Diversions

American Crocodile near downtown Miami a few weeks ago. (Photo courtesy Jose Perez.)

Here.

This test is a cut above most of the silly self-evaluation tests one finds on the Web. It’s worth the five minutes or so that it takes to complete.

(Via Ann Althouse, who got it via other bloggers to whom she links and whose test results are interesting to compare.)

UPDATE: Some of the commenters responding to Ann Althouse think the test is a typical bunch of manipulative rhetorical gotchas from people who think they know better. That may be right.

My oldest daughter introduced me to the Geography Olympics this week-end; she suggested, however, that a patriot would spend some time on this before bringing down America’s average (as she well knew I would).

It’s a nice break. This is my daughter (now seeking diversions from dissertation-writing) who in primary school fastened a world map to the front of her binder and asked her classmates to point our their native lands. She’d come home with questions about Qatar and Bulgaria and Botswama. Third-world nations building up their ag & engineering skills often send grad students to red-state schools. Something like 36 languages were spoken by those primary students, since that school also serves married student housing.

(This is a totally unserious post, nothing about China or Bush or Iraq or the Lancet article or World War II. So only click to see the rest if that is OK with you.)

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My sister sent me a little box of candy from that greatest of all candy stores, Gowell’s, in Brockton, Massachusetts.

Brockton is a once-great town that has fallen on hard times. Half the boots worn by the Union Army were made in Brockton. It was once the shoe-making capital of America, maybe the world. It was always a tough town, but now it has gang problems and many other pathologies and seems to be heading downward.

But I find myself almost emotional with relief to see that Gowell’s lives on. Gowell’s home page says: “John Wayne was a customer of ours. He received our chocolates during his stay at a Boston hospital. He ordered candy monthly and his favorite was Dark Almond Bark.” It is probably 25 years since I set foot in the place, but I remember the picture of John Wayne. If business or pleasure should bring you to or through Brockton, stop in and get some candy. Buy whatever you think you want to bring home, and a few loose pieces in a bag to eat in the car.

UPDATE More Brockton trivia. The northwest border of Brockton is astride the boundary line between Plymouth and Norfolk counties. That is the oldest boundary-line in English-speaking America. It was the boundary-line between the Plymouth Bay Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, way back in the 1600s.