Terrence Jones signs financial aid package with Kentucky. From what I understand, he has until classes start to change his mind. I imagine UW’s only chance to get him now is if Calipari jumps to the NBA.

Mayweather goes nowhere without A.1 – NYPOST.com. New York Post:

When they were served their well-done steaks, Mayweather’s brother asked if the restaurant had any A.1. The server said no, but a bottle of A.1. was instantly produced from Floyd’s “cash bag,” a tote the boxer uses to carry US currency that he “rains” on crowds at nightclubs.

Good quality beef overcooked and doused in A.1.—sad. Steak sauce kept in a make-it-rain bag—fantastic.

Mikhail Prokhorov’s statement to New Jersey Nets fans. I know that’s who it’s to because he starts it with, “Hello Nets fans.” He prefaces his championship ambitions with “If everything goes as planned.” I have a sneaking suspicion that the plan included a #1 pick and a certain free agent.

Vegas Dream Projects and Failed Renderings. Found this through Wikipedia’s list of proposed Las Vegas casinos that never opened. Here’s the only one that matters:

One of the concepts for the large property directly across I-15 from the Mandalay Bay was the WWF, which would probably draw a rather rough crowd. The chances that this will be built are slim indeed.

Maybe not the best idea, but certainly the best computer rendering. There’s also a proposal for another Stratosphere ride that would basically be a single coaster drop from near the top of the tower. It would have been 800 feet high. Being conservative and estimating the actual drop would be 700 feet, that’s still about 300 feet higher than the current record holder Kingda Ka. And it’s 550 feet higher than the tallest drop I’ve been on (Goliath at Six Flags Magic Mountain). Basically this ride would have been awesome.

Time Out New York lists the 30 best summer blockbusters ever.

I guess I can’t speak for the movies before, say, 1990 since an essential part of experiencing a summer blockbuster is watching it in the theater that summer. Only three of the top-10 were released after 1990. Here are some quick gripes: Independence Day should be in the top-15. (ID4 is the last one in, really?!) And The Dark Knight should be in the top-10.

(Via Kottke.)

Drake performing a verse from ‘You Know, You Know’. (Via Nah Right.)

Yeah, and you can spare me all the accolades, I’m the reason you can find my city on the atlas page.

Half a million dollars later and my taxes paid and I’m still spending money from my acting days.

Man, I swear life is such a lovely thing. Feel the perks that a seven-figure budget bring.

Tell your girlfriend that I can pull some fucking strings, so we’re courtside when LeBron gets a fucking ring.

This reminded me of something very loosely related: Terrence Jones, Kentucky, and John Calipari. How tempting is it to a high schooler to be offered entrance into a social circle that includes LeBron James and Jay-Z? For UW’s sake, I hope the answer is not-very. And for something more closely related: here’s hoping Bill Simmons’s @celticschants idea gets at least one “New York Knicks!” chant going.

You can now drag and drop images to embed them into Gmail messages in Google Chrome. Now it’ll be even easier to send sets of stupid captioned pictures to my friends! (I re-read that previous sentence and I sound sarcastic but I didn’t to.)

Modern Warfare 2 Resurgence Map Pack scheduled for June 3. I haven’t been playing anything the past couple of weeks, but I was playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2 instead of MW2. My guess is I’ll end up buying this map pack, so I hope it’s better. Fifteen bucks for a map pack is kind of high, but EA basically charging used-game buyers $15 to get some initial maps in BC2 is worse. (And EA’s future plan to charge used-game buyers $15 just to play online is even worse.)

On a side note, when reading comments on the recent Activision/Infinity Ward split, I’ve seen a lot of comments about how Activision is beating the franchise into the ground the same way they beat Guitar Hero into the ground. When I read those comments, I think the comment authors are implying that Activision should have spread out Guitar Hero releases instead of milking it. That’s dumb. People didn’t get bored of the franchise because there were too many songs available, there wasn’t much room for change in gameplay and it just got boring. Can’t blame a business for getting it while it’s hot.

Kevin Wildes on the B.S. Report (ESPN Flash Player | MP3). Simmons and Wildes discuss more half-baked ideas, including intentional body odor as an advantage in basketball, methods for shortening MLB games, and a physical WWE hall of fame. While discussing the WWE hall of fame, Wildes talked about a letter he wrote:

I once wrote a letter when I was little to WWF, asking them, well I had the idea that, like, you need two referees. Because the one referee is always being compromised. I actually wrote this letter when I was a kid. Like, listen, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the one referee, I mean the whole thing is getting ruined!

The Human Centipede review by Roger Ebert:

I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don’t shine.

The trailer isn’t as bad as I expected.

Machete Movie Trailer. I was excited for this when it was announced that the Grindhouse trailer was going to be turned into a full length film. I didn’t know Jessica Alba was in it. Now I’m more excited. (Thanks Laura.)

Sunday we gambled in Paris, shopped at Caesar’s Palace (I stop and think before I say the name because I ALWAYS think Little Caesar’s first), ate at the Wynn buffet, and then gambled on the strip. Monday we woke up, thought about what that day meant, got depressed, got talked into taking a limo to the airport (which was just more depressing), and flew home.

Here’s the first half of the trip. I split it up into two sets because of Flickr’s limit of posting 30 pictures on a single page. (Actually, I looked through the terms of service just now and couldn’t find that limit anymore. I’ll just assume it’s somewhere.) These are pictures from Friday when we flew there, Friday night getting ready for Tao, Saturday walking the strip, Saturday night getting ready for XS, and some of Sunday our relaxation day.

I went to Vegas this past weekend with the guys. Here are some pictures from my camera phone. I’ll share some more thoughts about Vegas—right now my body is pretty angry with me so an easy caption post seemed like a good idea.

Dropping the car off at the off-site parking lot. I left my camera in the shuttle but had time to call and get it back. That’s why my mom taught me to always get to the airport early.

Doodle Jump was real big this weekend.

Vegas WHOO. This is us with our luggage. Dan isn’t in the picture, but he’s nearby. His luggage isn’t in the picture, and Lord knows where it was.

Arriving at Planet Hollywood. As far as Vegas goes, I’ve stayed at Excalibur twice (more senior citizens than Old Country Buffet) and Paris once (I like Paris also). I liked Planet Hollywood more (room was nicer and it was convenient being attached to a mall). Oh yeah and of course there was Circus Circus when I was a kid which was AWESOME.

Another great thing about Planet Hollywood is Earl’s Sandwiches. It was our go-to spot when not eating at a sit-down restaurant. $5.95 for a hot sandwich, which is a no-brainer on vacation, when wallets become a little looser (and this is amplified on a Vegas trip).

Here’s a picture of our room. I stayed with Albert, Marvin, and Tubo. Dan, Paul, Chris, and RJ were one room over (but not connected unfortunately). Ben, Jon, and their cousin Anthony were somewhere on another floor. I didn’t take a good picture of the bathroom, which was nice. Double sinks, a shower, and a tub. I said if we were ever in a rush to get ready we could put our board shorts and do twosies in the shower and tub. Nobody agreed. (P.S. I’ve never stayed in a suite so I understand some of you might be very underwhelmed by this room.)

Combined, we had about $500 on the Lakers in game 6. They won by one, which was cool. But we needed them to win by two, which was really really not cool. We were bummed to say the least. On the flight home I thought about if it were like the butterfly effect and our entire trip would have been different if we won that bet and the group was happier as a whole on the first night.

The dry-aging display case at Gallagher’s steak house in New York, New York. When I was a kid, I always wanted to have one of those fast food soda stations in your house. Now I want one of these.

We went to XS in Encore on the second night. I had to pee really bad before we met with the promoter, so I did. By the time I caught up to the rest of my friends, they were being walked into the club. I heard a few of them yell my name so I ducked under the ropes to join them, cutting past the general admission line. People-that-don’t-take-themselves-too-seriously Power Rankings: 34805. Parkour enthusiasts 34806. Vegas bouncers.

Anyway, XS is impressive. I’ve heard good things about it and have imagined what it’s like, but I was still in awe.

This is Champ Bailey in the blue shorts at Niketown. You’ll have to take my word for it. It was basically a sausage fest of celebrity sightings. I took this list from RJ: Chris Bosh, Michael Crabtree, Joakim Noah, Larry Fitzgerald, Tony Gonzalez, TJ Ford, & Brendan Haywood. Tyrese, Drake, Edgar Sosa, Sherron Collins, Champ Bailey.

Here’s me and Albert at the Wynn buffet. Quality food. Unfortunately, my best buffet days are behind me. It’s a young man’s game.

Here’s a picture of Anthony at our Tao table.

Here’s a mirror picture of my roomies in our bathroom on the last morning. We’re sadder than we look. I hate the last day of vacation. Back to our miserable existence…

Mario Crossover. Play as your favorite NES character in Mario’s world. You’ll be entertained for at least a couple of minutes. And I’m guessing you’ll pick the guy from Contra first.

Montage of idiots, as seen on TV! If you’re familiar with infomercials, a lot of them have a clip of someone doing something idiotic to justify why everyone needs this product right away. “Does your cat make too much noise?”

Note: I wrote this April 5th, just a couple of days after buying the iPad. I’ll have some updated thoughts. Also, I got a 16GB Wi-Fi only unit.

There are a lot of in-depth iPad reviews better than anything I’d be able to write, so I’ll just think of questions and answer them based on my first two days with it.

How’s the hardware?

The screen is beautiful. Typing on the keyboard is a mixed bag for me. Awkward describes it best. Vertically, typing is comfortable but slow. Horizontally, typing is fast but uncomfortable. The speaker is mono, which doesn’t bother me, but I wish it could get louder. And, yes, this thing is begging for front-facing camera.

So there’s no Flash?

No. And it hasn’t bothered me so far, especially because a lot of sites prepared for the iPad. And YouTube works and its the host for most videos that I come across day-to-day. The only time I ran into the you-need-Flash alert was when I tried to view a video on the NBA site that was linked from their Twitter feed that I saw on the NBA Courtside iPad app. (Which looks cool in the previews I’ve seen online but is useless until the playoffs.)

How’s web browsing?

It’s fantastic, but I miss having keyboard shortcuts. Right now I’d like a four-finger swipe in Safari to open up your tabs. And maybe left and right swipes to go to your next and previous tabs.

There’s no multitasking?

Not for third-party apps. Mail still checks email, Safari keeps your tabs and pages where you left them, and iPod can play music and podcasts while you do other stuff. But acccidentally hitting the home button ends my Geometry Wars session and forgets where I was browsing in NetFlix. Without multitasking, I’ve been annoyed a few times but never frustrated.

What free apps did you try?

Adobe Ideas, NetFlix, Twitterrific, TweetDeck.

Adobe Ideas lets you draw. It seems to be vector-based so you can zoom in as far as you want without losing quality. Since it’s vector-based it cleans up the lines you draw. Lots of fun.

NetFlix lets you watch their selection of streamable content on your iPad. Simple as that, and probably how you imagine it would work. Scrubbing through the timeline isn’t as good as on the desktop version (no thumbnailed previews). The online selection isn’t great for movies, but the TV show selection is very good. Seeing as how I have the WiFi iPad, though, I’ll primarily be using it at home and would rather watch a movie on a TV.

Twitterific and TweetDeck are Twitter apps. I’m not a Twitter power-user and Twitterific’s simpler.

What apps have you bought?

Flight Control ($5), Geometry Wars ($10), SketchBook Pro ($8), Instapaper Pro ($5). I’ve never bought anything off of the iTunes store, so this is my first time having a store account seamlessly linked to my bank account. I get flashbacks to my dorm food account when buying apps—I’m spending real money but it doesn’t feel like it.

Right now I would fully recommend Flight Control. You have an overview of a map and you direct planes and helicopters to their landing strip by drawing their paths—game over if two crash into each other. Once the screen starts to fill with planes and helicopters it’s a lot of fun. But each game starts out so easy that the the first couple minutes feel like a waste of time. It’d be great if there were a higher fast-forward speed than currently available.

Geometry Wars is the same Geometry Wars available on gaming consoles. I’ve never played those, but it was pretty fun on the iPad. It’s a top-down shooter, and you place your thumb anywhere on the left side of the screen to create a vehicle motion joystick and your other thumb on the right side of the screen to create a gun motion joystick. Think Smash TV. I never regretted buying $10 of candy and Thomas Kemper the same way I regret paying $10 for Geometry Wars. Again, it’s fun, but $10 just feels like too much. I think $5 is going to be the sweet spot for most iPad games.

SketchBook Pro is fun to use. And it reminds me of the day I bought a Wacom tablet in high school. But I’m not that serious about drawing, and it seems like serious artists could take SketchBook Pro a long way. You’ve got a lot of brush settings and layers to work with. Adobe Ideas satisfies any urge I have to draw and I’d recommend trying that out first before shelling out $8 for SketchBook Pro.

Instapaper Pro converts web pages to more reader-friendly versions and keeps track of things you want to read later. I haven’t used it much yet, and so far I’ve found that I’ve just been reading things on the original sites. But I think it’ll be good to have a queue of things to read whenever there’s free time. If you read a lot of long articles it might be worth it (still deciding if I’m included in that group).

Those app descriptions were too long just sum this thing up

I woke up Sunday, grabbed my iPad, and lied in bed for an hour using checking my usual sites. That was awesome. It’s only going to get better as more apps are released and app pricing settles down. I’ll be using my laptop a lot less, and as often as it’s connected to my external monitor it could really just be a Mac Mini at this point. The iPad is changing things, just look at all the major sites that were prepped for the release. Serious work will continue to be done on traditional systems. But the iPad has everything necessary for entertainment.

Hulu announces Hulu Plus. LA Times:

Under the proposal, Hulu would continue to provide for free the five most recent episodes of shows like Fox’s “Glee,” “ABC’s “Lost” or NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” But viewers who want to see additional episodes would pay $9.95 a month to access a more comprehensive selection, called Hulu Plus, these people said.

I skimmed the comments and it took about two seconds to remind myself of why I try to stay in my RSS reader and away from comments. Here’s a sample with my snarky thoughts:

Talk about greed!

Talk about business!

Why would the majority of people pay for a service to watch shows they can download illegally for free?

iTunes is doing alright charging for things people can download illegally.

Who on Earth would pay $10 per month for old episodes of shows?

People who want to watch them.

P.S. I love that they chose an Arrested Development screenshot.

Marvel’s Chris Baker on selecting MvC3 characters:

“There are absolutely characters that will be much more relavent in the next few years and you want to get them in there, there are characters that have become a lot more popular since the last Marvel Vs. Capcom game, that weren’t in there that we wanted to get in there. There are characters that have been invented in the last ten years that we may want to get in there.”

My guesses: Thor is a sure thing and Whiplash is likely. More Avengers members will be in it, it’s just a matter of who, and Nick Fury seems possible since Chris Redfield is confirmed already.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Announced. Yes.

Dave Chappelle at the Laugh Factory. That links to a clip where he talks about Man rape. Here’s a clip from the same night where he talks about The Secret. These are from a five-hour performance this past fall. Can’t they just sell the whole thing for $100 or something?

On another note, Jerry reminded me that Dave Chappelle and Conan O’Brien have been good friends for a long time and that it wouldn’t be the biggest surprise if Chappelle showed up sometime during the tour. I think it’ll happen. In the meantime check out one of Dave’s many interviews with Conan O’Brien. His description of a trip to China at 3:37 killed me.

I was going to write something coherent but I had a hard time putting everything I remembered in order. Instead, here are some bullets.

• Reggie Watts from Portland opened for Conan. He did some live voice sampling, played piano, sang, and did some impersonations. The music sounded great but it wasn’t exactly a laugh riot. He’s obviously talented but things that started funny went too long.
• The Legally Prohibited band came out and did “Move On Up” to open. Live bands make everything better. They did songs throughout the show with Conan playing guitar. It’d be nice if Max Weinberg was with them on tour, but they’re great regardless.
• Video of Conan lazing around the house was good. The workout montage after it was better.
• Conan came out and said his goal was to have the crowd leave thinking that it was kind of sort of worth it. Then he opened with some of his thoughts about Seattle, which he loves. His wife is from here and his wedding was here so it’s nice to know that it’s not like the school principal saying “best class ever” during graduation.
• He shared a slideshow of people he’s angry about being on TV while he isn’t, including Snooki and the Kardashians. At some point I thought Jay Leno would flash on the screen, but he didn’t and Conan never mentioned him.
• Andy Richter came out and did what he does on Conan’s shows. But he also did a couple of fake commercials Dick’s Drive-In and the Fremont Troll.
• Conan came out for a few minutes in the leather suit from Eddie Murphy’s “Raw”. On to the next bullet point.
• A few elements from the old show made appearances. Masturbating Bear did his thing. Triumph made a video appearance. And Conan also brought out the Chuck Norris Rural Policeman Handle. I started watching Conan after seeing the Walker clips online, which puts me in the same light as the guy that started watching Chappelle’s Show after the Rick James skit, but I can live with that. I love these clips.
• At some point they inflated a giant plastic bat. There aren’t a lot of people that can make that funny, but Conan’s one of them.
• Deon Cole came out to do some stand-up and he killed. Great and unexpected. Would’ve been the best surprise of the night except, well, Conan brought out a musical guest.
• My friend Jerry went the night to the first Seattle show and said that Dave Matthews performed. I figured he’d have a different guest perform for the second showing, but I wouldn’t think it’d be a bigger deal than Dave Matthews. Eddie Vedder came out and did his “Rise” cover from the Into the Wild soundtrack. Mike McCready joined him and the Legally Prohibited Band and did the Pearl Jam cover of “Baba O’Riley”. Conan’s tweet sums it up:
  

  “Eddie Vedder’s set at my show in Seattle last night melted my eyeballs. Seriously, I’m going to sue Eddie for boiling my ocular-jelly.”

Absolutely kind of sort of worth it. Catch it if you can.

Update: Albert said I should have more pictures. Here’s the bat:

Here are some pictures I took with my phone, along with a couple sent by friends. Enjoy! Here’s the first one—a candid shot Dan took of me futuristically contemplating.

I was checking to see if I should wear shorts to the game and saw what doubles as my favorite temperature and the name of my boy band if I started one.

Jerry sent me this. He always keeps me up to date with hooded out headlines.

Here’s Donatello on SketchPad. I can’t draw legs well. Scratch that—I can’t draw well. Actually I kind of like the headband.

I wanted to make chicken teriyaki from a recipe and I needed to get some garlic. I hate peeling garlic so I went for the pre-minced stuff. I could choose between the small jar for $1.99 or the large for $2.99.

Or the lifetime supply version for $4.99.

Just when you thought Ross couldn’t amaze you anymore.

He fought with the Samurai?

He is Samurai.

Here’s what it looks like from my perspective when I’m crying so hard that I lose my breath.

The first dude bro ever. A guy in a shirt and hoodie in a sea of fedoras.

“I Will Always Love You” by Lin Yu Chun. Prepare for your head to explode.

Macworld iPad review. Kind of just testing the WordPress bookmarklet on the iPad. Seems to work alright. Just wanted to find a link to share but this review is really good. My quick impressions are that I’ll only be using my laptop when I’m writing or creating something; browsing, reading, and watching are all better on the iPad. I don’t miss Flash but I do miss keyboard shortcuts.

I hate the internet on April fools day because articles need to ne really clever to be slightly funny and most aren’t. I like the spirit of it though. Here’s a good prank: College Humor put banners around New York saying In-n-out was coming soon to certain locations.

The kitchen and living room shots are by Albert, aspiring photographer. Fantastic Sunday.

ABC Nightline: Justin Bieber Fever. I definitely understand if you can’t stand his music—I probably would have hated it back when I thought there was a difference in “real” hip hop and Cage was my favorite rapper. But he seems like a good kid raised by a single mom. He understands that it’s weird that he’s constantly trending on Twitter and there’s no arguing with his approach to meeting fans: Treat them how he would want Beyonce to treat him if he met her.

Fitness Spotlight: Trainer Tells All – What I Have Learned About Health and Fitness. Long bulleted list of practical advice:

Diet is 85% of where results come from…..for muscle and fat loss. Many don’t focus here enough.

The first big amount of lbs you lose in the first week dieting is mostly water

Squatting to parallel will only give you weak hamstrings and lead to more knee issues. You should be able to go down like you were going to pick something off the ground, as that is the reason our bodies were designed to squat

(Via Kottke.)

2004-2005: UW mens squad and the Dawg Pack react to the #1 seed. I love when the guy starts yelling “overrated” with J.J. Redick on the screen and gets to about “overra-” when WASHINGTON flashes on the screen and the place goes bonkers. I was more distraught with the Huskies vs. Huskies loss the next year, but 2004-2005 is hands-down my favorite UW roster: Brandon Roy, Nate Robinson, Will Conroy, Tre Simmons, and Bobby Jones. (Bonus: Appleby red-shirting.)

SLAM: The 6 Coolest People in the NCAA Tournament. More like 6 people the guy likes, but one of them is Quincy Pondexter so I couldn’t care less what the title is:

No offense to the floor general from Chicago (Jerome Randle, Cal) but Quincy Pondexter got hosed for the Pac-10 Player of the Year award, and his play in the Pac-10 tourney let us know who the best player in that conference truly was. Q-Pon averaged 20 and 8 on a team, and in a conference that got zero shine this season (somewhat deservedly so) Pondexter found a way to help lead U-Dub to the NCAA Tournament. With the diminutive Isaiah Thomas (5-8) flanking him, the Huskies have become a team with their shoulders pulled back, chest out, and something to prove. Interestingly, the Huskies will go into their first round matchup against Marquette being the bigger squad, and the Vegas bookmakers have this matchup as a “pick-em” game. If you need a sleeper team to get to the Sweet 16, take a look at the boys out of Seattle.

UW/Marquette 4:20pm Pacific Time tomorrow. And at around 6:00pm hearts will be broken, hopefully not mine.

Go read The Hunger Games. Yes, I’m linking to something I linked to a couple of weeks ago, but I need someone to talk to about it. Just finished Catching Fire, the second book, and also just found out that the final book isn’t out yet. Great. But it’s been picked up by Lionsgate, meaning it’s time to speculate on the cast. Which mostly means it’s time for me to nod and tell myself that Jessica Alba can still play a high-schooler. Teenage brutes trained to kill? My friends have taught me that Ronnie Coleman and Jay Cutler are always a good answer.

2007 “I remember” Kevin Garnett trade commercial. I wrote “anything is possible” in my previous post and immediately thought of his bewildering and fantastic post-game interview. And that reminded me of the commercial from the beginning of that season. Loved it then and still love it now.

Predators official site. Sneak peek is up, trailer on Thursday! Robert Rodriguez won’t screw this up. And he really can’t, if you take into account expectations based on what the franchise has become. Alien vs. Predator set the bar so low that it wasn’t possible to make a worse movie involving Predators, then Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem came out and proved that anything is possible.

Serious Eats: Mobile Chowdown 3 roundup. Marination Mobile sets up shop about 7 minutes from where I work on Mondays. I think I’ll be making the weekly trek. As for Mobile Chowdown, I went to Mobile Chowdown 2 and was sad that Skillet wasn’t there and really sad I couldn’t make it to Mobile Chowdown 3, since Skillet was there along with some of Portland’s best trucks.

Sports Illustrated slideshow: Rare Photos of Charles Barkley. But certainly not rare occurrences—it opens with him eating some pizza.

Young Artists for Haiti “Wavin’ Flag”. Young (Canadian) Artists for Haiti. Looks like 40 people recording the chorus, but Drake gets his own verse whoooooo. Then Justin Bieber makes an appearance at the end in some dark studio. Actually, watching it again, it looks like Drake and Justin Bieber both weren’t at the group recording. Actually, thinking about this, I shouldn’t be watching so closely. Good song, great cause.

Pigeons might be better with the Monty Hall problem. I first read the Monty Hall problem in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Here’s a summary of the problem from Amazon:

Imagine that you face three doors, behind one of which is a prize. You choose one but do not open it. The host–call him Monty Hall–opens a different door, always choosing one he knows to be empty. Left with two doors, will you do better by sticking with your first choice, or by switching to the other remaining door?

I understand the math behind it, but I still have a hard time believing it, because it’s so much easier to think that “switch or stay” is 50/50. It’s easier to visualize it with charts and to believe it after viewing simulations. The pigeons in the article essentially do the problem over and over and learn to switch every time:

Pigeons likely use empirical probability to solve the Monty Hall problem and appear to do so quite successfully.

“Different species often find very different solutions to the same problems,” Herbranson said. “We humans have ways of tackling probability-based problems that generally work pretty well for us, the Monty Hall dilemma being one notable exception. Pigeons apparently have a different approach, one that just happens to be better suited to the Monty Hall dilemma.”

Empirical probability is a slower, less elegant, brute-force method that can be tricked by the kind of random fluctuations seen in real data, Herbranson said, but it doesn’t employ any mental rules of thumb that can lead to traps such as the Monty Hall problem. In a similar way, the visual systems we depend on to quickly make sense of the world around us can lead to our susceptibility to visual illusions, he added.

Orlando Magic pre-game dunking. Eboy with some hangtime for a nice windmill (just ignore Rashard lifting him up), Carter with a nice two-handed 360, JJ getting up and double-pumping, and Gortat going between the legs (actually prety nice).

Actually, this Chicago Now post is a better look into the Handome Men’s Club skit: How Jimmy Kimmel pulled off “Handsome Men’s Club”.

It’s funny, several of them were a little uncomfortable, like, “Just so you know, I don’t think I’m this handsome guy.” Don’t worry. First of all, you are. And secondly, no one is going to think you’re a jerk in this piece. We’ve made Jimmy the ahole in this one, don’t worry about it.

New York Times Arts Beat: Secrets of the Handsome Men’s Club.

Ms. McNearney said the skit, directed by Andy Fisher, was shot over seven or eight days, during which club members were mostly filmed one at a time. (Three handsome men had to briefly put up with the glare from one another’s halos when Taye Diggs, John Krasinski and Tony Romo shot their scenes together.)

The skit itself is embedded in the NY Times post, but here’s a link to the YouTube page.

Eric Bischoff posted this on Facebook:

“For what it is..yes. Allegedly WWE found out about a Lloyds of London policy that Bret had in effect AFTER setting up this match, and as a result Lloyds of London has to approve of the physical structure of the match. Can’t confirm this, and perhaps WWE has “bought out” the problem, but if not..could be disappointing. Either way, I am looking forward to it and am happy for Bret. Going back to WWE in any capacity was the right thing for him to do at this stage of his life.”

There’s rumors about changing the match to a tag match. I’d like to see McMahon put Bret in a Sharpshooter then have Bret reverse it like he was supposed to do to Shawn Michaels years and years ago. Lloyds of London is the agency that paid Mr. Perfect millions of dollars to not wrestle.

BS Report: Bill Simmons and Adam Carolla break down Fast and Furious. This is from April 20, 2009. I enjoyed listening this specific podcast three or four times when it was first released and I hadn’t even watched Fast and Furious. Last weekend I watched Fast and Furious and the podcast and movie have a relationship where both become much much funnier together. Some topics discussed: Vin Diesel’s response to his sister’s worries regarding him showing up at her house that’s being staked out by the FBI, cigarette lighter timing, and the groundbreaking plot where the good guy needs to infiltrate the bad guy’s organization.

Biggie performing at the 1995 Source awards. P. Diddy opens the performance. I’ve been wanting to say something about him. A couple weeks ago I heard on the radio that P. Diddy said some things about being the first to do it big with the private jets and the clothing lines and that others should be thankful that he paved the way. True, but he should be more humble considering his career in its current form was launched because his best friend died. (Via Nah Right.)

Wired Reread. Theis Søndergaard scans pages from old Wired issues and provides some great commentry. Someone needs to do this with old video game magazines. In high school, I loved grabbing one of the old EGMs in the house and reading SNES reviews and PS1 previews. We threw them away one day, which made sense for getting rid of clutter, but I wish we kept at least a few. (Via Daring Fireball.)

The (Oscar-winning) Logorama guys are doing a Ghost Recon short. I look forward to it. (Via Kotaku.)

I was trying to watch Always Sunny in Philadelphia on Hulu last night and then a bunch of ripped dudes started asking if I wanted to see their d**k. The middle was bleeped out but I have a sneaking suspicious I know what it was. I hate Calvin Klein X ads and I hate whoever thought it’d be good to target Always Sunny viewers.

One of the best Saturdays I’ve had in a long time: great Seattle weather, a whole lot of my friends, football, steaks, and ice cream.

Roger Ebert gets his voice back. Here’s a description of what the company is doing, from that Esquire profile:

Ebert spent all those years on TV, and he also recorded four or five DVD commentaries in crystal-clear digital audio. The average English-speaking person will use about two thousand different words over the course of a given day. CereProc is mining Ebert’s TV tapes and DVD commentaries for those words, and the words it cannot find, it will piece together syllable by syllable. When CereProc finishes its work, Roger Ebert won’t sound exactly like Roger Ebert again, but he will sound more like him than Alex does.

Technology at its best.