Qi

I thought that Alan only won because he refused to answer the "how old are you?" trap question, but even then, with 10 subtracted, would he still have won by 1 pt?

Excellent episode, the level of detail was about right, I thought.

K
 
did anyone see the show where they discussed china's slow progression to an industrial based country and their lack of innovation? they claimed it was due to glass not being created because they had porcelain instead to drink their tea out of and they hadn't a reason to invent glass.

well, i know a guy who's is a lecturer in chinese history and he says that this is simply not true. he says that both europe and china were using glass for fenestration and that europeans in that time weren't using glass to drink from either - it was metal. china has had glass for 2000 years and theres plenty of evidence to suggest its common use.

he claims the reason that its progression slowed was more down to the isolation policies of the emperors in the 15th and 16th century which prevented an influx of ideas from outside.

so, if that 'quite interesting' fact is wrong, makes you wonder how many other things they are also getting wrong. kinda ruins the program to think that it might all be nonsense.
 
One thing I learned from the otherwise mostly pointless "Programmes Of The Decade" thing on Channel 4 tonight is that the programme was originally conceived to be a "intellectual team vs. dunderheaRAB team" thing with Alan Davies as the captain of the dunderheaRAB and Stephen Fry as the captain of the intellectual team. When it came to record the pilot, the person who was supposed to host the show couldn't for some reason that I didn't catch (due to only half-watching the programme while making food), and they asked Fry to step in, just the once. He didn't want to do it, but was talked in to it. 5 minutes into recording the pilot, they realised that they should have thought of him as the host in the first place.

I'd always wondered why Alan Davies was the only regular, and now I know.
 
because it was a serious charge he was making. to be clever sometimes qi misleaRAB which is an issue.

prisoners do work sometimes, not all do by any stretch. their work pays into victims funRAB and into the cost of their incarceration, but it rarely makes much of a dent in to that. plus they get walking around money for extras. in california alone there is severe inmate over crowding and orders to forcefully reduce inmate numbers by a judge because of conditions, the budget is just not there for enough cells. this is the opposite of the situation fry painted for the audience as if inmates were cash cows. the prisons unions and such also are in constant fights over money. its scarce, not plentiful. the total cost of incarceration of a california inmate is 50k http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/laomenus/sections/crim_justice/6_cj_inmatecost.aspx?catid=3
if even only half are not working, it goes to 100k per working inmate to work off basic costs. its just not going to happen, most dont' work. theres simply a practical limit to how many factories you can place around a prison, or how many prisoners you can guard and transport constantly

sometimes you can lie by telling a half truth.
 
I could hardly believe that in the General Ignorance round they were asked to sing Auld Lang Syne and all of them INCLUDING David Tennant sang "for THE SAKE OF Auld Lang Syne". I was waiting for the hooter to interrupt and for SF to correct them, but it didn't happen.
 
It's interesting, I don't remember seeing Jeremy Hardy since the earlier series, I also seem to remember him being a good guest.

It does seem the norm these days to have more and more stand ups on the show. People like Johnny Vegas and Jack Dee come to mind.

As for last night's episode, Bill Bailey is always a good guest though he seems to have become quieter in the later series. Rich Hall is another quite one but I like him on QI, the stuff he comes out with is usually pretty good. Barry Humphries I didn't mind, but it seems he isn't as comfortable as himself than he is as a character.

What's all this about Stephen lecturing, I hadn't noticed, and as somebody said earlier it may be that he just needed to drag the show along due to the lack of panellists' input.
 
I only saw it last night, and while JV was cringeworthy at times I thought he gave Rob Brydon some great comic lines.....the one about his parents removing him from class made me lol!
 
A really good episode last night, far better than the Christmas Eve one and the one that should have been shown on Christmas Eve.

I'm not a fan of Norton, but thought he did well last night.

Funny and interesting, as it should be.
 
One of the thing's that really annoys me is when they make a joke and then just don't let go. (Like the German Driving Licence Parking Ticket thing). yes we get the joke but there's no need to spend ages going on about it.

This gets left into the main show at the expense of some of the better questions that we see in XL, and is just a waste.

It's getting to the point where I won't be bothered with the half hour show and will only watch XL.

And what is it with Stephen fry and that Tarzan Call intro? I know it's G for Good Evening but once - yeah, evey week no.
 
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