Go South, Old Man

Days 0,1

Headed off on our Antarctic odyssey last light.  Dublin to Paris to Buenos Aires. We’ll continue to Ushuaia tomorrow where we’ll join the ship.  Thirteen hours in a plane was fairly yucky, followed by a 90 minute queue in passport control.  Is it beyond the wit of man to get passport control right? If I were queueing to pay for a product, no business would risk making me wait so long.

Anyhow, that’s quickly forgotten after a stroll in Big Apple, Argentina including a delicious lunch with veal carpaccio and pasta in an almond sauce. Even bought myself a teeshirt with a penguin on it.

This evening we met 78 year-old polyglot (7 languages) Dino sitting at the next table in our restaurant.  He joined us and we passed several pleasant hours together exchanging war-stories. We seem to regularly attract older men to our tables; do we look older than we are?

Tanzania

Just got home from holiday in Tanzania and have to write about it.

Tanzania is in sub-Saharan Africa, once called “darkest Africa” and we’d never seen any of it.  Africa has such a dreadful reputation; wars, corruption, poverty.  Tanzania sounded different however, a country that since its formation (by the merger of Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964) has lived peacefully with its 120+ tribes and its mixed christian and muslim religions.

We wanted a safari but we wanted more: a cultural experience too.  Through serendipity, we stumbled on a new company which claims to provide an authentic Tanzanian experience.  Objectif Tanzania is operated by Daniel Ole Nasira and Stéphane Neuvéglise and if Tanzania is on your itinerary, you should seriously consider letting them organise your trip.

Daniel is a member of the Maasai tribe and he knows Tanzania like the back of his hand.  He and Stéphane showed endless patience in designing a trip which blended the most amazing safari in four different national parks (where we personally recorded 93 different animal species) with a range of cultural experiences in towns and tribal villages across the north of the country.  They even managed to pack in a few hiking days and a visit to Stone Town in Zanzibar to round off our holiday.  Daniel personally guided us throughout our visit and was endlessly alert to ensuring we had a maximum experience and considerable contact with the very lovely Tanzanian people.  Daniel was also supported by Abdela, our cook during the camping days.  It was worth the trip just to meet Abdela who made campsite dining feel like a visit to the Ritz, with our meals presented with a most erudite speech each evening.

Photos still in the camera but will add some here when we’ve sorted them.

 

Bridge Party Individual Movement

Last week my wife and I hosted a bridge party at home for 12 players (3 tables) with an individual movement obtained here. The movement is a cyclic movement over 7 rounds.

The evening was enjoyable but I noticed several flaws in the movement and so during the last few days I wrote and ran a genetic algorithm to try to improve it. I think my improved movement (see below) is substantially better and so I describe below each of the flaws analysed and offer the new movement for whoever wants one.

I think the objectives of a good bridge party individual movement should be both social and fair and I believe these two objectives are entirely compatible in designing the movement; i.e. the objective should be to play with as many different partners and opponents as possible distributed as evenly as possible and leaving sufficient time to eat, drink and chat together.

We had opted for a 7-round 21-board movement which worked well, so I decided I would stick with that profile but try to improve it. Since each of us wants to meet all 11 other players over 21 boards, it would be ideal to meet each of them twice (approximately) with 7 different partners and 14 different pairs of opponents.

Original Movement
An analysis of the original movement produces the following flaws which I summarised with a penalty point for each degree of flaw.

1. Partner Diversity (no partnerships should be repeated since there are 11 partners available for 7 places)
   1.1   Single repeats: 0 cases ✔︎
   1.2  Double repeats: 0 cases ✔︎
2. Opponent Diversity (with 14 seats available for 11 different opponents, each player should be met either once or twice)
   2.1   Non-rivalry: 36 cases (cost 36) e.g. player 1 never opposes player 8
   2.2  High Rivalry: 14 cases (cost 14) e.g. player 1 opposes player 4 three times
   2.3  Excessive Rivalry: 2 cases (cost 4) e.g. player 6 opposes player 3 four times
3. Table Diversity (with 21 chances to meet as opponent or partner, everybody should meet roughly twice)
   3.1   Total Avoidance: 8 cases (cost 8) e.g. players 2 and 11 never meet at a table. In fact, only 4 players meet everybody
   3.2  Congregation: 28 cases (cost 28) e.g. players 1 and 4 share the same table three times
   3.3  Crowding: 8 cases (cost 16) e.g. players 1 and 10 share the same table four times
   3.4. Repeat Matches: 3 cases (cost 6) e.g. players 2, 3, 4 and 6 meet in Rounds 1 and 7
4. Summary: Player 4 is a good example of how poor the standard movement is, playing four times with player 2 and three times each with players 1, 3 and 5 while failing ever to play with player 9.
5. Total cost 112

Improved Movement
A similar analysis of the improved movement goes as follows:

1. Partner Diversity
   1.1   Single repeats: 0 cases ✔︎
   1.2  Double repeats: 0 cases ✔︎
2. Opponent Diversity
   2.1   Non-rivalry: 12 cases (cost 12) e.g. player 3 never opposes player 11
   2.2  High Rivalry: 0 cases ✔︎
   2.3  Excessive Rivalry: 0 cases ✔︎
3. Table Diversity
   3.1   Total Avoidance: 0 cases ✔︎
   3.2  Congregation: 24 cases (cost 24) e.g. players 1 and 6 share the same table three times
   3.3  Crowding: 0 cases ✔︎
   3.4. Repeat Matches: 0 cases ✔︎
4. Summary: Improvement is across the board with only two types of flaw persisting.
5. Total cost 36

It seems clear to me that this movement is superior both in fairness and sociability.

The three images below can be printed as table movement cards.

Unintimidated by Culture

Book: How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard
Rating: 8/10 … not another How to Bluff Your Way in Literature guide

Have you ever felt culturally inferior when conversation turns to literature and you haven’t read or can’t remember the books being discussed?  Maybe you’ve heard of them but fear that offering an opinion will be found out as unsubstantiated by direct reading experience.  This amusing book will help you to see it in a new light.

I picked up this hardback book (new) for €6.  The gems you find at market stalls!  This is one for book lovers.  It tells us why we do’t need to read books … indeed we are better off not reading them … but even as we nod and agree with the arguments, it reminds us of why we’ll continue to go on reading.  Although his message is serious, his tone is light and mocking.

Bayard divides our knowledge of books into unknown, skimmed, heard of and forgotten.  None actually qualify as read.  Since we can’t read more than an infinitesimally small fraction of the world library, we are all effectively non-readers and even the most erudite among us spend most of their time bluffing about what they have read.  In those small number of cases where we have actually turned the pages of the book, we have forgotten so much and overlaid the rest with so much personal interpretation that we are essentially bluffing still.  This is what he says:

“Being cultivated is a matter not of having read any book in particular, but of being able to find your bearings within books as a system, which requires you to know that they form a system and to be able to locate each element in relation to the others … The distinction between the content of a book and its location [in the system] is fundamental, for it is this that allows those unintimidated by culture to speak without trouble on any subject.”

In the first part of the book, he discusses how we (don’t) read.  He provides advice from Robert Musil on why to avoid reading at all costs … to avoid favouring one book over another; from Paul Valéry on how to criticise after merely skimming a book (not to mention the subtle art of doling out faint praise); from Umberto Eco on how to deduce content without reading the book (with an amusing aside on how the accumulation of error points to truth); and from Montaigne on why our memory of books we think we read is suspect in the least.  On memory, he concludes:

“Indeed, if after being read a book immediately begins to disappear from consciousness, to the point where it becomes impossible to remember whether we have read it, the very notion of reading loses its relevance, since any book, read or unread, will end up the equivalent of any other … As agonizing as it may be, Montaigne’s experience may nonetheless have the salutary effect of reassuring those to whom cultural efficiency seems unattainable.”

He goes on to describe literary confrontations, those occasions when we find ourselves called on to defend our reputation as cultured people.

… to be continued …

Ryanair shows its quality

This comment (ugly grammar, spelling and punctuation intact):

you’re an idiot and a liar!! fact is! you’ve opened one session then another and requested a page meant for a different session, you are so stupid you dont even know how you did it! you dont get a free flight, there is no dynamic data to render which is prob why you got 0.00. what self respecting developer uses a crappy CMS such as word press anyway AND puts they’re mobile ph number online, i suppose even a prank call is better than nothing on a lonely sat evening!!

has to say something about the kind of people Ryanair employs. It was posted to the blog of Jason Roe by an anonymous member of Ryanair’s staff (something the company has admitted). A very unrepentant Head of Communications riposted that this is what we must expect if we want to play with the big boys! I think he’s shown just how small they are! God how we’ve changed in Ireland! I’m old enough to remember when even our critics were treated with common courtesy. Bear this behaviour in mind when you have any reason to interact with them.