What is chicken?
Friday, November 30, 2007
I've never been too much of a fan of Jeopardy!, the TV show. If its on, I watch it--with no cable, we only get one local channel, which forces us to have the TV off most of the time. Even though I am not a fan, I do remember
Peter Ken Jennings, the guy that won 72 straight games. I didn't watch all 72 shows; I don't even think I watched 3 shows when he was in it. However, the internet was buzzing with his mental prowess, hence I knew who he was. Just like you know what the "dancing baby" was, way back then (5 years ago?).
I think knowing irrelevant things now is actually kind of cool. It's the revenge of the nerds, net style. And the bank accounts of IPO winners are proof to it. I wonder if there will ever be another Jennings? 72 games amounts to a lot of useless fact memorization.
So what's up with the "what is chicken?" title? When my son was around 4 years old, he had a cold together with a minor fever. He gets really mellow when he's sick and just lays around the couch doing nothing. One night, Jeopardy! was on. Nothing unexpected: answers were given, and the contestant gave the question. For one answer, which I don't remember what it was, Gabriel sat up and confidently said: "What is chicken?" Again, I don't remember the question, but it was interesting that the understood the rules of the game. So every time that the show is on now, we first try the question: "What is chicken?"
From time to time, it is actually the right question. Similarly to a broken watch that has the correct time twice a day: that's 0.083333333...accuracy. It'll be correct 1 out of 12 times--that is not bad for something that is supposed to be broken.
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