Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
I am writing to you this afternoon from the picnic table in my back yard. I meant to finish the pub quiz and the newsletter at work this morning, but my Box.net account was malfunctioning. I see why the kids today stick with Google docs.
Yesterday my son Jukie joined our French bulldog Margot and me on a long walk through a variety of neighborhoods in west Davis. Starting on 5th street near the northwest corner of campus, we meandered through the presidential streets, through Village Homes, and all the way up to Watermelon Music on Covell Boulevard where we bought an advanced jazz for alto saxophone workbook for my son Truman.
Neither Jukie nor Margot the French bulldog is a talker, so I have to keep watching them for signs of thirst, fatigue, and the need for play. I suppose that on the weekend, we should all also be watching ourselves for such signs, especially if we are aiming for 10,000 steps, as I do on most days. The more modern the greenbelt, the more frequent the water fountains, we decided.
For some reason, as we were traipsing through the halcyon paths of Village Homes, an alert appeared on my phone from Scientific American alerting me that life on Mars was likely discovered decades ago, back in 1976. I should have silenced my phone.
It occurred to me that the widely-lauded science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson might be interested in this story. He knows something about Mars. How odd, then, that this unexpected alert appeared when I was walking just a few blocks from Robinson’s home! Was this a cosmic coincidence, or further proof that the big five tech companies, in their ongoing quest to be “useful,” are spying on me, my contacts, my friend Stan, and my location?
If I hadn’t been so focused on my two charges, and the quiet beauty of the site of our walk, I might have forwarded the article to Stan. Instead, we enjoyed the groves and topiary.
Well, it turns out that I didn’t have to use electronic means of communicating with Robinson, for I found the winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards tending to his (public) garden on our way back to the car. He and I discussed Mars research, the Davis Shakespeare Festival, including next Sunday’s “Bard-BQ,” and the pleasures of gentle exercise on a weekend afternoon.
I think neither magic nor science nor science fiction can account for that phenomenon of thinking of a friend, and then encountering him on the street. Every weekend afternoon merits a walk. Serendipity rarely happens at home.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature landscape, magic, and science questions, as well as questions about shoes, military service, 4K content, dry streams, redheads, thunder, the difference between Switzerland and Sweden, wild specials, King Hrothgar, the legend of the phoenix, aborted airport romances, big games, hollows, sluggers, fruits and nuts, runners who pass, waterfalls, Batman, fictional towns in Pennsylvania, digable planets, banishment, Ptolemy, continental vowels, big ships, fidelitous faxes, totalitarianism, bifurcations, biopics, gloves, and Shakespeare.
I hope you can join us tonight for the Pub Quiz, and Thursday for poetry at the Natsoulas Gallery with featured poet and UC Davis English Department Professor Margaret Ronda. See http://www.poetryindavis.com for more information.
Sincerely,
Your Quizmaster
https://www.yourquizmaster.com
P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s Pub Quiz:
- According to a 2017 Oxfam report, a certain number of the richest billionaires own as much combined wealth as “half the human race.” Is that number of billionaires 8, 18, or 80?
- Aliko Dangote, the richest person on the African continent and the richest man of African descent lives in what African country, the seventh most populous in the world?
- Almost a decade ago, Warren Buffett made a famous claim that he paid a lower tax rate than his WHAT?