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Or, to aficionados, CSI: New York.

I’ve discussed the show before, after the standalone (non-crossover) Pilot.  I remarked after that episode, “I’m not sure if they’re taking liberties with the medicine on the show or not, but they are taking extreme liberties with the trigonometry, so I wouldn’t necessarily expect rigorous stuff from the show.”

And how.

The best of the Pilot, the Gothic Horror feel, evaporated after the first episode.  I rapidly lost interest.  It’s essentially a science fiction show now.  Or comic book show.  The frequency of I’mSorryWhat?! moments in the show defy belief.

I tried watching last week’s episodes.  They have frakking tricorders: they pointed a laser scanner at a fragment of material, and the readout said “Silica”.  They concluded it must be ceramic.  Um…

Hold on, same episode.  Their mass spec isolated various points in a chemical mixture, one of which was biodiesel.  Um…

Hold on, though.  The episode has a sub-plot about the sport of street luge.  In Manhattan.  We’re back to trigonometry.  The way-too-fancy visuals on their software (into which, by the way, they entered speed in miles per hour, weight in pounds, and acceleration in meters per second to get their answer) determined that for the street luger to reach the speed at which he was estimated, he had to have descended a 35% grade (for an unspecified time or distance).  The investigators looked for one.  In Manhattan.  They found one a quarter mile away.

OK, forget the fact that a 35% grade, anywhere, followed by flat road for a quarter mile, would not yield a street luger going 80 miles per hour at the terminus.  Let’s talk about a 35% grade for a moment.  The infamous Lombard Street in San Francisco has a native 27% grade, which was considered completely impassible.  They put in extensive switchbacks, taking it down to a 16% grade.  You ever driven down that street?  You ever see anything more than a quarter again as steep as Lombard Street in Manhattan?  To be specific, on 45th between Fourth and Sixth?  Other than, say, the 10 cm drop-off from sidewalk to street?

These writers are insane.  It’s not even fun to watch the show.  It’s less plausible than The X-Files, where at least they’d give Mulder a few hand-wave lines.  There’s no way to figure out a mystery, because the answer might as easily be “mutated chipmunks did it”, in what is supposed to be a procedural melodrama.

There is exactly one compelling thing about this show.  That’s in the next post.  Look up, look down, or click right, depending on how you’re reading this post.

“We’ve paid out millions of dollars to hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers”

Assuming “millions of dollars” means “greater than or equal to $2,000,000 and less than $1,000,000,000″, and that “hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers” means “greater than or equal to 200,000 satisfied customers and less than 1,000,000 satisfied customers”, they could pay the average recipient just over $2 for his gold and still be speaking the truth.  But maybe the people who got $2 were the “satisfied customers”.  Maybe they have millions more customers who received less than $1 for their gold, and who were not satisfied customers, and therefore not counted in the statistics.

Methinks the ad could use more clarity.  Something like “Our average payout is $300, and we’ve paid over 300,000 people. Want to join them?”  Exact same number of characters.

Reviewers found 109,263 errors when reviewing Houghton Mifflin’s math textbooks that were submitted to the state of Texas.  Seriously.  That’s with real math, not Houghton Mifflin math.  Texas imposes a $5,000 fine on each mistake.  The state’s letting them off on a technicality, so the textbook publisher will not have to pony up half a billion dollars to pay the education department.

Ah, Texas textbooks.  Ring a bell?  Go read that link if you haven’t.  It tells about Texas’s textbook standards, which, I swear I’m not making this up, must glorify “free enterprise”, “patriotism”, and the “values” of the state’s heritage (of Texas.  Uh-oh.  Then again, not to worry.  “Lying” is clearly one of their values, so when they deceive students, they’re actually teaching them an important lesson about the values of the state.  See?  Neat, huh?)

Go read.  At the time of that post, the chairperson of the Board of Education co-owned a petroleum company, and explained that “The oil and gas industry should be consulted” when it comes to textbooks, because they “always get a raw deal.”

eBay Pack Your Bags & Win It Contest Rules: “All random drawings will be conducted on or about 12:00 pm, P.T. by Strobe Promotions, Inc., the independent judging organization, in Hicksville, NY … As a condition for receiving any prize, winners who are residents of Canada will be required to correctly answer (unaided) a time-limited mathematical skill-test question.”

What?

Enter the contest.

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