Status Update_ Today, I Learned What the Third Largest City in Uzbekistan Is

...And, the answer is Namangan. The city located in the northern edge of Uzbekistan in the Fergana Valley has a population of about 441,300 people according to Wikipedia.

In his new book "The Googlization of Everything," University of Virginia professor/author Sani Vaidhyanathan (and, I thought my last name Gokbudak was difficult!), we can effectively ask Google anything, and it will in 99 percent likelihood give us the answer. Of course, this has a dark side as well which the authro explains in great detail which would take a long time for us to go into (ok, it is actually a bit over our heads, but fascinating!).

Author Elif Batuman, a fellow Turkish-American whom I've never met, wrote about her adventures in Samarkand, Uzbekistan's second largest city behind the capital Tashkent, in her excellent memoir "The Possessed" which also talks about her affinity for Russian authors like Leo Tolstoy ("War and Peace.").

I would write more, but the line for hamburgers at the deli is growing! In a future entry, we are hoping to post about the geographical distance between Wilmington, Del., and Lynchburg, Va.

Last year, we tried to do our own version of GeoQuiz, a feature on the NPR show "The World," but few people really seemed interested in learning about things like major tourist attractions in Slovenia. But perhaps one day we may bring the series back from the dead!