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Like Dr. Vallicella, I got a 14 out of 15 on the religion quiz he took. Most of the questions were absurdly easy, but the ones that dealt with religion-and-politics or religion-and-history were harder for me to answer. I guessed on two of those questions, and apparently got one of them wrong (a history question).

Several weeks ago, I got a 15 out of 18 ("Very Good; You Are Definitely Talented") on the Traditional Architecture Quiz over at the always-entertaining All Look Same, a website that tests your ability to differentiate East Asian faces, art, architecture, etc. The architecture quiz shows traditional buildings like temples, pavilions, and so on, and you have to guess whether you're seeing something that's Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.

While I'm rather proud of my architecture quiz results, I know that I still have a great deal of trouble distinguishing different types of structures in Korea. Example: unless a photo provides certain obvious clues, it's often difficult for me to distinguish a building on Buddhist temple grounds from a building at a Confucian academy. If I see clues that lead me to believe I'm looking at a temple, this isn't so hard. But photos of a given building, taken at a distance and in a certain kind of light, usually leave me scratching my head and rushing to the caption to identify what I'm looking at.

And don't even ask me to distinguish different Buddhist denominations by their architecture. Most of my studies in Buddhism have tended to focus on the gross aspects of its ethical and metaphysical teachings, with a dash of history of thought. Were you to quiz me on specific Buddhist rituals or iconography, or on the finer points of, say, folkloric Korean Buddhism, I'd be useless to you. (And this, folks, is what distinguishes the MA student from the PhD student: knowing a lot broadly is nothing like knowing a lot both broadly and deeply.)

I can't say that I've been interested in many quizzes of late. If anything, I'm curious to retake two diagnostics that I've always enjoyed: the "Belief-O-Matic" profiler over at Beliefnet.com, and "The Political Compass," a diagnostic I take every couple of years to see whether my political views have evolved. (They seem not to. I always score as a centrist.)

ADDENDUM: Some may remember my old Star Trek Movie Quotes Trivia Quiz. It's still around if you're interested. Only for the geekiest of the geeky, though. You've been warned.


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