Ramblin' with Roger

From this PBS story from December 2012 entitled American Voices: Judy Norsigian-

The Library of Congress recently named Our Bodies, Ourselves as one of 88 books that shaped America. It’s had a profound impact on our consciousness, on the ability of women to see the importance of asking questions, not to just take whatever a doctor says.

JEOPARDY! wiz Ken Jennings – he won 74 games in a row – gave a TEDx talk at Seattle University in February 2013 called The Obsolete Know-It-All. It runs about 18 minutes, in which he discusses the JEOPARDY! competition with Brad Rutter (human) and the IBM computer named Watson, as. He talks, among other things, about how a part of the brain shrinks when one uses GPS, or uses the cellphone to look up your friends’ numbers. This is one of those issues I respond to viscerally. Looking it up on Google may be more “efficient,” but it doesn’t compare with knowing stuff.

If the technologies fail us – power grid crashes, computers compromised by cyberattacks – what will we still know? What does it all mean in terms of our human interaction? By contrast, 5 ways robots can improve accuracy, journalism quality.

Andy Marx writes about the day he and his grandfather Groucho saved the television show ‘You Bet Your Life’ from ending up in a Dumpster. If he hadn’t answered the phone, the shows would have been lost forever. In the comments, there was an interesting link to a story of how much of our cultural history depends on one person’s decision to preserve something instead of throwing it away.

Speaking of TV, Ken Levine’s comment about the late Bonnie Franklin, and her TV show ONE DAY AT A TIME falling between the cracks prompted the question about why some shows remain perennially popular while others fade out. “It doesn’t necessarily seem to be question of quality.” Interesting responses in the comments section.

Mark Twain Captured on Film by Thomas Edison in 1909. It’s the only known footage of the author.

The lead guitarist of The Who, Pete Townsend, has written an extraordinary book, Who I Am. Part of the great strength of the book is based on Townsend’s fortunate habit of keeping journals.

Three or four years later, Mom and Dad purchased the Encyclopedia Americana, ostensibly for the family, but I was clearly the greatest user by far. I may have read the whole thing, over time. Because the books became instantly dated, Americana sold these Annuals that would update the main books. My parents bought these as well, and I DID read the volumes practically cover to cover.

Ken Levine is a blogger I’ve been following for about five years, and whose observations about the entertainment industry I enjoy a lot. He is “an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer.” So I was interested in a book by a guy who both wrote shows I’ve watched, such as MASH, Cheers and Frasier AND has done play-by-play for Seattle Mariners and other baseball teams.

I put his new book on my Amazon wish list and received it for Christmas. The premise of the book he dedicated a blog post to is that: