05 Oct 2005 @ 11:52 PM
So, I don’t claim to understand the numbers in Lost, but it’s a rare episode where I don’t notice some patterns. In this episode, the numbers "108" and "540" both came up. 108 is the sum of the "4 8 15 16 23 42" numbers, and 540 is 5 times that much.
Now, that’s great, but what the heck do they mean?
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04 Oct 2005 @ 8:45 PM
The New York Times started running somewhat-regular mini-extravaganzas* back on July 4, 2003. It actually succeeded in selling me a copy of the paper for the first one. After I found out that one was published online, I stopped rushing out to score a hardcopy, but I have followed along closely online.
I think you’ll have to have a free NY Times login (or borrow a communal one from bugmenot.com) to get to the puzzles themselves.
Here are links to all of them so far (from newest to oldest):
The Old College Try (June 4, 2005)
Beat the Clock (December 31, 2004)
Let the Games Begin! (August 12, 2004)
Presents of Mind (December 25, 2003)
Patriot Games (July 5, 2003)
The thing about these puzzles is that, while challenging, they require no specialized puzzle-solving knowledge. In that respect, they’re probably appealing to a much wider variety of people than the highly specialized puzzle events that I normally participate in. I have had a lot of fun with all of them so far, and I hope the Times continues this tradition.
*mini-extravaganzas, as defined by the National Puzzlers’ League, are a number of puzzles having a theme or storyline, and usually with a final puzzle incorporating information from all previous stages.
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04 Oct 2005 @ 7:51 PM
When I tuned in to "The Eyes of Nye", I was expecting more of the same "science with a comedic nerd" style stuff that I got from Bill Nye the Science Guy (Science Rules!). Wow, was I disappointed.
I watched my first episode, Genetically Modified Foods, and was expecting a science education, but what I got was an agenda-filled political rant about something that happens to involve science. At least half of the episodes I’ve seen since then have also come with an agenda.
I easily agree with him on most of the positions he takes in the show, but I sure wasn’t expecting what I ended up getting. Oh, and the show averages really glum, too.
I guess he kinda makes no qualms that it’s something of a dressed up op-ed, as even evidenced by the title. And the way he closes. "<the sky falling! we’re all going to die if we don’t get smart!> At least that’s how I see it, and I’ll see you next time on "The Eyes of Nye"."
Now that my expectations have been through a violent, reactive reset, I still mostly enjoy the show. There’s still the campy sense of humor (Science with Mr. Sanders is a particularly twisted (and hilarious) recurring segment of the show), and even mostly good science.
At least that’s how I see it, and I’ll see you next time on "Scott Blomquist’s space".
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04 Oct 2005 @ 7:37 PM
[Wow--better get it in gear on this series of posts, or I'll forget everything I have to say about it!]
Read the first part of this series to get caught up, and then continue reading below.
I’ll throw in a brief mention here of the application process for those of you who aren’t familiar with Game-style events. Since it’s impractical to host more than some small two-digit number of teams, and since there are often more teams than that who are interested in participating, Game organizers usually require some form of application for the event. Applications are usually evaluated principally on the amount of effort put into them. My team submitted a 16-page glossy magazine called "Shark Bait Quarterly". It’d take forever to explain all of the inside jokes, but there’s lots of good stuff in there if you’re just skimming through, too. Pay special attention to the Tips from the Baiting Masters at the bottom of each of the crew biographies pages. At any rate, it was a good enough application to get us in.
Since we made the cut, we were mailed a physical invitation about a week before the actual event. Up until that point, we didn’t have much of an idea where the Game would start. The invitation itself looked like it was just a few pieces of card stock glued to each other in that common invitation-y way. We knew that more information had to be there somewhere, so we chose to dissect it. Turned out that the _real_ invitation was, in fact, inside the middle layer of the fancy invitation. It told us to make our way up to a hotel in Bellingham, WA.
On the Friday that the game actually started, we made our way up to Bellingham for a banquet in celebration of the release of the 42nd Mooncurser’s Handbook. We were encouraged by Game staff to mix and mingle during the banquet instead of seating our entire team together at any one table, but they didn’t explain why that might come in handy.
Leading up to dinner itself, they alluded to an executive in Galactic Consortium going rogue, but this was about the only plot development they did. It popped up one more time during the weekend, but in a somewhat weak way (we’ll get to that later). I have to say, the near complete lack of a plot may well have been one of the only major disappointments for me in this entire Game.
After an all-around good meal (which it sure should have been considering the $300 per person participation fee), something spectacular happened. They rolled back the wall to the tune of awe-filled gasps from around the room, to reveal an elaborate set of games and activity stations. They quickly explained all of the activity stations, and more importantly that every activity was a group activity that required cooperation among competing teams. Every success in one of the activities earned your team additional information to use in solving one of several metapuzzles that would get your team hundreds of points.
The activities took the form of simple things such as stacking cups (yeah–of the CupStacking variety) with a plastic robot arm, answering Sci-Fi trivia questions game show style, and 4-way Dance-Dance Revolution. We had a lot of fun doing most of them, but despite a three-team coalition to solve the meta-puzzles, we didn’t get any points for any of them.
By the end of the night, we had all done so much cooperating, that most teams had decided that alliances would be required to win the next day. We were eventually told that collusion was expressly forbidden, with one exception that would be explained later.
I’ll explain that exception in the next installment of this series.
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04 Oct 2005 @ 6:18 PM
Lately on the radio, I’ve been hearing what are probably 60-second ad spots for NBC’s fall prime time lineup. It consists of one femaile and two male voices that somehow just sound young and hip. The voices spend 60 seconds just jabbering about what’s on tonight on NBC in an exceptionally casual way. They comment on how much they liked the show last week, how hot the actresses are, and rumors that they’ve heard about this week’s episode.
They even make mistakes and correct each other. For example, today one of voices said something about how some actress on Law & Order SVU won a Emmy, and one of the other voices corrected it to "no, it was a Golden Globe". But it was just like it would have gone down in regular conversation among you and your closest friends. I really mean exceptionally casual conversation.
The most amazing thing about this ad campaign to me is that it really does on some deep down human level make me want to be one of the cool kids that get to be part of their water cooler conversation the next time I catch them on the radio. It hasn’t yet caused me to watch a show that I otherwise would not have, but I have to believe that it just might one of these times. Hell, I just might watch my first episode ever of SVU tonight. Just because my cool friends on the radio recommended it.
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03 Oct 2005 @ 4:32 PM
On my vacation, I’ve come up with more stuff to do than I’ve actually finished, so I think I’m technically more behind on the stuff that I’m staying home to get caught up on. But I’m having fun falling doing it.
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