While this old fuddy, duddy obviously understands the importance of technology and social media to my profession, I have to admit sometimes with all these new-fangled doo-hickies I’m stuck in a time warp. But after hearing what Ripley is doing, maybe I’m going to have to get with the times.
Amazon is letting Ripley Entertainment use Alexa to distribute “Ripley’s Weird Minute” which will provide 60 seconds worth of weird news. So those of you who have Alexa and have traditional news outlets like NPR and CNN, you can now add “Ripley’s Weird Minute” to that list.
New content is offered in “Ripley’s Weird Minute” for every day, six days a week Monday through Saturday. The feature covers anything and everything from going with all news about pi and math on March 14 to historic facts on such things as burly-man cheerleaders of the 1800s.
Since I didn’t have “Ripley’s Weird Minute” or Alexa for that matter I have to admit I did an internet search for “burly-man cheerleaders of the 1800s” and actually found out at that time cheerleading was considered the manliest of sports — and yes it was all male.
So in my lifetime we’ve gone from learning about odd things from Sherman asking Mr. Peabody about some odd fact or asking Mr. Owl how many licks does it take to finish a Tootsie Pop to now having Alexa telling us about the weirdest things imaginable 60 seconds at a time on a daily basis.
And since a lot of the writings in this Popcorn Stand are about weird news I can find maybe I should go out and get one of these Alexa do-hickey thing-a-ma-jigs (I think that’s the technical term) and actually subscribe to “Ripley’s Weird Minute.”
Believe it or not.
— Charles Whisnand
