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Actual Books
Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics,
Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™
“Revelatory... Harris's sly wit and infectious curiosity make understanding world chaos fascinating... witty, horrific, and necessary.”
-- Boston Globe
"Brave... irreverent... charges into the thick of the globe's myriad simmering wars... hilariously relaxed."
-- New York Observer
“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING.”
-- John Hodgman,
author, The Areas of My Expertise and correspondent for The Daily Show
"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"
-- The Wall Street Journal
"A surprisingly touching memoir"
-- Entertainment Weekly
"Effortlessly funny and informative... tender, human, and very wise... A must for anyone who loves Jeopardy!, or has ever seen it, or is breathing."
-- Joss Whedon, creator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
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Home  Book Blog
Prisoner of Trebekistan
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Prisoner of Trebekistan gets a nod in this Detroit News story about the way quiz shows seem to have changed over the years.
I'd like to elaborate, btw. There's a frequent charge that our country has dumbed down, and if you compare the questions currently asked on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? (which I didn't even know existed) to the questions asked on, say, Twenty-One, there seems to be a prima facie case.
And granted, there are days when I think the future of quiz shows will be a show called Who Can Push The Big Red Button, with ten beautiful girls standing next to ten three-foot-wide buttons, nine of which are blue. Pushing the lone red button gets the contestant $50,000. Can the contestant do it? Join host Don Imus and find out.
But the big-money questions on Jeopardy! are still pretty damn tough. The big-money Millionaire questions are, too. Just like in the 1950s. I think shows like Deal Or No Deal don't tell us anything about any possible changes in our knowledge or intelligence; people have enjoyed games of chance since long before TV was invented. Deal Or No Deal's current popularity may only tell us that our culture intuits luck as a factor in economic success a bit more, and if so, that would be a logical reflection of some of the structural changes we've seen in the last quarter-century or so.
There was a time when working-class people like my dad could very predictably get a good, stable job, buy a home, and have a relatively stable life, purely through hard work, which was extremely well-valued. Not quite so much anymore. Interesting to notice that Deal Or No Deal's contestants seem to be consistently working class.
Talking out of my ass, as usual. But that's what I think, anyway.
Oh, and none of this is in Prisoner of Trebekistan. Which is barely even about Jeopardy! in some ways. But a lot of you know that already.
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This was a little disturbing --
A big public display about how the Rapture is gonna come any second...
And everybody is already gone.
I guess if you're reading this, we're all gonna tribulate together.
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There's a certain economy to this building in Basseterre, which contains representatives of Italy, Austria, the UK, France, Switzerland, the US, Canada, and, yes, The Athlete's Foot:
When The Athlete's Foot sends troops to liberate Foot Locker, we already know who's in the coalition.
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As a long-suffering Cleveland native, I'm certainly used to Indian fans willing to find joy in even the worst defeats. But this is a whole other level.
These Indian fans (as in India India) were cheering wildly -- IN-DI-A! IN-DI-A! etc. -- yesterday at the Cricket World Cup:
This enthusiasm comes despite the fact that India was eliminated from the tournament almost three weeks ago.
The two teams actually on the field were England and Bangladesh.
Imagine how vocal these folks would be if their team were actually on the same continent.
Gotta admire the energy.
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I could probably use a few long days in there myself.
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