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Is Jeopardy getting easier or am I getting smarter?

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Mudcat
Now I could arrange the facts of my life to sound like there were reasons for me being an addict. Here's how that goes: I was a very high achieving young kid in school, music, athletics - always at the top of everything I tried and winning awards based on natural ability. Once I got to my teens, kids who learned work habits were catching up to and passing me as I was still trying/expecting to get by on the natural ability I had been so praised for. But it wasn't enough. Increasingly I was not living up to my promise. Increasingly I was a failure and a disappointment.
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I read about a psychological study that was very interesting and that I can really relate to. They took a bunch of kids, and regardless of the what they were doing on their school tasks, they praised half of them for being really smart and talented, and they praised the other half for the excellent effort they were making.

The effort kids thrived, worked hard on new things, took chances. The kids that were praised for their natural smarts and talents were reluctant to work on new things and take chances. They developed worse study habits. Resting on their laurels, not willing to do something new that might reveal limitations.

I would definitely recommend that parents make a lot of effort to praise effort and take it easy on the natural ability stuff. Natural ability isn't really something to be that proud of anyway, is it?
 
For a long time I had a very perverse disdain for hard work, looking down my nose at anyone who had equal grades to me due to good study habits, or anyone who played piano better than me due to taking lessons.

I doubt my parents encouraged me to be stupid like that. Just some dysfunctional defense mechanism I guess.

There was nothing more important once I got clean and sober than learning strong work habits, which I now consider one of my greatest strengths (not that I have much to show for them).

It is something I would really encourage parents to be be aware of and stress.



Wayne Gretzky had some talent, no question, but that fokker worked his ass off.
 
Mudcat
So what do you do? What do you avoid? Unfortunately there are so many different circumstances that people describe, it would be impossible to avoid them all.

And the fact is too that most non-addicts have very comparable stresses and neuroses. Everyone's got shit.
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there is the quandary - however i get what you say when you said this

Now I could arrange the facts of my life to sound like there were reasons for me being an addict. Here's how that goes: I was a very high achieving young kid in school, music, athletics - always at the top of everything I tried and winning awards based on natural ability. Once I got to my teens, kids who learned work habits were catching up to and passing me as I was still trying/expecting to get by on the natural ability I had been so praised for. But it wasn't enough. Increasingly I was not living up to my promise. Increasingly I was a failure and a disappointment.

It left a big hole in my gut. That was right around the time intoxicants became available to me and I filled that big hole in my soul with drugs which made me feel happy and special and euphoric again.
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On a Jeopardy-related note, I am pissed off. Looks like they are going to be having some big multi-level tournament next year with great players from various decades. If it's anything like that Ultimate Tournament of Champions a few years back, it could go on for like 6 weeks. That's 6 weeks they won't be circulating in new regular peeps.

There are already too many fokking specialty tournaments! Fok all that! Fok the kids, fok the teens, fok the colleges, fok teachers! Focus at all times on bringing in new peeps!

Truth is I will probably really enjoy that tournament and seeing how Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings do. If they end up meeting each other, it will be like the Super Bowl for me.



But still!


:fok:
 
Mudcat
There are already too many fokking specialty tournaments! Fok all that! Fok the kids, fok the teens, fok the colleges, fok teachers! Focus at all times on bringing in new peeps!







:fok:
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I am going to have to rethink my "everything MC says sounds like poetry" statement.

I agree too many specialty tournaments.

Did you like Little Creatures?
 
I had to look that up. I have quite a bit of Talking Heads on CD that my music guru put together for me, but I don't necessarily know what albums go with what songs.

I wasn't a Talking Heads fan when they were together and releasing stuff. It's not like, say, Pink Floyd for me where I hear an album title and I know exactly what it means. Talking Heads is all a mish-mash for me. It's a wonderful mish-mash, but disorganized.

So anyway I wikied Little Creatures and then there's the next problem: there is a list of song titles but I don't necessarily know songs by title.

I recognize a couple. Then I plugged a few more in at YouTube. I recognize most but not all.



My summary at this point: it's okay but not my favorite collection.

Furthermore I don't think I have a single one of those songs on any of my CD's so apparently my music guru agrees. He has not seen fit to pass it along.
 
Little Creatures and the one after it...true stories I guess...I didn't like at all. I agree on the mish mash thing. 77/Fear of Music/Remain in Light/More songs about buildings and food all run together for me. Speaking in Tongues and Stop Making Sense (compilation/best of) stand out to me. The rest I hate so I couldn't tell you anything about them.

Went back and listened to some of 77 this morning. Didn't have the same effect on me as it did years ago. And I can say without a doubt they no longer are my favorite band of all time. If you have not seen the concert film Stop Making Sense, you really need to...it's genius. One of the greatest concert films ever.
 
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