Game of Thrones rules

by Loimere

George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy A Game of Thrones is one of the great stories of the last 20 years. Because it creates a narrative that deconstructs the characters we have come to expect in a fantasy. It forced us to re-examine these expectations – who is good, who is bad – by providing much deeper characterizations and very human responses.

In fact, for much of the book, there is little or no fantasy. This could just be some sort of odd historical work of fiction. But its twisting of what we expect in the narrative makes us very much aware of how we come to most works with a pre-conceived idea of good, evil, right wrong. We expect good guys to be smart and do good. Bad guys are never as smart as the good guy. IN battles, the good guys are never defeated and none of the major characters is physically damaged during any battle.

None of that is true here. Which is why I was worried about the TV adaptation. TV does not like to destroy preconceptions very often, The book contained many scenes that were important to the narrative but would not seem like anything TV would allow to be shown.

Yet HBO did and should be commended for allowing the writers of the TV adaptation to actually provide much the same story as the book.

Shocking things have happened yet we care even more deeply about the characters, even the bad ones, because we have to see how it all turns out, knowing that we cannot really get hints from our preconceptions.

Not only could anyone die, but the bad guys may never really get the death they deserve. Or they might. Only Martin knows.

Luckily, the internet can provide us some of what we want:

I want the writer to be the smartest of all, to have such a grasp of the narrative that every surprise actually makes absolute sense. It is not just a gotcha. we can see just how the writer got us to that surprise.

The finale of Game of Thrones set us up for an exciting new season next year, with every character having something to add.

All the reasons I loved the end of Game of Thrones are also reasons I loathed the end of the Killing. The killing is all about gotchas, for no reason other than to be a gotcha. The characters change their behavior simply to provide twists.

And this is a show where I definitely do not think the writers are smarter than me. They simply lie to me in order to drive the plot. The detectives have been so incompetent that they have literally ruined three and maybe more lives. One man lies in a coma and another may be killed, all because they were simply stupid.

Linden ends the season having left the Seattle PD. How in the world would any reasonably realistic world ever allow her back next season to work on this case?

So, we have a show that is not like any other police procedural – the cops are stupid and incompetent. And everyone is a suspect for one show? Red herrings become boring after a while and deus ex machina endings are just bad writing, not great art.

The end of the Killing reminded me of the end of Tootsie – where Hoffman reveals that he is really the son, not daughter, come to exact revenge.  Such a contrived end is funny in this setting. Not so in the Killing where I feel I just waster 13 weeks of my life.

In contrast to Game of Thrones, there simply is no one in the show I care about at all, not even the police. They are stupid, incompetent, petulant, and just boring. And they change day to day based on what the writers want in order to make the plot more mysterious, etc.

After 13 weeks we know less about the killing of Rosie than the first 15 minutes. And the twisting of the characters in order to shock us has actually created characters I no longer give a rip about.

I’ll wait a year to see the 2nd season of Game of Thrones. It has compelling characters in a narrative that I simply can not guess.

Not so for the Killing. It has boring charcaters in service to a narrative that constantly lies to the audience. So I know how things will go next season – more lies from incompetents.

Non-Open Access to science is part of the problem

Some science journalists need to hang their heads in shame
[Via Pharyngula]

Ben Goldacre and others carried out a very interesting study: they analyzed the top 10 UK newspapers for a week for their health reporting, and categorized the quality of the support for health claims. It’s not encouraging.

Here’s what we found: 111 health claims were made in UK newspapers over one week. The vast majority of these claims were only supported by evidence categorised as “insufficient” (62% under the WCRF system). After that, 10% were “possible”, 12% were “probable”, and in only 15% was the evidence “convincing”. Fewer low quality claims (“insufficient” or “possible”) were made in broadsheet newspapers, but there wasn’t much in it.

I do have one criticism, though. The paper is in a journal called Public Understanding of Science. It isn’t open access, though, so apparently the Public is not allowed to read about the Public Understanding of Science unless they cough up $25 per article. They can read about “science” for cheap in their local tabloid, though. Isn’t this part of the problem, too? Let’s also put part of the blame on a science publishing industry that puts up barriers to reading the real stuff.

[More]

A paper that demonstrates that much of the science reporting in the media is insufficient, – that only 15% is convincing – certainly substantiates Sturgeon’s Law, within experimental error.

But publishing the research in a journal which is really not accessible to the public does little to actually change the problem, as most people will never read about it except in the media which the paper demonstrates can not write well about science.

What is the purpose of the researchers? Because it certainly is NOT providing society with the ability to examine and judge their work. If that was the case, they would either have published in an Open access journal or one with a nominal charge to read.

Publishing in a journal that charges $25 to read suggest to me that the researcher’s purpose was mostly to enhance their own reputation. Actually educating people about this question was, at best, secondary.

Otherwise, the public would be able to read their work. As it stands now, even any scientist not working at a University would most likely have to ay to read the article.

Only one in five Americans has a college degree

I was reading an article about manufacturing in the US and it made the point that the majority of Americans do not have a bachelor’s degree. In fact, only 22% of the people in the US have a bachelor’s degree, although almost 90% have a High School diploma.

Canada now leads the world. We were once number one. Now we are number 12 out of 36 developed countries. The Russian Federation is now ahead of us.

There are huge benefits for having a degree and American competitiveness requires that we try to move up against our competitors. Instead we continue to drop.

Every year we become less capable fo competing in world markets compared to other nations.

Even though there are huge individual and societal benefits for higher education.

Men with only a High School education have a median income of about $29,000. A bachelor’s degree raises this to over $50,000.

People with higher degrees have lower unemployment rates. They also provide much greater tax revenues than those without degrees. In fact, society as a whole benefits, not just the individuals. Every individual who attains a bachelor’s degree has a net benefit to the rest of us of $89,000.

For every graduate of a college, the United States has almost $90,000 to spend that it would not have if they only had a High School degree.

Public colleges have an average tuition and fees of about $7600 a year or a little over $30,000 for four.  If tuition at public schools were all paid by the government, society would still see a net benefit of almost $60,000 while the individual would see over $20,000 more a year.

Any state could accomplish this by putting $1000 a year for 18 years in an account earning only 5% a year for every person born in the state. If the individual attended a public school as an in-state resident, the money would pay for them.

It will never happen.

The questions every Android tablet maker should be asking

The Android tablet problem, nicely summarized by one review’s conclusion
[Via Marco.org]

From Ars Technica’s review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, which exemplifies the softball “please keep sending us gadgets” review so prevalent recently:

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 easily has the best hardware of any Android tablet on the market today. Samsung has really outdone itself—the Tab 10.1’s svelte profile and impressively light weight (it weighs less than an iPad and has more RAM) are sure to attract the attention of consumers.

Really? Will a lot of customers notice the 2% thickness difference or the 6% weight savings over an iPad 2? I guess it must be the RAM they’re clamoring for, since that’s a hotly debated spec among iPad buyers.

Hardware excellence isn’t the only measure of a good tablet, however; software is arguably just as important—if not more so—on such a personal device.

Google has moved Honeycomb forward with Android 3.1 and has thankfully fixed the stability problems, but that’s still not enough. Honeycomb’s barren third-party application landscape really hobbles the Tab 10.1 and other Android tablets.

Translation: Android tablets have managed to copy the iPad’s hardware well enough — the easy part — but have failed to provide good software and significant third-party app choice — the hard part.

[More]

Not only is the review skewered in this fashion but the essay also brings up questions that need to be answered by any tablet maker:

1) Why would a significant number of buyers choose this instead of an iPad?

2) What will cause enough people to buy this that developers will beat down the door to make great apps for it?

The mass markets are not buying these because of the hardware spec – only geeks care about those. The mass market cares about what it does, how efficiently it does it and if it will improve things.

Looks are nice. Industrial design is an important part of a successful product. But people want to do things with the tablet and simply having a large screen or a light weight does not cut it.

Apple was able to make the iPhone a success because out of the box Apple had created a software environment that enhanced people’s lives. Apple but a lot of hard work into that software that was the OS and into its original apps.

People bought because of the enhancement the software provided to the hardware. The hardware by itself would not have sufficed. With that popularity, Apple was able to leverage a huge developer response.

Not so with Android tablets nor, so far, with Windows. Heck, MS has been rumored to be paying developers to create software.

The geek market has very little idea of what will sell in the mass market. Apple’s perhaps greatest impact has been on moving technology out of the geek market and into the mass market in ways that enhance people’s lives.

Too many hardware and software makers seem to feel that if they can get the geek market to adopt the tech, then it will naturally flow to the mass market. See Linux for why this does not necessarily follow.

Until more companies understand how to make this transition, and how to provide livelihoods for the very developers the hardware requires,  Apple will continue to eat them alive.

They thought the streets were paved with gold

by Mike McCaffrey

Multiple Android tablet peddlers give up, focus on 4- to 5 -inch smartphones
[Via MacDailyNews]

“Branded handset vendors as well as ODM/OEM handset makers, who have ventured into the tablet PC segment, have recently switched their focus back to the development of 4- to 5-inch high-end smartphones in the wake of recent lackluster sales of Android-based tablets, according to industry sources,” Daniel Shen and Steve Shen report for DigiTimes.

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Like any other gold rush, all these companies thought they would be able to just pick up market share just by showing up. The tablet market that Apple revealed would be theris for the taking.

All they had to do was produce the goods.

Many produced the goods and saw little results. It really does appear that, at the moment, there is not a tablet market – there is an iPad market.

The only success so far – Samsung – slavishly copied the iPad so much that Apple is suing Samsung over that plagiarism.

None of them really want to put in the hard work of creating the market. But because they did not, they have no real understanding of the market or what really works. Apparently copying Apple will only work for one of them.

Non-scientists getting confused about science

by Pink Sherbet Photography

Climatologists figuring out which data makes their models better
[Via Ars Technica]

In order to improve long-term predictions of global climate change, we need more information about the current and changing environment. Unfortunately, in the current era of government budget problems, expensive satellite climate studies are being cut, so it is important to identify the measurements we need the most, choosing among things like air temperature, pressure, humidity, radiance at various wavelengths, radiation transfer to and from the surface, etc.

One possible way of prioritizing is to figure out which of those measures would help us the most when it comes to projecting future climate change, and focus research funds there. A paper that recently appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science presents a statistical method for doing this and shows that surface temperature measurements may not be the most useful data to improve surface temperature predictions.

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Reading the comments reveals a tremendous misunderstanding of what the report was about. It is not about cherry-picking data to get the best model.

Data for things as complex as climate models are collected by a wide variety of methods, each with their own error – some measures are quite precise while others have large error bars.

The researchers took a model which incorporated a lot of data from a wide variety of sources and asked the question – Could a smaller number of more precise measurements provide a model that was just as robust as one where all the data could be included?

They wanted to know that if only some methods for collecting data could be carried out, which would be the most informative? It might be that using 3 highly precise forms of measurements would produce a climate model virtually identical to one which included all the available data.

If that were the case, they we should make sure we continue to accumulate data from those 3 forms of measurement.

And that is what they found. Several measurements from satellites for instance, as well as some terrestrial measurement, can reproduce a climate model as well as including all the data used to create the model. Just a handful of approaches can create a model just as robust as including all the different approaches.

In a time when we seem to be limiting ourselves, to preventing some spending for research, we now have an idea of the relative importance of several data collection methods. we can make sure that he get the data using the approaches that will be most informative.

Apple will shortly be able to pay cash for the rest of the mobile phone makers

Apple could buy the mobile phone industry
[Via asymco]

The second quarter ends in less than two weeks. When it does, I expect Apple will have over $70 billion in Cash, Cash Equivalents, Short-term marketable securities and long-term Marketable Securities. That figure has been growing predictably.

Also predictable has been the decline in value of Apple’s mobile phone competitors. Most spectacularly Nokia and RIM. The enterprise values of the public companies selling 75% of all phones sold world-wide are as follows:

• Nokia $22.6b
• RIM $13.8b
• HTC $25.4b
• Motorola Mobility $4.2b

The values of the profitable phone-making subsidiaries are a bit more difficult to estimate but we can use multiples of trailing operating profits. I generously use the multiple applied to HTC (14).

• Sony Ericsson $0.21b x 14 = $3.0b
• Samsung $3.76b x 14 = $53b

That leaves valuing LG’s phone business which has not been profitable in the last four quarters. I assume a nominal value of $10b. These data points are shown in the following chart:

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Not stock but cash. This gives an idea of the growing cash hoard Apple has. It shows just how it has caught the wave of smartphones at just the right time, and now has a cash pile about as big as entire industries.

That cash hoard allows it to do some possibly interesting things, like perhaps building out a nation/worldwide infrastructure to carry data wirelessly using White-fi, completely circumventing the wireless carriers.

Being unable to adapt kills companies

RIM called a ‘one-trick pony,’ company’s ‘nightmare’ seen as benefit to Apple
[Via AppleInsider]

With Research in Motion’s second quarter of fiscal 2012 officially in the books, analysts on Wall Street have begun to pile on the beleaguered smartphone maker, declaring its outlook bleak as competitors like Apple are poised to gain on its losses.

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A few years ago, back when it was a niche market, RIM was on top of the smartphones. Now that they are much more a mass marketplace, they are failing.

While the same thing could happen to Apple, they have shown the ability to adapt that is simply lacking in most other companies.

Adapt or Die is more than just a motto.

Another one bites the dust

Acer Halves Tablet Forecast
[Via Daring Fireball]

Bloomberg:

Acer Inc., the Taiwanese PC maker battling excess inventory and a share-price slump, more than halved its tablet forecast because of concerns a weaker European economy may damp demand.

Tablet shipments will be about 2.5 million to 3 million units this year, President Jim Wong said in Taipei today. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer JT Wang as recently as May 10 forecast selling 7 million of the devices, which compete with Apple Inc.’s iPad and Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy Tab.

Via Dare Obasanjo, who tweets:

Acer finds out what I’ve always said, there isn’t a tablet market, there’s an iPad market.

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Competing with Apple iPads is not so easy. Samsung may be able to hang on because it was the first “competitor” although that may have happened through back door ‘technology transfer’ fromApple, since Samsung is a major partner in the manufacture of each iPad.

The Macbook Air – the stealth fighter of the PC world

by Travis Isaacs

Sustained growth of MacBook Air may provide Apple $3.0B-per-year opportunity
[Via AppleInsider]

Apple is poised to realize a $3.0 billion opportunity with its line of MacBook Air computers as “break-out” growth of the portables continues, according to one analyst.

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Non-Air Macbook sales were down about 10%, in line with the rest of the PC market. But Macbook Air sales were up.

Yet hardly anyone really notices them. And nobody has really tried to produce a competitor.

With the iCloud and other approaches, having a large PC with a disk drive will not be needed as much. In a post-PC world, something like the MacBook Air – a truly portable laptop with the low weight and battery life of a tablet will become more ubiquitous.

Netbooks do not have the weight or battery advantages of the Air – having a disk drive and a hard drive makes that a reality. The lightest netbooks cost as much as a MacBook, so where is the advantage?

I think that MacBook Airs will become the laptop of choice in a mobile society. Sure, some people will need a Pro, but what do the regular laptops have to offer that a cloud-enabled Air does not?

Suviving rabies without a vaccine

California girl is 6th person to survive rabies without vaccination
[Via Boing Boing]

Rabies is a strange and scary thing. Until 2004, this virus was 100% lethal in humans—without a dose of life-saving vaccine, preferably before symptoms even presented themselves, everybody died. That changed with the introduction of the Milwaukee Protocol, an experimental treatment that calls for patients to be put into medically induced comas and given antiviral drugs. The idea is that, usually, people die not from rabies itself, but from related dysfunction of their nervous system. If you shut down the brain, maybe the dysfunction won’t matter as much and you can keep the person alive long enough for their immune system to kill the rabies. The video above tells the story of the first person to survive rabies thanks to the Milwaukee Protocol and how the Protocol works.

The treatment has not worked on everybody. In general, it’s worked best on older children and teenagers. This week, 8-year-old Precious Reynolds became the 3rd American—and 6th person ever—saved by the Protocol.

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I had never heard of anyone surviving rabies. It is supposed to be 100% fatal but this protocol sounds like it lowers the odds somewhat. They should make a movie about Jeanna Giese, the first to survive..

While she suffered some brain injury, the protocol did its job and gave her a life. It is not a perfect cure but it seems to raise the survival rate from 0% to 10-20%. And there is a lot of therapy needed to recover even a close to normal existence.

Jeanna has now graduated from college. Without the treatment, it would never have happened. Perhaps the doctor should get the Nobel Prize for Medicine for opening up this novel approach.

A nice examination of the scientific method, embedded as it is in human society

by Sarah G…

The science of seeing what you want to see
[Via Butterflies and Wheels]

The weapons we need to defend scientific objectivity are themselves social practices, Kenan Malik points out.

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A very interesting essay which demonstrates that even though individual researchers might make mistake, particularly in interpretation of data –  they are human, after all – the overall process  (the give and take of peer, review publication and replication, etc.) helps us gain better understandings of the world around us.

Our system of science works well BECAUSE we are human, not just in spite of it. Confirmation bias, the bane of all researchers that are human, can confound a lot of work.

But the more people who examine the work, who bring their own views to the work – particularly an adversarial view – the closer we get to an accurate view of the Natural World.

The start of the citizen BBC?

BBC IS Going To Start Live Broadcasting Field Reports From iPhones
[Via Cult of Mac]

The best camera, as they say, is the one you have with you. The BBC seems to be embracing this fact, and so it’ll be rolling out a special app to its reporters hat will allow them to report on breaking news in the field, right from their iPhone.

The new iPhone functionality will go live to BBC employees later this month, and allow their field reporters to upload video, pictures or audio, then upload it directly to the Beeb on either 3G or WiFi.

According to the BBC’s head of news operations, Martin Turner, “Reporters have been using smart phones for a while now but it was never good quality… Now it is beginning to be a realistic possibility to use iPhones and other devices for live reporting, and in the end if you’ve got someone on the scene then you want to be able to use them.”

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How soon after using ‘official’ reporters to upload news will the BBC have an official app that allows citizens to upload video of breaking events?

It would sure make confiscating cell phones by the police much less useful, since the video would already be out there.

I don’t expect them to just use anyone but, just as some bloggers are actually very good journalists, so too would some citizen. They could essentially act as stringers in specific regions.

I wrote about a TV production studio in the front seat of a car. I think it would be very smart for some media to start encouraging this approach from readers.

Another emerging baseball statistic – Night Owl vs. Early Bird

by uwdigitalcollections

Night owls see 45 point batting average boost under the lights
[Via Ars Technica]

The Associated Professional Sleep Societies is busy holding its 25th Anniversary Meeting in Minneapolis, and the meeting has produced 340 pages of abstracts and a flurry of press releases, generally focused on various aspects of nodding off. One of the exceptions tackled the related issue of circadian rhythms, the daily cycles of sleep and wakefulness, using a somewhat unexpected measure of performance: professional baseball. When it comes to batting, it looks like there may actually be morning people and night owls.

On its own, this isn’t a bit of a shock. Chronotypes exist in many animals, and have been linked to a variety of performance tendencies, with different people peaking at different times of the day. There’s even a survey, the Morningness Eveningness Questionnaire, that helps assign people to one of the two categories in the survey’s title. The shock might be how large the impact of chronotype appears to be at the professional level.

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The Night Owls batted over .300 after 10 at night while the Morning batters were at .252. I can see managers taking into account this tendency when it comes to late game pinch hitters.

I wonder if it follows pitchers also? A closer should be more of a Night Owl for example. And what about other statistical measures, such as slugging average?

I imagine there are some interesting sabermetrics being done right now. Baseball has, in many ways, been timeless by definition. There is no clock to watch.

But I can see coaches starting to watch the clock, as will ball players. “Jeter hits 50 points higher after 10 PM. Slow down the game to get him more time to play AFTER 10.”

A small sample but the results are intriguing enough for a larger study.

Apple vs Nokia: Could Microsoft be the big winner?

by CannedTuna

Timing of Nokia agreement suggests a ‘favorable outcome’ for Apple
[Via AppleInsider]

Though Apple will pay Nokia a one-time sum and ongoing royalties as a result of their new settlement, one analyst believes the timing of the agreement suggests Apple was able to negotiate a favorable outcome.

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Apple wins. Nokia wins. And Microsoft scores at the buzzer!

What a difference a few years makes! Nokia, once the top cell phone maker, is now falling fast. Apple is rising. Nokia made a deal with MS to use Windows on its phones sometime in the future. Nokia has new management. MS buys Skype.

MS is supposedly paying Nokia billions to get Windows on Nokia’s phones. Why not just buy Nokia? Maybe that is what MS would like.

But these lawsuits might hamper that. Not only could Nokia lose, really hurting their IP, but the original purpose for all this may have changed.

Supposedly the suits came about because Nokia wanted more from Apple for licensing the IP than it charged others for the same IP. Because of the way these pools of patents were licensed, there was a requirement to charge Fair and normal licensing fees.

Apple felt Nokia was making an exception for them and refused to pay for the licenses, starting all this cascade of lawsuits.

Back when they started, it was to pressure Apple to give up IP of its own. But in the years since, Nokia has bleed money while Apple just hauls it in. The longer the cases went on, the worse the balance sheet for Nokia.

No one wants to buy a company with lawsuits like this hanging over everyone.

Just as it is easier to fix the roof before you sell a house, Nokia removed some doubt from its balance sheet, adding a lot of dollars to its bottom line. Now they have settled. They get a big paycheck and future licensing, just like everyone else does.

Now Nokia looks much better for its future purchase.

As I wrote earlier, MS needs to have a mobile agenda every bit as strong as Apple, especially if it wants to control its future. Thus it needs to have the OS, the hardware and the apps to allow users to carry on a totally mobile lifestyle beholden to no wireless carriers.

Apple has iOS, the iPhone/iPad and FaceTime. MS has Windows and now Skype. They need the hardware under their control.

I expect them to announce the purchase of Nokia in the next few months.