Bridge

That was more like it. I declared just about every contract in sight, played with Andy with a nice 1M-4M vibe going on, messed up some 3H contracts, stopped in several correct part-scores, didn't bid an unbiddable slam, and managed a decent squeeze in a 5C contract that should have been 3NT[1].

[1] I can't quite remember the layout now. It wasn't perfect -- technically if the opponents had known to guard different suits they could have kept it, but it went through textbookly.

ETA: And of course, we managed to correctly bid to 5H, despite one of us bidding blackwood and one of us bidding gerber :)

Saturday

Sonic, Mobbsy, Martin, Ewx, Naath and Pseudomonas came over for dinner and games. It went very well.

(no subject)

Intro

Question. Let S_n be the sum of the first n primes. Show that there is a square number strictly between any successive S_n.

Eg. (2+3+5)<16<(2+3+5+7)

( Spoilers for Question 8 )

It probably wasn't worth describing this in that much detail. It wasn't that complicated. But:

* It was all written down on scrap paper anyway.
* Someone may take heart from seeing how people go down blind alleys and home in on relatively short answer.
* It's always worth writing something up neatly in case you missed something obviously wrong/interesting.

(no subject)

Top Ten Most Amusing Sequel Titles¹:

1. "Alien", "Aliens"
2. "Ocean's 11", "Ocean's 12", "Ocean's 13"²
3. "Cube", "Hypercube"
4. "Band of Gold", "Gold"³
5. "The Matrix", "The Third Rank Tensor", "The Fourth Rank Tensor"
6. "XXX", "XXXX"
7. "X-Men", "XX-Women"
8. "You wait ages for one, then three Godots turn up at once!"
9. "Dude, Where's My Car?" "Seriously, Dude, Where's My Car?"
10. "The Madness of King George III"⁵

[1] Some were really used and some not. Can you guess which?

[2] Actually, this just seems dull, I don't know why

[3] Is that the only overlapping but shorter sequel title ever? The first was TV drama about several prostitutes; the second was when one of them made rich.

[4] I left about Naked Gun 3.3 as that's supposed to be silly.

[5] OK, they never made the madnesses of king george the i and ii. But I wanted to include it :)

[6] Which have I missed out?

ETA: I suppose "Day of the Triffids" and "Night of the Triffids" should be somewhere, mainly because they just annoy me by the sequel being disappointing, but now me being unable to remember which came first. After all, which does come first, night or day (please, no answers).

Having sex on the bonnet of your car when the car is a HUGE SENTIENT ROBOT

Who'd have thunk the Transformers movie would raise interesting philosophical etiquette questions? You're probably tired of "So, can we eat sapient alien" questions, so let's have a different one.

Does privacy apply between species? Does it go with intelligence or compatible biology/mores?

I mean, me, I don't like having sex in front of cats or inflatable penguins, because I'm (most of the time) very private. Being naked in the flat is an occasional luxury rather than the norm. So it doesn't apply to me.

But if the aliens don't place any importance on sexual reproduction or pair bonding, and are friends, and don't gossip, does it matter?

You'd naturally think it does. In the Mote in God's Eye (insofar as Larry Niven is an authority on alien contact) the humans have to explain some aspects of privacy.

OTOH, in books where the sapient alien is pet-like, or an artificial intelligence, sometimes people don't care.

What actually would happen? Can we ever know until we *do* find sapient aliens?

Just when you think you've done everything...

Which is more sad? Doing maths for fun, or LARP? :)

I'm not serious, I just found it amusing that after years of saying "Try everything but... No, OK, I've *done* LARP and country dancing", I discover a new low :)

ETA: No, we have a winner: using a metaphor which compares maths to sex
See here: http://cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com/348218.html?thread=2335034#t2335034, I try to think of an appropriate analogy for privacy-in-front-of-an-alien where it *doesn't* apply.

(no subject)

You'd think having a book of (very) short stories left at work would be convenient. You can pick it up whenever you want a five minute break away from the computer. But it doesn't work out like that.