News Quiz

No. 181: “Sit Up and Cheer”

“This is great news for the millions of Americans who are not getting enough physical activity,” says Dr. Claude Lenfant. What is?

by noon ET Thursday to e-mail your answer to newsquiz@slate.com.

Wednesday’s question (No. 180)–“Three for All”:

Safer, cleaner, more fun–these are the attributes touted by an organization’s new chairman. What organization?

“The Shining Path. Now even shinier.”–Jennifer Miller

“Heritage USA. First step toward more fun: All-nude water slide!”–Tim Carvell

“The organization is Western civilization. The new chairman is Wendy Shalit.”–Daniel Radosh

“Union Carbide, announcing their triumphant return to Bhopal.”–Joel Silverman

“North American Man Boy Like Association.”–Brian Danenberg (Larry Amaros, Tim Rogers, Beth Sherman, Larry Schnur, Ken Tucker, Deb Stavin, Molly Shearer Gabel, Aaron Schatz, and Charles Star had similar answers.)

Click for more responses.

Randy’s Wrap-Up

The big thing is not so much having lots of good points, as knowing which are your good points and which are your bad. It’s not always obvious. Consider safe and clean. Do people really want that? Put that pair in your personal ad, and you’ll be dating my aunt Helen (if you’re a man) or my uncle Morty (if you’re a neat and prudent gay man) or my uncle Herb (if you’re a straight woman and his mother, my great-aunt Selma, says it’s OK). You don’t want that; you want to be the sort of person who attracts the sort of person who wants dangerous and dirty. (But let’s not bring up my cousins.) When enlistment rates are down, Army recruiters panic and misconstrue their points. You don’t attract ferocious soldiers by promising above average pay and, some day, a fine pension. Warriors want challenge–terrible pay, miserable conditions. Henry V would have inspired no one on St. Crispin’s day by declaiming:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;For he today, so safe and clean with meShall be my brother.

Today, most historians believe that the Battle of Agincourt was more fun than Aunt Selma.

And that’s the act I would have done at the Concord Hotel if they just could have hung on one more season, and if Buddy Hackett’s lawyers had stayed off my back. Safe, clean, fun.

Conventional Answer

The New York City Convention and Visitors Bureau.

New chairman, Tim Zagat, announced that his first act will be to change the name of the organization to “NY & Company,” presumably to make it clear whose interests the city will continue to serve.

Kids Corner Extra

Who Am I? Can you identify someone from very little hard evidence, just like a real policeman?

Clues

1. I like to stay in a safe-deposit box, a freezer, or between the pages of a Bible.

2. I have extraordinary strength, use an unknown language, and have an aversion to God.

3. I’m doing something “more intimate, more personal”; I’ve “stripped away the theater”; and “if the public could see it, they would demand that we do it more, not less.”

Solutions

1. I’m an infant DNA sample.

Nine Florida hospitals now offer to take blood samples from newborns, to help with prompt identification if the child is eventually murdered. The hospitals recommend that the blood sample, dripped onto a special card, be stored by the parents in the above-mentioned places.

2. I am a Swedish gym teacher.

Or I am possessed by the devil. The Vatican’s new, revised guide to exorcism, “De Exorcismis et Supplicantionibus Quibusdam,” lists these three warning signs but cautions that exorcists “must not consider people to be vexed by demons who are suffering from some psychic illness.”

3. I’m a senator meeting in closed session, dancing around in my underwear.

Comments, in order, came from Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Chuck Hagel, Sen. Gordon Smith. The part about the underwear probably isn’t true, but how can we be sure?

Race Results

Win: NAMBLA.

Place: IOC.

(Time to merge? And of course by “merge” I mean form a single organization able to more efficiently serve the needs of all its constituents.)

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