Clue, Nobel, Rank, Dynamite, Crow

The Evidence Found In Clue's Soundtrack

Jigowatts | YouTube | 1st February 2022

Clue's soundtrack is full of, well, clues. The opening horns act as alarm. The cello stabs stand in for literal stabs. The melody has seven musical phrases for the seven main characters, and also acts as a microcosm of the story: a series of questions and resolutions, punctuated by three endings. At the end of the opening titles, we already know the structure of the entire movie (19m 11s)

The Man Who Almost Faked His Way To A Nobel Prize

BobbyBroccoli | YouTube | 6th August 2020

German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön's 2002 construction of the world's smallest transistor, or "the most blatant and egregious case of academic fraud in all of modern physics." Schön claimed that the organic crystal pentacene could be used for the world's first organic superconductor. "This was, as one researcher described it, like turning an apple into an orange" (42m 29s)

Ranked Choice Voting Is Exploding In America—Is That A Good Thing?

The Review | YouTube | 19th January 2022

The increasingly popular system of ranked-choice voting is complicated by the fact that many don't rank past their first choice. "If a politician is encouraging their voters not to participate, the system will likely fail for them, but if one side is doing all the encouraging and the other side isn't, this year's election could be an electoral bloodbath for one side" (19m 38s)

How Napoleon Dynamite Broke The Algorithm

Now You See It | YouTube | 1st February 2022

The Napoleon Dynamite Effect: recommendation algorithms absolutely cannot predict whether people will like Napoleon Dynamite. This might be because its intensely quirky style clashes with its uber-traditional plot. "It's harder for a viewer to make sense of Napoleon Dynamite compared to movies whose story matches their tone, and that phenomenon made the movie a statistical risk" (8m 53s)

Beautiful Video Of The Week

Turning the wavelength of crow flight patterns into music

Watch The Viewer's recommendations each week as a handy YouTube Playlist.

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Editor: Abe Callard. Comments? Suggestions? Write to us at editors@theviewer.is