Same name, different James. Congratulations on 30 wins! pic.twitter.com/5h33A8datj— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) May 30, 2019
2. Alex: "Alex Trebek Reveals Some of His Tumors Have Shrunk by 50 Percent: ‘It’s Kind of Mind-Boggling’" (People):
Although the cancer has a 9 percent survival rate, Trebek has been responding very well to chemotherapy. “The doctors said they hadn’t seen this kind of positive result in their memory.... I’ve got a couple million people out there who have expressed their good thoughts, their positive energy directed towards me and their prayers... I told the doctors, this has to be more than just the chemo, and they agreed it could very well be an important part of this... I’ve got a lot of love out there headed in my direction and a lot of prayer, and I will never ever minimize the value of that.”
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33 comments:
Didn’t I see that guy as a henchman in a Bond movie?
Dang... is Trebek seriously suggesting that sending "thoughts and prayers" might be more than a useless/ hypocritical/cynical gesture???
Hope that doesn't get out:
In an interview with People magazine out Wednesday, Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek credited the prayers of millions of his fans for helping him in his fight against stage-four pancreatic cancer, now in “near remission.” Yet, while ABC’s World News Tonight touted Trebek’s praise, the CBS Evening News ignored that part of Trebek’s comments and NBC Nightly News edited it out of the quotes read and video clips they aired.
Everything is a potential weapon. *rolling eyes*
Good for him.
Maybe if Alex has a great outcome it will give others with a similar diagnosis more hope.
Hope is a powerful thing.
Silly Alex, don't you know Hollywood says thoughts and prayers do nothing?
I told the doctors, this has to be more than just the chemo, and they agreed it could very well be an important part of this... I’ve got a lot of love out there headed in my direction and a lot of prayer, and I will never ever minimize the value of that.
I'll take Lightweight Religion for $2000, please...
If I ever write a novel, it’s going to have a henchman.
In a Matrix like simulation the thoughts and well wishes, aka: hopes and prayers, of our simulation co-occupants can have a dramatic effect.
"...it’s going to have a henchman."
Name him "Henchman #2."
"It appears that, in all countries and in all creeds, the priests urge the patient to pray for his own recovery, and the patient's friends to aid him with their prayers; but that the doctors make no account whatever of their spiritual agencies, unless the office of priest and medical man be combined in the same individual.
The medical works of modern Europe teem with records of individual illnesses and of broad averages of disease, but I have been able to discover hardly any instance in which a medical man of any repute has attributed recovery to the influence of prayer. There is not a single instance, to my knowledge, in which papers read before statistical societies have recognized the agency of prayer either on disease or on anything else.
The universal habit of the scientific world to ignore the agency of prayer is an important fact.
To fully appreciate the ‘eloquence of the silence’ of medical men, we must bear in mind the care with which they endeavour to assign a sanatory value to every influence. Had prayers for the sick any notable effect, it is incredible but that the doctors, who are always on the watch for such things, should have observed it, and added their influence to that of the priests towards obtaining them for every sick man. If they abstain from doing so, it is not because their attention has never been awakened to the possible efficacy of prayer, but, on the contrary, that although they have heard it insisted on from childhood upwards, they are unable to detect its influence.
Most people have some general belief in the objective efficacy of prayer, but none seem willing to admit its action in those special cases of which they have scientific cognizance.
...
The impulse to pour out the feelings in sound is not peculiar to Man." -- Statistical inquiries into the efficacy of prayer, Francis Galton, 1872
Expressing thoughts and positive energy will do it every time.
If it doesn't go well, at least Trebek goes out with a bang.
They're going to have to buy off James to get him off the show.
The chemo kills most, but not all, of the cancer cells. The survivors have a resistance to the chemo drug. So those cells begin to multiply and the tumors start to grow again, and can pop up anywhere, in your bones, in your brain . . . it's heartbreaking. Once it has metastasized, cancer is like a freight train that just crashes through every barrier you throw at it. Specialists don't help, money doesn't help.
Even the chemo can kill you. It makes you toxic, you have to be careful in your interactions with loved ones. No kissing, you have to flush twice.
"They're going to have to buy off James to get him off the show."
I watch regularly. Someone wins every night. How much more do you suppose James has won in his $2.3m run than would have been won by different winners?
Probably will find a way to get him out once they decide that a continued run of success is no longer boosting ratings.
I've watched Jeopardy for decades. I wish Alex well.
"I'll take Lightweight Religion for $2000, please..."
He isn't really talking about religion, I don't think. It's an indirect way to say he knows he is loved and thanks for all that.
I am sure many people who receive a terrible cancer diagnosis wonder if anyone would care or perhaps even notice if they slipped off the face of the earth.
Alex has had the good fortune to hear how much people want him to stay forever, hosting the game show that has merged with his identity.
Sometimes I imagine that James is a supernatural creature, keeping Alex alive. The game has taken on epic proportions these days.
"They're going to have to buy off James to get him off the show."
At some point it will be like "Win Ben Stein's Money," with a permanent contestant that everyone come on the show to try to beat.
The morbid question everyone is thinking but not asking is whose run finishes first?
Holzhauer is a professional gambler. He knows that eventually he will miss on a "double" and one of his opponents will get lucky.
Holhauer is a professional, so he knows that he's playing with the House's money.
He can't lose what he's already accumulated. I don't get the sense he cares about surpassing the current record winnings first place holder, he just wants to win as much as possible so I expect he won't take any unusually aggressive chances once he's past $2.5m.
Will he do something sensible with his winnings, like set up himself and his family through some sort of investment vehicle that generates a decent base income level? Or will he head to Vegas with his winnings in his pocket and see if he can increase it even further? Will we one day read a story about how he gambled it all away? How many of his family members have already hit him up for a little financial help for that problem they're having?
I think the ratings will determine how long Jeopardy "allows" him to stay. Right now the ratings are through the roof, but eventually people will tire of seeing him win, and even worse- the pool of contestants will self-select themselves out of that pool until he is gone- for example, I can "question" correctly about 90-95% of the "answers" on any given show- good enough to win a good portion of the time on a normal taping (as I age, I get less quick, though), but Holhauer would probably beat me by at least $50K- even on a good, fast brain day for me. I think we will likely see even worse contenders at some point soon- I just don't know how big a pool of contestants the show had before Holhauer got 10 shows deep.
If he starts hurting the show's ratings and quality of play, the producers will probably start seeding impossible to answer clues in the Daily Doubles- one at first, then all three. Eventually Holhauer will miss two or all three in the same episode and go down.
"At some point it will be like "Win Ben Stein's Money," with a permanent contestant that everyone come on the show to try to beat."
Nope. None of his opponents try to beat him. They are playing for second. You can see it in their eyes. They finally get on Jeopardy and they don't believe they have a chance. Then James hits the first daily double, bets "all the cheddar", and they know it.
I have seen it claimed that Holhauer's strategy is brand new- it isn't- I have watched this show off and on for over 40 years now, and I have seen players try his strategy- work the bottom up, bet it all on Daily Doubles etc. It hasn't really worked because they couldn't answer enough of the questions correctly to overcome the occasional miss on the Double, nor could they consistently beat the other opponents on the buzzer. Holhauer is different because he is a better player overall with the right strategy. I think Jenkins at his peak could have given him a run for his money if he adapted the same strategy. The hardest part is being able to answer the bottom clues without getting a feel for how the category's answers are structured- it is why people normally start with the easiest ones at the top. Holhauer is very mentally flexible in that way.
I haven't been watching as of late and this may have been previously discussed here, but at some point doesn't the show run through enough taped episodes so that new contestants will know who he is and what they are up against? Wouldn't they alter their play strategy accordingly? Not that it would help necessarily...
I have seen it claimed that Holhauer's strategy is brand new- it isn't-
Yes. Usually during the old TOC finals you'd see bottom up play and/or DD hunting.
Can't find it, but a book by a former Jeopardy producer explained the questions got easier over time in response to viewer demand. Another factor in the mid-aughts was complaints about the dearth of minority and female winners.
There's some obscure study that shows that questions went from college freshman level in the 80s down to 10th grade 30 years later.
Win Ben Stein's Money
Back when Jimmy Kimmel was somewhat funny and not a miserable, scolding POS.
I watch regularly. Someone wins every night.
Not always. I remember the game where all three contestants ended up with zero.
“Jeopardy!” legend Ken Jennings’ record of $2,520,700 won over 74 games.
Will he do something sensible with his winnings, like set up himself and his family through some sort of investment vehicle that generates a decent base income level? Or will he head to Vegas with his winnings in his pocket and see if he can increase it even further?
Umm, yeah, guy already lives in Las Vegas and is a professional sports gambler., so I'm gonna say you hit the nail on the head..
I have often thought if you took a rabbit and set it on a stool in the infield of a baseball stadium and then have all 50,000 people in attendance simultaneously think "kill the rabbit" it would fall over dead.
Yellow fever has as one of its symptoms an acute onset of despair. Patients with yellow fever spontaneously think they will die and get rather morbid about it. One early treatment was to encourage patients to maintain a positive outlook, and to explicitly tell them positive thoughts would help them survive. And it did. Odd, that.
Placebos work.
One of my favorite X-Files episodes had Alex Trebek play himself as one of the Men In Black. Loved it. Episode was "Jose Chung's From Outer Space", Alex's partner was Jesse Ventura.
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