I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
---Groucho Marx
Facebook is a peculiar social media website, but like others it employs AI algorithms to guess and then present unsolicited material that supposedly resonates with my interests. One result is that I'm getting a lot of stuff about the Beatles...no problem with that. I also like another site, called Goodwill Librarian, that promotes books and reading and has all sorts of funny and pithy posts. The other day they showed the above quote by comedy legend Groucho Marx, who also said, "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member" and "Why, a four-year child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can't make head nor tail of it." In his day, though, television gave its viewers few options beyond the three major networks, public television and an occasional independent channel. Now, though, although you can still get brain-wasted sitting in a stupor watching inane programming, television offers a variety of opportunities for educational experiences...especially if you use Roku or something similar to access YouTube. That channel can teach you just about anything on Earth...just do a search on your topic and see what happens. Earlier this year...although I've gotten away from it more recently...I was learning college mathematics in different on-line lectures on YouTube. Nowadays I've been stuck on the Kendra listening practice in the five languages I'm studying...it's a great way to both get used to the spoken language and fill in my vocabulary with new words. There's also a lot of "how-to" maintenance and repair stuff there...go ahead, give it a try. You can even run a virtual marathon if you like...or follow a number of great classical music pieces with the written music on screen tracing the audio. And on and on...yep, I wonder what kind of savvy, hilarious quip my old friend Groucho would have to say about all that...
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