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!