My mother sent this to me, and I repost it here so as not to carry on the shameful family legacy of being someone who sends these sorts of things out by e-mail. Also, as much as I am embarassed by not knowing some of these things — although, really, who sees a rotary phone dial regularly any more in 2005? — I find the notion that the average score is seven to be a somewhat dubious claim.
Anyway, the evil e-mail list thing:
There are 25 questions about things we see every day or have known about all our lives. How many can you get right? These little simple questions are harder than you think — it just shows you how little we pay attention
to the commonplace things of life.
Put your thinking caps on. No cheating! No looking around! No getting out of your chair! No using anything on or in your desk or computer!
Can you beat 20? (The average is seven.) Write down your answers and check answers (on the bottom) AFTER completing all the questions.
REMEMBER – NO CHEATING!
BE HONEST! That means no looking at your phone or anything on your desk …
If you have both an Internet-capable computer and a rotary telephone on your desk, I want to shake your hand and take your picture.
Then, before you pass this on to your friends, change the number on the subject line to show how many you got correct. Forward to your friends and also back to the one who sent it to you.
LET’S JUST SEE HOW OBSERVANT YOU REALLY ARE – If not, just have fun! Here we go!
1. On a standard traffic light, is the green on the top or bottom?
2. How many states are there in the USA? (Don’t laugh, some people don’t know.)
3. In which hand is the Statue of Liberty’s torch?
4. What six colors are on the classic Campbell’s soup label?
5. What two numbers on the telephone dial don’t have letters by them?
Rotary telephone; a similar question about touchtone phones is coming later. This list has to have been passed around pre-Internet, back when people tied up office fax machines with such things.
6. When you walk does your left arm swing with your right or left leg? (Don’t you dare get up to see!)
7. How many matches are in a standard pack?
8. On the United States flag is the top stripe – red or white?
9. What is the lowest number on the FM dial?
10. Which way does water go down the drain, counter or clockwise?
In the Northern Hemisphere, in this case.
11. Which way does a “no smoking” sign’s slash run?
12. How many channels on a VHF TV dial?
13. On which side of a women’s blouse are the buttons?
14. Which way do fans rotate?
Answer as if you are looking at a fan blowing in your direction.
15. How many sides does a stop sign have?
16. Do books have even-numbered pages on the right or left side?
17. How many lug nuts are on a standard car wheel?
18. How many sides are there on a standard pencil?
19. Sleepy, Happy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Dopey, Doc. Who’s missing?
20. How many hot dog buns are in a standard package?
21. On which playing card is the card maker’s trademark?
22. On which side of a Venetian blind is the cord that adjusts the opening between the slats?
23. There are 12 buttons on a touch tone phone. What two symbols bear no digits?
24. How many curves are there in the standard paper clip?
25. Does a merry-go-round turn counter or clockwise?
Assume you were looking down from above the merry-go-round.
ANSWERS
1. Bottom
2. 50
3. Right
4. Blue, red, white, yellow, black and gold
5. 1, 0
6. Right
7. 20
8. Red
9. 87.7
10. Clockwise (north of the equator)
11. Towards bottom right
12. 12 (no #1)
13. Left
14. Clockwise as you look at it
15. 8
16. Left
17. 5
18. 6
19. Bashful
20. 8
21. Ace of spades
22. Left
23. *, #
24. 3
25. Counter
Now send it to some of your friends and put your score in the subject box!
Do it and I’ll get you back with endless chain letters. You’ve been warned. My mom’s got some headed her way right now.
In completely unrelated news, Wired has a fascinating article about the birth of Google.
In honor of the 36th anniversary (good lord!) of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Google has put up a custom Google Maps showing the landing site: Google Moon. (Make sure to zoom all the way in at least once.)
Hopefully, Google Mars won’t be too many years off.
I just found out that John Stewart was in my fraternity, at the William & Mary chapter.
Neat. Yet another fraternity brother who’s vastly funnier than me. I’ll have to settle for being the second most famous Pike journalist, after Ted Koppel.
My heart goes out to all those affected by the bombings in London. It was a senseless, pointless, stupid, bloody act.
I’ve already gotten the heads-up that my London friend is OK, but I know many other people are not — 40 dead at this hour and more than 700 injured, and both numbers are still climbing. I can only hope that this is the worst of it.
Once again, I’m struck by what a massive miscalculation this sort of attack is, just as attacking the United States on 9/11 was a mistake. Watch our movies, world: John Wayne is our national self-image, and how do you think he would react when attacked? The British have endured decades of terrorism and capitulation is not how they respond to it.
A sort of brutal Darwinism is taking place here: Terrorists stupid enough to attack enemies who will strike back hard are going to find giant holes blown through their organization. Maybe the organization will carry on, maybe it won’t, but most of those responsible won’t be around to find out.
In any case, my deepest grief and sympathy for Londoners and the British in general. I am put in mind of Gail Simone’s wonderful post-9/11 essay (first published at CBR, and later reprinted in Marvel Comics’ “Heroes” charity book). To paraphrase what she said then, the people responsible for this atrocity thought they were striking at the heart of Britain.
They missed.
Perhaps a little late for me, but Yahoo! News’ newest edition of Tech Tuesday talks all about the history and practice of blogging.
Well, maybe it’s not too late. Jonah has had a blog for years, and just revamped it quite a bit this past week, porting it over to the same software I use, WordPress, and making other changes. Check out what he recently saw around the neighborhood, where I lived until a year ago.
Anyway, Yahoo on blogging. There’s four blogging articles, and more on podcasting and RSS, which I think somewhat fall outside the strictest definition of blogging. The blogging articles themselves:
Everyone’s Blogging (But You?)
Can my employer fire me for criticizing the company in a blog? Maybe. Freedom of the press means Uncle Sam has to tolerate your ramblings, but your boss doesn’t necessarily have to–especially if you use a company PC to monitor or manage your blog. That said, some companies encourage blogging as a way for employees to engage customers, partners, etc. Several, such as IBM, have issued guidelines for employees to follow, so everyone understands the rules. In general, unless you’re at a company that encourages blogging as a way to communicate, like Sun Microsystems, don’t blog at work. Anything you create on an employer’s PC is fair game for monitoring.
If you’re going to talk business on a blog–regardless of where the PC you actually post it from is located–make it clear you’re not speaking for the entire company. And remember, if you keep a racy or controversial blog, potential future employers may find it when they do a Web search for information about you (and many will). You may be proud of your creative writing about Carmen Electra and Paris Hilton, but the folks in human resources may not see it your way.
This would probably be a good time to mention that nothing said here on this site should be taken as representing the views of Freedom Communications or the Daily Press family of newspapers.
Starting a Blog – Free spots to blog. I’ll pass: I like having control over my own destiny, and the article neglects to mention that free blog sites have suddenly shut down in the past.
Radio Blogs? – All about broadcasting (or, rather, podcasting, “a made-up word that’s a combination of IPod and broadcasting”) your voice across the Internet, much like Augie does as an adjunct to his main site.
Bloggers Go Mainstream to Fight Regulation – Bloggers fight threatened campaign finance regulation changes that would extend campaign finance laws to them.
How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else) – An Electronic Frontier Foundation article on how to blog without losing your job. Other than their (perhaps slightly obsessive) focus on anonymity, I’m already following their tips, although apparently, under California law, I couldn’t be fired for my political views. (It’d just make things extremely difficult with sources, so none for me, thanks.)
