If this doesn't get you ready for some hardwood action I don't know what will

A welcome to visitors searching for some combination of wood, action, and hard. Stay, you won't be disappointed.

This video is old, but damn if it ain't awesome.

You gotta love it baby.

i·ron·ic

-adjective

1.

/Triple Jinx/

From Ross Siler, the Salt Lake Tribune Jazz reporter:

Kyrylo Fesenko delivered a very loud "Boom B------" as he walked to his locker while Carlos Boozer was talking to reporters after Friday's game.

The Blog-Ethicist: Have You Seen My iPhone?

After a little futzing, you realize that the iPhone 3GS that someone left next to you in a bar is actually a disguised prototype of the next iPhone (front-facing camera and all). Is it ethical for you to sell the phone to a crappy tech blog? And, if a crappy tech blog chooses to buy the phone, are they ethically obligated to disclose the price and details of the purchase?

Which is Utah? Which is Denver?

 

(Image courtesy of Mr_eX from the Geekbox.net forums.)

No AK, No Boozer, and Half a Memo.

You know what that means:

It's Time!

Just Rankings 2

Lost, Season 6: 8
The Desmond and Ricardo episodes: 10
The Kate and Jack episodes: 1
V: The Series: 4
FlashForward: 2
Modern Family: 9
Community: 9
Parks & Recreation, Season 2: 8
The Office, Season 6: 4
30 Rock, Season 4: 3
Castle, Season 2: 8
Check, Season 3: 4
The idea of FlashForward as a Lost replacement: 0
The idea of V as a Lost replacement: 1
The idea of Fringe as a Lost replacement: 9
Watching 43 episodes of Fringe to catch up: 1
Heavy Rain: 6
The Aviator: 9
The 2004 Academy Awards winners vs. who should have won: -2
Band of Horse, Everything All The Time: 7
Broken Bells, Broken Bells [+Video]: 9
Metric, Fantasies: 3
Spoon, Transference: 6
Bishop Allen, Grrr...: 6
Muse, The Resistance: 7
Matt and Kim, Grand: 8
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros: 8
Mika, The Boy Who Knew Too Much: 6
Billy Boy on Poison, Drama Junkie Queen [Explicit]: 5
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It's Blitz! (Deluxe Version): 8
Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix: 4
LEGO: Rock Band: 5
Bully: Scholarship Edition: 1
Heavy Rain: 8
BioShock 2: 8
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: 0
Left 4 Dead 2: 4
New Super Mario Bros. Wii: 6
Halo 3: ODST: 9.5
Halo 3: 9
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves: 8
Scribblenauts: 3
Punch-Out!! Wii: 4
Professor Layton & the Curious Village: 6
Death of print media: 3
Chow Truck: 8
African Restaurant and Market: 6
Mazza: 8
Lugano: 10
Tandoor: 9
Meditrina: 7
EW.com mobile: 8
How TMZ mobile won’t let you switch to the full site and is totally gimped: -10
Any mobile website that won’t let you switch to the full site: -20
IMDB app: 6
Tweetie 2 app: 9
Facebook.com: 4
Air Mouse app: 8
Implode! XL: 7
Sportacular app push messages: 9
Darkness app: 8
Kindle app: 4
Not being able to delete Stocks, iTunes and YouTube apps: 0
Local boutique clothing stores: 7
Fashion Place Mall: 4
Target: 7
Costco: 4
Sunflower Market: 9
Whole Foods: F-

\Double Jinx\

Despite my best efforts to jinx the Jazz, Utah is still in contention for the #2 seed with just two games remaining in the regular season. We need a little help from San Antonio and Phoenix, but come Thursday morning, I think it is quite probable that we will end up in that 2-3 sweet spot to avoid a potential Conference Semifinals matchup against the Lakers.

After that, all bets are off.

I honestly have no idea who is going to make it out of the Western Conference. I think any team in the West can beat any other team in West in a 7 game series. As a Jazz fan, that is terrifying. As a NBA fan, that is exhilarating.

Baring Phoenix winning out (which would set up a difficult road matchup against the Nuggets), the Jazz are on course to play either the Spurs, the Thunder or the Blazers. Of all of those potential matchups, I think I would prefer playing the Spurs.

As we saw less than a week ago, the Thunder are just scary. And although we beat the Blazers 6 times over the course of the pre-season and season, I would gain little satisfaction in knocking out a team that has played quite admirably in the face of so many injuries. Not to mention, I would be unable to speak to my Portland friends during the week of that matchup. Besides, after the Blazers dismantled the Lakers in Los Angeles this afternoon, I would much rather them fall to the #8 seed (which looks likely given that Roy's injury will probably keep him out of the crucial game against OKC tomorrow).

Don't get me wrong: the Spurs are playing great basketball right now. But nothing would give me greater pleasure than watching the Jazz hip-check the Spurts out of the playoffs. Then again, the Jazz lose their cool against teams that get the benefit of the doubt from refs.

As I said before, all bets are off.

The Jazz could very well be making another first round exit, which would be a disappointment -- but not a major one. I'll be sad to see one of our major pieces leave during the offseason (probably Boozer, maybe AK), but after last season's endgame debacle, I am just happy to see this team play (an almost) 82 games at the level it is capable of.

Here is quick look back at my 5 favorite games from the 2009-2010 Utah Jazz season:

#5. November 19, @ San Antonio (W 90-83)
Besides that week in which the Jazz beat the Lakers, Spurs, and Magic at home, there was not much to feel good about during the 2009 half of the season. Except this little gem. Somehow, despite a middling 5-6 start, the Jazz pulled together its first road win in the Alamo Dome in over a decade, snapping a 20 game losing streak. Although this victory was not the catalyst that the pulled the team together, it was an opportunity to exercise some demons and to dismantle the image of the Jazz as a poor road team. Plus, I hate just about everything about the Spurs.

#4. January 9, @ Dallas (W 111-93)
The first 36 games of the season felt like an extension of the ennui that plagued the team during its free-fall to the 8 seed the year before. After losing 4 games out of 5 including a painful loss at home to a Melo-less Nuggets, the Jazz were 19-17 and in 10th place in the Western Conference. Rumors were starting to circulate that management was willing to trade every player except Deron Williams. Then out of nowhere, the Jazz destroyed the Mavericks in Dallas. This my friends, was when the season started to turn around. The Jazz would go on to win 17 out its next 19 games, including a pair higher up on this list.

#3. April 6, vs. Oklahoma City (W 140-139 OT)
There was a lot of chatter that this overtime thriller was THE game of the year. Close, but no cigar.

#2 February 21, @ Portland (W 93-89 OT)
The Jazz thoroughly embarrassed the Blazers just a month earlier in the Rose Garden, so I was fully expecting some karmic justice and more than a little grief from my Portland bros when I attended this game. Lo and behold, in the first quarter, AK went to the locker room with backspsams, leaving Utah without two of its starters. With 7 minutes left in the third, the Blazers took a commanding 25 point lead much to the amusement of the crowd. It seemed like every time the Jazz trimmed the lead, the Blazers would answer back with a bucket. And then Korver scored a 3 ball 4 minutes into the 4th, closing the gap to just 9 points. I remember this moment perfectly because some random guy a few rows in front of me jumped out of his seat yelling angrily "Korver! Finally!" Slowly, the crowd's elation was replaced with dread. The crowd let out a collective grown when Boozer hit an impossible 8 foot buzzer beater to send the game into overtime. After the Jazz's improbable come from behind victory on the road (as I mentioned before, 2nd best in NBA history), I left the Rose Garden suppressing a smile as the people around me headed home shellshocked. Quite a bizarre feeling.

#1. January 14, vs. Cleveland (W 97-96)
'Nuff said.

Memorizing the Irrational

March 14th is Pi (Approximation) Day, a glorious celebration of the mathematical constant π.

Why March 14 you ask? Because the Ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes first approximated π as 3.14. [Since π is an irrational number, some people argue we should celebrate Pi Day on July 22 or 22/7 if you live in Europe.]

I remember the first time I discovered π on my calculator, I spent the next hour memorizing the constant. To this day, I can still recall 3.141592654 (my calculator rounded the last digit, mind you) without breaking a sweat. After the billionth digit, however, things start to get a little hazy.

π is an irrational and transcendental number, meaning that its decimal form never repeats. Knowing the first 10 digits does not give you any insight into the next 10. The famous physicist Richard Feynman once joked that he had memorized π to a string of six sequential 9s [now known as Feynman point] just so could end his recitation with "nine nine nine nine nine nine and so on." Supercomputers are tested by how fast and far out they calculate π. In January 2010, a computer took 131 days to compute more than 2.7 trillion digits of π.

My early attempts to memorize π fall right into that memorization range revealed by Miller's famous psychological study "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information." On average, we have the cognitive capacity to memorize a chunk of about 5-9 digits. Think about how much easier it is to memorize a local 7 digit number than a long distance 10 digit number.

Yet these cognitive limitations have not stopped individuals from memorizing this irrational constant. As of October 2006, the world record for the number of digits memorized is 100,000.

Imagine that for a moment. 100,000 digits.

Which brings us to piphilology: the use of mnemonic devices to remember a span of digits in π.

One method involves the use of piems, or poems, in which the length of each word represents a single digit of π. Cadaeic Cadenza is perhaps the most famous example:

One / A Poem / A Raven / Midnights so dreary, tired and weary,

One = 3 letters = 3
A = 1 letter = 1
Poem = 4 letters = 4
etc.

The use of this mnemonic device allows a would be π memorization scholar to remember the first 3834 digits of π. Remember: before The Iliad and The Odyssey were put to paper, they were recited orally by memory. Creating a story or narrative helps facilitate the memorization process.

Unfortunately, if we are going for the π World Record, 3834 is not going to cut it.

A former World Record holder used a technique called the method of loci, which is a fancy and antiquated way of saying visual mnemonics. The method of loci involves using a unique and vivid image to commit a word or digit to long term memory. In the case of the world record holder, he envisioned himself walking down his neighborhood and each landmark he passed represented a string of digits. Abstract, but apparently it works.

You will probably never attempt to commit π to memory. But the next time March 14/July 22 rolls around or you find yourself measuring the circumference of a circle, take a good hard look at π. Although π in its representation as a letter of the Greek alphabet may look harmless, it is a mathematical concept of unfathomable magnitude.

100,000 memorized digits seems very impressive, but that is only 3.7037037 × 10^-8 [entirely unrelated: I love that the HTML for superscript is the very bro "sup"] of the known digits of π.

It is like the furthest depths of the ocean: for all of our understanding, we simply do not know where either ends.

The Blog-Ethicist: Machine Error In Your Favor

(Faced in a slightly different way than Portland's questions.)

If I went to 7-11 and the employee made an error that resulted in my receiving one product free, I would feel obligated to tell them about it. Yet, when I use a vending machine and the machine spits out two items instead of one, I've always seen that as a bonus.

Does the fact that the machine made the error make it more acceptable for me to take advantage of the mistake? Is this a good example of why we shouldn't fear the impeding robot uprising? (Assuming that the robots are not Socialists, of course.) Anonymous, Salt Lake.

in just-

i hope e.e. doesn't get mad.

in just-
e.e. cummings


in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little lame baloonman


whistles far and wee


and eddyandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring


when the world is puddle-wonderful


the queer
old baloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and


it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed


baloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

what are the odds?

this is truly embarrassing but too funny not to post.

i signed up for okcupid.com. technically it's a dating website. it's like facebook except with algorithms that tell you who you're compatible with and then you talk or whatever.

anyway, i signed up two days ago. today i got a message from a girl--the first message i've received.

in the note she said we're 98% compatible and that i'm third on her list of highest matches. she asked if i wanted to hang out. i clicked on her name to look at her profile.

it was kat johnson.