Someone's watching you -- and it might be a good thing...

from ArsTechnicaEthnic biases were found when the authors of an article in the American Economic Review compared baseball games with automated pitch monitoring systems vs those without.

"A black pitcher throwing a nonterminal pitch in the early innings of poorly attended games in a non-QuesTec ballpark gains over 6 percentage points by matching [the umpire's ethnicity] (41.4 versus 35.2 percent called strikes)."

They also found that pitchers would throw in ways that would take advantage of the bias... Hmmm... Who wouldn't?

The government wants to see if you'll be annoyed...

It seems that it's expensive to synchronize the frequencies between different sectors of the national power grid. And it's only going to get worse as we add 'green', 'sustainable' technologies like wind.

So, why don't we just not do it, see if people really do depend on their wall clocks to be accurate and then make a decision (or not) later to turn the synching back on later.

He said there are alternatives if people have problems from the test: The federal government provides the official time by telephone and on the Interne

A(nother) geek's interpretation of the "boobquakes"

Over at Ars Technica, they have an analysis of one woman's attempt to test the validity of a Muslim edict about women's modesty - or lack thereof.

Assumption #1: The earthquake arbiter has good aim. What good would an earthquake punishing us for indecency be if it couldn't a) be felt in a populated area, and b) kill someone? Therefore, we only count earthquakes of a magnitude of 5 or more that have a death toll of at least 1 person. If looks can kill, then they should.

Cutting to the chase:

It turned out that there were four earthquakes with a 5.0 or greater magnitude on Monday, which is an average number, and none of them were lethal. That is to say, the Boobquake claimed no lives. And since the pure chance of a deadly earthquake was low anyway, this style of analysis casts the effects of cleavage, exposed ankles, and elaborately coiffed hair on earthquakes as inconclusive at best. By these standards, the Boobquake was a disappointing scientific, as well as geological, failure.

[emphases added]

The National Debt...

Ok Go!

These guys have a lot of fun with their music and videos. This one took a long time to set up.

(ex)SNL Star talks and sings of Obama

Victoria Jackson, who seems to be or have become a Christian, talks and sings at a Tea Party demonstration.

Ultimate hacking...

not easy, but doable... Eh, Bert?

clipped from www.nzherald.co.nz Using off-the-shelf chemicals, Tarnovsky soaked chips in acid to dissolve their hard outer shells. Then he applied rust remover to help take off layers of mesh wiring, to expose the chips' cores. From there, he had to find the right communication channels to tap into using a very small needle.