The only Twitter you'll ever need to follow
- If there were a sweepstakes for bat-shit craziest State in the
Union, Florida would win hands down. It seems everyday a news headline
comes out of the Sunshine state like 'Florida man, arrested for getting
drunk and punching a manatee' or 'Florida man, arrested for trying to
return a used enima set to CVS pharmacy'. With all that craziness it's
good to know it's all documented in one handy twitter feed for you.
Introducing @_FloridaMan
Some quick highlights urr lowlights from Gator country...
Florida Man
@_FloridaMan
Real-life stories of the world's worst superhero.
Everywhere, FL
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Florida Man Accused Of Masturbating In Front Of Girl, Claims He Was Fixing Hole In His Pants | http://bit.ly/XwmVkZ
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Florida Man Gave Teller Full Name While Robbing Bank | http://bit.ly/YPMA9q
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Florida Man Said He Was Within His Rights After Shooting Neighbor's Cats | http://buff.ly/Y7f7r0
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Florida Man Robs Girl Scouts Selling Cookies | http://bit.ly/ZARk1A
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Florida Man Spent Six Months Posing As Deputy To Impress Girlfriend; Actually Works At Pizza Hut | http://on.wtsp.com/YXcHsS
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Police Say Florida Man Tried To Eat Bag Of Meth | http://bit.ly/XDuvIh
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Florida Man Arrested For Throwing Taco Bell Burrito At Brother-In-Law's Face | http://bit.ly/XX4zth
Are We Sure We Want To Get Rid of the Postal Service? - The US Post Office is our favorite whipping boy when we want to conjure the image of some incompetent, bumbling bureaucracy. But consider this, last year the USPS delivered 160 Billion pieces of mail to 330 million Americans, and 99% of the time they got it right. What other industry whether public or private can boast a 99% accuracy rate at that volume?
If you think about it, our USPS is a modern marvel. It connects Americans across 1.3 million square miles with each other and to the economy. It practically invented the science of logistics and supply chain management that are used in business today. It brought new technology such as digital scanners, and automated sorting to practical use. It's what allows a letter sent from Fairbanks, Alaska to New York City in less than 4 days.
Now you may say yeah that's nice but people don't write letters anymore, so no wonder they're losing money. But the USPS would be pulling a profit had Congress not done something stupid back in 2006 as reported by Jesse Lichtenstein from Esquire. They made the USPS pay into it's pension and healthcare fund 75 years into the future. Most private companies and Gov't only pay up to 30 years in the future and would be like having to pay 20% of your paycheck into a retirement account you could not use until 75 years from now. And why? Because private shippers like UPS and FedEx lobbied Congress to the tune of $100 million last decade to make it a planned failure so when the postal service goes bankrupt they could privatize it and grab the estimated $80 Billion in revenue the USPS makes every year.
Currently that letter from Fairbanks to New York would be the price of a postage stamp at $0.46. Try sending it UPS or FedEx for that distance and within 4 days and it would cost at least $6. When you factor in part of the economy directly dependent on mail delivery like Amazon or catalogs, the USPS helps generate 8.5 million jobs and $1 Trillion for the private sector. Imagine what an increase in shipping costs would do the economy if turned over to private shippers. But surely UPS and FedEx would never raise prices unincumbered from Congressional oversight just to ensure profit, right? Sometimes we don't know how much things mean until they are gone.
So here's that comprehensive, groundbreaking study of porn stars you probably didn't ask for - A researcher in England named Jon Millward shows what happened when statisticians have too much time on their hands. He recently released a study of 10,000 porn stars culling data from IMDB and results are below (don't worry safe for work)
The most common bra size is 34
The most common hair color for female porn stars is brown. Brunettes (including black and brown hair) outnumber blondes nearly 2 to 1
The most common female role appearing in a film title is "teen." "MILF" and "wife" come in second and third.
The most common female porn star first name is Nikki. The most common male first name is David.
The average porn star weight is 117 lbs for women, 167.5 lbs for men.
The average porn star height is 5'5" for women, 5'10" for men.
Majority of porn stars came from California
So here's that revealing, all access reality show of Ke$ha you probably didn't ask for - MTV announced the debut of Ke$ha My Crazy Life. The hook here is come for the craziness but stay for the weirdness like the one segment where she drinks her own urine. There's one way to be the new Mentos Breath Freshner spokesperson.
Well Better Late Than Never - Mississippi became the last of the 50 states to ratify the 13th amendment of the US Constitution (the one that says people are not property so no slavery) in February of THIS year. Nothing like waiting 148 years after the Civil War to finally affirm the abolition of slavery. Apparently it did ratify it back in 1995 but never got around to actually notify the Office of the Federal Register which would have made it official. It was brought to their attention after a ole Miss University professor saw the film 'Lincoln' and did a little research. Given that state's history of race relations I'm sure that's not ALL embarrassing.
Politico asks if it's too early to start thinking about the 2016 Presidential election - Although it was a rhetorical question the answer of course is an unequivocal yes. Yes it is too early. Like 3 and half years too early.
Quite Possibly The Whitest Sentence Ever Written - A hacker made a brazen and daring technological feat by breaking into George W. Bush's personal e-mail and revealed a bombshell to website thesmokinggun.com...the real reason we invaded Iraq? An affair with Condoleezza Rice?...umm, nope..some 'interesting' artwork (see below) but mostly proof that wealthy, white male plutocrats are very boring people.
One of the exposed e-mails came from Jim Nantz, CBS Sports play-by-play broadcaster, and hero for the upper class, country club set. That intrigued the sports blog deadspin.com to look into that matter and they discovered the writers at thesmokinggun had inadvertently created an important cultural artifact of the English language: Quite possibly the whitest, most WASPiest sentence possibly ever written.
From the original story:
Both Hemingway and Nantz corresponded with Bush, 88, about playing golf and visiting the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Let Issac Rauch from deadspin take it from here:
We'll never have a whiter sentence than one recounting correspondence between two WASP icons—George H.W. Bush and Jim Nantz—about making a golf trio with some guy named Hemingway and hanging out at a compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. What do you think those guys talk about? Braided belts? Saltines? The dangers of women's soccer? We can only hope someone leaks those conversations as well, so we can use the paper they're printed on to make drywall.
One Truly Is The Loneliest Number - In this month's edition of what the hell can you do with a geography degree, we have Dorothy Gambrell of Psychology Today who did analysis of Craigslist's 'missed connections' where people try to find some hottie they saw out in public but couldn't get their number or something. Her analysis is mapped below, and apparently if you live down South WalMart is the new single's bar. New possible pick-up lines include:
'Mind if I buy you a 12 pack of sprite on sale for $2.99'
'I saw you across the Layaway counter and your eyes just roped me in'
'Enough with small talk, why don't we take this party over to Sam's Club'
'Uhh, wanna f**k?'
About that Gay Pope Rumor - Master blogger Andrew Sullivan (gay himself) posited that Pope Benedict XVI was probably a closeted gay man given the unusual living arrangements in retirement. He will be sharing an apartment with Georg Gaenswein at the Vatican who was his personal secretary and were apparently very close. Add on rumors from Italian newspaper La Rupubblica of a 'lavendar mafia' running things behind scenes that was about to be exposed. Already on thin ice with his role in covering up child abuse scandals, the prospect of a 'gay cabal' scandal apparently was the other shoe (red lavendar from Prada) to drop, forcing his resignation.
I'm very skeptical. Just because the Vatican hierarchy enjoy dressing up in glitzy costumes and have high camp rituals does not make them gay. Nor does the fact the College of Cardinals are all a bunch of dudes who like to hang out drinking beer and discuss other people's sexuality while in agay bathhouse sauna. Or the time they said women can't be priests because
'uh ewwww, girls' No the pope isn't gay at all.
And if he were, a majority of Catholics would be 'oh, that's cool. I got no problem with that' So the Catholic hierarchy could perhaps evolve on the issue.
What if I told you an obscure mathematical process could prevent the next mass shooting? - Some people might remember the show 'Numb3rs' where a mathematical genius teamed with his older brother FBI agent to solve complex crimes and prevent ones from happening by use college Algebra. As convoluted and far-fetched the series may have been in general, using math to solve or prevent crime wasn't far off. In statistics there is a technique called data mining that uses various mathematical formulas to comb through millions and millions of data records from bank, credit card, and internet records to find patterns that can predict human behavior. And in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, there actually exists a quantitative tool that can be employed immediately to prevent the most feared of all random violence, the deranged mass murderer carrying a gun.
Credit card companies have algorithms that can flag problematic purchases to prevent potential fraud or theft. Say you use your card mostly at Target for groceries or basic household items, and then all of a sudden your card is on a shopping spree at high end jewelry stores in Beverly Hills. The credit card company will stop or hold the transaction until they can verify you are actually the one doing the purchasing. How did credit card companies know to act? Because a mathematical algorithm said those jewelry purchases were out of the ordinary from your normal behavior and something was wrong.
As tech writer John Pavely demonstrated on the Huffington Post, in the same way this can be applied to an algorithm to detect possibly then next James Holmes, Seung-Hui Cho, or Jared Loughner:
- We know mass shooters, fit a certain demographic profile, mostly white, exclusively male, and generally between the ages of 18 to 35.
- We know mass shooters were not frequent purchasers of firearms and ammunition until right before their sprees. Unlike normal gun owners who would have a regular purchasing pattern such as coinciding with hunting season, gun club memberships, etc.
- We know many had behavioral problems so add in scripts for anti-depressants or anti-psychotics, fees for mental health services, admits to psychiatric hospitals such as Cho, the Virginia Tech killer was just months before his spree.
- We know many mass shooters were exceptionally bright but very troubled with many dropping out or expelled from college prior to their spree. This also included many run ins with the law or school officials for disruptive or unusual behavior.
Add in these variables to a predictive algorithm and it could alert law enforcement and gun sellers to potential trouble. Take Holmes, the Aurora shooter who was withdrawing from grad school at Univ. of Colorado, had visits with three mental health professionals at his school's health service, and bought several guns including a AR-15 assault rifle and 2 Glock handguns all within four months of his movie theater rampage. So when Holmes tries to buy 6,000 rounds of ammunition off the Internet the algorithm could shut that transaction down and force Holmes to demonstrate in-person to a gun store clerk or police officer that he is indeed of sound mind. Which a gun club owner in Byers, Colorado most definitely did not when he rejected Holmes' application for firearm training.
Many civil libertarians and gun owners will understandably decry how invasive of privacy this can be but here's the deal, banks and credit card companies have already perfected and use data mining and share these predictive algorithms with retailers and marketers to sell you stuff. And this includes Gov't agencies like Homeland Security and the FBI to track potential terrorist cells when they buy things like one-way airline tickets, large quantities of industrial materials that could be used in a bomb, and you guessed it firearms. But unless the gun industry can somehow effectively manage to prevent guns from ending up in the wrong hands, and in lieu of any effective gun control. Data mining is the least disruptive, cost effective method to separate lawful gun owners from those about jump off the deep end and do harm.
Some quick highlights urr lowlights from Gator country...
Florida Man
@_FloridaMan
Real-life stories of the world's worst superhero.
Everywhere, FL
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Florida Man Accused Of Masturbating In Front Of Girl, Claims He Was Fixing Hole In His Pants | http://bit.ly/XwmVkZ
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Florida Man Gave Teller Full Name While Robbing Bank | http://bit.ly/YPMA9q
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Florida Man Said He Was Within His Rights After Shooting Neighbor's Cats | http://buff.ly/Y7f7r0
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Florida Man Robs Girl Scouts Selling Cookies | http://bit.ly/ZARk1A
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Florida Man Spent Six Months Posing As Deputy To Impress Girlfriend; Actually Works At Pizza Hut | http://on.wtsp.com/YXcHsS
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Police Say Florida Man Tried To Eat Bag Of Meth | http://bit.ly/XDuvIh
Florida Man @_FloridaMan
Florida Man Arrested For Throwing Taco Bell Burrito At Brother-In-Law's Face | http://bit.ly/XX4zth
Are We Sure We Want To Get Rid of the Postal Service? - The US Post Office is our favorite whipping boy when we want to conjure the image of some incompetent, bumbling bureaucracy. But consider this, last year the USPS delivered 160 Billion pieces of mail to 330 million Americans, and 99% of the time they got it right. What other industry whether public or private can boast a 99% accuracy rate at that volume?
If you think about it, our USPS is a modern marvel. It connects Americans across 1.3 million square miles with each other and to the economy. It practically invented the science of logistics and supply chain management that are used in business today. It brought new technology such as digital scanners, and automated sorting to practical use. It's what allows a letter sent from Fairbanks, Alaska to New York City in less than 4 days.
Now you may say yeah that's nice but people don't write letters anymore, so no wonder they're losing money. But the USPS would be pulling a profit had Congress not done something stupid back in 2006 as reported by Jesse Lichtenstein from Esquire. They made the USPS pay into it's pension and healthcare fund 75 years into the future. Most private companies and Gov't only pay up to 30 years in the future and would be like having to pay 20% of your paycheck into a retirement account you could not use until 75 years from now. And why? Because private shippers like UPS and FedEx lobbied Congress to the tune of $100 million last decade to make it a planned failure so when the postal service goes bankrupt they could privatize it and grab the estimated $80 Billion in revenue the USPS makes every year.
Currently that letter from Fairbanks to New York would be the price of a postage stamp at $0.46. Try sending it UPS or FedEx for that distance and within 4 days and it would cost at least $6. When you factor in part of the economy directly dependent on mail delivery like Amazon or catalogs, the USPS helps generate 8.5 million jobs and $1 Trillion for the private sector. Imagine what an increase in shipping costs would do the economy if turned over to private shippers. But surely UPS and FedEx would never raise prices unincumbered from Congressional oversight just to ensure profit, right? Sometimes we don't know how much things mean until they are gone.
So here's that comprehensive, groundbreaking study of porn stars you probably didn't ask for - A researcher in England named Jon Millward shows what happened when statisticians have too much time on their hands. He recently released a study of 10,000 porn stars culling data from IMDB and results are below (don't worry safe for work)
The most common bra size is 34
The most common hair color for female porn stars is brown. Brunettes (including black and brown hair) outnumber blondes nearly 2 to 1
The most common female role appearing in a film title is "teen." "MILF" and "wife" come in second and third.
The most common female porn star first name is Nikki. The most common male first name is David.
The average porn star weight is 117 lbs for women, 167.5 lbs for men.
The average porn star height is 5'5" for women, 5'10" for men.
Majority of porn stars came from California
So here's that revealing, all access reality show of Ke$ha you probably didn't ask for - MTV announced the debut of Ke$ha My Crazy Life. The hook here is come for the craziness but stay for the weirdness like the one segment where she drinks her own urine. There's one way to be the new Mentos Breath Freshner spokesperson.
Well Better Late Than Never - Mississippi became the last of the 50 states to ratify the 13th amendment of the US Constitution (the one that says people are not property so no slavery) in February of THIS year. Nothing like waiting 148 years after the Civil War to finally affirm the abolition of slavery. Apparently it did ratify it back in 1995 but never got around to actually notify the Office of the Federal Register which would have made it official. It was brought to their attention after a ole Miss University professor saw the film 'Lincoln' and did a little research. Given that state's history of race relations I'm sure that's not ALL embarrassing.
Politico asks if it's too early to start thinking about the 2016 Presidential election - Although it was a rhetorical question the answer of course is an unequivocal yes. Yes it is too early. Like 3 and half years too early.
Quite Possibly The Whitest Sentence Ever Written - A hacker made a brazen and daring technological feat by breaking into George W. Bush's personal e-mail and revealed a bombshell to website thesmokinggun.com...the real reason we invaded Iraq? An affair with Condoleezza Rice?...umm, nope..some 'interesting' artwork (see below) but mostly proof that wealthy, white male plutocrats are very boring people.
One of the exposed e-mails came from Jim Nantz, CBS Sports play-by-play broadcaster, and hero for the upper class, country club set. That intrigued the sports blog deadspin.com to look into that matter and they discovered the writers at thesmokinggun had inadvertently created an important cultural artifact of the English language: Quite possibly the whitest, most WASPiest sentence possibly ever written.
From the original story:
Both Hemingway and Nantz corresponded with Bush, 88, about playing golf and visiting the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Let Issac Rauch from deadspin take it from here:
We'll never have a whiter sentence than one recounting correspondence between two WASP icons—George H.W. Bush and Jim Nantz—about making a golf trio with some guy named Hemingway and hanging out at a compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. What do you think those guys talk about? Braided belts? Saltines? The dangers of women's soccer? We can only hope someone leaks those conversations as well, so we can use the paper they're printed on to make drywall.
One Truly Is The Loneliest Number - In this month's edition of what the hell can you do with a geography degree, we have Dorothy Gambrell of Psychology Today who did analysis of Craigslist's 'missed connections' where people try to find some hottie they saw out in public but couldn't get their number or something. Her analysis is mapped below, and apparently if you live down South WalMart is the new single's bar. New possible pick-up lines include:
'Mind if I buy you a 12 pack of sprite on sale for $2.99'
'I saw you across the Layaway counter and your eyes just roped me in'
'Enough with small talk, why don't we take this party over to Sam's Club'
'Uhh, wanna f**k?'
About that Gay Pope Rumor - Master blogger Andrew Sullivan (gay himself) posited that Pope Benedict XVI was probably a closeted gay man given the unusual living arrangements in retirement. He will be sharing an apartment with Georg Gaenswein at the Vatican who was his personal secretary and were apparently very close. Add on rumors from Italian newspaper La Rupubblica of a 'lavendar mafia' running things behind scenes that was about to be exposed. Already on thin ice with his role in covering up child abuse scandals, the prospect of a 'gay cabal' scandal apparently was the other shoe (red lavendar from Prada) to drop, forcing his resignation.
I'm very skeptical. Just because the Vatican hierarchy enjoy dressing up in glitzy costumes and have high camp rituals does not make them gay. Nor does the fact the College of Cardinals are all a bunch of dudes who like to hang out drinking beer and discuss other people's sexuality while in a
And if he were, a majority of Catholics would be 'oh, that's cool. I got no problem with that' So the Catholic hierarchy could perhaps evolve on the issue.
What if I told you an obscure mathematical process could prevent the next mass shooting? - Some people might remember the show 'Numb3rs' where a mathematical genius teamed with his older brother FBI agent to solve complex crimes and prevent ones from happening by use college Algebra. As convoluted and far-fetched the series may have been in general, using math to solve or prevent crime wasn't far off. In statistics there is a technique called data mining that uses various mathematical formulas to comb through millions and millions of data records from bank, credit card, and internet records to find patterns that can predict human behavior. And in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, there actually exists a quantitative tool that can be employed immediately to prevent the most feared of all random violence, the deranged mass murderer carrying a gun.
Credit card companies have algorithms that can flag problematic purchases to prevent potential fraud or theft. Say you use your card mostly at Target for groceries or basic household items, and then all of a sudden your card is on a shopping spree at high end jewelry stores in Beverly Hills. The credit card company will stop or hold the transaction until they can verify you are actually the one doing the purchasing. How did credit card companies know to act? Because a mathematical algorithm said those jewelry purchases were out of the ordinary from your normal behavior and something was wrong.
As tech writer John Pavely demonstrated on the Huffington Post, in the same way this can be applied to an algorithm to detect possibly then next James Holmes, Seung-Hui Cho, or Jared Loughner:
- We know mass shooters, fit a certain demographic profile, mostly white, exclusively male, and generally between the ages of 18 to 35.
- We know mass shooters were not frequent purchasers of firearms and ammunition until right before their sprees. Unlike normal gun owners who would have a regular purchasing pattern such as coinciding with hunting season, gun club memberships, etc.
- We know many had behavioral problems so add in scripts for anti-depressants or anti-psychotics, fees for mental health services, admits to psychiatric hospitals such as Cho, the Virginia Tech killer was just months before his spree.
- We know many mass shooters were exceptionally bright but very troubled with many dropping out or expelled from college prior to their spree. This also included many run ins with the law or school officials for disruptive or unusual behavior.
Add in these variables to a predictive algorithm and it could alert law enforcement and gun sellers to potential trouble. Take Holmes, the Aurora shooter who was withdrawing from grad school at Univ. of Colorado, had visits with three mental health professionals at his school's health service, and bought several guns including a AR-15 assault rifle and 2 Glock handguns all within four months of his movie theater rampage. So when Holmes tries to buy 6,000 rounds of ammunition off the Internet the algorithm could shut that transaction down and force Holmes to demonstrate in-person to a gun store clerk or police officer that he is indeed of sound mind. Which a gun club owner in Byers, Colorado most definitely did not when he rejected Holmes' application for firearm training.
Many civil libertarians and gun owners will understandably decry how invasive of privacy this can be but here's the deal, banks and credit card companies have already perfected and use data mining and share these predictive algorithms with retailers and marketers to sell you stuff. And this includes Gov't agencies like Homeland Security and the FBI to track potential terrorist cells when they buy things like one-way airline tickets, large quantities of industrial materials that could be used in a bomb, and you guessed it firearms. But unless the gun industry can somehow effectively manage to prevent guns from ending up in the wrong hands, and in lieu of any effective gun control. Data mining is the least disruptive, cost effective method to separate lawful gun owners from those about jump off the deep end and do harm.
