THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Did Manny Pacquaio actually quote Leviticus?

The article reads like Manny is talking about basically being god-fearing.  But, in the paragraph in question in the article it shows:

Pacquiao’s directive for Obama calls societies to fear God and not to promote sin, inclusive of same-sex marriage and cohabitation, notwithstanding what Leviticus 20:13 has been pointing all along: “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

I bolded that part.  When I read it, it seems like it’s the author, not Manny, that is quoting Leviticus.  However, the other media are quoting the article as if Manny repeated Leviticus.  “Notwithstanding” is an odd word to use in this case.  The author is saying that, in spite of what Leviticus is saying, Manny is saying to fear god.  There’s no spite there.  Indeed, it’s the exact opposite of spite: in accordance with.

So, using notwithstanding is out of place there, and, the author seems to quote Leviticus, rather than attributing the quote to Manny.

Monday, May 14, 2012

When to buy Facebook?

There’s fundamentals, and there’s technicals.  This is only about the technicals.

Google opened at 100 on Aug 19, 2004 and could still be had for that price on Sep 7, 2004.  That’s about three weeks.  In between, the price went as high as 113, and as low as 99.  After that, the run started.

That’s just one data point.  Make of it what you will.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Howard Stern

Love him or hate him… you’ve got to love him or hate him!  But more than that, respect him. For a guy that’s p-ssed off alot of people, he certainly has the most faithful crew imaginable.  No one turns on him.

Monday, May 07, 2012

Star Trek convention… in comic form!

This is pretty cool.

Sunday, May 06, 2012

Eli Manning PSA

Loved it!

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Monday, April 30, 2012

“Non-sports Sites Folks Should Know”

If there’s an “indispensable” site that you think your fellow readers may appreciate, feel free to post below.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Should we have a Technology Court?

We have a FISA court that deals with matters of surveillance, and we have an immigration court.  We have divorce court.  We have all kinds of courts where the judge is an expert on the topic, or if he’s not, he’s going to become an expert based on the narrow focus of the topic.

Why don’t we have a court that deals with technology and IP?  You have congress that proposes SOPA, and some members have no idea what it is, and ask for “nerds” to be brought in at basically the 11th hour.  If SOPA had managed to be passed, a judge on the technology court would tell Congress it’s insane.  And maybe we’d get better case law guidance on IP and patents on software and “processes”.

This is me speaking naively.  Now, make me look smart, and expand the idea with a thoughtful elaboration.  Or, make me look clueless, by describing why the legal system can’t support such a court.  I’m listening…

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Prisoner’s Dilemna game show

I can’t wait it from the office, but it sounds intriguing. 

Feel free to put spoilers below.  Obviously, for those who don’t want the spoilers, watch the video before looking at the comments.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

“Use These Tips to Help Prevent Children from ever Being Abused”

A few good lessons, that’s being distributed through Little League.

Friday, April 13, 2012

“F@ck U academic paywall journals!”

In every revolution, there is one man with a vision. (*)

‘I was taken aback by how quickly this thing blew up,’ says Tim Gowers, a prize-winning Cambridge University mathematician.
It began with a frustrated blogpost by a distinguished mathematician. Tim Gowers and his colleagues had been grumbling among themselves for several years about the rising costs of academic journals.

They, like many other academics, were upset that the work produced by their peers, and funded largely by taxpayers, sat behind the paywalls of private publishing houses that charged UK universities hundreds of millions of pounds a year for the privilege of access.

There had been talk last year that a major scientific body might come out in public to highlight the problem and rally scientists to speak out against the publishing companies, but nothing was happening fast.

So, in January this year, Gowers wrote an article on his blog declaring that he would henceforth decline to submit to or review papers for any academic journal published by Elsevier, the largest publisher of scientific journals in the world.

He was not expecting what happened next. Thousands of people read the post and hundreds left supportive comments. Within a day, one of his readers had set up a website, The Cost of Knowledge, which allowed academics to register their protest against Elsevier.

The site now has almost 9,000 signatories, all of whom have committed themselves to refuse to either peer review, submit to or undertake editorial work for Elsevier journals. “I wasn’t expecting it to make such a splash,” says Gowers. “At first I was taken aback by how quickly this thing blew up.”

Gowers, a mathematician at Cambridge University and winner of the prestigious Fields Medal, had hit a nerve with academics who were increasingly fed up with the stranglehold that a few publishing companies have gained over the publication and distribution of the world’s scientific research.

(*) You are welcome.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Illogic of seeing the good in bad people: Star Trek, Larry David

Patterns of Force:

KIRK: Gill. Gill, why did you abandon your mission? Why did you interfere with this culture?
GILL: Planet fragmented. Divided. Took lesson from Earth history.
KIRK: But why Nazi Germany? You studied history. You knew what the Nazis were.
GILL: Most efficient state Earth ever knew.
SPOCK: Quite true, Captain. That tiny country, beaten, bankrupt, defeated, rose in a few years to stand only one step away from global domination.
KIRK: But it was brutal, perverted, had to be destroyed at a terrible cost. Why that example?
SPOCK: Perhaps Gill felt that such a state, run benignly, could accomplish its efficiency without sadism.
KIRK: Why, Gill? Why?

Space Seed:

KIRK: Name, Khan, as we know him today. (Spock changes the picture) Name, Khan Noonien Singh.
SPOCK: From 1992 through 1996, absolute ruler of more than a quarter of your world. From Asia through the Middle East.
MCCOY: The last of the tyrants to be overthrown.
SCOTT: I must confess, gentlemen. I’ve always held a sneaking admiration for this one.
KIRK: He was the best of the tyrants and the most dangerous. They were supermen, in a sense. Stronger, braver, certainly more ambitious, more daring.
SPOCK: Gentlemen, this romanticism about a ruthless dictator is
KIRK: Mister Spock, we humans have a streak of barbarism in us. Appalling, but there, nevertheless.
SCOTT: There were no massacres under his rule.
SPOCK: And as little freedom.
MCCOY: No wars until he was attacked.
SPOCK: Gentlemen.
KIRK: Mister Spock, you misunderstand us. We can be against him and admire him all at the same time.
SPOCK: Illogical.
KIRK: Totally. This is the Captain. Put a twenty four hour security on Mister Khan’s quarters, effective immediately.

Moral?  If you need to say something good about an historical figure, find good people to make your example.  Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, William Wallace (irony is not lost on me).  It’s not hard to find people who perservered through noble, inspiring actions.  It’s almost impossible to play the Hitler-is-good card, and somehow remain unscathed.  The only time I’ve seen it happen:

Larry David: One thing I admire about Hitler - he never took any shit from magicians. [...] [imitating Hitler] Where is the rabbit? Show me the rabbit!

Monday, April 09, 2012

Greatest Star Trek idea ever?

Wow, the Starship Enterprise, built to full scale, as a building attraction in Vegas.

Glove-slap: Brad.

Friday, April 06, 2012

Accidental Statistician

George E.P. Box.

Some of England’s best scientists were there. There were a lot of experiments with small animals, I was a lab assistant making biochemical determinations, my boss was a professor of physiology dressed up as a colonel, and I was dressed up as a staff sergeant.

The results I was getting were very variable and I told my colonel that what we really needed was a statistician.

He said “we can’t get one, what do you know about it?” I said “Nothing, I once tried to read a book about it by someone called R. A. Fisher but I didn’t understand it”. He said “You’ve read the book so you better do it”, so I said, “Yes sir”.

I asked the Army for some literature about Statistics and they duly sent me a number of useful books.

In the next 3 to 4 years I designed and analyzed hundreds of experiments of many different kinds. In my list of published papers the first two described some of that work.

Wednesday, April 04, 2012

Director’s Cuts

As much as I hate the story selections of Yahoo News (there’s a popular meme going in the comments “I checked to see if Chris Chase linked to this"), the Yahoo commenters are sometimes hilariously snarky.  For example, here’s a story of James Cameron changing one scene in Titanic, at the insistence of an astronomer who noticed the sky was all wrong.  (He recently made a similar comment to Jon Stewart that his globe is rotating in the wrong direction.  I’d hate to think how Tyson explains the implausibility of the end of Superman I.  Personally, I explain what we see as a metaphor.)

Anyway, here are some comments that cracked me up:

James Cameron = changes his film when people complain
George Lucas = changes his films when no one asked

***

leonardo dicaprio doesn’t die at the end of Titanic. At the start of Inception he washes up on the beach.

***

if u watch titanic backwards, it is about a magical ship that saves people

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Smallville returns… in comic book form

Great idea for those who’ve wanted it to live on forever.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) with Playing Cards

This is our development, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this exists in some form already. 

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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

What are the preconditions necessary for self-defense to exist?

SCENARIO 1:
Say that you are sitting at a table in a restaurant, and “Lanray” walks in.  You don’t even know Lanray.  Lanray sits down face-to-face, Lanray pulls out a gun, and places it in the middle of the table.  And Lanray tells you that he’s going to count down from 10, and if by the time Lanray gets to zero you didn’t grab the gun, and pull the trigger, then Lanray would do so.  You believe your life is in imminent danger, and so, you grab the gun, but a skuffle ensues, you drop the gun, Lanray picks it up, and kills you.  Can both be given a self-defense right?

Both of you believed, at the moment you grabbed the gun, your life was in danger.  Is it enough of a precondition for self-defense, or, is the fact that you were originally threatened mean that Lanray is precluded from using self-defense?  That is, he was the invading force, he was the one that introduced the weapon.

SCENARIO 2:
Now, what if instead, both of you happened to be sitting at tables side-by-side.  Lanray thought you were suspicious.  He decides to put his gun on the table in front of him, in full view of you.  But, you had no idea why he did that.  Lanray did not say why he did it.  He just kept looking at you.  You decide that the sheer act of showing a weapon was a threat, and so, you reach for the gun, and Lanray kills you. Can both be given a self-defense right?

SCENARIO 3:
Finally, we still have the side-by-side scenario, but this time Lanray pulls out the gun, and tells you that he just likes to show it off.  You are both joking around, but then the talk becomes a heated argument.  You are both still seated at the table.  You are worried that if you get up and/or walk away, Lanray will shoot you.  All you want to do is grab the gun and toss it aside, so you can get the heck out of there.  You reach for the gun.  Lanray has no idea why you are reaching for the gun, so he decides to grab it and kill you.  Can both be given a self-defense right?

***

In hockey, or in sports, there is something called “assumed risk”.  That both players freely and of their own volition enter a risky situation.  And, if something happens, like a fight, you can’t then go to the law to seek justice.  That you both agree that the risks are greater, and it’s assumed to be what is standard for that particular situation.  There can be lines that are crossed, like getting a two-handed stick across the face.  That is not assumed risk, because it’s not tolerated by anyone.

When you walk into a restaurant, what kind of “assumed risk” is there?  If guns are legal, can you assume that it’ll become part of the landscape?  That the gun has a right to be there?  And if you reach for Lanray’s gun, that he has a right to defend himself, even if the simple appearance of the gun was the catalyst for your actions?  Or, is it the case that because Lanray introduced the gun, that only he is assuming the risk.  That the other person, who did not enter into the situation voluntarily, is the only one who has the right to be granted self-defense.  And in Lanray’s case, his rights to self-defense cannot be sustained.

***

Note: ANY reference to any existing events will be automatically deleted, no questions asked.  Even if you try to be cute, and change names, I will delete any such posts.  The only one who can be cute around here is me. There are other threads for you if you need to reference current events.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

“Officer Anthony Colicchio”, Renaissance Man

Fun story for you The Wire fans.  I only saw the last two seasons of The Wire, but I have all 5 seasons on disc.  For some crazy reason, I have yet to open the box.  I should just pop a disc in my disc player, and play it when I’m bored, instead of watching Green Lantern twice in three days.  But my kid has his PS3 game in there, and I don’t want to continually swap disks in and out.  Weird, right?

Removing the Individual Mandate

Non-sports AND non-political post.  This is more for actuaries and economists.

ANY AND ALL POLITICAL POSTS WILL BE DELTED AT WILL, EVEN IF MOST OF YOUR POST IS NOT POLITICAL.  IF I SMELL YOUR POST TO BE POLITICAL, I WILL DELETE IT.  NO EXPLANATION, NO APOLOGIES.  “THE OPRAH HAS SPOKEN” (*).

(*) Thank you MadTV.

The idea behind the individual mandate is that if you wait to need insurance, then the insurance company is going to go bankrupt.  The idea of insurance is that we all pool our money now, and the premiums of the healthy people will cover the expenses of the sick people.

If you try to get insurance coverage for your furnace or AC from your local gas company, those guys know that people will wait until they have a problem, before getting the coverage.  So, they put in a lag: coverage begins 15 days or 21 days after the policy is in force.  The policy simply presumes (to a point) that your furnace has no pre-existing condition, on the idea that a person is not going to go without their heater for 15 or 21 days.  (Obviously, if the furnace is wrecked, the insurance company is going to presume that you knowingly started the policy with a non-functional furnace.  So, they may deny coverage.)

So, that kind of idea can apply with health insurance.  You start with the idea that when the law takes effect, than everyone has sixty days to buy insurance, no questions asked, no preconditions to satisfy.  No one is required to buy insurance.  After that, any insurance you buy is either subject to a pre-condition clause, or, it can only take effect after N months of premium paying.  In addition, those premiums will be subject to a higher rate than the rest of the population.  What kind of “N” would we need?  I don’t know.  What kind of premium would we need?  I don’t know.  There’s a breakeven point that the insurance company can calculate, much like they calculated the 15 day or 21 days gap between signing up for your HVAC coverage and when it can actually be used.

Another way to get around it is to get the States to own it.  Much like the federal government has certain requirements that the States must meet to get education or transportation subsidies, the federal government can give massive subsidies to the States… but only if the States meet the requirements.  And the requirements will be so strict that it’ll be like auto insurance: everyone gets it.

Anyway, I’d like to hear from the Straight Arrow readers about how this can practically work, and other alternatives, that doesn’t require the FEDERAL government to mandate anything (but allow the States to decide whatever they want to do).

Again, if I smell one sentence of political discussion, I’ll delete your post, no matter how Gretzky-like the rest of your post is.  Be good.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Foo Fighters contract rider

Hilarious.

“Nothing in this contract shall be construed to constitute the parties as a partnership of joint venture,” it begins, before getting to the heart of the matter: “Chewbacca did not get a medal at the end of Star Wars, which is a travesty. …”
...
The band, which took home five Grammys this year, including Best Rock Album, noted that it needed vegetarian dishes for at least 20 people — “Yup, the Crusades didn’t rid the world of them, so we have to pretend to care. …”
...
They also include a recipe for ice (Get some water. Clean water is preferred. Put it in trays. Store at freezing. Repeat as necessary. …), while noting in the legally binding contract that “chicks dig scars,” “men should never wear turtlenecks,” and ”Ty Cobb was the greatest baseball player of all time.”

Other interesting ones:

Among the most famous was the rider of Van Halen, requesting that there be “no brown M&Ms” in their dressing room. Insiders knew the M&M stricture was not a random quirk on the part of lead singer David Lee Roth. It was actually a test. The rider also had instructions on how to set up the stage and sound equipment. If there were brown M&Ms when they arrived at a venue, it suggested somebody didn’t read the rest of the rider and there might be other problems when it came time to play.
...
The kids group the Wiggles is very definite about the presence of children behind the curtain — they don’t want any. “Absolutely no children allowed in backstage area, including the area surrounding the tour vehicles,” their rider warns. “This applies to all children no matter whom they belong to. No exceptions.”