No. 163: "Initiation"
As a condition of joining the European Union, Lithuania has agreed to
ban a practice quite common in the United States. What?
by 5
p.m. ET Sunday to e-mail your answer to [email protected] .
Tuesday's question (No. 162)--"Check It Twice":
The list includes Louis Vuitton
handbags, Mont Blanc pens, pecorino cheese, and cashmere sweaters, pullovers,
sweat shirts, and waistcoats. List of
what?
"A
complete inventory of items destroyed in the bombing raid on the Republican
Guard headquarters in downtown Baghdad."-- Michael Connelly ( R.C.
Leander and M. Pesca had similar answers.)
"The
list is obviously a paragraph pulled at random from Tom Wolfe's A Man in
Full , but where the hell are the exclamation points?"-- Alex Balk
"All
items soon to acquire the 'Intel Inside' logo."-- Todd York
"In an
alternate universe, where Tina Brown still ran The New Yorker , each was
going to have its own special issue."-- Chris Kelly
"Items
that former future Speaker of the House Bob Livingston has had affairs with
outside of his marriage. (Please note, his wife has forgiven all but the
handbag)."-- Larry Amaros
Click
for more responses.
Randy's
Wrap-Up
In this the Christmas season, when tasty sweaters
and snuggly cheeses are on everyone's gift list, it's traditional to reflect on
where it all began. That's why, at our house, I read aloud from that holiday
classic, Eric Foner's The Story of American Freedom . The kids throw
another SimuLog on the fire, and I tell them about the 1950s when, Foner says,
the noble ideas of the American Revolution at last evolved from old-fashioned
political freedom to the modern freedom to shop in the mall of your choice.
Foner quotes David Lilienthal, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission who, in
1952, wrote: "By freedom, I mean essentially freedom to choose to the maximum
degree possible. It means a maximum range of choice for the consumer when he
spends his dollar." Here was an idea intellectuals might also embrace.
"Industrial society," wrote Clark Kerr, president of the University of
California at Berkeley, in 1960, "might undermine freedom 'in the workplace,'
but the compensation was the greater range of 'alternatives in goods and
services,' and thus 'a greater scope of freedom' in Americans' 'personal
lives.' "
Then we all go outside
for a look at the holiday figures arranged on the front lawn--Khrushchev,
Nixon, the floor-sweeping robot--why, you'd almost believe you were back in
Moscow, in 1959, at the American National Exhibition. There, in the model
kitchen of a suburban ranch house, Vice President Nixon proclaimed the true
spirit of America, what Foner sums up as "freedom of choice among colors,
styles, and prices." God bless us, every sweater!
Potassium-Rich
Answer
These are among the items
on which the United States will impose 100 percent tariffs unless the European
Union opens its market to bananas shipped by Chiquita and Dole. While the
banana sanctions violate World Trade Organization rules, American vigor in this
matter seems to derive from the hefty contributions Chiquita's major
shareholder, Carl Linder, makes to both political parties. Referring to the
paucity of U.S.-grown bananas, former U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor
noted, "If you drive north on the Pacific Coast Highway, I think there's 10
acres of bananas on the right-hand side."
Imaginary
Anthropology Extra
It's a wonderful magical
land, and it's not on any map: You must find it in your heart or on your
television. But who are the people who live there? Answer these questions based
on a just released study of prime-time network TV conducted by George Gerbner
of Temple University for the Screen Actors Guild and noticed by Adam Bonin.
Questions
1. What demographic group is portrayed as most
dangerous?
2. What group is portrayed as the second most
dangerous?
3. What is the most underrepresented group?
4. What happens to women
over 30?
Answers
1. "Characters portrayed as suffering from mental
illness are depicted as the most dangerous of demographic groups, with 60%
shown to be involved in crime or violence (three times the actual rate)."
2. Foreigners. And they don't do so well as victims,
either. "A disproportionate number of ill-fated characters comes from the ranks
of poor, Latino and foreign men, and both young and old African-American and
poor women."
3. Hispanics appear on prime-time TV at about
one-quarter their rate in the population, 2.6 percent vs. 10.7 percent.
4. They begin
disappearing: Nine out of 10 women on television are under age 46. And they
turn to crime. "Women age faster than men, and as they age, they become more
evil."
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