Skip to main content

2011 Prognostication Quiz, Question #5 Film

What will win the Academy Award for Best Picture?
a. The Social Network
b. The King's Speech
c. True Grit
d. 127 Hours
e. Inception
f. none of the above: some other film will win

The film about overcoming adversity had to overcome adversity to best the late favorite The Social Network for American filmdom's top prize. The answer to Question 5 in the 2011 Prognostication Quiz and the winner of the 2011 Academy Award for best picture is b. The King's Speech.

Sixteen contestants guessed this correctly, besting the seventeen who found Mark Zuckerberg's tale more compelling than King George VI's and also the twenty who took a flier on an underdog in the form of answers C, D, E, or F.

The Oscar V-V-Victors:

Ekrem
Valerie
Marcus
Lorraine
Chris M.
Zoe
Ron
Cherie
Sarah
Jo
Cameron M.
Rachel F.
Katie
Claire&Craig
Ellen
Adrian

Leader Board


Ekrem has stunned the competition with his third point out of five questions. After three years, his "spell something" strategy for choosing entries has finally starting to pay off with his currently brilliant slate of answers, "BAD ABBA FED LEVIS."

Celebrating the concept, the photo above is the top result of a Google Images search for "BAD ABBA." The photo title is The really bad Abba imitators and is in a folder titled Knoeble's Grove [sic], which is an amusement park in Pennsylvania. You can almost hear the tuba visible in the background laying down a woefully inadequate disco bass line.

3 Ekrem
2 Valerie
2 Dave
2 Marcus
2 Lorraine
2 Paul
2 Chris M.
2 Pete C.
1 Zoe
1 Collette
1 Ron
1 Jeff
1 Cherie
1 Sarah
1 Rich
1 Ryan
1 Jo
1 Rachel H.
1 Russell
1 Cameron M.
1 Rachel F.
1 Katie
1 Claire&Craig
1 Kevin
1 Ellen
1 Missy
1 Larry
1 Adrian
1 Leanne
1 Cameron L.
0 Ted
0 Chris C.
0 Jan
0 Matthew
0 Tina
0 Beth
0 Eric
0 Grant
0 Janet
0 Todd
0 Peter B.
0 Zhiqi
0 Michael
0 Nadir
0 Craig
0 Gloria
0 Megan
0 Keila
0 Stacey
0 Ben
0 Liz

This should also serve as a wake-up call for those of us who have yet to score a point. With the Question 5 returns, the median score has shifted from zero to one. The 21 of us with zero points (out of the 53 entrants) are now below average by mean or median. We aren't even the mode anymore, since 22 entrants have one point.

Question 11 Update

The devastating earthquake that hit Japan on Friday was only 8.9 on the Richter scale. Lorraine, Ryan, Jo, Kevin, Adrian, and I hope that the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that we have predicted for this year happens further out in the middle of the ocean so as to be less destructive to humans.

Question 13-15 Update

Valerie, Dave, Chris M., Ron, Sarah, Jo, Russell, Rachel F., Katie, Adrian, Matthew, Grant, Megan, and Keila also came close to getting a point when a significant percentage of Zsa Zsa Gabor died as she had part of her leg amputated recently. Fractional points will not be awarded in this situation.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Can You Cross Your Toes?

Katie and I had a heated discussion the night before last. We were sitting on the couch watching Jon Stewart when she noticed a large, apparently cancerous growth sticking out of the bottom of my foot. She asked what the big lump in my sock was. "That's my toe," I responded, nonplussed. I had crossed my first and second toes, causing a lump to protrude from the bottom of my sock. Katie was quite alarmed. "You can cross your toes?" "Sure, can't you? Everyone can cross their toes!" "Of course I can't cross my toes. Who can cross their toes?" And I confirmed that Katie could not, in fact, cross her toes. Even manipulating her toes with my fingers, I could not get her toes to stay crossed. She just has very short toes. That led, of course, into a discussion of who was the freak. Were my long, crossable toes abnormal, or were her stubby, uncrossable phalanges the outliers? In case you're confused, here are some pictures. First, of my v
35 comments
Read more

Leagalize drugs!

The Economist has a wonderful editorial this week about legalizing drugs. I wholeheartedly agree that the world will be better off by far if the United States legalized, taxed, and regulated illicit drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, and heroin. The goods that will come from legalization: 1. We will save the $40 billion the US spends trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. 2. We will save the costs involved in incarcerating so many drug offenders (as well as gain their productivity in society). 3. We will gain money through taxation on the legal drug trade. 4. Legalized drugs will be regulated, and thus purer and safer to take. 5. With all these savings, we will have lots of money to spend on treating drug addiction as a public health issue rather than as a law and order issue. We will have lots of money to fund treatment programs for addicts that are ensnared by the easier availability of drugs. 6. We will prevent tens of thousands of killings in countries that produce drugs when proc
10 comments
Read more

2017 Prognostication Quiz FINAL POST: Questions 10 and 11, Stocks and Quakes

In the last post , I pointed out that Matthew D. and I were in a two-way tie at the top of the leaderboard with me holding the edge over him in the tiebreaker. For Matthew D. to have a chance to come from behind and grab the win, some significant December movement would be needed in one of three areas: the stock market, world earthquakes, or a convenient death. Here's what happened: 10. Stocks (December 29) How will stocks do in this first year of Trumponomics? Will the Dow Jones Industrial Average be up or down compared to the final close of 2016? Which way will the Dow go? a. Up b. Down The Dow Jones continued to rise throughout the month. I maintained my advantage in the tie-breaker. 11. Earthquake (December 31) How many big earthquakes (magnitude 8.0 or larger on the Richter scale) will there be this year? (Big earthquake counts from this millennium are indicated in parentheses.) How many big earthquakes will there be this year? a. None (2) b. One (7) c. Two (4) d. Th
Post a Comment
Read more