TCoNAheads

The Trivia Championships of North America were held recently at the MGM Grand in Vegas, and a big thanks to Paul Bailey for organizing it and about 100 other people for being such fun to hang out with.

On Saturday, I had the honor of hosting a roundtable discussion about IBM's human-crushing Watson trivia machine, with guests Ken Jennings (74-time Jeopardy! winner and Watson victim) and Ed Toutant (Millionaire winner and former IBM engineer).  This is the three of us afterward, looking like frat brothers about to go on a bender.

Yes, we are all that orange.  

On Sunday, I had the fun of playing the Alex Trebek role for the final rounds of the team championship.  No crazy-lady-thief-chasing required.

I apparently left my chin in the green room.  But no matter: congrats to Jonathan Hess, champion in multiple individual competitions, and to team champions Frank In Court.

Paul Bailey deserves huge praise in creating a counterpart to the European Quizzing Championships, and the event was a roaring success.  See you next year in Vegas, and (hopefully) this fall in Bruges!

I am Eliza Dushku’s brother (at least in cartoon form)

If you're not watching Torchwood: Miracle Day, you're missing out. It's everything you'd expect from the Russell T. Davies, the genius behind the best years of Doctor Who.

I've been a fan of Russell's for years, and lucky enough to call him a friend from the day Tom Tomorrow noticed that Russell's book about Doctor Who contained a completely unexpected bit of praise for my Prisoner of Trebekistan, of all things. I contacted Russell to say thanks, he emailed back in about ten seconds, because he's that cool and gracious, and it's been hooray ever since.

The animated webseries that goes with Miracle Day, Torchwood: Web of Lies is also pretty damn good. And I'm happy to say I have a tiny, tiny part in it — playing Eliza Dushku's brother. Although in cartoon form, I look like this:

A foot taller, ten pounds thinner, with a cool beard... sigh

I gotta lay off the caffeine.

$700,000 and still accelerating!

Congrats to Friends of Bob Harris, the Kiva lending team I nominally captain (although all I really do is cheerlead) on passing the $700,000 mark!

FoBH has also just entered Kiva's all-time top ten teams in sheer number of loans made, passing Kiva France, with a current total of over 25,000 loans to clinics, schools, and small businesses in more than 55 countries.

I look at those numbers and frankly can't quite even imagine this much generosity brewing up so quickly from so many people. I don't even know what to say about it. Awesome, wonderful, fantastic, and so on!

Onward! Team Norway, we're coming for you!