Interesting Stuff

http://www.aclu.tv/ – ooh, this looks interesting. Tune in in September!

One of my goals for the summer is to become a Junior Master at the bridge club. Since the last time I wrote about bridge, I’ve needed about a third of a Master Point to get there. Sadly, try as I might, I can’t seem to do it! Jim and I played together this past Thursday at the club. Thursdays they have a 49er game (for people with less than 50 Master Points) and an open game (for people with more). Since Jim has 180 or so, we were in the open game, and got a 3-way tie for 2nd out of 4 partnerships (there was a winner, and everyone else tied; it was kind of weird). It was my first IMPs game (slightly different scoring system), so I was thrown off a bit. Still, no dice. Jim and I then played in St. Paul on Sunday and came in slightly below average out of 14 or so tables. Finally, we played tonight. We had been doing OK but not great, and I thought that we could certainly get points in the C stratification. With 31 of the 32 boards scored, we were tied for 3rd in C, which gets half a Master Point. However, that last board came in, and bumped us down to 4th, which gets nothing. This entry is called “0 for 9” because at each of these games, there are 3 things I’m trying to do: successfully use Smolen Transfers (we’re playing them, but the situation hasn’t come up to use them yet), successfully pull off a squeeze play (I’ve found 2 situations where I tried, but I messed up one and got a bad trump split in the other), or become a Junior Master, which still hasn’t quite happened. Argh! We’re giving it one more shot tomorrow, and I fear that will be the end of bridge this summer. I’d really like to be 1 for 12 in my goals here (preferably 2 for 12, but I can’t be picky at this point). There were at least 3 boards that I should have played better this evening, including 2 cold slams that I considered bidding but shied away from in the end. Well, we’ll see what tomorrow holds, I guess…

A memorable hand from this evening →

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/08/18/BL2005081800744_5.html – this is long, but touches on a bunch of topics, several of which I hadn’t heard of before.

http://www.slate.com/id/2124603/?nav=tap3 – John Roberts appears to have improperly ruled in a case concerning whether the Geneva Convention applies to people at Guantanamo Bay (he should have excused himself from the case). Does this happen often? How would we even know? I think it’s pretty scary that you might have to question the impartiality of the judicial system.

Right. More later!

Some of you know how two weeks ago, I was all \ford{What I need is a strong drink and a peer group.} Well, that’s exactly what I got last night! Jeffrey, Emily, Amanda, Lauren, Diana and I went over to Lily’s pad to have a “we’re all 21″/”end of the summer” party. We started off the night with Smirnoffs, and watched some Monty Python, including several sketches with some biting social commentary, which was pretty great. After mixing a few things involving Kahlua, Bailey’s, banana schnapps, and some other stuff, Amanda and I beat Lily and Jeffrey in a game of team chess, which was kinda weird. I had no idea that Amanda was such a good chess player. It’s kind of sad thinking this is the end of the summer – Jeffrey left for Iowa State today,Emily went back to Madison (though she will supposedly return for the State Fair and RenFest), Diana leaves next week… and I’ll be back in Claremont in a week and a half. After a really shitty start (thanks again to everyone who wrote and cheered me up), the summer has turned out OK. Nonetheless, I can’t wait to get back to Mudd and see everyone!

Oh. Also, Jeffrey and I went to St. Olaf on Tuesday to see Michael. We went to an Indian restaurant for dinner and then saw The Wedding Crashers, which was pretty good. Michael seems to be doing well, though he hates his job.

“There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.”
— Arthur C. Clarke

Also, Hansford introduced me to Russian Jokes, which I find hilarious.

Müller returns to his office and sees Stirlitz kneeling in front of the safe. “What are you doing here?” asks Müller. “I’m waiting for the tram,” Stirlitz replies. “Ah, I see,” says Müller and walks out. “Wait a minute,” he exclaims, “how can a tram go through my office?” He rushes back, but Stirlitz has disappeared. “He caught the tram, then,” thinks Müller.

Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev are all travelling together in a railway carriage. Unexpectedly the train stops. Stalin puts his head out of the window and shouts, “Shoot the driver!” But the train doesn’t start moving. Khrushchev then shouts, “Rehabilitate the driver!” But it still doesn’t move. Brezhnev then says, “Comrades, Comrades, let’s draw the curtains, turn on the gramophone and pretend we’re moving!”

On one hand, I pick up a hand with Ace-Queen-Jack-fifth in both spades and clubs, and open 1S. My left-hand opponent overcalls 2H, and Jim passes. I think to myself, finally! a chance to use Mel’s Complete Count! (Mel Colchamiro invented MCC as an approximation to determine when to continue bidding after opening a 2-suited hand with no help from partner and interference from the opponents. The situation almost never comes up, but when it does, you get pretty confused and worried trying to decide whether to bid on). However, before I could get that far, my right-hand opponent bid… 3C. She had 5 clubs, and I had another 5 of them, finessing the crap out of her! I quietly passed, and the opponents worked their way up to 3NT, at which point I doubled. Jim lead the Ten of spades, and I saw that Dummy had the King of clubs and Nine of spades (note that I had the Eight) but Declarer had the King of spades. However, she held up on the first trick, and took my Jack of spades with it on the second (Jim had continued with a low spade, showing a doubleton, and Dummy played her Nine). We then went through six red tricks, and Jim started to look pretty worried about my double. At last, Declarer let the Jack of clubs ride around to me, and I claimed the remaining 5 tricks with my Queen-Ace of clubs and Ace-Queen-Eight of spades. We got a score of +500 for the hand!

That was one of our two top boards. We also took three second-from-tops and two more tied-for-second-from-top. Our worst boards, however, were merely fourth-from-bottom. Hot damn!

Sunday, much to my surprise, my old bridge partner Jim called me up. He had been suspecting that I’d be back in town sometime soon, and was wondering if I’d like to play with him again. This was really touching, since we had only really played together 3 or so times before, and I hadn’t told him when I’d be back in town! So I was thrilled. We went to the Tuesday game, which is really large because they charge a little bit extra, award a few extra Master Points, and donate money to some sort of charity/fund thing. There were 15 tables there! Jim and I played surprisingly well – I counted 1 big mistake that I made, 2 games that got away from me without me understanding what was going on, and 1 small mistake that Jim made (there were other things we could have done better, but they were pretty small). The coolest part about the evening was that we had absolutely no misunderstandings – certainly we made a couple bad bids, but we at least communicated what we were trying to say. This apparently paid off – we took 2nd place! That is to say, 2nd place over all 15 East-West partnerships (we beat every life master sitting there), and 4th out of all 30 partnerships present. In our stratification(which is only the people with less than 50 Master Points), we took first among the East-Wests and 2nd among everyone. We had an incredible 60.1% game (for you non-bridge types, 50% is perfectly average, less than 35% is abysmally embarrassing, and no one ever breaks 75%. A 100% game would mean that, on every single board, you got the best score in the room). This is the first time I’ve had a 60% game, and only the second time I’ve broken 55%, so I was absolutely psyched. Jim quipped that we should take the scoring printout and frame it on the wall. We were given a whopping 1.76 Black Master Points, bringing my total to 4.70. I can almost certainly make Junior Master by the end of the summer (that takes 5 Master Points total). This weekend, there is a larger Sectional tournament that awards Silver Master Points, but I’m going to be in Wisconsin at the time. Boo!

I think the reason Jim and I do so well is that we understand each other almost completely. Bridge partnerships are built on trust and understanding at the bottom, and good performance on top of that. Jim is only a Junior Master and I’m not even that yet, but we can actually communicate with our bids and discards, and this information allows us to each do our parts better than if we only had a vague idea of what was going on. I think this is why Sheri and I did OK but not great – we have pretty good performance, but we are a bit weak on the understanding and severely lacking in trust, and that was pretty frustrating. I wish I could find someone like Jim out in California.

On an unrelated note, I spent today hanging out with Hansford, who is doing an REU up at the U of M. We went canoing on Lake Calhoun (and Lake of the Isles and that one next to it and even up to Brownie Lake), which was pretty cool. Hansford had never been canoing before. He then came over for dinner and we hung out and played Set and Xactika and stuff. It was pretty low-key, but a lot of fun.

Can some one explain this to me? Why would any branch of Al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organization want to blow up a resort in Egypt? Last I checked, Egypt wasn’t really doing anything to combat terrorism and they certainly weren’t claiming to be a bastion of freedom (remember how the most recent election was fixed and had a lot of coercion surrounding it). I don’t think anyone would claim that Egypt had some sort of animosity towards the “Muslim world,” so that’s probably not a motivation. If these people were trying to kill some Israelis without Israel’s security forces and army wandering around, I think they could have done it in a much less obtrusive manner. I honestly have no idea what prompted this bombing, which is weird because I like to at least pretend I have a vague understanding of the world.

Dear Senator Coleman:

Thank you very much for the information you sent me about how you are helping to curtail Iraqi prisoner abuse. However, I originally wrote you to express my concerns over a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. I feel quite strongly that such an amendment would place the symbol of our freedom above our freedom itself, and I believe that this is precisely the sort of notion that our constitution stands against. Democracy is widely held to be the most tolerant form of government because it tolerates dissent and gives people the right to freely voice and display their opinions in a nonviolent way. If we start to ban such displays, we start to slip away from democracy and towards totalitarianism.

As one of my representatives in the senate, I implore you to do everything in your power to keep this amendment from passing. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to seeing your work in the senate.

Sincerely,
Alan Davidson
Edina, MN