Well, in a way. After you sit through a long video ad on this article, you can listen to a recording of the whale imitating a human voice. It sounds like a drunk guy singing nonsense to himself in the bath underwater, but it does sound more human than whale.
Maybe the sirens of Greek mythology were really just whales.
A single investor tried to provide Romney with a boost on Intrade after the last Presidential debate. Spending around $17,800, the investor managed to push Romney's chances of winning the election from 40% to 48%. The lift lasted just six minutes before Romney's chances dropped back to 41%.
Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution commented on a similar tactic in the last Presidential election:
This supports Robin Hanson’s and Ryan Oprea’s finding that manipulation can improve prediction markets — the reason is that manipulation offers informed investors a free lunch … The more manipulation, therefore, the greater the expected profit from betting according to rational expectations.
Seems like a bad investment, though if it's a Romney crony, $17,800 may just be something found under a sofa cushion.
A better investment would be to try and bribe Nate Silver. If Silver said Romney's chances of winning the election had jumped to almost 50% I'd have a heart attack. As it is, I'm nervous as hell that that crazy liar Romney might actually pull off the upset.
The Weeknd is the stage name of Canadian R&B singer Abel Tesfaye. Marie introduced me to him a while ago, and his first three albums topped the charts in Eugene's driving soundtrack for months on end. Tesfaye has a great voice, and his music just sounds...dangerous. Naughty. A cocktail of drugs and sex.
He released his first three albums for free on the web at his website, and you don't have to look far to find them. But much to my joy, he's issuing a remastered version of his trilogy with 3 bonus tracks on a CD titled simply Trilogy. I know, I'm one of the 7 people in the world who still buy CDs, but only as a delivery mechanism for higher quality digital audio files. MP3s make my ears bleed, and Tesfaye's voice deserves better.
Besides, $11.99 for the equivalent of 3 full-length CDs of stuff this good is a bargain.
Creative commercial for the realism of these IPS displays.
