pilowsky

The problem was - like most things - human-made. Passports did not exist in their current form until after WW1 - https://on.natgeo.com/3u3NJ0a. Agatha Christie and Max used to bother people in the middle east and steal their artefacts with complete impunity at that time. The idea of the conservative dog-whistle: "We will decide who comes to Australia and when" (to paraphrase John Howard (Tedious Australian PM) is only possible because of the post-war nationalism. The USA did not enter WW2 to prevent the holocaust or stop a war. Many US corporations were profiting from the conflagration, and some openly supported the NAZI's. They were also pretty happy to give safe harbour to useful war criminals such as Werner ("I only joined the NAZI party because I had to") von Braun. I don't know the role that the influenza pandemic played in the emergence of the passport (in the form that we know it now) in 1920.

If Bayes theorem is obscure then all hope is lost.

Just to clarify. Is this a BBO problem or a realbridge problem? Does Andy work for both?

No, the same people exist all over the world. If you can believe the world was created in 6 days, you can believe anything.

Literacy is such a problem in the USA that Dr Suess was commissioned to write some books to improve reading comprehension. This is what the original 2nd amendment says: NB "A well regulated militia" and "the security of a free state". There was never any intent that this would mean everybody who wanted one could purchase and keep a Battleship on their front lawn to deter trespassers. The whole "rights" argument about guns in America holds as much water as a colander. For those that didn't get past Dr Suess, a colander is a thing that doesn't hold much water.

BBO is not satisfied with the quality of your play. Or

Very funny!

Vaccine distribution in Australia is useless. To date, the roll-out is risibly small https://www.abc.net....t/13197518?nw=0 Politicians claim all kinds of reasons for this - shortage of supply, poor production, mean Europeans. But for the past 30-40 years, successive governments paid lip service to science. Quietly dissipating and denigrating the pursuit of academic work while pumping money into "important" endeavours like the Australian Institute of Sport. To give some perspective about the value that the world places on Science, it is worth remembering that this year the Nobel prize for Medicine is worth $USD 1,192,546 (converting SEK10,000,000). The Nobel prize is typically shared between 3 people (the maximum permitted in the rules) who are not dead (also in the rules). Each of the winners of the US tennis open will get USD3,800,000 this year. Much as I understand that hitting balls with sticks takes practice, this disparity makes no sense to me. One beneficial effect of the coronavirus was that, for a short while, there was no sport on the radio.

...and there's another problem. Of the 70+ million people that voted for the "smartest man on Earth," I would bet that exactly 97.35% of them would not understand that "Zero evidentiary support" means that it didn't happen. Exactly 100% of them will believe that it means that there is obviously some support - just not 'evidentiary' and Trumpy, Trumpy, Trumpy. These same people exist in Australia. Like the pod people - they're everywhere. They look like people, sound like people, but really they're vegetation. A terrifying combination of "Night of the living dead" and "Invasion of the body-snatchers". I remember about two years ago when the internet became feverish because some commentator used the word 'oleaginous' in a sentence. Lawrence ODonnell was so excited that someone had said "oleaginous" that he devoted more than 8 minutes to it on MSNBC. You can see it for yourself. http://bit.ly/Oleaginous. Instead, they believe in something called "Natural law" - one of the most (in)famous proponents of "Natural Law" is JR Biden. A man that may not know everything, but at least he knows the difference between right and wrong.

...and Dottie be good tonight.

There is something truly strange about the world we live in when these two headlines appear on the same day: https://www.bbc.com/...d-asia-56870410 and https://www.npr.org/2021/04/22/989797337/out-of-thin-air-nasa-rover-makes-oxygen-from-martian-atmosphere

And look how that worked out.

I suspect - with no evidence - that the vast majority of play against robots is Human V. 3 other robots. OP is someone with considerable success in that format. (https://www.bridgeba...hp?u=fuzzyquack). OP's comments about robots tournaments are completely correct. But, every player is dealing with the same advantage/disadvantage. I don't think fuzzyquack is talking about robot V. 2+ human games

OK - so if the defenders (usually) continue to play then they have no recourse. Thanks.

I play with someone IRL who is of the firm opinion that if someone makes a claim and it is rejected, then they cannot subsequently take a finesse to make the contract. Is this true? In every jurisdiction? Yes, GIB is sometimes kind. Sometimes it isn't. It will sometimes deny an invalid claim and then continue to play so badly that you make the contract anyway. Swings and roundabouts.

I agree. Ask a nearly incomprehensible question, and you get a nearly incomprehensible answer. There is a thing called push-polling where the questioner is actually attempting to sway the opinion of the person being questioned. Very common in politics. This sounds like something a little different - sort of "drama-polling". I knew a psychiatrist that complained that reporters would ask if being blonde was associated with eating disorders. They wanted a headline that read, "Psychiatrists believe that Lady Di has an eating disorder." The objective of all Journalism is to make money by being exciting. Conveying truthful, useful information comes a distant second.

Have you checked the common types of hand shape? There are only 39 possible shapes. The probability of picking up a hand with a singleton OR a void in it is ~36% of all hand types. On top of that, four hands are dealt. Each of the hands has a 36% chance of having a singleton, or a void. If you want to find a place with a lot of Singletons, there's a small town in NSW called Singleton - 100% of the residents are Singletons. I've never been there.

One other small thing. Because BBO is a completely anonymous service, you do not know the identity of any particular kibitzer. A person can easily log out and then log in with a different username. There is no compulsion for the data that appears next to a user name to bear any relationship to reality.

It sounds like a great way for BBO to make extra revenue. Charge players a little more for additional average HCP's. Say $0.01 per 0.1?

[hv=pc=n&s=sk852hakt4dkcak42&n=saj3hj73daj9642c3&d=n&v=n&b=5&a=1dp2hp3hp4np5hp6nppp]266|200| From yesterdays Daylong number 1. After butchering the play and ending up 6NT-2 I was surprised to get 53.13% for this board - along with 11 others. One person got it right for 6NT= and another person made 6D= Turns out you can make 6 of anything (except clubs). Pre-emptive apologies for the bidding. West leads the ♠4 [/hv] What happened to me:

Since you are playing with GIB - which is pretty rigid in terms of partnership agreements, here is what I have found.Personally, I find the relationship between the bids, the meaning and the possible outcome fairly tight. The GIB slam bidding methods are not as intricate/sophisticated as some of those outlined above but they are outlined in detail in the GIB system notes. Over a call of 4NT, I generally find the Robots land in a reasonable slam - even if I play badly and don't make it. Here is a link to the system notes where the meanings are outlined in detail. https://bit.ly/GIBsystem

If that's the "bottom line", then I'm sorry to hear about your upbringing. If you would be kind enough to explain the difference between a good and bad upbringing - a problem that has baffled parents for centuries - I'm sure we'll all be interested. When Alfred Binet introduced the IQ test, it had only one purpose - to assess the likelihood of success in high school. If you equate the likelihood of success in High School with intelligence, then, well, you are 3 times less intelligent than the person you are talking to. As illustrated in this example, IQ testing provides the opportunity for children to engage in pointless competitions about "intelligence" at a time in their lives when many of them are terribly concerned about how clever they are and their place in the world.

There are all kinds of reasons why a head of state (a normal one) might seek to take a path between sucking up and bared teeth aggression. The face value of these comments is meaningless. It sounds like he is trying to lower the temperature to return to the pre-psycho government of the past four years. All the same, my confidence levels for better government throughout the world is not at an all-time high.

Weapons of mass destruction all over again. Here is how Generals explain to political advisors about going to war. http://bit.ly/GoToWarExplained

As in the teacher saying "Everyone is unique." Or as I sometimes read in the media - such and such is "very unique."