Fast Quiz!

[Guest fountainhall]

Aleppo is daily in the news. It is one of the oldest inhabited cities in civilisation and featured heavily in the Crusades.

 

In what play or plays does Shakespeare mention Aleppo?

 

No cheating, please

[Rogie]

Not like me to dodge a guess, but my knowledge of Shakespeare is terrible. I suppose if he wrote a play based on say Richard the LIonheart he might have mentioned Aleppo, but i've no idea if he did.

 

It's very sad to see what's unfolding in Syria. The President was an ophthalmologist by profession living in London and regarded as a decent chap. I don't think he ever expected to become President.

 

I visited Syria back in the early 90's and it's a fascinating country. The so-called crusader castles are amazing.

[Guest thaiworthy]

I'll bet even the venerable Kokopelli doesn't know this one.

[kokopelli]

Othello

[KhorTose]

Othello

 

I loved Macbeth, the play we had to do in the 12th grade. One of the things I loved was the scenes with the witches---done best by Piolanski. Here Aleppo is mention. However, Koko's answer made me think and I did cheat and looked it up and he is also right.

[kokopelli]

Othello is correct? I never read the play nor cheated. Just pulled the answer out of my ass. Figured if Othello was a Moor then maybe he traveled to some Muslim countries.

[Rogie]

I'm kicking myself! That's all I knew about Othello too, that he was a Moor, so I would have used exactly the same reasoning as Koko if only I'd woken up.

 

 

[kokopelli]

Rogie; refer to my post on the Mars Rover post. You were using English system in reasoning , I was using Metric system in my reasoning. Although I believe the English use Metric and the Yanks use English ?

[Guest fountainhall]

Obviously posters are an educated bunch, what with brains using English and Metric reasoning. But it's the answer that counts, whether it not it comes out of your ass!

 

The answers are Macbeth, where one of the witches does indeed refer to Aleppo in Act 1, Scene 3 -

 

"Her husband's to Aleppo gone"

 

- and Othello Act 5, Scene 2

 

"And say besides, that in Aleppo once, 
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk 
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, 
I took by the throat the circumcised dog, 
And smote him, thus."

 

Honourable mention to Rogie for entering, even though Shakespeare did not write a play on Richard I and I think I am right in saying the Third Crusade did not go near Aleppo (although had he written such a play, no doubt he could have found a way to mention the city in a scene featuring evil witches and murdering Moors)! But I sure do envy Rogie having seen all those amazing crusader castles.

[Rogie]

Rogie; refer to my post on the Mars Rover post. You were using English system in reasoning , I was using Metric system in my reasoning. Although I believe the English use Metric and the Yanks use English ?

 

The 'English system' is rather strange.

 

We are loathe to let go of our beloved imperial units but the pressures of the modern world dicate we need to accept metric units of measurement. But we shall never 'embrace' them with open arms - younger people maybe, but not my generation.

 

As an ex-scientist I used metric units all my professional working life, but in the real world I prefer our miles over kilometres, our pints rather than litres and I weigh myself in stones not kilograms. However I lose no sleep having to order my apples or bananas in kg in the grocers or my cheese in grams or kg at the deli. One thing I definitely do not like is when I am asked my height and am obliged to give the answer in metres. Because I was brought up on feet and inches I cannot visualise in my mind what a height of say 1.75 metres is. I notice that evenin some metric countries such as Australia some people stick to feet and inches for height rather than metres.

[Guest]

I buy diesel in litres, but measure fuel consumption in miles per (UK) gallon.

 

I weigh about 71kg and am 6' tall. However, for all other linear dimensions of less than 1km, I always use metric measurements.

 

In some cases, the entire planet seems to adopt a mixture of imperial and metric. For example, a 185-65R13 tyre has a width of 185mm and is made to suit a 13" wheel.

[kokopelli]

And there is the car with a 5 liter engine producing 300 horsepower.

[kokopelli]

Speaking of English and Metric equivalents, would any of you like to guess what a "slug" measures? No cheating.

[Rogie]

It reminds me of Call my Bluff, a British TV programme where two teams of three try to guess the correct meaning of a word. One definition is always correct and the other two are red herrings.

 

So here would be the three meanings:

 

a slug is a measure of whisky

a slug meaures the ferocity of Mohammed Ali's jab

a slug is a measure of how fast you can load a gun

 

unfortunately it is also possible for all three to be wrong

[Guest fountainhall]

Some amount of volume - as in a slug of whisky.

[Bob]

Or a slug of any drink (usually alcohol).

Or a slug is a punch with a fist.

Or a bullet (usually, at least in the US, referring to a lead bullet in a shotgun shell).

Or a slug is that slimey little snail-like creature that infests our gardens.

[kokopelli]

I am pleased to see that our members are slugging away for the correct answer but to no avail. Most likely Rogie knows the answer because of his scientific background but wanted to give everyone else a shot at it.

 

In the English/Imperial system of measurement a SLUG is a unit of MASS. The equivalent unit in the Metric system would be the KILOGRAM. Thus z909's mass would be 4.86 slugs = 71 kg. Some may think that the equivalent unit of a kilogram is the pound but that is wrong. The pound is a unit of FORCE; the equivalent unit in the Metric system would be the NEWTON (nt). Thus z909 would "weigh" on Earth, not 71kg but 698 nt = 157 lb. Wow, he is slim!

 

Wanna guess who the newton was named after?

[Rogie]

I'm dumbfounded! I certainly wasn't holding back, I've never come across it.

 

As for newton, I hope where I assume it comes from is right, or I will be led out to face a firing squad!

 

Yes, I was a scientist and was beginning to feel just a trifle inadequate until I looked up the Wikipedia entry:

 

Stick this in your pipe and smoke it!

 

"The slug is a unit of mass associated with Imperial units. It is a mass that accelerates by 1 ft/s² when a force of one pound-force (lb_F) is exerted on it.

With standard gravity g_c = 9.80665 m/s², the international foot of 0.3048 m and the avoirdupois pound of 0.45359237 kg, one slug therefore has a mass of approximately 32.17405 lb_m or 14.593903 kg. At the surface of the Earth, an object with a mass of 1 slug exerts a force of about 32.17 lb_F or 143 N."

 

If you're a glutton for punishment you can read more at:

 

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Slug_(mass)

[Bob]

Wanna guess who the newton was named after?

 

No guess from me as I'm still busy trying to find out who's buried in Grant's tomb.....

[kokopelli]

President/General Grant is "buried" in Grants Tomb in New York City/USA,The Newton was named after Fig, the town of Newton in the USA

[Rogie]

Darn, I never knew that!

 

Not sure if they're sold in the UK, I've never seen them but then again I never looked.

 

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/05/03/name-change-fig-newtons-are-now-just-newtons/

[ChristianPFC]

Figured if Othello was a Moor then maybe he traveled to some Muslim countries.

 

How do you jump from Moor (black African, as black as they can get) to Muslim countries? The only connction I can see that the Arabs/Muslim had slaves from Black Africa.

[kokopelli]

I used the same reasoning as Shakespeare. Also the word "Moor" has various meanings and does not necessarily mean a black African, as black as they get. Othello was a General in the Venetian army and was well traveled in his military career.

[Guest fountainhall]

How do you jump from Moor (black African, as black as they can get) to Muslim countries? The only connction I can see that the Arabs/Muslim had slaves from Black Africa.

 

Surely the connection is that following its origins in Mecca, Islam spread with astonishing rapidity and covered all of North Africa within less than 100 years. This continued right through to Shakespeare's time. So there is no contradiction between Otello being both a Moor and a Muslim - with no connection to slavery. As kokopelli points out, Otello was a general in the powerful Venetian army, both much decorated and much respected.

[KhorTose]

So there is no contradiction between Otello being both a Moor and a Muslim - with no connection to slavery.

 

This statement by FH is 100% correct and you can even add no connection to ethnicity too as the the term Moor derived from the area they lived in called Maure by the Romans. These are the people who conquered most of Spain and Portugal when they converted to Islam. In Shakespeare, Orthello is always pictured black since that was written into the play that way, but many Moors were light skinned Berbers and brown skinned arabs as well as blacks from Mali, Algeria, and Niger. The Arabs have never had a problem with skin color. They did have black slaves, but they also had Turkish slaves. Nevertheless, these slaves could raise to high positions. The term for Turkish slave is mamluke or ghilman and the most famous was Saladin who defeated Richard I of England in the holy land. The Mamluks went on to found a dynasty in Egypt that ended under King Farouk. When talking about people you must be careful of generalizations, but one that is nearly always true is there is no racism in the Islamic world..