BobHarris.com - Fun Factoids

Books! Actual books!

"A rollicking ride of intellectual discovery and emotional growth... his comic timing never fails"

-- The Wall Street Journal

"Pulls you in like a good sports story"

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Endearingly frank... jubilant... lighthearted and fast-paced"

-- New York Newsday

"A surprisingly touching memoir"

-- Entertainment Weekly

"Snappy and informative"

-- Associated Press

"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

"I haven't seen Jeopardy! since I was a kid, and yet I was charmed and amused by Bob Harris's fascinating and surprisingly suspenseful book. Through sheer force of personality, he takes this brainy TV show and makes it funny and easy to relate to."

-- Ira Glass, creator and host, This American Life

"A surprisingly intimate, entertaining book."

-- Orson Scott Card, 4-time Hugo Award winner, author of Ender's Game

"Funny, enlightening -- and just might help you win a million bucks on Jeopardy!"

-- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Know-It-All

"A masterful job of describing the feel of Jeopardy! in the heat of battle... I knew Bob was a great guy and a fantastic Jeopardy! player. Now I've found that he's also a wonderful writer. I think I'm starting to hate him."

-- Brad Rutter, top money-winner in Jeopardy! history

Books I'm Getting

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

"Only Bob could make a user’s guide to our increasingly hostile world this absorbing, this breezy, and—ultimately—this hopeful.”

— Ken Jennings, author of Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs

“Fascinating, enlightening, and surprisingly: NOT TOTALLY DEPRESSING. A gimlet-eyed look at the world we endure that’s also suitable for enjoying with a gimlet.”

— John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise
and correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

"All three [presidential] candidates should read all three of these [recommended] books, but McCain gets first crack at Bob Harris's "Who Hates Whom“... a lighthearted overview of the insurrections and civil wars in the world today."

— Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought, in the New York Times Book Review

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Fun Factoids

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Monday, 04 September 2006

This is just stuff I've found both (a) completely useless and yet (b) oddly amusing. I intend to add to this frequently, and you'll see a mention of new additions on both the main and Trebekistan.com blogs when I do.

Some of the below surfaced while studying, some of it I stumbled upon at random, and some of it I've just heard over the years and found even more amusing when it actually checked out.

However, as the book shows, I've been surprised over and over by things that I thought were utterly pointless turned out to be terribly important. So maybe something here will change your life someday, in completely wondrous and unforeseen ways.

But probably not.

Scientists have found that dying stars pulse at an audible frequency -- F above middle C, to be exact -- just before exploding into supernovae. Coincidentally, Jeopardy! p-TING noise when the Final Jeopardy is revealed is two F notes, an octave apart. The first tone is F above middle C.

The residents of La Gomera in the Canary Islands speak a sophisticated language communicated entirely by whistling.

While attending Radcliffe, former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was nicknamed "Pinky."

Not a single member of the American Mensa Hall of Fame was ever an actual member of Mensa.

Québec license plates bear the slogan "je me souviens," French for "I remember." However, there's no definitive text explaining exactly what the originator of the slogan meant. We just have to assume it's the other stuff on the wall he first put it on.

Widely-accepted theories over the origin of language are often discussed by perfectly serious academics as the "ding-dong," "pooh-pooh," "bow-wow," "ta-ta," and "yo-he-ho" hypotheses.

A 2004 biomechanical study by the International Cricket Council discovered that 100% of the sport's bowlers (the equivalent of pitchers) were breaking the rules, and probably always had been.

The camera operator for the famous footage of Evel Knievel crashing at Caesar's Palace was actress Linda Evans.

Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow mathematically proved that, given more than two choices on a ballot, no voting system can be definitively fair.

The world's oldest surviving peace accord, the Treaty of Kadesh, was signed in 1269 B.C. by the rulers of Egypt and the Hittites. It promises "lasting peace" throughout the Middle East. So that worked out swell.

Nine people were killed in London in 1814 by a giant wave of beer.

Osama Bin Laden loves volleyball.

The Kenyan who supposedly spoke the slogan "Just Do It" in a Nike TV commercial actually said "I don't want these; give me big shoes."

In 1937, the Nazis held an exhibit of art they had purged from museums and condemned as "degenerate." It was attended by over three million people.

In the Thai language, the verb Jep! means hurt, injured, or sore.

The name of the monorail at the San Diego Wildlife Park isn't African; Wgasa is actually short for "Who gives a shit anyway."