After a huge game last night in game 3 of the NBA Finals, a buddy pointed me to some video blogs "created by" Sasha Vujacic. Nicknamed 'The Machine', Vujacic scored 20 points on 7-of-10 shooting to help lead the Lakers to victory over the Boston Celtics. So far there are three entries in the Sasha Vujacic video blog saga, and I can't wait for an entry talking about last night's performance.
Sasha Vujacic Video Blog 1
You'll find the rest of the videos after the jump.
Ever wanted an NBA championship ring without going through all the trouble of actually playing for a winning team? Today's your lucky day then, as an authentic championship ring from the Los Angeles Lakers 1999-2000 season has popped up on eBay, for the small starting sum of $22,500. Keep reading for more information on the auction and photos of the ring.
As a Laker fan (don't hate), I've seen Kobe go from ice-cold to red-hot more times than I can count. All of us have no doubt seen our favorite player enter some ethereal state of mind that finds them incapable of missing a basket. Well, research reveals that the notion of a hot-streak is nothing more than an illusion.
The illusory nature of basketball shooting streaks was first demonstrated by Amos Tversky and Thomas Gilovich, a psychologist at Cornell. They began the investigation by sifting through years of Philadelphia 76er statistics. They looked at every single shot taken by ever single player, and recorded whether or not that shot had been preceded by a string of hits or misses. If "the hot hand" was a real phenomenon, then players should have a higher field goal percentage after making several previous shots. The streak should elevate their game.
So what did the scientists find? There was absolutely no evidence of "the hot hand". A player's chance of making a shot was not affected by whether or not their previous shots had gone in. Each field goal attempt was its own independent event. The short runs experienced by the 76ers were no different than the short runs that naturally emerge from any random process. Taking a jumper was like flipping a coin. The streaks were a figment of our imagination.
Jim Kerstetter of C|Net has written an essay demanding the abolishment of Boss Buttons. What's a Boss Button? Usually it's a simple press on your keyboard that immediately hides whatever you're gazing at on the monitor and replaces the image with something work-related.
The reason this subject is coming up is because millions of people are watching the NCAA tournament via video stream while at work.
Come every March, thanks to office pools on the NCAA college basketball tournament, boss buttons are as common on desktop computers as personal e-mails and photos of your friends: They're probably not supposed to be there, but we all have them. NCAA.com has even provided a helpful boss button on its Web site.
Jim argues that it's time we finally abolish this illusion and remove the shackles from office-workers to watch what they want to watch.
Here's a thought: Let's stop all the silly shenanigans and make boss buttons a thing of the past. Get it out in the open and let people keep track of the office pools without worrying about getting into trouble. The average American is spending more time in the office than ever. And the average tech worker spends even more time than that. There's a reason all those Silicon Valley companies offer free food, subsidized child care, laundry, auto-detailing, and swanky gyms: So you never have an excuse to go home.
If I were in a position to employ people at an old-school, tangible location, I'd probably have a television set up for people to watch and just nip it in the bud. Besides, all that video-streaming has to be killing the corporate bandwidth.
