Below are six trivia questions. If you’d like to participate, you can either reply to this e-mail or submit your answers via Google Forms by using the button below. You can find our rules and guidelines by following this link.
1) In 1992, George H.W. Bush attacked a certain television family by saying that his goal was to “make American families a lot more like the Waltons” and a lot less like that certain other family. NAME the television character who responded days later by saying “Hey, we're just like the Waltons. We're praying for an end to the Depression, too.”
2) NAME the nation that today has two official currencies: the United States dollar and, at the recent urging of its president Nayib Bukele, the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
3) In a colloquial sense, you can add WHAT letter to something you can see at 30 Lincoln Center Plaza in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in order to get something you can see a few miles away at 123–01 Roosevelt Avenue in Queens?
4) NAME the frozen-yogurt brand that launched in Arkansas in 1981 and that has more than 250 locations today; it claims to sell the country’s best yogurt.
5) NAME the Brazilian soccer player, the recipient of five consecutive FIFA World Player of the Year Awards from 2006 to 2010, who in 2019 became the all-time leader in goals scored in World Cup matches.
6) The answers to the first five questions in this newsletter all share a connection. NAME the American pop-rock band with a one-word name that closely relates to this newsletter’s connection; the band is one of the most successful artists in the history of what is now known as the Billboard Adult Pop Airplay chart.
Trivia Newsletter CXIII Recap
1) Article 37 of the Geneva Conventions (as amended in 1977) allows for “ruses of war” such as camouflage and misinformation but specifically prohibits WHAT act, examples of which include “the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender” and “the feigning of an incapacitation by wounds or sickness”?
This is PERFIDY.
Upon reading Article 37 again, I see that my wording in the question wasn’t precise. I wrote that Article 37 specifically prohibits perfidy. Here’s some of Article 37:
It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy. The following acts are examples of perfidy…
As I read it again, I noticed that perfidy isn’t actually prohibited; instead, the prohibition is on killing, injuring, or capturing an adversary by using perfidy. But surely the rule cannot be that perfidy is totally fine as long as it doesn’t work, right?
…
Following the Hague Regulations, the prohibition only concerns the killing, injuring or capturing of an adversary by resort to perfidy. For reasons given above, the term "treachery", which was considered to be too narrow, was abandoned in favour of the term "perfidy"; moreover, the capture of the adversary was added to the two former prohibitions on "killing" and "injuring". However, bearing these considerations in mind, the present Article 37 is limited to the framework defined by the 1907 Regulations, and therefore the present article only condemns perfidy in the sense of the first sentence of the article.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that even within these limitations, the interpretation of perfidy will always be easy. The problems arising from this provision seem to have been aptly revealed by members of a delegation to the Diplomatic Conference in a study of the results of the Conference. According to the authors of this study, the prohibition of perfidy has its weak points. If only the fact of killing, injuring or capturing an adversary by resort to perfidy constitutes a perfidious act, the question arises what an unsuccessful attempt would be called. Moreover, it seems that a prohibition which is restricted to acts which have a definite result would give the Parties to the conflict a considerable number of possibilities to indulge in perfidious conduct which was not directly aimed at killing, injuring or capturing the members of the armed forces of the adverse party, but at forcing them to submit to tactical or operational measures which will be to their disadvantage (raising the white flag for the sole purpose of deflecting or delaying an attack is not a direct violation of the prohibition contained in the first sentence even though it is a violation of Article 23(f) of the Hague Regulations).
On the other hand, people will then be killed, injured or captured in the course of combat. It will be no easy matter to establish a causal relation between the perfidious act that has taken place and the consequences of combat. The authors consider that it follows that there remains a sort of grey area of perfidy which is not explicitly sanctioned as such, in between perfidy and ruses of war. This grey area forms a subject of permanent controversy in practice as well as in theory.
2) English philanthropist George Williams is most notable for founding WHAT organization in London in 1844? Originally intended as a place that would not tempt young men into sin, one version of the organization’s mission statement today is “[t]o put Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all.”
This is the YMCA. The YWCA was founded in London just eleven years later, in 1855.
You might know the YMCA as an organization that runs a bunch of neighborhood athletic facilities. What’s up with that? Read about that here:
Today, YMCA-run gyms span the United States, serving millions of people. You might wonder why a faith-based organization would be running gyms at all, but ”The Y,” as it has rebranded itself, got its start in the workout biz thanks to a late-nineteenth century philosophy known as “muscular Christianity.” This movement, which linked physical prowess with a strong faith and morality, “represented Protestant men’s response to changes throughout the nineteenth century,” writes scholar Irén Annus.
These men were responding to a number of developments, she writes, such as “the growing public presence of women” in the temperance movement and the push to get women the vote, as well as the influx of immigrants who worked stereotypically masculine labor jobs while middle-class white Anglo-Saxon Protestants increasingly lifted pens.
3) The website of the International Powerlifting Federation (IPF) states that one of the three disciplines that make up powerlifting is the squat. NAME both of the other disciplines of powerlifting, according to the IPF.
We were going for the BENCH PRESS and the DEADLIFT.
Do you remember the joke from Season 3 of The Office where Michael Scott gives multiple opening lines to his speech at Phyllis’s wedding? “The most important part of a speech is the opening line,” he says. “When time is not a factor, I like to try out three or four different ones.” That’s the energy I get from the first paragraph of the IPF’s “about” page:
Strength is the primary ingredient of athletic performance. Powerlifting's lifts are the definitive measure of strength. Powerlifting is the ultimate strength competition. The powerlifting athlete competes in three specific disciplines, each designed to measure different areas of human strength. The sum or total of the best lift in each discipline determines the winner. Powerlifting is an exciting sport where athletes compete against the force of iron as well as other athletes.
4) “I goofed this case. I forgot about the jury. I forgot about the question of guilt or innocence and a proper presentation on that point because I was so wrapped up in getting it dismissed on constitutional questions,” said pro bono defense attorney John Flynn in 1967 during his client’s retrial. WHAT was Flynn’s client’s last name?
Flynn’s client was Ernesto MIRANDA, who is most notable in American history for the Supreme Court case that recognized (or, if your politics differ, created) one’s constitutional “Miranda rights.” After the Supreme Court case was decided, Miranda’s case was retried, prosecutors were able to bring more evidence, and Miranda was convicted (and later paroled).
I am not a criminal-defense lawyer, but I would not recommend using phrases like “I forgot about the question of guilt or innocence” if you are a criminal defense lawyer describing your work!
5) Coincidentally, four of the top five leaders in career regular-season rushing touchdowns in the National Football League have last names that end in WHAT letter?
The letter is N, and those leaders are:
Emmitt Smith (164)
LaDainian Tomlinson (145)
Marcus Allen (123)
Adrian Peterson (120)
Walter Payton (110)
Walter Payton, the legendary Chicago Bears player, passed away in 1999. At a memorial for Payton, his teammate Dan Hampton said:
I got a little girl, she's four years old. Ten years from now, when she asks me about the Chicago Bears, I'll tell her about a championship, and I'll tell her about great teams, and great teammates and great coaches. But the first thing I'll tell her about is Walter Payton.
6) Each of the sets of questions and answers in this newsletter relates, in some fashion, to the act of doing WHAT? (A hint: If I had to give this newsletter an additional subtitle, that subtitle would be “Vault 101”).
Each question relates in some way to the act of RAISING YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.
Question #1: Perfidy may involve a false surrender, as alluded to in the question.
Question #2: The dance associated with the song “Y.M.C.A.” requires putting one’s hands in the air.
Question #3: The bench press and deadlift both require raising your arms.
Question #4: Miranda and his case are most closely associated to procedures during and shortly after the arrest of a suspect, which may involve a suspect raising their hands.
Question #5: A referee signals a touchdown by raising their arms in the air.
The newsletter title, “This Ain’t a Scene,” refers to the 2006 Fallout Boy song “This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race,” which was meant to make you think of “raising” arms. The supplemental clue in Question #6, “Vault 101,” was a double connection. The vault, the act that gymnasts do, ends with the gymnast raising their arms in the air—so, “Vault 101” refers to a basic introductory fact about the vault. However, “vaults,” including a vault named Vault 101, also figure prominently in the Fallout franchise of video games, which was a way to reinforce the newsletter title, since “Fallout” is also in the name of the band we were pointing towards.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.