A man has recalculated the values for Scrabble and another man build a car for his parrot. Some people have way too much time on their hands!

SCRABBLE VALUES

A post doctoral scholar at the University of California San Diego says he recalculated the values on the letter tiles for Scrabble. He says his new values better reflect the letter usage in the English language. The new system calculates letter values based on 3 things: 1. the letter’s overall frequency of usage in the language, 2. their frequency of use by word length, and the ease in which players can transition in and out of a word. In his system the letter “Z” goes from 10 points to 8 points. “X” goes from 8 to 5, “F” goes from 5 to 3, and “V” goes up from 4 to 5.

A CAR FOR A PET PARROT

A Florida computer engineer student built a smal, robotic car for his pet parrot. He said he did this so the parrot could get around the house easily. Andrew Grey, was ultimately trying to figure out a way to keep his parrot from squawking when he developed the “bird buggy”. He said he realized that his parrot just wanted to be around people, so with the bird buggy he can now easily move to get to people.  Gray said his bird steers the robotic car with his beak. The bird buggy also has sensors so his bird doesn’t crash