kurtadb

Helicopters on Thursday found the body of a hiker missing since the weekend in Rocky Mountain National Park.

That's another Japanese word that you'll be learning. Here's why:

That video was taken from this article by Stephanie Mlot in PCMag: "Toyota Fuel-Cell Car Expected Next Fall" (11/18/14).

One thing I like about this video, in addition to the eye-popping car, is the fact that a Japanese man speaking with a noticeable accent stars in it. (It has an effect similar to when German engineers with conspicuous accents talk about BMWs, Mercedes Benzs, Volkwagens, and Audis. Rather than being offputting, the German accent coming from automobile engineers makes you want to trust them and buy their cars.) I think it's part of a plan to emphasize the Japaneseness of this new hydrogen powered car, and that is certainly true of the name. Up to now, how many Japanese cars being sold in America have model names that are Japanese?

From the video, we already know that "Mirai" means "future". All well and good, but let's talk about it a bit more. In Chinese characters, that would be written 未来 (simpl.) / 未來 (trad.). In Mandarin this word is pronounced wèilái, in Cantonese it is pronounced mei6 loi4/lei4. Character by character, the word means "has not yet | come". That evinces a very different idea of futurity than the English word, which comes from Latin futūrus and signifies "going / about to be; that is to be".

The Latin word derives from PIE *bheuə-, also *bheu-, via its suffixed form *bhu-tu‑. Thus our English word "future" is firmly rooted in an Indo-European belief that it will come to pass / be / exist. The Sinitic term, in contrast, is more skeptical, and indicates an uncertainty about the very possibility of that which has not yet arrived. It seems to me that, if we accept the philosophical implications of the term, mirai / wèilái will keep receding and never quite arrive.

I suspect that, if we look into words for "future" in various languages of the world, we will find a wide variety of different attitudes toward its nature.

[Thanks to Thomas Lee Mair]

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah woman says she encountered only brief resistance when she recently had her driver's license photo taken while wearing a colander on her head as a religious statement.

0h h1 is a super simple Sudoku-type game where you need to keep the number of blue and red tiles in each row and column the same. I don't know how people keep coming up with such simple games that are still challenging...you'd think they'd all have been invented by now. (via waxy)

Tags: video games

According to a recent survey¹ of citizens in 14 countries, the United States ranks second in the amount of ignorance about things like teenage birth rates, unemployment rates, and immigration. Only Italians were more clueless. You can take a version of the test yourself and then view the results (results for the US only). Some of the more notable results:

- Americans guessed that the unemployment rate is 32%, instead of the actual rate of 6%.

- While 1% of the US population identifies as Muslim, Americans guessed 15%. 15!

- 70% of Americans guessed the US murder rate was rising. It has decreased by more than half since 1992.

- Americans guessed that almost 24% of girls aged 15-19 give birth each year. Actually, 3.1%.

Then again, what do Americans hear about constantly on the news? Unemployment, Muslims & immigration, murder, and teen pregnancy. It's little wonder the guesses on those are so high.

1. As you know, survey results are to be taken with a grain of salt. ↩

Tags: USA

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued a poor visibility warning from Sunday evening through Monday evening in the seven-county Denver-Boulder metropolitan area.

I look forward to every Thursday in a way that I don't remember awaiting the release of an episode of anything recently. There's something very intimate about someone telling you a story that close to your ears.

That's Jason Reitman echoing the thoughts of the many listeners who have turned Serial -- a new podcast from the producers of This American Life -- into the fastest growing podcast ever. Twenty years ago, we were all hooked on TV and radio. Twenty years of technology advances later, we're all hooked on TV and radio. Content is king.

For those who are already knee deep in the Serial serial, Vox has a complete guide to every person in the podcast.

Syndicated from NextDraft. Subscribe today or grab the iOS app.

Tags: audio   podcasts   Serial

If it's any consolation to motorists stuck in recent epic traffic jams in Cherry Creek, the neighborhood is paying it back to city coffers.

Eden Hazard had a remarkable 2012-13 season in the English Premier League. Having begun the season at the age of twenty-one, he scored nine goals, of which only two came from the penalty spot, and assisted on a further eleven—all in fewer than twenty-eight hundred minutes of action. Only his then-teammate Juan Mata had more assists, with twelve; Mata also played the equivalent of one more entire match. But did this mean that the two Chelsea men were the best passers in England?

Probably not. For many years, soccer has been using assists as a measure of passing prowess on the pitch. That’s too bad, because it’s a pretty meaningless statistic.

Let’s start with the obvious. Goals win soccer games, and shots lead to goals. To take shots, teams usually need to pass the ball into a position where reaching the goal is both feasible and likely. Assists only reward players whose passes happen to result in goals. The question is whether the player whose passes result in goals more often is really a more skillful player than one whose passes are squandered.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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Give Yourself Away

With the season upon us, I thought I’d take some time to summarize some of the new information available I put on the site over the summer. If you’ve paid close attention to my twitter feed, then these aren’t new. But most people don’t, so here goes.

- Conference historical summaries. If you want a clearer picture of how fast a conference has played at since 2002 or how many wins it has taken to win the league title, the conference historical summary is your place. It also provides a useful reference for membership changes. (Accessible by clicking All on the conference standings page.)

- Souped-up lineup info. If you were around at the end of last season, you saw that I posted the most frequently used lineups for each team on the team page. I’ve added some visual markup to those which depict the usage and perimeter shooting tendencies of each player.

- Depth charts. I’ve added depth charts to the team page as well. It’s all dependent on my yet-to-be-patented position identification technology, which is guaranteed to be 80% accurate in identifying a player’s correct position. Keep in mind it may take a few days into the season for these to appear. And like almost everything on my site, this information ignores games against non D-I teams.

- Opponent tracker. Opponent tracker will allow you to rank a team’s opponents by various stats. You can find things like which or your opponents has the best offense or lowest turnover percentage and other stuff. (Accessible by clicking the opponent tracker link above a team’s schedule on the team page.)

- Benchwarmers added to roster. Many years ago when I set up the player stats, I made it so a player had to appear in 10 percent of his team’s minutes to show up on the player page. Sample size and all that. But sometimes, there are important players like Creighton’s Zach Hanson or Florida’s Chris Walker that don’t make that threshold and we still want to either acknowledge their existence. So now all players that play between 2 and 10 percent of their team’s minutes show up in the benchwarmers category.

- Career shooting numbers added to player summary. Nothing huge here, but on the player summary I have a player’s career shooting numbers. This is actually a good time to remind you that starting with last season, I no longer count player stats against non D-I opponents, so what you see on my site may differ from what you see in other publications.

- kPOY tracking all season. This year, I’ve turned on the kPOY computer at the start of the season for entertainment purposes. The kPOY leaderboard may look absurd for the first month of the season and slightly goofy for a month after that. But hey, when Eastern Washington’s Venky Jois goes for 20 and 12 tomorrow morning, we’ll all get a kick about him being the early frontrunner for the kPOY, yes? (accessible by clicking on the player stats link at the top of the page, then clicking on kPOY.)

- 2002 season data. I’ve added tempo-free stats for the 2002 season. Player data is available for a limited number of teams.

More stuff is coming. I’ll have player stats for conference games only, a tool to more easily see trends in playing time and other cool things. Stay tuned!

My kids and I went to the new Lego Store in the Flatiron this weekend, and I again noticed how freaking expensive Lego sets are. The Death Star set is $400 + tax and even small sets are $30-40. Afterward I wondered if renting Lego sets would be an economically viable business and sure enough, someone is giving it a go: Pley. It works a bit like Netflix's DVD service: you pay a flat subscription fee each month and can check out as many sets as you want, one at a time. Doesn't look like they rent out Lego Stephen Hawking or Lego Mona Lisa though.

Tags: business   Legos

From first-time players to Olympic athletes, any curler will be quick to say it's all about the ice. After decades of competing for ice time with hockey leagues across the metro area, members of the Denver Curling Club say they're ecstatic to finally have a dedicated facility whose sole purpose is creating the perfect sheet of curling ice.

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Before all three rings fill up, while the audience is still finding seats and the acrobats are checking the wires, the circus starts with a lone clown in the spotlight. Eric Wemple’s Washington Post headline was promising — too promising. “Fox News cuts ties with Ben Carson“:

Following an ABC News report that Fox News contributor Ben Carson is set to air an hourlong ad/documentary “introducing himself to the American people” as part of a 2016 Republican presidential bid, Fox News has cut ties with him, according to a Fox spokeswoman…

The next step in that progression is a surprise to absolutely no one. Carson, 63, has openly talked of the appeal of running for president, including on the airwaves of Fox News… Carson at one point expressed concern that a 2016 election might not even be held because there might be “so much anarchy going on.”

In the 2012 election cycle, Fox News ended the contributorships of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as those men moved toward presidential bids. A similar cutoff occurred with Scott Brown, who was a Fox News contributor prior to his failed 2014 New Hampshire Senate campaign…

And we all remember how well those three guys did, out in the world beyond the Wingnut Wurlitzer. I’m assuming Dr. Carson’s new fillum is modeled on the Gingrich model (expand awareness of the brand, to increase speaking fees & product sales) rather than that of Sanctorum (establish ‘next in line’ credentials, while simultaneously making even your paid supporters loathe you) or Cosmo Boy (lose repeatedly, but in a manner entertaining enough to keep one’s name ‘relevant’).

Because I love you guys, I risked the good health of my hard drive by spelunking over to the Carson infomercial’s loudest proponents, Dead Andrew Breitbart’s idiot media offspring:

Armstrong Williams, whom Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon called an “entrepreneur, media personality, strategic thinker, and dear friend of Andrew Breitbart,” joined Breitbart News Saturday to announce the nationwide release of the biographical documentary on Dr. Ben Carson, A Breath of Fresh Air: A New Prescription for America…

People will be so impressed with Carson, according to Williams, because “they think that they know him. But, they will be amazed when they see this story. He is such a good man. He is such a genius. He’s different. He’s not an ideologue. He’s a very caring person.” Beyond this, however, Williams reminds us that Carson is a surgeon by training and, as a result, he is very decisive…

Bannon asked Williams why would Carson want to descend into the “muck and grime” of what modern politics has become. Williams replied, “As his business manager, it is the last thing that I want him to do.” But Williams goes on to assert that watching Carson is “like watching a tsunami—he’s a strong wind every day. I see him change, it’s like watching the Ten Commandments, watching Moses when he found out what God had for him—he became renewed and refreshed.”

Williams recounted that he has reminded Carson many times of the evils of politics, how people will try to destroy him, tear down his family, and undermine his reputation, which Carson spent a lifetime building. Yet, Williams explained that Carson told him that “I feel a deeper calling here, I can’t say I won’t do it, I can’t say I will.”

He reminded Williams of how critics undermined Lincoln and made him look goofy and unqualified to hold office, yet he made the world a better place to live, even though he gave his life. Carson also said,“You know there is some things worth dying for, there’s some things that if it causes you to lose your reputation it’s worth it, because it is not about me. If people see in me, something that I have, that can move this country forward, then that is what I’m going to do.” …

It’s the Lincoln comparison that’s the cherry on this BS sundae. But the punchline is, I can see one or another of the GOP’s Seventeen Dwarves of 2016 offering Carson the vice-presidential slot (although I’m not sure Carson would accept it). Not Santorum or the other godbotherers, of course, or the stone egomaniacs like Ted Cruz. But Jeb!Bush or Scott Walker or Romneybot mk.3 might decided the free publicity (post-racial GOP!) was worth the aggravation.

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Pete Turner won't drop the word "illegal" from the name of his popular Mexican restaurants, despite a request last month by a group of people in Fort Collins who say the name is hurtful to many in the Latino community.

The Canadian-born forward is on the verge of American citizenship and may choose to play for the U.S.

Tesho Akindele had a great rookie season for FC Dallas. The 22-year-old scored seven goals and added three assists in 26 matches (18 starts), good enough to earn interest from the Canada national team.

Akinele was born in Calgary, but moved to Colorado when he was nine years old and has been in the U.S. ever since. He went to the Colorado School of Mines and reportedly applied for American citizenship in September.

As soon as Akindele gets citizen, he will be eligible to play for the U.S., something he appears to be interested in. Canada called the forward in for next week's friendlies, but he has declined the call, apparently because he wants to keep the door to the U.S. open.

Hearing FC Dallas forward Tesho Akindele has decided not to accept call-up from Canada after interest from the US #canMNT

— Luke Wileman (@LukeWileman) November 5, 2014

Canada thought Akindele would join them for upcoming camp but he has since changed his mind

— Luke Wileman (@LukeWileman) November 5, 2014

If Akindele plays for Canada next week, he will not be able to switch to the U.S. The one-time switch only applies to players who were eligible for the country they were changing to when they played for the first country. Because Akindele does not have U.S. citizenship right now and is not eligible for the U.S., he couldn't play for Canada now and switch to the U.S. later.

The tweet indicates that Akindele's U.S. interest is not one-way too. The U.S. has apparently shown interest in him and it would not be surprising if Jurgen Klinsmann told Akindele that the forward would be called in for January camp, when it is domestic players only. That's a long ways from the first team and big tournaments, but it is a first step and a clear intent of interest.

Akindele can play as a winger as well as an out-and-out striker. With the way the U.S. has struggled to find options at both spots, having as many choices as possible is great and Akindele could be one of them.

Voters in Lakewood defeated a measure that would have allowed retail marijuana stores in the city.

The Kindle Voyage e-ink reader is so unremarkable that I’ll just direct you to Jason Snell’s better review for most details, since it’s not worth writing up a full review here.

I was expecting better after years of Kindles being decontented into flimsier, lower-end devices, but I think it’s clear that Amazon just isn’t willing or able to make a premium, high-quality e-reader.

Rather than approximating buttons, the Voyage’s overly complicated “pressure-based page turn sensors with haptic feedback” are the worst of both worlds: they lack the precision, feedback, and intentionality of buttons, and they take more effort and are smaller than touch targets.

The Kindle software and interface is even worse. It has changed very little since the 2011 Kindle Touch, which itself was mostly just basic touch interaction bolted onto the 2009 Kindle 2’s UI.

And this crisp, new, high-resolution screen is still displaying justified text with very few, mostly bad font choices. Some of these choices, like the default PMN Caecilia font, made sense on the old, low-resolution Kindle screens but need to be reconsidered for this decade. Some of them, like forced justification and forced publisher font overrides, have always been bad ideas.

But Amazon doesn’t care. Nothing about the Voyage’s software feels modern, or even maintained. It feels like it has a staff of one person who’s only allowed to work on it for a few weeks each year.

The ideal Kindle would have hardware page-turn, Home, and Menu buttons and a touch screen for UI navigation, selection, and text entry.

The hidden, error-prone touch zones would be optional and off by default, since the hardware buttons would remove the need. Touching the screen would only be used to interact with what’s being displayed on the screen (which usually isn’t necessary) rather than constantly triggering unintuitive, undiscoverable, error-prone actions.

Text would be rendered with a small selection of high-quality fonts designed for high-resolution screens or printed books, and full justification would be either optional or unsupported. The user’s font and justification preferences would optionally override any fonts specified by publishers.

But Amazon has never made such a device, and it seems like they never will.

Bottom line: It’s a Kindle. If you’ve used any recent Kindle, you know exactly what to expect. There are no surprises, no major changes, and no major improvements. If you already have a Kindle that you like, there’s not much reason to upgrade. It could be much better with a few small tweaks, but Amazon seems to think releasing almost the same thing every year is good enough to keep the e-ink line going.

I suspect this will be my last Kindle. Amazon doesn’t care about e-ink Kindles anymore. Why should we?

Microsoft must have thought it had pulled off a nice piece of product placement when it gave CNN election commentators a bunch of Surface Pro tablets to help with their coverage. CNN dutifully covered its desks with the devices, resulting in a series of proud tweets from Microsoft fans.

There was just one small problem, noted by GeekWire: a closer look revealed that hidden behind the Surface tablets were the iPads that commentators were actually using. In one case, the commentator was actually using her Surface tablet as a stand for her iPad.

Microsoft, which was last year forced to write down $900M on its ill-fated tablet, has frequently taken pot-shots at the iPad, running a series of misleading Surface tablet ads attacking the iPad (and iPad mini) before more recently turning its attention to the MacBook Air. Switching overt advertising for product placement doesn’t seem to be working out too well.

Update: iMore later drew our attention to CNN anchor Mathew Sheffield digging deeper into the hole, claiming he was using both devices:

So, er, using the Surface as a dumb monitor while actually doing stuff on the iPad, then. Didn’t Microsoft tout the famed multi-tasking abilities of the Surface while claiming the iPad was only a single-use device … ?

Left image screengrab tweeted by Microsoft employee  Stephen Legler. right grab by IT developer @adamUCF

Filed under: iOS Devices Tagged: Apple vs Microsoft, iPad, ipad air, iPad Air 2, Microsoft, Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Surface Pro, Microsoft Surface tablet, Surface, Surface Pro

Visit 9to5Mac to find more special coverage of iOS Devices, iPad, and Microsoft.

What do you think? Discuss "Microsoft Surface product placement in CNN election coverage fails as iPads revealed behind them [Updated]" with our community.

Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium) is coming out with a new film in the spring, Chappie. Chappie is a robot who learns how to feel and think for himself. According to Entertainment Weekly, two of the movie's leads are Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$ of Die Antwoord, who play a pair of criminals who robotnap Chappie.

Discussions of AI are particularly hot right now (e.g. see Musk and Bostrom) and filmmakers are using the opportunity to explore AI in film, as in Her, Ex Machina, and now Chappie.

Blomkamp, with his South African roots, puts a discriminatory spin on AI in Chappie, which is consistent with his previous work. If robots can think and feel for themselves, what sorts of rights and freedoms are they due in our society? Because right now, they don't have any...computers and robots do humanity's bidding without any compensation or thought to their well-being. Because that's an absurd concept, right? Who cares how my Macbook Air feels about me using it to write this post? But imagine a future robot that can feel and think as well as (or, likely, much much faster than) a human...what might it think about that? What might it think about being called "it"? What might it decide to do about that? Perhaps superintelligent emotional robots won't have human feelings or motivations, but in some ways that's even scarier.

The whole thing can be scary to think about because so much is unknown. SETI and the hunt for habitable exoplanets are admirable scientific endeavors, but humans have already discovered alien life here on Earth: mechanical computers. Boole, Lovelace, Babbage, von Neumann, and many others contributed to the invention of computing and those machines are now evolving quickly, and hardware and software both are evolving so much faster than our human bodies (hardware) and culture (software) are evolving. Soon enough, perhaps not for 20-30 years still but soon, there will be machines among us that will be, essentially, incredibly advanced alien beings. What will they think of humans? And what will they do about it? Fun to think about now perhaps, but this issue will be increasingly important in the future.

Tags: Chappie   Die Antwoord   movies   Neill Blomkamp   robots   trailers   video

Over the past two or three days, a surprising number of people have asked me why the Democrats appear to be doomed in today's midterm election. I don't know for sure whether Democrats are doomed, but there's no denying that things look grim for the donkeys. For the record, then, if Republicans retake the Senate tonight, here are the three big reasons why:

The Map. Democrats are defending a lot of seats that they won in red states in 2008. They were always likely to lose most of them when they came up for reelection, and that's exactly what's happening. By contrast, Republicans had almost no vulnerable seats to defend. The map on the right shows the basic shape of the river.

6-Year Itch. It's the sixth year of a presidential term. Barack Obama has mostly managed to avoid the scandals that so often beset presidents in their sixth year, but he's still suffering from the usual accretion of bad news and exhaustion that's almost inevitable at this point. This has tanked his approval rating and tarnished the Democratic brand.

Midterm Falloff. Democratic voting blocs (minorities, the poor, and the young) simply tend not to vote in midterms.

This explains most of what's going on. Beyond this, every race has its own local issues, and nationally we're still suffering from government gridlock; a weak economy; and lots of scary overseas stuff (Ebola, ISIS, Putin, etc.).

For what it's worth—and I reserve the right to change my mind about this later—one thing I don't blame is stupid Democratic strategery. Sure, I'd like to have seen a clearer message from Democrats and a more full-throated defense of liberal priorities. But honestly, I don't see any magic bullets out there. Like it or not, there were a lot of Democrats defending their seats in red states where that message just flatly wasn't a winner, and these folks really had no choice but to distance themselves from Obama. This created obvious problems of its own since (a) it made Dems look a bit aimless and (b) it provided the press with a storyline too juicy to pass up, but I'm hard pressed to figure out a better alternative. Democrats may not have mounted a memorably disciplined or inspiring campaign this year, but neither did they mount a memorably disastrous campaign. For the most part, they muddled along about as well as they could have, and in the end, it probably wasn't enough. That's not very dramatic, but it's probably the truth.

Which two teams have gone the longest without losing on the same day? You might not care but regardless, I feel I have an obligation to tell you. Your indifference only motivates me to continue to track this fact with the intensity of 1000 red suns. If you’re new here, you can check out past editions of this post like the one before last season and the one that started it all in November 2012. After reading those, if you don’t care, then you may want to see a doctor and make sure your heart is functioning, because it might not be.

As it happens, the answer to this question is the same as it was last year at this time. The last time Ohio State and Kansas lost on the same day was February 19, 2005. I don’t know how rare it is for the top streak to survive a full season since this is only the third year I’ve done this, but I expect it’s rare. I can say that with confidence because the reigning pair now has nearly a two-year advantage over the next-longest streak. I can also say that with confidence because of the ten-longest streaks entering last season, just two survived. Here is that list from a year ago…

1. Ohio State/Kansas (2/19/05)
2. Duke/Kansas (3/6/05)
3. Fairfield/Kansas (2/25/06)
4. Kentucky/Memphis (11/23/06)
5. Duke/Robert Morris (2/1/07)
6. Duke/Weber State (3/15/07)
7. Fairfield/New Mexico (12/4/07)
8. Kentucky/Weber State (12/8/07)
9. Harvard/Purdue (12/22/07)
10. Belmont/Minnesota (1/5/08)

Ohio State and Kansas made it through last season’s schedule with just one scare. On February 1st, the Buckeyes started the day by hanging on for a 59-58 win at Wisconsin. That was important because later in the afternoon, Kansas would get beaten fairly easily by Texas. Other than that, it was smooth sailing for our respective partners in streaking. They even worked it out during conference tourney time, with Kansas falling in the Big 12 tourney semis on a Friday while Ohio State lost in the Big Ten tourney semis on the subsequent Saturday.

As we begin the season, it’s been over nine and a half years since an Ohio State fan and a Kansas fan could commiserate about their respective team’s losses on the same day. They’ve shared 130 game dates and combined for 45 losses in those cases, but at least one of the teams has won every time.

Let’s check out what this season has in store for the streak by looking at the common dates on the schedules of the two teams and the chance of the streak surviving each date.

            Ohio St.               Kansas            Chance
11/14    UMass-Lowell (H)    UC Santa Barbara (H)     100%
11/18     Marquette (H)          Kentucky (N)          91%      
11/28   James Madison (H)    Tenn/Santa Clara (N)      99%
12/10     High Point (H)         Georgetown (A)        97%
12/13    Morehead St. (H)          Utah (H)            99%
12/20   North Carolina (N)       Lafayette (H)         99%
12/22      Miami OH (H)           Temple (A)           99%
12/30       Iowa (H)             Kent St. (H)          99%
1/10      Indiana (A)           Texas Tech (H)         96%
1/13      Michigan (H)         Oklahoma St. (H)        93%
1/17        Iowa (A)             Iowa St. (A)          75%
2/14     Michigan St. (A)         Baylor (H)           88%

There is a legit shot that the streak makes it a full decade. Of the 12 shared dates, there’s only one where neither team is at home. That would be January 17, a particularly scary one when Ohio State travels to Iowa and Kansas will be at Iowa State. An odd quirk is that the teams only share one more date between then and the end of the regular season.

Of course, they’re bound to share dates during conference tournament time and they may play on the same day in the NCAA tournament as well. But based on the regular season data, there’s almost exactly a 50 percent chance these teams enter their respective conference tournaments with the streak in tact.

Here’s the list of the ten-longest streaks to start the season. I’ve found it especially useful in mixed company to break the ice. Other than the top streak, it’s mostly the usual matches involving a successful team from a top conference and a successful mid-major. Well, except for the Duke/Savannah State pairing. Savannah State has lost 93 games over the past six seasons, but somehow, never on the same day as Duke since early December of ‘08. The world truly makes no sense sometimes. Here’s hoping that streak makes it to the top for next season.

1. Ohio State/Kansas (2/19/05)
2. Fairfield/New Mexico (12/4/07)
3. Ohio State/Weber State (2/2/08)
4. Ohio State/Vermont (2/17/08)
5. Manhattan/Memphis (2/23/08)
6. Robert Morris/Vermont (11/21/08)
7. Duke/Savannah State (12/6/08)
8. Memphis/Murray State (12/20/08)
9. Iona/Ohio State (12/27/08)
10. Gonzaga/Richmond (12/31/08)

On the eve of Election Day, a Quinnipiac University poll of likely voters released Monday shows both Colorado's race for governor and U.S. Senate too close to call.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told progressive activists on Saturday that Iowa is "critical" to maintaining a Democratic Senate.

"If we win Iowa we're going to do just fine," he said on a conference call hosted by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "Iowa is critical. There’s no other way to say it."

He urged the activists to make calls to Iowa voters in support of Democrat Bruce Braley, who is narrowly behind Republican Joni Ernst in the battleground Iowa race.

Reid launched a broadside on Ernst, characterizing her as "so far to the right that maybe even a part of the right wouldn't like what she's talking about." He warned that a victory for her would probably mean Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) becomes the next majority leader.

"She's so out of line with mainstream Iowans, mainstream Americans, that she refuses to appear before editorial boards," Reid said. "She has spent the entire campaign talking about what she did as a young girl, castrating animals."

He described Braley as "a fine man" with "a good record of public service."

Caitlin Conant, a spokeswoman for the Ernst campaign, responded to Reid's comments in an email to TPM.

"Reid says Democrats will be 'just fine' if Braley wins, but Iowa can do better. Reid is only backing Braley because he supports Obama's agenda of higher taxes, more debt, and Obamacare," she said.

Ernst leads Braley by 1.2 percentage points in the TPM PollTracker average.

This article has been updated to include a response from the Ernst campaign.

Dan Hurley reports on a confusing new childhood illness:

More than 100 cases of a polio-like syndrome causing full or partial paralysis of the arms or legs have been seen in children across the United States in recent months, according to doctors attending the annual meeting of the Child Neurology Society. Symptoms have ranged from mild weakness in a single arm to complete paralysis of arms, legs, and even the muscles controlling the lungs, leading in some cases to a need for surgery to insert a breathing tube, doctors said.

The outbreak, which appears to be larger and more widespread than what has largely been previously reported by medical and news organizations, has neurologists and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scrambling to find out what is causing these cases and how best to treat it. “We don’t know how to treat it, and we don’t know how to prevent it,” said Keith Van Haren, a child neurologist at Stanford University School of Medicine. “It actually looks just like polio, but that term really freaks out the public-health people.” Instead, neurologists are now calling it acute flaccid myelitis: acute because it occurs suddenly, and flaccid because the affected limb or limbs become markedly weak.

Been obsessed with Run the Jewels 2 from Killer Mike and El-P this week.

Anil Dash clued me in to Run the Jewels earlier this week on Twitter:

Okay, RTJ2 is incredible. @KillerMikeGTO & @therealelp make it three classic albums in a row. Is anybody else at their level right now?

I'm not qualified to answer that, but this album is very good. Plus! Run the Jewels 2 is available as a free download.

Tags: music   Run the Jewels

While Touch ID makes sense for most of us as a secure and convenient way to protect our phones, there is one group of people who may want to stick to good old-fashioned passcodes: criminals.

A Virginia District Court has ruled that while phone passcodes are protected by the 5th Amendment, which says that those accused of crimes cannot be compelled to incriminate themselves, there is no such protection against using a suspect’s fingerprint to unlock a phone … 

The ruling was reported by The Virginian-Pilot in the case of David Baust, an EMS captain accused of trying to strangle his girlfriend.

Prosecutors had said video equipment in Baust’s bedroom may have recorded the couple’s fight and, if so, the video could be on his cellphone. They wanted a judge to force Baust to unlock his phone, but Baust’s attorney, James Broccoletti, argued pass codes are protected by the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits forced self-incrimination.

Judge Steven C. Frucci ruled this week that giving police a fingerprint is akin to providing a DNA or handwriting sample or an actual key, which the law permits. A pass code, though, requires the defendant to divulge knowledge, which the law protects against, according to Frucci’s written opinion.

As a ruling in a District Court, there is plenty of scope for either aspect of the ruling–that passcodes are protected and that fingerprints aren’t–to be over-turned on appeal, but it’s an interesting argument.

Sophisticated lab techniques make it possible to fool Touch ID using only a high-resolution photo of a fingerprint. The approach was first demonstrated on an iPhone 5s and later shown to work also with the more sophisticated sensor on the iPhone 6.

Filed under: iOS Devices Tagged: Crime, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, police, Touch ID

Continue reading more about iOS Devices, iPhone 6, and iPhone 5s at 9to5Mac.

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Rep. Cory GardnerThe clock is ticking on Democratic incumbent Mark Udall as another poll shows him behind Republican challenger Cory Gardner in Colorado's important U.

A man was runover by his own van in Aurora Sunday when he dropped a lit cigarette into his jacket and jumped out of the moving vehicle.

Just a short note because the last sentence in the post is being misunderstood, which is my fault, because I wrote it. Here’s the context:

That piece was not so much “covering the phenomenon” as viciously skewing it. And yes, its tone smacked of bullying and dismissal. When you’re telling people they don’t even deserve to be in a debate, and associate them with segregationists and every other entity good liberals have been taught to despise, “dismissive” is the least of it.

Look: whatever case the gamergate peeps have, they have botched it with their tactics. Those tactics have been repellent in every sense of the word. But bullying has occurred on both sides, and only one side was bullied before.

The two sides I am describing are the journalists whose work I was just criticizing and the gamergate supporters. Not the whole two sides of gamer culture; not men and women; just the journalists I’ve been citing, and the people they’ve been lambasting.

What you're looking at here is Tottenham Hotspur attacker Erik Lamela scoring a freaking 20-yard rabona goal. He apparently didn't like his chances of scoring a curler from 20 yards with his right foot and wasn't in any kind of position to get the ball to his left foot, so he just WRAPPED HIS LEFT FOOT AROUND HIS RIGHT AND SCORED THAT WAY INSTEAD.

I've seen some absolutely brilliant rabona passes before (most of them by Eden Hazard) and some close-range rabona goals, and even penalties, but never anything like this. I've never seen a player attempt a 20-yard rabona shot from the center of the pitch before, and if someone had told me before this game that Lamela would attempt one, I'd probably be really annoyed.

He should just take a regular right-footed shot there, but who cares, because ERIK LAMELA JUST SCORED A FREAKING 20-YARD RABONA GOAL. EAT IT, HATERS.

Here's what Poche thought of the goal. He was SUPER unimpressed.

The only thing better than Lamela's goal is Pochettino's reaction. pic.twitter.com/FWaWlJsK5f

— Rich Arrowsmith (@RichArrowsmith) October 23, 2014

But Ben Davies? Well, the Tottenham left back had the best view of the goal, and he had a slightly different reaction.

Yeah, that's more like it. This is almost certainly going to end up as our goal of the season.