Ken Jennings
The Final Jeopardy! questions seem to be, by design, things you can't know. And so it's not about who knows them, but who can figure them out in thirty seconds.Collection: Design
When you see people who are really good at game shows, the one common attribute is a cool head under pressure: an ability to perform as well in the studio, surrounded by lights and noise, as you do on your couch.Collection: Cool
Even before you understand them, your brain is drawn to maps.
I have condemned my kids to a lifetime of geographic illiteracy.
When you make a decision, you need facts. If those facts are in your brain, they're at your fingertips. If they're all in Google somewhere, you may not make the right decision on the spur of the moment.
There's just something hypnotic about maps.
It's boring to have the same guy win. I'm actively rooting against myself.
If it's on the Internet, then it's gotta be true.
It's so much fun that the money is just icing on the cake. There seems to be a lot of icing.
Being a nerd really pays off sometimes.
It's really changed me. For the first time I'm in favor of the Bush tax cuts.
As Jeopardy devotees know, if you're trying to win on the show, the buzzer is all. On any given night, nearly all the contestants know nearly all the answers, so it's just a matter of who masters buzzer rhythm the best.
Knowing lots of answers but being a millisecond slow on the buzzer is indeed very frustrating.
The future is here.
You watch an old 'Jeopardy!' and the categories alone are very plain. 'Poetry,' or 'Movies,' or 'Physics.' If you watch it now, though, there'll be a theme board where the categories are all Hitchcock movies. Lots more jokes, lots more high-concept categories and questions.
I remember one of my last shows, the Final Jeopardy! clue was something like 'These two boys' names are top 10 boys' names in the U.S., they both end with the same letter, and they're both names of Jesus' apostles.' Now, obviously that's not a knowable fact.
We don't realize how hard it was to drive anywhere outside the major cities less than a century ago.
I can't relax and sink back in the couch and watch 'Jeopardy!' the way I used to.
People are using GPS systems to find millions of little hidden objects throughout the world - often as simple as a piece of Tupperware hidden in the woods. You go to a website, you get the latitude and longitude to get the specific location of a certain specific hiding space, and then you go there and see if you can find it.
You live overseas, you see these exotic places and you want to know about them. But, weirdly, it also made me homesick for all these very prosaic places in America.
I would stare at maps of Delaware for hours.
For some reason the most devoted mapheads seem to be kids.
I have always loved maps.
I would read the atlas for pleasure. I knew it was weird. It was weird.
During the whole 'Jeopardy' experience, I felt like I was living a bit of a double life, I would be secretly flying out to L.A. to tape new shows, hoping that none of my coworkers would notice the absence and figure out what was going on. 'Jeopardy' tries very hard to keep their secrets.
Sure I have a cell-phone, so I don't have to remember everyone's number anymore, but that really wasn't a core part of my brain.
If I start outsourcing all my navigation to a little talking box in my car, I'm sort of screwed. I'm going to lose my car in the parking lot every single time.
For me, it started as a child with one of those little wooden jigsaw maps of the U.S., where's there's crocodiles on Florida and apples on Washington state. That was my very first map.
Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, has argued that geography seems less relevant than ever in a world where nonstate actors -- malleable entities like ethnicities, for example -- are as powerful and important as the ones with governments and borders. Where on a map can you point to al-Qaeda? Or Google, or Wal-Mart? Everywhere and nowhere.Collection: Powerful
Eratosthenes, the mapmaker who was the first man to accurately measure the size of the Earth, was a librarian.Collection: Men
When you make a decision you need facts. If those facts are in your brain, they're at your fingertips. If they're all in Google somewhere you may not make the right decision on the spur of the moment.Collection: Decision
The thing you like/are good at is a sacred thing.Collection: Sacred Things
There must be something innate about maps, about this one specific way of picturing our world and our relation to it, that charms us, calls to us, won’t let us look anywhere else in the room if there’s a map on the wall.Collection: Wall
I always bring my kids vacation souvenirs printed in Comic Sans, so they know I love them but not unconditionally.Collection: Kids
There’s just something hypnotic about maps.Collection: Maps
I always feel a certain sense of reverence in libraries, even small city ones that smell like homeless internet users.Collection: Cities
I threw the opening pitch at a Blue Jays game, and after the pitch, the mascot asked me if I wanted him to sign the game ball, which I thought was funny. What would he write? "Best Wishes, Some Guy in a Bird Suit"?"Collection: Writing
For me, it started as a child with one of those little wooden jigsaw maps of the U.S., wheres theres crocodiles on Florida and apples on Washington state. That was my very first map.Collection: Children
If youre a vegan who ran a marathon & got your dogs from a shelter, how do you decide which thing to wedge into the conversation first?Collection: Dog
Twitter makes you a comedian in the same way that digital cameras make you a photographerCollection: Comedian
We regret the insinuation that Mr. Alex Trebek is a robot, and has been since 2004. Mr. Trebek's robotic frame does still contain some organic parts, many harvested from patriotic Canadian schoolchildren, so this technically makes him a 'cyborg,' not a 'robot.'Collection: Regret