Sunday, October 21, 2012
Inside the Mind of a Workaholic
I hate writing this story because I want to be a person you admire, but I also hate not writing it. Because I want to be a person I admire. I want to be a person known for honesty.
Which means I need to tell you that I wish I cared more that I’m not talking to the Farmer.
I hate that I have stories I don’t want to tell. Because I have found that almost always, the secrets we keep matter a lot to us, but they don’t matter to other people.
For example, I emailed to Melissa one day. “I have a secret: I drank wine at breakfast today and I haven’t stopped.”
I thought Melissa would email back that I’m an idiot and I’ll be in rehab.
But she emailed back, “I forgot to get a refill for Lexapro and today is the first time in a year that I’ve initiated sex.”
Secrets are fun. That’s what I try to tell myself. It’s fun to not have to have a secret anymore, really.
It’s very hard to tell which of our secrets are huge and which are small. Like, I did not think it was a big deal when I said I was having a miscarriage, but that was a huge deal to a huge number of people. And I thought it was a huge deal when I said I was trying anti-anxiety meds, but no one really cared. What is a huge secret to you and what is a huge secret to everyone else is so different.
Which makes me feel unsure about secrets.
But I read a piece in the Wall St. Journal about a safari guide in Zimbabwe. He is one of the most famous safari guides in the world, and he says he tells people to “never run away from an animal. Always go slowly. Unless I tell you to run. Then run.”
And there was one time when he was guiding a man and woman through some elephants, and a mother elephant started chasing them. So they had to run. They ran for about half a mile, and they still hadn’t gotten away. And the woman said, “I can’t go anymore. I can’t run anymore. I just can’t.”
And the guide said, “Okay. I’ll have to shoot the elephant.”
Then she said, “No. I’ll keep running.” And she did.
I think we are like that. That if the alternative is terrible, we can keep running. But first we have to really believe the alternative is terrible.
by Penelope Trunk | Read more:
How to Write the First Draft of a Novel in 30 days
[ed. All six stages can be found here.]
The outline you'll complete using the 30-day method will become a snapshot of your novel. After finishing a full outline, you should feel you've got the makings of an entire book (your story should feel complete, solid, exciting and satisfying) and you should be desperate to start writing the book itself.
This first draft outline is the equivalent to the first draft of a manuscript. Because you've revised it so thoroughly, it will read with all the completeness and excitement of a finished novel. Using this outline to write the first draft of your book (which, in almost all cases, will be the final draft, needing only minor editing and polishing) should be so easy you might even feel a little guilty about it. All the hard work will already have been done creating the outline.
Throughout this guide we'll work on the assumption that the first draft of your book isn't a fully completed draft in the traditional sense, but is instead a comprehensive outline – your first, whole glimpse of the book and a snapshot of what it will be once finished. The outline you create over the next 30 days will become the foundation upon which your entire novel will come to rest. This method is a way to lay out the full course of the story as it flows from beginning to end.
Your commitment to the 30-day method
Despite its flexibility, the 30-day method requires a great deal of commitment from you as a writer. The first thing you need to become a productive writer is self-discipline. This method will give you that in spades – if you're willing to dedicate yourself to it. Not everyone will be able to complete a first draft outline in exactly 30 days on their first try, but that doesn't mean you'll never be able to do it. This method, like all methods, requires a sufficient amount of practice. The more you use it, the more time and effort you'll eventually shave off your outlining schedule. In the future, you may even notice it takes you considerably less time to write the first full draft of your book.
Does it mean you've failed if it takes you 90 days instead of 30? Of course not. If you need more (or less) time to perform certain steps in the process, you can adjust your schedule easily. But this method will probably make you work harder than you've ever worked before.
Some will enjoy the challenge; others will use the method while setting their own deadlines for each step. And others still won't be willing to allow their muse to be harnessed in this way. Find what works for you over the long term, not simply for the moment. Even if you find the next 30 days difficult, persevere – it will get easier with experience.
Understanding the 30-day method schedule
Keep in mind that each of the six stages identified in this method has its own day-to-day schedule. These individual schedules are discussed at length at the start of each corresponding chapter. Don't worry if you need to allow yourself an extra day or two for some tasks. As you become more familiar with the method, you'll find it easier to stay on schedule.
The first steps to creating a comprehensive outline are very rough — each building on the previous one. The preliminary outline you create in stage one won't contain everything. You'll just be getting your basics down at this point. With each step, you'll be developing more details about every aspect of the book, and your outline will grow to reflect that.
The outline you'll complete using the 30-day method will become a snapshot of your novel. After finishing a full outline, you should feel you've got the makings of an entire book (your story should feel complete, solid, exciting and satisfying) and you should be desperate to start writing the book itself.This first draft outline is the equivalent to the first draft of a manuscript. Because you've revised it so thoroughly, it will read with all the completeness and excitement of a finished novel. Using this outline to write the first draft of your book (which, in almost all cases, will be the final draft, needing only minor editing and polishing) should be so easy you might even feel a little guilty about it. All the hard work will already have been done creating the outline.
Throughout this guide we'll work on the assumption that the first draft of your book isn't a fully completed draft in the traditional sense, but is instead a comprehensive outline – your first, whole glimpse of the book and a snapshot of what it will be once finished. The outline you create over the next 30 days will become the foundation upon which your entire novel will come to rest. This method is a way to lay out the full course of the story as it flows from beginning to end.
Your commitment to the 30-day method
Despite its flexibility, the 30-day method requires a great deal of commitment from you as a writer. The first thing you need to become a productive writer is self-discipline. This method will give you that in spades – if you're willing to dedicate yourself to it. Not everyone will be able to complete a first draft outline in exactly 30 days on their first try, but that doesn't mean you'll never be able to do it. This method, like all methods, requires a sufficient amount of practice. The more you use it, the more time and effort you'll eventually shave off your outlining schedule. In the future, you may even notice it takes you considerably less time to write the first full draft of your book.
Does it mean you've failed if it takes you 90 days instead of 30? Of course not. If you need more (or less) time to perform certain steps in the process, you can adjust your schedule easily. But this method will probably make you work harder than you've ever worked before.
Some will enjoy the challenge; others will use the method while setting their own deadlines for each step. And others still won't be willing to allow their muse to be harnessed in this way. Find what works for you over the long term, not simply for the moment. Even if you find the next 30 days difficult, persevere – it will get easier with experience.
Understanding the 30-day method schedule
Keep in mind that each of the six stages identified in this method has its own day-to-day schedule. These individual schedules are discussed at length at the start of each corresponding chapter. Don't worry if you need to allow yourself an extra day or two for some tasks. As you become more familiar with the method, you'll find it easier to stay on schedule.
The first steps to creating a comprehensive outline are very rough — each building on the previous one. The preliminary outline you create in stage one won't contain everything. You'll just be getting your basics down at this point. With each step, you'll be developing more details about every aspect of the book, and your outline will grow to reflect that.
Lance Armstrong's Money Problem
He became not a man but a myth: A youngster from a broken home in Texas, raised by a single mother, discovers he has a talent for riding a bike. He becomes a brash young upstart challenging all those Euros in a sport they think they own. He falls victim to cancer. He nearly dies. He battles back from death’s to door to get back on his bike. Many scoff. Some laugh. None give him a chance of ever becoming a competitive cyclist again. Then he wins the Tour and goes on two win six more, the most ever. Along the way, he becomes incredibly rich and incredibly famous.
It is an American story. A Horatio Alger cycling tale.
And now it has all come tumbling down. The spoil sports with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) have revealed that all seven Tour victories came thanks in part to an expensive and complicated doping program that involved not just Armstrong but his whole team, with Armstrong serving as the chief dope pusher. Armstrong continues to deny this (more on why later), but the USADA case is a slam dunk. Many of Armstrong’s former buddies in the U.S. Postal Service/Discovery team have already confessed their involvement. Some of them have put the smoking syringe in Armstrong’s hand. The financial records tying Armstrong to notorious Italian doping doctor Michele Ferrari are there.
Armstrong doped. You’d have to be a dope to believe otherwise. Even Armstrong appears to have tacitly accepted this reality.
A man who once vehemently protested against the rumors of doping that followed him throughout his career, he strangely made no protestations of his innocence at a gala for the Livestrong charity in Austin Friday night.
“During the last few days a lot of people have asked me how I am doing. And I’ll tell you, I’ve been better, but I’ve been worse,” said the newly resigned chairman of the Livestrong board. “It’s been a difficult couple of weeks for me and my family, my friends and this foundation. We will not be deterred. We will move forward.... I just have one last request. Let’s have a hell of a good time tonight.”Not a word there about what Armstrong’s lawyers have previously called a USADA “witch hunt.” Could it be because there was no such thing or because the USADA in this case found an actual witch? Whichever the case, Armstrong now has a huge public relations problem, and all the experts agree the only way out is for him to admit what he has done and seek forgiveness.
But you didn’t need a PR expert to tell you that now, did you?
The reaction might not be at all bad if Armstrong tomorrow said this:
I won those seven Tours because we trained the hardest, we raced the smartest, and we put together a better doping program than any other team in the race. Yes, we cheated, but everyone was cheating. And I decided that if we were going to win, we were going to have to run not only the best cycling program on the bike, but the best medical program off the bike. And we did. All those European cyclists are mad today because we beat them at all levels of their sport, and there is no doubt doping was one level of that sport.I have no doubt a fair part of the country would listen to that and say, “Yo! Go Lance!
Only Armstrong can’t say this. Why not? Money.
by Craig Medred, Alaska Dispatch | Read more:
Photo: Cheridan Chard
Google’s Crystal Ball
It’s hard to predict voter turnout because people are reluctant to admit that they will not vote. How reluctant? One recent estimate suggests that as many as two-thirds of people who will end up not voting tell pollsters that they will.
In my work in economics, I use anonymous, aggregate data from millions of Google searches in hundreds of media markets in the United States to measure variables on sensitive topics — racism, drug dealing and child abuse, for example — where people tend to be less forthcoming in surveys (to put it mildly).
My research suggests that by comparing Google search rates for voting information so far this year with search rates on comparable dates from previous elections, we might already be able to get a pretty good idea of the composition of the 2012 electorate.
Despite the ubiquity of Google searching, and searchers’ demonstrated willingness to share their true feelings and unbridled thoughts on Google, what Americans are typing when they search remains surprisingly underutilized in political analysis. But Google can often offer insights unavailable elsewhere.
by Seth Stephens-Davidowitch, NY Times | Read more:
Illustration: Andrew Rae
My 6,128 Favorite Books
Fifty-five years later, with at least 6,128 books under my belt, I still organize my daily life—such as it is—around reading. As a result, decades go by without my windows getting washed.
My reading habits sometimes get a bit loopy. I often read dozens of books simultaneously. I start a book in 1978 and finish it 34 years later, without enjoying a single minute of the enterprise. I absolutely refuse to read books that critics describe as "luminous" or "incandescent." I never read books in which the hero went to private school or roots for the New York Yankees. I once spent a year reading nothing but short books. I spent another year vowing to read nothing but books I picked off the library shelves with my eyes closed. The results were not pretty. (...)
I read books—mostly fiction—for at least two hours a day, but I also spend two hours a day reading newspapers and magazines, gathering material for my work, which consists of ridiculing idiots or, when they are not available, morons. I read books in all the obvious places—in my house and office, on trains and buses and planes—but I've also read them at plays and concerts and prizefights, and not just during the intermissions. I've read books while waiting for friends to get sprung from the drunk tank, while waiting for people to emerge from comas, while waiting for the Iceman to cometh.
In my 20s, when I worked the graveyard shift loading trucks in a charm-free Philadelphia suburb, I would read during my lunch breaks, a practice that was dimly viewed by the Teamsters I worked with. Just to be on the safe side, I never read existentialists, poetry or books like "Lettres de Madame de Sévigné" in their presence, as they would have cut me to ribbons.
During antiwar protests back in the Days of Rage, I would read officially sanctioned, counterculturally appropriate materials like "Siddhartha" and "Steppenwolf" to take my mind off Pete Seeger's maddening banjo playing. I once read "Tortilla Flat" from cover to cover during a nine-hour Jerry Garcia guitar solo on "Truckin'" at Philadelphia's Spectrum; by the time he'd wrapped things up, I could have read "As I Lay Dying." I was, in fact, lying there dying. (...)
I do not speed-read books; it seems to defeat the whole purpose of the exercise, much like speed-eating a Porterhouse steak or applying the two-minute drill to sex. I almost never read biographies or memoirs, except if they involve quirky loners like George Armstrong Custer or Attila the Hun, neither of them avid readers.
I avoid inspirational and self-actualization books; if I wanted to read a self-improvement manual, I would try the Bible. Unless paid, I never read books by or about businessmen or politicians; these books are interchangeably cretinous and they all sound exactly the same: inspiring, sincere, flatulent, deadly. Reviewing them is like reviewing brake fluid: They get the job done, but who cares?
by Joe Queenan, WSJ | Read more:
Photo: Thomas Allen
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Arrogantly Shabby
At first glance, Fairbanks-based Arrogantly Shabby seems like a lot of other fashion blogs: Cool kids in cool clothes, modeling in obscure, offbeat locations. But there’s something a little different about the clothes and accessories featured on this blog: They were found at the dump. And they probably haven’t been washed.
Anyone who has lived in Fairbanks knows that dumpster diving is a popular pastime for many, and a way of life for some. Hopeful scavengers descend on the transfer stations scattered around town, where residents take their throw-aways to be trucked to the city landfill on the outskirts of town. These transfer stations, known colloquially as the "dump," feature both garbage bins and reuse stations, and are swarming grounds for treasure-seekers of all kinds.
Friends Trista Crass and Katie Robb, two Fairbanks girls with a creative streak and self-proclaimed “cheap” side, have taken that beloved local tradition online with Arrogantly Shabby. With upwards of 10,000 views a month from all over the world, the fashion blog is now approaching its three-year anniversary.
The blog started as a “joke” says Crass, “but when we went and did it, we realized how fun it was.” The idea was born one night after a weekly sauna party: Crass had complimented Robb’s scarf, who replied “it’s actually a pillow case,” snagged from the dump and then cut up into pieces. They slowly realized that pretty much everything they were wearing had come from the dump. Arrogantly Shabby had begun.
by Laurel Andrews, Alaska Dispatch | Read more:
Photo: Arrogantly Shabby
How Small Is Too Small?
Most people see a parking space and promptly back up into it; Tim McCormick sees one and thinks, “I could live here.”
Who would willingly choose to live in something with the footprint of a parking space (8x10x16 feet)? Millions already do, argues McCormick, a communications consultant: bedrooms, dorm rooms, motel rooms, hostels, mobile homes and the like. “I myself live comfortably in a converted one-car garage of 200 square feet,” he says, “which allows me to live inexpensively near downtown in super-expensive Palo Alto.”
In cities where space is at a mind-boggling premium, McCormick’s idea of taking up residence in a parking space — in what he refers to as a “Houselet” — isn’t all that far-fetched. It may in fact be more appealing than the so-called “hacker hostels” that got a lot of buzz earlier this summer. Essentially apartments that house herds of would-be startup entrepreneurs willing to pay market rate to live in near-migrant-worker conditions, hacker hostels are proliferating in cities like San Francisco and New York where work culture calls for 24/7 commitments and lots of food-truck takeout (which no doubt inspired upLIFT’s prefab parking pods for the city).
These apartments are less living spaces than crash pads with a social networking component.
They do fit a particular market need, however, which is more than a lot of housing options can lay claim to. Is collaborative space the new urban amenity, replacing the granite counter top or Viking range? Perhaps. Savvy developers see a market — namely, people’s attraction to what’s outside a dwelling as much as, if not more than, what’s in it — and are trying to fill it. (...)
It is an understatement to say that demand far outstrips supply in San Francisco. As a result, rents and mortgages have gone through the roof. (Compare those 200 units to the 16,502 units of affordable housing that will be built this fiscal year in New York City.) San Francisco has proposed reducing the minimum square footage for residential units (currently 290 square feet) so that more units can be built. The proposed new minimum would be 150 square feet plus kitchen, bathroom and closet (a size that is, interestingly enough, about the size of McCormick’s one-car garage). It’s also, jokes Patrick Kennedy of Panoramic Interests, a developer in Berkeley, Calif., who has created a 160-square foot prototype, as small as “you can go without causing psychological problems.”
Who would willingly choose to live in something with the footprint of a parking space (8x10x16 feet)? Millions already do, argues McCormick, a communications consultant: bedrooms, dorm rooms, motel rooms, hostels, mobile homes and the like. “I myself live comfortably in a converted one-car garage of 200 square feet,” he says, “which allows me to live inexpensively near downtown in super-expensive Palo Alto.”In cities where space is at a mind-boggling premium, McCormick’s idea of taking up residence in a parking space — in what he refers to as a “Houselet” — isn’t all that far-fetched. It may in fact be more appealing than the so-called “hacker hostels” that got a lot of buzz earlier this summer. Essentially apartments that house herds of would-be startup entrepreneurs willing to pay market rate to live in near-migrant-worker conditions, hacker hostels are proliferating in cities like San Francisco and New York where work culture calls for 24/7 commitments and lots of food-truck takeout (which no doubt inspired upLIFT’s prefab parking pods for the city).
These apartments are less living spaces than crash pads with a social networking component.
They do fit a particular market need, however, which is more than a lot of housing options can lay claim to. Is collaborative space the new urban amenity, replacing the granite counter top or Viking range? Perhaps. Savvy developers see a market — namely, people’s attraction to what’s outside a dwelling as much as, if not more than, what’s in it — and are trying to fill it. (...)
It is an understatement to say that demand far outstrips supply in San Francisco. As a result, rents and mortgages have gone through the roof. (Compare those 200 units to the 16,502 units of affordable housing that will be built this fiscal year in New York City.) San Francisco has proposed reducing the minimum square footage for residential units (currently 290 square feet) so that more units can be built. The proposed new minimum would be 150 square feet plus kitchen, bathroom and closet (a size that is, interestingly enough, about the size of McCormick’s one-car garage). It’s also, jokes Patrick Kennedy of Panoramic Interests, a developer in Berkeley, Calif., who has created a 160-square foot prototype, as small as “you can go without causing psychological problems.”
by Allison Arief, NY Times | Read more:
Phoro: Panoramic Interests
iMetamorphosis
’What’s happened to me?’ he texted no one in particular. It wasn’t a dream. His dorm room, a proper community college dorm room although a little too small, lay peacefully between it’s four supermodel and athlete covered walls. A collection of networking conference name badges lay spread out on the Ikea Bjursta—Toledo was an aspiring entrepreneur—and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of Fast Company and housed in a nice but fake wood frame. It showed a 20-year old internet billionaire wearing a T-shirt and jeans, slouching casually and looking utterly unconcerned in an office chair.
Toledo then turned to look out the window at the typical Portland weather. Through his internal microphone, raindrops could be heard hitting the non-touch enabled pane, which made him feel quite sad. ‘How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense,’ he thought, but that was something he was unable to do because he was used to sleeping on his stomach, and in his present state couldn’t get into that position. However hard he tried to roll over, he only managed to slide further through the set of application menus on his touch screen belly. He must have tried it a hundred times, turned off his camera so that he wouldn’t have to look at the sliding applications, and only stopped when he noticed his battery life percentage drop from 86 percent to 85 percent.
‘Oh God,’ he thought, ‘what an improbable career path I’ve chosen! Attending networking events and web seminars day in and day out. Starting a business like this takes much more effort than joining an established corporation, and on top of that there’s the curse of the new economy, worries about studying the right thing, fast food and junk food, incoming requests and invites from different people all of the time so that you can never really get to know anyone outside of a few party pictures of them on Facebook. It can all go to Hell!’
by Oyl Miller, McSweeny's | Read more:
Photo: Richard Termine via:
Consumer Products
2) Celebrities are not appendages of our society anymore; they are the basis of our communal lives. Literature and architecture, art and politics, are at most sidelights—small, ancient alleyways down which fewer and fewer minds wander. Pop culture has long since left the word culture behind to become the primary way we understand the world. Just before she died, the film critic Pauline Kael told a friend, “When we championed trash culture, we had no idea it would become the only culture,” and she was right. The average American household now watches eight hours and twenty-one minutes of television a day. If we want to understand ourselves, if we want to understand the civilization to which we belong, we have to understand celebrities, because the modern world of freedom and loneliness has produced them as the primary communal experience. (I know more about Tom Cruise’s sexual history than I do about my cousins’.) We confront the mysteries and the terrors of life through them.
3) Celebrity culture may seem ahistorical—superficial and of the moment—but its roots reach deeply into the past four hundred years. The dominance of celebrity culture is the long triumphal march of image over substance. (...)
11) The rise of more intense, and briefer, celebrity over the past century is a side effect of the movement from silent film to the camera phone. Andy Warhol’s dictum that everyone in the future will have fifteen minutes of fame was probably overstating the duration. Viral videos have given the briefest, most superficial fame to a boy doing light-saber tricks, a man attempting to knock down the Oasis frontman, a baby laughing maniacally for a couple of minutes.
12) Within the maelstrom of image, however, certain celebrity types return to the public consciousness again and again. Gwyneth Paltrow is not just Gwyneth. Without Greta Garbo, there is no Grace Kelly; without Grace Kelly, there is no Gwyneth. The power of this particular trope—the blond princess—is huge; Great Garbo was the most charismatic actress in history. Avenue Princess Grace in Monaco is the most expensive stretch of real estate in the world, over twice the per-square-foot value of an average Fifth Avenue apartment. Each manifestation of the Gwyneth/Grace/Garbo figure wears the skin of the previous manifestation. For women, along with the blond princess, we have the blond whore (Mae West, Tallulah Bankhead, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna), the exotic (Sophia Loren, Penélope Cruz), the independent (Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Streisand, Ellen Burstyn). Among men, the tough guy, the consummate gentleman, the upstanding fellow, the outsider, the shlub, the permanent child, the destroyed adolescent, the man who consumes himself to death, have all been constantly reinvented. As in any other form of polytheism, gods appear and disappear, built to fit time and occasion and place. No matter what social change is under way on the playing field of history, the gods above remain; they hover over the changing world without moving. There has always been a James Dean, there will always be a James Dean.
by Stephen Marche, Lapham's Quarterly | Read more:
No need to bring your umbrella to this interactive installation piece. This mystical indoor rain room by Random International utilizes light, movement, and presence as the foundation of their artwork, which is why visitors can experience the soft pitter patter sound of the raindrops without even getting wet. As they walk, sensors detect motions which in result choreographs the water away from them as if the visitors control the weather.
via:
What It's Like to be on Jeopardy
A spam filter almost scotched my chance to be on television. I was scanning through the usual detritus of offers in July 2011 to enhance body parts and transfer large sums of money from people in distant lands, and spotted this subject line:Jeopardy! Contestant Audition in SeattleHa! That's a new scam, I thought, before I recollected that I had taken the Jeopardy quiz show's online screening test earlier in 2011. While I have been told my entire life that I would be perfect on Jeopardy due to my ability to retain and produce (on demand or in spite of protestations not to) trivial information, I thought I scored poorly on the online test. Apparently not.
I called the number in the email after first confirming via Google that it was actually connected to Sony Pictures Entertainment, which produces the show, and was told that, yes, it was legit. A year later, I found myself at Sony Pictures in a suit and a tie shaking hands with Alex Trebek, and hearing the dulcet tones of announcer Johnny Gilbert say my name.
If you have access to this quaint thing called "broadcast television," whether over the air or through cable or satellite receivers, you might have seen me win $15,199 last night by ultimately correctly recalling Karl Marx's name in the nick of time. That was a squeaker. I'll be on again this evening, and you'll see how I perform this time around.
Jeopardy is a fascinating cultural phenomenon. Everyone I know seems to have watched it as a kid, and some friends and colleagues' parents continue to watch it every night. The show had a top viewership of 50 million in the 1990s, but has declined to about 9 million today. The last time you may have thought about it, if you're a typical Boing Boing reader, is when you heard that Ken Jennings won 74 episodes in a row after the program lifted a five-win maximum. (Ken was an outlier. Few people have won more than five episodes since, and no one has come close to his run.) (...)
After my first (and only?) stint on the show, a friend of mine pointed out that while Jeopardy appears to be a quiz show, it's really a very particular form of a reality show. It's like The Amazing Race with most (but not all) of the personality stripped out. Instead of competing Survivor-like in physically intense challenges with deprivations and also trying to manage the social calculus of not being voted off, Jeopardy reduces us mostly to brains and reflexes.
This starts with the selection process. For decades, Jeopardy had cattle-call auditions in which interested people were called in to take a quick test. Those that scored well continued on, and some made it on the air. But most people were sent away. This is, of course, highly inefficient. Three years ago, the show switched to an online screening test, and now has 100,000 people take that quiz each year.
From the 100,000, the contestant coordinators winnow out about 2,000 to 3,000, they say, for in-person auditions, like the one I went to in August 2011. The audition is intended to make sure that people perform well on the show, and starts out with a 50-question rapid-fire exam in which answers don't have to be in the form of questions. It then proceeds into a quite realistic simulation of the show with signaling buzzers, a game board, and an interview section. (...)
The show wasn't and isn't looking solely for smart people who test well. Rather, they want people with a combination of traits: a deep knowledge well, the ability to retrieve an answer quickly, unflappability, a decent personal presentation and personability. The 21 people in my audition slot in Seattle (including an old friend I ran into who had auditioned before) for the most part had those characteristics.
If contestants were cast simply by rote memorization and rapid-retrieval abilities, you know the result, because you see it at technology trade shows and engineering colleges: a row of people, mostly men, would affectlessly and rapidly answer every question as fast as possible and seem somewhat unsympathetic. They might not even scream or smile when they won. That's not good TV. The show wants people who have a few interesting stories about themselves, and to whom the 10 million or so home viewers will be able to relate. They can't be super-brainiacs, because that deflates viewers playing along at home.
by Glen Fleishman, Boing Boing | Read more:
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