QUES: Enlisted members of the USAF have pay grades from E-1 (entry level) to E-9 (senior enlisted). While all USAF military personnel are referred to as Airmen, the term also refers to the pay grades of E-1 through E-4, which are below the level of non-commissioned officers (NCOs). Above the pay grade of E-4 (i.e., pay grades E-5 through E-9) all ranks fall into the category of NCO and are further subdivided into "NCOs" (pay grades E-5 and E-6) and "Senior NCOs" (pay grades E-7 through E-9); the term "Junior NCO" is sometimes used to refer to staff sergeants and technical sergeants (pay grades E-5 and E-6).

What pay grades are included in the USAF for Senior NCOs?
What is the answer?
ANS: pay grades E-7 through E-9
QUES: In 1974, Feynman delivered the Caltech commencement address on the topic of cargo cult science, which has the semblance of science, but is only pseudoscience due to a lack of "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty" on the part of the scientist. He instructed the graduating class that "The first principle is that you must not fool yourselfand you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that."

Which topic did Feynman's commencement speech at Caltech avoid?
What is the answer?
ANS: unanswerable
QUES: IndyMac reported that during April 2008, Moody's and Standard & Poor's downgraded the ratings on a significant number of Mortgage-backed security (MBS) bonds including $160 million of those issued by IndyMac and which the bank retained in its MBS portfolio. IndyMac concluded that these downgrades would have negatively impacted the Company's risk-based capital ratio as of June 30, 2008. Had these lowered ratings been in effect at March 31, 2008, IndyMac concluded that the bank's capital ratio would have been 9.27% total risk-based. IndyMac warned that if its regulators found its capital position to have fallen below "well capitalized" (minimum 10% risk-based capital ratio) to "adequately capitalized" (810% risk-based capital ratio) the bank might no longer be able to use brokered deposits as a source of funds.

What was one of the agencies that downgraded a significant number of IndyMac's MBS bonds in April 2008?
What is the answer?
ANS:
Moody's