Sleeping Dogs Lie

"We spend our days chiseling. And since you can't un-chisel a stone, see that your aim is true." -Charlie McDanger's page-a-day calendar

Heckuva job, 'merica!

Well we finally wiped our hands of that little mess called Iraq.

U.S. service members dead: 4484
Allied service members dead: 318
Iraqi civilians dead: 100,000+ documented, up to 1m+ estimated
U.S. dollars spent: $800 billion so far, $4 trillion all told

Where's all that money going? To the bankers and the defense contractors, of course. War is a racket.

Enjoy your dissent while you can

Check out the crowd control of the future, courtesy of the sick people at Raytheon:

It's not the first crowd control tool to use sound waves, but Raytheon's patent for a new type of riot shield that produces low frequency sound waves to disrupt the respiratory tract and hinder breathing, sounds a little scary.

Paul & Mykel 4dec11

Ready set go

A friend called this morning with this problem, and wants an answer by the end of the day.

My sister, while administering a college exam, thought two students seated next to one another were communicating during the test.

The test had twenty-six questions, each with answers A through D. Of the twenty-six, Student A answered sixteen correctly and ten incorrectly. Student B answered sixteen correctly, eight incorrectly, and left two blank.

Of the questions that Student B answered, every single correct and incorrect answer matched the answers given by Student A. Assuming they did not cheat, what is the likelihood of them giving these twenty-four identical answers?

There are of course confounding variables, including different question difficulties and different plausibility of incorrect answers. Nonetheless, she'd like a reasonable approximation of the math.

Answers in the comments section please, and feel free to communicate with the person sitting next to you.