13 ms·
Grace Hopper on Late Night with David Letterman (1986) [video]
- 11thEarlOfMar 4y ago"... between here and the satellite there are a very large number of nanoseconds."
- silisili 4y agoWow, I'd never seen her speak before. 79 years old and sharp as a tack here. Her memory and comebacks are better/faster than mine are at half her age!
- 72727848426 4y ago[flagged]
- khazhoux 4y ago[flagged]
- JasonFruit 4y agoAll true, but the throwaway account indicates that they correctly predicted the reception.
- JshWright 4y ago"How did you know so much about computers?" "I didn't... it was the first one."
- orblivion 4y agoI definitely laughed out loud at that one.
- jkaptur 4y agoDoes anyone know if her star earrings are a reference to her rank? Or is it just a coincidence?
- kodah 4y agoThat would be very against military tradition, so I doubt it.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoHm. Not a lot of earrings in the military? So, maybe against men's military tradition...
- DoreenMichele 4y agoShe was in the Navy. The Simpsons had a joke about Bart getting an earring to be all rebellious and his dad saying something about "You're disrespecting our proud Navy heritage." Sailors have been known to wear earrings. I mean male sailors.
- kodah 4y agoThe only official earring I'm aware of that was actually written into a NavMC at some point was the Black Pearl for being the lone survivor of a ship wreck.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoThe question wasn't about officially sanctioned jewelry. But thank you for your informative comments.
- kodah 4y agoThis is an astonishingly bad faith take. She was in the Navy. The Navy and the Marine Corps have explicit policies about not representing your rank or using your rank for influence or gaining favor. As I said in another thread, I don't walk around calling myself by my former rank and I'd expect such a highly ranked officer not to as well. As I said, I doubt that's what the ear rings are.
- robg 4y agoBrilliant find, throws in the reference to DEC, where she had just joined.
- tinglymintyfrsh 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug
- tinglymintyfrsh 4y ago"President Carter took [a boat to work] away." Wow, she enlisted at 37 in 1944. That's impressive. EDIT: I hate to #nit god like Comic Book Guy, but a picosecond is a trillionth of a sec and femtosecond is a quadtrillionth.
- ary 4y agoOne of the biggest travesties of American culture is that people like Grace Hopper are not lionized on television. The best we've been able to do is the occasional appearance of intellectuals on late night or premium channels. There was a time in the first few decades of American television that intellectuals, academics, writers, etc. were invited on to actually discuss ideas.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dmead 4y agoCase in point, all those Noam Chomsky interviews.
- colmvp 4y agoOn the other hand, they exist in other forms, like interviews or talks viewable on YouTube, or podcasts that can be re-listened to at any time.
- ary 4y agoSafely removed from broadcast television where there are many, many people who are not innately curious or able to fathom a different set of ideas. Exposure to different points of view are crucial to a well rounded mind and development of curiosity. Nothing is wrong with things being available on Youtube or podcasts. The point is that much (if not most of it) is only available there and broadcast TV sits at the bottom of an ocean of emotion that exerts such extreme pressure that free thought cannot occur.
- teepo 4y agoWell we do have the NVIDIA Grace Hopper Super Chip: https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-grace-hopper-superchip-architecture-in-depth/ https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-grace-hopper-superc...
- anonu 4y agoMaybe that's where podcast shows have taken over... Guys like Lex Fridman and, dare I say, Joe Rogan help further the intellectual conversations of today.
- DoreenMichele 4y agoYou should watch it if only for her illustration of nanoseconds and pico seconds. It's brilliant and not what I expected.
- dang 4y agoRelated: Grace Hopper on Letterman - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16555400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16555400 - March 2018 (1 comment) Grace Hopper on Letterman - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8967077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8967077 - Jan 2015 (1 comment) Grace Hopper on Letterman - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4456613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4456613 - Aug 2012 (2 comments)
- tomjakubowski 4y agoI wonder where she was going with the question about Letterman's ancestry
- kzrdude 4y agoThe way she assumed UK ancestry was interesting. Maybe it's just small talk in an old fashioned way?
- favorited 4y agoI know it was the 80s, and it was a different time, but I never liked how Dave kept calling her "Grace." If Colin Powell was on Letterman, Dave would have called him "General Powell."
- KwisatzHaderack 4y agoDavid Letterman is a real jerk. Watch his interview with John Waters where he treats him with disdain or when he creeps out Jennifer Aniston by licking her.
- kramerger 4y agoWatch his interview with Paris Hilton after the prison thing. Never cared for her, but jesus how can someone be so cruel to a young girl in the middle of a life crisis? https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/david-letterman-paris-hilton-interview-b1804290.html https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/dav...
- darkerside 4y agoIn fairness, she had to know it was coming at least somewhat. It's probably the reason she was there. If she didn't want to talk about it, she didn't have to go on a late night talk show, but she wanted to promote her business. Not everybody even gets the opportunity to make that tradeoff in support of businesses they work just as hard on.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- peepee1982 4y agoHe was a dick to Harvey Pekar, too. He even said he feels bad about it in a Howard Stern interview after his retirement. A lot of comedians seem to hold him in high regards, which I never understood, but that's probably on me. But he really does seem like a massive prick.
- ralfd 4y agoFun fact: Next month David Letterman will only be 4 years younger than Hopper is in the video. I wonder if WW2 felt more far away at that time, then the 80s feel today, even though both are 4 decades?
- teekert 4y ago"It the hardest thing to tell the people in this country: There was a time when everyone in this country all did one thing together." Yeah yeah, common foe (this was around ww2), I know. But still. That nano and pico seconds example is such a nice example of taking a difficult scientific concept and getting it across, in a way that I'll never forget.
- mysterydip 4y agoI have one of her quotes on my office door: "The most dangerous phrase in the language is, 'we've always done it that way.'" It's applicable way more often than it should be.