So are you done with sparkly vampires now? I hope you are. Vampires are supposed to suck blood and turn their W's into V's and say 'bleh!' and get blown away by Bruce Campbell or, if he's not available, an airplane that conveniently runs them over. Twilight does not have real vampires.
And by the way, don't get me started on Monster High, which made their vampire vegan and hemophobic to the point where she can't even say the word 'blood' what the hell.
But just in case you haven't yet had your fill of vampires who are not really vampires, there is now Twi-line. Apparently, if you're sad that there are no more Twilight movies, if you're in the United Kingdom, you call a number, and for the next two weeks, random quotes from the Twilight movies will be continuously played back to you. This will tide you over until your DVD finishes rewinding so you can watch the Twilight movies again and get the same quotes with bonus context, plot and moving pictures depicting the characters saying them.
And, you know, pay more money for the privilege.
And then we can wait for a vampire to show up at the beach or something. ...what... DAMN YOU, MONSTER HIGH!
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Games You Didn't Think Were Solved
You know about nim games? You might have heard about them as a kid in school but probably haven't been acquainted with them in a while, because they're not really much of a game. They're more of a math problem disguised as a game. The object of a nim game is, you and one or more other players are trying to count to a target number, and when your turn comes up, you can count by a certain small amount- the next one, two or three numbers in line, perhaps. The object can be either to be the one to count the target number, or if you're looking for a loser, that can be the one who's stuck with the target number.
Nobody plays them outside of K-12 math classes, because these have been solved. In any given game, there are checkpoint numbers that, as long as you reach them, guarantee victory, and these checkpoint numbers can be reliably reached by either the first or second player right from the beginning. The entire game is who goes first or second.
This is not the only game to have been solved, or is on its way to being solved. You of course know about chess, for which computer programs are continually being developed to solve in increasingly distant lengths from the endgame. Tic-Tac-Toe has been solved, solved, and solved again, to the point where Hollywood Squares had to have a five-square-win scenario built in for when the random easily-excitable people they plucked off the street and placed in front of semi-minor celebrities were able to inevitably place the game into a draw.
As luke McKinney of Cracked points out today, Connect Four has also been solved. Namely, it was solved by James D. Allen in 1989, and then again two weeks later (PDF) by Victor Allis of Vrije University in the Netherlands. Assuming perfect play, the first player is supposed to win. A man named John Tromp gave a stronger solution in 1995, allowing the first player to make mistakes and still guarantee victory.
You can do this with any two-player game with a finite number of moves under complete control of the player (e.g. no dice or any other random element) and a finite board. Eventually, given enough time, you can solve it, and figure out whether the game is supposed to have a winner or end in a draw, and what kind of margin of error you have to work with while still guaranteeing the result. The largest game to have been completely solved to date? Checkers. A checkers game is supposed to end in a draw. As with chess, people are still working on Go and Reversi.
The difference between a solved game nobody plays and a solved game people still play often is whether you can reasonably memorize the solution. Which is why people still play chess, and nobody plays nim games.
If you want a game that is, to this point, effectively unsolvable, though? Get a third player. Introduce a third player and the move and strategic possibilities grow by such a large proportion that all but the simplest games are turned unpredictable. I'm sure that eventually someone will come up with a solution to games of more than two people, such as Chinese Checkers, but so far, all that's out there is a solution to solitaire Chinese Checkers.
You know. If any of you have ever thought to play that.
Nobody plays them outside of K-12 math classes, because these have been solved. In any given game, there are checkpoint numbers that, as long as you reach them, guarantee victory, and these checkpoint numbers can be reliably reached by either the first or second player right from the beginning. The entire game is who goes first or second.
This is not the only game to have been solved, or is on its way to being solved. You of course know about chess, for which computer programs are continually being developed to solve in increasingly distant lengths from the endgame. Tic-Tac-Toe has been solved, solved, and solved again, to the point where Hollywood Squares had to have a five-square-win scenario built in for when the random easily-excitable people they plucked off the street and placed in front of semi-minor celebrities were able to inevitably place the game into a draw.
As luke McKinney of Cracked points out today, Connect Four has also been solved. Namely, it was solved by James D. Allen in 1989, and then again two weeks later (PDF) by Victor Allis of Vrije University in the Netherlands. Assuming perfect play, the first player is supposed to win. A man named John Tromp gave a stronger solution in 1995, allowing the first player to make mistakes and still guarantee victory.
You can do this with any two-player game with a finite number of moves under complete control of the player (e.g. no dice or any other random element) and a finite board. Eventually, given enough time, you can solve it, and figure out whether the game is supposed to have a winner or end in a draw, and what kind of margin of error you have to work with while still guaranteeing the result. The largest game to have been completely solved to date? Checkers. A checkers game is supposed to end in a draw. As with chess, people are still working on Go and Reversi.
The difference between a solved game nobody plays and a solved game people still play often is whether you can reasonably memorize the solution. Which is why people still play chess, and nobody plays nim games.
If you want a game that is, to this point, effectively unsolvable, though? Get a third player. Introduce a third player and the move and strategic possibilities grow by such a large proportion that all but the simplest games are turned unpredictable. I'm sure that eventually someone will come up with a solution to games of more than two people, such as Chinese Checkers, but so far, all that's out there is a solution to solitaire Chinese Checkers.
You know. If any of you have ever thought to play that.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Scottish Family's 800-Year-Old Curse Finally Lifted
Assuming the curse reads something like, 'you and your descendants will suffer until water is tied in a knot'.
Because that's what scientists at the University of Chicago have managed to do. You ever make a water tornado in a soda bottle? That's about how a vortex is understood to work: single one, straight line, pretty stable. If you do it right, though, not necessarily. When a vortex breaks up, it can start going squirrely, flailing, colliding with itself perhaps, losing some connections in the chain and making new ones. (See also: your water tornado with a particularly thin vortex starting to do a bellydance.) So after about 30 attempts at making a proper hydrofoil, and one of those newfangled 3-D printers, the team managed to make a knot, which you can see in a video here. Bubbles make it so you can actually see what's going on.
This does have a larger purpose- they're hoping to put this towards better understanding plasmas and superfluids and various physics issues- but if I don't get to drive my car on a highway made of water, this has all gone to waste in my book.
Because that's what scientists at the University of Chicago have managed to do. You ever make a water tornado in a soda bottle? That's about how a vortex is understood to work: single one, straight line, pretty stable. If you do it right, though, not necessarily. When a vortex breaks up, it can start going squirrely, flailing, colliding with itself perhaps, losing some connections in the chain and making new ones. (See also: your water tornado with a particularly thin vortex starting to do a bellydance.) So after about 30 attempts at making a proper hydrofoil, and one of those newfangled 3-D printers, the team managed to make a knot, which you can see in a video here. Bubbles make it so you can actually see what's going on.
This does have a larger purpose- they're hoping to put this towards better understanding plasmas and superfluids and various physics issues- but if I don't get to drive my car on a highway made of water, this has all gone to waste in my book.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Rapid-Fire Book Club, Pre-Snowzilla Edition
So I had a Barnes and Noble gift card from Christmas that needed burning. That happened today, in advance of a huge snowstorm we're supposed to be getting, and three books later, here we sit:
*Colbert, Stephen- America Again: Re-Becoming The Greatness We Never Weren't
*Hibbert, Christopher- The House of Medici: It's Rise And Fall
*Jacobs, A.J.- Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest For Bodily Perfection
Two of these, America Again and Drop Dead Healthy, I'd been meaning to get for a while and just now got around to it. The House Of Medici is more of my normal procedure of 'see book, buy book'.
*Colbert, Stephen- America Again: Re-Becoming The Greatness We Never Weren't
*Hibbert, Christopher- The House of Medici: It's Rise And Fall
*Jacobs, A.J.- Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest For Bodily Perfection
Two of these, America Again and Drop Dead Healthy, I'd been meaning to get for a while and just now got around to it. The House Of Medici is more of my normal procedure of 'see book, buy book'.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Well, At Least It's Kosher
Most people who utter the word 'Monsanto' are likely to do so with scorn. This Al Jazeera article by Charlotte Silver, commenting on a case involving Monsanto currently before the Supreme Court, should provide a decent primer on why that is. The concerns are, basically, that Monsanto's increasing power and influence- and the capability of their crops to inadvertently cross-pollinate neighboring farms- combined with the fact that Monsanto, in addition to crops, also makes herbicides such as Roundup, creates a sense of unease in not only how much of our food supply Monsanto controls, but what chemicals are in the food that they supply and what kind of damage those chemicals might do.
People are worried about eating stray bits of Roundup that Monsanto got mixed in the food and not knowing about it until they get sick is really the thing here.
Important, to be sure. Especially because I live in a farm state. But that's not really the reason we're here today.
The concern with Monsanto is that people may not know what they're really eating, but... they have an idea what to look for. Not so the case in Iceland. Icelandic officials recently learned that it's not just the things you're looking for that you have to look for. They were looking for horsemeat that had been getting into various meat products around Europe (Taco Bell and Burger King are among the companies hit), as a precaution to see that it wasn't happening in Iceland too.
When they checked one brand of domestic meat pies from a company called Gaedakokkar, the good news is they didn't find horsemeat.
The bad news is they didn't find meat. They found what the AP described as "some kind of vegetable matter". And now a whole new investigation has been launched.
On the plus side, if you wanted meatless meat pies, well, you're in luck.
People are worried about eating stray bits of Roundup that Monsanto got mixed in the food and not knowing about it until they get sick is really the thing here.
Important, to be sure. Especially because I live in a farm state. But that's not really the reason we're here today.
The concern with Monsanto is that people may not know what they're really eating, but... they have an idea what to look for. Not so the case in Iceland. Icelandic officials recently learned that it's not just the things you're looking for that you have to look for. They were looking for horsemeat that had been getting into various meat products around Europe (Taco Bell and Burger King are among the companies hit), as a precaution to see that it wasn't happening in Iceland too.
When they checked one brand of domestic meat pies from a company called Gaedakokkar, the good news is they didn't find horsemeat.
The bad news is they didn't find meat. They found what the AP described as "some kind of vegetable matter". And now a whole new investigation has been launched.
On the plus side, if you wanted meatless meat pies, well, you're in luck.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Total Carnage! IIIIIII Love It!
A year ago, I mentioned here a Chinese TV show called Interviews Before Execution, in which, as the title indicated, condemned prisoners were interviewed immediately prior to being hauled off to the execution chamber. It was cancelled soon after it caught international attention, though seemingly less due to the show's content and more due to the fact that people were trying to use it to extrapolate how many people China executes every year, a number China doesn't release, calling it a state secret.
We can pretty safely say it wasn't cancelled for the content. Because CCTV, Chinese state television, has caught fire from the global community for their actions concerning four foreign drug traffickers, convicted in the 2011 killing of 13 Chinese fishermen. One was Burmese, one Laotian, one Thai and one of "unknown nationality". A television special was constructed around their execution, including live footage running right up to just before the actual execution by lethal injection, which was just about the only thing CCTV didn't show. Although given the content of the program, one gets the idea that even that was strongly considered. The full fear of death from the condemned were placed on display and played to the hilt, while CCTV reporters talked at length about how humane the lethal-injection method was and what a fair trial the condemned received despite the original considerations to just kill them with a drone strike. It all smacked of brazen propaganda.
Nations that don't parade people around before executing them immediately went up in arms, asking what kind of civilized society China thinks it's running, because that kind of behavior is one normally associated with a bygone era and now associated with only the most draconian and repressive nations. China itself was more polarized than universally outraged: many were as outraged as everyone else- one lawyer even noted that it broke China's own criminal code stating that executions should be announced but not displayed- but there were some who not only cheered it on, but whose only complaint was that the method of execution was too humane. The Sydney Morning Herald quoted one blogger who stated, "These beasts should be pulled apart by vehicles.''
It's a throwback to China's previously-common practice of public executions, officially banned in 1979 but which in practice has never actually stopped. One set of public executions was reported by The Australian in advance of the 2008 Olympics. Another was reported by the Epoch Times as having occurred around the 2012 New Year period. Public executions have slowed down, but they've been replaced with 'execution vans', literally vans with blacked-out windows where the condemned is bundled into and executed on the spot.
The LA Times, by the way, ventured a guess of 4,000 executions a year. The BBC quotes a number of 8,000. For whatever that's worth. Second-place Iran is thought (PDF) to hover somewhere in the 300's. In any case, it shoots holes in the 'announce the executions' part of the criminal code as well. After all, if they announced them all, you'd be able to count them.
We can pretty safely say it wasn't cancelled for the content. Because CCTV, Chinese state television, has caught fire from the global community for their actions concerning four foreign drug traffickers, convicted in the 2011 killing of 13 Chinese fishermen. One was Burmese, one Laotian, one Thai and one of "unknown nationality". A television special was constructed around their execution, including live footage running right up to just before the actual execution by lethal injection, which was just about the only thing CCTV didn't show. Although given the content of the program, one gets the idea that even that was strongly considered. The full fear of death from the condemned were placed on display and played to the hilt, while CCTV reporters talked at length about how humane the lethal-injection method was and what a fair trial the condemned received despite the original considerations to just kill them with a drone strike. It all smacked of brazen propaganda.
Nations that don't parade people around before executing them immediately went up in arms, asking what kind of civilized society China thinks it's running, because that kind of behavior is one normally associated with a bygone era and now associated with only the most draconian and repressive nations. China itself was more polarized than universally outraged: many were as outraged as everyone else- one lawyer even noted that it broke China's own criminal code stating that executions should be announced but not displayed- but there were some who not only cheered it on, but whose only complaint was that the method of execution was too humane. The Sydney Morning Herald quoted one blogger who stated, "These beasts should be pulled apart by vehicles.''
It's a throwback to China's previously-common practice of public executions, officially banned in 1979 but which in practice has never actually stopped. One set of public executions was reported by The Australian in advance of the 2008 Olympics. Another was reported by the Epoch Times as having occurred around the 2012 New Year period. Public executions have slowed down, but they've been replaced with 'execution vans', literally vans with blacked-out windows where the condemned is bundled into and executed on the spot.
The LA Times, by the way, ventured a guess of 4,000 executions a year. The BBC quotes a number of 8,000. For whatever that's worth. Second-place Iran is thought (PDF) to hover somewhere in the 300's. In any case, it shoots holes in the 'announce the executions' part of the criminal code as well. After all, if they announced them all, you'd be able to count them.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Egg... Egg... Egg-Ster-Min-Ate
I think it's time for another science experiment, don't you? Yes, you do. You are getting very sleepy.
You know those little fizzy eggs? You dump them in the bathtub or the sink or whatever and it fizzes away to reveal there's a little toy in the middle? Well, today we're going to learn how to make one. An Angry Birds figurine will be used as the toy. You need baking soda and water for this, and perhaps an oven (if using an oven, get a parent). They use vinegar to dissolve the egg.
And it's really very simple. Get a bowl, put some baking soda in it, add water to make the baking soda mushy and moldable, and then just mold it around the toy. Then dry it out.
Show them what that looks like, random cute kids.
You know those little fizzy eggs? You dump them in the bathtub or the sink or whatever and it fizzes away to reveal there's a little toy in the middle? Well, today we're going to learn how to make one. An Angry Birds figurine will be used as the toy. You need baking soda and water for this, and perhaps an oven (if using an oven, get a parent). They use vinegar to dissolve the egg.
And it's really very simple. Get a bowl, put some baking soda in it, add water to make the baking soda mushy and moldable, and then just mold it around the toy. Then dry it out.
Show them what that looks like, random cute kids.
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