Rick Rosner: You can hold bad TV in contempt, but you must give good TV its due. How do you distinguish between the two? Bad TV is lazy. For example, my wife grew up with The Brady Bunch. She was just a child, probably six or seven years old, when it aired, so she couldn’t necessarily discern …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 960: Tips for Working in Television
Rick Rosner: You are in a much more difficult situation than I was because the financial opportunities available now are much worse. When I worked at Kimmel, we got paid 52 weeks a year, even though we only worked 46 weeks and had six weeks of paid vacation. It was a dream job, one that nobody …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 959: Writing Comedy Used to be a Better Gig
Rick Rosner: Okay, so you asked me what my favourite comedy of all time is, and I said I’d have to consult a list. So, I’m looking at Rotten Tomatoes’ list of 150 essential movie comedies. However, a disclaimer is necessary: comedies don’t age well. Most movies don’t age well, especially now that everyone has …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 958: A Rosner List on Television and Movies
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Well, let me give a brief preface. I work around 14 to 18 hours a day because I don't sleep much, averaging 16 or so, 7 days a week. However, I no longer stress as much as I used to. I take better care of myself now, which is a significant improvement. …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 957: Are you not entertained?~!
Rick Rosner: So you just said that Chat GPT-3 is up now. Is that the deal? That's Chat GPT-4.0. 4.0. So, what is it being touted as? What are the improvements over the previous version? Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It appears to be better at analyzing and generating sound, text, and images, especially in speed. Rosner: Everything …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Yes. The basic premise is that these large-scale models were introduced only very recently. Despite their recent emergence, updates are being released rapidly, often within a year of each other. Each update is seen as a significant leap forward in accuracy, ease of conversation, depth of processing, speed of processing, and other aspects. …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 955: Grammatical Understanding Versus Real Comprehension
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: My wife just turned on a documentary about the Brat Pack. It was filmed 35 years after the Brat Pack era by one of the actors characterized as being in the Brat Pack, Andrew McCarthy. Whenever I watch anything like this, or like tonight, when Jimmy Kimmel is hosting a fundraiser for …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 946: I could have been a contender
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: You had assigned homework for me, which I didn't complete because I took a nap. You wanted to discuss the role of God in Judaism? It's not only that, but a specific concept within a particular reform of Judaism. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The idea involves the Hebrew word for Messiah, meaning anointed. In …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 945: Rick Rosner on Israel Jacobson and Reformed Judaism
[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I wanted to talk about the comparison and contrast between American styles of women's rights and Canadian styles, focusing on what Canadians and Americans are doing better. In my view, Canadians are probably doing better, even though the United States is a wealthier country. In the contemporary period, Canadian women …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 944: Canadian and American Women’s Progress
[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what if at the lowest level, the world, lowest magnitudes, time doesn't exist? While at the higher levels, higher magnitudes, time begins to emerge and, in fact, becomes a major factor in the general business of the universe, the general informational processing of reality. There is self-interaction between the …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 943: From the Top of the Informational Charts
Rick Rosner 