Web Game Helps Predict Spread of Epidemics

An anonymous reader writes "Using data from the web game wheresgeorge.com, which traces the travels of dollar bills, scientists have unveiled statistical laws of human travel and developed a mathematical description that can be used to model the spread of infectious disease."

Oddly enough...

[Hindustu]

The only dollar bill I remember possessing with the "Where's George" stamp on it came from a man working at a pizza shop with gigantic cold sores.

i cant see the site yet but....

[MoFoYa]

now i'm gonna sanitize all my money, and i'm kinda concerned about things i buy from overseas. The bird flu is pretty nasty!

Re:Shades of Psychohistory

[xdc]

Good call! Maybe they should set up a Foundation to reduce the duration of the impending dark age. :)

Obligatory...

[mshiltonj]

Zombie Infection Simulation Machine! [sothisisacomic.com]

Brians! Must eat brains!

Re:Shades of Psychohistory

[Meagermanx]

...thus proving that Intelligent Design is real.
I'm glad we got that over with. Who wants to call the school board?

Re:whereisgeorge took itself offline

[tomhudson]

... because they're converting to dollar coins, to help prevent the spread of epidemics.

This way, you can legally launder your money ...

Re:Business model

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's me. Unfortunately for you, I stuffed all of my 'WheresGeorge' dollars--deep--into the g-string of a 45 year-old, questionable tooth-count, over-weight stripper.....Sorry.

Bird Flu? I'm thinking chicken-head....hehhehe....

/. diseases

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Maybe if we give diseases websites and /. them we can wipe them out.

Now where's my Nobel Prize for mdicine?

Re:Obligatory...

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: What's the first thing Jesus said to his diciples after rising from the grave?

A: BRAAAINS! BRAAAAAIIINS!

Re:Self-service gas pumps illegal

[craXORjack]

I'd imagine that gas pump handles are pretty darn unsanitary.

I think fast food restaraunts are pretty darn unsanitary. I was in line behind a guy last summer who looked like he was a landscape worker or something. He was dirty as all get out and covered in perspiration. He paid for his meal with several dollar bills pulled out of a grimy wallet that was wet with his sweat. The bills looked like they had floated in a sewer for a couple weeks before he fished them out and put them in his pocket and of course when I paid with a ten a few seconds later what do you think I got in change? His nasty, oh god do I have to touch them, ones. I considered for a second asking for my change in quarters but he was still standing right there waiting on his food, so I felt forced by politeness to pretend that there was nothing wrong and touch those putrid, falling-apart bills and put them in my wallet. Then the woman behind the counter who had three inch, curved, fingernails started to put my order in a take-out bag so her hands were all over my fries. And nobody with three inch nails can wash their hands very well because they are too afraid of breaking one. Then when I told her it was for dining in, she pulled everything out and tossed it on a tray so that the fries were strewn all over and touched the plastic of the tray. Now maybe its different in other states but here they are not required to wash the trays between uses. They only wipe them off with a greasy towel to get the ketchup and mayonnaise smeared into a thin enough film that the next customer won't notice it. I was so grossed out from touching the bills that I went to wash my hands before I unwrapped the sandwich. That's when I noticed that the restroom door only opened inward. So I had to grab the handle to get out, the same handle touched by the half of all men (and probably 99% of all kids) who don't wash their hands after wiping their bottoms or holding their penises. I've tried lots of different foods but that's one flavor I'll pass on! Anywho, fast food establishments have got to be one of the worst disease vectors.

i dunno

[syle]

Using games to track people is tricky though. I did a lot of research on this, and my findings showed that 80% of the population of the world are Night Elf females who just turned 18 and want to chat.

Re:Sociology vs Psychology

[aug24]

Every individual person is special and unique

I'm not. That's what makes me so special. And unique. Oh...

Justin.

Money washed

[Alkind]

So the healthiest place to be is in the printshop where they make the notes and the worst spot is where they destroy the notes. I would alarm the union if I worked in that building. Can't be that they do not have some laundries at strategic spots like Las Vegas. The mob understands the problem.

Apparently, U.S. Congress is very disease-prone

[elrous0]

Researchers found that a surprising number of these bill ended up in their local senators's pockets. They also found that a surprising number of large companies were a potential breeding-ground for infections, including Halliburton, Bechtel, Boeing, and Lockeed-Martin.

-Eric

Trick the system

[se7en11]

1) Derive perfect plan to trick system
2) Get every /. user to send me $1
3) Profit

Brilliant!