Bloodless Coup

He misspelled asteroids. :P

Well if he typed it up himself ...

i have seen this, or an earlier version, before, but it is stunning to consider the crisis facing such a questionnaire would present. on the one hand, you're only receiving it because he's interested. on the other, i think lots of pretty bright people would be completely crushed the number of questions unanswerable without further research, and in particular the number of questions that are close enough to seem knowable but far enough not to know.

but i loved this one: "Distinguish R. Kelly from R. Crumb." there are other contemporary questions, but this one is by far the most playful. and i'd bet plenty of his applicants have troulbe with it, either really not knowing the references or worrying that it's a trap.

my respect for the one former clerk of his i've encountered only goes up upon seeing this questionnaire.

Yeah, that's the most fun question - and David Lat's response was great - "they're indistinguishable ... both are total pervs".

I'm a little conflicted on this - a lot of it seems really old white guy (first question deals with the not-so-long-ago Northern Rhodesia, the last with the night Cortes' company barely survived those savage Aztecs, asking about the former European names for places, etc. ...) in a way that Samuel Huntington might approve of. But hey, if you can answer all these things you've got a pretty deep knowledge of at least part of history and literature.

I just meant that for someone who seems to be so old school and tough on the kinds of questions, that seems a glaring oversight.

maybe i just refuse to believe that i'm stupid on any relevant index despite the fact that i know remarkably little on the questionnaire (that is, in short, i'm projecting and protecting me ego at the same time), but i really wonder whether it's more about how much you can answer or more which particular dozen or so questions any given qualified applicants happens to know something about. i know lots of smart people who would bomb terribly on that exam, and unless he only wants history buffs, cassicists, or, ahem, political scientists in his chambers, he can't seriously be expecting very many people to get even half of these questions right.

Well I'll meet you at least halfway on that analysis - I think he'd be delighted to have a string of applicants who'd know all or most of these things, but yes, it's entirely possible he is most interested in what is answered and how it's answered. Of course some questions obviously leave open a variety of answers (45, 48, your favorite movie in the last 10 years) - but there are others where exactly what you write could say something about you too.