Number of hours it took me to remember all fifty states of the USA:
4, over 4 days.
Number of hours it took me to remember forty five of the states of the USA:
Half an.
Those last bastard five, in the order eventually remembered:
Wyoming. Missouri. Nebraska. Minnesota. New Mexico.
State I don't know if I'd ever remembered if I hadn't, by complete coincidence, picked up an old Garrison Keiller book to read on the train, and found it mentioned on almost every page, in a coincidence which felt uncomfortably as if God had been peering over my shoulder with increasing frustration for the past three days, and was now unable to control himself from shouting out the answer:
Minnesota.
Four places which, to my shame, I seriously considered as possible states:
Wicheta. Omaha. Nantucket. Alberta.
Place which I actually did think was a state, and the non-statehood of which meant that when I finally checked my completed list, I discovered to my anguish I had in fact only suceeded in remembered 49 of the states, a significantly less impressive achievement (and let's not forget, that makes it significantly less impressive than 'really not very impressive at all'):
(District of) Columbia.
State I'd left out:
Delaware. Bastard Delaware.
Amount of use any of this was in its intended task of helping me get to sleep on any of the four nights:
Zero.
Saturday, 8 July 2006
Maryland took a while as well.
Posted by John Finnemore at 1:43 am
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6 comments:
You see, this is the sort of post blogs were made for. I can't ever think of anything like this to write about. I'm sure I do things like it, but it never occurs to me to write about them.
I liked this.
Omaha's in Nebraska, n'est-ce pas?
Principally, yes. There's also one apiece in Illinois, Texas, Arkansas and Georgia. But of course I didn't know any of this before I checked Wikipedia. I was thinking of the Normandy Landing beach, and the type of poker. I am a dolt.
My excuse for Wicheta is that I was thinking of Wyoming. It's not a very good excuse.
This is going to look incredibly like spam, but it's not. I spent hours learning all the States of the US on www.sheppardsoftware.com (the Geography games). I recommend it. Not only can I name all the States, I can draw them on a map. (Now this post looks less like spam and more like showing off - sorry.)
PS I now also know all the countries in Africa.
PPS But I still can't sleep at night.
Without wishing to belittle Joe - or John, memory feats are always to be encouraged - when I was six I had a friend called Daniel Lowther, who could not only name the capital city of each country in the world, but draw said country's coastline.
Or borders, obviously.
I am humbled.
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