Los Links June 25th 2016

Very nice ,  

Physics Cats!, 

The block heard round the world (its on Youtube, but worth a watch), 

Why Islands induce dwarfism

NBA Finals Game 7 Scores

The NBA season has finally reached its pinnacle.  After a playoffs full of blowouts, we get to see one last fight between the Warriors and Cavs take place back in Oakland.  The Warriors are trying to regroup from one of the most disastorous games I think Ive seen from a starting lineup, posting just a 36 O Rtg and a negative 84.6 rating overall.  The killer was as I pointed out the other day, that the so called lineup of death fouls at a prodigous rate, and they had a rate of over 55% for the night in Game 6.  It also did not help that as a team they shot just 38% on three poitn attempts that were open or wide open. 

We will see if the Warriors without Bogut can tamp down on the Cavs ability to get to the rim and score.  42% of their shot attempts were from less than 10 ft out, and they made 63% of them.  If they can go back to the dominance they showed early in the series at that, the Warriors should walk off winners.  The program thinks they'll be able to figure it out, winning a tight 104-99 kind of game.It only gives them a 64% chance to do so though, largely because of the quickly disappearing defense over the last 3 games.

Los Links 6/18/2016

Stripes make you faster 
The natural camouflage of animals is always truly fascinating.  Just that little bit of deception is all thats needed to protect them from becoming a meal.

 Antikythera Mechanism'spurpose discovered,
Ancient societies were much more advanced thn we will ever really give them credit for, at least until the beginning of the collapse of the Empires of Antiquity.

  It plays just for you,
 I need this for around the office when folks start complaining about different applications

  Drink up!
 This is always why I hate when folks proclaim the Science is settled.  It never truly is, especially when it comes to science that is as complicated as the human body is.

NBA Finals Game 6 Scores

The most important cog for the Warriors machine would appear to be Draymond Green and his defensive acumen. The Cavs top three lineups were able to post an average 122 offensive rating while on the floor, helping to annihilate Golden State at Oracle. Green returns though for a trip to Cleveland where his most common lineup has held the Cavs to just a 108 rating. This could be largely why the program gives the Warriors a 68% chance to walk off as champions tonight, winning an average of 107-100.

It will be interesting to see though if missing Andrew Bogut hampers the west coasters. He's been on the court for a majority of the playoffs this year and his rim protection has helped allow a lot of the help defense Golden State likes to play. It should also be interesting since the lineup of death allows nearly every 40% of opponent field goals to add a free throw attempt, as opposed to just 17% with Bogut in the lineup.

NBA Finals Game 5 Scores

The NBA playoffs continue to be excitingly weird.  The Cavs missed almost all of their open shots at home ( and let the Warriors take 28 of their 36 attempts as open beyond the arc) to allow the Warriors to steal game 4 and all but eliminate them. Then the Draymond Green decided to take another nut shot at an opponent and has been suspended for Game 5. This is a pretty unprecedented event, and how exactly Golden State responds will be interesting. Green has averaged just under 40 minutes a game this series, with the top two lineups without him also feature Leandro Barbosa and Mo Speights with significant time.

To build an actual team model without Green is very difficult because of his super high minutes. However, even tamping down the Warriors a bit without him and elevating the Cavs a bit, the program sees the series ending tonight in Oakland. The Cavs have been atrocious away from Cleveland in this series with just an 85.7 Ortg and a Drtg over 115.   I'm not certain it's as certain as the 92% the program gives the dubs but the 103-92 score sounds just about right.

NBA Finals Game 4

So everything this playoffs has been goofy. Over half the games have been decided by double digits.  And I think it is largely a result of the increased 3 point attempts. We'll see how tonight goes but the program thinks the Cavs can tie things up with a 110-105 victory tonight. It should at least be interesting to see if Lebron can continue to frustrate Draymond Green and if Kevin Love is in fact the man holding back the Cavs offense.

NBA Finals Game 3 Scores

The Cavs have found themselves in a hole. Specifically a terrible shooting hole. That has been the difference for a team that had been absolutely lights out prior to this series. While a lot of folks have talked about their 3 point shot drying up, it's been the easy interior stuff that has killed them. During the regular season the Cavs hit 56% of their shots from under 10 ft. So far in this series they're shooting just 48% from that short distance. They are also missing open looks (as defined as a closest defender 4-6 feet away) at a whopping 71% rate. That's been a quarter of their shots that are uncontested and they can't make 1 in 3 of them!

The program is again super on the Cavs returning to normality, especially at home. It gives them an 88% chance to win, and thinks they'll get to 108 points. It still sees the Warriors shooting hot though, scoring 104.

NBA Finals Game 2 Score

Game 1 did not go exactly how the program had thought it would.  The Warriors for the most part were right on target, with the bench helping make up for a pretty mediocre game from the sharp shooting stars.  The Cavs though struggled inside of 10 ft, posting a pretty abysmal 43.5% on those shots.  Kyrie Irving and Lebron James were pretty big culprits on this front, going 3/6 and 6/14 respectively.  If that happens again, they will lose this series in pretty quick fashion.  The team overall will still need to shoot better from beyond the arc, but Kyrie and Lebron especially need to finish.


The program does see a big rebound.  It believes more in Lebron and Kyrie being able to bounce back than the Warriors bench being so spectacular again.  Give the Cavs a 52.7% chance to even things up on the road.

GSW' Wins: 473    CLE' Wins: 527
GSW' Average Score: 104.4354771     CLE' Average Score: 107.4435543

Los Links June 4th 2016

The galaxy might be a bit slimmer than we thought, 
Very interesting work being done on a pretty important cosmological topic.


Rosetta's comet contains the ingredients for life,  
Not really so much as that, but the comet contains some of the basic elements that life might need to come together

Aristotle’s Tomb Found,  
 Pretty cool. 

Efficient hydrogen from Seawater,  
A friend of mine and I were just discussing whether or not a hydrogen economy or a more electric based one would be better (specifally the new Tesla model and its viability.  If hydrogen from desalination is very efficient it could really help more drought plagued California. 

NBA Finals Game 1 Win Percentages

For the opening game tonight, the Warriors are 6 point favorites at home.  I think thats a bit off, my numbers have them covering only 38% of the time.  A more likely scenario is a 2 point win for Golden State to open the series, with an average score of 105-103 in their favor.

'GSW' Wins: 593    'CLE' Wins: 407
'GSW' Average Score: 105.8530419     'CLE' Average Score: 102.66593405

Ctl Alt Revolt Review

This past weekend I was able to head back home to visit some friends and my family for a couple of days.The long drive can be a bit tenuous along I70, since there are large swaths of it that are not really covered by radio.  So, I always make sure to download an Audiobook to listen to.  This time, I got CTRL ALT Revolt! Its a solid story of an AI uprising coming to destroy humanity.  There were some good parts and some stuff that I couldn't just not enjoy, so overall I'd have to give it just under 4 stars.  I've got a review that delves into the specifics, but contains spoilers past the jump.

I'd like to first state that the narration was very good on this particular book.  Mare Trevathan is not a narrator I've heard before, but she was able to do an excellent job portraying the different characters emotions and states throughout.
The Audio portion of this review gets a full 5 stars, so if you see she's a narrator do not fear that you'll end up with a flat telling of the story.

Non Spoiler Review:
Overall, the story flows very nicely.  None of the characters acts in a way that seems far outside of what would be expected,and there are just a few sections that drag on a bit.  The humor is good and appropriate in the places it gets used, although some of the jokes start to fall flat as the author uses the same bit fairly often for some of the side commentary.  Which, is something a reader should be aware of, that the author projects a lot of his political philosophy as side jokes throughout the novel.  The end epilogue was also a bit of a letdown for me, not really tying things up.  However, the author's ability to really paint a picture with his words gets my praise. He describes the robots in great detail, and is adept at giving scene details that help add to the immersion in the story world.