I looked into playing Go when I was a teenager but it never appealed
to me. I knew the game had a long history and was renowned for its
subtlety but it just wasn't to my taste.
Everything I was looking for but didn't find in Go, I found years later in
Hex.
And because Hex is less than 100 years old and has yet to develop a large
following, playing it feels like being in on the ground floor—if of
a building whose stature remains to be seen. It's not like chess,
where Bobby Fischer proposed starting each game with a different
arrangement of the pieces because openings had been analyzed to death.
Another difference between Hex and chess (for me, anyway) is how it
feels to review games by top players. Whereas games by chess masters
can be interesting, top-level Hex games seem downright magical.
They're like proofs of math theorems: they make sense once you see them,
but they take a Gauss or an Euler to conjure them out of nothing.
Although I never got into playing Go,
I do find the game endearing by virtue of its having a bunch of
proverbs.
Some are specific to Go, but some are general enough that
they could apply to Hex as well, e.g.:
- Nothing requires doing this or that, but necessity exists.
- Your enemy's key point is your own key point.
- It is difficult to know exactly what you are doing.
- Don't get surrounded! Ever!
- A basic: Don't push too hard.
I'm still learning the implications of that last one. Compared to
top-notch play, a lot of Hex games at my level look like petty squabbles.
A statistics paradox.
A drug is shown to be slightly more effective than placebo
in a trial with subjects who are dancers.
For non-dancers, the drug is also slightly more effective than placebo.
But in combining the two trials, the drug is
less effective than placebo.
Is the drug worth taking? Well, are you human or are you (non-)dancer?
| ------- placebo ------- | --------- drug --------- |
|
dancer | non-dancer |
1000 | 1100 |
300 | 473 |
30.0% | 43.0% |
|
dancer | non-dancer |
1059 | 1002 |
320 | 433 |
30.2% | 43.2% |
|
|
|
|
Yes, this is a contrived example.
And it relies on the various arms of the trials having
non-uniform values of n, although that's not unusual in the
business (see table at right).
I got the idea for this from a
book,
which described the paradox in terms of trials with male and female subjects.
The dancer angle I've used here is an inside joke for
he who wants pet ferrets. |
News from the AP
("
Mars
Rover Is Set to Move On"):
... Its next major task is to find a rock to drill into,
and that requires moving to a new spot. ...
Sounds familiar. Typical behavior of several dudes I've climbed with.
Two unrelated things.
One, how cool is it not just to start a paragraph
with a large capital letter, but to capitalize the second letter too.
|
Two, from xkcd's
collection of
NHC discussion
bulletins:
HURRICANE ISIDORE DISCUSSION NUMBER 24
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MIAMI FL
11 PM EDT SAT SEP 21 2002
HURRICANE ISIDORE CONTINUES
TO STRENGTHEN...AND MOVE TOWARD THE
BAY OF CAMPECHE. HOWEVER...THE NHC WOULD LIKE TO REMIND EVERYONE
IN THE AFFECTED AREA THAT THE REAL STORM...IS INSIDE US ALL.
$$ FORECASTER ANDERSON |
If,
in a work of fiction,
a prominent general got caught committing adultery with his
biographer,
and the bio was called ALL IN,
it would seem crudely contrived.
|  |
Should you hear a conservative ask—as some do—how the
USA could possibly have reëlected Obama, point them
to screen
caps of the loser's transition web site and ask how they could
think we'd be better off with anyone who would set his name in such
a hideous script typeface.
The Secret Service's code name for Romney was Javelin, which the
WaPo tells us
was a reference to the
AMC
car. Gremlin would've been better still—but either way,
nice touch to give him the name of a relic. |
xkcd graphic
by Randall Munroe
used by kind permission
I've
been deluged with email asking what happened to the horses that got
loose yesterday.
(Either that or I didn't see anything I wanted to take a pic of today.)
I called neighbors who have horses, and although these weren't theirs they knew
whose they were and rounded them up.
A bucket of food aided in charming them. |
This morning I saw two horses running down the trail in open space
across the street. They looked to be enjoying new-found freedom.
Then came a point where the trail goes downhill. The horses stopped, as if
they knew that coming back would mean uphill and they didn't want to sign up
for something that felt like work. They stood around, their body language
suggesting thoughts along the lines of OK, now what.
It reminds me of how this autumn has been for me. I quit my job a few
months ago and took some time to breathe. Now I stand before
various stuff I want to get done, that doesn't happen without effort.
|
In one of my recurring dreams, I've bought one or more used cars that
I don't really want. It can be an annoying dream while it happens
but to the extent I can interpret it, it's a nice reminder that a
lot of the stuff one is tempted to acquire isn't all that worth having.
Last night I dreamt I was about to drive somewhere with a friend,
he looked askance at me when he saw I had a big old car which
he didn't think was my style, and I said don't worry,
it's a dream car,
it's not real even though it looks that way to you now.