Zombies, eh?by KenWe haven't done this in a while, and when I saw the new issue of National Geographic in the mailbox this evening when I got home from today's urban gadding (first a visit to NYC Transit's Bergen Sign Shop out in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, then a Historic Districts Council walk up in Harlem and even farther up in Mott Haven, the Bronx, focusing on three still-in-use Carnegie-paid-for public libraries, with a drive-by of a third on the bus en route to the Bronx), I thought, you know, we haven't done this in a while!So here it is, direct from the address insert in this month's subscription mailing:
1 Izmir, Adana, and Bursa are major cities in what country?2 The Strait of Malacca links the South China Sea with which ocean?3 Name the largest city in Scotland, which is located on the Clyde River.4 The Corfu Channel separates the Greek island of Corfu from which neighboring country?5 What country north of Ghana, formerly known as Upper Volta, won independence from France in 1960?
THE ANSWERSI DID JUST . . . WELL, NEVER YOU MIND HOW I DIDOkay, okay, I got three right, and two others maybe not quite as right. I'm frankly a little dubious about (4), the answer to which seems hardly worth concerning ourselves with. So maybe I don't know exactly where Corfu is. Am I expected to keep track of every last Greek island? Hey, there are, uh, millions of them. And then --HOLD ON! RECOUNT! I WANT A RECOUNT!Now just a doggone minute! When did [name withheld] become Scotland's largest city? Everybody knows that [name withheld] is the capital and Edinburgh the largest city. Okay, Edinburgh isn't on the Clyde (it's on the Firth of Forth, as I was reminded when I looked it up), and I should have remembered that (besides, shouldn't that be "the River Clyde," not "the Clyde River"?), but it hardly mattered since I knew perfectly well what the largest city in Scotland is -- I've got this! And in any case I can hardly be expected to keep track of every confounded river in the world.Oh.Never mind.#
