Radio Shack

“I’ll miss the stores, but, realistically speaking, it’s been a very long time since they’ve even vaguely resembled what they once were.”

Pointless exercise

Randomizing a deck of cards

Shuffling a deck of cards is a relatively poor way to randomize. It can take surprisingly many passes to completely randomize the deck, more than people use in a game. It’s possible to intentionally or unintentionally fail. The best way to randomize cards might be to spread them all out, mix them around, reassemble the deck, and repeat several times. People don’t typically do this.

It might be interesting to randomize a deck by throwing dice to order the cards. I wonder if bridge players would notice, or if it would change their play. You could say (and I would agree) that making up the deck is part of the game; that there are rules for making up the deck; and that rolling dice and looking up the corresponding cards isn’t part of the game. Anyway, a thoroughly randomized deck would be detectable through statistical analysis, and I suspect it would affect the game. The players would notice that things seemed to be going oddly.

On a big table, lay out the cards, with jokers, in rows of nine. The first die determines which of the six rows to choose. The second die could determine from what position in the row to start counting, and the third die the number to count off to choose the card. Or you could make a look-up table for three dice, following Diceware’s example.

You could set up a deck like this, and carry it in your pocket. Just in case.

The idiot

Who is the idiot with a clipboard? I don’t know. The real problem is that he’s almost certainly not an idiot, but a really smart guy.

There is a particular kind of irrational behavior that seems to be part of human or organizational nature. That the people involved are serious, capable professionals in positions of significant responsibility does not make a difference. Here are some fictionalized but truthy dialogues:

Serious Responsible Man who should know what he’s doing: “Hey Mister Wizard, thanks for coming over.”

Young Wizard: “No problem; what’s up?”

SRM: “This package might contain an infernal engine of enormous destructive power.”

YW: “Okay, I’ll take a look. You’ll need to evacuate this floor, and the floors above and below.”

SRM: “Oh, we don’t want to do that.”

YW: “?”

SRM: “It’s probably just the new filing cabinet.”

YW: “Okay, well, call if you need…”

SRM: “Wait, where are you going? Aren’t you going to open it?”

YW: “What for?”

SRM: “It might be an infernal engine of enormous destructive power!”

YW: “Then evacuate the floors like I said.”

SRM: “We don’t want to do that.”

YW: “Then open it yourself.”

SRM: “But you’re the wizard!”

YW: “Then take my advice; evacuate the floors!”

SRM: “But…”

You get the point. Examples abound. Here’s another:

Not a rocket scientist: “Why are you wearing Full Impermeable double-layer Armor, plus 2 Against Lethal Miasma?”

A real rocket scientist: “The area may be contaminated with a class IV lethal miasma!”

NARS: “Then why are you not wearing the Helm of Respiratory Protection?”

ARRS: “It makes me feel like I’m suffocating, and there’s probably not any contamination.”

NARS: “Then take off the armor.”

ARRS: “There might be contamination!”

NARS: “Then put on your Helm of Respiratory Protection!”

et cetera

But of course the military is not subject to this kind of irrationality, right? So one would ever see, for instance, an experienced senior NCO walking around in, for example, poison ivy, buck naked except for a gas mask, carrying a scrub brush and a bucket of, say, calamine lotion. But if you ever do see such a thing, the line to take is not that it’s pointless to wear a gas mask while walking around naked in poison ivy, but that it’s inappropriate for a senior NCO to do cleanup. That’s a more effective argument.

Life on Mars?

Dunno, but either the Martians or the Martian Skynet is maintaining pretty effective planetary defense perimeters. From the graphic, only a handful of our units are making it to the surface.

Science facts

• We are part of the Laniakea supercluster.
• Dead batteries bounce.

My kind of church lady

“Tamara laments the rise of a utilitarian mentality in the church – in which business models are imposed and buildings are regarded merely as assets. One could add that this same mentality has led to the mediocrity and at times downright brutality of modern church architecture. The church is seen as no more than an auditorium and not only the clergy, but the people too have lost any sense of the need to construct a temple and are intent on building a preaching hall.” — Closing Churches Closes Faith, by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

I’m not sure a church should be exclusively a temple, or exclusively a preaching hall. If it must be one or the other, I’d rather go worship God in a temple. I can watch a sermon on tv, or read a book. I can sit and talk with friends at a restaurant. I can watch goofy Youtube videos, or listen to someone sing along to recorded music about anywhere; certainly in more places than I want to.

Floating dirt bike?

This in an impressive Russian motorcycle. The music with the video is said to be awful. I watched with the sound down.