snap culture: January 2006

  1. your superbowl source ben, 1/31/2006 3 comments
  2. How about a game of Kin-Ball? William, 1/27/2006 0 comments
  3. beats watching monkeys with dartboards ben, 1/21/2006 1 comments
  4. What's a lifetime pass to MLB worth? William, 1/20/2006 0 comments
  5. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! William, 1/17/2006 0 comments
  6. Hikikomori William, 1/16/2006 1 comments
  7. the power of the internet ben, 1/10/2006 1 comments
  8. I just don't know what to say... William, 1/09/2006 0 comments
  9. the future is now ben, 1/06/2006 0 comments

1/31/2006 Add a comment

The best place to read about what's going on in Detroit this week is the Blog of Chuck Klosterman, writer and sometimes columnist for ESPN's Page 2. Oh, but whatever you do, don't call it the Superbowl! ben

Comments

  1. Anonymous Anonymous: I have been following a site now for almost 2 years and I have found it to be both reliable and profitable. They post daily and their stock trades have been beating
    the indexes easily.

    Take a look at Wallstreetwinnersonline.com

    RickJ     5/21/2006  
  2. Anonymous Anonymous: I have been following a site now for almost 2 years and I have found it to be both reliable and profitable. They post daily and their stock trades have been beating
    the indexes easily.

    Take a look at Wallstreetwinnersonline.com

    RickJ     5/28/2006  
  3. Anonymous Anonymous: I have been following a site now for almost 2 years and I have found it to be both reliable and profitable. They post daily and their stock trades have been beating
    the indexes easily.

    Take a look at Wallstreetwinnersonline.com

    RickJ     5/29/2006  

1/27/2006 Add a comment

I discovered this sport by accident, and from the description, Kin-Ball seems like a sport one would play in gym class. But of course there's a federation and world championships, etc. When you follow the link, be sure to check out the movie, which plays out like an '80s promotional video.

Now, if I would take up Kin-Ball, I could probably become world-class in a "sport" pretty quickly. William

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1/21/2006 Add a comment

In the TradingMarkets.com / Playboy 2006 stock-picking contest, 4 of the 10 Playboy bunnies are currently in the top 1% of all equity mutual fund managers, beating over 11,700 people who do this for a living. And 9 of the 10 are beating the S&P 500.

But markets absorb information in a perfectly efficient way, right? So either this is random chance (and someone else can work out the odds that 40% of the non-pros would be in the top 1%), or the efficient markets hypothesis is nonsense.

Thanks for the link, John! ben

Comments

  1. Anonymous Anonymous: Two in a million. That's the probability of at least 4 bunnies ending up in the top 1% of investors, if all investors are independent and equally likely to have any given level of success. But is it reasonable to suppose that they are independent and identically distributed? Probably not. For starters, I would imagine that the typical bunny has a smaller and less diverse investment portfolio than most fund managers, which increases the variance, making them more likely to do extremely well or extremely poorly. Also, it's likely that the bunnies have similar investments to each other, which would mean that they aren't independent. This makes four extreme successes more likely, since they aren't really four separate unlikely events.

    Still, it's pretty remarkable. Have you thought about investing in Playboy?

    -Someone Else     1/21/2006  

1/20/2006 Add a comment

How about 444 days in Iranian captivity. American hostages in the late `70s were awarded lifetime passes to baseball games. Some have chosen to take advantage of the privilege, and others never have. William

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1/17/2006 Add a comment

Live! (link from the Sports Guy's intern.) William

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1/16/2006 Add a comment

This is one of the most interesting articles I've read in quite awhile. Evidently in Japan, some young people (usually men in the late teens to late 20s range) drop out of society entirely, effectively becoming shut-ins from their family, friends, and the outside world. Many think it's their response to the myriad pressures put on them by overbearing parents, crushing societal norms, and a heavy emphasis on scholastic success. William

Comments

  1. Anonymous Anonymous: Sounds like the honors students at Swarthmore... 1/16/2006  

1/10/2006 Add a comment

It would have taken you ages to lay out all the newspapers from the last 20 years on the ground, cut out each strip, then cut out each frame, then mix them all up in a large bucket, to produce something as brilliant as the random Garfield comic generator. Genius.

I want them to make one for "Cathy," which was always my least favorite strip (most likely because I couldn't relate to an overweight 40 year old spinster-in-training). Then you could see which randomly drawn strip maximized the number of punctuation and sweat/stress marks in three frames. For instance, I count 13 in yesterday's strip alone. Also, it looks like she's finally gotten married. ben

Comments

  1. Anonymous Anonymous: It just needs a permalink button to let you save your favorites and send them to your friends. 1/11/2006  

1/09/2006 Add a comment

about this. [link from Gene Weingarten's chat] William

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1/06/2006 Add a comment

this site is a scary glimpse into the future. And not all that far from being true. Hell, even reporters at CNN are being wiretapped. That will be a huge story if it ends up being true. ben

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