Quiz Show
Chief Judge Danny Boggs (6th Cir) apparently gives his potential clerks the following quiz [recommend that you right click on link and open in new window] to gauge their interests. (HT: A3G) This serves as yet another proof that federal judges are superhuman entities.
Just for entertainment purposes, I'll answer the questions I know in the comments. Feel free to do the same, though I would frown upon (to the point of deleting) anonymous answers.
Just for entertainment purposes, I'll answer the questions I know in the comments. Feel free to do the same, though I would frown upon (to the point of deleting) anonymous answers.
Labels: Kevin Smith
posted by Armen Adzhemyan at 9:31 PM
9 Comments:
NOTE: As per the instructions I'm not researching anything, even the ones where I "knew" the answer but can't think of it now.
1. "How Much Do I Love Thee" (hate this guy, wife Elizabeth Barett much better poet)
2. Nestor
3. Crap. 3 billion?
4. (guessing) Mary Queen of Scots?
5. [blank]
6. Madison
7. Gorbochev, Chernenko, Andropov last three GenSecs of Communist Party. No clue about the last three chairmen of the supreme soviet.
8. [blank]
9. Brandenburg = Bach.
Kreutzer = [blank]
Red Orchestra = [blank]
10. [blank]
11. They have harsh effects.
12. Gunter Grass = [blank]
Bertolt Brecht = Three Penny Opera
Alvar Aalto = [blank]
13. [blank]
14. [guess] Arctic Circle
15. Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
16. [blank]
17. 33 BC
18. [blank on all three]
19. [blank]
20. 1601 = [blank] 1984 = Orwell 4'33" = [blank]
21. One
22. [guess] Pres of S. Africa?
23. [blank]
24. Polk
25. [blank all]
26. "Clouds" and "Lysistrata" (favorite play of all time where the premise is that the women of Athens go on a sex-strike to stop the men from fighting the silly Peloponnesian War).
27., 28. [blank]
29. Bismarck
30. googol = [blank], Gogol = Russian author.
31. 1% (?)
32., 33., 34., 35. [blank]
36. Tenant in Hughes' "Ballad of the Landlord"
37. New York (?), Yes.
38. [blank]
39. Diskobolos by Myron
40. Cleveland 1880 (I hope this is right)
41. Seattle, Nagasaki, Toronto, Moscow, SF.
42. 900 (?)
43. 1775
44. Yeager, Glenn, Armstrong (and Aldrin as second).
45., 46. [blank]
47. 17, 43
48. Sonnet (?) with 17 lines
49. A Tale of Two cities
50. [blank]
51. Franklin
52. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Cavafy.
53. [blank, unless Mt. St. Helens]
54. Kilo, Kyllo, Kelo (2.2 lbs, thermal imaging search and seisure, eminent domain in Conn)
55. [blank]
56. To be or not to be / That is the question / Whether tis nobler to suffer (the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes)
57. [blank]
58. Jael = [blank]
Corday = [blank]
Cory = [blank]
Macbeth = Macduff (?)
Mrs. Goebbels = Joseph and 5 kids?
59. Weddings of Blood (Bodas De Sangre)
60., 61. [blank]
62. N. Korea = Pyong Yang, Zambia = [blank], Armenia = Yerevan
63. Some abusive bastard she met as a pen pal.
64. [blank, but died recently. Played well by Johnny Depp]
65. Republic, Apology of Socrates
66. [blank]
I had the good fortune to take the quiz and meet Chief Judge Boggs a few weeks ago for a clerkship interview (sadly, I didn't get the job).
He noted that it's too hard for anyone to actually know all of the answers to the quiz. It's more of a mechanism for striking up odd conversations during the interview.
And, perhaps ideally, all four of his clerks might collectively be able to complete the quiz.
And Hayes beat Tilden in the 1876 election, which is now the subject of a book by the late great Chief Justice Rehnquist.
I know I'm also definitely wrong on Plath's husband, the ranking of the cities, and Mary McLeod...
This should wake me up and allow me to re-engage the tax reading!
I have a hunch though that it will be very humanities based and that I will never work for Judge Boggs...
1. ____
2. ____
3. I'll wager 10^11.
4. ____
5. ____
6. Thomas Jefferson was Washington's Secretary of State.
7. Gorbachov, _____, ______
8. ______
9. Bach, ______, ______
10. ______
11. Hmm, etymology of draconian... harsh.
12. "The Tin Drum," most recently "Crabwalk." _____, _____
13. _____
14. Lower Canada is made up of states, Upper Canada of territories?
15. They never become realized?
16. ____
17. 10 A.D.?
18. ______, _____, William Blake
19. It's (16 choose 3) - (14 choose 3), but I forgot the exact formula for that. Grr. UPDATE: I checked, it's 16!/(13!*3!) - 14!/(11!*3!). This becomes 1/6 * [16*15*14 - 14*13*12] = a number one uses a calculator to compute.
20. ____, Orwell, ____
21. Three, one orbiting Earth and two orbiting Mars.
22. President of South Africa.
23. ___
24. Polk?
25. ____, it marched on Dunsmuir to Macbeth's chagrin, ____
26. ____, ____. I suppose I could guess words like Hecuba, but forget it.
27. _____
28. _____
29. Bismarck?
30. ____, ____
31. It's a factor of two since 1750, so within the last fifty years I'll drop the old 30% +/- the prescribed 20%.
32. ____
33. Pound?
34. Has to be a boat. And I think an early Supreme Court decision.
35. "As a comedy"?
36. Frost's travelers.
37. The West Indies, no.
38. ____
39. The Thinker? Crap, who knows anything about sculpture?
40. Tilden, 1870s.
41. Moscow, Seattle/Toronto (they should be very close, with Seattle a little farther north), San Francisco, Nagasaki
42. I don't have a piece of paper, but you're averaging seeing 90 cars per mile. I'd have to think about the relevance of the speeds, but right now I think they are not, just getting your relative rate of passage is. So, travel another 100 miles, pass 9,000 cars.
43. late 1775, early 1776
44. Chuck Yeager, Yuri Gregarin?, Neil Armstrong
45. ____, Nabokov, _____, ____
46. "the worst ______."
47. 15 or so, 43 or so.
48. A sonnet has 14 lines, I'll imagine sestina somehow involves six. So, sonnet.
49. I suppose Huck Finn.
50. ____
51. The American revolutionaries as a group.
52. ____
53. Krakatoa?
54. Is this supposed to be funny? Kelo v. the Computerized Crackhounds.
55. ____, ____, ____, ____
56. Neither a borrower or lender be. The play is the thing in which we'll catch the conscience of the king. Goodnight, sweet prince. (Skipping to be or not for reasons of cliche)
57. Something by Poe?
58. ____, ____, ____, herself, ____
59. Gypsy Ballads.
60. ___
61. ___
62. Pyongyang, ____, ____
63. Ted Hughes.
64. Hunter S. Thompson
65. The Republic. Something else.
66. The Pig-wanker. Ha. I could have guess "The Friar" or something more likely to win.
hopefully you were raised upper middle class is my first impression.
Discuss.
#2. King Priam - Hector - Paris.
#11 From Draco (Dracos), politian responsible for enacting harsh codes in Athens.
Good job, I would have flunked that quiz :-)
It would definitely seem to be biased in favor of a very elitist background.
I note a glaring absence of sports questions!
Takings & Bakings... I love it. And it even makes me think of Murphy's old Take & Bake pizza.
You know, the whole scenarios just sounds like it would be hilarious.
I'd say the quiz is biased toward people who:
1. had a fairly traditional liberal arts education, and
2. actually remember the facts they learned, even after taking their exams.
The second point is the important one - it picks out three types of people:
1. those who have a very good memory,
2. those who find it intrinsiscally satisfying to think about a wide range of subjects that have no obvious instrumental utility, and
3. those for whom this information is instrumentally useful - mainly those who plan to be interacting with people who are impressed by people who know a particular set of (otherwise) useless facts. Hence the whif of elitism.
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