Fourteen-year-old guitar goddess
I give you Tina (14), covering Van Halen’s “Eruption” on a Vigier Excalibur Custom.
Canada targeting San Francisco Bay’s Intelligent Immigrants?
This photo got 17,088 Flickr views in eight hours. There’s a strong message in this. I wonder whether the US is listening.
Billboard says:
H-1B Problems?
PIVOT to CANADA
New Start-Up Visa
Low Taxes
Angie Miller already won American Idol
After Angie Miller was eliminated from American Idol last Thursday, I lost interest in the singing part of the show. But I am still very much intrigued by the “voting” part.
So here is a chart of the contestants’ Twitter followers as of this morning, Thursday, May 16, 2013. The day of the grand finale. Who will be the winner?
According to this chart Candice has a slight edge over Kree, but does that mean much? Because look at Angie Miller, the contestant who was eliminated last week. She has double the followers of Candice or Kree. And she keeps adding followers, despite not being on the show any more. In the week since she was eliminated, Angie has added 26,134 Twitter followers, more than twice the number for finalist Kree (12,662)!
That Angie Miller has star power is indisputable. The question is how to reconcile the discrepancy between her huge Twitter and Instagram following and her elimination from the show. Could it be that Twitter users don’t vote? Or that rednecks don’t tweet? Or is the show rigged?
Either way Angie has already won. Her unfair elimination and the resulting controversy have amplified the buzz around her name. And she got a recording contract already, before the American Idol “winner” is even announced. Isn’t that winning?
Angie Miller’s original song “You Set Me Free” is getting released on iTunes today.
A different kind of tandem bike
I found this image of a man and a woman on a Malvern Star abreast tandem bicycle on the website “vintage everyday: Bikes, bicycles, pushbikes”. According to the caption, the photograph was taken circa 1930 by Sam Hood.
I can’t imagine what kind of coordination it requires to ride this bike.
What do all Google products have in common?
All Google products have one thing in common. They are too rational. There is no spice, no flavor. There is no fun. Which works great for some products (search, maps), and not so great for others (social networking, Google+).
Why is Facebook so popular, despite its silliness? It is precisely because of its silliness. Because who wants to be serious 24/7? Google thinks Google+ users do. Google is wrong.
The Google brain trust would do well to read Johan Huizinga‘s “Homo Ludens”
(“Playing Man”). Written in 1938 by a Dutch historian, the book discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society. Inside it is an explanation of why Google+ is the desolate wasteland that it is today.
I wish Google would drop the magic glasses, the self-driving cars, the social networking efforts. I wish they would concentrate on search, which everyone loves. Keep Gmail, Maps, and Docs. Drop the rest. Everyone will be better off.
SHARP — old and new
The folks at SHARP must have liked my post about my trusty 35-year-old ELSI MATE, because they sent me a brand new calculator. Thank you, SHARP!
The new SHARP has 469 functions, twin power, and comes at a great time. It will go to my son, who will use it in his college math classes.
I will stick with the ELSI MATE, and I hope to write another blog post for its 40th anniversary.
American Idol: What went wrong?
Back in March I predicted that Angie Miller would win American Idol 2013 (Season 12). I reaffirmed my prediction two days ago. My prediction was based on two assumptions: 1) There is strong correlation between American Idol contestants’ Twitter popularity and their TV popularity. 2) The show is not rigged — i.e., the show’s outcome is indeed determined by viewers’ vote alone.
Last night Angie was eliminated from the show, rendering my prediction wrong. The simplest explanation is that Twitter popularity does not guarantee TV viewer votes. But that explanation doesn’t satisfy me. I will do some digging, and may speculate in a future post about what might have gone wrong with my prediction.
Why Angie Miller will win American Idol 2013
Angie Miller will win Season 12 of American Idol simply because she is the most popular contestant, by far. She has been so, consistently, since March 22, 2013, when I started keeping weekly tabs on the contestants’ Twitter following.
There is no conspiracy. The show is not rigged (for Angie to win, anyway; it might be rigged in other ways and for other purposes).
See for yourself in this aggregated chart (below):
Dimitrov stuns Djokovic, causes major upset
They don’t call him “Baby Federer” for nothing. Bulgarian Grigor (Grisha) Dimitrov eliminated the world number one professional tennis player Novak Djokovic from Serbia in the second round of the Mutua Madrid Open tennis tournament, 6-7, 7-6, 3-6, in 3 hours and 4 minutes.
Below is a screenshot of the final score and match stats, and an earlier photo of Dimitrov at the US Open Series UCLA tournament, both courtesy of our friends at Kidz News.
Credit: Kidz News
Credit: Kidz News
The Orthodox Easter tradition
Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass explains the Orthodox Easter tradition in this one-minute video. Orthodox Easter is this Sunday, May 5, 2013.