onoway

Some thoughts which immediately come to mind: 1) that there is assumed to be ONE optimum way to teach so all kids learn equally effectively, which is an asinine assumption. 2) that using a concept based method of teaching math rather than a practical one will be more effective for most kids, .and I would love to see the studies that came up with that result 3) I'm not at all sure what the goal of it is supposed to be. Most kids won't become mathematicians, and if kids used to say, "what's the point of this"??.. and they did..what can you say to them when even their parents can't find a connection to "real"life? 4) I might be more sympathetic if kids could at least make change without having to rely on calculators and cash registers..if your bill is $6.79 and you give them $7.04 many of them would be totally lost... Home schooling looks more and more like a rational choice.

The box where it asks if you would like BBO to remember the password is checked as per instructions, but the password always has to be entered by hand, on any of the three computers I have used with BBO..and there seems to be no way to retrieve forgotten passwords. Is it just easier on BBO to have someone make up another ID than to track down the errant password? I don't understand why it doesn't work for me..I tried with the box UNticked as well and it didn't work then either. It isn't a huge deal, but I am wondering..obviously since it is there the option is intended to be available and at least for me it simply doesn't work and never has. Anyone else notice this?

"Let me try and use a bridge analogy." Who answers when you holler for "DIRECTOR!!" ? unsure.gif Easy...you Answer! But if you are afraid of Life and need the government or need a Daddy you will always whine and be disappointed when they fail to protect you. :unsure: Vigilante justice, anyone?

"Let me try and use a bridge analogy." Who answers when you holler for "DIRECTOR!!" ? B)

I wonder if people should perhaps not use bids requiring an alert in speedball tournaments if they find themselves unable to define them accurately,concisely and speedilly. The confusion of having to ask for an explanation of the bidding box alert, then waiting and figuring out what it is in chat and then having to sort out what to do about it puts a degree of time and psychological pressure on the opps which seems a bit unfair. I know many many less able players will simply go on in total bewilderment because of time pressures and the stress of trying to haul an explanation out of a bidder. It has always struck me as a bit of one upsmanship to plunk a convention name into the bidding box and wait to see what the opps do about it, esp if there is reason to suspect they may not know it.

Maximizing did indeed help, and got me back the missing lines. So then I tried small chat font and got even more lines, does life get much better? Thank you both so much! :blink:

I had to load BBO onto a different computer and I have lost at least two lines from the chat area. I have deleted and reloaded twice, and all I get is either NO chat area or 4..sometimes 5 lines. Since I kib a lot of teaching sessions the loss of those two or three lines is distressing..one announcement from another club re an event now totally disrupts everything and I cannot access the last and the next lines of the teaching session at the same time. If someone messages me and someone else comes on line I lose the message and have to scroll back to get it. This is becoming very irritating and disruptive...other people tell me they have loaded BBO recently and still get 7 lines for chat ..has anyone any suggestions? People who don't use the chat much may find this petty but chat has a pivotal place in my use and enjoyment of BBO and the loss of chat space is greatly diminished that. Help??

on the other hand I have played with some pards....tag team bridge anyone? http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23979955-23109,00.html

In a tourney yesterday one opp took over 5 minutes to bid (I thought he was frozen) the TD was called, then his pard took over a minute to bid, so we just barely got going when the clock ran out,...and WE got ave- . When I complained I was told I had notified the WRONG TD, that only one of the three could do anything about it. and I hadn't notified the right one. So we got penalized even though the TD I had notified was watching the nonaction for at least three minutes. The joys of free tourneys :) Still, by and large most of the TDs do a decent job, even in the free tourneys.

ran across this today and had a hard time believing it...is this for real? http://nightweed.com/printableusavotefacts.html

Being an intermediate, I think most beginner/intermediates I know would have bid 3nt after the 3!d call....figuring that pard's minor suit was self sufficient but pard must have something in the other suits as well to open 1 and then jump, but nothing biddable, so since this hand has goodies in all the other suits and 3nt is only 9 tricks.. ...hope is a strong component in most of our games :) I agree that most would believe 2!h to indicate 4 !h holding. One question I have never understood is why oh why is 2nt not forcing one round? It would make life so much easier...

I don't know if here is the place, but wanted to say that the addition of Mumble is great. I have one question..was trying to listen tonight and the commentator was very faint. Every once in a while the people doing the coordination? came on and they were loud and clear. It was slightly better by the end of the event. Is there any way to get the voices of the commentators a little louder? I had the volume on my computer adjusted to max as far as I know. But,,,it was fantastic to hear the voices and commentary. Thanks everyone who has brought and continues to bring all these goodies for our enjoyment . Kudos!!

So is a child of 3 years old who helps carry material to his daddy to make a vest a terrorist? is he when he is 8? 12? The U. S. agreed on an arbitrary age below which a person is to be considered a child. This person was under that age at the time.

another alternative being looked at; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25374237/

I understand they are justifying this on the basis that he was not wearing a uniform, therefore he cannot be considered a soldier, he must be a terrorist. On the other hand, I haven't heard that Americans are knowingly allowing 15 year olds to be in the army, so that's a bit of a peculiar stand. And I dunno..if my house had been bombed, and a bunch of "enemy"soldiers with guns were swooping in and I was hurt and scared and believed they would kill me or send me somewhere to be tortured and then maybe killed, I just might try to defend myself by throwing a grenade if one was around. He was injured before the soldiers even got to the house, so had very few options at the time. There isn't even consensus it was he who threw it. And he was a CHILD. I wonder how the American government can possibly think that this sort of thing is helping in any sort of way? It is against the Geneva convention, it is against common sense and it certainly is an example of why American government is so mistrusted..the rule of law for anyone but them, it seems. Also, because it is a particularly sad example of how things are going, and is something that (I think) Americans should be deeply ashamed of, doesn't mean it isn't true. It just might be that that is really all there is to the story. The story is one thing...what really makes me feel a degree of despair is reading the reactions to the story..as though this could possibly be defensible behaviour. The land of the free and the home of the brave....the might of the US vs a 15 year old child( at the time) whose access to legal council has been severely restricted..in a court where nobody could possibly be accused of being impartial, and where it seems the rules of evidence are designed to accommodate the desired result. Though the fact that is to be a trial at all is a victory of sorts, it has been reported Bush is unhappy about this and is considering ways to circumvent the Supreme Court's decision. First they came for the man down the street.....I hope you know that story, because it seems to be being acted out in the States right now, wouldn't want it to be a shock when you realize how a contempt for rule of law and respect for human rights has little concern with borders. It seems to me that the war against terrorism has done far far more damage to the world and the economy,safety, health and happiness of people than anything any terrorist could ever have dreamed of accomplishing.

I personally think, not being a gambling sort of person, that the costs of losing the bet are unacceptably high if we actually are mistaken about the safety of the containment plans for the virulent waste produced by nuclear power. All along we have been told that nuclear power was safe, which was not true (according to studies of such things as the incidences of cancers and birth defects within a diminishing range of miles of a nuclear power plant) so am a bit reluctant to believe that there is now nothing left to solve in terms of the problems. Perhaps if the money being spent on PR and campaign blitzes for nuclear energy were spent instead developing more ideas outside the box we would be in a much better situation. I am very far from being able to intelligently assess the claims made in the following link, but they seem intriguing. Might this be one possible solution to vehicle pollution? http://www.flixxy.com/zero-pollution-automobile.htm There is another one as well, with an entirely different approach but with similar claims (NOT run your car on water, btw) but I seem to have lost the link. :)

Does anyone actually consciously do this? Decide what needs to be done and once accomplished, feel ready to switch off? No wonder children are encouraged to think big :)Seems to me I remember reading somewhere that Mick Jagger said something about hoping he wouldn't live past 30 but he seems to perfectly happy being more than twice that age, now. Is it really fear or simply sensible to avoid leaping into a situation which is not only totally unknowable beforehand but also as far as we know, nonreversible? Better the devil you know than the devil you don't comes to mind. I think suicide is not a cowardly act, nor selfish, but generally a`sign of someone in an unbearable amount of pain and despair, at least in our culture. Because the pain may not be readilly visible to others doesn't mean it is less real to the sufferer. Some people have more capacity to deal with that than others do. I think to say suicide is selfish is reacting out of a selfish POV - you are a selfish s.o.b if you do this because I will feel bad - I think it is more valid to say I will feel very bad if you do this so I really really hope you get some help to help you feel less pain so you don't feel you have die to get relief. One of the things which has come to my attention over the past couple of years is the role of certain minerals and vitamins in depression. A serendipitous discovery of magnesium supplements , taken for an entirely different reason, made a huge difference to a friend of mine who was suicidal. Also, there was a book "potatoes, not prozak" which has some interesting observations. Seems to me the bottom line is once it's done, it's done, so don''t waste it...the alternative may not be any better and is certainly more final. There are some things worth hanging around for - maybe even just to find out what exactly was supposed to be the reason to be.

Perhaps because most people have had experience with bad things happening in their lives and the bad things pass and life is good again, so they harbor a glimmer of memory and hope that this will happen again... because they are unsure of what happens after death (what if it ISN"T the end or any better..then you're REALLY stuck) ... .because people left behind will be devastated (even though it may not seem so at times).. because suicide is not a reasonable solution to wanting revenge..the person who hurt you may feel very badly, but really, who actually won?? because of pride, not wanting to just concede defeat without investigating all other options thoroughly, what if the solution to your problems is out there just around the corner waiting for you to find it?.. because humans are not lemmings, generally, (sheep maybe , lemmings not).. because there are people out there worse off and they aren't giving up, maybe they know something you don't.. because as well as all the awful things in life there is also beauty and caring and humor, sometimes it's just a bit difficult to see it...

yes I had the same problem until I read the next part of the instructions which is click yes and say you want to connect anyway. It is a bit confusing. Something else I found confusing was knowing where the voices were coming from i.e. which room. The people who are active, it seems, have red lips in the list, but there's no indication as to where they might be. I messaged for information which was instantly forthcoming, but that will get to be a drag for the people trying to run it, if everyone does this. Is there some way to identify which rooms are using mumble in the mumble list? Aside from this it's very cool to hear the voices of the commentators.:)

There already is. The team matches do not need to be organized by BBO, anyone can do it as far as I know. Get your team together, find four opps and away you go. This spring (and probably again this fall) IAC club was running Team matches for its members. Ray's Bridge Club functions through BBO and has both pair and team matches going, but people have to arrange them themselves. As far as being able to comunicate with all your team members at one stroke, I think you will have to count on having a regular team meeting time and or use something like skype. With the number of people visiting BBO, the sub groups and crossovers that there would be at any one time boggles the mind. If people are truly interested, they will find a way to organize themselves. After hosting the IAC team matches I can think of nothing less likely to be a good use of BBO staff than trying to organize this. People need to put some effort into these things themselves. They are not as easilly arranged as tournaments and require a good deal more involvement from whoever is running the things than a regular tourney does. So..either join one of the groups such as Ray's or(and) organize them yourself, with your team and asking people you and your teammates know to be opps. If you don't know how to set them up, I will be happy to help get you started if you catch me online.

A somewhat different question but along the same lines...I was in a fairly large indy tournament today and for 4 of the 8 boards had the same person..twice as pard and twice as opp. There were something like 37 tables..twice only one person cycled away from the table. Towards the end of the tourney it seemed a bit more random. I would expect this with a small group but how does this happen with such a large group?

I know nothing about the science of this, but ran across a quote yesterday in my rambles..."First, there was nothing. Then it exploded."

If you had the power to change one event in history what would it be? Not counting wars here as they are always a series of events, though something specific like the Battle of Waterloo would qualify... the burning of the Library in Alexandria....

I fail to understand this logic. It suggests that people who live on the lower end of the economic scale should be eating more nutritiously than people with more disposable income and for that I see absolutely no evidence. In fact I would lay heavy money the reverse is true. Part of this I think is education, part because of the same psychological connotations that led to the fetish for white bread (brown bread is for people who can't afford white bread), part because manufactured food is so much more accessible now than ever before, and part because carbohydrates and fat are the most "satisfying" for most people. Possibly aside from education, these aren't going to change. If you have $3 to last you for two days which are you going to buy, 2 tiny tins of sardines, 2 much larger cans of fake meat, 2 loaves of white bread, 1 loaf of somewhat more nutritious bread, or a head of lettuce and two tomatoes? Most likely it would be 1 tin of fake meat and 1 loaf of white bread. Think of the manufacturing jobs lost and the businesses closed if all the "junk food" or "semi-food" producers were closed down! The options in stores are far less now than ever before in terms of "real" food..there is a plethora of fake or manufactured food available. I can't see that this will change. People may switch from eating chicken to eating hot dogs...from real cheese to fake...is this a step toward nutrition? Most chain grocery stores don't even carry the cheaper non "muscle"meats, with the possible exception of liver. You might be able to get them from your local butcher...if your local butcher has survived the mountain of constantly revised upgrading requirements which have driven 6 local butcher shops to close their doors in the last two years, although none of them have ever been responsible for any problems, and all were up to code before. Fish is in a league of its own. First it isn't cheap anyway, at least not here. Second many people won't eat it for reasons ranging from mercury contamination to a simple aversion to the idea or taste, or allergy. Third, there are massive problems arising from many of the fish farms as they are presently set up, including contaminating the wild fish stocks, pollution, and the same sort of reliance as the intensive livestock raising on land has on antibiotics and drugs to counteract the effects of highly unnatural living conditions. Farmers are being strongly encouraged to grow grain which cannot reproduce itself, the seed is sterile, so must be bought each year from the supplier. How does this warp the economics of farming, in the long run, and just how much nutrition is there in sterile seed? How many of your garden seeds are hybrid and thus it's not a good idea to save the seed from the plants you are raising? People can still learn to forage, but now roadsides are sprayed with pesticides and/or herbicides, even back roads. Does your town allow you to keep chickens in your back yard, or a goat? Also, many people just don't cook, they are almost afraid to. So they have a much more limited awareness of what options are even available to them. When stressed, people tend to look for the familiar for comfort. The other day, in a very small country store, a huge tractor took up most of the parking lot. The owner ( a young grain farmer) was in the store..they had no fuel (gas) for the car & no money to buy fuel, so he drove his diesel tractor to buy food. He had $10, he said. He bought Kraft dinner, a litre of milk and cigarettes. He doesn't have a cow or chickens and his wife works in town so they don't even have a garden. (?!) On the other hand, someone in Edmonton was forced to pull up all the potato plants that they had lining their driveway because their neighbors complained that they lowered property values. Seems to me the most certain result will be more theft and waste in stores, as people surreptiously open packages and chow down there. Are we getting to the point when people will be going to jail for stealing food? I think it is unlikely that conditions which allowed most people to have a relatively good diet on a relatively low income are going to return any time soon, if at all, short of real social upheaval. People will eat, but for many, it isn't going to be good food.

Bidding; 2♠s X Pass 3♠ The question is, what if anything, does that bid say about ♥?