QUIZ

My results:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

What is alarming is that I ran two samples of my writing, one a political editorial, the other an appreciative essay on a rare angling book, and both got the same result. My guess is that test is responding to my vocabulary.

Hat tip to Chico Kidd.

Quiz

I got Riker for a result. I’d been hoping for Khan.

Hat tip to Tristyn Bloom.

Which of 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention are you like? Quiz

(I got James Madison, doubtless because I said I liked reading books too frequently.)

Steve Bodio offers a bit of a challenge.

This was sent by the biographer [Anne Winter] of the late legendary Jesuit adventurer, mountaineer, hunter, and my sometime mentor Father Anderson Bakewell, S J, who found it in an 80’s Jesuit newsletter among his effects. It has been around in various iterations, but I wonder, given the rifle, if he were also involved in its creation. His was the only sloth bear in Rowland Ward’s top ten guided by “self” and he was the youngest member of Tilman’s Everest crew, whose pioneering south route was finally accomplished by Hillary– among a lot of other things.

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New York Times, November 21, 1999:

BAKEWELL-Anderson, the Rev. Reverend Anderson Bakewell, a Jesuit priest, missionary, mountain climber and explorer died of cancer at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 13, 1999. He was 86. Fr. Bakewell was born in St. Louis, MO. He graduated from St. Louis University in 1937. In 1942, he entered the Society of Jesus, volunteering five years later for a mission to India. He worked with fellow Jesuits at the Haffkine Institute in Bombay, preparing antivenin for snake bites and studying cobras, krait and vipers. After ordination in Calcutta in 1951, he worked at a jungle mission in Bihar. Returning to the U.S. in 1955, he raised money to build a Jesuit retreat house in Faulkner, MD. Later he served as assistant pastor at Holy Trinity Church, Georgetown, where the Kennedys attended Mass. In 1967, he volunteered for a mission to Delta, Alaska where he had a 35,000 square mile parish, ministering to four churches and three pipeline camps, twice carrying out rescues at 70 degrees below zero. In 1978, he became chaplain of the Carmelite Monastery in Santa Fe. In 1939, Father Bakewell made the first ascent of Cristobal Colon, the highest peak in the Columbian coastal range. In 1941, he was in the first party to climb Mt. Wood, in the St. Elias Range, Yukon, then the highest unclimbed peak in North America. In 1950, he participated in the first attempt to climb Mt. Everest from the south. In 1965, as a member of the Explorers Club, he participated in the first nonstop, round-the-world flight across both poles. As a naturalist he collected reptiles, mammals and plants material for U.S. scientific institutions. He was also a trophyholding big game hunter. Funeral masses were held in Santa Fe and St. Louis. Burial was in St. Louis.

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INSTRUCTIONS: Read each question carefully. Answer all questions. Time limit: four hours. Begin immediately.

ENGINEERING: The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed in a box on your desk. You will also find an instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In ten minutes a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take whatever action you feel appropriate. Be prepared to justify your decision.

Complete examination.

I grew up in Shenandoah, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, about 90 miles northwest of Philadelphia, so I have to admit my result was dead on accurate.

Norman Rockwell, Saturday Evening Post cover, August 27, 1960 (click to enlarge)

As the paintings of Norman Rockwell frequently attest, pre-1960s America was not nearly so thoroughly divided by class as today’s America.

We recently linked the New Criterion article by Charles Murray, excerpted from his forthcoming book, on the damaging impact to both sides of class separation in contemporary America.

To illustrate his theses, Mr. Murray subsequently offered a 25 Question test, designed to indicate exactly how isolated from ordinary America the individual subject may be.

Murray’s test seems pretty accurate, as I got a score of 67, placing me in the “first- generation middle-class person with working-class parents and average television and moviegoing habits” category, which is quite right. I’m the descendant of Turn-of-the-Last-Century Lithuanian immigrants, and grew up in the Anthracite coal mining town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. My father and grandfathers were coal miners. As a consequence, I think Murray is right in believing that I’m much less infatuated with the moral and intellectual superiority of the urban community of fashion.

Can you tell Barack Obama from a pop culture celebrity? Take this 8 question quiz and find out.

Hat tip to Daniel Moloney.

(received via email)

1. In the 1950s, where were automobile headlight dimmer switches located?

a. On the floor shift knob
b. On the floor board, to the left of the clutch
c. Next to the horn

2. The bottle top of a Royal Crown Cola bottle had holes in it. For what was it used?

a. Capture lightning bugs
b. To sprinkle clothes before ironing
c. Large salt shaker

3. Why was having milk delivered a problem in northern winters?

a. Cows got cold and wouldn’t produce milk
b. Ice on highways forced delivery by dog sled
c. Milkmen left deliveries outside of front doors and milk would freeze, expanding and pushing up the cardboard bottle top.

4. What was the popular chewing gum named for a game of chance?

a. Blackjack
b. Gin
c. Craps!

5. What method did women use to look as if they were wearing stockings when none were available due to rationing during W.W.II?

a. Suntan
b. Leg painting
c. Wearing slacks

6. What postwar car turned automotive design on its ear when you couldn’t tell whether it was coming or going?

a. Studebaker
b. Nash Metro
c. Tucker

7. Which was a popular candy when you were a kid?

a. Strips of dried peanut butter
b. Chocolate licorice bars
c. Wax coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside

8. How was Butch wax used?

a. To stiffen a flat-top haircut so it stood up
b. To make floors shiny and prevent scuffing
c. On the wheels of roller skates to prevent rust

9. Before inline skates, how did you keep your roller skates attached to your shoes?

a. With clamps, tightened by a skate key
b. Woven straps that crossed the foot
c. Long pieces of twine

10. As a kid, what was considered the best way to reach a decision?

a. Consider all the facts
b. Ask Mom
c. Eeny-meeny-miney-mo

11. What was the most dreaded disease in the 1940’s?

a. Smallpox
b. AIDS
c. Polio

12. “I’ll be down to get you in a ________, Honey”

a. SUV
b. Taxi
c. Streetcar

13. What was the name of Caroline Kennedy’s pet pony?

a. Old Blue
b. Paint
c. Macaroni

14. What was a Duck-and-Cover Drill?

a. Part of the game of hide and seek
b. What you did when your Mom called you in to do chores
c. Hiding under your desk, and covering your head with your arms in an A-bomb drill

15. What was the name of the Indian Princess on the Howdy Doody show?

a. Princess Summerfallwinterspring
b. Princess Sacajewea
c. Princess Moonshadow

16. What did all the really savvy students do when mimeographed tests were handed out in school?

a. Immediately sniffed the purple ink, as this was believed to get you high
b. Made paper airplanes to see who could sail theirs out the window
c. Wrote another pupil’s name on the top, to avoid their failure

17. Why did your Mom shop in stores that gave Green Stamps with purchases?

a. To keep you out of mischief by licking the backs, which tasted like bubble gum
b. They could be put in special books and redeemed for various household items
c. They were given to the kids to be used as stick-on tattoos

18. Praise the Lord, and pass the ________________?

a. Meatballs
b. Dames
c. Ammunition

19. What was the name of the singing group that made the song “Cabdriver” a hit?

a. The Ink Spots
b. The Supremes
c. The Esquires

20. Who left his heart in San Francisco?

a. Tony Bennett
b. Xavier Cugat
c. George Gershwin

ANSWERS

This test claims it can determine which side of your brain you use most, depending on in which direction you see the dancer turn.

The Telegraph is commemorating Prince William’s break-up with his girl-friend, reportedly over class issues (the young lady was seen by the British Press chewing gum) with a quiz designed to identify your place in the British social system.

I found that I knew all the right answers, thus –in theory– entitling me to be Duke of Devonshire. But, if restricted to the facts, I’d have to settle for “having a coat of arms.”