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© I m a g e D a v e F o r b e s
Engagement 1,600+
Situated in Peel Park
The 1905 Edwardian-era Bandstand with its Birdcage Style design and wrought iron balustrade with a pinnacle roof.
Donated to the people of Kirkintilloch by Baillie David Perry who later became the Provost of the town, it was also a product of the local long-gone Lion Foundry.
Renovated in the early 2000's and re-dedicated by the late great Magnus Magnusson KBE (Mastermind Quizmaster) who lived in the area on March 1st 2003. The Bandstand was designated a Category C Listed Building from 1979
I think I may have found the original 3 doors from Monty Hall's "Let's Make a Deal". The NBC television show premiered in December 1963.
Choosing the right door with the car has come to be called the Monte Hall problem.
It’s a famous paradox that has a solution that is so absurd, most people refuse to believe it’s true.
Suppose you’re on Monte’s game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats.
You pick a door, say No. 1, and Monte, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, “Do you want to pick door No. 2?”
Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?
Believe it or not, it’s actually to your benefit to switch:
If you switch, you have roughly a 2/3 chance of winning the car.
If you stick to your original choice you have roughly a 1/3 chance of winning the car.
The answer sounds unlikely.
After door 3 is opened, you would think you then have two doors to choose from…both with the same odds. However, you are actually much more likely to win if you switch.
Those who switched doors won about 2/3 of the time.
Those who didn’t switch won about 1/3 of the time.
This fact has been proven over and over again with a plethora of mathematical simulations.
If you’re stumped and still don’t believe it — don’t worry, even mathematicians scratch their head on this one. One genius mathematician, Paul Erdős didn’t believe the answer was right until he was shown simulations of the winning, “switch”, strategy.
A lot of people have trouble with the better odds of switching doors, myself included, until I realized a fact: the odds are better if you switch because Monty curates the remaining choices.
Let’s say you played the game where Monty doesn’t know the location of the car. It wouldn’t make any difference if you switch or not (your odds would be 50% no matter what).
But this isn’t what happens. The Monty Hall problem has a very specific clause: Monty knows where the car is. He never chooses the door with the car. And by curating the remaining doors for you, he raises the odds that switching is always a good bet.
Steve Selvin:
The origins of the problem. The Monty Hall problem, also known as the as the Monty Hall paradox, the three doors problem, the quizmaster problem, and the problem of the car and the goats, was formalized by biostatistician Steve Selvin (1975) in a letter to the journal The American Statistician.
Monty Hall:
Monty Hall (Monte Halparin) was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1921 and died in 2017 at 96 of a heart attack in his Los Angeles home.
There's actually an earth-3 version of Riddler that exists, so here he is aha. Unfortunately there's no question mark piece that exists yet, so I'm stuck with this bum staff
Some Backstory: Enigma is the secret identity behind which Edward Nashton of the Antimatter Universe lives. Once the superhero known as the Quizmaster, his entire family was slaughtered by the Crime Syndicate, and he was only able to save the soul of his daughter Stephanie, integrating it into a powerful engine with multiversal travel capabilities and many powerful options; she traveled with him often as his aide.
#1 Explore / Interestingness
The Title:
Matthew 11:28
"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."
Last night, me and my family were headed to Sunset and Hollywood Blvd. However, the traffic was so heavy that made me decide to turn back home since we had some shots taken earlier in the day at Sylmar.
On our way home, my wife saw this church and I was also impressed with the architecture and the lighting. I know that this was not just an ordinary stop for a photoshoot. A deeper message is being conveyed. Somebody up there is calling me. I know and I can feel it. Thanks God He still knows me.
The stars can be seen while shooting this picture. Just highlighted them using Photoshop for more emphasis. This is made up of 6 different exposures and HDRed and tone mapped using Photomatix. HDR post processing was done in Photoshop CS2. Hope you like it.
CHURCH OF THE STARS
St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church was the home parish of Bob Hope, legendary actor, comic and star of movies, radio & TV. He lived just a short way down the road on Moorpark.
Actually, it was originally his wife Dolores Hope's parish - Bob didn't convert to Catholicism until very late in life - but he often attended services here with his wife. (Back in 1969, Bing Crosby attended the wedding of Bob Hope's daughter, Linda, at St. Charles.)
Bob Hope died at age 100, and his funeral at St. Charles was a small, private afffair, limited to family members, held on the morning of July 30, 2003 - after which he was buried at San Fernando Mission cemetery (where his mother is buried.)
Cardinal Mahony graduated grammar school there in 1950. His Mom and Dad were married at St. Charles, at the original church on Weddington St. in North Hollywood.
Actor Eric Estrada ('Ponch" on TV's "CHiPS") and his family often attend Sunday Mass here.
"Jeopardy!" quizmaster Alex Trebek and wife were seen in attendance for one of their children's First Communion.
The church is located in North Hollywood (in the Valley) on the southwest corner of Moorpark Street & Lankershim Blvd.
Excerpts from www.seeing-stars.com/Churches/StCharles.shtml
____________
This ARTIST is for HIRE.
Before hosting 'Jeopardy!' Alex Trebek hosted CBC's 'Reach for the Top.' A new mural at Sudbury Secondary School - Trebek's alma mater - honours him nicely. By artist Alex Ledo.
This is the view from a rooftop bar called Dirty Little Secret. There are two other bars in the building - The Four Kings and The Five Stags. We'd been to the pub quiz at The Five Stags and Cam, who was the quizmaster when we quizzed at The Pub, told us to come up and see the views from here.
This junction is where the trolley bus lines go around the corner. You can see lines painted on the road and also the overhead lines for the trolley buses to get their power.
Tuesday, 22nd March 2016
About 6 weeks ago we started a dress up Friday zoom quiz for the houses in the village with the quiz master rotating through the different houses based on scores, performance, dedication and random allocation. Scoring tends to be a bit arbitary with bonus points at the discretion of the quizmaster.
We are usually a very social bunch, in and out of each others houses all the time, meeting for drinks or telly watching or just hellos, going for walks together, having parties etc.
Like most of us in the UK, this third lockdown has been very hard. In the village, many of us working are from home and /or essential workers, homeschooling the kids and the weather in Cornwall has seemed darker and wetter than usual for this time of year. It has been really grim. So this has been something we all look forward to and it has got sillier and sillier.
Tonight the theme was super hero / supervillain based. From left to right, I give you:
Mrs Menopause and Sockman; Lycranman and Gasmask Girl; Deadpool Fan Fam; Wonderwoman and Cat Girl; Amnesia Woman, Harley Quinn and Dad (alternatively Joker and Batman); Thermos Man (he had gone to make tea - his superpower); Gimlet Girl and the Invisible Woman,; Mrs Sinister and Mr Grumpy; The Iron Man and Marvel Woman; Wanker Woman and Cider Man; and finally Mankini Man and the Masked Something
Thermos Man (and his giant teabag) got some points but was allocated next weeks quiz master for the best fancy dress
I love these people
For WAH who are visiting Enjoying things with Humour.
"Solar Lottery" was Philip K. Dick's first published novel. It takes place in a world dominated by logic and numbers. Loosely based on a numerical military strategy employed by U.S. and Soviet intelligence called minimax (part of game theory), the Quizmaster, head of world government, is chosen through a sophisticated, computerized lottery. This element of randomization in the society serves as a form of social control since nobody, in theory at least, has any more of an advantage over anybody else in becoming the next Quizmaster.
Society is further entertained by a televised selection process in which an assassin is also allegedly chosen at random. By countering and putting down these threats to his life (using telepathic bodyguards as defense), the leader gains the respect of the people. If he loses his life, a new Quizmaster, as well as another assassin, are again randomly selected. Quizmasters have historically held office for timespans ranging from a few minutes to several years. The average life expectancy is therefore on the order of a couple of weeks. [Source: Wikipedia]
Thames Skerry "St Helena" Once owned by BBC University Challenge Quizmaster 'Bamber Gascoigne' a resident of Richmond before his Death in 2022
River Thames. Ham. Richmond. Greater London. U.K.
So here we have a series of candid images from that most curious of experiences - the village quiz, 15 tables, 6 people on each team, slightly frightening quizmaster, but lots of fun . . .
EQ: 5D, 35mm, AL
Hallo liebe Leser,
hier nun das versprochene Bild vom Samstag. Der gute Herr hat die Hochzeitsgesellschaft mit doch recht lustigen Spielchen auf Trab gehalten. Auch wenn ich ganz persönlich kein so großer Freund von diesen Spielen bin, waren diese jedoch echt der Knaller.
Markus
So here we have a series of candid images from that most curious of experiences - the village quiz, 15 tables, 6 people on each team, slightly frightening quizmaster, but lots of fun . . .
Italian postcard. Publicity still for Ragazze d'oggi/Girls of Today (Luigi Zampa, 1955).
Michael Nicholas Salvatore Bongiorno, better known as Mike Bongiorno, was born 26 May 1924 in New York and died 8 September 2009 in Monte Carlo, Monaco. He was an Italo-American journalist and television host. For the history of Italian television he has been an institution as Italy’s famous quiz master between the 1950s to the 1980s. As such he played himself in various films too. Even if he lived in Italy for most of his life, he kept his American nationality until he turned 79.
Mike Bongiorno was of Italo-American descent, his paternal grandfather being a merchant who emigrated from Mezzojuso in Sicily. While he was a child his parents divorced and his mother took him to her hometown Turin, where he visited college. All his life he remained a fan of Juventus, Turin’s soccer club. During the Second World War he was not mobilised thanks to his American nationality, so he dropped his studies and joined the Italian resistance as go-between the Italian partisans and the Allies in Switzerland . He was captured and escaped execution because of his American passport, but stayed in for six months at the San Vittore prison of Milan, and was then deported German concentration camps. Early 1945 he was liberated even before war ended, thanks to an exchange between war prisoners. Bongiorno went back to New York, but established himself in Italy in 1952, where he became the most popular television host form the earliest days of the medium on, working for the national public broadcasting company RAI, and starting with the programme Arrivi e partenze (1953).
In the mid-1950s Bongiorno acted in various films. First in Luigi Zampa’s comedy Ragazze d'oggi (1955), starring Marisa Allasio. In the same year Bongiorno re-enacted himself in the film Il motive in maschera (dir. Stefano Canzio), based on Bongiorno’s popular homonymous radio show. Next followed a lead in Guido Malatesta’s comedy I milliardari (1956), and a part in the film Il prezzo della gloria, starring Gabriele Ferzetti, directed by newcomer Antonio Musu and shot in the province of Puglia, in South-East Italy. Bongiorno acted in a scene shot at Taranto, where his character has car trouble. In the 1950s Bongiorno was also visible in several ‘fotoromanzi’.
From 1955 to 1959 Bongiorno ran the first Italian television quiz Lascia o raddoppia?, based on the French Quitte ou double ?, which again was based on an American quiz. Buongorno became Italy’s quiz master ‘par excellence’. Italian writer and semiologist Umberto Eco even dedicated a famous essay to him: Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno (1963). This also affected Bongiorno’s film acting, who from the 1950s on was regularly visible as quiz master in Totò lascia o raddoppia? (Camillo Mastrocinque 1958) with Totò, Giudizio universale (1961) by Vittorio De Sica and with Vittorio Gassman, Fernandel and Alberto Sordi, C'eravamo tanto amati (1974) by Ettore Scola – in which one of the characters (played by Stefano Satta Flores) is a candidate in Lascia o raddoppia , Sogni mostruosamente proibiti (1982) with Alida Valli and Eccezzziunale… veramente (1982) again with Sandrelli.
After Lascia o raddoppia followed the quizzes Campanile sera (1960), Rischiatutto (1970) and La fiera dei sogni. From 1963 on he also presented the Festival of San Remo for over a decade. In 1979 Buongiorno presented his first show for commercial television: I sogni nel cassetto, produced by Telemilano, which after became Canale 5. His last RAI quiz show was Flash (1980/1982), after which he completely moved over to Mediaset, the television group of Silvio Berlusconi. Afterwards followed Telequiz Bis (1981) Superflash (1982), Pentathlon (1985), Telemike (1987) and La ruota della fortuna (1989). In 2000 he co-presented the animal programme Qua la zampa. For the Retequattro channel he presented two quizzes for youngsters: Genius and Il migliore. Bongiorno was married three times and was rewarded with a doctorate honoris causa at the university IULM of Milan in August 2007.
For decades Mike Bongiorno, who always opened his programmes with his famous « Allegria ! », was known everywhere. Also known were his problems with finding the right quiz papers, his endearing old-fashioned Italian, but also his rages against technicians and candidates during his shows, even in live recordings. His mistakes were proverbial, in particular during La ruota della fortuna, and caused for parody. During one quiz he asked who was this Mr. Paolovi? Meant was Paolo VI (pope Paul VI). Imitation and parody resulted in maliciously changing his « Allegria! » in « Allergia! » (allergy). Bongorno was nicknamed "SuperMike" and "Telemike".
Sources: English, Italian and Fench Wikipedia, IMDB.
From the Exhibition 'LONDON LANDSCAPES'
November 2008 - January 2009
Neil Williams is an accomplished photographer firmly based in south London.
Initially inspired by the landscapes of Bill Brandt and Michael Kenna, Williams uses colour in his photography and is treading through a tradition of lansdscape in an exciting direction that is very much his own. Neil's work is, quite simply, fantastically seen and conceived. You cannot fail to want to own at least one of his beautifully produced images the moment you see them...
THE SUN AND DOVES
61 Coldharbour Lane
Camberwell
London SE5 9NS 020 7733 1525
Well here goes. The Esteemed Quizmaster General Andy (a.k.a Silsonroadrunner) suggested many months ago I compile a collage of pictures to form the basis of a quiz.
I have therefore risen to the challenge and done so and this is a toe in the water so to speak. If it's popular I might try some more to complement Andy's established Bank Holiday quiz's.
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It's the same format as we are used to guys, just name the location.
Answers and educated guesses via Flickrmail please. I will post the answers next weekend and announce the winners. The actual pictures used will then be released in order onto my photostream following on from this one with caption details for those interested.
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ANSWERS & WINNERS at 19.30 on Friday 24th August.
Top Left = Hastings.
Top Right = Quainton Road.
Bottom Left = Sudbury (Suffolk) this was the hardest as its the 1865 built station closed in 1990.
Bottom Right = Middlesborough.
1st Place : David (54A South Dock) well done mate all four in just over 48hrs.
2nd Place : Mark (Mr C's Photo Gallery), congratulations.
Joint 3rd Place : Mark (Corbeau75) 3 out of 4 and Robert (Headcode) 3 out of 4.
The one you couldn't get guys bottom right was Middlesborough.
A BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYONE THAT TOOK PART, (might do another next month).
At the end of trivia, these people heard it was her 21st birthday, (the Quizmaster with the white jacket) knew it was her birthday) but these other players heard "21st" and wanted to buy E a shot (if she wanted it) before we left for the night. I did not have any drinks but E and the other three had Washington Apple shots. It was pretty cool they did that. And my daughter was happy and had a good time.
Björn, the Quizmaster hosting another excellent Christmas quiz.
My sixth and seventh packs of polaroids with the Polaroid SLR 680 were red metallic framed color photo models by Polaroid Originals. I shot them both over the Christmas and New Year season of 2018, thought the coloring would work quite well with the times and so it did!
Taken with Polaroid SLR 680 analog camera. Polaroid Originals 600 instant film with red metallic frame, fresh from the store.
I'm the quizmaster this week and I'm using a quiz given at the U3A National Conference last week. I've covered the answers with a sheet of paper.
From the Exhibition 'LONDON LANDSCAPES'
November 2008 - January 2009
Neil Williams is an accomplished photographer firmly based in south London.
Initially inspired by the landscapes of Bill Brandt and Michael Kenna, Williams uses colour in his photography and is treading through a tradition of lansdscape in an exciting direction that is very much his own. Neil's work is, quite simply, fantastically seen and conceived. You cannot fail to want to own at least one of his beautifully produced images the moment you see them...
THE SUN AND DOVES
61 Coldharbour Lane
Camberwell
London SE5 9NS 020 7733 1525
So here we have a series of candid images from that most curious of experiences - the village quiz, 15 tables, 6 people on each team, slightly frightening quizmaster, but lots of fun . . .
Young Creatives u10 Prize
The young artist developed the project Leuchtende Zukunft (Bright Future) primarily because he wanted to help reduce energy consumption. This protects the environment. The houses themselves emit light, so a great deal of energy for lamps and heating can be saved. High energy-consuming lamps become redundant and lamps and lanterns that give off dim light can be replaced by huge glow sticks.
These sticks, which contain mycelium, are placed in the transparent walls of houses in order to make them luminous. This is how it works: There are 71 kinds of fungi that give off a dim light, among them the *Armillaria* mellea, or honey mushroom. The mycelium of this European fungus glows at night. Placed in a tube, this could replace lamps—at least dim ones.
Emilio Deutsch (*2012) is in the fourth grade at LIBO Montessori Schule in Brunn am Gebirge. He is interested is motorcycle racing and Formula 1 and enjoys watching and playing “Quizmaster” on the app. He loves animals, nature, and likes jumping on his trampoline. In his free time, he conducts experiments with various materials and absorbs knowledge about all sorts of subjects related to nature and science. He is very concerned with the environment and is constantly inventing new things to protect it and keep it clean for the future.
Photo: Florian Voggeneder
GABBEH: a lesson here in thread woven in song
seasoned by the colors of the wind and the
swaying grasses brushing the sky -
SABRINA: I woke up in a panic because I
dreamed I lost my magic powers and Aunt Zelda
was in her lab and a fire started but Aunt
Hilda was in the attic writing erotic poems on
her magic typewriter -
GABBEH: a thread connecting the living to the
dead, and a color connecting the living and
the dead to the undead and the immortal -
SABRINA: - so when I woke up my panties were
all wet and my hand was down there and I
couldn't find my wand and sparkles were
leaking down my legs and Salem was just
sitting there wheezing looking out the window
and checking his watch and my damn wand was
right there under his paw. I wiped off my hand
and sat up and told him that the Witches'
Council would totally kill him for stealing my
wand when he's already been transformed into a
cat for 100 years as punishment for plotting
to take over the world - silly!
GABBEH: we do not weave cats. there is the
lamb, the gazelle, the tree of sorrow and
life, and the raven. If you want to live in
the pleasure of the carnal, you must not
appeal to the cosmic, but bloom from inside.
SABRINA: I can't masturbate with my wand
anymore, but so Salem is there and he just
says "I KNOW. I'M WAITING FOR DASH." But
what's Dash got to do with the wand and the
Witches' Council?! Salem?! "Well, I did steal
your wand, with the timely help of one
Principal Kraft. You see, he remembers all too
well the time you zapped his heart medicine
into razzles and he had to go to the emergency
room because he was barfing rainbow foam, so
the usual mortal objection to making bargains
with talking cats was in his case trivially
overcome by merely hinting at the many
hardships and humiliations you would suffer as
a result of our nefarious pact." I couldn't
believe it - well, I could believe that
Principal Kraft would seek revenge on me for
my many heartless pranks, but to imagine Salem
was not only involved, but had brokered, and
more shockingly still, initiated, deals aimed
at - aimed at what?! My death? Stripping me of
magic, and thus, of my heritage?!
GABBEH: your magic is your life as it is an
irreducible and alogical pulsating segment of
the lifethread. but what about Dash?
SABRINA: Dash is - well, Dash was a boyfriend.
Harvey got really jealous when I summoned a
huge ice cream sundae, and then Dash zapped
himself into a spoon but Harvey grabbed the
wrong one and ended up ... eating Dash. So, a
few days later, after Dash was passed through
Harvey's system ( slow mortal bowels ), he had
been leached of all his Protective and
Transformative magic, but kept his offensive
and explosive skills. Something about the
microhairs on the colon, I don't know. Aunt
Zelda explained once it when we were inside
Mrs. Quick's large intestine for a class
project. She said, "you must never pass
through a mortal, or through a demi-mortal,
for all your defensive magic will be whisked
away."
GABBEH: imagine the autonomy of your organs -
they crawl away into separate holes, then
gather again in a rough harmony. much ink has
been spilled reckoning how are matter and
spirit stitched, but the thread cuts deeper
than those two superficial fabrics: the
conference of the organs - the harmonies of
the brain, lungs, and bowels; the fleshy
overtones rattling up the spine - this, this
is that mind you try to escape, to measure.
only after your organs flee from another...
forever.
SABRINA: Dash knows I love Harvey more than
anything except maybe my mother, but Dash
really hates Harvey so he's trying to get back
at him by stealing my magic. He even tricked
the Quizmaster out of his time travel powers -
he set up a massive grid of Charitable Magic
events, this huge non-profit thing to give
leftover coffee to North Korea, so, naturally,
the Quizmaster showed up, pissed, but before
he could chastize and punish Dash, Dash pulled
out the Book of Listening he stole from my
Aunt Hilda while she was looking for me up the
beanstalk, and Quizmaster's words stuck there
in the book, magic fully intact, but trapped,
and not realized! So, Dash just flipped the
book over and read it as a protective spell -
backwards, so it shot out this huge beam of
sparkle energy through Quizmaster's head and
the rest of his body was instantly transported
to the Psychic Council Prison beneath the
rings of Neptune courts building. So there he
was, with Quizmaster's head split in two,
leaking brain sparkles onto the floor, he
grabs the left half, because of the spell
memory centers, and totally chows down on it!
What he doesn't know is that the Council's
already sent out the WolfBats to recover
Quizmaster's head!
GABBEH: flying wolves, the night is yours. the
sieve of the brain, the non-molecular matter
of quizmaster, the bats strain the flesh and
the bone of the transgressors to rebuild with
refined saliva and urine the brain of magic,
that same sieve - but on an infinitely grander
scale - as the individual's own sieve organ,
the Head of the Quizmaster.
Dear Pub is the Hub
My pub, The Sun and Doves, is in south east London in the middle of some of the most socially and economically deprived wards in the UK. I have owned a tied lease on the pub since 1995.
We have always worked hard to make sure the pub has active community presence and involvement in many community activities since day one. It has been described as a 'gastro pub' and an 'alternative art space', 'a pioneering business' and 'fiercely independent'. We describe ourselves as 'the Contemporary Local'.
My long practical experience of the beer tie and understanding the pernicious abuse of it by pub companies led me to being one of the founders of the Fair Pint Campaign.
This is a busy pub but neither I nor my business partenr who runs it with me have ever made more than a modest living, we have no assets other than the lease, no pensions and so on. We are a great example of everything that is wrong with the tied pub regime in the UK. Being in business here is rewarding spiritually, morally and in terms of deep experience but financially it is a disaster. Unable to borrow money to improve the premises, perennially keeping trading just through working out of cash flow and creative ducking and diving is no way to run a business. If we were able to buy our stock outside the tie it would have been a very different experience - we would have made a profit every year, would have invested more in the business than we have been able to, which would mean that now the business would have be even busier and we would be making a decent living.
I have been pushing RBS and Scottish & Newcastle Pub Company to sell the freehold. S&NPC are very reluctant to even discuss this.
I have been asking the local community to consider buying their local:
www.flickr.com/photos/thesunanddoves/4407935737/
www.flickr.com/photos/thesunanddoves/4437179086/
The idea seems to have pricked a nerve in the local community as well as with the head office of S&NPC who don't like the idea one bit.
I am still working on a business plan and on how to make such structure work and would be very interested to see if there is some work we could do with Pub is the Hub on this?
I look foward to hearing from you.
With best wishes
Mark
J Mark Dodds
Crawley U3A has a quiz group which meets once a month and is very enjoyable. We play in teams of three or four which are selected at random each time. A different member of the group acts as quizmaster for each session. The team I was in didn't do too badly coming second out of four - but we came a cropper on the collective names of various creatures (6-10 in the second round) … and we only got five out of twenty of the names of US state capitals, we'd have done better if we'd learnt this song. 😟
www.messersmith.name/wordpress/2010/11/29/walking-the-ten...
After my last post, all cheery and grateful, I'm ahead far enough on happy credits to grow all sombre and introspective again. Today I took delivery of a lonely, stormy Sunday. Last night I attended the annual Country Women's Association Quiz night, a sort of mega-Trivial Pursuit distraction which provides the folk of Madang with an evening of aimless and good natured competition.
Since this is going to be yet another soul-searching ramble through the back alleys of my cranium, let me first demonstrate that I am not in a bad mood at all. These are among the finest bananas I have ever had the pleasure of smushing up in my still toothy gob. Somebody brought them up to the beach at Blueblood a couple of weeks ago. I must have eaten about six of them. As you can see they are rather small. They are incredibly sweet and the flavour is slightly reminiscent of green apples:
See, that's a happy thing. You may find little flakes of freeze-dried happiness elsewhere on this page. Let's see what happens. I'm winging it.
As I plan to intersperse scenes from last night's frivolities here and there as I plod along, I may as well get started. This is our intrepid QuizMaster, Shane McCarthy overseeing the presentation of the craft projects. Each table of six participants was required, on pain of merciless ridicule, to create an object d'art from the miscellaneous contents of a cardboard box. Imaginations ran rampant on the theme of "Christmas Carol":
Once again I found myself facing a dilemma, the magnitude of which might seem trivial when seen from some remote location outside my skull. Over and over again, because of my life situation, smack dab in the middle of everything which meant anything to us, I have to decide if I'm going to do this or that and wonder what my reaction is going to be. The problem is that there is no more us. There is just me. The range of effects which I have experienced has fallen between the extremes of euphoria and despair. I honestly don't know beforehand what is going to happen. I'm just along for the ride.
This is a tender minefield. While that expression may seem an oxymoronic, it is not. All that is happening here is that my community is allowing me the freedom to find a new normality. People are treating me as if everything is business as usual. This is exactly what they ought to do. The minefield is of my own device.
I had waited for an invitation to a table at Quiz Night until I felt that I had to take some active part in my life once more. Two days before the event I called two friends asking, in a not-so-transparent manner, if they had a table and if it was filled. Later that day, I did receive an invitation, after I mentioned it, from another friend. So, committed as I am to allowing life to carry me where it will with as little interference from me as is prudent, I accepted with a mixture of gratitude and foreboding. I'm such a drama queen. Everything has to be a big production. Nothing is easy. Truthfully, I blame my mother, but don't tell her.
It is a minefield, but it bears me no malice. It is simply there, inert until provoked. If I stay in place, I won't get anywhere. I'll stand and take root in this miserable existence. I can walk gingerly, experimentally, but I know that the odds are against me. I've already stepped on a few and I have big chunks missing here and there. The wounds are painful, but they heal rapidly, some more rapidly than others.
There is fun aplenty at every Quiz Night. Ridiculous, giggly fun. Here three teams compete to determine which can most rapidly expend an entire roll of toilet paper by wrapping a team-mate in it:
Following the analogy of the minefield, I'll tell you a true story (really) about a related metaphor, The Point of No Return.
When you note that you have reached the geometrical centre of the minefield and you count your injuries, it dawns on you that you are only half-way home. Injury-wise it might make more sense to retrace your steps and return to GO, not collecting $200. Yet that way lies the madness of arriving back at the beginning and realising that the only reasonably safe option is to once again retrace your footsteps back to the point at which you turned around and proceed from there. You could have done that without wasting energy. Rational decisions at this point are extremely difficult to reach.
Late one Sunday afternoon in the early '70s, I roared away from Chicago Midway Airport in a US Army UH-1 "Huey" helicopter with my crew of four en-route to Decatur Illinois, our home airfield. It was a late departure and each of us had a severe case of "get-home-itis"; families and jobs awaited us. I was Pilot in Command, as sorry a situation as you could want. I was neither much of a pilot nor much of a commander. Deeming that we had sufficient fuel, we lifted off post-haste.
Shortly after passing Kankakee, we could see a massive line of thunderstorms ahead of us. This is my no means unusual for a summer evening in Illinois and it seemed that there were plenty of non-flashing holes through which we could safely pass. We fluttered on, listening to AM radio rock-n-roll through our helmet speakers. After a while it was becoming more and more obvious that we were going to be doing some ducking and weaving. I tapped my finger on the fuel gauge. My co-pilot nodded and frowned. I considered a hop back to Kankakee and a miserable night with a grumbling crew in a motel and rejected it.
We dodged thunderheads visible only by their fireworks and suffered some moderate turbulence which reminded us how long it had been since lunch - just long enough. Nobody wants to barf into his helmet bag. With all of that dodging and searching for holes, I could see that fuel was going to be a teensy-weensy problem. The chatter on the intercom went significantly silent. Everybody knew that we had just passed the Point of No Return. I was wondering precisely how many Army Regs and Flight Rules I had already busted. I was about to bust a few more.
Well, I see that it's time to shorten this long story. We passed safely, if unsteadily through the flashy Texas Line Dance of cumulonimbus incus aircraft washers and into the still, star-studded air of central Illinois about twenty-five minutes from Decatur when the Twenty Minute Fuel Warning light began excitedly to advertise its presence. Uh-oh. As pilots are wont to put it rather indelicately, the pucker factor increased by an order of magnitude.
Let me take a break from that breathless and somewhat pointless reminiscence to show you our creation: (and then I'll try to explain the inexplicable)
I sincerely hope that you can see that it is a manger scene, complete with a tiny, fuzzy Baby Jesus. I contributed, somewhat distractedly, the snowflake and the exclamatory Moo from the spotted cow.
So, was there any point at all to the helicopter story? Probably not. But, if I had to guess, I guess it would be that we are sometimes so distracted by what we so desperately want that we are unable to recognise what we so desperately need. Now, connecting this somewhat tenuously back to the minefield thing, a few of those mines might capriciously explode into bouquets of roses, unlikely as that might seem. Others will blow a leg off. Some might be duds. The problem is that I must keep moving and the only way I know the intent of a mine is to step on it. You know, my situation is not a bit different from yours, now that I think of it. Humpf! And I thought I was special.
Some things which I fervently desire now are not yet available to me. Someday some of them might be. Time will tell. Time will also tell whether they were things which I actually needed. Other things, things which I do not currently yearn for, may turn out to be the things which I need. It would have been such a senseless tragedy if I had killed my crew and myself in a flame-out crash because I did not want to spend a night in a motel in Kankakee. That is what I needed. I realised that most certainly when that warning light came on.
I'm striving quite earnestly to keep my eyes peeled for the warning lights. Right now, I know that I can't trust my desires to be in my best interest. Though some, with that fearful symmetry, burn as bright as William Blake's tiger in the forest, I can never forget the minefield. It is not just a figure of speech. I must move forward. Carefully.
So, with that hopeful thought, I will give you a happy, pretty face. No, not mine. Though I have now made myself happier than I was a couple of hours ago I am still no prettier. Writing does that for me.
This is the lovely smiling face of Michaela of Vienna, who rescued me from an evening of solitary regret:
Saved again by a sensible and loving friend.
Brugge 27/05/2014, reunie oud Club Brugge spelers in hotel weinebrugge te Brugge op foto: Leo Van Der Elst als quizmaster (picture by Florian Van Eenoo/photonews)
Brugge 27/05/2014, reunie oud Club Brugge spelers in hotel weinebrugge te Brugge op foto: Leo Van Der Elst als quizmaster (picture by Florian Van Eenoo/photonews)
SABRINA, THE TEENAGE WITCH, the bewitching comical adventure about a modern-day sorcerer's apprentice, airs on FRIDAYS (8-8:30 pm, ET) on the ABC Television Network. Starring are: Melissa Joan Hart, as Sabrina; Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick as as her eccentric aunts; Nate Richert, Jenna Leigh Green and Lindsay Sloane as her high-school classmates; Nick Bakay as the voice of Salem the cat; and joining the cast this season are Alimi Ballard as The Quizmaster and Martin Mull as the high school's vice principal.
Gleetings ! Gleetings from Gravesend, yes.
Today, The Hobgoblin is playing at Charlton Heston on University Challenge. Bamber PaxTroll, Quizmaster, asks the questions.
'Chuck' can barely control himself as Bamber begins.
"Your starter for 10 !" says Bamber, dramatically. If 'Chuck' gives the correct answer he will win Mastermind outright !
"What was the actor Charlton Heston's real name ?"
"What !" cries 'Chuck'. "That's cheating !"
"I'll have to hurry you !" teases Bamber.
Poor, poor 'Chuck'. He tries not to cry.
Walk Tall !
Eddie Warren Quizmaster, Louie McPeake, Carl Sharkey, Ken Larkin, Rose Cullen Walsh, Marie, Flannery, Anne Scully, Elaine Hunt, Margaret Jordon, Roseleen Walsh 1990s
There is, perhaps, no more storied of a TV Game Show than Jeopardy! First aired on March 30, 1964 (today marks its 49th Anniversary!) with Art Fleming as its host, the modern version was “born” in 1984 with Alex Trebek hosting, a position he continues to hold today. Literally millions of dollars have been won by contestants who share their knowledge on virtually every topic imaginable. However, the Hezbollah game show The Mission has but two topics, and one purpose. The topics - - The Koran and the Palestinian martyrs. The purpose - - to keep the conflict with Israel in everyone’s mind. As the excerpt from the article below by Conal Urquhart shows, this is a highly popular show in the Arab world.
What was the name of the Israeli town attacked by Fatah fighters resulting in the death of five Israelis?
The four contestants thought deeply but only Bishara pressed his buzzer. "Al Manara," he said. "Correct," said the quizmaster.
"A martyrdom operation [suicide bombing] took place on April 25 1995, in southern Lebanon. What was the name of the martyr?" the presenter went on. This time Haythain pressed the buzzer and gave the correct answer of Salah Gandur.
The two were competing in a quiz show, the Mission, in which the goal is to get to Jerusalem on a virtual map by demonstrating a good general knowledge and long memory of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The show is broadcast all over the Arab world from Beirut on al Manar (the beacon), the satellite TV station of Hezbollah. The format is like most quiz shows but many of the questions are on the violence in the Middle East.
It features a map of Israel with Jerusalem marked by the golden Dome of the Rock. The contestants get a step closer to the dome when they answer a question correctly. Contestants need an encyclopaedic knowledge of martyrs as well as the Koran. The quiz, like most of al Manar's programmes, is designed to keep the conflict with Israel in everyone's mind.
Lebanon has almost 400,000 Palestinian refugees and is still formally at war with Israel but for most the nearest they will get to Jerusalem may be the virtual journey offered by the Mission. In this weekend's game no one reached Jerusalem but Haythain won about £2,000. Al Manar claims that 3,000 people call the channel every week to compete from all over the Arab world but there are no figures for viewers.
Riad Suror, 28, a construction worker in East Jerusalem said the programme maintained the memory of what the Palestinians had lost and what they would struggle to get back. "Through the questions," he said, "we are reminded of the history of how the Zionists planned to take our land," he said.
It is hard to believe that something seemingly as innocuous as a game show can further pure, unadulterated hatred. Yet, it appears that’s exactly what THE MISSION does. Though many may say this is not the case, it is probably wise to know, understand, and believe the words of Proverbs 26:24-26, “Whoever hates disguises himself with his lips and harbors deceit in his heart; when he speaks graciously, believe him not, for there are seven abominations in his heart; though his hatred be covered with deception, his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly”(ESV). With that kind of hatred running rampant, even on TV shows, it is more important than ever that we pray according to Psalm 122:6 - - pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
For more on this story, visit: Jerusalem Prayer Team Articles Page.
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Trophies being presented for the 2008-9 Pee Wee Junior Bible Quizzers for the state of New Jersey. Scores are cumulative year-long scoring, but I'll tell you there were only 2 meets!
Arbroath Library was the venue for the Arbroath final of Masterkid in November, 1995. Pictured with assistant librarian Hazel Cook, quizmaster, were, from left, back - Catherine Reid, Andrew Abel, Amy Bigham, Scott Cerqueti, Steven Herald and Mrs Cook: seated - Lauren Pomphrey, Derek Duncan, Marc Cargill, Michael Bastow and Emily Jardine.
A cheque for £341.20 was presented by Barry Simpson in July, 1991 to the Intensive Care Unit at Ninewells Hospital, where he had been a patient. The money was raised by quizzes. In the picture were, from left - Gordon Skelton, quizmaster; Sister Sandra Collie, ICU; Janice Clark, helper; Barry Simpson, Sister Eileen McKenna, ICU; and Sandra Guthrie, organiser. (Photograph - Stan Mackie)
Photos from the forty-five minute workshop for 7- 10 year olds which was held Pearse Street Library, Wednesday 2nd July.
Renowned European quizmaster Karl Heinz Ruminegge is one of the world's deepest thinkers (he lives in a submarine off Hamburg). He leads an audience of armchair experts, artefacts, scientists and fans of nonsense through his own absurd quiz: Which absurd cat are you?
Known for his distinct and only mildly accented interview technique, Karl Ruminegge is also really famous. (You’ve probably seen him on TV.) One part vintage vaudevillian and one part European quiz show master, Rumminegge invites you to be led by the nose through a quiz you will find hard to remember.
Part of the Children's Art in Libraires Summer Programme 2014.