314. Fresh Fruits

Created in 1966 by Ron Karenga, X is a week-long holiday celebrated in the United States honoring African heritage and culture. The name of the festival is derived from the Swahili phrase "matunda ya X", meaning "first fruits". Each of the seven days is dedicated to Nguzo Saba or 'The Seven Principles' described as Umoja (Unity), Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics), Nia (Purpose), Kuumba (Creativity) and Imani (Faith).

The week day celebration is marked by lighting a kinara (candle holder) and pouring of libations, and culminating in a feast and gift giving. The greeting for each day of is "Habari Gani", Swahili for "What's the News?"

The US stamp (pic), created by artist Daniel Minter, shows seven figures in colorful robes symbolizing the seven principles.

Which celebration am I talking about?

313. Banished from Venice....

In 1291, practitioners of this art-form were forced to move from Venice to a neighboring island (name blacked out in the figure) as most of Venice was made up of wooden buildings.

Which art-form? Which neighboring island?

312. In the court of King Neptune?

Those who accomplish the feat are nicknamed Shellbacks and those who have not are nicknamed Pollywogs.

After accomplishing the feat, Pollywogs receive subpoenas to appear before King Neptune and his court (usually including his first assistant Davy Jones and her Highness Amphitrite and other assorted dignitaries), who officiate at the ceremony marking their transition to a Shellback.

What feat are we referring to?

311. The new Pheidippides?

The Athens Classic Marathon, an annual event was established in 1983 and has been run annually since, normally in November.

The marathon is dedicated to the memory of someone (pic above), who amongst other things, held the national Greek record for Long Jump for 23 years and whose death caused a symbolic piece of graffiti to come up all over Athens.

Identify this person.

310. Product-displacement?

In the post production for this movie, in opposition to product placement, the editors had to resort to something called product displacement,and digitally remove several logos from various artifacts in the movie (at a cost of several thousand pounds).

Many companies such as Mercedes refused to allow their products to be used in non-flattering and squalid settings which the movie demanded.

Identify this fairly contemporary movie.

309. The road to enlightenment....

What is the following an example of:

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat
hacking at the PDP-6.

"What are you doing?" asked Minsky.

"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe," Sussman
replied.

"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.

"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play," Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.

"So that the room will be empty."

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

308. Off with his head (but they couldn't get rid of his shadow)...

The Turkish-Greco school of shadow puppetry gets its name from the name of a labourer (the name translates into Blackeye in English) active during the construction of a mosque in Bursa during the reign of Orhan I. The labourer and his compatriot (who is also an integral part of these plays) used to entertain other labourers during construction time and were executed for the resulting delay of the work. The saving grace was that they became folk heroes!!

The plays themselves are structured into four parts – Mukaddime (the introduction), Muhavere (the dialog), Fasil (the main plot) and Bitiş (the conclusion).

Identify this art form which is especially associated with the holy month of Ramzan.