Friday.

* How to score 1830 points in a single turn of Scrabble.

* A recent study has proved scientifically that we're all dicks.

You might expect that being prompted (primed) to think of yourself as a good person would make you more altruistic or moral — but, in fact, the exact opposite appears to be the case. Primed to think about what a good person you are, your most likely reaction is to think you’ve paid your morality dues and go on about your business.

* Universities during the meltdown.

Since most American colleges have an endowment less than 1 percent the size of Harvard's, most do not have Harvard's problem. But they have other problems. The sources of income on which they depend—tuition revenue (at private colleges) and state appropriations (at public colleges), as well as annual alumni contributions (at both)—are under pressure too. Everyone knows about the competitive frenzy to get into a few highly ranked colleges, but in fact most of the 1,500 private colleges in the United States do not attract significantly more applicants than they can enroll. On the contrary, they struggle to meet enrollment targets, especially now that families in economic distress are turning to public institutions, which tend to be cheaper.[2]

* Glenn Greenwald's three laws of actually existing media bias.

(1) Any policy that Beltway elites dislike is demonized as coming from "the Left" or -- in this case (following Karl Rove) -- the "hard Left."

(2) Nobody is more opposed to transparency and disclosure of government secrets than establishment "journalists."

(3) The single most sacred Beltway belief is that elites are exempt from the rule of law.

News roundup.

* There's rioting in Oakland following the shooting of Oscar Grant by BART police last week.

* The Odyssey as a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

* Sean P. Murphy at Inside Higher Ed says teaching at a community college isn't as bad as it is sometimes made out to be.

* The Gallery of Obscure Patents.

* At right, via grinding.be, your image of the day.

* A person's Erdős–Bacon number is the sum of one's Erdős number—which measures the "collaborative distance" in authoring mathematical papers between that individual and Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős—and one's Bacon number—which represents the number of links, through roles in films, by which the individual is separated from American actor Kevin Bacon. The lower the number, the closer an individual is to Erdős and Bacon.

* What Obama will look like after four years as president.

* And just for kicks: Scrabulous is back.

xkcd has your daily dose of dirty Scrabble humor.

Hey, guys, I just wanted to tell you about this great new application I just found on Facebook called Wordscraper. It's a lot like that word game we all used to play as kids—what was it called? Scrabusomething. Anyway, it's fun.

(Thanks, Neil, it's your move.)

Followup from last week: Scrabulous has been disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice.

UPDATE: Anyone else installed the legit Hasbro version yet? It's not only twice as slow with half the features, it's ugly too.

Friday leftovers.

* The director of a leading US cancer research institute has sent a memo to thousands of staff telling them to listen to Ze Frank and use a cell-phone headset (even if Salon is right and it won't really make you a safer driver).

* Hometown heroes Hurwitz and Hayden are writing another Harold & Kumar—which is a good thing, because it was always conceived as a trilogy. (I'm told they actually have nine H&K movies planned out, including the three prequels.)

I regret to admit I missed the second in theaters, but I plan to make up for that error when the DVD is released in just four days.

* Now that its competing Facebook application is up and running, Hasbro has renewed its lawsuit against the makers of Scrabulous. More at Slashdot, which notes: "EA's version has netted fewer than ten thousand players, versus Scrabulous' estimated 2.3 million." I still say they ought to just buy Scrabulous and be done with it.

* Math may be hard, but there's no gender difference in math performance, according to a new study in Science. Via MeFi, where the poster adds: "Bite me, Larry Summers."

* And the Edge of the American West continues to impress: here's a look back at the decision in United States of America v. Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, handed down 24 years ago today.

* The minimum wage: a disgrace and a scandal.

Here is how the political and economic system has been ripping off workers. Once upon a time, if you worked hard and were productive, that translated directly into your paycheck. Not anymore. From 2000 to roughly 2007, productivity went up 20 percent -- while the median hourly wage was up 3 percent. My friend Joel Rogers,director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, made a stunning calculation not too long ago: Had wages tracked productivity as they have over the past 30 years, "median family income in the U.S. would be about $20,000 higher today than it is." Check this out: Taking into account productivity, the minimum wage should be $19.12 -- which would make it almost 50 percent above today's median wage (not to mention the pathetic $6.55).

That's right. The minimum wage should be more three times what it is today. At that level, you would make almost $40,000 a year. Not an outstanding amount given all the other costs and the likelihood that you would not be in a job with health care and a pension (that's another issue). But, beginning to be in the realm of respectable.

The Guardian plays Stephen Malkmus in Scrabble and gets clobbered. I don't know much about music, but I do know a little something about Scrabble, and I have to take issue with one of Stephen Malkmus's Scrabble tips.

1. "Save your X and Zs so you get at least 70 or 80 points when you use them."

This is wrong for precisely the reason that #2—"Don't waste your wildcards (blanks) because they're really precious—is right. Scrabble, while I enjoy it quite a bit, is a tremendously unbalanced game because the bonus for using all your letters is so high. (In a 300 point game, the bingo bonus alone is worth 1/6 of the winner's total score.) The best strategy therefore is to always be working towards a bingo, even if it puts you temporarily down. With a blank, you're pretty much guaranteed to eventually get a bingo as long as you hold onto Es, Rs, and Ss (or if you already have I, N, and G)—and even without a blank you have a pretty good shot at it just by holding onto the right letters.

This is why, contra Malkmus, you should actually get rid of Qs, Zs, and Xs as quickly as you can: because every turn you have one of those letters is a turn in which you're quite unlikely to drop a bingo. They're worth a lot, so you don't want to just throw them away—but trying to hold onto them until you can get more than 50 points is a complete waste.

With QI, QAT, ZA, AX, EX, OX, XI, and XU in your bank, you can almost always lay down a Q, Z, or X on a bonus tile in two directions, netting a quick 40 within a few turns. Wait too long, though, and you strangle your precious bingo in the cradle...

Facebook has been asked to remove the Scrabulous game from its website by the makers of Scrabble... Lawyers for toy makers Hasbro and Mattel say Scrabulous infringes their copyright on the board-based word game. Because this didn't happen immediately, I'd assumed that Facebook and Hasbro worked out some kind of deal. I guess cease & desist orders still move slow in the future. Hasbro's utterly insane, in any event, to try and shut Scrabulous down—what they need to do is offer Facebook the opportunity for a license so they can get a piece of the action. This move just shortsightedly kills their own user base. Via Tim, who's come back after several crushing defeats to absolutely massacre me in our last two games.

826NYC is hosting a unique fundraiser: a Scrabble for Cheaters tournament. Each team is allowed to purchase one-use cheats based on the amount of money they raised for the charity:

1. Trade out a letter—$25
2. Wheel of Fortune: buy a vowel—$50
3. Flip a letter over and make it blank—$100
4. Add 10 to any letter’s value—$150
5. Add Q, Z, or X to any word, anywhere—$200
6. Passport: play a word in any language—$250
7. Consult the dictionary for one turn—$300
8. Consult the Scrabble word list for one turn—$400
9. Reject another team’s word—$450
10. Invent a word (must have a definition)—$500

My money's on Team Hodgmoliver. (Yes, apparently it's really them.) The real question is whether or not the prices for these cheats make sense. I play a lot of Scrabble these days, and I'm pretty sure that "Flip a letter over and make it blank" is way undervalued, while "Passport" and "Consult the dictionary" are way overvalued. (Keep in mind turns are timed at two minutes.) "Reject another team's word" also makes "Invent a word" a very sticky proposition... Via Kottke.