Quiz II:1 -- Supplemental

This one goes out to all of you who thought the U.S. State flag quiz this week was toooooo easy, and longed to see the alternative quizzes that the international contingent got to play. And I think I know who you are! Nobody, that's who. But what the hell.

Here are the states of Australia....


And here are the provinces of Canada -- the image will hopefully expand a bit if you click on it.

This is not an official Wednesday Quiz, nor will scores count towards Wednesday Quiz Season Two. Nor should it be played for investment purposes.

The Reading List: Interpreter of Maladies

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999.

Interpreter of Maladies is the second book by Jhumpa Lahiri that I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Well, I didn't literally "read" the first -- Unaccustomed Earth -- but rather listened to it on my mp3 player, like I do with a lot of books. It had been strongly recommended to me by my friend Santha, and I ripped it from a library book-on-CD without paying any attention to the cover. It began in an ordinary enough fashion, introducing a cast of characters, a situation, and a prevailing mood. Then, the second chapter introduced a whole new set of characters who seemed to be occupying a different timeframe and situation, but this is not unusual in a novel. But then the third chapter, too, seemed to start things afresh, and I was beginning to boggle at how much the author was asking me to remember and by trying to imagine the convoluted plot structure she was going to have to use to start tying all these situations together.

Well, I don’t read short fiction a lot, so it wasn’t until the fourth “chapter” once again introduced a whole new scenario that I caught on. Unaccustomed Earth is a book of ~short stories~, thematically linked but, except for one pairing, each independent of the other. Oops.

This time I wasn’t fooled. I started reading Interpreter of Maladies fully aware that I was reading a book of short stories! And, having eventually found Unaccustomed Earth to be an excellent book of short stories, I set a high bar for Interpreter of Maladies. Happily, I was not disappointed.

The stories in Interpreter, which is actually the older book, cover the same themes as those in Unaccustomed Earth: the experiences of first- and second- generation Indian immigrants to the United States. Lahiri is writing what she knows, but also with a rare perception and deftness of touch that captures not only the specifics of her subject matter but also its human universals. She gives us an insider’s perspective of what it is like to live within an immigrant subculture, and certainly shares a lot of experiential detail about the texture of Indian-American life. Yet these are not narrowly drawn stories. Everybody feels like an outsider now and again during their life, and most of us also feel some measure of conflict between the pull of parental tradition and the push of a younger generation adopting new ways of life. At some level, we all share the state of cultural flux and uncertainty that Lahiri’s characters live in.

Lahiri is a lovely prose stylist, with a language that is serious and sober yet compelling enough to keep you reading just-one-more-story until well after your bedtime. Often the stories are sad, but there is also humor in the details. Too, these are generally stories about small things --memories of seasons from childhood, inconclusive attempts to mend broken relationships, conflicts between the residents of an apartment building. This renders them quieter than the grand adventures related in most novels, regardless of genre or tone. But they are also more intimate than most fiction, and more directly related to real life, which after all generally flows by in a parade of small stories.

Two of the pieces in Interpreter of Maladies, “A Real Durwan” and “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar,” take place entirely in India. They are not bad, by any means, but they are a little out of place; Lahiri is really at her best when writing about people out of cultural context, thousands of miles from home or one generation from the familial homeland. “This Blessed House,” a story of an arranged marriage faltering from the couple’s mismatched personalities, may be familiar to first-time readers; I know I’ve heard it read before, probably on This American Life or something like that.

It is of course completely irrelevant, and indeed both condescending and sexist, to mention that Jhumpa Lahiri is an almost unbelievably beautiful human being. Yet since Santha mentioned this when recommending the book to me, it seems somehow needful that I mention it in turn to you here and now, as I in turn recommend her collection – both collections, actually – of exquisitely crafted short stories to you.

March's Element of the Month: Cobalt!

March's Element of the Month:Cobalt!
Co
27

Atomic Mass: 58.94 amu
Melting Point: not sure
Boiling Point: not sure

March’s Element of the Month is Cobalt! Now, usually I am able to use the resources of the so-called “World Wide Web” to synthesize the state of knowledge about any given monthly element, but since I am writing today from a telecommunications-free cabin overlooking a sullen, stormy, wine-dark sea, we’ll have to work from what resources are at hand -- to wit: Volume 3 of the 1921 World Book (“Child Study to Electrode”) and Volume 5 of the 1959 Encyclopedia Britannica (“Castir to Cole”).

So, let’s see. From the former, we mostly learn that Cobalt is a silver-white metal that's an awful lot like Nickel, and like Nickel is good for coating other metals so they stay nice and shiny and don’t corrode. Except, it’s more expensive than Nickel, so who needs it. Also, you can make a pink ink out of Cobalt Chloride and, if you write on a piece of pink paper, it’s invisible – until you heat the paper, when the writing turns blue! Cool. And then of course Cobalt compounds are used in pigments for paints, dyes, glazes, and what-not. How important is Cobalt? Well, the town of Cobalt, Ontario is given as the world center for its production, and the population as of 1916 is listed as 5500 and dropping. Draw your own conclusions.

The Centerfold!

The Britannica tells us that the word Cobalt comes from a 14th Century German word for evil spirits, the connection being not only that Cobalt is often associated with Arsenic, which was of course a major health hazard for miners, but also that it was absolutely useless, a waste of mining time and energy. So historically, Cobalt seems to be the whipping boy of the periodic table, getting no love from anybody. The venerable encyclopedia does eventually concede, though, that the uses of cobalt “are not numerous, but are increasing.” Being strongly magnetic, it has new applications in the bleeding-edge technology of “telephony,” and its alloys are being used in heating elements and high-speed cutting tools.

The Britannica devotes a stultifying three columns to the chemical properties of Cobalt, going out on a limb with this daring summary statement: “The chemistry of cobalt shows many resemblances to, as well as differences from, the chemistry of iron and nickel, its neighbours in the periodic system.” It also notes that “finely divided metallic cobalt occludes as much as 100 times its volume of hydrogen, and readily gives it up again when heated to 200C in vacuo.” I only vaguely understand what that means, but it sounds pretty cool, and also I will be looking for any further opportunities to use the phrase in vacuo.

Want more Cobalt in your life? You might have to look hard: it represents only 0.000018% of the matter here on the crust of the Blue Planet [[July 2012 update: This figure seems a couple of order of magnitude too low, compared with contemporary sources]]. For a shortcut, though find yourself a meteorite. You might find that it’s as much as 2.5% Cobalt!

Incidentally: Best compare-and-contrast of articles between Volume 3 of the 1921 World Book and Volume 5 of the 1959 Encyclopedia Britannica? “Churchill, Winston.” They are SO inconsistent!

The Wednesday Quiz II:1 -- State Flags

The Wednesday Quiz -- Season II -- Quiz 1

State Flags

The Wednesday Quiz is a "closed-book" test of knowledge and intuition; please do not look up answers, ask others for help, or answer as a team.

Questions about the rules and the ~Fabulous Prizes~ are answered here.

---

This week's Quiz is a identification game. For each image,

Identify the State Flag

Here are 10 flags of U.S. States. Identify them for 10 points apiece.

NOTE: If you are a non-UnitedStatesean who intends to compete regularly throughout Season Two, you may request an alternative Quiz appropriate to your own country in the comments. No, really, you can. And I will happily provide.

1:


2:


3:


4:


5:


6:


7:


8:


9:

10.


Submit your answers in the comments!

The Great Movies: A Hard Day's Night

A Hard Day's Night
Richard Lester, 1964.

Previous Contact: I watched A Hard Day's Night several years ago with Mrs.5000, something of a mild Beatlemaniac, with a stony, unamused face. I found it the opposite of amusing.

- - - -

The Beatles were a popular rock quartet whose songs reflected and had considerable influence on the rapid stylistic changes in popular music during the 1960s. Because of their unparalleled commercial success and, to a certain extent, because one of their number would eventually meet a tragic end while still at the height of his fame, this band has become emblematic of an entire generational shift that occurred in the U.S. and Europe during their tenure at the top of the pops. Had this not happened, A Hard Day's Night would be a mere museum piece, a marketing tie-in for musicians of yesteryear. But because the Beatles became such a larger-than-life phenomenon, the film can still command an audience 46 years later.

A Hard Day's Night is a mock documentary of a day in the life of the Beatles' early stardom. The movie begins with the band fleeing a hysterical mob of female fans and concludes with them playing a concert for a hysterical mob of female fans. In between is a long series of absurdist skits, many of which involve "Paul's Grandfather," a strange older gentleman who tends to make trouble but who, everyone notes, is very clean. And of course there are lots of Beatles songs.

My grouchy original reaction notwithstanding, A Hard Day's Night is a hoot. All four musicians are relaxed and clearly enjoying themselves in front of the camera, playing themselves with wit and a kind of polite antiauthoritarian panache. There is a nice undercurrent of social satire, as well. At one point, one of the lads stumbles into a marketing office, gets mistaken for a model, and is told about how a shabby make of shirt is going to be engineered into an enormous teen fad within the month. This is a cheeky swipe at The System, but it's of course also deeply ironic -- the Beatles being, after all, among the most effectively engineered teen fads of all time.

Plot: The Beatles prepare for and play a television concert, overcoming obstacles such as their managers' attempts to keep them from having any fun.

Images: Athough it is not explicitly set up as a documentary, the film has a spontaneous, lifelike feel that comes from its black and white imagery, an active, mobile camera, and its use of everyday locations and dizzyingly enthusiastic extras.

Dialog: From the same strange and silly realms of British humor that would, a few years later, bring you Monty Python's Flying Circus. People say a lot of things that don't make sense, and if you are in the right mood that's pretty funny.

Prognosis: I've looked at this movie from both sides now. I guess it all depends on your mood. In my current mood, it's mildly awesome.

The REAL Olympic Closing Ceremony

Well, it says here that the games of the 2010 Olympics are over, so it's time to see how the countries of the world stacked up in their every-four-years festival of universal brotherhood and competition in the colder athletic events!

Now, some of my paisanos here in the United States of America, where the L&TM5K is written, are going to be all "U.S.A.!!! U.S.A.!!! We got the most medals, dude!!!" And doubtless our friendly neighbors to the north are all like "Well, you know, third place is pretty good, eh?" And over in the European Union it's all "Ach, Deutchland is ja die Nummer Zwei!" and so on. But you can all just calm down, because as we've discussed before, raw medal count is simply not a fair measure of a nation's relative studliness. Since countries come in different sizes, the only fair measure of prowess is per capita medal count. And I'm here to declare the winners.

Per Capita Medal Count of the 2010 Winter Olympics

Medals per 1,000,000 Citizens

1. NORWAY -- 4.69

With more than double the number of medals per capita of their nearest competitors, the stout Norwegians have clearly proven themselves the studs of winter. Hands down.

2. AUSTRIA -- 1.90

Recently recognized for their classic flag, Austrians now receive a big L&TM5K salute for frosty athletic excellence!

3. SLOVENIA -- 1.5

That country that used to be the north part of Yugoslavia? Yeah, they can kick your ass on skis. Or skates. Or whatever.

4. SWEDEN -- 1.18

5. SWITZERLAND -- 1.15

6. FINLAND -- .93

7. LATVIA -- .91

8. ESTONIA -- .77

The L&TM5K congratulates Most Favored Nation Estonia for finishing eighth among the more than 200 countries in the world!

9. CANADA -- .76

Unlike the 2008 debacle for host China, which finished with a dismal per capita medal count, this year's hosts finished high enough to be respectable, while still low enough to be polite.

10. CROATIA -- .68

Other Medalists

CZECH REPUBLIC -- .57

SLOVAKIA -- .56

The Czechs and the Slovaks finished so closely that you'd almost think they were the same country!

NETHERLANDS -- .48

GERMANY -- .37

Ach! Wirklich sind wir nur die Vierzehnste! Nicht so gut als die Skandinavishe Landern! Wie laestig!

BELARUS -- .32

KOREA -- .28

FRANCE -- .17

POLAND -- .16

AUSTRALIA -- .14

Easily the studliest of the large nations in the summertime, the Aussies show that they can compete in the cold season too. But only just.

UNITED STATES -- .12

Another disappointing finish for a country that usually prides itself on its ability to take on any wacky military adventure at any time, anywhere. Maybe better save it for the warm season, cowboys.

RUSSIA -- .11

ITALY -- .08

KAZAKHSTAN -- .06

JAPAN -- .04

GREAT BRITAIN -- .02

CHINA -- .008

Despite its much-vaunted progress in recent years, China once again finds itself trailing painfully in international athletic competition. But before we poke too much fun at the People's Republic, consider such countries as India (the second largest country in the world) and Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nigeria (the fourth through eighth) who, despite their massive populations, took no medals at all. Clearly, they are not trying hard enough. At least not in winter.

Flag Friday III

Flag Friday is a periodic discussion of the world's national flags; the project is explained and indexed here.

These discussions are about graphic design, and perhaps about nationalism and national symbolism in general. They should not be taken as critical of the countries, ideals, cultures, or people that the flags represent.


Bahrain



Parsons: Citing "good colours" and that it is "simple," he assigns it “B“, 70/100.

Michael5000: Bahrain combines the two most common flag colors -- white and red -- in a pattern that is simple but, save for neighboring Qatar, nearly unique. It is not wildly attractive, but it is serviceable and effective.

Grade: B+



Bangladesh



Parsons: Citing "plagiarism" and "bad colours" and describing it as "eyewatering," he gives it a "C+", 60/100.

Michael5000: The motif of a circle centered within the rectangular is among the most obvious possible flag designs, yet there are exactly two that use this simple, efficient design. To accuse Bangladesh of plagiarism (of Japan, presumably) is therefore just plain nonsense. Nor is a mix of green and red generally considered eye-watering; I don't know how things are in New Zealand, but here in the United States of America our biggest holiday is branded with that color combo. It could be argued that a red-on-green flag poses problems of recognition for those suffering the most common form of color blindness, but this is the only real design flaw of the Bangladeshi banner. Otherwise it is distinctive, simple, and immediately identifiable.

Grade: B+



Barbados


Parsons: The "silly trident thing looks ridiculous," he says, but he likes the "good colors." gives it “B-”, 65/100

Michael5000: The colors are good, and the trident -- a bold, simple, and symmetrical shape nicely picked out in black against the gold field -- is an excellent symbol for an island county. Far from looking ridiculous, it gives Barbados one of the most handsome and immediately recognizable flags of any nation.

Grade: A



Belarus


Parsons: He dislikes the "bad colours" and feels it is "noisy," and awards it a “D-”, 39/100

Michael5000: Again, green and red are not "bad colors" except in the narrow sense of posing difficulty for the colorblind. The "noise," presumably, is the pattern of ticking on the inside margin. Modeled after traditional Belarussian weaving patterns, I personally find this marginal pattern not only attractive but also a charming, folkish expression of national sentiment. Although a fine-grained pattern, it is simple and consists of only two colors, so although it might not stand up to Aviatrix's child-with-crayons test (see comments, here), it is well within the ability of a talented seamstress. Overall, a handsome and distinctive flag.

Grade: A-



Belgium


Parsons: Praising its "good shape," he gives it a “B+”, 75/100.

Michael5000: I don't particularly care for the squarish 13:15 proportions of the letter-of-the-law Belgian flag, and apparently most Belgians don't either, since banners of a more flaggy 2:3 ratio are far more common in actual use. But my real concern is the colors. Although of honest origin -- the Belgian flag, romantically enough, was slapped together with material from a local fabric shop as the country declared its independence -- it is simply too similar to the flag of Germany for comfort. Yes, the colors are in a different order, and yes, one is vertical while the other is horizontal, but having two countries with the same tricolor next door to each other is getting close to defeating the whole purpose of a flag. Also, for my money the combination of red, gold, and black is among the ugliest in use on tricolors.

Grade: B-



Belize



Parsons: Disliking "writing" and "graven images" and characterizing it as "too busy," he assigns a "D", 40/100.

Michael5000: I believe this is the first instance we've seen in this survey of the seal-as-flag school of design. Counter to the whole concept of a flag, which is meant to indicate nationality at a distance, the fussy detail involved in a seal defeats both whole-cloth manufacture (you certainly couldn't have put THIS flag together at the fabric store in the fervor of revolution!) and the crayons of the nation's children. Use of a seal notoriously ruins the flags of most of the U.S. states, and here the flag of Belize. A few genuine and appropriately scaled design elements -- the circular white space in which the seal is placed, and the thin top and bottom stripes of red -- are mitigating factors.

Grade: D