Author: Josh Witten

http://www.thefinchandpea.com

No sign of life

If you read news reports, you would think that the only point of sending the Curiosity rover to Mars is to search for extraterrestrial life. Therefore, I suggest, that after every test it conducts Curiosity play the chorus of OK Go’s “No Sign of Life”. This will make it easier for the journalists to understand the results, but also carries a sense of optimism for the future.

No sign of life, no sign of life, no sign of life, no sign
But I got a hunch, oh, it’s not over yet, oh, it’s not over yet Continue reading “No sign of life”

Linkonomicon III

 

  1. Not all failing schools are failing. Reminds me of Hamilton High School – via Carrie Brown-Smith via Deborah Blum.
  2. Neil Armstrong was about two seconds and one ejection seat away from not being the first man on the moon – via Maggie Koerth-Baker.
  3. Greatest meme ever would have been Buzz Aldrin punching Neil Armstrong like a moon landing hoaxer. Instead, he was just pouty. On the moon – via Tyler Cowen.
  4. There was a time when nice girls* didn’t do comedy. Thankfully, that time is gone. Gorgeous* Ladies of Comedy – via Jamie Frevele.
  5. Don’t believe that there was a time when nice girls* didn’t do comedy? Listen to the Nerdist Podcast interview Joan Rivers and change your mind.
  6. Thanks to a dinosaur show in my youth, my nightmares start with the phrase “packs of carnivorous, goose-sized dinosaurs”. Take note, my nightmares, geese ARE dinosaurs, and vicious – via Mark Frauenfelder.

*All jokes, by they way, in case you happen to have the comedic depth of an average internet commentor or the “funny” sub-reddit.

 

Linkonomicon II

  1. Risk of death by Russian Roulette in Kentucky is one in a million (per year) – via Tyler Cowen. 
  2. Rape is rape, Mr. Akin.
  3. Shipping pallets, the sine qua non of the global economy – via Cory Doctorow.
  4. If you are going to pick an arbitrary day to bask in the glory of Singin’ in the Rain (and Donald O’Connor‘s vaudevillian genius), the 100th birthday of Gene Kelly (star & co-director) is as good as any – via Maria Popova.
  5. How to annoy EO Wilson without criticizing group selection by Michelle Nijhuis.

Fixing football

This is a repost of an article that originally appeared at The Paltry Sapien on 10 August 2012.

American football. Not proper football. We already fixed that once. We call it rugby.

Speaking of which, we were at a dinner party when the subject of my rugby career was brought up (not by me). A discussion about surviving a full contact sport without padding (don’t hit with your head and hit with forces below the physiological limits of the human body) transitioned into a discussion of how to reduce debilitating injuries in American football.

In the presence of a rugger, people like to suggest getting rid of the helmets and pads. It is the pads that allow American football to be so violent1. You could reduce the violence and, therefore, the injuries by getting rid of pads; but that’s not going to happen. American football is a violent sport. The fans like the violence. The players like the violence.

And, helmets and pads are necessary for the single most important element of modern American football: the forward pass.

Continue reading “Fixing football”

Very superstitious

Automatic trading algorithms are important elements of the financial industry. Their very existence raises issues. In addition, there are issues of robustness and the empirical support for the data they use to make decisions.

Shing Tat Chung created an automatic trading algorithm that makes its decisions based on a variety of superstitions: Continue reading “Very superstitious”