The MIT Mood Meter

Posted on by in Technology

It was just written up in Popular Science: The Mood Meter came about when a team of researchers at the place from whence all awesome things come, MIT’s Media Lab, hooked up a camera and screen (or projector) to some nifty facial recognition algorithms that can spot faces and smiles in real time. And, after assuring campus security that they wouldn’t be recording any images, they placed the installations in four different locations across MIT’s campus. Faces deemed to be smiling are augmented on the screen with a big, cartoon smiley face. Frowning and neutral countenances get an emotionless overlay, instead. The software also estimates how big each person’s smile is, on a scale of 0 to 100, and averages

Continue reading

MIT Sloan Brews Beer

Posted on by in Beer

Last night a group of us from school went out to Barleycorn’s Craft Brew store in Natick, MA and made 60 gallons of beer. There were 4 batches: an Imperial Hefeweizen, a Tripel Beglian Ale, a Pale Ale, and a California common ale. Robin Bose created a photo blog of the event with lots of shots of the entire process. We still need to make labels for these brews, but here are a few the group came up with last year:

S&P Goofs Up Again

Posted on by in Current Events, Markets

Via Kid Dynamite: Just in case you missed the most ridiculous story of the day – the BBC has the details: “Standard & Poor’s accidentally released a message to some of its subscribers on Thursday saying that it had downgraded French debt from its top AAA rating. S&P said it was investigating what had gone wrong and stressed that France still had an AAA rating.” So, Europe is a veritable powder keg right now waiting to blow, and S&P accidentally releases an erroneous message that they downgraded France.  Then they said sorry.     I’m half surprised that markets weren’t down even more this morning. Beyond absurd. Agreed.

The Idiot’s Guide to Buying a Congressman

Posted on by in Current Events

Via Ezra Klein, this is not entirely surprising, but still fairly disturbing: Disgraced ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff is out of jail. He was released in June. He now works as an accountant at a kosher pizza parlor. And he needs a literary agent. “I was actually thinking of writing a book,” he told “60 Minutes.” “The Idiot’s Guide to Buying a Congressman.” In the interview, Abramoff gives away some of the tricks of his former trade. The big one? Dangle a job, he told Lesley Stahl. “When we would become friendly with an office and they were important to us, and the chief of staff was a competent person, I would say or my staff would say to him or her

Continue reading

The General Problem

Posted on by in Cartoons

Via xkcd: The mouse over is worth quoting: “I find that when someone’s taking time to do something right in the present, they’re a perfectionist with no ability to prioritize, whereas when someone took time to do something right in the past, they’re a master artisan of great foresight.”