The Monday Quiz XLI

Aerial Photos

This week, the Monday Quiz takes a bird's-eye view of some famous places. You've heard of all of them. But can you identify them?

1. What is this place called?

2. What city is this?

3. What city is this?

4. What is this place called?

5. What is the compound in the upper left of this photo called?

Submit your answers in the comments.

...and, just for fun: where's this?

Weekend Edition

Art!

Those of you who live in the United States of America should definitely drop everything you are doing and come out next Friday evening (Sept 5th) for the opening of Mrs.5000's First Ever Solo Show!! It's at the 23Sandy Gallery here on the beautiful East Side of the City of Roses, sensibly located at the intersection of 23rd and Sandy. Reception from 6 to 9! If past experience is any guide, there will be free wine and cookies! Can't go wrong with free wine and cookies.

Here's the official postcard! [note: Mrs.5000 uses a goofy alias, "Susan Collard," in order to attract attention in the "art scene." But you and I know who we're really talking about here.]

The online catalog for the show can be found right..... here.


Hey! The Olympics are Over!

Here's the final score of the Olympic games!

1. Bahamas: 2
One medal for every: 153,725 people

2. Jamaica: 11
One medal for every: 254,939 people

3. Iceland: 1
One medal for every: 304,367 people

4. Slovenia: 5
One medal for every: 401,542 people

5. Australia: 46
One medal for every: 447,839 people

6. New Zealand: 9
One medal for every: 463,718 people

7. Norway: 10
One medal for every: 464,446 people

8. Cuba: 24
One medal for every: 475,998 people

9. Armenia: 6
One medal for every: 494,764 people

10. Belarus: 19
One medal for every: 509,777 people

So, congratulations to the island nations for their athletic prowess!

Congratulations too to Estonia, right up there in the world standings with a 12th place finish! (And, it's worth mentioning, 3rd place in gold medals per capita!) Ära räägi! Kas tõesti?! Kas te soovite tantsida?!

Tough breaks for the United States of America, though, which ended up way back in the pack at 46th with only one medal for every 2.7 million people. And a devastating Olympics for hosts China, with a humiliating 68th place finish of only one medal per 13.3 million people. China can at least take pride in having beaten neighbor India, taking up the rear at 87th with only one medal per 382.7 million people. Well, there's always next year. Or, four years from now. Whatever.

It's Labor Day Weekend!

...unless you are from one of those countries that celebrates labor in May. Which is pretty much every other country in the world, right? Well, we in the United States of America celebrate labor at the end of summer. That's just how we roll.

A chat snippet from last year:

8:54 AM Patrick: hooray for labor!
8:56 AM michael5000: Hooray for Labor Day!
8:57 AM Patrick: oh right.
8:58 AM michael5000: well, labor too.
9:00 AM Patrick: but less so

College Football, Baby!!

It's the first weekend of the season!! But I promised not to talk about that.

A chat snippet from last year:

10:46 PM michael5000: How 'bout them Huskies?
10:48 PM BigSister5000: Yeah, could you believe the third quarter?
10:50 PM michael5000: I'm pretty sure that was a lucky guess.
10:51 PM BigSister5000: What, was it actually lucky?

And finally, the buzz-kill:

Yoyo the Cat, who was featured back in February in the Sentimental Cat Post, died this week at age 21 1/2. She was a remarkably gentle, good-natured, intelligent, and charming animal, and lived a enviably happy and peaceful life. We miss her a lot.

The Thursday Quiz: Bye-Week

The Thursday Quiz has a lot to celebrate! Saturday, for instance, is its first anniversary! Plus, today is the first day of the COLLEGE FOOTBALL SEASON!!! ...which, per last year's spectacular lack of reader interest, I will not be talking about this year. However, we should at least give the great sport a moment of dignified contemplation:

Right, where were we? Oh, right -- the Thursday Quiz is taking the week off; it will be back next Thursday to start off the Sixth Season.

Congratulations

...are in order to the Fifth Season Champions, who include, but are not limited to:

gs49 -- Five stars, two of 'em Gold ones!!

Phineas -- Four stars: a Gold, two Silvers, and a Blue!!

Karmasartre -- Four stars: a Gold, two Silvers, and a Green!!

Nichim -- Four stars, a Gold, a Silver, and two Blues!!

Rex Parker -- Four Green Stars!!

Thanks to them, and -- as always -- to all of you who indulge me by taking the Quiz or just by glancing at the blog in general every once in a while. It's very flattering. I hope some of you have a small fraction of the fun I have with this thing.

Return of Classical Wednesdays I

By actual requests -- of which there was more than one! -- Classical Wednesdays returns with a new round of recommendations for your listening pleasure.

The Baroque Era

Before I wrote the Classical Wednesdays series, I thought I had an roughly even mix in my collection of Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and 20th Century music. I was wrong! Turns out I actually listen to music of the Baroque much less than music from any other of the four time periods. But never fear! I can still write about the period in a tone that implies absolute confidence in my own knowledge! Any questions? No? Good.

General Listening Suggestions

The three biggest names in Baroque music, at least from the modern American perspective, are Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Georg Friedrich Handel. Most of the Baroque music in my collection was written by one of those three guys, and honestly I can't feel too bad about it. All three wrote at a consistently high level, and you could do worse for a Baroque listening strategy than to just focus on them.

Handel, who wrote in England, is a bit heartier than the other two. His music has a bit of bluster in it that I like. It's peppy. J.S. Bach is the intellectual, writing intricate pieces where the various parts all seem to move independently of each other but also somehow come together in an coherent whole. There's a mathematical precision to Bach. Physicists love him. Vivaldi is sunnier, showier, a violin virtuoso who creates music that feels a little more spontaneous, a little less methodical, than Bach's. If you root around in the music of these three, you'll find a certain sameness to a lot of it, but you'll also find some real gems. If you can handle vocal music, try Handel's operas, Bach's cantatas, and the Vivaldi Gloria.

There was also a lot of concerto writing going on in the Baroque, so if you are fond of a particular instrument and want to get away from the Big Three, you can look for a collection of concerti. For instance, I have a disc here called "Baroque Trumpet Classics" (this one happens to be on the Seraphim Classics label) that features concerti by Stolzel, Telemann, Torelli, and (of course) Vivaldi. It's good! And, the focus on a single instrument gives a concerto a distinct sonic texture, and breaks up the sameness you can sometimes get in the Baroque sound.

More Specific Suggestions

Realizing my lack of breadth on the Baroque circuit, and knowing that the L&TM5K readership expects the very highest level of content, I have been digging around in the Baroque literature a little to find some new pieces for us to listen to. Here's what I've turned up.

Corelli: Concerti Grossi, Op. 6. There's a sweet wistfulness in these proto-symphonies that, combined with the inherent thinness of the Baroque sound, strikes me as downright autumnal. Maybe its just that we are approaching the turn of the season, but this music seems to conjure up visions of falling leaves, late sunshine, and apple stands. Very pleasant stuff.

Tartini: Five Sonatas for Violin & Basso Continuo. Most chamber music before Beethoven or thereabouts was composed more to be enjoyed by the players than to be enjoyed by listeners. This was before wide-screen television, computer gaming, and fantasy sports, remember, so the poor wretches were reduced to playing music together as a form of entertainment. Much of a composer's money was made through providing sheet music for this market.

The Tartini Sonatas show the classic profile of chamber music written for amateur performers. The violin part offers opportunities to show off, but really isn't very complicated. The harpsichord part is even simpler, for the most part just laying out chords for the violin to riff over. The cello part requires little more than a living human being, which goes to show that, then as now, it was hard to scare up a good bass player.

For all that, they are nice. At times a little on the formal side, at times fairly jolly, they have a great deal of old-world garage band charm. They won't blow you out of your shoes, but they might pick up your mood a little.

Handel: Recorder Sonatas, Op. 1. Since our last discussion of the Baroque prompted a free and frank exchange of views on the recorder, I thought I would give Handel's contribution to the repertoire a listen. They are very listenable! They are light, bouyant, and highlight the pure quality of the instrument's tone rather nicely. They are also, it must be said, a bit static harmonically. Since the recorder can't really cover the whole chromatic scale, a piece that uses it has very few options for changing key. It's interesting to hear Handel try to fudge this problem. He has the accompanying instruments change key while the recorder plays melody lines cobbled together out of the handful of notes within that key that it can produce. Even with this trick, though, a little bit of monotony sets in if you are listening too carefully.

Bach: Cello Suites. Six suites! Six movements apiece! One instrument! And the cello isn't really a chord-playing instrument, either, so for the most part you are simply listening to a single melodic line throughout the suites. It goes without saying that this makes for a somewhat austere music. This is probably not the best choice for music to keep you perky while driving at night. However, there is a dignified sweetness to these pieces that makes them good listening, and -- sorry, Bach -- terrific background music for writing and thinking. The first movement of the first suite is the big hit of the series; you can give it a listen and decide from there if you want a lot more of the same.

Teleman: The Paris Quartets. Bubbly, pleasant, suitable for a wedding reception -- this is champaigne music. The flute is a featured instrument in some of the quartets, which gives them a lightness of touch that might be charming, or kind of lame, depending on your mood. Not recommended for firing up the team before the big game. But potentially great in other settings.

The Great Movies: "The General"

The General

Buster Keaton, 1926.

The General must have been a hella exciting movie in 1926. With sound, it would still be pretty exciting today. It consists of two incredibly elaborate train chases, bookended and divided by some very modest plot material. Since there's not much of a story line, the biggest problem of silent film -- that dialog is incredibly cumbersome -- is simply avoided. And even without a soundtrack, the photography of the train chases is pretty amazing. The many stunts, some of them rather jaw-dropping in their daring, were clearly performed in an era of more relaxed standards of liability. It is far from obvious how many of the shots of the moving trains were even filmed, given the technology of the day. There are a gazillion extras, costumed and choreographed to a tee. It is a astonishing feat of filmmaking.

But is it entertaining? Well, somewhat. As much as it could be, perhaps.

A silent movie just lacks the immersive quality of the talkies. The action is visually dazzling, but without the screeches, roaring, shots, and shouts, it's not really very engaging. There is comic relief in The General, but since dialog is not really an option, it's almost all in the form of broad visual gags (there is, however, a fine instance of irony in the late going, but it's the best moment in the movie and I don't want to give it away). It is certainly the most entertaining silent movie I've ever seen (beating out Battleship Potemkin by quite a ways, and Broken Blossoms by a country mile), but that's not really saying much. Once you've had synchronized sound with your motion pictures, it's really, really hard to go back.

Another possible problem with the entertainment value, depending on how much you worry about such things, is that the movie wants you to root for the Confederate States of America against the corrupt and devious soldiers of the United States. Now, I understand that many ordinary folks in the South fought in the army of the CSA with noble intentions and commendable bravery. And, I understand that national reconciliation was a bit more of a live issue when The General was filmed than it is today. Yet, if you wanted to identify a single country that has ever embodied the worst of the human species, the CSA -- the explicit purpose of which was to protect and perpetuate the human rights atrocities of its ruling class -- would have to be on your short list. So even watching The General as a historical artifact, I personally find its sentimental take on the gentility of the Confederate Army a little hard to stomach.

Plot: For reasons having to do with the Civil War and luv, a man chases one train with another train for a long long ways. Then, for similar reasons, he drives a different train back to where he started, while being chased by other trains. Out of an hour and a half of screen time, a full hour is train chases. The best part of the movie? The train chases.

Visuals: Rather amazing, really. People are running around all over the trains while they are in motion, shooting at each other, throwing stuff onto the tracks, blowing things up, fighting with other people on the train, etc., and you always have a coherent idea of what's going on. Filming so many stunts, many of them quite daring, on and from a moving train, must have been a pretty amazing experience. I'm glad I wasn't the film's underwriter.

Dialog: It's a silent movie.

Prognosis: If you watch just one silent movie this year, this is the one to watch! But... why would you?

Shh! The Monday Quiz is Sleeping!

...and the Fourth Season of the Monday Quiz is in the record books. Congrats to DrSchnell, who put in a dominating performance, taking Exclamation Points home in seven of the season's ten contests to earn top honors.

Cartophiliac was right behind him with six wins, and takes the second spot.

Chance, la gringissima, and gs49 were all strong contenders as well, with four E.P.s apiece over the course of the summer.

My respect and thanks to these general knowledge studs -- and to everyone else who has showed up for a Quiz or two over the summer.

Seasonal Champions of the Monday Quizzes are now shown on the Quiz Leaderboard. Eternal glory, baby!

---

The Fifth Season of the Monday Quiz starts next Monday, September First.

Q: Will you be bringing a challenging yet entertaining mix of traditional and innovative five-question image-based pop Quizzes?
A: You know I will.

Q: I'm a teacher. Is it really proper for me to be taking the Quizzes? Isn't my role to be giving quizzes?
A: It is critical for an educator to be able to understand and identify with the experience of their students. The michael5000 Quizzes have been shown by several scientific studies to enhance intellectual humility, broad-mindedness, and love of learning if taken on a regular basis. Several major universities and urban school districts are in fact looking into requiring their teaching staff to take the Monday Quiz for just this reason. There is really no better way for a teacher to spend their Monday lunchtime.

Q: How about students?
A: Yeah it's good for you guys too.

See you next week for the Fifth Season of the Monday Quiz!

Meanwhile...

If you are starting a new semester of teaching or learning this week, best of luck to you! Knowledge and understanding are good! Have fun!

The Reading List: Beowulf

Beowulf is a message in a bottle from an amazingly remote time and way of life. It is like a letter that you find in the attic, written by a cultural great-great-grandparent, an eccentric ancestor that you never had the chance to meet and whom you know precious little about, but whose influence is still felt every time the family gets together.

The differences between your life and the life of a medieval Anglo-Saxon tribesman are notable. You, gentle reader, live perched on the framework of a global economic system, a relatively stable social order, and myriad wonders of technological achievement and materials science. The Anglo-Saxon, on the other hand, has a life style that, although by no means "natural" -- we're talking about human beings, here -- is far more exposed to the elements and to the immediate questions of food supply and survival than we are or probably could bear to be. Manufactured items are exceedingly rare. With communication sporadic and resources few, human-on-human violence is a commonplace.

These are people without literacy, without an organized justice system, without antibiotics. They can not expect to be famous in the future or to be defended from assault by others, and they know that life is always extremely tenuous. All of this breeds a way of thinking about priorities that seems to the modern eye, shall we say, bracingly rugged. There are no frills, and there is no romance. Beowulf, the warrior hero, lays it out for us before going into battle:

...do not grieve. It is always better
to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.
For every one of us, living in this world
means waiting for our end. Let whoever can
win glory before death. When a warrior is gone,
that will be his best and only bulwark.

A Note on the Text

No one knows the exact origins of the Beowulf story. We don't know whether it was an important legend among the Anglo-Saxons or just a random one that happened to survive by accident. It is an oddity in that it is a written relic of a non-literate people; the oral tale survived long enough into the reintroduction of literacy for someone -- two someones, judging by the handwriting -- to write it all down.

There is a lot of Christian content in Beowulf layered over a clearly pagan core narrative. This may be because the scribes who wrote the tale down, who were almost certainly monks, manipulated its content; or, it's possible that the tale had evolved Christian trappings among its tellers in the newly Christianized population. Either way, the text reflects its having been written down in the period of transition from non-literate pagan England to literate, Christian England.

That Was a Good King

The Anglo-Saxons are a tribal people; in the grand game of Civilization, they have discovered Iron Working but not Monarchy. What they call "Kings" are really regional warlords. The job of these kings is to protect their people through wise leadership in war and diplomacy, and to ensure that everyone gets an equal cut of the spoils. Alliances must be well thought out, wars must be prosecuted with vigor and valor, and treasure and the honor that it signifies must be distributed fairly and properly to those who have earned it.

To an great extent, Beowulf is a kind of Medieval Machiavelli, a manual of advice for the Anglo-Saxon king. Beyond the basic tale of hero fighting monsters, the text is packed with digressive speeches that recount the histories of tribes, heroes, and events. Each of these tales comes with an implied suggestion for the best practice of leadership.

One of the key messages of Beowulf, for instance, is "avoid feuds." The idea that "it is always better to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning" is intended to deter crime and violence by the threat of reprisal, and doubtless it often served that function. It's an unstable system, though, in that once the peace is broken it tends to stay broken, in an endless cycle of reprisal killings. And this is bad. Feuds are costly, disruptive, and almost impossible to stop once they are underway. They can fester for generations. The Anglo-Saxons, as you might expect, understood the psychology of this very well; at one point, the tale contemplates two tribes trying to end a decades-old feud through a judicious political marriage:

Than an old spearman will speak while they are drinking [at the wedding feast],
having glimpsed some heirloom that brings alive
memories of the massacre; his mood will darken
and heart-stricken, in the stress of his emotion,
he will begin to test a young man's temper
and stir up trouble, starting like this:
'Now, my friend, don't you recognize
your father's sword, his favourite weapon,
the one he wore when he went out in his war-mask
to face the Danes on that final day?
...and now here's a son of one or other
of those same killers coming through our hall
overbearing us, mouthing boasts,
and rigged in armor that by right is yours.'
And so he keeps on, recalling and accusing,
working things up with bitter words
until one of the [bride's] retainers lies
spattered in blood, split open
on his father's account....
Then on both sides the oath-bound lords
will break the peace....

It's hard to end feuds. Readers of Beowulf are reminded of this constantly, and reminded that the best path is to make sure that feuds don't get started in the first place.

An even more important message is "be generous." Give until it hurts. In Beowulf, the final measure of a king is how much loot he is passing around. If you are distributing a lot of gold to your people, it shows that you have successfully fostered and defended the wealth of the community, and that you honor and respect the work of the people who made it all possible. It is, oddly enough, a more or less democratic mechanism, a way of assuring the consent of the governed. If you are tight-fisted, you will sow resentment and dissent, and you will not be king for long.

Considering that we are in the Early Middle Ages, here -- the proverbial "Dark Ages" -- its impressive what a promenant role queens have in this system of distributing wealth and honor. They mix freely and with apparent ease through the company of warriors, and the honors that they bestow through words and gifts are portrayed as somewhat independent of, but equal to, those of their husbands. That they possess some measure of power -- and that they, like their husbands, were considered under obligation to exercise that power wisely -- is shown clearly in this episode:

Great Queen Modthryth
perpetrated terrible wrongs.
If any retainer ever made bold
to look her in the face, if an eye not her lord's
stared at her directly during daylight,
the outcome was sealed: he was kept bound
in hand-tightened shackles, racked, tortured
until doom was pronounced -- death by the sword,
slash of blade, blood-gush and death qualms
in an evil display. Even a queen
outstanding in beauty must not overstep like that.
A queen should weave peace, not punish the innocent
with loss of life for imagined insults.

Queens are definitely not entirely autonomous, but then this is not a society of autonomous individuals. Everyone in the community is bound to everyone else by obligations of service, responsibility, and the sharing of loot.

About that loot

The Anglo-Saxons are mad for it. They do not share our notion of the embarassment of riches. Unabashed materialists, they find gold fascinating and lovely, and frankly want as much of it as possible. In a time of very, very few manufactured goods, a handful of gold hoops seems to have represented the good life. Indeed, to an Anglo-Saxon gold "rings" (bracelets, really) ARE the good life -- they are the luxury automobile, the McMansion, the marble countertops, the master bedroom suite with wraparound shower, the weekends in Aspen, the whole deal. It's all wrapped up in a few bands of metal. A person's rings represent their honor and their standing among their peers, and thus, like the luxuries of any era, they have a psychological worth unrelated to their inherent beauty or utility.

This is the kind of thing that makes Beowulf so fascinating. Its characters think and act in ways that are often wholly alien to us. But at the same time, they are human beings and, for those of us who grew up in the matrix of the English speaking world, they are important cultural ancestors. In there with the alien, there are plenty of glimpses of what we share.

On the Translation

I read the popular recent translation by the Irish poet Seamus Heany. This version is sometimes criticized on technical grounds and for being "too much Seamus Heany, not enough Beowulf." I am unqualified to comment on the technical questions, but can comfortably say that "too much Seamus Heaney" is an oxymoron. The text as he renders it is a brilliant piece of alliterative poetry. I read it out loud, probably to the puzzlement of the neighbors, and it felt great coming out of the mouth. The only problem was getting the rumbling rhythms out of my speech for a few hours afterwards.


Summary

You know the story. Man fights monsters: Grendel, Grendel's mom, and a dragon. The fights don't make up much of the text, though, and for my money they are just window dressing for a much more interesting meditation on the qualities and responsibilities of leadership.