19 folks, including FOUR from my office, playing this round of near-daily questions arriving in our e-mail. Key rule is that you can’t look up the answer.
See how you would have done.
Today’s Answer is worth $600 and the category is: Political Lingo
The Jeopardy game answer is: An 1868 definition of this term: “Men traveling with little luggage and less character” to profit from the situation.
Hitting my strong suit for an old poli sci major!
Continue reading Office JEOPARDY! #2
My denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) voted for marriage equality at its General Assembly this month. “Ministers will be allowed to marry same-sex couples in states where it is legal.”
On the other hand, Freedom and Faith Coalition’s Road to Majority conference had an Obama figurine in the urinal.
CBS News Sunday Morning did a piece, Born this way: Stories of young transgender children. The ever-interesting Dustbury on Gender Confirmation Surgery.
Writer Jay Lake worked closely with Lynne Thomas, an Illinois-based librarian… to ensure that all his blog posts and essays would be saved for posterity. “Though this is a relatively uncomplicated task for his blog content, which he unambiguously owned, it gets problematic when you wade into the legal rights of preserving your social media presence. ‘You can’t just download Facebook content into an archive.’”
A cartoon from 2008, and still apt: A Concise History Of Black-White Relations In The United States.
Mark Evanier on O.J. Simpson trial nostalgia.
Continue reading June Rambling: Hal Holbrook; Marimba Queens
I was watching JEOPARDY! per usual. But this was strange: in the six days between June 6 and June 13, inclusive, none of the contestants got the Final correct in five of them, whereas I KNEW four of them, and guessed correctly on the fifth. The one question I got wrong, two of them got right.
These are the six final answers:
20th CENTURY AMERICANS: In 1911 Glenn Curtiss received this document Number 1.
THE MEDITERRANEAN: It’s the only U.N. member country in the Mediterranean where English is an official national language.
SCIENTISTS: As a humorous tribute, an astronomical term equivalent to at least 4 billion has been named for him.
CAPITAL CITY WORDPLAY: Ending in the same 2 letters, these 2 are capitals of a nation that covers a continent & of a nation reaching onto 2 continents.
CURRENT TELEVISION: George Romero declined to direct a few episodes of this series, calling it “basically…just a soap opera”
FOREIGN AFFAIRS: William Sullivan retired from the Foreign Service in 1979; he was the last U.S. Ambassador to this country.
Which one did I get wrong? Continue reading Teevee; remembering Dee, Gwynn, Kasem, Noll
Descendants of Solomon Northup, who recounted his story in a memoir, 12 Years A Slave.
The Real Origins of the Religious Right. “They’ll tell you it was abortion. Sorry, the historical record’s clear: It was segregation.”
Dustbury points to an article about how the ineptitude of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and its predecessors, go back nearly a century.
The Worst Argument Ever Made Against Gay Marriage.
Amy Biancolli’s book: To plunge is to live. Also, her parents in love.
Judy Sanders, former local news reporter and photographer, is dying of ovarian cancer. Confronting the long goodbye from Paul Grondahl, and a piece by her former colleague, Ken Screven.
Diane Cameron’s blog Love in the Time of Cancer has been going on since 2008, but I just discovered it.
Getting kicked out of the prom.
New York Erratic asked: “Have you ever dated anyone who turned out to be gay?” Continue reading May Rambling #2: New Zealand music
My old buddy Augustus (who you FantaCo customers might have known as Matt), put this together for my birthday. Pic on the left is from the cover of the FantaCon 1988 convention program, drawn by the late Chas Balun. The image is on the right was John Hebert’s rendition from Sold Out #1, c. 1986.
This is about me because: It was so cool. And he wrote: “Thank you for turning me on to a world of literature far beyond science fiction and fantasy. Your are still an influence on this boychik. Long may you arrange. (books in order).” And you thought I couldn’t blush.
Now Jaquandor KNOWS how to celebrate my birthday. He added me to his sentential links here. He answered my question about football.
This is about me, obviously. (Sidebar: some highly educated person wrote “As is my want” recently in a mass e-mail I received. You have NO idea how difficult it was for me NOT to correct him. Jaquandor would NOT make this misteak, er, mistake.)
Tom Skulan of FantaCo is being interviewed for Theater of Guts.
This is about me because: I worked at FantaCo for over eight years I took the photo of Tom, and also the pic of the late Chas Balun looking towards the ceiling. I find it interesting that my photos of the store Continue reading March Rambling: mostly about me
Seriously, I had no idea. As a regular viewer of JEOPARDY!, there are contestants I like, ones that I don’t particular care for, and most from whom I just want to see a good match.
Having viewed the four victories of one Arthur Chu, I did not realize that his reign, to be continued on February 24, was at all controversial until someone sent me an article and asked me to comment on it. Then a couple more people sent me other articles. This was a story on Yahoo!’s Finance page?
So what are his JEOPARDY! “sins”?
Continue reading The (alleged) JEOPARDY! sins of Arthur Chu
Arthur’s article Why we think the news is worse than it is. This led to a thread that I wrote about finding good news amongst the bad which are here and here and here.
People I know personally, at least one an artist, seemed really irritated that a Norman Rockwell painting fetched a record price last month. This antipathy seemed to be tied to the notion of Rockwell as artistic pablum. Another view of the artist Continue reading January Rambling: looking for good news
