As if TLM wasn't the best already, she arranged for us to have a "secret date night" tonight. I write you now from halftime at the TD Banknorth Garden, where the the C's have a 22 point lead over the Raptors.
Whenever I come across stories about new discoveries of prehistoric anythings, I make note. A couple of days ago scientists at the University of Oslo in Norway (my favorite country at Epcot) found what they think to be a new species of prehistoric sea reptile. There appears to be some controversy, though, as they're not sure this new species is really new. Um, ok...it doesn't make for a great story per say, but it's an excuse to include images like this one:
Also, in a more exciting and less vague declaration made by scientists on Monday, a dinosaur mummy has been found, complete with bones, skin, and maybe even organs and muscles. This is great news as now we don't need to mine for those pesky prehistoric mosquitoes fossilized in amber to get our dinosaur DNA for our dinosaur amusement parks...
Pirates vs. Ninja...why is that again? I'm sure there is a story (more than just "the Ninja were jealous that Pirates had their own day"), but today is the Day of the Ninja, so celebrate by busting out your black ski masks (just don't walk into any convenience stores!).
Last year "Ask a Ninja" enlightened us as to the origin of the day (see below), but for some reason I don't think he's being entirely serious...you be the judge.
Did the Patriots get any extra help last night in their victory and quest for a perfect season? If they did, it was from the Ravens, case closed. Consider these plays:
With a 7 point Ravens lead, Kyle Boller launches a pick into a pack of Patriots with 10:37 left on the clock on a 3rd and 14 on the NE 30. Consider this: had the play been a running play, or even a short passing play out to the flat, the clock would have continued to tick and Baltimore might still have had a shot at a field goal (albeit a 47 yarder from that line of scrimmage), or at least a coffin-corner punt otherwise. Instead, the Pats return the interception to their own 43 and march 37 yards in 1:36 o kick a field goal and cut the difference to 4. McGahee had been running all over the Patriots front all day, so why stop then? Fault here: Baltimore.
On the Patriots' final drive, the first time they faced a 4th down came with 1:38 left in the game. Brady had just thrown a short pass on a 3rd and 10 to Kevin Faulk who managed to gain 9 yards to make it 4th and 1, and Brady subsequently hurried to the line and tried a QB sneak only to get stuffed by the Ravens' perfectly positioned front line, seemingly ending the Patriots' drive. The play is called back, though, as "someone" (Rex Reed) on the Ravens' sidelines called timeout just before the snap. The Ravens' defense on the field is livid with their coach. Once again, fault: Baltimore.
"I heard the whistle blow and I stopped...I would've made the first down if the whistle didn't blow." - Tom Brady on the 4th and 1 QB sneak
On the very next snap (thanks again, Rex!), Heath Evans is slammed for a one yard loss. Here is the only place where Baltimore may have gotten some help as Russ Hochstein jumped off before the snap, nullifying the last play (again) and making it 4th and 6. Was this a bad thing, though? No, not at all, and for three reasons, the first being the aforementioned voiding of the Evans play. The second reason is that I believe it contributed to rattling the Ravens, and the third was what came on the next play, with the Ravens' looking for a pass, sleping on Brady who sprinted(?) for 12 yards to get the 1st. Fault: Baltimore.
Oh, on that same play, Samari Rolle tacked on 5 yards after an illegal contact call, giving the Pats now a 1st and 10 on the Ravens' 18. Fault: Baltimore.
The last 4th down for the Patriots on the drive came with just 55 seconds left on the clock and the Patriots still needing a touchdown. After a New England timeout, presumably to draw up just the right play, Brady tried to find Ben Watson in the endzone, but to no avail as the pass went incomplete, bouncing off three sets of hands. The play (and end of the drive) was once again revoked, however, as a penalty was called for holding on Jamaine Winborne (incorrectly, though, as it was Bart Scott was tackling Jabar Gaffney as Brady was releasing the ball), resulting in a Patriots 1st and Goal on the Ravens' 8 yard line. Fault: Baltimore.
Next play: touchdown pass to Gaffney on an in-route-turned-out-route. Both feet were clearly in, and the ever-vague "did he have possession" question came into play when the replay official wanted to look it over. Where was the pass rush the Ravens had been so successful with all night? OK, really this was a great play by the Patriots, and the following is for the sake of consistency. Fault: Baltimore.
An absolute meltdown of linebacker Bart Scott followed with a 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct, then another one for throwing an official's flag into the stands. That's 30 yards assessed on the ensuing kickoff, Bart. At this point Baltimore was only down by a field goal and had one timeout. Scott's two penalties, along with another 5 yards for an offsides on Ed Reed, put the Patriots point of kickoff on the Baltimore 35 yard line, essentially making sure the Ravens' next drive would start at best on their 20. Fault: Baltimore (specifically Bart Scott)
Let's see if the Steelers can learn from Baltimore's mistakes.
Well, it isn't exactly the day after Thanksgiving, but it is a day after Thanksgiving, and TLM and I finally put up the tree. It was fun and easy, and the only new question this year was whether to go and get a real tree or not. Thoughts?
An American Legend passed away on Friday as Evel Kneivel died, ultimately losing a three year battle with cancer. Though I have always been fascinated by Evel Knievel and his jumps since childhood, I never thought of why all of his highlight reels were of his unsuccessful stunts. Now it seems like a no-brainer: humans have an innate interest in the failings of others, whether it be breaking vertebrae and ribs while trying to jump over a fountain at Cesar's Palace or just getting voted off in your favorite reality show (finally!).
I think one YouTube user put it best when he suggested that Evel Knievel, upon arrival to Heaven, would hop on a motorcycle and proceed to jump over the Pearly Gates (without injury, of course).
Another year, another 30 posts in November. Some would say I "made it", though I didn't think of it as such a burden (though TLM will attest to more than a few nights where I "still had to post").
Maybe I'll keep this going for a while; see how long I can keep the streak alive.
(to my lovely fiancée: I swear it won't be neurotic about it, promise!)
I couldn't help myself. After a couple of very tough days at work, I went through my "to be looked at later" bookmark folder and found this at (where else) WidgetBox.
I kid you not, I've played exactly once and, yes, I picked the million dollar case, and had a string of "no deals" to win it...
This is a piece of a Red Sox "Sgt. Pepper" Montage AL-9000 sent me. There's a nice page with a full size version of it on the NY Times site, complete with a listing of each person included.
It's always good to see Nuf Ced McGreevey...it's too bad he couldn't just give a quick jolt with his left elbow a bit and tag Harry Frazee in the ear.
Back in high school (not that many years ago, I'd like to think), I was in a programming competition that pitted a program I wrote to play a 2-player game against those of all of my classmates in a single-elimination tournament. I made it to the finals and eventually won, though after discussion with the other finalist we both realized that based on our PASCAL code (ok, that many years ago) the winner would have been the program that went first. More importantly, both of us wrote very shortsighted code; that is, we set up a series of rules like "look for a winning move first" and "look for a block second". It was only a matter of time before I learned the more traditional computer science approach to creating algorithms for 2-player games: game trees.
A game tree is a symbolic representation of all the possible outcomes of a game where nodes are the "states" of the game at a given time and the connecting arrows are the possible "moves" (called "plys" in game theory). Think of it as an inverted tree where the root node represents the start of the game and all its branches representing a player's first turn.
The common example for explaining game trees is the well-known game of tic-tac-toe. Player 1 starts out with a blank grid and 9 possible squares to click in. After a spot is chosen (and an "X" is placed), there are 8 other squares from which player 2 can choose (and place an "O"), which then leaves 7 squares for Player 1, and then 6 for Player 2, and so on. You can guess that even a game as simple as tic-tac-toe, guaranteed to be over in 9 moves, can have a pretty large number of possible ways it can be played. At first glance you may even calculate the number of nodes in the game tree to be 9! (362,880), though luckily there are several factors we can use to trim this number down (to 26,830 nodes, in fact).
The first way to trim a game tree is to consider all of the branches that never make it to ply number 9 because the game has already finished. For example, imagine Player 1 winning with 3 spots still on the grid (however unlikely, it's still possible); the last 3 plys for that branch never need to be calculated. Another important way to "prune" the trees is to recognize any kind of symmetry (rotation, reflection) across branches and represent each by one and only one branch. For example, if Player 1's first move is to a corner, any corner, our game tree only needs to have one branch as each of the other 3 nodes where Player 1's first move is a corner can be rotated to look like the first. The same is true of Player 1's first move if to a side spot. Add in the branch that stems from Player 1's first move to the center spot and you now have 3 branches coming out of the root node, not 9...now that's some good and efficient pruning.
In the project below, I've recreated the commonly seen 2-ply game tree for a tic-tac-toe game. Playing with this visual and interactive model may give you a better understanding of how game trees are constructed. The sitemap of the workBench project is what the (beginning of the) game tree would look like. Look at the number of branches each node spawns and see if you can figure out why none of the 2nd-tier nodes spawn 8 branches. Also, there are lots of other, more sophisticated ways of pruning game trees if you are interested, but they are beyond the scope of this post.
So why are game trees important anyway? Why would knowing about them have changed how I made that program all those years ago? The answer is simple: if you can make a model of all possible outcomes, you can choose the path that helps you the most. In a 2-player game tree, this can be done in a variety of ways, though an easy example is to "rate" each node, started from the end of each branch, or leaf nodes. If a node gives Player 1 a win, assign a rating of 1 to that node. If it gives Player 2 a win, rate it -1, and if it is a tie, rate it 0 (this is how I was taught, though you can use any rating system you'd like, such as colors or shapes). Once all of the leaf nodes have been rated, the nodes in the ply above them can be rated as well, all the way up to the top using the following rules:
For each node X on ply Z, look at the parent node Y one level up on ply (Z-1).
If all of node Y's children are rated the same way, give node Y that rating.
If any of node Y's children are rated as a win for the player whose turn is on ply Z, rate node Y a win for that player.
If neither condition applies, rate node Y a tie.
This may seem hard to understand, but in a nutshell all it means is that if you have to choose between a bunch of moves, all of which have ratings already, you don't want to choose one that has at least one outcome where your opponent wins, assuming your opponent will see that opportunity and take it (that's the crux of step 3).
If you are an educator and involved in anything that revolves around game theory, recursion in programming, or even symmetry in high school Geometry, constructing (or filling in already started) game trees for simple 2 player games may be a fun and productive activity.
It may even be the key to you winning a programming tournament in your high school computer class...
The Eagles gave them a run for their money last night, that much is certain, but the New England Patriots are still undefeated improving their 2007 season record to 11-0. The toughest challenge of the remaining games still seems to be Pittsburgh, though Philly showed last night that not every game against the Pats is a blowout.
Who was the player of the game last night? Was it Wes Welker (13 catches, 149 yards), Jabar Gaffney (6 catches, 87 yards, 1 TD), or maybe Asante Samuel (2 interceptions, 1 runback for a TD)?
Of all of the questions, the ones that gained the most publicity (by far) were the questions asking students what they'd settle for in return for their right to vote (forever). I'm not sure if this was multiple choice format, but many headlines read something along the lines of "Students at NYU hapy to give up their right to vote for an iPod".
This is, of course, an oversimplification, but reading the article made me think about my own right to vote. I'd always been taught that voting was perhaps the most important thing I could do as a citizen of this country (right up there with jury duty!), and for all intents and purposes this teaching stuck; I make sure I go out just about every November and cast my ballot. However, I can remember some heavy discussions about recent elections (see election, presidential, 2000), many of which brought the actual value of my singular vote into question as well.
How much is my vote really worth? For the moment, forget monetary value...that is, does my vote really matter for anything? I'd like to believe the answer is "yes", but can anyone be so sure anymore? If, then, one's vote is worth nothing, why not take a million bucks or free tuition?
The answer is simple, to me at least. I believe that the right to vote is priceless, and is one of the reasons, nay, freedoms for which people want to come live in this country. Even if my one vote doesn't sway an election, I treasure the fact that I have the ability to choose who our leaders will be and how our laws will evolve...
TLM showed me this today, which I used as a basis for my post over at TRintuition. Somehow this has been around the net for a long time and I had never seen it until today. Still pretty cool...
You're supposed to see the figure spinning one way, then try to get it to spin the other way. Using the shadow underneath the figure makes this easier, and eventually you will be able to do it, trust me.
To commemorate this year's birthday of Baseball Joe, I'm including a clip from the "Baseball History Podcast", something I think he'd enjoy. Too bad most of this week's episode revolves around the Highlanders (soon to be Yankees) and their totally disreputable star, Hal Chase.
If you want to subscribe to the podcast, you can find it in the iTunes directory, or alternatively just subscribe to http://bhp.libsyn.com/rss. Happy Birthday Pop!
Content found on The Neoteric is of no particular genre, topic, or focus, other than it was all at some point, in some way, interesting enough to me to write about.
