Borders; World Cup prospects; a bargain; a first mowing
Samuel has been asking me to (a) “write” (i.e., draw) countries, (b) write down their names, and (c) “write” any “connecting” (bordering) countries. Not so bad when the country is Ireland or Spain; pretty taxing when it’s Russia. Or France, which is much more than just Metropolitan France.
Some facts:
Because France magically borders countries in Europe and (via its Guiana) South America, every World Cup winner but one – England – is part of an unbroken chain of land-adjacent World Cup winners.
Habilitate the sea borders, and England joins the chain.
All the finalists also form an unbroken land-or-sea-adjacent chain. (Sweden and Germany share sea borders, as do Italy and Croatia.)
So do all the semifinalists but South Korea. (Russia/USSR borders Poland by land and the USA by sea; Serbia/Yugoslavia touches Bulgaria, which touches Turkey; and Morocco, Africa’s sole top-four finisher, borders Spain.)
The moral: If your country is several steps away from the chain – if you’re in, e.g., Malaysia, Australia, or Subsaharan Africa – you won’t get to the last stages, not for a good while anyway. India probably is too far removed as well. Sure, only China lies between it and Russia, just as only one country (North Korea) lies between top-four-finisher South Korea and Russia, but goodness, you’d have to slog over the Himalayas and through Tibet and Siberia and over all of European Russia and make the leap to Kaliningrad just to get as close to the center as Poland, which last played a semifinal in 1982.
These are my profound thoughts this evening.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Our next-door neighbor, Mike, buys stuff in abandoned storage units and sells it at flea markets and garage sales. Today, he sold to me, for $2, a copy of Janson’s History of Art, which I’d been pining after for decades. I never could bring myself to order that beast of a book through the post.
It may not be the wordiest volume I’ll ever read, but it’ll probably be the heaviest.
I looked at the pictures with Samuel. I left him alone with the book for two minutes, and he started to color in it. He was bitter when I removed it to a high shelf.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I mowed for the first time this year and now am sore.
Some facts:
Because France magically borders countries in Europe and (via its Guiana) South America, every World Cup winner but one – England – is part of an unbroken chain of land-adjacent World Cup winners.
Habilitate the sea borders, and England joins the chain.
All the finalists also form an unbroken land-or-sea-adjacent chain. (Sweden and Germany share sea borders, as do Italy and Croatia.)
So do all the semifinalists but South Korea. (Russia/USSR borders Poland by land and the USA by sea; Serbia/Yugoslavia touches Bulgaria, which touches Turkey; and Morocco, Africa’s sole top-four finisher, borders Spain.)
The moral: If your country is several steps away from the chain – if you’re in, e.g., Malaysia, Australia, or Subsaharan Africa – you won’t get to the last stages, not for a good while anyway. India probably is too far removed as well. Sure, only China lies between it and Russia, just as only one country (North Korea) lies between top-four-finisher South Korea and Russia, but goodness, you’d have to slog over the Himalayas and through Tibet and Siberia and over all of European Russia and make the leap to Kaliningrad just to get as close to the center as Poland, which last played a semifinal in 1982.
These are my profound thoughts this evening.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Our next-door neighbor, Mike, buys stuff in abandoned storage units and sells it at flea markets and garage sales. Today, he sold to me, for $2, a copy of Janson’s History of Art, which I’d been pining after for decades. I never could bring myself to order that beast of a book through the post.
It may not be the wordiest volume I’ll ever read, but it’ll probably be the heaviest.
I looked at the pictures with Samuel. I left him alone with the book for two minutes, and he started to color in it. He was bitter when I removed it to a high shelf.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I mowed for the first time this year and now am sore.