127.

This was a rock concert held at ________Speedway in Northern California. The concert was organized by The Rolling Stones, and was anticipated by many to be a "Woodstock West". Artists that played during the event included Santana, Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The Grateful Dead were also scheduled to perform, but declined to play shortly before their scheduled performance because of the increasing violence at the venue.

An incident which shot the concert to notoriety was the death of 18-year-old Meredith Hunter, who under the alleged influence of drugs "intended to do terrible harm to Mick or somebody in the Rolling Stones." He was intercepted by a member of Hell's Angels, who were incharge of security at the concert, (according to reports in return for $500 worth of beer), and who stabbed Hunter resulting in his death. In all there were three deaths among the audience, and Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones and Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane were punched and hurt during the concert. The documentary Gimme Shelter which chronicled the last weeks of The Rolling Stones' 1969 US Tour incorporated extensive footage from this concert. Name the concert.

Answer(Highlight):
Altamont Free Concert

126.

 X is a former Chinese politician. He came to prominence through his tenures as the mayor of Dalian and then Governor of Laoning province. The son of Bo Yibo, one of the Eight Elders of the Communist Party of China, he is widely identified as one of the princelings of Chinese politics. Between 2007 and 2012 he served as a member of the Central Politburo and secretary of the Communist Party's Chongqing branch.
He came to international attention when his top lieutenant and police chief Wang Lijun fled and sought asylum at the American consulate in Chengdu and revealed details of X's alleged involvement in the homicide plot of British citizen Neil Heywood. The incident exposed factionalism and corruption within the Communist Party to international observers, serving as a major embarrasment to the Party before the CPC 18th National Congress. His wife was convicted of the murder, and he was stripped of all party positions, lost his seat at the National People's Congress, and eventually expelled from the party.

Answer(Highlight):

Bo Xilai

125.

This painting is called Nine Jackies, painted after JFK's assassination by one of the most famous modern artist. Name the Artist.

Answer(Highlight):
Andy Warhol

124.

X's book The Cold War brought the phrase to common currency to describe the political situation post World War II. He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize(1958 and 1962) for his syndicated newspaper column, Today and Tomorrow.
X was an informal adviser to several presidents, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on September 14, 1964 by President Lyndon B, Johnson. He however later had a feud with the President over his handling of the Vietnam War. X's reputation was so high that a Democrat senator from Idaho who voted against Johnson(a Democrat President) reasoned that he agreed with X.
Who is X?

Answer(Highlight):
Walter Lippmann

123.

He is a Ukranian professional boxer and the reigning World Boxing Council heavyweight champion, and is the 12th-longest reigning Heavyweight Champion in the world, having retained his title since 11 October 2008. With a 87.23% knockout percentage rate, he holds the second highest knockout-to-fights ratio, after Rocky Marciano's 87.76%. His power and his possession of a PhD have led to his nickname, Dr. Ironfist. He is currently also leader of a political party and has been elected to the Ukrainian parliament.
His younger brother is the reigning WBA, IBF, WBO, IBO & The Ring Heavyweight Champion.
Name both brothers

Answer(Highlight):
Vitali Klitschko and Wladimir Klitschko

122.

The End of the Affair is a novel by British writer Graham Greene, published in 1951. The novelist whose works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, loosely based the book on his affair with Lady Catherine Walston, and is set during and just after World War II.
The book recently gained attention in India, because of something many speculate is loosely based on the novel. What?

Answer(Highlight):
Yash Chopra's Jab Tak Hain Jaan is said to have been loosely inspired by The End of the Affair

121.

X was a 1979 seven-part drama spy miniseries for the BBC. It is the television adaption of the 1974 novel of the same name by Y.
Starring Alec Guinness in the lead role, the main credits  feature a matryoshka doll progressively revealing a doll looking more irate than the previous, with the final doll being faceless, an allusion to Winston Churchill's describing Russia as "A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."
The miniseries was remade into a film in 2011, and earned Z his first Oscar nomination, before which he was widely described as "the best actor not to have been nominated for an Oscar." Give X, Y and Z

Answer(Highlight):
X - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy
Y - John Le Carre
Z - Gary Oldman

120.

This is a global intelligence company founded in 1996 in Austin, Texas by George Friedman. The company has been described as " a private quasi-CIA". The company " fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations." Although it has large multinational corporations as clients, its reputation among intelligence experts is poor: It has been described as "just The Economist a week later and several hundred times more expensive"

The company gained worldwide attention when it was hacked by Anonymous, who claim to have retrieved 200 GB of data. Its email cache was released by Wikileaks on 27 February 2012, and revealed among others, monitoring of protesters of Bhopal Gas Tragedy by Dow Chemicals, and of PETA activists in Canada during 2010 Winter Olympics for Coca-Cola Company.

Name the Company.
Answer(Highlight):
Stratfor

119.

X was a Belgian surrealist artist. He was born in 1898, and is known for his thought-provoking images that challenge observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality.

On 12 March 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. According to legend, X was present when her body was retrieved from the water. When she was found, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of X's paintings during 1927-1928, of people with cloth obscuring their faces. Even his later painting Y(1964) depicts a person whose face is partially obscured from view by an object. Give X and Y.

Answer(Highlight):
X: René Magritte

Y: Son of Man

KQA Mindsweep 2.0 and Mega-Whats 2012

MINDSWEEP 2.0 & MEGA-WHATS 2012

What’s what
MindSweep is KQA’s international open solo quizzing championship while Mega-Whats is our annual national open quizzing championship for teams of four members.

When
From this year on, MindSweep and Mega-Whats will be held on the same day over forenoon and afternoon sessions respectively.

The date: Sunday 9 December 2012

Schedule
MindSweep: 1000hrs-1300hrs
Mega-Whats: 1500hrs-1830hrs

About Mega-Whats 2012
This year’s edition is set by Arun Hiregange and Kiran Vijayakumar and will be held in fourteen cities: Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, Bhubaneshwar, Kolkata, Guwahati, New Delhi, Panaji, Pune, Mysore, Coimbatore, and Thrissur. The winners from each of these cities, and two more from the top ten teams nationally, will battle it out at the Mega-What’s Face-off in ASKQANCE 2013, KQA’s 30th Anniversary Quiz Fest.

About MindSweep 2.0
MindSweep, our international solo championship, is intended as a vehicle for the things that are distinctive about the quizzing that happens in some (if not all) Indian cities.

The setters (Navin Rajaram, Dibyendu Das, Kiran Vijayakumar and Arul Mani) have enjoyed taking (and bulbing at) the World Quizzing Championships, perhaps because Indian quizzing is a wee bit different from its international cousin. MindSweep is our attempt at sharing the things we enjoy about quizzing with an international audience.

So, what the devil is distinctive about Indian quizzing? A privileging of good guesswork over memory; the triumph of generalists over specialists; bombing a syllabus, rather than using one; the pleasure of parsing, or unknotting, or sometimes being pythoned by a carefully coiled question; a festive relationship with the English language; and the strange appetite for knowing joy and defeat in one instant–a mystical state known as AJM, or Goddamn-it-I-was-that-close.

After the first edition of MindSweep in Jan 2012, several embittered souls sent in their punning suggestions (not all of them were polite) for what we should actually have called the quiz. We laughed, and carried on. The first edition of a quiz, like a first kiss, must elicit some reaction, some ‘hubbub, babel, shindy, hullabaloo, stramash, charivari, and total contempt of repose,’ or what’s a contemptibly long zindagi for?

In MindSweep 2.0, the taker will meet ten sets of questions (200 in all) over two one-hour sessions–this means two installments of five sets of questions, interrupted by a short 30-minute break for answers, corrections, and worship of the bladder.

MindSweep 2.0: The Topics

1. The Arts: Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Design, Architecture, Installation Art, Dance, Theatre
2. Science and Tech: Concepts in the Sciences, History and Philosophy of Science, History of Technology, The Environment, Astronomy, Medicine, Inter-disciplinary work, Popular Science Writing
3. Literature: Poetry, Literary Fiction, Non-Fiction, Drama, Genre Fiction, Graphic Novels, Critics, Literary History, Translation
4. Social Sciences: History, Anthropology, Cultural Studies/Social History, History of Ideas, Economics,The Philosophers
5. Business: Brands, Fashion, Business History, Advertising
6. Sports and Leisure: Sporting History, Games, Television, Gaming, Sports-Writing, Sports-Coverage, Hobbies–Collecting, Gardening, Fan-communities, The Internet
7. Cinema: Hollywood, National Cinemas, World Cinema, Film Genres, Film-Technology, Film-language, Cinema & Society, Film-writing
8. Music: Instruments, Performers, Genre Music, World Music, Tech Innovations, Music-magazines, Music industry, Music-journalism
9. Food & Drink: From all over the world
10. Travel: Places, Peoples, Languages, Landmarks, Journeys, Voyages, Means of Transport

If you would (after all this) like MindSweep to be held in your city/country, please mail kqaquizzes@gmail.com, and cc:arul.mani@gmail.com

from
http://kqaquizzes.org/mindsweep-2-0-mega-whats-2012/

118.

At a point when X was killing numbers of Pandava troops, Krishna advised Yudhishthira to adopt a plan to kill X. Krishna advised that it be proclaimed that Y was killed in battle, at which out of grief, it was expected that X would lay down his arm.
Yudhishthira, being a proponent of truth, hesitated at this, at which his brother Bhima killed an elephant in the Kuru army named Y, and proclaimed "Y is dead, Y is dead".
The proclamation had its effect, and X lay down his weapons, at which Z, born to King Drupada, beheaded him.
Give X, Y and Z.

Answer(Highlight):
X - Dronacharya
Y - Ashwatthama
Z - Dhrishtadyumna

117.

Bugsy Siegel was an American gangster associated with the Genovese Crime Family. Siegel with associates Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello formed Murder, Inc.; credited with carrying out many contract killings across US.
His desire to be a legitimate businessman led him to gain ownership over the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. He spent extravagantly on his new 93-room Hotel, thereby incurring the displeasure of mob bosses.
On June 20, 1947, Siegel was shot in the head, twice. Although there is a general misconception that he was shot through the eye, in fact his left eye was blown out of its socket by the overpressure created by the bullet's striking and passing through Siegel's skull.
The misconception was propagated by the murder of a film character based on Siegel, in a Gangster Classic. Name the Character and the film.

Answer(Highlight):
Moe Greene, The Godfather

116.

Born in 1959, this poet has published four poetry collections. Gemini(1992), Apocalypso(1997), English(2004) and These Errors are Correct(2008). He shot into literary fame in 2012 for his first novel, set in the Bombay of the 70s and 80s.
In 2006 he told The Hindu that he had been an alcoholic and an addict for almost two decades:
"I spent most of that time sitting in bars, getting very drunk, talking about writers and writing. And never writing. It was a colossal waste. I feel very fortunate that I got a second chance."
Who am I talking about?

Answer(Highlight):
Jeet Thayil

115.

Chalmun's Cantina is a fictional bar located in this pirate city. It is popular among freight pilots and many dangerous characters of various races and contains booths, a bar counter, and some free-standing tables, and sometimes a band of musicians named Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes.

The establishment is extremely rough in nature; but the clientele and the management give incidents of deadly violence no more than a moment's attention.

Simple enough, name the pirate city

Answer(Highlight):
Mos Eisley