Daily Show on the NCAA

I've got a few posts here and there that I'm working on, but this is absolutely beautiful and needs to be shared. We'll go ahead and call this your Clip of the Week, from Aasif Mandvi at the Daily Show.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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More nerd humor

I'm working on a few posts for later today (and later this week), but until I've got those ready to roll, I thought I'd share some more excellent nerd humor that I've come across lately. First, from the always brilliant nerds over at XKCD:

And second, from imgur, courtesy of my man Killagroove:

Yup, it's a big Wednesday around here. More coming your way later today... I think.

Clip of the Week

It's time for this week's Clip of the Week. I wanted to share this little montage of Tom Brady and Ray Lewis from last year's AFC Championship Game, but I figured I'd hold off until after Sunday's rematch, just in case...

Besides, there's plenty of other stuff to choose from this week, so there's no need to go that far back into the YouTube archives. In the sports world, we've got this new ad for Nike golf, combining Tiger Woods with Rory McIlroy. Unfortunately for Nike, their two big stars both missed the cut this week in Abu Dhabi, so... yeah. Good marketing. Also in sports, Kevin Durant is good, and this shot from Ole Miss guard Marshall Henderson is incredible.

Then we've got a few animal videos, like these ducks taking their first swim ever, these dogs interrupting a soccer game, and these dolphins attempting to take over the world (wait, what?). And finally, we've got another excellent parody video from The Onion, this time taking on Facebook. Or maybe Twitter. Or Instagram. Hell, I don't know, it's about social media business or something.

Anyway, your Clip of the Week is still football-related, and still involves Tom Brady, because I feel like it has to. From the guys at Bad Lip Reading, who killed it with Mitt Romney a while back, this is Bad Lip Reading, the NFL version. Enjoy, and go Pats.

Quote of the Week

We had two solid contenders for this week's Quote of the Week crown, one of whom is a familiar face around these parts. In an epic rant about the ludicrous trillion-dollar platinum coin proposal that inexplicably gained traction last week before quickly being shot down (but not before turning our political and economic discourse into a Simpsons-esque farce), Stephen Colbert delivered a classic line about the recently re-elected President Obama, saying, "we should have known a coin was Obama's solution to everything—it was right there in his slogan... CHANGE!"

The whole clip is worth a watch, if only because Colbert does an excellent job of breaking down the whole it's-legal-because-it's-not-technically-illegal basis upon which the entire proposal relied, which is interestingly pretty much the same basis upon which Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court this summer. Nevertheless, this week's Quote of the Week is going to come from a totally different source, although also technically a familiar "face" around here.

A couple of years ago, an IBM supercomputer named Watson made waves when he (it?) beat two great Jeopardy! champions in an exhibition match, in the process demonstrating the potential for computing in the next generation. The IBM team has continued to fiddle with Watson, hoping to refine the computer's ability to comprehend human language (and to minimize some of the memorable gaffes that he made on the show). Part of that tinkering process involved incorporating slang into Watson's vocabulary, which... well, let's just let Fortune's Michael Lev-Ram tell the rest of the story.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"[IBM research scientist Eric] Brown attempted to teach Watson the Urban Dictionary. The popular website contains definitions for terms ranging from Internet abbreviations like OMG, short for "Oh, my God," to slang such as "hot mess." But Watson couldn't distinguish between polite language and profanity—which the Urban Dictionary is full of. Watson picked up some bad habits from reading Wikipedia as well. In tests it even used the word "bullshit" in an answer to a researcher's query. Ultimately, Brown's 35-person team developed a filter to keep Watson from swearing and scraped the Urban Dictionary from its memory. But the trial proves just how thorny it will be to get artificial intelligence to communicate naturally."
                                                - Michael Lev-Ram, Fortune

Too funny. I can't get the concept of a foul-mouthed robot spewing insults at everyone out of my head. In fact, it makes me want to build a Watson for myself and program him only with things he picked up from Urban Dictionary. But I digress.

I still think that the potential for artificial intelligence is incredibly high, but this speaks volumes about how weird and nuanced human thought and communication can be, and therefore how difficult it can be to replicate. Given how frequently public figures put their feet in their mouths with episodes of careless and thoughtless speech, I can only imagine how bad things might be for a computer that hasn't been programmed to understand the subtleties of (and contradictions in) modern language.

[Fortune]

Clip of the Week

In a totally dead week for clips (I think somebody turned off the interwebs for the holidays), I don't have much to share with you for this week's Clip of the Week. So I'll just take a page from the old Kickstarter book and share with you a promotional video for a cool little cartoon-inspired art project.

This guy (Rob Loukotka) was trying to raise $3,000 for the printing of these posters, and he raised over $100k, presumably with an assist from the Big Picture blog. That's impressive, and it's a testament to the power of Kickstarter. So, without further ado (and with apologies to Duke's punter, who pulled off an impressive play in a meaningless bowl game), I give you the entire history of ACME products used by Wile E. Coyote against the Road Runner.

Happy weekend, people.

Clip of the Week

Alright, it's Clip of the Week time, and I'm not going to do the Christmas theme (or the Mayan theme) even though I probably should.

The runner-up videos are fewer than in a typical week, but they make up in quality what they lack in quantity. If you're concerned about GMOs (or even if you're not, or even if you have no idea what GMOs are), then this video shared by Barry Ritholtz is an absolute must. It provides an excellent primer on the issue while also being fairly entertaining.

Also, the Year-in-Review type of stuff is now starting to come through in earnest, and we'll start it off with this excellent pop music mashup video first posted by the good old Red Cowboy. And speaking of Year-in-Review, this absolutely horrendous free throw has to be in the running for the worst sports play of the year. It just doesn't get much worse.

But this week I'm going back to my old reliable, with another excellent animal-related clip. If this laughing camel (hey, come to think of it, this sort of does go along with the Christmas theme, doesn't it?) doesn't make you smile and forget about the fiscal cliff and the Mayans and all the Christmas presents that you still haven't bought because you thought the world was gonna end today and you just really didn't think it was necessary to spend your money on gifts for your aunts and uncles and cousins and small children that you'd never have the opportunity to see them open—hypothetically speaking, of course—then I really don't think there's any hope for you. This guy is the best.


Thank you, Killagroove, for a terrific heads-up.

Quote of the Week

Every once in a while, I like to mess around a little bit with Quote of the Week and give the honor to a cartoon, like this awesome Dilbert comic strip, or this nerdy statistics humor cartoon. This is one of those weeks, because I feel like we could all use a little levity around here, given all the talk about guns and fiscal cliffs and of course the looming apocalypse.

On that last point, here's your Quote of the Week, courtesy once again of my man Killagroove.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Finally, some real innovation

You see, guys, what have I always been telling you? If we really want to get some real innovation in this country to get us out of our economic doldrums, we just have to start taking our cues from Russia. Wait, that can't be right...

In October, design practice Y/N studio caused a stir by designing a blueprint for a swimming lane along Regent's canal in London, so that people could swim to work. Now, the Estonian architecture studio Salto has built an equally inventive solution to the boredom of the morning commute – a 51m (170ft) -long trampoline, so that you can bounce to your destination. 

 

The trampoline, called Fast Track, has been built and installed at arts festival Archstoyanie, and has been a hit since it was opened at the end of November in the Nikola-Lenivets forest, in south-west Russia. Made of black rubber, it is, according to Salto "an attempt to create [an] intelligent infrastructure that is emotional and corresponds to the local context, giving the user a different experience of moving and perceiving the environment".

Hey, that's a fantastic idea! It's green, it gets us off our butts and exercising a little bit, it encourages our long-lost love of nature... what could possibly go wrong? Oh... right.

Fun with sports math

Sticking with our sports theme for the day—and adding in some statistical analysis because that's what we do around here—I thought I'd share a couple of recent articles about the baseball postseason that I found interesting. First up, from the Freakonomics blog (emphasis mine):

When the playoff in baseball began, 10 teams – and their fans – were very happy.  But the playoffs being what they are, we knew that only one team – and its fans – would actually be happy when the whole thing was over... 

So what did the Tigers and all the other “losers” (and yes, that includes the Yankees) learn from the playoffs? 

For an answer, let me quote the following from The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (a wonderful book by Leonard Mlodinow): 

…if one team is good enough to warrant beating another in 55% of its games, the weaker team will nevertheless win a 7-game series about 4 times out of 10.  And if the superior team could beat its opponent, on average, 2 out of 3 times they meet, the inferior team will still win a 7-game series about once every 5 match-ups.  There is really no way for a sports league to change this.  In the lopsided 2/3-probability case, for example, you’d have to play a series consisting of at minimum the best of 23 games to determine the winner with what is called statistical significance, meaning the weaker team would be crowned champion 5 percent or less of the time.  And in the case of one team’s having only a 55-45 edge, the shortest significant “world series” would be the best of 269 games, a tedious endeavor indeed! So sports playoff series can be fun and exciting, but being crowned “world champion” is not a reliable indication that a team is actually the best one. (p. 70-71)

So, no, the "best" team doesn't always win the title, because there's just way too much randomness involved, even in a multiple-game sample as opposed to football's one-game sample. That's why it's entertaining. That's also why the Giants beat the Patriots twice, but I digress.

So if the "best" team doesn't always win the title, maybe the "hottest" team does? Let's ask our friends at the Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective.

Every so often, a playoff series in the NHL, MLB, or NBA will be fought between a team that has just come off of a sweep and a team that has barely survived a competitive 7-game series.  While the latter team is still battling and exerting itself in games, the former will be resting, recovering from the 4-game series, and preparing for the next round... 

Each time a series like this occurs, we are given two contrasting arguments by media figures.  On the one hand, the team that swept has had ample time to recuperate from injuries, rest their bodies and arms, and watch video on both potential teams it could face.  On the other hand, in the large gap of time between games, the team could have “lost momentum,” somehow dissolving the focus and chemistry that had led to the team’s initial success... 

Across the NHL, MLB, and NBA, and looking only at matchups where the previous round was also a best-of-7 series, this scenario has only occurred 29 times throughout history.  The team that has swept has won 20 out of these 29 occasions, and has needed, on average, 5.3 games to defeat its next opponent.  This is not too distant from what one would expect; the teams that swept, in general, have better regular season records, so they tend to be stronger than the opponent who has struggled to emerge from a previous series.  The results, however, are more interesting when broken down by sport. 

Out of the 14 times this matchup has occurred in the NBA playoffs, only twice has the team that went to 7 games in the previous series won the next series...  Much more frequently, the team that has swept in the previous series has gone on to win.  Whether the reason for its winning is that it generally has had better records, or because they were well-prepared and well-rested, is impossible to say for sure. 

The NHL had a similar pattern to the NBA, until 1993; since then, 5 out of 6 teams that went to seven games won the next series against the team that had swept... 

In the MLB, this type of matchup has only occurred four times, mainly because the LCS is the only 7-game series that occurs before another series, and the LCS has not always been a 7-game series.  In all four of these matchups... the team which went to 7 games in the LCS won the World Series...

Although the few data points we have suggest such, concluding that rest is more important in the NBA, whereas momentum is more important in the MLB and NHL is impossible.  In truth, both of these components probably impact the outcome of a playoff series, but probably even more important is how good at winning the team is. Out of these 29 series, 21 of them were won by the team with the better winning percentage (or, points for NHL).  Being well-rested is helpful — but being good is even more helpful.

Alright, then. So, over time, the best team does win more often than not, regardless of how "hot" they are. But in any given playoff series, whether the team is "hot" or "good" seems to take a serious back seat to "luck". Good talk. All of this really bring us right back around to the greatest sports cartoon of all time, from XKCD (in case you were wondering, yes, this entire post was just an excuse to run this cartoon again... I love it):

So, enjoy your sports, by all means. But don't get too carried away with building glowing and complex narratives based on the results of the games. More often than not, it's just a lot of random noise.

[Freakonomics]
[HCSAC]

Clip of the Week

Alright, Clip of the Week time. This week's clips were thoroughly dominated by election material, and I don't feel like rehashing any of it (even though The Daily Show was on fire, head over to the Cowboy if you're into that sort of thing), so I'm just going to give this one to Jimmy Kimmel, who's been doing some great stuff lately. Honorable mention goes to Chuck Pagano, by the way...

Enjoy.

Happy Halloween

I'll be getting things back to normal here tomorrow, but I thought I'd wish you all a Happy Halloween while I still had the chance. Have fun out there, but be careful what costumes you choose...

Clip of the Week (Election edition)

Alright, time for Clip of the Week. I really wanted to give the Washington Nationals some love here, but their Game 5 choke in the NLDS (and... this) made me back off of that decision. Nevertheless, this and this are some pretty cool sports videos by any measure.

I also want to give some love to Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from the edge of space in the coolest way possible (or maybe this is cooler). There's some other random stuff out there as well this week, including this Pixar short with the Toy Story characters and this awesome SNL parody of the iPhone5.

But I feel like going the political route this week, so here are two fantastic election-related clips from a couple of late night hosts doing what they do best. I give you Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, with your politically charged co-Clips of the Week.

The 100k chicken coop

Some things, you just have to let speak for themselves. I present to you, courtesy of Needless Markups (ahem, that's... Neiman Marcus), the $100,000 Chicken Coop.

Dawn breaks. The hens descend from their bespoke Versailles-inspired Le Petit Trianon house to their playground below for a morning wing stretch. Slipping on your wellies, you start for the coop and are greeted by the pleasant clucking of your specially chosen flock and the site of the poshest hen house ever imagined. Your custom-made multilevel dwelling features a nesting area, a "living room" for nighttime roosting, a broody room, a library filled with chicken and gardening books for visitors of the human kind, and, of course, an elegant chandelier. The environment suits them well as you notice the fresh eggs awaiting morning collection. Nearby, you pick fresh vegetables or herbs from your custom-built raised gardens. You've always fancied yourself a farmer—now thanks to Heritage Hen Farm, you're doing it in the fanciest way possible!

Alright, fine, I'll comment. This whole thing sounds like it was written and conceived by Elaine Benes for the J. Peterman Catalog. All you need is an Urban Sombrero to cap the whole thing off.

But don't worry, Neiman Marcus is willing to donate $3k of your $100k purchase to The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy... but if you've got $100k to piss away in the first place, you should probably just give it all to the Conservancy in the first place. It'll be a much better use of the money.

[Neiman Marcus]
(h/t inhabitat.com)

Hungry Hungry Hippos

Now... I am absolutely certain that I joked about this, sarcastically and dismissively, when the movie version of Battleship was announced and released. But now, it's a reality, and I just... I don't even know anymore.

It is a poser that even the most creative of screenwriters might struggle with: how to adapt the children's game Hungry Hungry Hippos into a blockbuster movie. Nevertheless, that is the task facing Hollywood's brightest minds this morning after manufacturer Hasbro confirmed last week that it is planning a big-screen outing for the brightly coloured plastic playthings (Ed. Note: this is what we're talking about. Yeah...). 

Hungry Hungry Hippos is part of a roster of planned films that also includes Monopoly (a project that at one point had Ridley Scott attached) and Britain's Action Man, the latter despite his American cousin GI Joe having already featured twice in multiplexes. Hasbro has been inspired by the multibillion-dollar success of its Transformers franchise in the hands of Michael Bay, and apparently has not let Battleship's disappointing $300m (on a $200m budget) haul earlier this year upset its plans for worldwide domination. 

The latest proposal to bring its range to cinemas has been hatched in partnership with Hollywood film production company Emmett/Furla, which says it will make three movies in the next two years.

I'm being punked, here, right? This is all an elaborate joke? Whatever. Clue was pretty good, I guess... when does Yahtzee come out?





[Guardian]

Clip of the Week

Uncharacteristically weak group of clips out there this week, but that should change with the MLB Playoffs starting up this weekend. I would've loved to have posted some great clips from last weekend's Ryder Cup here, but... um... you know... yeah.

There were a couple of solid football highlights as usual, including this high school play and this college play. But football highlights are sort of a dime a dozen, and there's still a lot of season left.

I'm not even going to begin to talk about Wednesday night's who-can-say-the-least-while-looking-the-best Presidential debate, so don't bother asking for highlights here.

Instead, we'll keep things on the lighter side (again), and share the latest episode of Jerry Seinfeld's "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee", starring Michael Richards (Kramer). On the whole, I've been a bit disappointed by this series, but I think this one is definitely worth a watch, if only because these guys continue to have fantastic chemistry. And of course, Richards doesn't shy away from his racist meltdown a few years back, after which he pretty much disappeared from the public eye. If you're into Seinfeld, it's worth a watch. Enjoy.

Clip of [Last] Week

Alright, we're back at it here after a couple-day unplanned hiatus from the blog (I had family in town, so I ranted and raved to them in person instead of on the blog... so be it). I've got at least 3 blog posts coming your way this afternoon, starting with last week's Clip of the Week, which never got posted.

As you all know by now, I harbor some pretty negative feelings toward Apple and their iPhone—I think they've transitioned from being an ingenious and admirable company to being an evil genius company, and there's an important difference between the two. Given that backdrop, I got a huge kick out of these two iPhone-related clips, the first from Jimmy Kimmel (awesome) and the second courtesy of Barry Ritholtz (also awesome, in a different way).

It was also another week in which sports were played, so we got this and this from the college football ranks and this goal from a one-legged soccer player.

If you're familiar with the work of the rapper DMX... just... watch this, I guess. And if you want to see a fun visualization of what contagion looks like (and how stable systems can quickly become very unstable), watch this little experiment.

But this week's spot is reserved for the recognition of Steve Sabol, the President of NFL Films, who died last week after a long illness. NFL Films was a huge part of my childhood, back when VHS tapes were a thing and YouTube (and the internet) hadn't yet been invented. I had tons of NFL Films videos at home, and I would watch the same ones over and over again. They were that good. Frankly, Steve Sabol's work is a big reason that the NFL is so popular today, and of course the league is now throwing up all over itself in the wake of Steve's death. Solid work, Commissioner.

At any rate, I love sports, I love NFL Films, and I love profanity, so this clip here is the perfect way to honor Steve Sabol's memory. R.I.P.

Quote of the Week

If you're like me (or like this guy), you got plenty sick of seeing Bob Costas' face on NBC during the Olympic coverage this summer. Be that as it may, Costas was on with Conan last week, and he took some pretty funny shots at NBC, endearing himself to some of the viewers and redeeming himself at least a little bit in the process. He's still a smug, smarmy, takes-himself-way-too-seriously little troll, but at least he seems willing to acknowledge that fact at times.

Either way, I got a kick out of his appearance on Conan, and he gets this week's honor for his ironic sense of humor.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"I'm sure you'd be the first to attest, Conan, that when it comes to the tough calls, NBC usually gets them right."
                               - Bob Costas

Watch the video below to see the context. Good stuff.

Quote of the Week (I love Canada edition)

Couple of blog posts coming your way today, starting with your Quote of the Week, which will be a little lighter for a change. I gave some serious consideration to this eye-opening quote from Vladimir Putin, extolling the virtues of group sex (seriously, can you imagine Obama dropping a bomb like that on the campaign trail?), but nahhhh.

Instead, I'm going to keep things a little closer to home, heading up to America's hat. From Quebec...

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Someone (possibly wearing super villain gear, although that’s pure speculation on my part until they’re apprehended) broke through security at the Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve in Quebec and made off with $30 million worth of Canada’s sweetest export."
                                         - Brad Moon, Wired
 
Whoa, whoa, whoa... Canada has a Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve? That... is... AWESOME.

Here in the good old U.S. of A., we maintain a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to be tapped during times of supply disruptions or other emergencies (like, you know, a Presidential election... side note, amazing that the link there doesn't mention Fed policy at all when discussing the impacts on crude oil prices... savvy). At any rate, a petroleum reserve is one thing, given the outsized impact that fuel prices tend to have on our economy. But up in Canada, it's apparently maple syrup that's the prized commodity. Terrific.

This news item plays into all of the awesome stereotypes that I already want to have about Canada, so I'm not going to bother to do any further research into this matter. Canada is an awesome land of flapjacks and maple syrup and flannel shirts and lumberjacks and hockey and all of those things combined into something called "lumberjack hockey", and that's how I'm going to leave it. I love you, Canada.

[Wired]

This about sums it up

So, this morning's jobs report was, once again, pretty terrible. No worries! Markets are higher because now everybody's convinced that the Fed is, once again, riding to the "rescue". We've been here before.

(Inspired by this)

Fed buying baseball cards

While the market gives its Pavlovian cheer to the latest kinda-sorta-we're-not-really-printing-money-you-guys-I-swear proposal out of Europe, I thought this would be an appropriate time to pass along my favorite cartoon from the last few months. Courtesy of Barry Ritholtz's Big Picture blog...

Seriously, when can the Fed start buying some stuff that I actually own (no, I don't own Treasury bonds or mortgage-backed securities, and I hope you don't either)? In addition to baseball cards, I've also got a pretty awesome collection of obsolete electronic devices and salvaged golf balls. Sure, you might think of these things as worthless, but I just consider them to be "distressed assets".

Mr. Bernanke, if you want to stimulate the economy, I suggest you start rummaging around in my basement. I'm quite sure you'll find something to your liking down there.