Listening to Alex Trebek’s words wash over a college football game just feels magical. That’s a testament to the guys at Solid Verbal, who must have spent weeks parsing over old episodes of “Jeopardy!” to pull enough dialogue from its host to fill over three minutes of highlights of last season’s Standford-Oregon game.
Well done, guys. This is fantastic. Read the rest of this entry »
If you missed out on the man-versus-machine match on “Jeopardy!” earlier this week, we humans basically got our asses kicked. Watson, the IBM supercomputer designed for the two-game match, won with $77,147. Former “Jeopardy!” champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter finished with $24,000 and $21,600, respectively.
Everyone involved seemed to recognize this as a historic event in computing, and if you haven’t read Jennings’s chat on the Washington Post website from Tuesday or his piece on Slate yesterday, you’d be entertained by both. A sampling from the former:
Q: I was suprised that you only got through the first round. I found too much of the first night devoted to IBM, like a long commercial. What is the format of the next two nights?
A: The contest is two games stretched out over three nights: another half game tomorrow, with the final game Wednesday. In addition to giving IBM a nice infomercial spot (if you buy a Watson 1.0 license for home use, you also get a Watson mouse pad and some steak knives!) the documentary spots help explain how the contest came together, why this truly represents an AI breakthrough, and so forth.
It reminds me of the “human interest” stuff that always clogs up Olympic footage. Revealed tonight: Watson hopes to win these games for its adorable little sister, who has leukemia!
Other computer conquests of humans in games include Deep Blue’s controversial chess win against Garry Kasparov in 1997 and the CPU opponent against me every time I play Madden. How does that damn game ALWAYS come up with 2 touchdowns in the last 1:15? Total bologna.
Watch Double and Final Jeopardy! of Game Two after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Here at With Leather, we like to honor all walks of sport, and nobody conceives, executes or dissemenates competition like the wonderfully insane minds running Japanese television. When you think about the Allied Occupation of Japan after World War II, where staples of Americana like liberal democracy, individualism and even baseball, it’s almost like Japan represents what America could have been in some parallel universe. Think about that; we could have been Japan. I can’t process all of the feelings I get from realizing that.
Now think about the fact that you–yes, you!–could have been the guy with pins clipped to your nostrils, lips or nipples as you tried valiantly to pull the bikini top off a Japanese girl (one with a really flat ass, by the way, but who’s complaining). Live vicariously after the jump if you dare. It’s as if they as a people decided to embrace what was great about Western civilization and just discard all of that puritan bullsh-t that guilt-trips so many people into perpetual misery. Don’t ever change, Japan. Let your nipple-pointed star burn brightly for years to come. Read the rest of this entry »
I never thought of a “speedy presentation” has having a 45-second intro, but what do I know about that sort of thing. If I can make a “presentation” that lasts 45 seconds and my “audience” is still interested at that point, that’s a win for me. But anyway, this video is basically about how to cheat at Scrabble, and it’s a good analogy for life. However, it kinda glosses over one obvious fact: nobody wants to play board games with dickheads. And if anyone wants to play me in Scrabble on Facebook or Pogo, I could get down with that. Just don’t be pissed if I spend days on end between moves. There’s only so many things I can do with a tray full of vowels. via.
I feel like I've seen this before, but YouTube insists it's new to the Internet. So I guess all the insane shit on Japanese TV is starting to look the same to me. Hmmm… people playing Rock Scissors Paper and beating each other with a paper fan? Wasn't that done with people wearing insect costumes? Or did I see that when the men were throwing buckets of wax onto each other to turn each other into statues? Hey, when was the last time I looked at tentacle porn?
Whoops, forgot to turn off the inner monologue. Ignore that last sentence.
[FanHouse]
Just like the Bible always predicted, the final battle between Good and Evil will be played on the foosball table. Sadly, only twenty of these were made, and even if you could get your hands on one it would cost you £14,500, which I think is something like five million dollars.
You can click the thumbnail below for the teams' lineups. I have to admit: it doesn't look good for Good. The offense is a shambles: God can start things pretty nicely, but his finishing skills have diminished over the last 2000 years, and I don't see Mary Poppins and Gandhi stepping up to score goals in his place. Meanwhile, Evil's midfield is responsible for some 13 million deaths and unspeakable brutality, and though I like Flash Gordon's speed on the other side, Christopher Robin and Mother Teresa are obvious weak links against such tyranny.
Anyway, if you want to bet on Evil, I guess With Leather is the place to do it. (UPDATE: Thanks goes to The Basketball Jones for this)
