Big Pickles

There are some awesome pictures of Antarctica here. I always thought the entire continent was covered in ice all the time, but I was wrong.

By the way, does anyone know if we treat Antarctica like space, in that no country is allowed to claim all or part of it as their own?

Labels: geography, science

A recent comment on Clark's blog made the following claim:

Brigham Young once commented on the weather in St. George with a statement something like this: "If I only had a house in St. George and a house in hell, I'd summer over in hell."

I've heard similar quotes attributed to various people, mostly about Texas (because I live here) but also about various other places. I suspected the comment had been made about nearly every state and city in the Southwest, so I googled "live in * and rent out *" (because that's the way I've heard it most often) with interesting results.

My favorites:

"...I'd live in Hell and rent out Texas/Arizona/San Antonio/Houston/Brooklyn/Vegas/Arkansas/Oklahoma/South Africa/Memphis/Louisiana/New Guinea/etc."

"...I'd live in California and rent out Heaven."

"...if I were a UN peacekeeping force and owned Bosnia-Herzegovina and Tombstone, I’d live in Bosnia-Herzegovina and rent out Tombstone."

My limited research indicates that the original quote was about Texas and was first attributed to General Phillip Sheridan in 1866, but I'm open to argument.

UPDATE:

It appears the St. George quote is most often attributed to J. Golden Kimball (Jeffrey Holland cited it once in a 1974 speech), which makes sense. Kimball was a GA from the 1890s until his death in the 1930s, so he could have heard the Sheridan quote and adapted it to St. George during that time.

Labels: general, geography

It all started with this site: How many of the 50 states can you name in 10 minutes?

I saw it a couple of weeks ago, but didn't post about it because I wasn't really impressed. First of all, it was kind of easy--I named all 50 in less than 5 minutes. Then you had to wait for the time to run out, and then it didn't even verify your answers. It just popped up a list of the correct answers and you were supposed to check them yourself. Boooring.

But apparently the Internet thought it was the greatest thing ever, because similar tests started popping up everywhere. And the copycats are much better. First of all, they are more challenging: World Countries, African Nations, UN Member States. Also, they sport a much improved interface. The correct answers are verified as you go, and it keeps a running tally for you of how many are left. Very nice.

Not to be outdone, Ironic Sans went back and spiffed up their original States quiz, so now it's high-tech like the others.

Labels: general, geography, quiz