The Padres have become the latest Major League team to implement dynamic pricing for single-game ticket sales.
By using advanced computer programming, dynamic pricing will give the team the ability to adjust ticket costs higher or lower based on market demand and such factors as pitching matchups, the team’s performance, weather and potential milestones.
“Over time, as the game gets closer, ticket prices will normalize, but generally, fans who buy early will save money.
Single-game tickets will go on sale at the Petco Park box office, online at www.padres.com/tickets on Feb. 11.
All told, nearly three-quarters of single-game tickets will go on sale at or below 2011 prices.
via MLB.com
San Diego Padres go “big data” with dynamic ticket pricing
The Padres have become the latest Major League team to implement dynamic pricing for single-game ticket sales.
By using advanced computer programming, dynamic pricing will give the team the ability to adjust ticket costs higher or lower based on market demand and such factors as pitching matchups, the team’s performance, weather and potential milestones.
“Over time, as the game gets closer, ticket prices will normalize, but generally, fans who buy early will save money.
Single-game tickets will go on sale at the Petco Park box office, online at www.padres.com/tickets on Feb. 11.
All told, nearly three-quarters of single-game tickets will go on sale at or below 2011 prices.
via MLB.com
New book chronicles the history of UCLA from farmland to world-class public research university
Of the many photographs in a new history of UCLA, one is especially arresting. The photo, from April 1929, shows the school’s first four buildings on its soon-to-open Westwood campus with little else around for miles but rolling hills and a few houses. “The campus is so far out in the country that it’s obvious only farmers will ever be the students’ neighbors,” the caption reads, quoting a not-particularly-far-sighted journalist at the time.
Clearly, the growth of UCLA and surrounding Westside neighborhoods was never a given. The school’s unusual journey to academic prominence — with political intrigue and student unrest along the way — is the basic narrative of “UCLA: The First Century,” a lavish 360-page coffee table book by Marina Dundjerski.
Pushing against the Berkeley-centric education establishment, Southern Californians undertook…
Learn more about the book, UCLA: The First Century, and about the UCLA History Project.
Criteria for Autism is changing as the DSM-5 creates a new category: Autism Spectrum Disorder
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has proposed new diagnostic criteria for Autism in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).
While final decisions are still months away, the recommendations reflect the work of dozens of the nation’s top scientific and research minds and are supported by more than a decade of intensive study and analysis.
The proposal recommends a new category called autism spectrum disorder which would incorporate several previously separate diagnoses, including autistic disorder, Asperger’s disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified.
The proposal asserts that symptoms of these four disorders represent a continuum from mild to severe, rather than a simple yes or no diagnosis to a specific disorder. The proposed diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder specify a range of severity as well as describe the individual’s overall developmental status–in social communication and other relevant cognitive and motor behaviors.
This change will help clinicians more accurately diagnose people with relevant symptoms and behaviors by recognizing the differences from person to person, rather than providing general labels that tend not to be consistently applied across different clinics and centers.
Field testing of the proposed criteria for autism spectrum disorder does not indicate that there will be any change in the number of patients receiving care for autism spectrum disorders in treatment centers–just more accurate diagnoses that can lead to more focused treatment.
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DSM is the manual used by clinicians and researchers to diagnose and classify mental disorders. The APA will publish DSM-5 in 2013, culminating a 14-year revision process.
Visit an amazing new piece at LACMA, Metropolis II, a sculpture of a modern city
“It wasn’t about creating a scale model of the city it was about creating the noise of city” – artist, Chris Burden
Metropolis II is an intense and complex kinetic sculpture, modeled after a fast paced, frenetic modern city.
Steel beams form an eclectic grid interwoven with an elaborate system of 18 roadways, including one 6 lane freeway, and HO scale train tracks.
Miniature cars speed through the city at 240 scale miles per hour; every hour, the equivalent of approximately 100,000 cars circulate through the dense network of buildings. According to Burden, “The noise, the continuous flow of the trains, and the speeding toy cars, produces in the viewer the stress of living in a dynamic, active and bustling 21st Century city.”
via LACMA
A short doc about a kinetic sculpture that took four years to build. We had the honor of spending three days in Chris Burden’s studio filming this sculpture before it was moved to the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art (LACMA) where it is being reinstalled.
– Directed by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman
The perfect, easy two hour hike in Orange County – Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park
From OC Parks:
…encompasses approximately 4,300 acres of riparian and oak woodland canyons, rolling grassland hills and steep slopes of coastal sage scrub and chaparral. The park is highlighted by scenic rock formations, including the beautiful Red Rock Canyon.
There are three intermittent streams: Borrego, Serrano and Aliso Creek meandering through the park, each hosting an abundance of wildlife. Remnants of the former cattle ranching days can be seen throughout the park.
Though 90% of the park burned in the Santiago Fire of 2007, the land is in the recovery process.
In our last trip we see two sets of deer, falcons overhead, ridiculously large squirrels, and we may or may not have been growled at by a mountain lion!
Definitely worth a trip.
Will.i.am – "I will always be the best me I can be" – song on Sesame Street
Will.i.am sings “What I Am” as part of Sesame Street’s 41st season premiering September 27th, 2010, on PBS Kids.
If you like this also check out Richard Pryor doing the Sesame Street alphabet.
Will.i.am – “I will always be the best me I can be” – song on Sesame Street
Will.i.am sings “What I Am” as part of Sesame Street’s 41st season premiering September 27th, 2010, on PBS Kids.
If you like this also check out Richard Pryor doing the Sesame Street alphabet.
The internet invents another way for musicians to get paid – iTunes Match
The first royalty payments from Apple’s iTunes Match are in, and they got me excited – the total amount is over $10,000 for the first two months.
This is magic money that Apple made exist out of thin air for copyright holders.
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A person has a song on her computer hard drive. She clicks on the song and plays it. No one is getting paid. The same person pays iTunes $25 for iTunes Match. She now clicks on the same song and plays it through her iMatch service. Copyright holders get paid.
Same action, same song, one makes money for the copyright holder, and one does not. This is found money that the copyright holders would never have gotten otherwise.
via TuneCore
Instant Watcher turns the Netflix API into the perfect way to find a movie to watch
Instant Watcher is the perfect site for Netflix Instant users. You can quickly and easily find movies to watch and avoid the miserable search and click on Netflix’s own site.
“About a quadrillion times easier to browse than Netflix’s own site” — Boing Boing Offworld, Feb 6, 2009
Within a few clicks you can figure out how everything works, including my favorites: highest rated movies of 2010-2011, highest rated movies on Rotten Tomatoes, and the simple most popular streamed movies.
There is also the opportunity to view those movies expiring soon.
Finally, a critical part of the browsing experience is the pop-up that appears when you roll over a movie title. This gives you a picture and a synopsis without having to click a link and leave your list.
“A great example of the amazing things which can be built when a company offers up an API for use by third-party developers.” — Read Write Web / The New York Times, Jan 28, 2009
Once you visit and browse around you will never think about Netflix the same way again.
