The Economist: Quiz voor slimme mensen

Ook The Economist moet zijn best doen om niet aan internet ten onder te gaan. Deze week doen het blad daartoe iets onaardigs: het stelt moeilijke vragen, die je zo zou kunnen beantwoorden als je het blad zou hebben gekocht en gelezen. Bijvoorbeeld: in welk jaar schafte Italië castratie af voor zangers? Of: wie liep met Karzai door de tuinen van diens paleis om hem te overtuigen dat er een tweede ronde van de verkiezingen moest komen. Op de site staan niet alleen de vragen, maar kun je ook de goede antwoorden vinden

Nog een paar:

What Turkish television show, dubbed into Arabic, has been credited with bringing a wave of Arab tourists to Turkey?    "Valley of the Wolves", in which Israeli villains are defeated by heroic Turks     "Noor", featuring an emancipated woman and a blond-haired man who washes dishes     "Through the Bosporus", a reality programme in which mixed-nationality teams compete in a series of contests set on a deserted island in the Black Sea     "Evet-Yok", an international quiz show in which Arabs and Turks routinely win and Israelis and Kurds routinely lose

Which American president said, "Our future history will be more determined by our position on the Pacific facing China than by our position on the Atlantic facing Europe"?    Ronald Reagan     George Washington     Theodore Roosevelt     Dwight Eisenhower

According to an opinion poll designed to measure differences between Britain's ethnic groups, members of which group are most likely to feel able to influence the country's decisions?    Black Caribbean     Black African     Bangladeshi     White

Infosys, India's most celebrated IT firm, collects what percentage of its income from the domestic market?    78.3%     42.1%     24.9%     1.2%

Kenneth Rogoff, an economist at Harvard, says that "there is every reason to worry that the banking crisis has simply morphed into" what?    "next year's banking crisis"     "a long-term government-debt crisis"     "yet another bubble"     "a crisis of confidence in the entire financial system"

Sankar Chatterjee, a geologist at Texas Tech University, believes that the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period was caused not by a giant asteriod that struck what is now Mexico, but by what?    an even bigger asteroid that slammed down in what is now India     volcanic activity in India, which created a worldwide "nuclear winter"     the Indian subcontinent's collision with mainland Asia, which caused massive earthquakes     a world-soaking tsunami caused by shifting tectonic plates

When did Italy make castration for musical purposes illegal?    The 1670s     The 1770s     The 1870s     The 1970s

Bron(nen): The Economist