J. Michael Andresen

Entry deadline is 11 p.m. CST on January 10, 2011 . Send fifteen answers and one tie-break to jmandresen at gmail.com. Anyone with an email address is welcome to enter! 1. Quiz (January) Now in its fourth year, the annual Prognostication Quiz has grown to be an international phenomenon. We'll get the Quiz off to its most rapid start yet with some group psychology. What will be the least popular answer to Question 1 of the 2011 Prognostication Quiz? a. A b. B c. C d. D e. E f. F 2. Freedom (January) Freedom House is an international organization that studies democracy and freedom in the world, publishing an annual report on how many of countries are free, partly free, or not free. The 2010 report calculated that 89 of the world’s 193 nations were “free” in 2009. Will freedom advance, stay stagnant, or retreat in this year’s report, covering 2010? The number of times each answer has occurred since the fall of the iron curtain is indicated in parentheses. How will the number of free c

The winner of Question #11 in the 2010 Prognostication Quiz is D. Southeast (FL, GA, NC, MO, TN, LA) . That region has clinched the win for Question 11 despite the handful of games remaining. As of right now, here is the final tally of overall wins for each region in the stupidest question of this year's quiz: 937 D. Southeast 846 F. Heartland 821 E. West 812 B. Pacific 770 C. Northeast 759 A. Great White North It was a bad year for us up here in the Great White North, it seems. The highest people up the leader board to guess the Southeast were Grant's parents, Valerie and Cameron, who were at 3 points at the last post. I am suspicious there might have been some collusion in answering, since Grant himself chose the Southeast. The only other entrant to guess that was Ben. Kudos to those four to figuring that one out, and for demonstrating that sports prognostication may have a genetic component. We also had another unfortunate passing. Bob Feller, hall-of-fame pitcher for the C

Question 9 In the spirit of the twelve days of Christmas, ended with twelve Atlantic hurricanes this year, making the correct answer E. 10 to 12 to Question 9 in the 2010 Prognostication Quiz . Only three people predicted this: Ron Kevin Pamela True, it was an El Nino year, but many climate scientists (including Quiz entrant Marcus, who predicted C. 6 to 7 ) thought that other prevailing factors would keep the total number of hurricanes down. Kudos to the three who predicted otherwise. Kevin and Pamela are having rather forgettable performances in this year's quiz, but Ron has catapulted himself back into the lead with his bold prediction. Question 10 The Republican caucus gained 63 seats in the house and 6 seats in the Senate, making A. 40 or more seats the answer to Question 10 in 2010 Prognostication Quiz Only a measly two people correctly predicted the scale of the GOP drubbing. One of them was my father Larry, one of our nation's most strident Republicans. The other was

It was so frustrating to see interesting things from across the room and not be able to climb beneath/over/into them. I'm old enough now that I can scamper all over the house and get into anything I want to. One of my favorites is a giant jug that we use for firewood when I'm not sitting inside. My mother thinks I am very cute. (I guess I think so, too.) She likes it when I pose for pictures, so I appease her when I can. This one I rather enjoyed. I draw the line at ugly Christmas sweaters, though. My favorite thing of all is reading books, though. I have maybe 100 books at home and I try to have each one read to me every day. Sometimes I even ask for my favorites to be read twice! Or three times! Or more! It's a good thing I AM so cute!

The Nobel Peace Prize 2010 was awarded to Liu Xiaobo "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China" The precise wording of the announcement means Question 8 of the 2010 Prognostication Quiz has two correct answers: B. "Rights" and C. Any specific geographical region . Twenty-three people guessed one of these answers. The "Right makes Might" group: Ron Missy Rachel H. Larry Adrian Rich Zoe Janet Liz Valerie Michael A. Ellen Katie Pamela Mary A. Eric The regional hypothesizers: Russell Marcus Matthew Cameron Topher Peter II Rachel F. Question 13-15. Death B. Gloria Stewart passed away on September 27. She was a flapper in the 1920's and went on to fame amongst teenage girls 1997 with her role as "old Kate Winslet" in James Cameron's Titanic . Nineteen people thought (correctly) that anyone with a triple-digit age is a good wager: Ron Missy Beth Z. Janet Zoe Rich Rachel H. Katie Carol Keila Polly Eric Todd L

I had a free afternoon with Max and not Katie recently, and I decided it would be fun to go to the zoo! Max and I drove to Apple Valley to the Minnesota Zoo and had a great time. I took a bunch of videos. The first video I took, I had to scramble to get the camera ready to record Max's delight in running toward a large bronze statue of a turtle that is just inside one of the large indoor exhibit areas: Yes, that's right. My son was in such a hurry to run up to the sculpture because he wanted give the turtle a big kiss on the mouth (or on the beak, I guess). Only much later did it occur to him that it might be fun to ride on the turtle's back. I'm sure his priorities will change at some point, but it's rather cute in the meanwhile. On the day that we went to the zoo, Max had three words in his fledgling vocabulary: ball, bird, and duck. (He also learned "mama" and "dada" and "baby" but having mastered them, they no longer interested him

Poor Tiger. His wife was not as forgiving as Kobe Bryant's when his philandering came to light in the press. And golf is a much more a mental game than basketball. Tiger was unable to regroup after being left by his wife and children, and he was shut out of the four major championships. The last major of the season was two weeks ago, and Tiger finished tied for 28th. That means the answer to Question 7 of the 2010 Prognostication Quiz is E. Tiger will win no championships . A whopping 31 entrants were so empathetic with Tiger's pain that they were able to predict his lassitude on the links: Ryan Craig Janette Russell Larry Ron Adrian Gloria Missy Mary C. Stephanie Matthew Rich Zoe Carol Janet Ekrem Cameron Jan Megan Liz Grant Todd Valerie Polly Peter II Cherie Mike F. Tina Sarah Chris C. The 22 of us who thought all the extramarital nookie would energize Tiger this year stand cowed and embarrassed. Ben is especially embarrassed because he is in last place with zero points and

FIFA World Cup One of the two pre-tournament favorites, Spain needed two overtime periods to finally score the only goal of the game and beat the Netherlands. In one of the more bizarre human- (or mollusk-) interest stories surrounding the tournament, Paul the Octopus (pictured above) correctly picked eight World Cup games , including the final. The answer to Question 6 of the 2010 Prognostication Quiz is therefore B. Spain . Siete personas chose Espana to prevail: Rachel H. Russell Larry Adrian Matthew Grant Ellen That's an especially sweet point for Matthew, who won last year's quiz but has been shut out of this year's scoring until now. Death We've also had a spate of recent deaths. Lena Horne, Martin Gardner, and Robert Byrd have all gone on to meet their maker. (Isn't there a saying about such things coming in threes?) This means that F , N , and P are added to correct answers to Questions 13-15. Janette, Marcus, and Jan picked Mr. Gardner. Mary C. and Peter

Max's aunt Tina took a video of him while she was babysitting one day. In one two-minute video she captured a lot of his most recent developmental advances, including following verbal requests. Tina asks Max to cuddle his baby and he is only too happy to oblige. For those Max fanatics out there, I give you three additional videos taken on Max's first long-distance vacation! I had a two-day conference in Boston, so we made it a long weekend and took Max with us. He was quite good on the plane, despite our great fears: he loved looking around and only got fussy when he got tired and we were able to get him to take a nap when that happened. My favorite part was how smitten Max was with our hosts' three-year-old daughter. He kept following her around wherever she went so that he could sneak up and give her hugs when she wasn't looking. She loved the attention at first, but she was quite ready for us to finally leave. Poor Max. Unrequited love at such a young age! Here's

Max took his first steps on his birthday, when he took three half-falling steps to get from the ottoman to me sitting in a chair. Since then, he has mostly been perfecting his short-distance walking between pieces of furniture in the living room. Last Friday, he suddenly blossomed. He discovered that he has enough balance to go long distances as long as he went relatively slowly. In the intervening week, he has gotten faster and faster. Here he is, showing off his mad skillz:

Some months ago, I received this email: Common Phoenician transportation was by means of ships. Most often Phoenicians would travel by sea on ships called galleys. Galleys ate large ships that can be used either for trade, travel or war. The Phoenicians were one of the first people to make and use galleys along with the Greeks. More than often galleys were used for transportation for trade between varios civilizations such as the Greeks, Syrians and many other civilizations. Galleys were made from wood found in local regions in Phoenician territories. Galleys had large masts that had sails used to propel the galleys via wind power. They also included a set of oars on both sides o the ship so that oarsmen could row the ship when's winds were in unfavorable conditions. As time passed a many renovation to the galley occurred. Biremedes were introduced as an advancement on the original galley. The biremedes were a second row of oars to further increase the rowing capabilities of the ga

A guest blog post from my co-parent: Max is now more than 1 year old and has clear likes and dislikes. Max Likes: Grape tomatoes—he seriously loves these and will eat lots and lots of them; the other day I think he went through almost a pint Lettuce, even undressed. Wiggling his barefoot toes in the grass, which I’ve only let him do once Being outside Dancing—“dancing” meaning waving his arms and twisting at the waist when any of his toys make music or other sounds, such as the rumbling of a truck’s engine, when we sing to him, or when we say “dancing” Waving hello and goodbye to people, cars, animals, and objects—It is very exciting to Max when someone waves back, which isn’t that often because people in cars don’t usually see Max and people on foot are often past Max by the time he waves Balls Kissing (often sloppy open mouthed on the mouth), hugging, head-butting and biting (the head-butting and biting seem to be extensions of affection rather than something done out of frust

Randall Munroe on the has performed a large experiment in color perception over at the xkcd blog. Basically, 222,500 people sat down in front of their computers and typed in the name they would ascribe to a wide panoply of monitor-produced colors. Language Log calls this "the largest scientific experiment ever run by a cartoonist." The list at the end of the most outrageous individual entries was entertaining, but my favorite part was his analysis of the responses that occurred numerous times and in a gender-biased fashion: Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among women: 1. Dusty Teal 2. Blush Pink 3. Dusty Lavender 4. Butter Yellow 5. Dusky Rose Okay, pretty flowery, certainly. Kind of an incense-bomb-set-off-in-a-Bed-Bath-&-Beyond vibe. Well, let’s take a look at the other list. Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among men: 1. Penis 2. Gay 3. WTF 4. Dunno 5. Baige I weep for my gender.

This is the image on a new billboard that was put up over the weekend on my route to work. My first reaction was to note that there are very obvious reasons for why our neolithic forebears domesticated chickens to eat and cats to kill rodents rather than the other way around. That is beside the point for the ad campaign, though. The billboard's message is that we should treat chickens with the same respect as we treat cats because they are equally cute. I finally had to concede that ad campaign raises a very good point. Changes should be made. Although my current pet cat has been spayed, a quick trip to the nearest alley with a can of tuna fish should allow me to collect enough individuals to start a breeding program. My goal will be to create a strain of fat felines with nicely marbled meat that is more suitable for human consumption.

Max had lots of friends visit on Saturday: On Sunday, the entire family came over. (Also visiting was Missy, but she was the one taking the pictures!)

No, I haven't syndicated my blog with one of the nation's foremost newspapers in order to increase my commercial appeal. I am just noting that the fine folks at The Washington Post won the most Pulitzer Prizes this year, beating The New York Times by a single prize. This means that the answer to Question #5 on the 2010 Prognostication Quiz is A. The Washington Post . Here are the Post -er boys and girls: Ron Craig Beth K. Missy Gloria Beth Z. Zhiqi Janette Katie Carol Zoe Rich Leanne Leader Board Ryan's remarkable run has finally come to an end. After running off four correct prognostications in a row, he has finally showed some vulnerability. Is this a momentary lapse or the harbinger of a long, hard decline? Stay tuned to find out. Ryan maintains his lead at the top of the pack, but Ron, Craig, and Beth K. have advanced to within one point of him. The Wall Street Journal (Ryan's pick) was rather ingloriously shut out of the prizes for a second straight year. Inter