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Predictions about 2008

From 1968:

A typical vacation in 2008 is to spend a week at an undersea resort, where your hotel room window looks out on a tropical underwater reef, a sunken ship or an ancient, excavated city. Available to guests are two- and three-person submarines in which you can cruise well-marked underwater trails.

But many of the predictions are good, at least in part.  Get this:

The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer. These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance. Sensors in kitchen appliances, climatizing units, communicators, power supply and other household utilities warn the computer when the item is likely to fail. A repairman will show up even before any obvious breakdown occurs.

Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities. Not every family has its private computer. Many families reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their needs. The machine tallies up its own services and submits a bill, just as it does with other utilities.

Via www.geekpress.com.  As usual, it is presumed that traffic and transportation problems will have seen a lot of progress when in fact they have not.  Nor was it understood how unevenly the benefits of progress would be distributed and how possible it would be to continue a life basically devoid of these advances.

Striking out (by Russell Roberts)

Sometimes I get depressed about the quality of statistical work in economics. Then I read something from another social science. Here is a recent study where psychologists find that having the initial "K" increases your chance of striking out when playing professional baseball. Why? Well, it's obvious isn't it? The letter "K" is used when keeping score in baseball to represent striking out. So it's obvious now isn't it? Still don't get it? Neither do I. But hey, it's in the data. Between 1913 and 2006, players with first or last initial "K" struck out 18.8% of the time compared to 17.2% for the fortunate players unhandicapped by their initials. Here is the "explanation" of the authors:

Despite a universal desire to avoid striking out, K-initialed players strike out more often.  For those players, we argue that the explicitly negative performance outcome may feel implicitly  positive. Even Karl "Koley" Kolseth would find a strikeout aversive, but on the whole, he might  find it a little less aversive than players who do not share his initials, and avoid it less  enthusiastically.

But why? Why would having the initial "K" make striking out more pleasant? I just don't get it. The authors go on to "test" their theory by looking at grades of a sample of MBA students:

The MBA students in our sample are well aware of a direct connection between academic  performance and successful job placement. Nevertheless, despite the pervasive desire to achieve  high grades, students with an unconsciously-driven fondness for C's and D's were slightly less  successful at achieving their conscious goal.

That is, Charles Darwin received poorer grades than Alan Alda. But it turns out that Alan Alda didn't do better than the non-ABCD initialed:

Interestingly, A- or B-initialed students did not perform better than students whose  initials were grade-irrelevant. There are two possible explanations for this. First, students with  grade-irrelevant initials may already be maximally motivated to succeed. Second, because  performance is determined by motivation and ability, any increased motivation to succeed that  arises from having initials that match positive performance outcomes may not necessarily  translate into increased performance.

There is, of course, a third explanation: there is no real relationship and the authors have been fooled by randomness. Yes, their results are statistically significant. But how many relationships did they explore before finding the ones that were statistically significant. And ho many relationships are there to explore? To really test the theory, you'd have to look at baseball players with the initial "E" and see if they commit more errors than others. You'd have to look at guards in the NBA to see if those with initials "A" have more assists. Centers whose initials include an "R" should be better rebounders. You'd have to look and see whether students with the initials IC were more likely to take an "incomplete" in a class.

I guess Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England should have been a football player. Or maybe he just gets fired more often than the average Briton because it doesn't bother him as much as someone with a different last name.

Did Kafka know baseball scoring? Does this explain why he found success in life so difficult? Is this why he named a character "K"?

Do players whose initials are a backwards "K" strike out looking more than the average?

Navy SEAL died saving his buddies

CNN - Found 17 hours ago
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- When a grenade bounced off his chest and fell to the floor near his fellow troops, Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor acted ...
Navy SEAL's sacrifice earns Medal of Honor - MSNBC
Navy SEAL paid ultimate price - CNN
VET'S ULTIMATE HONOR - New York Post
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AP

Fat Wednesday...

Well, we're back in Chicago -- I was "dismissed" yesterday morning, after my appointment with the doc. Here's where things stand...

1. The initial protein that the neurologist found in my blood, way the fuck back in January, was, strangely, NOT found in my blood at Mayo. I don't know if it disappeared, was never there in the first place, or if it only shows up in odd-numbered months, but it ain't there now. Apparently, that's a good thing.

B. All the rest of my blood looks clean. Red cells, white cells, Beverly Cells, platelets -- no problems. My heart looks good, my lungs look good, my reflexes look good, and my ass looks good... in jeans, but is a little soupy in khakis.

iii. They don't have the results back from the fat pad aspiration yet -- I'm supposed to call tomorrow at noon to see what's the shizzle. They'll also have the results of this genetic test that determines whether I have the inherited form of this fucker.

Basically, the doc is pretty dubious that I've got amyloidosis. He says my physical exam shows none of the symptoms of someone with it, there's no evidence, so far, in my blood/bone marrow/pee that would suggest that I have it, and the whole thing just doesn't fit. There may be amyloid in my fat sample, but he says that, regardless, that does not suggest that it's systemic, which is the really bad version of it. I suppose there's still the chance that I'd have the genetic form of it, which is really heinous, but signs aren't really pointing to that either.

So, I'm cautiously optimistic, but I'm not throwing any fucking parties until I talk to him tomorrow. It's kinda like there's one second left on the game clock, the shot has been taken, but the ball is just spinning around the rim endlessly, and it won't fall in or out. A "toilet-ringer," if you will.

The only question is, who's gonna be there for the tip-in -- Bill Cartwright or Will Perdue.

GameTrailers update

Iron Man ’story’

English of the Dead trailer

Deadly Creatures interview

Neil Diamond to perform at Fenway Park

MSNBC - Found 21 hours ago
BOSTON - Neil Diamond will perform in concert this summer at Fenway Park.The singer made the announcement in a big-screen broadcast at the Boston Red ...
Buckner's Fenway return incredibly 'emotional' - MSNBC
Dice-K and Red Sox drop Tigers to 0-7 - MSNBC
Buckner gets warm reception in Fenway return - CNN
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AP

Haitian prison

If international minimum standards of about four square metres for every prisoner were met, the National Penitentiary would hold a little more than 400 inmates. On the day Maclean's visits the prison, there are 3,331 men jailed inside. Most, at least 90 per cent, have not had a trial. They are held under the euphemistic term "preventative detention," and because of a lack of judges, proper evidence, and even vehicles to transport them to court, it is unlikely many will be tried any time soon. "People sleep on top of people in here," one prisoner says through the bars of a bathroom-sized cell that holds 43 people. Most are standing. Others have fashioned hammocks out of scraps of cloth and have suspended themselves from the bars of the cell's high window, where they can get more light and air...

Here is more.  And that is not all:

There is a punishment cell, perhaps four feet tall, where no one can stand. The punishment cell is crowded, but less so than other cells, and some inmates prefer it. "You have people who do things wrong just so they have a place to lie down or to be safe from gangs," Cadet says.

Here is a video about recent food riots in Haiti, and no those are not in the prisons.

American cancels more than 1,000 more...

CNN - Found 3 hours ago
DALLAS, Texas (AP) -- American Airlines canceled more than 1,000 flights Wednesday, more than one-third of its schedule, as it spent a second ...
Flight cancellations may last into summer - Fortune
AA's Wednesday cancelations top 1,000 - USA Today
Poniard Pharma To Present Data From Phase 2 Study Of Picoplatin In ... - RTTNews.com
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AP