Team, Wins

AL East

Yankees 95

Red Sox 94

Rays 93

Orioles 75

Jays 68

AL Central

Twins 85

White Sox 78

Tigers 77

Indians 73

Royals 70

AL West

Mariners 88

Angels 85

Rangers 84

A’s 77

NL East

Braves 90

Phillies 88

Marlins 85

Mets 76

Nats 70

NL Central

Cardinals 88

Cubs 81

Brewers 80

Reds 78

Pirates 74

Astros 68

NL West

Rockies 93

Giants 87

Dodgers 84

Diamondbacks 80

Padres 77

[click the glasses]

TROLOLOLO

This is very, very bad. As long as we have fiat money and the FDIC, we must have a reserve requirement. Otherwise, there is no check on bank created inflation. Does Bernanke think that the existence of these requirements is causing the banks today to hoard their excess reserves, and eliminating the requirements will re-establish confidence and the good animal spirits? I can’t imagine why else do this.

A pretty strange way to use the valuable time of one of the richest people in the world. It would be awesome if Buffett started doing this type of thing for all his assets.

Most critics of standard statistics advocate the Bayesian approach to statistical reasoning, a methodology that derives from a theorem credited to Bayes, an 18th century English clergyman. His approach uses similar math, but requires the added twist of a “prior probability” — in essence, an informed guess about the expected probability of something in advance of the study. Often this prior probability is more than a mere guess — it could be based, for instance, on previous studies.

Bayesian math seems baffling at first, even to many scientists, but it basically just reflects the need to include previous knowledge when drawing conclusions from new observations. To infer the odds that a barking dog is hungry, for instance, it is not enough to know how often the dog barks when well-fed. You also need to know how often it eats — in order to calculate the prior probability of being hungry. Bayesian math combines a prior probability with observed data to produce an estimate of the likelihood of the hunger hypothesis. “A scientific hypothesis cannot be properly assessed solely by reference to the observational data,” but only by viewing the data in light of prior belief in the hypothesis, wrote George Diamond and Sanjay Kaul of UCLA’s School of Medicine in 2004 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. “Bayes’ theorem is … a logically consistent, mathematically valid, and intuitive way to draw inferences about the hypothesis.”

But Bayesian methods introduce a confusion into the actual meaning of the mathematical concept of “probability” in the real world. Standard or “frequentist” statistics treat probabilities as objective realities; Bayesians treat probabilities as “degrees of belief” based in part on a personal assessment or subjective decision about what to include in the calculation. That’s a tough placebo to swallow for scientists wedded to the “objective” ideal of standard statistics. “Subjective prior beliefs are anathema to the frequentist, who relies instead on a series of ad hoc algorithms that maintain the facade of scientific objectivity,” Diamond and Kaul wrote.

I agree!

When I saw Watchmen, I got the sense that it was a bit more “significant” than other movies based on comics I had seen. That is, there was more to it than say Sin City or V for Vendetta. Are there other graphic novels that reach the level of Watchmen? Suggestions?

I no longer live in New York, but I’m glad to see people organizing against this insanity.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/man_on_internet_almost_falls_into?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

Yes, it is exactly what it says it is.