Bearded Men Singing from the Heart, Part 24

New York beard

Bearded Men Singing from the Heart, Part 23

Austin beard II

Computers are better writers than a lot of people

I don't know if this is an indictment of journalism today or a small piece of support evidence for my least popular opinion ever:

Robot Sportswriter Outperforms Human (NPR)

…

The writer of that [terrible story that people assumed was written by a robot] — it turns out — was a living, breathing human being. But the creators of Narrative Science, a news-writing software program, took Deadspin's assumption as fighting words. They set out to prove that their system could produce a better story.

"We actually got hold of the information director of the school, we got the raw material, the numbers around the story," said Kris Hammond, chief technology officer of Narrative Science. "And we fed it to our system, which wrote the story, where the headline and the lead were focused on the fact that it was a no-hitter. Because how could you write a baseball story and not notice that it was a no hitter? I mean what kind of writer or machine would you be?"

I'll say it again (this is twice): Computers will be able to replicate every human creative activity within our lifetimes, and this is a good thing.

I've included the full text of the robot's article below the jump.

Bearded Men Singing from the Heart, Part 22

Beauty and the beard.

Bearded Men Singing from the Heart, Part 21

Five beards for the price of one.

Bearded Men Singing - Special Week-End Southern-Fried Jam Edition

A beard and a B3

Bearded Men Singing from the Heart, Part 20

Fifth Beatle beard

Maybe we should be clapping louder

… a new global opinion poll shows another, perhaps more serious form of damage: falling public support for capitalism. This is most marked in the country that used to epitomise free enterprise. In 2002, 80% of Americans agreed that the world’s best bet was the free-market system. By 2010 that support had fallen to 59%, only a little above the 54% average for the 25 countries polled. Nominally Communist China is now one of the world’s strongest supporters of capitalism, at 68%….

That's from the Economist, that says that this is a "cost of the financial crisis." But I think that the stage was set before then. As mentioned before (see again the Chart of the Decade, right), our current setup hasn't been doing wonders for anyone except the very rich lately.

Capitalism’s waning fortunes are starkly visible among Americans earning below $20,000. Their support for the free market has dropped from 76% to 44% in just one year. The research was conducted by GlobeScan, a polling firm. Its chairman Doug Miller says American business is “close to losing its social contract” with average families.

And then what happens?

Bearded Men Singing from the Heart, Part 19

Karmic beard

Why do the AP classes focus on the least useful texts?

I have no idea, but I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thinks so. Penny Arcade Tycho writes about his own experience surviving his expulsion from the smart kid lit classes, where they were "reading" Ulysses:

My first and only F well in hand, the illusion I had of myself - that of a pristine jarred brain casting aspersions on greasy, cavorting bipeds - was obliterated. I was enrolled, then, in a series of what were (and may still be called) "bonehead" classes, which was apparently where they hoarded all the Twain. And I Am The Cheese, and Watership Down, books that played with modern language and perspective and voice, and played rough.  There's really no doubt that my entire life turned on that point, and it never really stopped turning: the point at which Writing became decoupled from English.

Bearded Men Singing from the Heart, Part 18

Starkey Beard

Bearded Men Singing from the Heart, Part 17

Beard for Bangladesh

Bearded Men Singing from the Heart, Part 16

Beatle beard

Chart of the decade

That's from Chuck Marr via Jon Chait, who writes:

Now, the flaw in the liberal story is the lack of an ironclad causal mechanism. Liberals have a lot of fairly persuasive stories about how this happened -- political power, the decline of unions, monetary policy, changing social norms -- but all those stories have at least some problems. Still, that chart captures the overriding economic problem of the current era. It also explains why policy solutions like the "Road to Prosperity" are so insane. It is based not only on ignoring this overriding reality but of accelerating it. Ryan's premise that liberating the wealthy from their social obligation will create mass prosperity. It could not be more out of touch with reality.

Bearded Men Singing from the Heart, Part 15

Hall of Fame beard.

This isn't going to help nosocomephobics

via MoJo, Hospitals: Way More Dangerous Than You Thought

So the researchers started tracking errors at three hospitals themselves. As a result, they found that voluntary reporting missed 90 percent of the errors that took place in those hospitals. The study found that 1 in every 3 hospital admissions resulted in an adverse event, a figure that should make everyone shudder. A mere 10 types of errors made up nearly two-thirds of all the adverse events, conditions that included pressure sores and post-op infections—things that don't take rocket science to prevent. The cost of all these errors is high: as much as $17 billion every year, all from hospital screw ups that could be prevented. Perhaps Republicans looking to reduce health care spending should try going after medical errors rather than the people who suffer because of them.

1 in 3.

Bearded Men Singing from the Heart, Part 14

Beard for beards sake.