Who Is Famous For Their Dots and Dashes?

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Obviously, the first person you think of is Samuel Morse. What if I had asked, "Which artist is famous for their dots and dashes?" This was asked in a recent quiz I attended. One friend argued Morse would be the answer - and I agreed with his logic. The answer, however, was given as Jackson Pollack. But my friend would be vindicated because, as it turns out, Morse was indeed an artist*.  This gave me the idea to summarize the best questions, I can remember, from 2011.

*He was spurred to invent a faster mode of communication  when he received a too-late-communiqué that simply read "Your dear wife is convalescent". When he arrived home she had already benn buried.

You Never Get A Second Chance To Make A First Impression

For me, the above is a truism for two reasons:

1. You never get a second chance to make a second impression or third impression or fourth impression ..
2. You can change someone's perception of that first impression

It is all moot as what happens last is more important than what happens first. My first English teacher thought me this with an example from a debate. A student he had coached finished with,

"Agreeing with this would be like a turkey voting for Christmas. If you were a turkey, would you vote for Christmas?"

A powerful argument. I was reminded of this when I came across a clip of Gordon Banks's save from Edison Arantes do Nascimento, a poor peasant boy from Brazil*. The clip, which is after the jump, contains what may be the greatest pass in football history but it is largely forgotten because of the play that follows it. Careful, it is right at the beginning of the clip.


*  A hint as to the providence of the version of the clip I watched.

Another Everything-Is-Okay Block (This Is Not A Repeat)

The following hand is from the Terence Reese book 'The Most Puzzling Situations in Bridge'. We should all be familiar with the technique by now - from here and two more here.





West leads the K♥ against your 6♦. You have 11 tricks if the spades are breaking and a heart ruff will see you home. What if the spades are not breaking? Then you will have to bank on the ruffing finesse in clubs. To keep yor options open, draw trumps and play K♠ then A♠. You have 4♠+1♥+5♦+1♣ + 1 ruff = 12 tricks.

Geoff Shreeves vs Twitter

When I came home from bridge on Tuesday night Twitter was aflutter over remarks made by Geoff Shreeves to Islanovic during the post-match interview. Here is a video clip mixing it with The Simpsons' episode where Lisa dates Ralph:



Quotes after the jump:

Beccome A Stealth Mountain Acolyte

According to Buzzfeed, Stealth Mountain is the Twitter account that is doing God's work. It is simply an account that finds people on Twitter using the phrase "sneak peak" and then tweets at them, "I think you meant 'sneak peak'". That is all he tweets; the timeline is a continuous stream of that one phrase aimed at different users. The humour in the account is how people react to it. Expletive-laden responses encourage the tweeter to get a life. It must take a lot of patience from a very lonely person to run such an account. Or does it?

Also doing God's work

Introducing The Alot

Occasionally I will type 'alot' instead of 'a lot'. When I notice this, I smile and think of this article from the 'Hyperbole and a Half' blog*. In it she offers advice for dealing with the anguish caused by the poor grammar of internet commenters. Her best one centres on the mythical creature the Alot. Everytime she sees the word 'alot' used she imagines they are talking about a real creature - as seen on the right.


* My spell checker is underlining 'blog' and offering me 'biog', which is apparently informal for biography instead. That is a new one for me. Who uses 'biog'? What's wrong with 'bio'?


One that I find difficult to explain why it is funny is is the Spaghatta Nadle. I do not know why I find it funny.  It is silly, it is stupid, but it made me laugh out load.

Draw Analyzer With Line Chart

Changed the Draw Analyzer to have a line chart instead of a bar chart.

I feel that this is easier to follow. The next step will be to combine this with Races To PDF to get an overview of a particular course-distance.

Orange Kangaroo From Denmark

This is a simple trick that many people know at this stage. You ask someone to pick a number and ask them to perform a series of arithmetic steps to that number. The trick is set up so that they will always have four as their answer. The next step is to for a European country that begins with the letter that is equivalent to the number you have chosen (a=1 ..).

Now they should be thinking of Denmark and you request an animal that begins with the last letter from that country's name. This will normally be a kangaroo and from there you ask for a colour beginning with the final letter of that word. Noy you can proclaim, "Ah come on! There are no orange kangaroos in Denmark".

Going four->Denmark->kangaroo->orange is simple enough, but how do we make sure that every time out we turn there number into four? You have done it hundreds of times before.

Be Careful With Superlatives

I love watching SportsCenter commercials on ESPN so I was delighted to stumble across the following video:



So what do you call the next video when you realise that you have left some out?

The New Big Five (or Six)

Back in 2003 Liverpool were coming off the mini treble and a second-place finish in the Premier league with a record number of points. Optimism was high and I came up with "The Big Five": Gerard (Houllier) Gerrard Owen Hyypia Vignal

I recently came accross the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences and so I put in the above numbers.

Not recalling Hyypia's number, I entered 10, 17, and 27 as a sequence and immediately realised I had missed a trick. The preceding numbers are the third-to-fifth numbers of a Fibonacci sequence beginning with three and seven. This would have meant having Abel Xavier and Harry Kewell in "The Big Five" but I think the tradeoff is worth it.

Next I loaded up the current squad page to see if there were any Fibonacci sequences lurking in there. This is what I came up with:

• 3 Enrique
• 5 Agger
• 8 Gerrard
• 13 ----------
• 21 Lucas
• 34 Kelly

This looks pretty good to me. Just sign a world-class no. 13 and call it a day.

This Used To Be My Bread And Butter ..

.. but then the walls got their act together.

1:35 Doncaster April 1st

John "Milton" Keyes

Analysed my first race of the year last night. It was a Class 5, 0-70, amateur-riders race over 12f on good ground. I saw eight horses with significant chances and they filled the first five and six of the first seven. I am not sure if this is a good think as this early in the season I like to use the John Maynard Keynes line:

When the facts change, I change my mind. 

Perhaps, with so much more all-weather racing than when I last followed horse racing. the early season is less of a minefield as to which horses will be fit.

The result can be found here. Analysis is after the jump.