Acknowledging Mistakes On My Return From A Northern Land
Well, it's lucky I got the train then. We had considered travelling by air, and thus saving us from groups of odious Russian students, cheeky little children and German cheese-eaters, but, you know I'm cheap.
Edinburgh was good. I'll write more in time, in good time, though not now. I'm going to a party in Bethnal Green. It's non-stop innit.
Otherwise, two people have written to me to comment further on mistakes from my MQ and BH. I was going to say I was past caring, but since there is space to be filled here, I thought I might as well repeat them here verbatim. The first is from Ray, astrophile (or something, I just made that up from existing and iffy language knowledge):
1. You omitted the answer to 498 (Fox) and misnumbered the rest - 499 as 498, etc.
(Hey, it was getting late. The numbers became too much)
2. You're still not quite right on the first black in space. The name Richard Lawrence meant nothing to me, and I hazarded a guess he was the first to the South Pole (not the North Pole, because Robert Peary had a black companion, Matthew Henson - if you accept that Peary and his companions reached the Pole, which is disputed!). If you'd said ROBERT Lawrence I would have recognised the name and realised your error. He was indeed the first black American selected for spaceflight, but for the (cancelled) Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) programme, not Skylab. He would, however, probably have transferred to the Shuttle programme (other MOL astronauts did) if he had lived, but he was killed in a flying accident.
However, Guion Bluford, the first black American in space (on a Shuttle in 1983) wasn't the first ever black in space; that was a black Cuban, Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez, who flew on a Soviet spacecraft in 1980. (Note also he is often wrongly called Mendez. In Spanish-speaking countries the surname is usually the next-to-last name, so he should be called Tamayo, or Tamayo Mendez, but not Mendez.)
Now, don't you feel better for that?
Secondly, from John in an email with the subject line "Pedant":
"At which tournament did Tiger Woods miss his first cut in a major AS A PROFESSIONAL.
Well you are so proud of how hard the questions are."
That's right, but they're even harder if they're wrong. Neyeah, pah-ha and other incoherent noises of sillitude.
Edinburgh was good. I'll write more in time, in good time, though not now. I'm going to a party in Bethnal Green. It's non-stop innit.
Otherwise, two people have written to me to comment further on mistakes from my MQ and BH. I was going to say I was past caring, but since there is space to be filled here, I thought I might as well repeat them here verbatim. The first is from Ray, astrophile (or something, I just made that up from existing and iffy language knowledge):
1. You omitted the answer to 498 (Fox) and misnumbered the rest - 499 as 498, etc.
(Hey, it was getting late. The numbers became too much)
2. You're still not quite right on the first black in space. The name Richard Lawrence meant nothing to me, and I hazarded a guess he was the first to the South Pole (not the North Pole, because Robert Peary had a black companion, Matthew Henson - if you accept that Peary and his companions reached the Pole, which is disputed!). If you'd said ROBERT Lawrence I would have recognised the name and realised your error. He was indeed the first black American selected for spaceflight, but for the (cancelled) Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) programme, not Skylab. He would, however, probably have transferred to the Shuttle programme (other MOL astronauts did) if he had lived, but he was killed in a flying accident.
However, Guion Bluford, the first black American in space (on a Shuttle in 1983) wasn't the first ever black in space; that was a black Cuban, Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez, who flew on a Soviet spacecraft in 1980. (Note also he is often wrongly called Mendez. In Spanish-speaking countries the surname is usually the next-to-last name, so he should be called Tamayo, or Tamayo Mendez, but not Mendez.)
Now, don't you feel better for that?
Secondly, from John in an email with the subject line "Pedant":
"At which tournament did Tiger Woods miss his first cut in a major AS A PROFESSIONAL.
Well you are so proud of how hard the questions are."
That's right, but they're even harder if they're wrong. Neyeah, pah-ha and other incoherent noises of sillitude.
posted by That Quiz Guy at 10:37 AM
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