Free Republic

**SNIP** What should’ve been the biggest story of the week — five Division I college basketball games being examined for highly suspicious or “irregular” betting patterns can’t compete with the latest speculation of free-agent linebackers of varied achievement. According to multiple reports and the schools’ acknowledgments, four of those games include Temple’s team and the other was played by Loyola (Md.). Both teams had rotten seasons. But the most conspicuously suspicious among the games in question was University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) at Temple on March 7, a barely contested 100-72 UAB win. As curious games go, this one...

A nearly 60-year-old mathematical problem has finally been solved. The story began last fall when David Smith, a retired print technician from Yorkshire, England, came upon a shape with a tantalizing property. The life-long tiling enthusiast discovered a 13-sided shape — dubbed the hat — that is able to fill the infinite plane without overlaps or gaps in a pattern that not only never repeats but also never can be made to repeat. This elusive shape is known to mathematicians as an aperiodic monotile or an einstein, a clever pun that takes its name from the German words ein and...

An amateur mathematician in the United Kingdom may have solved a 60-year-old problem in geometry, garnering the attention of researchers. CNN reported David Smith, a retired printing technician, has discovered a shape known as an “einstein,” which can be tiled over a surface without the pattern repeating. The outlet noted mathematicians first began working on this problem in the 1960s. Smith and three coauthors, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig S. Kaplan, and Chaim Goodman-Strauss, published a paper explaining Smith’s finding. Smith, who says he is “always looking for an interesting shape,” wrote a blog post to serve as a “scrapbook” of...

Faced with an impossible puzzle, lab monkeys in a recent experiment showed unflappable resolve: They continued to guess what they thought must be the correct responses, even when rewards were doled out at random or in ways meant to disincentivize the animals from sticking to their guns. In short, the monkeys’ spuriously learned convictions—their seeming insistence that there must be a structure and solution to an unsolvable puzzle—outweighed their desire to maximize rewards during the experiment. The study, published August 23 in PNAS, suggests that the monkeys create internal representations and assumptions about how to solve a puzzle or address...

In Hebrews 11:1 in the Bible, faith is described as the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Now, according to a new study by Georgetown University neuroscientists, the strength of one's faith in God is likely linked to the brain.In their study, Implicit pattern learning predicts individual differences in belief in God in the United States and Afghanistan, published this month in the journal Nature Communications, the neuroscientists found that an individual’s ability to unconsciously predict complex patterns, through an ability known as implicit pattern learning, had a strong correlation with the strength of their...

ike sewing? Well you’ll love this news: the Vintage Patterns Wiki has released more than 83,500 patterns of pre 1992, out of print patterns for all to use. The browsable collection runs the gamut from Dynasty-inspired pussy bow power suits to Betty Draper-esque frocks featuring models in white gloves to an 1895 boys’ Reefer Suit with fly-free short trousers. Visitors can narrow their search to focus on a particular garment, designer or decade. If you click these links, you can see patterns from the following decades: 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The movie star collection is particularly...

We see patterns where none exist. It’s what humans do; in fact, it’s what animals do. Mark Twain noticed this and had a pithy summary. "We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it — and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again — and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more." The wary cat has a theory of the world: Stove burns you. Stay...

In the wake of the 2012 election, it is clear that the demographic challenges facing the Republican Party are serious. The populations that tend to vote Democrat are increasing their share of the electorate, while the share of the electorate that tends to vote Republican is decreasing. With the GOP now falling all over themselves to promote amnesty, this trend threatens to only intensify. On the other hand, the Democrats will for the foreseeable future be reliant on a vote split in minority communities that is basically tribal in nature. There is no way in hell that 100% of blacks...

In a potentially ominous Super Tuesday setback for Rick Santorum, a campaign filing mishap in Ohio could leave him ineligible to be awarded 18 Buckeye State district delegates -- more than a quarter of the total at stake there, ABC News reported Friday. Ohio has 66 delegates total, with 63 at stake on Tuesday. Santorum failed to qualify for any district delegates in three Ohio congressional districts representing nine delegates because he didn't turn in names there. ABC News reported that in six other congressional districts, the former Pennsylvania senator's campaign submitted fewer names than required to be eligible for...

Without a doubt every picture ever painted was made with but three primary colors. Black is no color at all and they say all colors are found in white light. So many things can be made with a few basic building blocks. So understand that I realized all of this when I found myself on a roll this morning churning out strange sentences. If they had not formed such an unique strange pattern and story I wouldn't bother you people with them. The other day something inspired me to write a halloween message that would add up to 666 in...

In a recent study, Bartolo Luque and Lucas Lacasa of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid in Spain have discovered a new pattern in primes that has surprisingly gone unnoticed until now. They found that the distribution of the leading digit in the prime number sequence can be described by a generalization of Benford’s law. In addition, this same pattern also appears in another number sequence, that of the leading digits of nontrivial Riemann zeta zeros, which is known to be related to the distribution of primes. Besides providing insight into the nature of primes, the finding could also have applications...

On election eve I re-post my personal analysis and prediction for the 2008 election.

Valdis Krebs networks patterns of political book buying This network visualization of political book buying is insanely amazing. I’ve asked Valdis for a mind meld, but I’m sure I don’t have enough capacity to absorb even a one-millionth of what I’d need to think the way Valdis does. Thank goodness he thinks the way he does:

What Are We Reading? Track America's Political Book Buying Click on a state to see that state's percentage of "red" and "blue" book sales over the past 60 days, as well as local political favorites. Or see how the map has changed over time by using the right and left arrows to choose a different two-month period during 2008. To see the changes in the map over the same periods in the last presidential election year, click the "2004" tab. Updated daily. Learn more.

Chain letters reveal surprising circulation patterns By Lisa Zyga A chain letter hoax that fooled thousands of people may help computer scientists understand how information spreads on a global scale. The chain e-mail originated sometime in 2002, and claimed to be a petition to organize opposition to the impending US-Iraq war. Tens of thousands of people signed their names to several hundred copies of the petition, with some copies appearing on Web archives. Like most Internet chain letters, the petition had its origins in a hoax, but its widespread dissemination is one of the few instances of a single piece...

Ancient Architectural Acoustic Resonance Patterns and Regional Brain Activity Authors: Cook, Ian A.; Pajot, Sarah K.; Leuchter, Andrew F.Source: Time and Mind, Volume 1, Number 1, March 2008 , pp. 95-104(10)Publisher: Berg Publishers Abstract: Previous archaeoacoustic investigations of prehistoric, megalithic structures have identified acoustic resonances at frequencies of 95-120 Hz, particularly near 110-12 Hz, all representing pitches in the human vocal range. These chambers may have served as centers for social or spiritual events, and the resonances of the chamber cavities might have been intended to support human ritual chanting. We evaluated the possibility that tones at these frequencies might...

January 04, 2008 Iowa: Romney's Women Trouble and More [Margie Omero is President of Momentum Analysis, a Democratic polling firm based in Washington, DC.] Gender played a huge role in the Iowa caucuses yesterday...on the Republican side. Mike Huckabee's sizable lead over Mitt Romney came largely from women. According to exit polls from both the Democratic and Republican caucuses, 40% of women voted for Huckabee and 24% for Romney. Among men, Huckabee and Romney are nearly tied (29% and 26%, respectively). ... In the Democratic caucus, the pattern is far less dramatic. Yes, Clinton does fare better with women than...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE HAMMER, Iraq — Soldiers see their missions differently. An infantryman has close contact with an enemy. But ensuring the infantryman is as safe as can be falls to other soldiers, whose MOSes — military occupational specialties — provide additional help. Having knowledge of what may face an infantryman outside the wire is something Pfc. Craig Obeso does. An intelligence analyst, the 20-year-old Obeso has yet to go outside the wire that separates Forward Operating Base Hammer from potential insurgents, but he knows his job is important. Analyzing intelligence is designed to help “patrols find what they are...

Winds Of Change: North America's Wind Patterns Have Shifted Significantly In The Past 30,000 Years Science Daily — Dartmouth researchers have learned that the prevailing winds in the mid latitudes of North America, which now blow from the west, once blew from the east. They reached this conclusion by analyzing 14,000- to 30,000-year-old wood samples from areas in the mid-latitudes of North America (40-50°N), which represents the region north of Denver and Philadelphia and south of Winnipeg and Vancouver. Researchers (left to right) Yong Shu, Eric Posmentier, Xiahong Feng, and Anthony Faiia. (Photo by Joseph Mehling) The researchers report their...

LONDON (Reuters) - If the numbers 13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5 ring a bell, it might be because you have been reading "The Da Vinci Code". Dan Brown's bestseller uses that series -- a mixed-up version of a sequence of numbers brought to the Western world by a 13th century Italian mathematician -- as a clue to a secret Swiss bank account. As Brown's book, and the film, turned into a global entertainment phenomenon, the work of Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa was given a new lease of life for millions of people. Not so for Elizabeth Miller. The technical analyst had long been a...