Senator Warner has announced that he will not run for re-election next year. A sad day for Virginia.

For any of you who have not been following the 54 million dollar pants story, this is your lucky day. Because it seems to have finally come to an end, and because here is a link giving you the low down. As it turns out, the pants weren’t worth 54 million dollars after all.

Basically the story is that a DC judge brings in a pair of pants to the dry cleaners. The pants are lost. After turning down offers of compensation by the owners, the judge sues them for 54 million dollars (down from $67,000,000). Apparently he arrived at this amount by calculating one offense for each day the “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign was up, multiplying by three (because there are three people in the family), and then adding on a couple mil for mental anguish. Plus $500,000 because it was Tuesday.

What I didn’t know before reading this is that the guy had been banned from the store earlier due to a similar incident where he threw a hissy fit over another pair of pants. Then he begged them to take him back, since they were the only dry cleaners in the neighborhood. They did. This turned out to be a mistake.

The article has some coverage of the trial, where apparently the plaintiff broke down on the stand and rushed out of the courtroom in tears. He misses his pants.

The ABC News Law & Justice Unit has calculated that for the original $67 million Pearson sought, he could buy 84,115 new pairs of pants at the $800 value he placed on the missing trousers in court documents. If you stacked those pants up, they would be taller than eight Mount Everests. If you laid them side by side, they would stretch for 48 miles.

Today in Science Express, some MIT scientists announced experimental confirmation for a method of relatively efficient non-radiative wireless power transmission.

Basically, they lit up a 60W lightbulb even though the power source was 2 meters away without making anyone sterile in the process, and it only took 150W of power to pull it off. Imagine setting things on your desk (or on a Microsoft Surface) and having them charge automatically. Imagine never having to plug anything into a cigarette lighter, ever. I doubt you’d want to use it for lights or your air conditioner because of the inefficiency and waste involved, but for small, power unintensive appliences it could be pretty convenient.

I would really like to have access to read this paper for free to figure out how they did it, but maybe later I’ll see if the internet has the info. I’d like to know how the efficiency scales with range. I’m also totally into trying to replicate what they did as long as it doesn’t require a superconducting electromagnet or anything because, seriously, plugging things in is a serious drag. Actually, even if it does require a superconducting electromagnet, I could maybe see if my old physics lab has an old one and, like, some liquid helium sitting around.

An aide to our very own Jim Webb was arrested the other day for trying to carry a loaded pistol along with 2 loaded ammo clips into the US Senate office building.

Maybe someone should let the Capitol Police know that in Virginia, this is perfectly normal, accepted practice.

If you want people to be smarter, all you have to do is tell them that they can make themselves smarter.

Yeah, sounds ridiculous, right? But check it out. It’s a given that most people think that intelligence is fixed - some people are just smarter. Maybe it’s genetics, and maybe it’s upbringing, but once you get to a certain age your intelligence is set.

But most scientific studies do not support that. People actually can make themselves smarter if they work at it. So what would happen if you told people this? How would they act on that knowledge?

Some people did that study. They created two groups of college students, and taught one group that intelligence could be changed. The other group was taught no such thing. The results were fascinating:

Those students who learned about IQ’s malleability improved their grades more than did students who did not receive this message, and also saw academics as more important than did students in the control group. Even more exciting was the finding that Black students benefited more from learning about the malleable nature of intelligence than did White students, showing that this intervention may successfully counteract stereotype threat.

Can this sort of thing counteract the effect of stereotypes enough to make a real difference? In a later study, the evidence suggests that it can. This same type of study was done on seventh graders. The control group learned about memory strategies, and the test group learned about the possibility of intelligence development.

As compared to the control group, students who learned about intelligence’s malleability had higher academic motivation, better academic behavior, and better grades in mathematics. Indeed, students who were members of vulnerable groups (e.g., those who previously thought that intelligence cannot change, those who had low prior mathematics achievement, and female students) had higher mathematics grades following the intelligence-is-malleable intervention, while the grades of similar students in the control group declined. In fact, girls who received the intervention matched and even slightly exceeded the boys in math grades, whereas girls in the control group performed well below the boys.

Now, who knows if this is real. More studies are needed. But IF it is true, it absolutely must be part of the curriculums of schools, starting at the lowest levels. I mean, I would contribute money to a campaign to put PSA’s on TV telling people that they can become smarter if they want to be. I view this as a really big deal.

Someone or something named Morgan Quinto did a ranking of states by “smartness.” They used a variety of measures, such as percentage of high school graduates, college graduates, test scores, education funding, class sizes, education costs, and that sort of thing.

Anyways, Virginia ranked 6th, which is pretty damn good (there are a total of 50 “states”). All of the ones ranked above it are in New England (if you count Maine as New England), which we all know is filled with snobby intelligentsia anyways, so we can disqualify them based on the fact that they use all of their books to cheat and that the winters are really, really cold.

Here is the list.

PS: Arizona is the stupidest state.

Virginia is now officially a swing state. According to that article, the national Republican party is starting to concentrate their efforts (read: money) on 3-4 senate races: Missouri, Tennessee, New Jersey, and, yes, Virginia. This is significant in that it means they are to some degree abandoning Montana, Ohio (the focus of the article), Pennsylvania (home to Santorum, which is kind of a big deal), and Rhode Island. All of these have Republican incumbents and all of them have been leaning more and more to the challenger in the past weeks.

Basically the situation is that the Republicans need to hold on to 50 seats to keep a majority (with Dick Cheney). The only seat they have a real chance of picking up from a Democrat is in New Jersey. If the Democrats can hold onto that seat (which they have for like 30 years or something ridiculous), then they need to win 2 out of the 3 remaining competetive seats, Missouri (statistical tie), Tennessee (statistical tie), and Virginia (statistical tie as of last week or so) to take the Senate. This election is going to be down to the wire (nationally).

I am hugely in favor of having Virginia as a swing state (swing commonwealth?). I feel like it means you are relatively moderate, which is good for its own sake, and also because people pour money into you and do whatever you say if they think they can earn a favourable glance from you in their direction. When was the last time a foreign policy decision was made because of what people in Utah thought? Never. When was the last time a foreign policy decision was made because of what people in Florida thought? Every day since the end of the Cold War (see: Cuba).

So I think this could be a good thing for Virginia (if it is true). It is also a good thing for the voters in Virginia, because it means your vote really might make a difference in November. So make sure you do it.

PS: This site is a good read if you are like me and follow elections the way most people follow sports. It’s updated daily.

A Virginian kid just graduated from UVA in 1, count ‘em 1 year.

He double majored in Math and Physics. He is 18, and came in with 72 AP credits (he took the tests without taking the associated classes). 23 credits in the fall, 37 in the spring, and 3 in the summer. He said his fall semester was nice because he had more time to socialize than he did in high school. He’s a master bridge player also.

He is crazy! The craziest part is that he is apparently some kind of Braniac (but good) - a supergenius, or at least a really hard worker, and yet his dream job is to become a Patent Lawyer (after getting his PhD in Math). Seems like a wierd choice, but I suppose he has earned the right by now to make wierd choices.

Oh also he has so many scholarships that his college education cost him 200$. The article suggests he might be running a profit at this point, depending on how savvy he is on the textbook market and thanks to a research grant he just landed.

Allen and Webb had a debate yesterday on Meet The Press. It took up the entire 1 hour show, and it is available online to watch for free, here. Under the big ugly picture of the two candidates, it says “Click here to watch Sunday’s entire show.” Click on that.

Even though it looks like you could just click the picture, you have to click the little bar thing. Who knows. Also, it’s Windows Media Player and it wouldn’t play on my iBook. But maybe that’s just me.

There’s a transcript here; the link on their main page to it actually goes to last week’s, with Dick Cheney.

I haven’t watched or read this yet, so caveat emptor.

Here’s some MLP (Mindless Link Propogation) for you. Former governor Mark Warner and possible 2008 Presidential candidate made a campaign stop in Second Life, the MMORPG (massively-multiplayer-online-role-playing-game) which I know almost nothing about, but which always seems to have mildly famous people showing up in it.

This kind of blew my mind - it may blow yours when you see his absurd Avatar. Pictures Galore.

Is this bumping Howard Dean’s “successful” Internet campaign strategies up a notch? I think that the problem that these politicians fail to realize that for all the hype you build up on the Internet, people on the Internet simply don’t vote - especially not MMORPG people. Besides, half the time when the Internet loves you, they really think you are stupid and they are just being trolls.

Remember: the Internet never laughs with you. At. Always at.

The Link.

I decided to check out digg.com this evening as is my custom every 2 minutes, and here’s what I found at the very top:

“3 out of 4 women now prefer a plasma tv to a diamond… THANK YOU GOD”

“The study found 77 percent of women surveyed would prefer a new plasma television to a diamond solitaire necklace and 56 percent would opt for a new plasma TV over a weekend vacation in Florida.

Even shoes lost out. The study found 86 percent would prefer a new digital video camera to a pair of designer shoes.”

Wait — women enjoy TV shows and taking pictures of things? Yep! Apparently women got tired of voting and birth control, and they turned their minds to more modern things.

But it turns out that even women haven’t noticed their newfound nerdiness. Another study reveals that women are just as good as men at using the internet, but are convinced that they’re much worse.

‘When all the data was assembled and analyzed, Hargittai uncovered “no statistically significant difference between men’s and women’s ability to find content on the Web,” after taking into account external factors such as income, education and years of online experience.

Yet, Hargittai wrote in the June issue of Social Science Quarterly, “Men are more likely to think of themselves as better skilled than women. In fact, not one woman thought of herself as an ‘expert’ user, and not one man thought of himself as a complete novice.”’

You don’t have to think too hard about black and white dolls, Stanford Prisons, and allegedly smart kids to understand what’s going on here. The shocking thing is that women, despite thinking they aren’t very good at internets, did as well as they did.

But even if modern women don’t know that they’re nerds, today’s young girls are smart and they know it. Heck, it is looking like women don’t need men for much of anything anymore. Maybe we shouldn’t be thanking our deity of choice quite yet, men.

I, for one, welcome our new female overlords, and I recommend that you other male readers of Haduken do the same if you don’t want to find yourselves mining diamonds in Africa for pretty necklaces when the revolution comes. Or, you know. Maybe they’ll make us work in plasma TV sweatshops.

We all remember the recent Governor’s race in Virginia. We remember how Kilgore warned us about how Kaine would love to have saved Hitler from defeat in World War II. How if, given the chance, he would gladly have pardoned perhaps the most evil man in history from the death penalty.

Well, now all of our worst nightmares have come true. Tim Kaine has pardoned the only witch ever caught and executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Of course, witches are notorious as the brides of Satan, which at the least is just as bad as Hitler, if not worse. They are certainly more dangerous, with their skills in magick.

Witches are very difficult to catch, and they are very wily when brought to trial, using every trick in the book to escape punishment so they can return to their tasty gingerbread houses. That is why in over 400 years, Virginia has only managed to successfully prosecute (at the cost of hundreds of taxpayer dollars) this one, single witch.

And now, Kaine has thrown all of this hard work away, all because of his love of Hitler. He couldn’t pardon Hitler, since (as far as we know) Hitler never came to Virginia, so he picked the next best thing - a proven witch.

Shameful.

This is important and exciting news. Meta-news, really. Virginia is finally in the news for something good.

No mention of our ridiculous lawmakers embarassing themselves, no mention of the CSA to help the readers find us on a map, nothing but good old fashioned math news.

Congrats to Gaurav!

Hey there. How are you? You look good. I know, I can’t believe it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other either. It’s just, you know. Work’s been crazy, and I’ve been out of town, and I just haven’t had a chance to call. I hope you haven’t been lonely. Oh, I’m sorry. I hate to hear that you’re feeling down because no one will write any posts for Haduken. Let me tell you something that’ll cheer you up. See, what I do, when I’m feeling lonely, is to find someone to hold me, and then I curl up in front of my computer for a good, old fashioned link warp up. Well, how about it? Do you want to click some links?

No?

How about now that I post this sweet-ass picture?

Okay then! First of all, have you ever wondered how to cook rice perfectly?

Have you ever wanted to know where someone was?”

For $100 and $6 per month, you can have a cellphone track its location on a website. You can conveniently leave the cellphone somewhere or give it to someone if you want to get really tricky.

Okay, I wrote that quote. But seriously, that’s what the link is about.

Is coffee just underpants remover for adults?

Is google news not tricky enough for you?

Spotback is a new breed of personalized news service. It is designed to quickly learn each user’s fields of interest and style by analyzing how users rate and interact with news information. It then offers users the most interesting, relevant and hard to filter news information personally tailored to their taste. Spotback uses sophisticated algorithms that analyze social behavior.

How awesome would it be to have a computer that is made of wood.

And lastly, here’s an article explaining a new twist on an old theory as to why we haven’t met any aliens - they’re all playing videogames. Why colonize Earth for real when you could just play the video game about colonizing Earth, based on the movie about colonizing Earth? If your civilization is advanced enough for intersteller travel, you probably have a really really fun version of Starcraft that you’d rather be playing. If you’re bored, and you made it to the bitter end of this link wrap up, check it out.

Yesterday I wasted a lot of time over at ytmnd.com and though I would share with you the fruits of my labour. Make sure you’ve got sound on for these.

• The wikipedia article explaining ytmnd’s
• Of course the original.
• Chunk is indestructible feat. Captain Picard.
• The Nooooo’ller coaster
• Batman: ualuealuealeuale
• The emosong
• Ducktails in japanese

So there you go waste some time.

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