That's why you should start with guinea pigs

I just saw The Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and I must say, the air-conditioning was very nice.

Actually, that's not quite fair-- the special effects were good. If they'd taken 10% of the thought and 1% of the money that went into the special effects and put them into the writing, it would have been a much better movie. A little better acting would have helped (especially the scientist interacting with Caesar), but I don't think much could have been done with that acting.

Actual sign language would have been nice.

The people were so stupid they don't deserve a planet. I will bow to expert opinion, but I'm pretty sure the security at the big drug company wasn't as good as the security in Jurassic Park.

The only interesting subtlety in the movie was Caesar picking up the fascist metaphor of bundling sticks to indicate strength in numbers. Even then, he's got a pathetic little bunch of sticks that he could have broken easily. In my not particularly humble opinion, the bunch of sticks should have been scaled to his strength. We do get an ape on horseback, which was a nice touch.

I've seen people argue that the humans should have done better against the apes-- probably true, especially considering that the plague hadn't taken hold at that point. On the other hand, the apes should have been picking up the guns and using them, too.

Not that I'm bitter or anything, but I really think the end would have been better if the viewpoint had pulled back to see a globe with the plague markers spread across it. I don't think I should be able to improve blockbuster movies that easily.

Get paid to improve your political prediction skills

There's a US government contest among prediction teams, and UPenn is recruiting.

College grads only, but it doesn't have to be a US degree.

Theoretically, it's 6-10 hours/year for four years, but it wouldn't surprise me if people who get interested put in more time.

UPenn is offering $150 total.

List of teams-- I haven't checked yet for other offers, but I will. UPenn isn't listed, so I'm not sure what's going on.

UPenn has Phillip Tetlock, who's done exceedingly interesting work about how bad people are at prediction, and this includes the experts.

You didn't have any other plans for those hours, did you?

Making Light has an open thread which is mostly about a probability brain teaser. I find such unspeakably boring,so I made my saving throw, but if you want extended discussion of something which is rather like the Monty Hall problem but not exactly, there it is.

However, KipW mentioned Not To Scale, a charming tile game in which the pieces rescale themselves to fit locations. The only mercy is that you don't have to rotate them.

There's also a discussion of small objects you might have with you that could stop a bullet.