pilowsky

Very impressive.Clearly, you've been taking lessons from me. With a little work, you can make no tricks at all and score 200%. Feel free to deposit funds into my BBO account.

I twisted my leg a few weeks ago, so I decided that to distract myself (no orthopaedic pun intended), I would attempt to make a dealing machine using Google Sheets. This turned out to be quite a nice beginner project. I needed to learn about a bunch of stuff that I hadn't used before. Finally, I managed to generate a .lin file that BBO would A) import and B) allow me to upload onto a teaching table. Given my luck, it was entirely unsurprising that the first hand I generated gave me 1 lousy Jack. Here's the hand: How would you bid it [hv=pc=n&s=s3hj932dt832ct532&w=skq52hkqt8d64cak6&n=st9874h6dkj5cqj97&e=saj6ha754daq97c84]399|300[/hv] Here's what GIB made of it:

I see the same bug. It's very annoying. I don't think moving to a bidding table is a solution. It would be great if the PTB's could acknowledge the existence of this flaw so that we don't have to keep posting about it.

That's true, I forgot about the pods. I have heard from somebody that the people in the pods also operate lasers in space, but I'm not sure. I really think someone ought to investigate. Also, is it true that these pod people communicate using special nets called podcasts? I don't know, I'm just asking. One thing that I am pretty sure about is that Elon Musk might be sending people carriers to Mars so that he can bring some of these people back to California - so my friend on the news said anyway, could it be true?

Some interesting podcasts from the ABC in Australia http://bit.ly/ABCcoronacast

That's hilarious. What "inquiring minds"?

Good to hear. Don't squeeze it .

Seems OK for me, but from the image, you don't appear to have placed a person/robot in the East seat.

What a great idea! We could call it a "spirit-level" Useful in keeping as on an even keel...

One of the biggest problems that I find with some academics is that (like many other people) they believe that having succeeded in one small area of knowledge acquisition, they are therefore experts in other areas about which they know very little. For myself, I quickly discovered as I moved along in the academic world that I knew and understood less and less. This 'structural uncertainty' that is part of every academics life makes scientists (and people that cleave to rational thought in general) appear simultaneously unsure about everything and incredibly arrogant. It's a truly bizarre concatenation, but there it is. When a scientist/academic says, "I'm 90% sure that if we don't do something about climate change", they do not mean "If we don't do anything about climate change, things are probably going to be OK". So it annoys me when I state something (carefully phrased to allow for the possibility that some of the struts of a carefully constructed argument are wrong) in an area that I know something about when others with no specialised knowledge quote something that a Journalist picked up second-hand and 'blogged' about in google as being equally valid. This latter problem of 'cherry-picking' came into the mainstream as a side-effect of the information revolution and reached its apogee with Trump and his cogeners. The use of op-eds as evidence instead of synthesizing information from primary sources to present a well-founded perspective is now the rationalism du jour. The reason that people do this is usually obvious: personal gain. Tragically, the value of wide dissemination of information has brought the opportunity for people to push an extreme position to generate an informational 'fog of war'. This fog of "it could be", "it was published in a 'reputable scientific journal" represents the most odious of uncritical thinking. I have personally reviewed hundreds of scientific articles in my career. Working academics will tell you that most of what is published turns out to be wrong (https://bit.ly/WrongScience). It's not surprising that many scientists observe something and then publish it when they see an effect. Recently, I have had some good results (by my standards) playing Bridge. It would be easy to conclude that this results from hard work, learning and consequently, improvement. Sure, this may account for some proportion of the variance. For myself, I suspect it is equally likely that the overall quality of the candidature has fallen.

At the login screen, check the box that says "invisible". It's next to the one that says "remember me". Now when you log in your name will be in a white box and that means you are 'invisible'.

Excellent! I'll sleep when I'm dead.

It may be that you have accidentally clicked on settings, then under 'General' untoggled the 'split screen' option. If you go to Account/settings and under General make sure that the split-screen button is 'on' (green) - button moved to the right. This could resolve the problem.

Hi, The only place that you can import .lin files AND replay them is on a teaching table. I believe that the reason for this is that on other tables, the play of the hand is compared for scoring purposes against the way it is played on 15 other tables. You can start a teaching table by first clicking on the Practice area, where you can start a Teaching, where you can play the hand, or a Bidding table. If you start a teaching table on your own and are not a Prime member, you will have to rent robots. Not a problem in your case. Once you start the table, you can 'export to table' hands you have recently played, create new hands using the 'hand editor' or upload hands from the deal archive.

What time was it? How long had he been awake? How much coffee had he drunk? Is the physical state of your partner important? Why do birds suddenly appear (http://bit.ly/SuddenBirdsCarpenters)? Why do fools fall in love (http://bit.ly/WhyDoFools)? Isn't it a losing game? Or was he a Ly(in)Mon? Isn't it the 'understanding' that's important? Maybe South was tired and thought West had opened 1NT - or maybe West was playing Precision, and when North bid 2D, South thought it was Cappelletti. On what basis did EW believe that North having both majors (strength unspecified) would affect their normal methods for reaching 6 Spades? Isn't this the key question in assessing damage? Was there 'intent'? Sure, E&W have a motive for claiming that the actions of N&S were the 'cause' of their failure to bid to a particular level. This question arises all the time, but what is the 'test'. Rather than asking what the TD 'should do', I would like to know what legal test applies when opps do something (which is or is not correctly understood by their partner) to prove that the action has deliberately and with malice damaged E&W. Given that E&W are 'strong players' - defined for operational purposes as being as good or better then GIB - a simple test might be: what would happen if GIB were E and W. This is easily checked with the (not always Advanced) robots on the teaching table. Here is what happens if EW are robots: East bids 2S and EW reach 6S. Here is what happens if East doubles and South bids Hearts: EW reach 6S. And here is what happens if NS say nothing: EW reach 6S. None of these is the optimal contract by any stretch. Finally, imagine the scoreline if South, overcome by an abundance of ethics, persisted with bidding Spades or Hearts and NS double for a fantastic score. btw, left to their own devices after 2D natural interference GIB stops in 4S! It seems that the tiredness of North and the odd bidding of South (with 10 losers over East's double) has nothing to do with anything. Even stranger is that the basis for the complaint is that they failed to reach 7♣ when 7♠,7♥ and 7NT are all available. What they seem to be complaining about is their inability to cope with a competitive auction. So - my question is what are the legal tests for assessing 'damage'? It seems completely unreasonable to say that damage occurs if NS interfere, and as a result, EW fails to reach a particular contract that they can now see (double-dummy) is optimal. This sounds like a "Well, m'Lud I wouldn't have driven while intoxicated if I had known that a Pedestrian was going to walk out in front of me and smash into my car" - style of argument. The problem seems redolent of an earlier post of mine where my partner bid 2D over 1NT which I alerted as Cappelletti - majors. The wise opp to my right immediately bid 3NT (knowing full well my partner had diamonds) and after they went down when my partner played out her diamonds, they complained to the TD who adjusted 60/40 in their favour. After seeing varieties of this type of behaviour multiple times now it seems that a fair test could be: Given the knowledge available to each player single-dummy, what contract would the average intermediate+ player be expected to achieve? And also, did the actions of the opposition substantially interfere with the likelihood that the average player could reach the contract? What is reasonable? Now that we can use GIB bidding as a simple yardstick there is some sort of "objective" measure, but even if you are a rusted-on robophobe, and want to use the ' "bridge-expert" on the Clapham omnibus' test, this complaint doesn't seem to pass the sniff test. The idea that a reasonable test is whether or not a particular pair thinks that it may or may not have achieved a particular result is completely specious. If that really is how TD's make rulings then either the rules need to change or Bridge is a game designed by Kafka and implemented by the Marx brothers: I suspect it's the latter. Here it looks like EW were a danger to themselves. It does not appear that they needed help from NS.

Why "of course"? I need all the help I can get.

If you can see and hear your screenmate then you are not playing online Bridge. You are playing FTF. When I play behind screens nobody can see or hear me. Nobody can hear me scream.

Yep, that looks very much like a BBO alert.

There is a little more to it than that. Viruses can cause brain problems for many reasons. I'll try and simplify it. 1. Direct: Some viruses are actually 'neurotrophic'. This means that their main target is nerve cells. But not all nerves. To understand this, try to think of a nerve as a tree and a virus as a parasite that likes trees. Some specific trees are affected by a specific parasite, but others are not. Why is this? Like trees, neurons live for a long time - basically for the life of the individual. They are almost unique in this. Being very long-lived is great. It means that we can use one neuron to store precise bits of information. Vision neurons that only respond to objects moving from left to right on a horizontal plane are good examples (Torsten and Weisel got the Nobel for this discovery). Every neuron can also be characterised in terms of where it projects and the inputs it receives. Also, every neuron produces and secretes multiple chemicals that it releases onto other neurons and multiple receptors that it expresses all over its membrane. The chemicals it releases in response to the frequency of action potentials determines how much it affects other neurons or targets of other types. Engineers will immediately see all kinds of possibilities for dynamic amplitude and frequency modulation. I mentioned things that neurons express on their surface. The lining of a neuron is two layers of lipid. the proteins that the cell makes (e.g. receptors) sit within this lipid bilayer. Proteins have hydrophilic and hydrophobic domains, so one end sticks out into the water, and the other bit prefers to be in the lipid. Many of these proteins have an inside bit and an outside bit. Viruses usually bind to one of these proteins. The neuron gets annoyed and recycles (no waste) the useless protein into the cell. The virus then releases its cargo of DNA or RNA into the cell, and everything starts to go bad. Viruses that sound like 'DNA' release parcels of DNA (e.g. adenovirus and hepatitis and herpes viruses). Polio is an RNA virus. It only affects neurons that control skeletal muscle. Coronaviruses use a protein found on many cells as their target: this is the angiotensin-converting-enzyme or ACE. To control the fluid distribution and blood pressure in the body. a system called the Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone System has evolved. (RAAS). It works like this: 1. The liver makes angiotensin 0 (angiotensinogen). There are bucket loads of it circulating in the blood all the time - just waiting. 2. The kidney makes renin (not rennin) - renin is an enzyme released from special cells in the kidney if blood pressure falls. If released, renin chops off a bit of A0 and turns it into A1. 3. Nothing happens until the A1 is turned into A2 (actually called AII) by an enzyme called ACE. then the AII acts on angiotensin type 2 receptors (and 1 for other stuff). Most of the receptors are on blood vessels. You can guess from the name what happens next - angio- (blood vessel) -tensin (constrict), and up goes your blood pressure. 4. Other enzymes in the blood quickly degrade the angiotensin restoring the system to normal. Like me, those of you who have high blood pressure will be taking either a -pril type drug or -artan. Drugs ending in -pril block ACE. Drugs ending in -artan block the angiotensin receptor. At one time, there was (completely unfounded) anxiety that people taking these drugs could have bigger problems with COVID. This turns out to be wrong. Keep taking your drugs. Returning to the original point, ACE is found in very high concentrations in the lung. All of the A1 made by renin is turned into AII as the blood is pumped through the lungs (basically a couple of heartbeats. But ACE is found in many other places - including the brain and the testes (ouch). Wherever there is ACE, the coronavirus can cause problems. And yes, it's in the brain too. 2. Specific but indirect. Because the virus can damage blood vessels - yes, ACE is there too; this can affect blood transport to the brain. Also, many people are in poor condition for many reasons, and it does not take much reduction in oxygen to stop the brain from working properly. Remember, the brain needs an adequate supply of oxygen and glucose all the time. 3. Not specific and indirect. The brain needs the body to be operating in a narrow range for other reasons. Any sickness that, e.g., elevates temperature, can cause neurological problems. Around 10% of babies can get such a high fever that they have a seizure. 90% of them grow out of it. So, that's viruses in a nutshell. Obviously, there is a lot more.

So, another psychic bridge director - that 'logic' makes no sense at all. It suggests that you haven't played much online Bridge. People pause all the time for all kinds of reasons - like responding to posts!

Did you read what I said? I randomise tempo. This means that nobody can infer anything from the time it takes for me to bid or play. Not opps, not partner and not Director. Sometimes I'm a little fast, sometimes a little slow. All my delays or rapid plays are completely meaningless. I learned this by playing with robots. They also delay intermittently - means nothing at all.

I really hope the worms don't get into your rings - it sounds uncomfortable. Drawing a false equivalency between football and Bridge doesn't help your argument much. All the same, I 100% agree with the second half of your first sentence. Being right about something is a great start. FYP btw - no charge for that.

Being an atheist and a rational thinker does not deny the possibility that some things cannot be explained using existing models. It does mean that - as a rationalist - I am always attempting to explain any phenomenon in a way that does not require the invocation of supernatural beings. As it happens, I ascribe to Jewish ethics (which btw are focussed on how you behave in this world - not some "afterlife"). Most of the subsequent "new-fangled" religions as my father called them do the same. People who identify with different parts of the political spectrum make constant appeals to authority and set up straw man arguments. How often do we hear the following phrases: "the American people want." "The Framers (of the US) constitution knew what they were doing" "As everyone knows." "You must never lead away from an Ace." Whenever I hear someone utter one of these lines, I instantly find it hard to take anything else they say seriously. If you are prepared to blindly accept one thing, how can I trust anything else you say? Personally, I expect that 90% of what I say will be proven wrong within a fairly short time. That's how learning works; by not sticking blindly to rules set down by authorities. Regarding the specific question about reductionism, I don't believe in a soul or essence. Ultimately, everything in a biological organism ought to be explicable in terms of the elements of the organism and how it interacts with the world. Given that any vertebrate is more complex (slightly) than a deck of cards. It seems obvious to me that trying to devise a model that explains all human action is probably impossible. Heisenberg backs me up on this. Heisenberg is stopped by a traffic policeman. "do you know how fast you are going?"; "No, but I know where I am". or this very slightly rude version (warning it contains a slightly offensive word)

phew

Who are these "best players" you speak of? What about the rest of us?