Every once in a while in life, you run across something that just takes your breath away. Something that comes out of nowhere, and takes a hold of your brain, and you can’t get it out. At Bumbershoot in Seattle on Saturday, I ran into one of those things. It was the musical duo called Rodrigo y Gabrielaand it was simply phenomenal.
The real amazing part is that I haven’t heard of this group until now. Their album is over a year old, and they’ve been playing together for over 5 years now. Originally from Mexico, they currently live and were discovered in Ireland. The music is all instrumental, and they play 2 acoustic guitars. If you just listen to them, it seriously sounds like there are 4 or 5 people playing.
An example of their live performance, highly recommend if you get a chance:
Their CD is currently #35 in music on Amazon, only costs $9, and comes with a bonus DVD. It will seriously be the cheapest entertainment you’ll buy all year.
In honor of the 2007 NFL season which starts in a couple weeks, I thought I’d throw together a quiz to see how many of the Super Bowl winners of the past 41 years I could remember. In doing so, I came across some interesting statistics, that somewhat flies if the face of the parity argument that is thrown around by NFL commentators and chatterers.
Out of 41 years, the Super Bowl has only been won by 17 different teams. That’s just barely half of the teams in the NFL who have won in 4 decades.
To compare the other 3 major US sports during that time (% teams winning championship from 1967-present) NFL: 17 of 32 (53%) MLB: 19 of 30 (63%) NBA: 14 of 31 (45%) NHL: 16 of 30 (53%)
Obviously, these are not scientific numbers, because each league has expanded since 1967, and they had different #’s of teams during those 40 years. However, you’ll notice they are all fairly only slightly above or below 50% in ‘Championship Parity’. Why is this? Does it have to do with poor owners who don’t know how to build a team that can win, or the fact that star players tend to propel certain teams to championships in multiple years? I’m curious your thoughts.
William Shakespeare, whoever he was, certainly was a prolific little writer. According to multiple sources, he wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets, and is often considered to have written the most beautiful poetry in the English Language. He also married Anne Hathaway, who may or may not be the great great great great great great great great great grandmother of the similar namesake of our generation. No, I kid.
Anyhow, given that Jeopardy and the N.Y. Times Crossword both frequently have questions related to the plays of Shakespeare, I figured it only fitting to use his plays as the basis for the next quiz. There were 36 plays in the First Folio of Shakespeare, published in 1623, and 2 other plays that have been attributed to him. The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge lists 2 other works as plays, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, however multiple other sources classified them as poems, so I left them out of this little quiz.
The works are ordered based on their order in the First Folio, but as you’ll notice, the years they are believed to have been written do not follow the same order. Ready to take on the Bard yourself, and see how many you remember? As usual, you have 10 minutes to name as many of the 38 plays as you can.
In what will be the last US based quiz or game for a little bit, I put up the Name the U.S. States quiz. It has the map, and you just have to fill in the states. Same timer and some nice feedback while you are filling them in.
After all the interest in the President Quiz, I decided to spruce up a State Capital game I wrote a while ago. I got the interest to learn the State Capitals a year or so ago after they kept coming up on Jeopardy. I’ve got to admit, there were a quite a few capitals I had never heard of before.
Once you take the quiz yourself, you can see which state capitals are the most known and unknown, as well as the average amount of capitals that those taking get right. The game has been live for a couple days, and currently, nearly 25% of those guessing get all the capitals right.
Well wow. It would appear over 40 thousand other people also found the idea of trying to name the U.S. Presidents an interesting challenge. The most forgettable presidents statistics are fairly interesting. Understandably the most remembered are the recent presidents, as well as Washington and Lincoln. I’m kinda surprised actually that Andrew Jackson only got a 77% remembrance rate, given his prominence on the $20 bill.
Also out on the 4th was a Rasmussen poll that details the popularity and recognizability of various U.S. Presidents throughout history. In general, it would appear that the results of their poll on recognizability fall similarly in line with the statistics from those taking the President quiz. However, at the bottom of the charts on sporcle were Hayes and Arthur, and the Rasmussen poll didn’t mention them at all. Perhaps they forgot to include them in their questions!
Here’s a shout out to Digg for all the attention, as well as the post on OneMoreLevel.com, and all you other blogs and forums out there. Also thanks to my hosting provider, Forbesoft. You held up to getting Dugg. Well done.
This past weekend, I got on a kick to complete a little project I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Being a regular Jeopardy fan, I strive to learn little tidbits of information from time to time. I spent a week learning and memorizing all the state capitals, and then tried to move on to world capitals. Let me tell you though, there are a lot of those. I petered out before I could learn them all.
I’ve recently noticed another knowledge area that would help one answer a lot of the questions, Presidents! Knowing the names, order and even Vice Presidents would come in awfully handy. I then realized I could barely name half our Presidents. So taking a break from sports for a moment, I put together a little web based game that I could play now and then to help me learn the Presidents.
With U.S. Independence day rapidly approaching, figured it was a good time to test that U.S. history knowledge. Enjoy.
Well, in terms of picking order, there weren’t and really big shockers. A few trades made the evening interesting, but in general, we won’t know how well any team did (including Seattle and Portland) until the players have had a chance to play in the NBA for a few years. Potential is great, but what matters most is how you perform in the real world. We could give you a rundown of the first round, but King Kaufman over at Salon does a quite humorous breakdown of the first 30 picks, and pointed out all the things we found funny, so hey, go read that. It sums things up quite succinctly.
As for the little contest on Sporcle, Congrats to ‘Kregmo‘, who scored the most points in the NBA Draft prediction game. He picked 6 players exactly, and also picked 19 of the 20 players picked in the top 20, missing only Sean Williams. Also congratulations to Riken Patel, who started strong, and ended up getting the most players exactly right, which was 9.
This evening, the 2007 NBA Draft gets underway. All the mock drafts and arguing and preparation finally comes to a close, and it’s time to actually make the picks. We’ll wrap up some of the biggest pre-draft questions, rumors and predictions.
#1 Already wrapped up? ESPN The Magazine (and many many others) are reporting that Portland has notified Greg Oden that they will be selecting him with the first pick. Perhaps this is true, perhaps it isn’t. What I don’t understand it is…why would you do that? What possible gain can there be by telling all the other teams (especially Seattle) what you’re going to do? Was all the secrecy of the past couple months for nothing? Wierd.
Hawks looking to dump #11 pick? All week there have been rumors that Atlanta is looking to trade the #11 pick for a player-actually-playing-in-the-nba. There was the Luke Ridnour for #11 with Seattle rumor, and more recently, the Garnett/Stoudamire 3-way blockbuster trade. Neither rumor has so far had much legs, but they both make clear Atlanta’s intentions to trade one of their numerous 2007 Draft picks for a proven NBA player.
‘Mock’ Mock Draft. There are an insufferable amount of Mock Drafts coming out leading up to the final day of guessing. We found this Bill Simmons - Chad Ford argue-fest quite an entertaining read however. Maybe it won’t give you the right answers, but at least it should make you smile.
And remember, with the draft starting at 7:30 EST tonight, you have until about 7ish to fill out your own mock draft. Will anybody get the first 20 picks right? Will it be you?
Well, we’re less than a week away from the 2007 NBA Draft. The players have visited many of the teams they might be going to, doing workouts and the like. There haven’t been any major trades yet for pick jockeying, but there’s a good chance there will be some movement on draft day.
, published in 1623, and 2 other plays that have been attributed to him. The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge lists 2 other works as plays, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, however multiple other sources classified them as poems, so I left them out of this little quiz.