GEOGRAPHY BEES

i wuv you anthony

all this "bee" business is most confusing to a brit like me. you chaps across the pond are mentalists, eh what?

no, we're cowboys

you're all dodgy builders? the plot thickens...

haha i was runnerup in the kansas geography bee... er, i don't remember what question i couldn't get, but the answer was lake titicaca!

Dave K and I = Kansas runner up versus Colorado third-place = we (almost) rule the front range.

I submit that they are dens of corruption and will now, for the first time, publically reveal the question I was eliminated by. The question was, roughly: "What insect in Africa is responsible for the transmission of [however many] cases of malaria each year?"

As a geography-bee kid you know that any questions about disease- transmitting insects are always answered by "tsetse fly." Always: they say "what insect" and you go "tsetse fly" because it's the only insect that you're supposed to know anything about. However the tsetse fly is more commonly associated with "sleeping sickness," also known as trypanosomiasis, also known as nagana, a (I think) Bantu word I remembered from my textbook. "We're in the big leagues now," I thought, "and this just might be a trick question: the answer is obviously straight-up mosquito. Mosquitos spread malaria, pure and simple, and even if tsetse flies do it too, mosquitos do it more, so technically mosquito is a correct answer to this question either way."

Bzzt. I was walking down front to lodge a protest when the next question was asked (meaning I could no longer lodge a protest).

I have been brooding about this for over a decade and it feels good to get it off of my chest.

Watch - we're going to end up foisting our stymied geographical ambitions on our children! I wonder what I did with the complimentary board game prize - i remember it having a really silly name like 'geography attack!' or something... the spelling bee kids get all the fame and fortune.

The biggest insult about the board game is that clearly no one will want to play it with you: who the hell wants to do geography trivia against a geography-bee finalist?

Wow, Nitsuh, that's rotten. They should have specified it if they wanted the "Price Is Right"-type answer.

I'd offer to play the board game with you but I'm sure you've found others in the meantime.

I WANT TO PLAY THE BOARDGAME

haha titicaca

Nitsuh I got one of those games too! I think I didn't know to answer 'krill' (well I knew but I forgot, sigh).

Oh and amusingly most of my whizbang geography factoid knowledge vanished.

Nitsuh, surely it all hangs on the "[however many]" bit of the question? You seem to be assuming that [however many] = the most cases. Bugger of a question though.

I think the animaniacs did a song about lake titicaca, at some point. that's a damn fine name for a lake. "the caspian sea" is also a good name for a lake.

Nitsuh, surely it all hangs on the "[however many]" bit of the question? You seem to be assuming that [however many] = the most cases. Bugger of a question though.

Yes, yes, but I created this great teenaged rationalization: if there are like 2 million mosquito transmissions and 100,000 tsetse fly transmission and you ask "which is responsible for 100,000 transmissions" it would in self-serving teen-logic world be technically correct to say either -- the mosquito was responsible for 100,000 transmissions and then some.

nabisco - sleeping sickness also = encephalitis lethargica, non?