Likelihood of Success

That’s the ticket

Posted by Ron Coleman on July 19, 2007

Jon Lovitz beating someone up — did you ever dream he had it in him?

Computer perfectly simulates life

Posted by Ron Coleman on July 19, 2007

In the long run, you can’t win:

Developed by computer scientists at the University of Alberta in Canada, Chinook vanquished human competitors at tournaments more than a decade ago. Now, in an article published today on the Web site of the journal Science, the scientists report that they have rigorously proved that Chinook, in a slightly improved version, cannot ever lose. An opponent, no matter how skilled, practiced or determined, can at best achieve a draw.

In essence, that reduces checkers to the level of tic-tac-toe, where the ideal game-playing strategy has been codified into a series of immutable rules. But checkers — or draughts as it is known in Great Britain — is much more complex, with 500 billion billion theoretically possible board positions; it is the most complex game that has been solved to date. …

Even with the advances in computers over the past two decades, it is still impossible, in practical terms, to compute moves for all 500 billion billion board positions. Instead, the researchers took the usual starting position and then looked only at the positions that would occur during the normal course of play.

“It’s a computational proof,” Dr. Schaeffer said. “It’s certainly not a formal mathematical proof.”

Hit your head against the wall here.

Posted in Nuvo-Techno, Sisyphus | Leave a Comment »

Dan Riehl notes a picture taken of the picture takers at today’s Grand Central Station explosion — which, these days, is everyone: “[W]hat caught my eye via Drudge was this picture. Everyone is taking video, or snapping photos with their cell phones. I imagine they easily outnumber the journalists doing the same.” (HT to IP.)

Yes, we’re all on board — journalism is something you do, not something you “are,” i.e., not a privileged caste. True. And for my part, I love my Blackberry Pearl with its camera.

But I’m not sure I love this development from the point of view of being people, as opposed to being journalists, all the time. I used to be an avid amateur photographer — yearbook editor, the whole thing. Always with the camera. Later on I realized that this was a pretty geeky way to go through life, at least as a teenager (think “AV club”). When I started having a family, I made a conscious decision not to get a video camera. Sometimes when I see the little snippets of movin’ pitchers with my kids on them from when they were little, I wonder whether I made a mistake. But I had decided that I didn’t want to experience videos of my experiences at the expense of the experiences themselves. As a photo-bug I realized I was not living in the moment, ever; I was living in anticipation of how the pictures of the moment would look.

Okay, now this was not a fun or a warm or a happy moment — it was an explosion. Someone was killed, unfortunately. But in general, I feel the reality of life slipping away in favor of not only the virtual, but the digital or, perhaps, the digitized. Do we all really have to be journalists, all the time?

UPDATE: Links to this from Glenn Reynolds and Ed Driscoll — always nice of a late Wednesday night, and my first hookup with Ed — yet I can’t help but think they didn’t either of them read the whole piece! They both elided right past a classic, “It is true … but” throwaway acknowledgment formula used all the time to make a completely opposite point — by journalists.

Posted in Futurama, Medialites | 5 Comments »

Internet anonymity and the higher law of Wall Street

Posted by Ron Coleman on July 17, 2007

Have I mentioned how against it, in its absolute form I am? It has its uses, yes; but defamation should not be one of them. Well, here’s an angle I hadn’t thought of: While libel and trade disparagement lawsuits lie gasping for air, how could I have forgotten the omnipotent powers of the Securities and Exchange Commission?

The chief executive of Whole Foods Market Inc. apologized to shareholders on Tuesday for anonymously posting comments about his company on the Internet as the organic and natural foods grocer said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had launched a probe into the matter.

News of the SEC probe comes a week after court documents filed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission revealed that Whole Foods Chief Executive John Mackey posted messages on a Yahoo! chat forum under an alias for years.

In the postings, Mackey talked up his company while predicting a bleak future for Wild Oats Markets Inc., the rival his firm is trying to acquire.

Maybe if the rest of us were publicly-traded issues, the law would protect us from web-based scoundrelry, too.

Posted in Lex scripta, Nuvo-Techno | 1 Comment »

Rotten boroughs

Posted by Ron Coleman on July 17, 2007

Arnold Kling, via Instapundit:

I think that President Bush has got one thing very much right, which is that Arab-Islamic terrorism is a symptom that something is rotten in the Middle East. If anything, his failures in Iraq and Palestine are due to underestimating the degree of rot. For all the allegations of his lack of intellect, George Bush is a brainiac compared to people who want to see terrorism as a symptom of something rotten in the United States or Israel.

Well taken, but I think a little wrong. When Kling writes, “his failures in Iraq and Palestine are due to underestimating the degree of rot,” it is in fact — contrary to the next sentence — not the rot in the Mideast that Bush (and the rest of us) underestimated, but the degree of political rot right here, mainly along the Capitol / MSM axis.

Yes, he could have no idea people would be so willing to slaughter their brothers, so often and so brutally, just to put political pressure on Washington. But far worse than this is that such pressure is so resolutely successful.

Rot does not begin to describe it.

Posted in Past is prologue, Politics and Poker | 3 Comments »

More on Failure Face

Posted by Ron Coleman on July 17, 2007

Dean’s World: Great Moments For Peace

Harry Reid really is making a great career as the symbol of craven surrender.

Posted in Politics and Poker | 1 Comment »

Now that’s a big inner tube

Posted by Ron Coleman on July 17, 2007

Really fat guys are different from you and me:

Crews rescued a man from the St. Croix River at Fox Landing, near Grantsburg, Wis. after he spent 12 hours stuck in the water. Authorities said the man’s weight was a mitigating factor in his delayed rescue.At about 8:15 p.m. Monday, authorities received a call of someone with a medical condition needing assistance.

According to the Pine County Sheriff’s Office, a group had gone tubing on the river when the tube of a man weighing at least 500 pounds went flat about two miles south of Fox Landing.

When you’re a quarter of a ton, you can’t expect to have the same kind of fun as human-sized people. Believe me, I know about overweight. But 500 pounds — that puts you in a very special class. And that’s not the same class as the one that includes “tubing” as a recreational option, I think.

Posted in Americana | 9 Comments »

No congestion pricing

Posted by Ron Coleman on July 17, 2007

Mike loses a big one:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg conceded failure Tuesday on his controversial plan to reduce traffic by charging drivers extra fees to enter Manhattan’s most congested neighborhoods. A day earlier, the plan had collapsed in the state Capitol.

I think that’s a shame. This fee would have been a big burden for a lot of people, and a small burden for me. But something has to give with traffic in New York, and I was interested in seeing how this class microeconomics-driven solution would have worked. I would like to think that Milton Friedman could have pulled some strings from the Other Side; but then again, as a cursed libertarian I cannot vouch from which side of the Other Side he’s on.

Too bad. Maybe some more manageable, or even a governable, major city will try this in the U.S.

Posted in Metropolis | 3 Comments »