1a. Vannevar Bush invented the idea of linking documents by hypertext, and published the idea in Atlantic Monthly in 1945: As We May Think, decades before Tim Berners Lee designed the modern World Wide Web.
2c. This was pointed out in The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (see 3.2 and 3.3), where he explains how Africa's geography prevents effective trade. Recently, in Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond points out that sub-saharan Africa's axis is north-south, making it practically impossible to transfer crops, apparently unaware of Adam Smith's contribution. He does add that none of the animals native to Africa are easy to domesticate.
3a. The usual answer is b, which while not wrong begs the question about why we see colours at all. Most mammals are colour-blind. It is thought that colour vision evolved in primates to help them to see and discriminate different foods, which range in colour from red to green, with almost no blue and no cyan food occurring naturally. It so happens that the sky scatters the same colour as stuff we know we can't eat because it's the wrong colour to be food. (See Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett.)
4. 1791, by Wolfgang von Kempelen. (see History and Development of Speech Synthesis) Dates as early as 1779, when Christian Kratzenstein successfully synthesized vowels, are acceptable, but no date later than 1800 is.
5. 1843, by Alexander Bain (see Alexander Bain & the Fax Machine.)
6b. Crete, to be exact. The Phaistos Disk was printed.
7. Midwifery, probably. Certainly not prostitution, because it's not a profession (no qualifications required, no governing body, etc.) and requires the existence of money which is quite recent. Unassisted childbirth in humans would result in high infant mortality, and so we can conclude that midwives would have existed from early in the evolutionary history of our species.
8. September 18, 1931. Japan invaded Manchuria (Mukden Incident). July 7, 1937 (when Japan invade China (Second Sino-Japanese War)) is also acceptable.
9. Yes. 0. Gas chambers were installed, but never used. See Dachau Concentration Camp.
10. They all have foods named after their inhabitants. (A Filipino is a Spanish chocolate biscuit.)
11d. Don't Bring Harry is about heroin. The others are about a) growing up and leaving childhood behind, b) a painting by Julian Lennon, c) meditation, e) the culture shock experienced after landing in a foreign country.
If you got a high score, then obviously Moab is your washpot.
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and was last updated on 2006-01-22 at 22:02.
© Copyright Donald Fisk 2006