Help needed!
Tapio Tamminen
I have a couple of questions that I'm sure the readers of this newsgroup can
answer.
I read an excerpt from Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. Now I would like to ask
for help as there was something I didn't quite understand. I'll give you some
context:
"Well, as long as such a smart man as you is here, maybe I could get you to
give me some advice for the boy. He just finished his National General
Classification tests. He just about killed himself studying up for them, but it
wasn't any use. He didn't do nearly well enough for college. There were only
twenty-seven openings, and six hundred kids trying for them."
My questions is: are National General Classification tests just something
made up by K. Vonnegut, or do they exist? If they do, what kind of tests are
they? Who can take them and at what age are they usually taken?
My second question is about The Body by Stephen King:
"But summer boredom was nothing like the school boredom that always set in
by the end of the second week, and by the beginning of the third week you got
down to the real business: [stuff deleted] How many girls could you get to play
Who Goosed the Moose during lunch hour? Higher learning, baby."
Who Goosed the Moose? What's that? Anyone?
Thank you in advance,
Tapio.
Charles Geyer
(Tapio Tamminen) writes:
> ... excerpt from Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.
>
> "Well, as long as such a smart man as you is here, maybe I could get you to
>give me some advice for the boy. He just finished his National General
>Classification tests. He just about killed himself studying up for them, but it
>wasn't any use. He didn't do nearly well enough for college. There were only
>twenty-seven openings, and six hundred kids trying for them."
>
>My questions is: are National General Classification tests just something
>made up by K. Vonnegut, or do they exist? If they do, what kind of tests are
>they? Who can take them and at what age are they usually taken?
Just made up by Vonnegut. For college entrance we have two competing
tests SAT and ACT. Some colleges and universities require one, some the
other, and some presumably neither.
>My second question is about The Body by Stephen King:
>
> "But summer boredom was nothing like the school boredom that always set in
>by the end of the second week, and by the beginning of the third week you got
>down to the real business: [stuff deleted] How many girls could you get to play
>Who Goosed the Moose during lunch hour? Higher learning, baby."
>
>Who Goosed the Moose? What's that? Anyone?
Well "goosing" is the act of grabbing someone in the crotch and squeezing.
I never heard of a game called "Who Goosed the Moose?" though.
There was a joke about a fictitious book titled "Antlers in the
Treetops or Who Goosed the Moose?" that was considered a side-splitter
when I was in kindergarten about 40 years ago.
--
Charles Geyer
School of Statistics
University of Minnesota
cha...@umnstat.stat.umn.edu