"If his eyes hadn't been so bad, Jim Kennedy wouldn't have seen the things he has and certainly would never have found himself in the murky waters of Normandy's Cherbourg Harbor.

Kennedy ended up an Army Diver, one of the last survivors to do his kind of work during World War II, and, oh, what he has seen." Click below for the front page article about Jim Kennedy the appears in the the Denver Post today, June 6, 2009 and written by Karen Auge.

Everytime we feature the Quiz Kids, we receive email asking questions. This is so rare because even with the healthy number of visitors on Norm's Ramblins very few drop us a note of appreciation BUT of the meager email we receive, 90% ask questions about The Quiz Kids. Apparently, this was a very influential program in the lives of "us kids" back then. We're now "old folks" and retain a fond memory of this special group because we wanted to be one of them so badly.

The Quiz Kids first debuted in the summer of 1940 and was conceived as a juvenile variation of the premiere quiz show of the day, Information Please. Its creator was Louis Cowan, a Chicago-based advertising and public relations man who had dabbled in radio since the mid 1930's.

The widespread popularity of Information Please, with its panel of "respected intellects," had proven that such programs could over come the highbrow stigma among the listening public. Cowan felt the next step would be to form a quiz program based on a panel of children, but not just any children! Cowan wanted prodigies “kids of immense intellect, poise, personality, and microphone presence. Just as important, Cowan also wanted these kids to never come across as arrogant or brash; children whom he auditioned that gave an impression of cockiness -or even children with "pushy or disruptive" parents- were summarily rejected.

The first children selected for The Quiz Kids audition recording were found from newspaper headlines. The first child chosen was a 6-year old boy, Gerard Darrow, who could identify more that 1,000 birds and was also an expert on butterflies, flowers, reptiles, amphibians, and shells! By the time the program was approved and the first episode was aired, the five member panel of Quiz Kids consisted of Gerard Darrow, Joan Bishop, Van Dyke Tiers, Mary Ann Anderson, and Charles Schwartz.

If Cowan and his staff had trouble selecting children to fill the program, they had an even worse time finding a suitable host/master of ceremonies. A pair of college professors auditioned for the part, but proved far too pompus and vain, giving the children not enough chance to talk. Another applicant was an intellect who traveled on the lecture circuit, but was rejected for "giving away" half the answers.

Out of a field of 20 candidates one emerged, not because of any outstanding abilities he possessed, rather because all the rest had been rejected. The sole survivor was Joe Kelly, a former vaudeville performer and host of the hayseed music program, The National Barn Dance on WLS Radio, Chicago. Kelly, having only received a third-grade level education before entering show business, was hardly the ideal candidate to host a quiz show where he would be called upon to referee children's responses to indepth questions concerning all matter of arts, science, history, and philosophy. A show in which every moment on the air held the potential of disastrous embarrassment for the former vaudevillian!

But Kelly was by no means stupid, and in fact was a quick learner. Though the kids were never coached, Kelly was given a list of the questions and answers well in advance of the programs, and held regular meetings with the shows researchers to go over potential problems with his diction. Eventually Cowan also hired a linguist to assist Kelly.

The quiz show operated on a basic format quite familiar to today's audiences; Kelly would ask the panel of five children a series of questions throughout the program. The first child to raise their hand and give the right answer would receive points. Based on these points, four of the five children would return again on the next Quiz Kids program, accompanied by a new contestant. All of the contestants were given savings bonds for each program they attended.

The show became quite popular and within a few months of its premiere, parents across the country began writing in, certain that their own little prodigies could more than compete with the other Quiz Kids. Soon there were national competitions for Quiz Kids contestants, Quiz Kids board games, and a national tour of the show -with Quiz Kids visiting the White House, or making appearances with Hollywood stars.

Certain kids became so popular that they made regular returns to the program, even if they had once been out-competed; only when they reached the disqualifying age of 16 would they leave the show for good. Among the most famous Quiz Kids were Gerard Darrow (the original Quiz Kid), Ruth Duskin (a 7-year old Shakespeare expert), math-masters Joel Kupperman and Richard Williams, Harve Fishman (a jack of all knowledge"), and Claude Brenner (a 12-year old who had such a polished demeanor on air that he was asked on at least four occasions to stand in for Joe Kelly as program host).

The amazing abilities of the children, and the difficulty of questions they were capable of answering, led many to suspect that the programs were fixed, but apparently (and more amazingly) none of the children were coached or aided with any of the questions.

On two occasions panels of professors from The University of Chicago and the University of Michigan came to the program for a little good-spirited (though ill-advised) competition with the Quiz Kids. The result was losses for the professors. The final score for The University of Michigan panel was 390 to the Quiz Kids' total of 420. The illustrious Chicago professors fared even worse with a score of 140 to the kids' 275. In one of the most difficult questions ever answered on the Quiz Kids program, Joel Kupperman was asked to imagine an 8-inch circle with an equilateral triangle inside it, with another circle inside the triangle, and an equilateral triangle inside that... and so forth. With only a moment's notice, he was then asked to give the area of the fifth triangle in this progression. This question had been submitted by a university expert and when his answer differed from Joel's, the expert was proven to be wrong.

A Quiz Kids television program was founded in 1949 and aired for several years with Joe Kelly and other members of the radio program, but the television version proved nowhere near as popular as the radio episodes. The Quiz Kids radio program aired its final episode on July 5th, 1953. In 1982 former Quiz Kid, Ruth Duskin, wrote a book entitled Whatever Happened to the Quiz Kids? which provided a wise and a haunting look at how the program (for better and worse) effected the lives of the child participants. In the ensuing years many of the former Quiz Kids had grown to resent their experience on the program, feeling exploited and somewhat robbed of their youth.

At the time of the book's publishing, former math-whiz Richard Williams had become a consul general in Canton, China and the first US ambassador to Mongolia. Jack Lucal had become a Jesuit Priest, Harve Fishman a TV show producer. Ruth (Duskin) Feldman had remained in the Chicago area and become a wife, mother, and journalist. Joel Kupperman had become a professor at the University of Connecticut and was living a private life, refusing all interviews about his quiz show experiences. Gerard Darrow, the 6-year old naturalist prodigy and original Quiz Kid, had not fared as well as the others. Throughout his adult life he had held a string of menial jobs with long periods of unemployment. In the end he died a lonely broken man, at the age of 47.

The program posted in the link below is a Quiz Kid program from April 4, 1950 when the "Kids" went against four college professors. When you click the link you may then back up or return to the Ramblins page or do your accounting while you listen.

I posted this last January prior to the new administration being place power and before it cancelled the Lockeed Martin F-22 Raptor contract for more fighters. Now that the F-22 will be removed from further production, what will stand up against this incredible Russian creation? Do you think any SU-30MKs will be sold to Iran or any of our other enemies?

With my limited knowledge of why current things are being dismantled and new projects are being installed seems to this old man like it's more than a "follow the money" but more like a change in how America will be governed in philosophy and the removal of America's long-standing position of leadership of the free world so that Globalism can be slowly implemented more easily as the frog-water continues to simmer. Or perhaps, my fears are totaly unfounded.

Russia now has #1 fighter plane in the world, the SU-30MK vectored thrust with canards. As you watch this airplane perform, look at the canards moving along side of, and just below the canopy rail. The "canards" are the small wings forward of the main wings. The smoke and contrails provide a sense of the actual flight path, sometimes in reverse direction. This video is the in-flight demonstration of the 30MK fighter aircraft. You will not believe what you are bout to see.

The fighter can stall from high speed, stopping forward motion in seconds with a full stall, and then it has the ability to descend tail first without causing a compressor stall. It can also recover from a flat spin in less than a minute.

These maneuver capabilities don't exist in any other aircraft in the world today. Take a look at the video with the sound up full. This aircraft is of concern to U.S. and NATO planners. We don't know which nations will soon be flying the SU-30MK. Certainly, Russian, but hopefully not China!

Following text from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:

Friends worked with advanced aircraft flight control systems and concepts for many years as an extension of stability control and means of control. Canards and vectored thrust were among many concepts examined to extend our fighter aircraft performance. Neither our current or next generation aircraft now poised for funding and production can, in any way, match the performance of this Russian aircraft in any combat situation.