In an election story that was buried under national news, the town of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, elected a new mayor after current mayor Lucy Lou declined to run again. The winner of the election was a pit bull named Brynneth Pawltrow, or Brynn for short. Retiring mayor Lucy Lou is also a dog, as were her two predecessors as mayor of Rabbit Hash. The mayoral election in the unincorporated community takes place by votes that cost a dollar, which goes to the Rabbit Hash Historical Society. Community members are encourage to vote early and often. The duties of the new mayor will include guarding the porch of the Rabbit Hash General Store and greeting visitors. Brynn indicates that she is up for the challenge.
DRUNK DRIVER RUNS OVER HIMSELF
An unnamed man in Orlando, Florida, became a drunk driving victim when his own truck ran over him. He left a strip club despite bouncers trying to stop him. A soon as he pulled out of the parking lot, he fell out of his truck, and the back wheels of the vehicle ran over him. The truck continued until it hit a house. The man got up and ran away. However, authorities were able to find him because he left his driver’s license at the bar. He has been charged with leaving the scene of an accident.
SQUIRREL TAKES REVENGE ON POLITICIAN
Howard Brookins Jr. is an alderman for Chicago’s 21st ward. He recently went on record as an opponent of the city’s squirrels. At a city meeting in October, he complained about the damage that squirrel do to garbage cans. According to the Chicago Sun Times:
“It’s a pet peeve. It does invoke some giggles. But we are spending too much money on replacing garbage carts because the squirrels continue to eat through ’em,” Brookins, former chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus, declared.
His stance added extra irony to an incident last week when Brookins was riding his bike and a squirrel jumped into his front wheel. Brookins was thrown to the pavement. The alderman lost several teeth and will require plastic surgery for a facial fracture. He was able to joke about the squirrels taking revenge on him.
BRITAIN BANS BEAN AD OVER SAFETY CONCERNS
A television ad for Heinz beans has been pulled from the air in the UK by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for safety reasons. The ad shows people using bean cans as percussion instruments to tap out a song. The ASA ruled that viewers might try to recreate the ad in real life and cut themselves on the cans. Heinz is not going to fight the order because the ad campaign was already near its end.
HOME INVADER WAS DRESSED AS A GORILLA
Group of women college students in Rexburg, Idaho, were frightened by a man who burst into their apartment last Friday. They couldn’t identify him because he was dressed in a gorilla suit. The gorilla came in through the front door, ran around the apartment, knocked over a few things, and left. Police said it was the second incident of its kind, as a gorilla did the same thing at another student apartment a week earlier, that one occupied by men. Rexburg Police Capt. Randy Lewis told East Idaho News:
“We don’t care if it’s a prank or if he was just monkeying around. We’re taking this serious and the perpetrator could be charged with unlawful entry.”
BIRD THROWS SNAKE AT CAR
Australia is often the butt of jokes about wildlife that is out to kill people. A dashcam video shows evidence that this might be true. A group of people were traveling on a highway near Wivenhoe Dam in Queensland when a bird of prey crossed their path and tossed a snake! The snake hit the windshield of the vehicle while the passengers screamed and then laughed. The driver did not lose control of the vehicle.
Millions of people watch Jeopardy! religiously—the game show has been popular since it first aired in 1964. But even if you never miss an episode, there’s a lot you might not know about what the winners do behind the scenes. We talked to a few previous Jeopardy! winners about betting on Daily Doubles, learning how to time the buzzer, and surviving awkward small talk with Alex Trebek.
1. THEY DON’T GET MUCH TIME TO REST.
Because of Jeopardy!’s tight filming schedule—five 30-minute shows are taped in a row, with minimal breaks—winners don’t have much time to bask in victory after conquering their competitors. “You only have about 10 minutes between winning your first show and appearing in your second,” explains Jelisa Castrodale, who won a 2010 episode. Castrodale tells mental_floss that winners are taken backstage to change clothes and get makeup reapplied, then they begin taping the next game.
“When I won, I honestly almost passed out from the shock of it (I had just beaten a seemingly unstoppable six-time champion) and was still so unsteady afterwards that I swear I almost had to ask a member of the production crew to double-check the spelling of my name for me when I wrote it down again,” Castrodale says.
2. SOME OF THEM SPEND YEARS PREPARING FOR THE SHOW.
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Some contestants spend years studying before they even try to qualify. After passing an online test, aspiring contestants are invited to an in-person audition. If they do well, they may be invited to appear on the show. In the interim, some winners prepare by watching Jeopardy! each night and making flashcards to memorize facts about everything from U.S. presidents and state capitals to ancient Greek gods and Shakespeare’s plays. Others study J-Archive, a fan-created database of prior clues, answers, and contestants.
3. IT’S ALL ABOUT TIMING THE BUZZER.
Even if a contestant knows the answer to every question, that knowledge won’t do them any good unless they press their buzzer at precisely the right time. “So much of the game comes down to buzzer speed and skill. I think that’s hard to appreciate unless you’re actually on the show,” David Walter, the winner of Jeopardy!’s 2007 Teen Tournament, explains. Contestants must buzz in as soon as Trebek finishes the question, when lights flash on the side of the game board. “Buzz in too early, and you’re locked out of ringing in again for a crucial split-second. Buzz in too late … and, well, you’re too late,” Walter says. Because timing the buzzer is a crucial part of winning the game, prior winners have written in-depth articles offering advice on how to master it with proper thumb placement and hand position.
4. IF YOU’RE ON A WINNING STREAK, IT HELPS TO BE AN INTERESTING PERSON.
Whether you love or hate the show’s small talk segment, in which Trebek spends a few seconds chatting with each contestant, Jeopardy! winners need to have a new, interesting anecdote to share for each game they play. “Coming up with ideas for that portion of the show is probably the hardest thing about being on the show,” Julia Collins, who won 20 shows in 2014, revealed in a Reddit Q & A. One month before taping, coordinators for the show send potential questions to contestants to determine interesting facts about them. On show day, Trebek chooses which fact to ask them about for the segment, which airs after each episode’s first commercial break.
5. THEY’RE COMFORTABLE WITH BETTING.
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Whether they bet all their money on Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy! or are more cautious, winners need to be okay with wagering large sums of cash. Because making smart bets can mean the difference between winning and losing, some contestants approach the game with a math script, knowing how they’ll bet no matter what happens in the game. “Because I had this scripted play, I wasn’t making the big decisions, I was just doing the math. I knew what the play was supposed to be … Other people were still making the decision. I think a lot of times, it made people think I was more confident in the category than I was,” Jeopardy! champion Arthur Chu told mental_floss in 2014.
6. THEY REHEARSE IN REALISTIC CONDITIONS.
Walter attributes his win to practicing with a mock buzzer for a few months before the taping: “I would stand up in front of the TV with a pen in my hand to simulate the buzzer. That got me used to the rhythms and speed of Trebek’s speaking voice, and made me less nervous around the buzzer during my actual tapings.” Other winners have practiced by shining a bright light in their faces (to simulate TV studio lights) and playing along with a group of friends watching, to mimic the added pressure that an audience brings.
7. THEY DON’T ACT LIKE TYPICAL GAME SHOW WINNERS.
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Contestants on game shows such as The Price Is Right and Wheel of Fortune are demonstrative: they often jump, shout, and clap when they win. “The contestant coordinators at Jeopardy! want enthusiasm, but they know they’re hand-picking the nation’s smartest academics, tech geeks, and librarians … generally introverts, in other words. So they lower their expectations and just ask winners for big smiles,” Jeopardy! superstar Ken Jennings (of the mental_flossKennections quiz) explains.
But some contestants struggle to find the right balance between showing too much emotion and not showing enough. After Josh Hager won an episode in 2014, the show’s producers came over to him once the episode had wrapped and told him not to be afraid to show his winning smile. “Apparently my endeavor to stay composed was too successful and they wanted just a little more emotion,” Hager says.
8. SOMETIMES THERE IS NO WINNER.
Although one of the three contestants in each episode almost always wins, several episodes have ended with no winner. Most recently, in January 2016, all three contestants answered incorrectly in the final round, losing all the money they had earned during the first two rounds. Because there was no winner, the next episode—with no returning champion—introduced three new players.
9. THEY HAVE TO KEEP QUIET UNTIL THEIR EPISODE AIRS.
Most episodes don’t air until several months after they’re taped. This lag time means that winners need to stay quiet about how they performed, and it can force repeat winners to habitually lie to their coworkers, family, and friends. In 2004, Jennings taped 48 shows before his first episode aired, so he had to keep his commute (every few weeks) from his home in Utah to Los Angeles a secret. “My boss told my co-workers a series of increasingly implausible lies about my whereabouts every other Tuesday and Wednesday. You think computer programmers are all geniuses? No one ever caught on,” Jennings writes on his website.
10. THEY DON’T GET PAID FOR A WHILE.
After patiently waiting for their first episode to air, winners must also wait months after their show’s air date for their prize money. And yes, they have to pay taxes on their winnings. Hager reveals to mental_floss that he got paid about six months after his episode aired. And although he won $27,100, he netted approximately $20,000 after federal tax, California tax (where the show is taped), and North Carolina tax (where he lives).
11. SOME OF THEM CAN BUY A HOUSE WITH THEIR PRIZE MONEY.
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Big winners can earn tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, which may allow them to pay off student loans, put a down payment on a house, or travel abroad. Even winners of more modest amounts can benefit from the extra cash, putting it toward a family vacation or college fund for kids. Hager, for example, used his prize money to pay off almost all of his student loans, and he and his wife moved out of their studio apartment into a spacious house. “Jeopardy! really did change my life and I can’t be more grateful,” he says.
12. FEEDBACK FROM JEOPARDY! FANS CAN BE MIXED.
Thanks to social media, winners face public scrutiny over everything from their appearance to the questions they answer incorrectly. Many internet commenters criticized recent winner Buzzy Cohen for his seemingly smug attitude and flippant responses in Final Jeopardy!, while others liked his sense of humor. Although some winners face a stream of harsh words on Twitter, they may also receive praise. “Lots of people on the internet compared me to Fred Armisen, which I take as a compliment,” Sam Deutsch, the winner of Jeopardy!’s 2016 College Championship, tells mental_floss.
13. WINNING THE SHOW PROVIDES LIFELONG PERKS.
Some winners include their Jeopardy! win on their resumes and LinkedIn profiles, hoping it will make them stand out to potential bosses and colleagues. After winning the show 74 times in a row, Jennings published a series of books, read a Top Ten list for David Letterman, and appeared on Sesame Street. “But the most gratifying thing lately has probably been the letters I get from kids … They all seem so smart! I’m doing my part for the nerd-ification of America’s youth,” he says.
Chu says that while he was studying for the show, his life centered on watching and reading about Jeopardy! to the detriment of his other activities. But after winning, he stopped watching the show to give himself a mental break. And Jennings admits that winning so many episodes has changed his reaction to seeing it on TV. “I find that I have a hard time sitting on my couch and lazily shouting out answers at Trebek, like I used to. Everything about the show—the music, the graphics, the sound effects—causes some fight-or-flight adrenaline spike in my blood and I become hyper-aware of every detail of the show. Maybe I have post-traumatic stress disorder,” he says.
15. THEY CAN’T ESCAPE THE CATCHY THEME SONG.
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According to Terry O’Shea, who won first place on the show’s 2014 College Championship, winners can’t escape the show’s instantly recognizable theme song. “When you go on Jeopardy!, people WILL taunt you with the theme song. It’s an unavoidable fact of life. If you do well enough, this will persist for several years afterward,” O’Shea explains. After appearing on the show, other winners face unrealistically high expectations about possessing encyclopedic knowledge. “I always watch [the show] with my friends, and they love teasing me when they know something I don’t,” Deutsch admits.
In 1953, Swanson had 260 tons of leftover turkey from Thanksgiving and didn’t know how to get rid of it. They asked their workers for ideas, and one man thought they should package it in individual trays with sides and freeze it. The TV dinner was born. 10
In the 1930s New York city planner Robert Moses deliberately built a number of bridges really low so that only cars could go under it – so as to prevent blacks (who mostly used public transport) from visiting New York’s ‘pristine’ beaches. 10
William Wrigley, Jr. sold soaps in 1891, offering baking powder as incentive to buyers. The baking powder proved to be more popular, so he started selling it, offering gum as incentive. But the gum proved to be even more popular, so he started selling them. In 1893, Juicy Fruit debuted. 10
Matthew McConaughey’s brother, Rooster McConaughey, named his son Miller Lyte and in return was gifted a years supply of beer for his life long commitment to the brand. 10
No, seriously, we don’t measure the speed of light (which always refers to the speed in a vacuum). We know exactly what the speed of light is.
It is: c = 299,792,458 meters per second.
And that is absolutely 100 percent accurate, with no measurement errors. The reason we know that that’s exactly the speed of light is that we defined it to be that number.
We then take our definition of a second (the length of time for a certain number of periods of the radiation emitted in hyperfine transitions in caesium-133), and from that we define a meter. So the thing we would be measuring is what a meter is.
We use the speed of light as a fixed velocity, from which all observers can define their own length scale.
To measure the speed of light would require an external definition of what a meter is—and since about the 1970s, we don’t have one.
And if you did want to measure the speed of light using this external distance reference, it’s easy to test: You just release a light pulse at t=0 toward a mirror and then time how long it takes to get back to you. This is the exact principle that radar and sonar work on (although again, they measure the distance knowing the speed—but it works either way round).
Some background:
The meter was originally defined after the French Revolution, in about 1799. It was defined as 1⁄10,000,000 the distance between the equator and the pole.
The “meter” was formally defined from 1889 as the length of a platinum rod, held in a vault in Paris.
From this definition of a meter (and an old definition of a second), we measured (using the mirror-timing method, or based on astronomical observations) the speed of light to be about 299792458, plus a non-integer bit, and error bars from the measurement errors.
Eventually, we realized that having a meter defined by something there was only one of was a bit annoying. So, we attempted to define it in a way that anyone could replicate—without having to refer to a “standard object.”
Therefore, we redefined the meter—using the speed of light.
The official definition of a meter today is: 1⁄299792458 of the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in one second, using the caesium definition of a second.
Therefore, this was exactly equivalent to defining the speed of light to be the number given above.
We chose that number (and not a more convenient number like 300,000,000), because that number changed the definition of a meter by only a fraction of a fraction of a percent—but made everything all nice and integer-y.
A consequence of using this definition is that any attempt to measure the speed of light is cyclical—you must use a “meter” to measure it at some point—which relies on the speed of light.
Therefore what you actually do now, when you “measure” the speed of light (in a vacuum), is actually “measure how accurate your measuring instruments are.”
Amazon isn’t the only store running great online Black Friday sales. We’ve scoured the Web for the other great bargains you need to know about.
Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting!
Black Friday is here, and Amazon is celebrating with deals you can grab from the comfort of your own home. If you’re not in the mood to stand in line and jockey for position at the local mall, here are the best deals we could find at the world’s biggest store.
Mental Floss has affiliate relationships with certain retailers, including Amazon, and may receive a small percentage of any sale. But we only get commission on items you buy and don’t return, so we’re only happy if you’re happy. Good luck deal hunting!
GADGETS
Amazon is deeply discounting its devices, including the Echo, Tap, Fire tablets, Fire TV, and more. If you’ve been thinking of grabbing the do-it-all Echo or a powerful, inexpensive Fire tablet, they’re a steal today.
Whatever your culinary plans for the rest of the holiday season, Amazon has you covered with deep discounts on cookware, serveware, and everything else you’re going to need. You won’t regret grabbing one of these deals on a KitchenAid mixer.
RTIC’s 30-ounce insulated tumblers are one of our readers’ most frequently purchased products. They keep your cold drinks cold and your hot drinks hot, and they’re much more economical than their Yeti counterparts. Amazon’s keeping the price under $12, a real bargain:
Keeping your teeth gleaming just got cheaper. Amazon is running huge coupon deals on some of its most popular oral care products. Today is the day to upgrade to an electric toothbrush!
Fans of the outdoors know that you can never have too many flashlights. Amazon’s marking some great Streamlight and Coast models way down today, so it’s the perfect time to upgrade your gear.
Amazon is slashing the prices on its full line of Kindle E-readers. Certified refurbished models that come with the same limited warranty as new Kindles are an even better deal.
The only thing better than a new TV is a new TV that comes with a free $100 Amazon gift card. Amazon’s bundling a gift card in with this popular 55-inch curved Samsung smart TV.
If you’ve been meaning to upgrade your power or hand tools or have a DIY master on your shopping list, Amazon is running a handful of great instant-discount deals on top brands like Bosch, DEWALT, Makita, and PORTER-CABLE. The discounts will be applied automatically at checkout. There are hundreds of items in these deals, so whatever tool you need, it’s probably in there!
You learn at a very young age that you should call 911 in an emergency. And, according to the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), people in the U.S. make approximately 240 million 911 calls every year. But not all those calls warrant emergency attention from police, fire department, or paramedics. So what, exactly, constitutes an emergency?
Only call 911 if a person or property is in immediate danger. A serious medical emergency warrants a 911 call, so don’t hesitate if you witness a heart attack, stroke, anaphylaxis, broken limbs, choking, drug overdose, drowning, a psychotic episode, or uncontrolled bleeding. If you see smoke or flames, witness a crime being committed, or see a car accident in which someone has serious injuries, call 911. And note that most states are still not equipped to process texts to 911, so stick to using a landline (so the dispatcher has access to your location) or, if you can’t access one, a cell phone.
According to TQ Gaskins, the lead dispatcher at a college police department in Southern California, you should only call 911 to get help for an immediate threat. “If you are at home and hear someone in your house, this is the time to call 911. If you come home and find someone broke into your home while you were away, then you should call the non-emergency line,” she says. “911 lines really need to remain open for people dealing with life-threatening or potentially volatile situations.”
According to Gaskins, most people aren’t aware that every agency has a non-emergency or business line. Go online to your city’s government website to find the non-emergency phone numbers of your local police, fire, and information services, and save them in your phone.
Don’t call 911 to file a noise complaint, report a traffic accident without injuries, or notify the police that your car was stolen. To report a missing person, call your local non-emergency phone number rather than 911, unless the missing person is a child, elderly, or has developmental disabilities. (And it probably goes without saying, but don’t call 911 to ask about weather conditions, parking restrictions, or when your electricity will come back.)
Still not sure if your situation warrants a call to 911? If you’re ever in doubt, err on the side of caution and place the call, then follow the dispatcher’s instructions.
