Last night I was watching The Simpsons and I noticed that the intro looked different. A few seconds on Google and I had my answer. Gotta love the internets.
Sure enough, it has been redone and some mad fan has gone to the trouble of generating a comparison.
There is also a side-by-side video comparison on YouTube.
Any sports fan knows that referees are as human as the rest of us – mistakes do creep in.
However, I recently read this short article citing studies that show ref’s also make more subtle, but systematic mistakes.
This article discusses a study of 3500 Bundesliga matches that found measurable bias in favor of the home team:
In the past I have read that football teams wearing red win slightly more matches. This article discusses a study of tae kwon do referees found that they favor the fighter in red.
In tae kwon do one fighter has a red helmet and one has a blue helmet.
In the experiment 42 experienced refs were shown videos of sparring rounds.
National Geographic has a photo gallery showing off some of nature’s clever disguises. Well worth a look.
There are two bugs in this picture. Seriously.
“Leaf knockoffs down to brown spots and notched edges, two Mimetica katydids with twiglike legs can rest or feed without drawing attention”.
In case you’re still not sure, here they are:
The gallery is well worth looking at. Below are a few more of by favorites.
Not a snake…
Finally, this is a great mantis. Nature is awesome.
Amazingly it seems that someone has managed to pick up a stunning mountain(!!) in Hout Bay for R10 million on auction. (see article on IOL).
The mountain was bought in a private auction for “about R10 million” after only 14 bids were received.
Why so cheap? Well it seems that there is a lot more to the story:
In fact, there are suspicions that the mountain hasn’t been sold at all.
If Parks Board attempt to expropriate the land then they will have to pay fair market value for it (they’ve offered R500,000). It has been suggested that the auction sale could be a ploy to make the ‘fair market value’ seem higher.
Interesting stuff.
A pagoda is a tall and often very old structure built entirely out of wood.
They are common in Japan and some are extremely old. For example “Horyuji pagoda in Nara was built in 607 and is thought to be the oldest multi-storey wooden structure in the world.”
The Economist has an article explaining just how these structures have managed to survive hundreds of years of typhoons and earthquakes.
Summary:
It’s a fascinating article and a good example of why The Economist is so great.
The Economist has an article on Zuma, South Africa, and the recession.
Summary:
In short, my take is this:
South Africa is full of poor people (40% of our population is below the poverty line).
These poor masses are impatient to improve their lot. They also believe that this is their right and will happen fast.
With good governance and hard work their lot should improve – but only over time.
This is a problem because:
So we have an already impatient, poor and jobless population being continually disappointed you surely have a recipe for unrest and possible disaster?
These days reading content online can quite a pain. The content that we want is lost in an ocean of junk (see image).
On top of that every site has different text styling, text sizing, etc, etc.
I recently came across a great solution: Readability.
Readability is a ‘bookmarklet’ that will update any site you’re looking at to be more readable.
This is how it works:
Basically the program will go through the page and extract the ‘content’ and then show only that content according to your formatting preferences.
In the example image here Readability would find the blue block and then show then content of that block according to your preferences.
Because the program must figure out which content is relevant this process doesn’t work every time. Some sites are not compatible.
That said, I find Readability very useful and often make use of it.
This article reports on an experiment investigating the impact of various photos in lost wallets.
240 wallets were distributed on the streets (in Britain). Each wallet had the same random items in it, but no cash.
The only difference was a single photo included:
Even in such a small experiment the baby photo obviously had a significant emotional impact on those who found the wallets.
Irrational human nature at work again.
Google has just announced that they are developing an operating system for release in 2010. When it comes to Google nothing surprises me anymore!
The idea is to create a simple, fast and free operating system for users who do everything online.
Windows is bulky, complex and fragile because it was developed for a world where each computer must bundle everything the user needs.
The Google OS is being designed for a world where users do everything online. By removing the bulk and complexity you get an operating system that is very fast, secure and stable.
It is important to note that the Google OS is currently targeted at netbooks (tiny, cheap, portable laptops). This is the perfect market for an OS like Google’s and it should pave the way.
There are still plenty of reasons to think that Google’s operating system is stupid.
1. We need Word and Excel
Meet Google Docs. Google and others have developed replacements for the essential desktop tools. Word, Excel, calendar, email, Powerpoint – they’ve all got working online replacements. It’s no coincidence that Google just brought Google Apps out of beta.
I’m even writing this text online – not in Word!
2. What if I’m offline?
Even in an increasingly wired world we are sometimes going to be offline. What then?
Meet Google Gears. Not many people know it, but Google has produced software that allows web applications to be used even when offline! Gears is still in it’s infancy, but it when applied correctly it works.
3. Net speeds are increasing all the time
To really work we need bandwidth and lots of it. Luckily that is happening anyway (although not fast enough in South Africa)
Google is releasing the operating system for free and open source. They’re doing us a huge favour for nothing! Why?
Google needs us all to be online. They want a world where everyone does everything online where they dominate. Fine by me.
In the wake of the recent miracle survival in the Yemenia Flight 626 crash I came across this even more amazing crash survival.
Summary:
That’s pretty amazing stuff!