by a European's standards), obviously
originates not in Mexico, where tequila is sipped. Where then was it conceived?
Food 18: Who produces the standardized 'Chinese'
and 'Mexican' dishes served by German food taxis?
Food 19: Is there a connection between the
theory of holistic nutrition (being conceived by Werner Kollath in Nazi
Germany) and the Nazi's Blut und Boden philosophy that called for
a no-frills lifestyle as to transfer the 'power' of the native soil to
humans.
Food 20: The substance that gives buns a 'fresh'
taste is an extract of human hair. a) Did it raise a scandal in Germany
at the time it became publicly known? b) Which compound is responsible
for this effect and how does it work? and c) Why has its use diminished
in recent times?
Food 21: Why is cheese only produced from cow,
sheep, goat and buffalo milk? Does the milk of other animals not curdle
(e.g. camel milk does not)?
Food 22: Which mammals are milked for food
and why no other?
Food 23: The company Thomy invented Rot-Weiß,
catsup and mayonnaise in one tube. Later, they marketed Rot-Gelb,
catsup and mustard following the same principle. Are plans for Weiß-Gelb
already in the pipeline?
Food 24: How does pemmikan taste?
Food 25: What is the spice cant which
was added to tea in 19th century England?
Food 26: How long did it take from the widespread
introduction of pizza in Germany that TV dinner pizzas were uniformly produced
with extra-thin dough and by demand of whom?
Food 27: What is special about Carmagnola peppermint?
G
Geography 1: How is Lac Mobuto Sésé
Seku called now?
Geography 2: Which large cities are that large
that inhabitants are no longer able to recognize suburbs and neighborhoods
as belonging to the same city they live in, if they run across the name
of that particular part of the city? Since there are not that many large
cities, it could be possible to draw the line somewhere, if you do not
count the effects of social stratification (most rich people in, for example,
Rio de Janeiro, do not know a favela's name, let alone its location).
Geography 3: Are there any pictures of Sakhalin
landscape on the web?
Geography 4: Is there current information about
the state of Lake Aral and the Kara-Bogas-Gol?
Geography 5: Why is the Black Sea island in
the vicinity of the mouth of the Danube called 'Snake Island' and what's
going on there?
Geography 6: The westernmost peninsula of New
Guinea is named Vogelkop peninsula. While this might mean 'Bird's
head', and the peninsula actually is shaped roughly like a bird's head,
this is only recognizable on maps, of which there were probably none at
the time of the naming. Who named the peninsula, when and why?
Geology 1: Are there accounts about how long
the reserves of fossile fuels and mineral resources are and were thought
to last at various times? Has someone drawn a graph out of them to depict
the estimated development of these resources' reserves?
Geology 2: In Amazonia, there are four major
colorations of water: 1) 'White' water, as in the Amazonas, has a pale
mud color from soil particles. 2) 'Black' water, as found in the Rio Negro,
is cola-colored due to peat. 3) 'Clear' water has a greenish-blue color
and springs in regions where both soil and organic matter have been eluded,
sometimes being 4) 'red' water, which is basically clear water in shallow
rivers with white sand bottom which diffracts the daylight, giving the
river a blood-like coloration. Are there photos of all these types of water
available?
H
History 1: Where do you get information about
the Polynesian Empire(s) between the 7th and 12th century A.D.?
History 2: Is there comprehensive information
about the history of the Eastern Asian people available?
History 3: What were the different slogans
of Nazi Germany's concentration and annihilation camps?
History 4: What purpose did the Great
Tower of ancient Zimbabwe serve? Is it hollow or massive? What is inside
and/or underneath it?
History 5: Are there accounts from various
Wester newspapers about the coup d'etat in South Vietnam on Nov
1st, 1963, which resulted in Ngo Dinh Diem's
deposition and execution one day later?
History 6: Is there a map with all Native American
tribes' or states' settlement areas?
History 7: This
is a photo of German zoologist Ernst Schäfer's (under the swastika
pennant) 1938/39 Tibet expedition in search of, amongst other things, the
proto-Aryans. The head of the German sitting at
the extreme right seems to be altered or retouched/exchanged: the board
in the window ends abruptly above it, the lighting being different from
the rest of the picture and the head seeming uncharacteristically blurred.
Has the image really been tampered with? If yes, who is this man and what
has been changed?
I
Information Theory 1: How much information
of any kind can be exchanged between two persons in a given amount of time
and how much is it retained after being perceived by the addressed part,
granted that the two do know each other exceptionally well?
Information Theory 2: Is it possible to narrow
form and context of a verbal message to such an extent that the range of
possible implications is also significantly narrowed, or does the content
of any verbal message allow for much more variation than its form and the
circumstances?
Information Theory 3: Is there a form of human
'language' that does not words, but sounds that express the content of
communication on their own?
Internet 1: Why is the German term for the
Web the pseudo-American 'Datenhighway',the U.S. term, however, in reality
'Infobahn'?
Internet 2: How widespread are 'has/had...
g/otten' and 's/he'-type abbreviations on the Web?
Internet 3: Is there a 'guided web tour' plugin
(like an automatic link list) available?
Internet 4: Is there a net library of religious
and mythological symbols with explanations?
Internet 5: Did someone post the rules to the
card games Double Fanucci (from a Zork game) and Beta
Antarean Fizzbin (from Star Trek: A Piece of the Action) on
the Web?
Internet 6: Why is irc.uni-erlangen.de
named 'the 'Berch'-server'?
Internet 7: What does the 'Mo-' in Mozilla
refer to?
Internet 8: Is there a Web index of major scientific
blunders?
Internet 9: Are there attempts to sell the
reformatted help pages of Netscape Navigator as the official guidebook?
It would make sense, as online help files are somewhat worthless when encountering
a connection problem.
Internet 10: Are there statistics concerning
which web browser in which version is at which percentage employed under
any given OS?
Internet 11: Why is the widespread Chinese
HTML encoding called 'Big-5'?
Internet 12: Who is Dr. Donald F. Roberts of
Stanford University who 'researched the influence of media on children
for nearly 20 years' and invented the RSAC filter system and what are his
moral values?
J
K
L
Law 1: How is the sex ratio concerning 'official'
executions (executions after a formal trial), both in single countries
and worldwide?
Law 2: Are there accounts on the Australian
'shark-arm murder case', in which a shark being
captured for an aquarium vomited the tattoed arm of a corpse that had been
disposed of by chopping it into parts and dumping it in the sea?
Linguistics 1: To whom does the term 'Dynamic
Duo' refer?
Linguistics 2: Who initially invented 'Das
saugt' as a pseudo-translation of 'That sucks'?
Linguistics 3: Is 'Chao Ten' a Chinese expression?
Linguistics 4: Are there phonetic dictionaries
of English/German<->Khoisan languages?
Linguistics 5: How much information about Church
Slavic (which is extinct) remains?
Linguistics 6: Is there an English/German<->Romany
dictionary available?
Linguistics 7: Where is the street name 'Gottesweg'
in Cologne derived from?
Linguistics 8: Why does the Turkish expression
for 'to masturbate' translate as 'to pull 31 times'? What does the Turkish
expression refer to?
Linguistics 9: Why is the German name for pickled
pig legs 'Eisbein'?
Linguistics 10: How did the scheme 'nicht -
auch nicht - schon gar nicht' develope?
Linguistics 11: Where can you get an English
or German translation of the national anthem of
Mongolia (music by Bilegiin Damdinsuren (b. 1919); words by Tsevegmiddiin
Gaitav (1929-1979) and Choijilyn Chimid (b. 1927). The music was adopted
in 1950 and the words in 1961)?
Linguistics 12: Where does the word 'modern'
stem from? It sounds like the German 'Mode' (fashion); did it merely mean
'in fashion' in the first place?
Linguistics 13: When did the expression 'Satz
heiße Ohren' for 'beating' (actually, rubbing an opponent's ears
violently back and forth with flat hands) come up and how did it develope
(how come it is nowadays much less often used as a direct bodily threat
and used by a much larger spectrum of people)?
Linguistics 14: Where in Germany can one take
courses in Malagasy?
Linguistics 15: Is there a Yiddish<->English
net dictionary?
Linguistics 16: How did the meaning of the
German 'Schindluder' change from 'cadaver' to 'incorrect/cruel treatment'?
Linguistics 17: When did the phrase 'Geh' doch
in den Osten!' turn up and what does it refer to?
Linguistics 18: From which language does the
instrument name 'banjo' stem?
Linguistics 19: From which language stems the
English slang term 'dubich' for 'marijuana' and what does it mean?
Linguistics 20: When were ^´`introduced
into written French, by whom and why?
Linguistics 21: Were the stress marks (for
example ^) that one finds in medieval German texts actually used then or
are they a recent addition to faciliate reading? If the former, when did
they disappear?
Linguistics 22: Who decided that the intermediate
symbols for ae, oe, ue, which were the respective vowels with a small e
on top, were to be replaced by ä, ö, ü in German, when did
that happen and why were two horizontal points used, which were already
applied as diaëresis over any vowel (as in coördinated, naïve)?
Linguistics 23: When was the horizontal line
as 'double consonant' symbol officially abolished in German?
Linguistics 24: What do the names of Mexican
dishes (Taco, Burrito, Quesadilla
etc) mean in English?
Linguistics 25: Amongst which social and geographical
groups in the USA, especially in Los Angeles, is the use of L.A.
for Los Angeles common in spoken and written language?
Linguistics 26: In which languages or language
families are words other than names started with capital letters? In which
are only small letters used, even for names?
Linguistics 27: Were the Cyrillic
letters that were abolished in the USSR in 1918 abolished because they
had, over time, fallen in disuse, or were they still used before and a)
replaced by other letters or b) the respective words abolished, too?
Linguistics 28: Are there few loan-words in
any language that contain 'unfamiliar' sounds (like English -th- in German),
or are they rather reconstructed and 'unfamiliar' sounds replaced by 'familiar'
ones?
Linguistics 29: When was f introduced
for the Greek phi? Did the transcription of phi into Latin
letters by ph already exist at this time? If so, did both exist
in the Latin language and if yes, were they interchangeable or not, if
not, why? If not, in which languages did the different letter codes f
and ph for the same sound originate and which one is older?
Linguistics 30: When in the history of modern
German did the discrimination between v and u begin? Did
v, after having seperated from the Latin u, possess a distinct
sound, or was it always used interchangeable with w or f
in German?
Linguistics 31: Who first used the term 'pissing
ground' (as in the movie Falling Down) for 'territory of a human
or other mammal'?
Linguistics 32: If a decanted liquid is a decantate,
then what is the remainder? Decantante? Decantone?
Linguistics 33: What is the Spanish word for
'munchies'?
Linguistics 34: Why do many shops employ quotation
marks rather needlessly around adjectives or nouns (like 'Frische' Orangen)?
Linguistics 35: Which proverbs and expressions
have transcended from commercials into the German language, which from
TV?
Linguistics 36: Is freizügig a
Germanized form of the English liberal?
Linguistics 37: What does the term Atombusen
mean and what does it refer to?
Linguistics 38: Did the persons that (re-)defined
the German word Lausitz as 'toilet seat that has been sat warm by
the previous user' know that the word Lausitz was already in use
(a region's name: e. Lusatia) or did they invent their word anew,
without knowing that it already existed?
Linguistics 39: Does the English adjective
ending -like always refer to visual qualities?
Linguistics 40: Whence stems the term 'mob'
for the U.S. Mafia and what does it refer to?
Linguistics 41: What does the 'best' in 'Best
Boy' (cable carrier) mean?
Linguistics 42: When and where did the fake
'Native American' matter of speech (e.g. heap good, go-um)
in the English language first appear?
Linguistics 43: What does the Japanese word
ryu (as in Ryukyu, Ryuichi, Ryuho) mean?
Linguistics 44: How large is the percentage
of Cologne's (the city having hosted the musical Gaudí) inhabitants
that pronounce the architect's name like the Bavarian Gaudi?
Linguistics 45: When, where and why was the
abbreviation Fon for Telefon conceived?
Linguistics 46: Is there a compendium of the
Tomainian language from The Great Dictator?
Linguistics 47: How come that the German word
Akt means 'intercourse' and 'nude rendition'?
Linguistics 48: Is the brand name Johnny
Walker a reference to a protagonist of 'Supertramp' William Henry Davies?
Is the band name Supertramp a reference to the author's moniker?
Linguistics 50: Do operating instructions translated
into Japanese or Chinese by Europeans have as often grammatical errors
as do those that were translated the other way around and are the errors
of the same kind?
Linguistics 51: How well-known is legalesisch
as a German translation of legalese?
Linguistics 52: Why are rolipolis (Glomeridae)
called Saftkugler in German?
Linguistics 53: whO InvEntEd thIs cyphErpUnk-Ish
wAy Of wrItIng?
Linguistics 54: Which people have or had names
that mean 'human being' in their respective language (e. g. Zulu, Kanaka)?
Linguistics 55: Since when does the tendency
in English-language media exist to inflect words from other languages in
accordance with their position in the English sentence instead of simply
using the nominative (as '...the Fantastischen Vier...' as opposed
to '...the Fantastische Vier...')?
Linguistics 56: Where did the term Geldkatze
for 'purse' stem from?
Linguistics 57: How did the English words for
'happy' and 'homosexual' develope until they both were gay?
Linguistics 58: When did the expression 'one's
daily bread' first appear? Bread in the European sense is, at least in
recent days, no basic food for the majority of the world's population and
has never been in large areas; furthermore it is nutritionally not really
adequate for long-time consumption. Thus, the aforementioned expression
seems to be more than a bit romanticizing or quite old.
Linguistics 59: In an edition of German MAD
magazine there was a section featuring useless household items, amongst
which there was a set of mats for glasses which bore a medieval-style minne
poem named something like Diû minne grosz. Is this poem really
medieval German and if yes, what does it mean in today's words?
Linguistics 60: Does the expression mem
toko exist in any language and if yes, what does it mean?
Linguistics 61: The Hindi word for 'potato'
is aloo. Since potatoes arrived in India only in the early Colonial
era, the question is why 'potato' was not Indianized like, for example,
'tomato' (Hind. tamatar). Is aloo translatable? If yes, what
does it mean? In any case, is or was there a indigenuous vegetable named
aloo in India that has been substituted by potatoes today? If yes,
what is it?
Linguistics 62: Why is a type of secondary
school in Germany called Gymnasium (greek: workout room, athletes'
training camp, gym)?
Linguistics 63: Was the term 'Raskolnikov'
ever used in any language to describe a person similar in character to
the protagonist of Crime and Punishment (as in '...well, he's a
real Raskolnikov...')?
Linguistics 64: Was the term 'hippie' used
by drill instructors as an insult for sluggish recruits in the 70s?
Linguistics 65: Whence is the term 'to ride
shotgun' derived?
Linguistics 66: Why is a style of short shirts
referred to as 'tank tops'?
Linguistics 67: How was the name Nissen
huts for a type of sheet metal huts conceived?
Linguistics 68: What are the Russian slang
words for cannabinoid products (hashish, marijuana)?
Linguistics 69: Is there a language map of
today's Afghanistan and the surrounding areas showing the distribution
of Iranian, Indo-Aryan and Altaic (Turk) family languages?
Linguistics 70: How was the term umlauts
for ÄÖÜ derived?
Linguistics 71: How does the Latin-letter transcription
of Tibetan work?
Literature 1: In which book (fiction, in German)
are both Chara foetida and Najas flexilis mentioned, one
a short time after the other?
Literature 2: Why did Douglas
Adams choose 42 as the Answer? Could it have been any number? If not,
what does '42' mean? If, why 42?
Literature 3: Where does one get the Zeit
article where a comparison of Brockhaus encyclopedia's various editions
is undertaken?
Literature 4: Since when were swear words like
'verflucht' censored as 'verfl...' in German comic strips? Who was initially
responsible, a central agency or the producers on their own accord? Is
this practice still kept up today?
Literature 5: How often does it occur that
persons put fake dust covers around their books because they are ashamed
of the titles (like 'Die Seestreitkräfte
der Welt (Guide to the World's Navies)' around 'Die
dicksten Katzen der Welt (Guide to the World's Fattest Felines)')?
Literature 6: Who did the 'Hier ruht Anselm
Feuerbach/Der im Leben manches malte...' poem from Lothar-Günther
Buchheim's Das Boot?
Literature 7: Are the Seven pillars of wisdom
a concept conceived by Thomas Edward Lawrence
himself and if not, by whom and what are they?
Literature 8: In which countries do XYZ
for dummies computer assistance books not sell well or at all because
the local users would not buy a book the title of which suggests that they
are complete nerds who possess several thousand dollars worth of technology,
but are too stupid to work out how to use it?
Literature 9: Did someone make a rough estimate
on how large the gigantic armies in the High
Fantasy spoof comic book series Chronicles of the Black Moon are?
M
Magic 1: Is there a satisfying explanation
for the feats that, according to contemporary witnesses as reliable as
they come, Dr. John 'Destiny' Dee supposedly
accomplished, like conjuring of and communication with angels and spirits?
Mathematics 1: How did the Slavic numeral system
that was abolished by Peter the Great work?
Mathematics 2: In which book or movie is it
found out that pi consists solely out of 0s and 1s from some point on and
that this is a binary-code message from God to the Creation? What does
the message say?
Mathematics 3: One can write down a number
infinitesimally larger than 0 by a mathematical term (1/0.99999... -1).
If one uses this method to write down numbers that are infinitesimally
larger than the preceding one, according to which equation does the termina's
complexity rise?
Medicine 1: What are the anatomical names of
the 'snuff pits' between thumb and forefinger and thumb and wrist?
Medicine 2: What are the yellowish-white, extremely
foul-smelling lumps that one sometimes coughs up after a chronical cold?
Medicine 3: Do human eyebrows turn grey at
the same time as the hair on the head? Always, sometimes or never?
Medicine 4: Why does the hair on one's head
turn grey or white in a relatively short amount of time?
Medicine 5: Is it true that humans can become
white-haired 'over night' after a severe emotional shock?
Medicine 6: Is there a most common (>>50%)
sequence in which eyebrows, body hair, beard and hair on the head turn
grey? Why does some hair turn grey only several years later than other,
if at all?
Medicine 7: What neurophysiological processes
does a 'knockout' cause to occur in the brain?
Medicine 8: How many frenula are there
in human beings, where are they located and do they have different names?
Medicine 9: Why do the eye sockets hurt when
you have a fever and move your eyes rapidly?
Medicine 10: Has there been research on overdose
effects of vitamine E, H, K and panthotenic acid and the long-term effects
of food with added calcium, iodate etc.?
Medicine 11: Do mass graves from past epidemics
('plague pits') still contain active smallpox
viruses?
Medicine 12: How come that homemade chicken
soup is a remedy against the flu?
Medicine 13: Are there diseases in humans where
abnormal growth of the teeth occurs?
Medicine 14: Who found out that Sarcocystis
species (except S. lindemanni) are incapable of causing serious
diseases in humans (a possible primary host) by attempting to infect himself
with smples, bearing in mind that it was well-known that Sarcocystis
cause often-lethal muscle degradation in its intermediate carnivore hosts?
Medicine 15: Are there assays of the distribution
of Rh/rh genotypes in a US population before the introduction of treatments
against Rh/rh immunic reactions in mothers and nowadays?
Medicine 16: What causes the short-term toxic
effects (internal bleeding as opposed to long-term leukemia/skin cancer)
of benzene?
Medicine 17: Are there surgeons who chat with
fugu cooks about the art of cutting?
Military 1: The Malaysian
frigate Hang Tuah (F 76) was supposedly built as a 'warship/luxury
yacht' for President Francis N. K. 'Kwame' Nkrumah
of Ghana, but taken over by the Royal Navy as HMS Mermaid as Nkrumah
was removed from office before the vessel's delivery. In how far can this
vessel be called 'luxury'? How much did Malaysia have to spend in 1977
to acquire the ship?
Military 2: Are there still barracks in Germany
that are named after Eduard Dietl, military commander of occupied Norway
in WWII, or other high-ranking Nazi officers?
Military 3: When was the term 'Die Truppe'
coined for the fighting (as opposed to administrative) part of the German
army, and by which group in the military?
Military 4: When was the Morse code established
as the code for military abbreviations (e.g. Viet Cong = V.C.
= Victor Charlie, thus 'Charlie' for Vietcong)?
Military 5: Is the term 'battleship' an abbreviation
of 'line-of-battle-ship', which was translated into German as 'Linienschiff',
which was, from about 1870 to 1920, equivalent in meaning to 'battleship',
which was afterwards replaced by the one-on-one translation of 'battleship',
'Schlachtschiff'?
Military 6: Is a picture of the Finis Belli,
an armored galleon built by the Dutch during the Spanish siege of Antwerp?
Military 7: Why did the U.S., world's #1 representatives
of a constitutional democracy as they were at this time, call one post-civil
war monitor Dictator? Were there vessels with similar names at that
time?
Military 8: Where does one get information
on the battles at Oerlinghausen and in the Dörenschlucht in early
April, 1945?
Military 9: How come that one of Papua-New
Guinea's ASI 315 'Pacific Forum' class patrol boats
is named Seeadler? The other crafts' names are Basilisk, Dreger
and Tarangau, neither of which names seems as German as Seeadler
does.
Military 10: What do the names of the vessels
in the Indonesian Navy mean?
Military 11: What happened to the Iraqui tanker
Agnadeen, which was interned in Alexandria in 1991, and the Iraqui
frigate Ibn Khaldoum after the 2nd Gulf War (Desert Storm)?
Military 12: Is there a picture of the catamaran-hulled
North Korean frigate that is code-named Soho?
Military 13: Where does the black-St. Andrew's
cross-on-white tail fin insignia on Spanish military
aircraft stem from and when and by whom was it introduced?
Military 14: Is there a picture of the Capitan
Cabral, a river patrol craft of the Paraguayan Navy which was built
in 1907 and probably is the oldest warship in active duty today?
Military 15: The Danish Flyvefisken
class of patrol craft (Hajen shown here)
is called STANFLEX 300, its displacement being roughly 300 ts. However,
the fishery protection vessels of the Thetis class with a full displacement
of 3500 ts are called STANFLEX 2000. Why?
Military 16: Why did a small Lebanese millitia
call themselves 'Guardians of the Cedars'? The cedar is the Lebanese
national symbol; did they use it as an allegory for 'country'?
Military 17: Is there a comprehensive account
of navies' naming traditions?
Military 18: Who invented the Japanese 8-8
fleet concept? Which different 8-8 plans were there (realized and
planned), when were they, of what vessels did they consist and what rôle
were they to play in the Japanese naval strategy?
Military 19: Are there any published mission
accounts/diaries of Soviet Tu-95 'Bear D' long-range
recce crews?
Military 20: The Projekt 1159/1159TR
'Koni' frigates (shown here is the former GDR
unit Rostock) were an export-only Soviet design, save for a single
1159 unit in Soviet service for training of the export vessel's
crews. This ship, later sold to Bulgaria and renamed Smely, was
named Delfin. Some sources, however, erroneously claimed it's name
to be Timofey Ul'yantsev or Zelenodolsk. Was there ever a
Soviet warship bearing this name and what kind of ship was it?
Military 21: Are there accounts of the French-Siamese
war that ran from Nov., 1940-Jan., 1941?
Military 22: Are there yellow press articles
on the Soviet light cruiser Sverdlov's
visit to Spithead during Queen Elizabeth II's coronation fleet parade in
Jun., 1953, the first time one of these ships was seen by the West? Actually
obsolete from the beginning, they were attributed to have a secret 'super
maneuvring system' and other superior equipment.
Military 23: What happened to the alleged West
German submarine class 211, of which 18 were reputedly planned to go into
service from 1995 on?
Military 24: Is there an armed force that names
army units and/or navy vessels after deities that are currently worshipped
in the respective country?
Movies 1: In which countries are movies not
even subtitled, let alone dubbed over? What are the common qualities in
those countries where neither is done? Is there a definite threshold in
these criteria?
Movies 2: Is there a Spanish version of 1492:
Conquest of Paradise with English subtitles available?
Movies 3: Are Charles McKeown's propaganda
posters from the movie Brazil available somewhere?
Movies 4: Is the 'castrated' Universal Studios-version
of Brazil available on PAL video?
Movies 5: Are Gianni Schettino and Antonio
Ragusa, playing the transvestites in Rome in Night on Earth TV in
real life too?
Movies 6: Which movie ends with the song Davon
geht die Welt nicht unter or Ich weiß, es wird einmal ein
Wunder geschehen and a shot of exploding nukes or marching (Third Reich?)
soldier's booted feet? Dr. Strangelove?
Movies 7: Who invented (by principle) and who
built (by form) the voice activated doors in Airplane II?
Movies 8: What is the role of the leaf in Story
of Ricky? Is it special as a leaf or special because it came from 'outside'
or what?
Movies 9: Was Malicious (Seitensprung
mit Folgen) featured as a foto-story summary
in Bravo magazine when it appeared
in Germany?
Movies 10: Was the gate to the Halls of Justice
in Mad Max which was of the same style as Auschwitz's Arbeit
macht frei cause of an extended discussion in Germany, was it merely
noted or did it escape widespread notice, and is it a deliberate or a coincidential
similarity?
Movies 11: Who dubbed the policeman in Mad
Max who calls the detached hand of the bola thrower 'lost property'
in the German version and why does this person have an English accent?
Movies 12: For which movies were own production
companies founded (e.g. Killing Zoë Productions)? Which of
these were independent companies, maybe even producing other movies afterwards,
which were only subdivisions that existed only as long as screening and
promoting the movie did take?
Movies 13: In how far was Life of Brian
intended by the Pythons as an innocent satire on religion?
Movies 14: Are there movie posters of Gandhi
2 from UHF?
Movies 15: Is there a script of the German
dubbed version of Airplane! (Die unglaubliche Reise in einem
verrückten Flugzeug) with the Bavarian text of the Jive Guys?
Movies 16: Is there already a movie in which
the WWW plays a key rôle?
Movies 17: Why does the passer-by exhale
into the air dispenser in front of the Ministry of Information Retrieval
in Brazil?
Movies 18: In how far does Strange Days
use the role-playing game Shadowrun
as an explicit guideline? Neither Cyberpunk novels nor Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0.
mention addictives like 'the wire', but they are quite important in Shadowrun,
named BTL there.
Movies 19: Did anyone draw a floorplan of the
building in Strange Days that Max enters while Lenny
shows the customer the 'showering girl' clip?
Movies 20: Why is the password to Mr. Helpman's
elevator in Brazil ERE I AM J H - it might be that Sam's father
referred to by Helpman was named Jeremiah (of which the password is an
anagram), but his family name was 'Lowry'?
Movies 21: Are there considerations to make
a Shadowrun movie?
Movies 22: Do the Hebrew letters that are burned
into the stone by the Lord in The Ten Commandments make any sense?
Movies 23: Is there a movie about the conquest
of the Aztec kingdom?
Movies 24: Are there movies about well-known
historical events that do not take part in North America or Europe, are
intended to be factual and in which every character speaks the language
the depicted person spoke in real life?
Movies 25: Is the script of The Great Dictator
available somewhere?
Movies 26: What is the inscription on Commander
Schultz's plane in The Great Dictator?
Movies 27: What are the criteria of porn movie
tit casters?
Movies 28: What is the 'church of the Antichrist'
building in El día de la Bestia in reality and whose statue
stands in front of it?
Movies 29: What did Douglas
Adams do for the Monty Python troupe?
Does he appear somewhere in their works in person?
Movies 30: 'Aristotle was not a Belgian.' (A
Fish Called Wanda). Why Belgian?
Movies 31: Where does one get the lyrics of
Sebastian's song Sodomy
from Meet the Feebles?
Movies 32: Why does one of the workers in the
scene where the order is given to search for the missing technician in
Class of Nukem High wear a 3M sticker on his security helmet?
Movies 33: In the New Athenaeum scene
in El día de la Bestia, the orator mentions 'the Pope' (a
slide of the Pope being shown) and 'the Antipope' (a slide of some high-ranking
Catholic cleric being shown). Who is depicted as the Antipope?
Movies 34: How come that Dr.
Klahn's prisoners in Kentucky Fried Movie, when getting released
by 'Big Jim' Slade, sing Shalom Aleichem?
Movies 35: Are there posters of the machinegun
scene in the Cleopatra Schwartz episode and of the Willer Beer
commercial final frame in Kentucky Fried Movie?
Movies 36: How come that the mustard Hynkel
puts on his strawberries in The Great Dictator is explicitly called
'English mustard'? Is it because English mustard is very hot or because
at that time, the UK was the only country that had managed to kick Hitler's
ass?
Music 1: Are there three timpani beats in the
'part in the war' part of Wish you were here by Pink Floyd?
Music 2: What is the spoken text by William
S. Burroughs in Ministry's Quick Fix?
Music 3: What is the WWII-time history of Rolf
Gehrke and Walter Oppenberg, who wrote the scouting song Nun greift
in die Saiten? What do the references to 'Cretean paths' and 'a victorious
army(host?)' imply?
Music 4: Is there a conductor who will get
or got an orgasm when feeling especially moved by an impressive piece of
music (for example, Tchaikovski's 1st piano concerto) and still can continue
conducting; if yes, how does or did it sound like?
Music 5: Who were the prevalent rap artists
of the time between when LL Kool J and Kriss
Kross rose to fame and what diversity of rap styles did reach the mainstream
market then?
Music 6: How do the Pink Floyd people define
a 'floyd'?
Music 7: Which are the spoken words in the
'radio' part right at the start of Wish you were here?
Music 8: In which musical aspects does the
chorus of Moskau, Moskau correspond with the stanzas of Soyuz
nerushimyi?
Music 9: Is the 'uh' after '...stand beside
and look' in Bob Marley's Redemption Song
out of purpose or out of fancy?
Music 10: What is the opposite of 'prelude'?
Music 11: Was the German band Silke Bischoff
virtually censored, not by official decree, but by silent agreement of
radio and TV stations in Germany, because its naming after a woman hostage
killed in a shootout on Aug 18th, 1988 was considered 'distasteful'? Did
this happen to other bands, and if yes, to which?
Music 12: Why is there currently a revival
of '50s/'60s schmaltz music in Germany? Why '50s/'60s and not '70s or '80s
music?
Music 13: What are the lyrics and spoken words
in Jah Lloyd's Walking Dub and what does White bird/Black bird/Two
bird/T'ree bird refer to?
Music 14: How does Japanese Heavy Metal-type
music sound?
Music 15: What is the philosophy of the German
band Stahlhammer?
Music 16: What happened to the 80s electronic
band Time Design, who produced Themes from the Real World, Volume
1?
Music 17: Where does one get a theremin
or instruction how to build one?
Music 18: Did any of today's Industrial bands
do an 'unplugged' CD?
Music 19: What happened to Sinéad O'Connor
after her run-in with the Pope?
Music 20: Where can one get Blixa
Bargeld's obituary to Rio Reiser?
Music 21: Are the lyrics of the 'Marihuana'
song by Die Goldenen Zitronen
available somewhere?
Music 22: Is there a Nazi band named Blutkrieg?
Music 23: What did the sound studio electronics
cost that was used to do the sound mix of Faith
and the Muse's Annwynn, Beneath the Waves?
Music 24: Does 'Nightmare Wave', a 'dark' version
of Dream Wave music, exist? If yes, by which bands is it done?
Music 25: What is the inscription and the symbol
on the ticket stamp in Joachim Witt/Peter Heppner's Die Flut?
Music 26: The Soviet WWII BM
series rocket launchers (aka 'Stalin Organ') were dubbed Katyusha
(Little Katya) by the Red Army. Is there a connection to the patriotic
song bearing the same name, which goes about a girl whose guy is a Red
Army soldier protecting the Motherland from the German invaders?
Music 27: Is the cockroach in La Cucharacha
really dazed because of smoking too much marijuana?
Mythology 1: According to which authorities
(e.g. Anne Rice) are vampires able to live out
of blood banks in times of need? According to which even off blood substitute?
N
O
P
Persons 1: What is 'Prototyp' by Dalibor Janda
and who is he?
Persons 2: Did Roland
Emmerich and Wolfgang Petersen like Perry Rhodan- and Jerry
Cotton-style German pulp fiction/movies as kids?
Persons 3: What did Joe
R. McCarthy die of?
Persons 4: What were the political positions
of the Monty Python crew and how explicitly
do they appear in their works?
Persons 5: Is there any picture of King Kamehameha
II?
Persons 6: Who is the Merriam person that a
lot of extinct animals are named after?
Persons 7: What is the German author Peter
Lauster like; what does he claim is his basic philosophy and view on
life, how does he think human beings are?
Persons 8: Is the Moldavian biologist Vladimir
Kirkin for real?
Persons 9: Who is Alan Bates?
Persons 10: Do the artists of the Sandman
and Death comics have a free hand in their artwork, do they have
strict limitations by the text authors or do both groups work hand in hand?
Persons 11: The vernier scale, named after
Pierre Vernier who invented it in 1637, is called Nonius in German, after
the Portugese mathematician Pedro Nuñez, called Nonius (1492-1577).
What did this man have to do with the vernier scale and why was 'Nuñez'
written spanish style?
Persons 12: Which post-WWII African statesman
became as 'the negro with the golden bed' the embodiment of the opinion
that development aid is squandered money, which was held strong in Germany
at that time?
Persons 13: Who is the archetypal 'Bubba'?
Persons 14: Was Carl von Linné the scientist's
real Swedish name?
Persons 15: Who were the Fantastic Four?
Persons 16: Who was the wacko Russian (might
be a fake) who appeared in Ilja Richter movies?
Persons 17: Who is Gertrude, to whom Strange
Days is dedicated?
Persons 18: Who was Maria van Diemen?
Persons 19: Is the wife of CDU
politician Wolfgang Schäuble the president of the Deutsche Welthungerhilfe?
Persons 20: Who is University of Cologne's
Erik Möller?
Persons 21: Who was Gunga Dinh, as in Rudyard
Kipling's poem?
Persons 22: Does Dr. Oetker
really have a degree and if yes, in what?
Persons 23: What do the Gs in G. G. Anderson's
name stand for?
Persons 24: Who were Jim Beam and Jack Daniel?
Persons 25: What happened to 'Kremlin flyer'
Matthias Rust after he became institutionalized?
Persons 26: Why was Jim
Morrison being called Lizard King?
Persons 27: Who was the German entertainer
Fips Rasmussen, what happened to him, why did he do overtly racist 'jokes'
in his ~80s stage shows, why did nobody openly protest agains this, does
he still do this kind of shows and were/are there other demi-fascist 'comedians'
like him in Germany after WWII?
Persons 28: What is the actual color of Kate
Winslet's eyes?
Persons 29: Is there a picture of Ivan Sorvall,
founder of one of the world's leading manufacturers of ultracentrifuges?
Persons 30: If a movie director does not want
to be connected to a movie s/he made, the director's name in the credits
is exchanged with 'Alan Smithee'. Was or is this a real person, and if
yes, who's he?
Persons 31: What did the actress Kimiko Tanaka
and the director Adrian Neil do except being involved in the creation of/appearing
in the Cyclone Home Trainer teleshop commercial?
Persons 32: Are there official accounts about
the mysterious North Vietnamese fighter ace Colonel Tonb (or Tomb)?
Persons 33: In 1925, George Galli disappeared
from his room in London's Savoy hotel. About 30 years later he was found
working as a priest in a French village. Are there contemporary newspaper
reports about the latter incident?
Philosophy 1: Why is it that quotes by classical
Greek philosophers, when given on German TV, are often spoken with an over-dramatical
intonation?
Physics 1: Who coined the term 'electromagnetic
radiation' and to which of this kind of radiation's properties does it
refer?
Physics 2: Why do the pictures in hairdresser's
shop windows very often get a bluish tinge when bleached?
Physics 3: Which well-known contemporary physical
theories are conceived without any possibility for veri- or falsification
within the next decades, given the probable technical means available ('Wormholes'
being an example)? Such a theory would be unscientific, considering physics
an empirical science.
Physics 4: What would triodes do if you put
them into a circuit analogous to an LED?
Physics 5: Up to which point can one exactly
define the wavelength of a photon or its energy?
Physics 6: What is the highest possible frequency,
taking into account the Planck time?
Physics 7: How hot can a star become thoretically
and at which wavelength would be the intensity peak of its radiation, according
to Wien's law?
Physics 8: Are there any instructions on how
to build prism glasses that exchange up/down and/or left/right?
Politics 1: Are there diaries of then-young
European left-wing politicians or political activists about António
S. R. de Spínola's attempted coup d'état in Portugal
1975?
Politics 2: Was 1. FC Köln soccer player
Toni Polster really a candidate for Jörg Haider's extremist right
FPÖ in Austria, 1997?
Politics 3: What is the U.S. NWCP?
Politics 4: How is the current state in Western
Sahara concerning independence negotiations and the POLISARIO's guerilla
war?
Politics 5: Was there a time in which the PRC
and Taiwan were in the UN World Security Council (one as a temporary, one
as a permanent member) and if yes, how did it work out?
Politics 6: Was the Heldenplatz in Vienna as
full of people when Hitler held his Anschluß
speech in 1938 as it is shown in the Nazi propaganda movie, or is the movie
yet another fake?
Politics 7: Are there any reasonable guesses
about who is on the U.S. Board of Censorship?
Politics 8: Does there have to be a public
advertisement by law for high-ranking civil service jobs such as mayors
in Germany?
Politics 9: Which countries demand a proof
of suitable cultural ancestry for an immigrant to gain citizen status?
Politics 10: In how far is health
shoe manufacturer Birkenstock connected to the German extremist right
Republikaner party?
Politics 11: Why does Oman possess such a disjunctive
territory, the Musandam area being separated from the remainder by
the UAE with a small Omani enclave in the vivinity of Khawr Fakkhan and
Al Fujayrah in between?
Politics 12: Why is there a Belgian enclave,
Baarle-Nassau, in the southern Netherlands? Why don't the NL just cede
some territory to Belgium in exchange for the enclave?
Politics 13: What purpose do the 'neutral zones'
between Saudi-Arabia and the Iraq serve? Who conceived them and is there
any administration in this area at all?
Politics 14: Is there a left-wing paramilitary
organization in Germany today?
Politics 15: Have any governmental emergency
plans in case of an (nationwide) armed uprising leaked out?
Politics 16: Who decides which political topics
are referred to in the carnival parades of Cologne, Dusseldorf and Mainz?
Politics 17: Was Benito
Mussolini at first viewed as quite a jerk, similar to the wop
stereotype, in the U.S. common opinion (as might be expressed in political
cartoons etc. and of which his portrayal in The Great Dictator might
be a reminiscence of)?
Politics 18: What purpose does Lhasa's Potala
palace, former seat of the Dalai Lama,
serve today?
Politics 19: Is a copy of the Stern
magazine article on the Stoltzenberg toxic waste scandal in Sept., 1979,
that mentions dead birds lying around in an abandoned factory hall, available
somewhere?
Politics 20: Is there a web page that offers
all national holidays, sorted from January to December?
Politics 21: What is the battle-cry of the
German Autonomen?
Politics 22: Which Danish party argued in the
early 80s that the only defence spendings the country needed would be to
maintain a direct phone line to the Kremlin to capitulate at once in case
of war?
Politics 23: Where does one get the text of
Enoch Powell's 1968 Rivers of Blood speech?
Politics 24: Where can one get information
on the Jewish 'homeland' in the USSR?
Politics 25: The symbols of the Oprichnina,
Ivan the Terrible's secret police, were a
dog's head and a broom hung from their saddles. Was a real (decaying etc.)
dog's head used or just the effigy of one?
Politics 26: What does the abbreviation TANSTAAFL
stand for?
Politics 27: Did the FRG mail service in the
Cold War era refuse to deliver letters sent from abroads on which the 'Germany'
was abbreviated (BRD as opposed to BR Deutschland or simply
Deutschland)? Did they refuse to hand over letters to GDR citizens
to the GDR mail service on which the DDR was not put in quotation
marks?
Politics 28: Were the persons hanged by the
Nazis in Berlin's Plötzensee prison in connection with von Stauffenberg's
assassination attempt strangled by rope attached to meat hooks or hanged
on the meat hooks directly? What happened to the movie that Hitler
ordered to make of the execution for his personal pleasure? Is it true
that the executors tore down the pants of the dying men?
Politics 29: Shah Mohammed
Riza Pahlewi ordered 12 Combattante II FAC (Zoubin shown here)
at CMN, Cherbourg. All but 3 were delivered before the Iranian Revolution.
When the new Islamic government finally had arranged the delivery of the
3 last boats (Khanjar, Neyzeh, Tabarzin) in 1980-81, one of those
was hijacked en route by members of an anti-Khomeini
group, but later abandoned. Are there contemporary repots about this incident?
Politics 30: What is the exact connection between
the German Tierschutzpartei Mensch-Umwelt-Tierschutz
and Christian fundamentalist Michael Brenner, who fights a one-man
war against 'smut' in German publication, like comic books, youth and news
magazines?
Politics 31: How come that few left-wingers
use 'We are the People!' as their slogan?
Psychology 1: What is the fastest way to learn
how to hallucinate?
Psychology 2: Is there a somewhat complete
compendium about the basic principles of human body language (yes-no symbols
etc.)?
Psychology 3: The number 3 does play a very
important role in verbal information exchange in the loosest sense at least
in the German language-culture. Since when, and are there suggested reasons?
Might it be that this results from the fact that 3 is the lowest number
with which to express a 'gradient' (as opposed to 1=unity, 2=opposites)?
Furthermore, do the numbers 1-3 as divisors of 1 (resulting in the fractions
1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 1) suffice for the most applications where only a rough
fraction is needed?
Psychology 4: When did it start that persons
broke the millennium 'barrier' in their personal planning and considerations
(as opposed to statistics and extrapolations) on a noticeable scale?
Psychology 5: Since when is the smell of onions
generally considered unpleasant in Germany? Until when did the same apply
to the smell of garlic (which is nowadays deemed 'spicy' even when quite
intense)?
Psychology 6: Do persons consider literature,
movies etc. more often as 'good' when they find concepts and thoughts in
them that are familiar and liked?
Psychology 7: Are there studies about identical
twins that grew up together yet had notably different personalities? The
interesting thing is that they should have been made, yet in the 'genes
are everything'-fervor of the time twin studies were considered 'the thing'
in human genetics, this other possibility might well have been neglected.
Psychology 8: How long did the Ayatollah
Khomeini have to drill Iranian youths to voluntarily clear minefields
by running over them, the 'key to paradise' (actually plastic keys bought
wholesale) hung around their neck?
Psychology 9: What happened to 'Little Albert'
after Behaviorist John B. Watson induced in him a phobia of everything
soft and furry by placing him in a room full of rats and sounding a loud
noise whenever he approached them?
Psychology 10: Is the treatment of young individuals
as inferior members of the respective social group (e.g. parent's use of
baby language) only found in humans and if yes, is it further restricted
to certain cultures?
Psychology 11: Has anyone ever tried to hypnotize
a person that was under drug influence, and if yes, with which results?
Psychology 12: When playing a game of Memory,
one sometimes hesitates before turning the second card. a) What is more
successful: turning it anyway or choosing another card wich seems to be
the fitting one with a higher probability? b) Is there, when one does the
latter, a corellation between the position of the turned card and the fitting
one? and c) Are there individual preferences that influence the position
of the card eventually turned in respect to the card intended at first?
Psychology 13: Is the differentiation between
'good' and 'bad' nationalism widespread in other than German-speaking countries?
Psychology 14: The TV commercial for Werther's
Echte candy was accurately remade for French TV. What are the differences
to the German version and in how far were they based on different consumer's
profiles in France?
Psychology 15: Has research been conducted
concerning the pattern in which individuals consecutively take ice cubes
out of ice cube boxes?
Psychology 16: Are there reports of incidents
in which someone, cruising along the highway, suddenly burst out along
the lines of 'If this fucking engine stalls once more, I'll set fire
to it!!'?
Psychology 17: Are there reports of people
who committed suicide leaving a note that said 'I'll try and be back'?
Psychology 18: Which are the oldest sources
that suggest physical violence to be a 'male' behavior/privilege?
Q
R
Religion 1: Who did calculate the DOB of Jesus
to be what is now Dec. 24./25., 0? Who declared it to be the 'official'
DOB?
Religion 2: Is there today a Christian sub-religion
which, based on Christian symbology and philosophy, declares the Pontiff
(by position, not by person) to be the incarnated Antichrist?
Religion 3: What happens if a person has to
break a vow of silence for a court hearing? Does its superior have to give
permission? What if there is no human superior?
Religion 4: Is there a tribe in New Guinea
that worships an anthropomorphic god of war resembling Sylvester
Stallone that they call Rambo?
Religion 5: Is it true that once a crucified
Father Christmas was produced by some Asian
company (as part of a collection of Christian kitsch for Asian customers)?
Religion 6: Is the water
fern Azolla spec., containing the symbiotic,
nitogen-fixing cyanobacteria Nostoc (Anabaena) azollae, really
revered in Vietnam as embodiment of agricultural fertility?
Religion 7: Which gods have/had flies as an
attribute?
Religion 8: Which gods were supposed to be
real organisms (not mythological ones or symbolized by real ones) and which
of these organisms had significance in divinatory or religious rituals
connected with the respective deity and/or were psychotropic?
Religion 9: What were the reasons for Karol
Woytila to adopt the religious name of Ioannes Paulus?
Religion 10: When were exorcisms of the Catholic
church first documented on photo, when on video? Are copies of those documents
available somewhere?
Religion 11: Which religions are state religions
in at least one country (in which?); which religions are officially recognized
as such in at least one country?
Religion 12: Did anyone attempt to re-interprete
Relevation 13:18 in such a way that it refers to the Pontiff/St.
Peter/the Archbishop of Rome etc. as 'the beast'?
Religion 13: How many heads, horns and crowns
does the Beast in the Relevation bear? Are there different accounts?
Role-Playing Games 1: What happened to the
Marina City Towers in Chicago in Shadowrun
during the Bug City incidents?
S
Sexuality 1: Does blood from a leech bite lose
taste for hematophiliacs due to the hirudine?
Sexuality 2: Were the terms 'Liebe machen'
and 'zärtlich werden' used as veiled expressions for having sex on
a regular base in the Bravo magazine
feature 'Mein erstes Mal' in the second half of the Eighties in Germany,
how was the sex ratio in that column compared to the ratio in society and
of the readership, maybe even splitted up per age, and considering all
those question, how is the current state?
Sexuality 3: Is there a considerable number
of left-wing, jewish etc youths who find delight in banging neo-nazi guys'
chicks?
Sexuality 4: When will XXX cinemas have webcams
installed so that voyeurs can take a look at what's going on there and
when will they have solo cabins with CUSEEME equipment and computer terminals
(probably the point at which cybersex becomes a public issue, not something
that merely involves the partaking individuals)?
Sexuality 5: When and where did the notion
appear that you '...can't get pregnant the first time'?
Sexuality 6: When, by whom and why was the
concept 'steaming' to indicate sexual excitement introduced in the US sex
industry?
Sexuality 7: Is there an artificial substance
that possesses most, if not all sensory qualities of human
sperm, but is none? If yes, is it possible to acquire it somewhere
or is a recipe available?
Sexuality 8: How exactly does the coating on
condoms kill sperm?
Sexuality 9: The Westboro Baptist Church,
a right-wing Christian Fundamentalist group issues these
'facts' about homosexuals over the Web, concluding that they are demented
perverts, criminals, a public health problem and followers of the Antichrist,
all the while hoarding riches to overthrow society, while bible quotes
suggest that homosexuality is a crime for which the only appropriate punishment
is death. These group quotes from a variety of sources. Which 'facts' are
true unbiased information, which are deliberate misquotes, which are 'facts'
invented by hate groups?
Societies 1: What is the political position
of the German Schiller-Gesellschaft e.V. who claimed the German
Green party to be 'Moscow's agents' in the 80s?
Societies 2: What is the moral code and purpose
of the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene
e.V. in Freiburg, Germany?
Sociology 1: How widespread is the expression
'fun + feminism' for the self-proclaimed view of life of the Spice
Girls fan community?
Sociology 2: How did hippies in Germany call
each other (like 'Man' or 'Brother' or 'Sister' in the U.S.)?
Sociology 3: Why do people with a light complexion
often suppress people with a darker one? Did it happen on a large scale
the other way around, and if yes, when and where?
Sociology 4: Since when were slimming diets
after the 'glut fests' Christmas and Easter a regular part of German women
magazines (Brigitte, Amica
etc)?
Sociology 5: In how far are the values transported
by the late 90s mainstream dance culture ('Die Sterne'-type music) a development
of the early 80s NDW style, parallelling a change in the culture's carriers
socioeconocultural (interesting neologism) situation?
Sociology 6: Is there less grafitti on rail
cars in the Netherlands than in Germany, if yes, do the cars have a paint-repellent
coating, are there less rail car sprayers in the NL, are the cars cleaned
more often or is there an entirely different reason?
Sociology 7: What attraction do some Germans
find in driving a camouflaged old pickup truck?
Sociology 8: Why do Christian-based cultures
have such a strange and distorted view on death that there are laws in
some places to protect the dead from 'insults' by the living and there
is the widespread notion that only the good deeds of the deceased shall
be remembered (de moribus nil nisi bene)?
Sociology 9: Since when was there official
passive discrimination against vagrancy in Germany ('passive' in that far
as it became almost impossible to fulfill the government's obligations
concerning registration if you had no fixed abode)?
Sociology 10: When did the 'butch' 'gay' and
the 'hoarse' 'lesbian' cliché voices first appear in Germany? Why
is the former well-known, the latter quite unknown? Do those cliché
pronounciations appear in other countries, too?
Sociology 11: Did anyone conceive a Holocaust
memorial that tries to remind of the murderers and those behind them instead
of the victims? This way, the fact that all that was done by a considerable
number of human beings does not get lost.
Sociology 12: In which countries does slavery
acknowledgedly exist today?
Sociology 13: Is there any information
on the airliner crash in the Andes where the survivors consumed the frozen
bodies of those killed to stay alive?
Sociology 14: The Riot Grrl subculture
developed from female punks around 1990. Where? When did it appear in Germany?
Sociology 15: Is there an illustrated compendium
of Tuntengymnastik?
Sociology 16: Are there other correctional
facilities along the lines of the Arizona Boys
Ranch in the US and, as they are financed by donations, who are
the donators?
Sociology 17: Are there jokes that start with
or along the lines of 'Two Russians, one Foreign Legion mercenary and one
religious fanatic are standing at the McDonald's counter...' anywhere on
the world?
Sociology 18: How come that when someone suggests
that it would be good if the Euro-US countries learned 'from the Japanese'
that person nearly always refers to the 'cog in the machine for the sake
of a prosperous economy' concept, although a) this is one of the concepts
which are viewed upon critically in today's Japan and b) there are that
many more, e.g. cultural, aspects which we could adopt from the Japanese
society?
Sociology 19: Out of which social strata, when
and in which European cultural regions did the habit first arise that the
wife adopts the husband's family name at marriage?
Sociology 20: Is there such a thing as a Cthulhu
Goth subculture ('...hung with jewelry like a Shubb-Niggurat priest...')?
Sociology 21: Where does one get comprehensive
accounts on ethnic groups that died out during the last few centuries?
Sociology 22: Fruko, after a Turkish
brand of cola, is Turkish street slang for 'policeman' (referring to the
'bottlecap' headgear). However, this seemingly innocent comparison is one
of the worst anti-police curses in Tukey. How come?
Sociology 23: When did the notion that 90%
or more of the Italian or Chinese restaurant owners in Germany payed protection
to the Mafia or Triads arise and on what is that figure based?
Sociology 24: Is a .mpg or .avi of Giovanni
Trappatoni's Ich habe fertig speech, maybe even subtitled, or a
transcript available?
Sports 1: Has it ever happened during a soccer
match that the goalie received a red card? If yes, did the team have a
replacement goalie? What happens in case they have not?
T
Technics 1: Why did it take until the early
30s for most larger nations to realize simultaneously that biplanes are
junk compared to monoplanes?
Technics 2: What does the Flächenregel
in airplane construction state?
Technics 3: Which was the first sound computer/synthesizer
that was produced in large numbers and employed extensively in live acts?
Technics 4: What does a scanning tunnel microscope
cost to produce and what on the free market?
Television 1: Are or were there TV serials
that are only 'kept alive' out of tradition and unwillingness to quit them,
even though the story has become plazzy and the actors third-rate?
Television 2: Where does one get old sequels
of WWF Club, which, at its time, was a big hit amongst adolescents,
but today seems ludicrous?
Television 3: Which concept stood behind Sender
Frikadelle and are sequels still available?
Television 4: Was there really a movie, sequel
or part of a kid's series on German TV that was called Bibitte rettet
ein Kalb vor dem Schlachthof, featuring a jolly-vagabond type of guy
who kidnapped a calf?
Television 5: What was the name of the comedy
show screened in the UK in the early 90s (containing the word fan)
that featured the host standing in front of an enormous fan and, in at
least one sequel, presented a fake soap called The man with the ironic
voice?
Television 6: Has anyone yet compared taped
clapping or laughing that is played during talk shows or sitcoms? If yes,
a) are there only a few samples of clapping or many different ones (one
probably couldn't tell one from the other in the show and b) how do laughing
tracks differ in similar shows in various nations?
Television 7: When, where and on which occasion
was taped laughter first introduced?
Television 8: Is The
PSI Factor an X-Files satire?
Television 9: How many children's TV serials
and -movies were shown in 1970, 1980, 1990 and 1997, respectively, in Germany,
whose 'heroes' clashed with the police or other governmental institutions
and (rightfully) won, their opponents being depicted as nerds?
Television 10: Where do teleshop companies
like Quantum get their dubbing speakers?
Television 11: Have there been any statements
from Poland on the large amount of anti-polish chauvinist jokes in the
popular German Harald Schmidt TV
show?
Traffic 1: In which European countries are
streets named after generic surnames (e.g. Barbarastraße)?
Traffic 2: What happened to the Trans Europe
Express trains?
Traffic 3: Are traffic lights' colors arranged
in the same pattern worldwide? If not, which patterns exist where? When
and by whom was it standardized?
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