Interesting Stuff

Tonight, Sara, Robert, and I played the most ridiculous game of Scrabble I have ever seen. The two blank tiles are an L and an E, respectively. The final score was 215 (Robert) to 224 (me) to 238 (Sara, who went out of tiles by playing the T in the lower left corner to make HET and ET, scoring 16 points). Sara had a fantastic game, playing the OU of OUR in the upper right corner after everything else had already been played there, then JADE under AXE, with the J on a double letter score, and then the A of VISA and ALONG after both VIS and LONG had been played. Linguaphiles unite!

‘Tis brillig, and I have been revisiting my erstwhile haunts ’round the internet. Surprisingly, I chanced to look back to Take Our Word For It, and discovered that they have begun to make new issues again! In honor of this, I have essayed to use a more aureate patois in this update, though my writing has become rather torose. Consequently, I shall keep this short. TOWFI is an online newsletter dedicated to etymology, and they have a wheen information in the archives (a particularly emolient example can be found here). They now appear to be run by The Institute for Etymological Research and Education, which makes the articles more authoritative yet less jovial than the old ones. Nonetheless, I am quite blithe.

As promised, here is a hand we played this evening at bridge club, as copied down by Andrew’s computer. Andrew was North, Kai was East, I was South, and Carrie was West. Kai opens with 1D, and I double (a classic example of a Takeout Double). Carrie passes and Andrew bids 1S. Undeterred, Kai bids 2H, which I double (this time it’s a Penalty Double). Carrie passes, and after a pause, Andrew passes as well. Kai gets scared and runs to 2NT, which I am happy to double (penalty again), and then Kai continues to 3D. At this point, I lose my confidence, and pass. Andrew, however, does a Penalty Double of his own before everyone passes. In the end, we took 1 spade trick, 2 diamonds, 1 club, and 3 hearts (one of which is a ruff), and another trick somewhere (I don’t remember if it was another heart ruff or another spade, but there was something else in there) for a total score of 800. Had we bid more and doubled less, we probably could not have made game, let alone grabbed 800 points. It was a lot of fun to bid – I’ve never made 3 doubles in a row before.

It’s late, and I’m stalling so that I don’t have to work.

First off, for all of you etymology fans – today in Psych class, I was bored (as usual), when the prof used the word “influence.” It then occurred to me that it’s probably an Old English spelling of “en-fluent,” which I would take to mean, “to make something flow.” A quick check in my dictionary reveals that yes, it originally referred to power flowing from the stars to change things. Neat!

Tonight’s bridge club was ridiculously full of doubles. I shall put up an example hand soon. Also, it looks like Andrew and Sunshine Purvis, Kai, and I will be playing in a Swiss event at the Regional tournament next Sunday. Here’s hoping!

Might there actually be some hope in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?

So, last night it was just starting to rain when I walked back from the tourguide meeting. The kind of rain where you can still watch individual raindrops hit the pavement. However, I noticed something really strange – In the midde of the slabs of concrete that make up the sidewalk, the rain was absorbed into the concrete (it’s apparently quite porous), and so the concrete continued to appear dry for several minutes. However, Within about half a foot from any crack in the sidewalk, the rain stayed on the surface and made it look wet. It appeared as though it was only raining on the cracks! I for one thought this was pretty neat. My dad hypothesizes that they put some kind of sealant around the cracks to keep rain/bugs/plants out of them. I don’t know, but it’s pretty cool.

Despite my silence, I’m still here. The MCM is over. The first half was great, the second was quite frustrating. We have a fantastic model and a horrible paper.

Tuesday I got to hear Brian Greene (world renowned string theorist) speak at the Athenaeum (sp?). It was fantastic! We have a reception at 5:30 with cheese and crackers. So I go, and I’m hanging out with people, and there he is, hanging out too. I introduce myself to him, shake his hand, and talk with him for a bit. It was pretty cool! Then there was a dinner at 6:00, and at 7:00, he gave a talk. Nothing you can’t find in his PBS miniseries or his books. However, in the books and the miniseries, he seemed like a nice, quiet, fireside-chat sort of person. In this talk, he was very enthousiastic, with fervor and practically a fire-and-brimstone air about him at points. Wow! What a surprise. After the talk, he had a book signing, and I got my copy of The Elegant Universe autographed. Nifty!

Finally, what post would be complete without more news? The Bush administration has once again altered scientific claims to fit their agenda, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. It’s kind of scary – of the people at the Fish and Wildlife Service who responded to the survey, more than half of them said that they had been instructed to change their findings to go along with the politics. This sort of thing incenses me. Argh!