Sigi_BC84

You're asking three questions: "Why is life worth living?" -- I can't assess the alternative ("non-living") so I'm happy to stick with life for the moment. "Assuming living is a choice, why do people choose to live?" -- It's human nature to "choose" life. I don't think it's an actual choice that you're making, as in choosing which suit to discard next. It's an instict, and those are usually followed without too much reasoning (especially a strong one such as this). "Isn't it rational for a lot of people to choose not to live?" -- This could be true, but it doesn't matter much since it's not in our nature to make a rational decision in that direction. Most suicides are done from a situation of great suffering and despair, not out of rationality.

You are touching something very deep and profound here. We're so used to categorizing the world that we mistake our categories for "reality" (which, quite ironically, is just another category, albeit a very abstract and elusive one; in fact it doesn't even exist as such). Decision models obviously need categories, as you can't even start to build a model of anything without adapting a dualistic view of the world and giving names to things and so on. These models are useful and necessary, and natural, in many ways. However, I don't think that decision making requires categorical thinking. We often make intuitive decisions and they are not necessarily worse than rational ones (sometimes they're even better). So if you meant to say the latter, I think I'll have to disagree. Language enters the picture (of perception, categorizing, forming of self-consciousness) very, very early and I think that (cognitive/neuro) science still has a looong way to go to give some definitive answers to questions like "which came first, language or high-level concepts?" The best efforts currently made involve deep introspection, and while I consider that very valid it's unfortunately useless when applying scientific standards. This is all very vague, but there is an inspiring book touching many of these topics called Shifting Worlds, Changing Minds by Jeremy Hayward. It deals with modem cognitive science and Buddhism (the author is a scientist with a background in molecular biology and also a Buddhist teacher). The text is very scientific but targetted at a general audience. You will most certainly like it if you liked Penrose's book and Hofstadter's works.

That's an interesting topic. I count them 3-3-3 onto the table and check that I have four remaining in my hand. I sort those then pick up pairs of cards from the table and insert them into the proper places in my hand. I keep suits alternating red-black (I'd love to have widespread use of 4-color decks, but that won't happen I guess) and within the suits I sort the cards accurately (helps me with signaling). Sometimes I keep my hand under the table afterwards as not to give away information. --Sigi

I don't want to lecture you on this here, but my advice is to get rid of the nicotine gums. It's just a waste of money and what point is there in prolonging your nicotine addiction by constantly giving it to your body? I've managed to stop smoking a few times simply by being consequent about it and never used gums. Well, after a few months I thought I could "handle it" and started again. Silly me. It's a myth that nicotine withdrawal is preventing you from stopping. The effects last only a few days and after two weeks time 99% of the nicotine in the system has been broken down or left the body. What remains are the psychological effects which are much stronger. I guess gums can be a help with quitting because you only have to handle one part of the addiction (the psychological part) and deal with the nicotine later, but continuing to use gums, what point is therein? --Sigi

I say the same, but not for the anarchist aspect of it, but instead because it's close to impossible to effectively enforce doping regulations. Those who have access to the latest doping methods (which usually cannot be detected for a while) have an unfair advantage to all the others. Appealing to fairness doesn't work -- the pressure to win is much too high in high-profile events. From a certain standpoint I would welcome an entirely drug-free sports world (it's better for the athletes health etc.), but in reality it simply doesn't work out. Heck, I'd favor a drug-free world in general, but that doesn't work out either. So a common sense reaction should be to let people decide on their own and have a go at whatever drugs they favour (be it in sports or otherwise). --Sigi

How about this one (ridiculously hard): What is the maximum number of completely bounded volumes that can be formed by three interpenetrating cubes, considering only the surfaces of the cubes as boundaries and counting only volumes that are not further subdivided? (BTW I don't know the answer but it's supposed to have been posted somewhere on the net.) --Sigi

I liked this one: You are given 9 black marbles, 11 red marbles and 13 white marbles. You are also given a magic device with a hole at the top and a dispenser at the bottom that works as follows: if you insert two marbles of different color, the box eats the marbles and dispenses two marbles of the remaining color (eg. insert a red and a white, get two blacks in return etc.) if you insert two marbles of the same color, the box eats the marbles and dispenses two marbles, one of each remaining color (eg. insert two blacks and get one red and one white in return etc.). the box has an endless power supply, ie. it does the above as often as you want Your task is to recolor your supply of marbles so that you end up with 33 marbles of the same color (either all black, all red or all white). How can that be done, if at all? If not, why not? --Sigi Hint (hidden):

Thanks for the tip. I am puzzled how football can be the most popular game in the world. Find a group of people to share the experience with. Then watch big games (European Championship or World Cup). Maybe visit a modern stadium (eg. in Stuttgart you could watch the first qualification match GER vs. IRE) to get a feel for how it's like to watch a match live. Just to watch it (the soccer phenomenon) from the outside, possibly with a strong aversion/bias against some of its elements will not help you understand the game. It gets more interesting as soon as you get a feel for it and get a sense of the community. Actually you've just missed a good opportunity with the World Cup in Germany... --Sigi

I like the layout and content of www.vbl.be It's in Dutch and only has the info that you expect from the Flemish Bridge federation, but if you want to see a nice web page about bridge... Uh... nothing to write home about. At all. The download links open an empty window (ugly and inconvenient). Website uses a frame (unnecessary and inconvenient). It's not a complete disgrace, though. (And no, I don't think my standards are too high ;-). --Sigi

Gay end to a magnificent tournament. If you are German. I'm sorry for the French whose hopes got shattered while one of their biggest players proved to be an incredible moron (surpassing Rooney, Bouhlarouz and de Rossi quite easily). I'm sorry for the English that the WAGs drew more attention than the performance of their actual team. I'm sorry for the Brazilians that their team was a complete disgrace. For us (Germans) this World Cup was enjoyable beyond all hopes and expectations. Match for third place was another magnificent party. Athmosphere couldn't have been better. Every single one of the 23 players (except for the third goalie) got their chance, finally. Kahn got his honourable discharge. The next day the team got celebrated as if they had just taken the title. It was simply awesome. Where soccer as a sport is concerned, the tournament surely was a letdown. I think it is not the fault of the hosts, the organization, the referees or even the FIFA. In my eyes the problem lies in the coaches' tactical decisions how to play important games. Only two teams played consistently attractive football: Argentina and -- yes -- Germany (we would not have believed that either before the World Cup). I hope the Germans manage to continue to play like this for quite a while. The upcoming tournaments will turn out to be similar in this regard if the attitude of the people in charge of tactical and strategic decisions does not change. --Sigi

Spot-on, Arend.

The counting game is nice, and the comments popping up when you are wrong are priceless. Unfortunately the page also proves my iron rule that there simply are no good-looking web pages concerned with the game of Bridge (maybe the ACBL website qualifies as the single exception to the rule). I'm still wondering why this is so -- I haven't hit that phenomenon as hard in any other area. --Sigi

Opera identifies itself as (using the default setting "Identify as MSIE 6.0"): User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 8.50 So there is no reason to assume that it "lies" about it's identity at all. In fact, the header contains the explicit information that it is in fact Opera you're dealing with. I think if websites discriminate against browsers, it's mainly to achieve correct rendering. Conspiracy theories are in the wrong place here in my not so humble opinion. I've just finished a small web project using some recent standards (CSS 2.0) and I've found that the browser who messes up the most is Internet Explorer. So, as a developer, you could start coding against the standards but afterwards you are forced to plug numerous holes due to IE not obeying these standards. Needless to say this is annoying as hell (especially due to the fact that you need to run IE to test your designs, which is not completely straightforward when you are not running Windows as your operating system...). All in all, Opera is the most stable browser when modern web standards are concerned, and also outstanding on many other fronts (yes, I've been a fanboy for a long time :-). Unfortunately MSIE still covers most of the browser market, and MS is not making a great effort to make it more standards compatible. There is a well-known standards test, called "Acid2". Opera is the only popular browser at the moment that passes this test completely. Microsoft, in turn, have even made it explicit that they are not trying to make Internet Explorer 7 (the upcoming version) pass this test (needless to say that they easily have the resources to do so). In my eyes that speaks volumes about their motives... Having Internet Explorer pass Acid2 would make a huge difference for web developers. Huge. --Sigi

Yes, and France have one of the worst goal keepers in World Cup history. I wouldn't be surprised if they lost because Barthez messes up once more. Anyway, Italy showed against Germany that they can play an offensive match even with a lot at stake. I'm hoping that they will be brave enough to try this strategy again in the finals. But probably we will see the usual tactical match as nearly always when two top soccer nations meet (as in Argentina-Germany during the first half, for example). The most we should hope for is an early goal due to a mistake on either side, so the match will open up during regular time. In the end I see Italy at an advantage, but probably it will be a close game if France can play at the level they've shown in their last two matches. --Sigi

I've got nothing to add to that.

With two of the "easy" options plus Engerland out, maybe another poll makes sense. Make your pick. --Sigi

That is a rational prediction based on the assumption that China will be a very profitable and important market. However, since so many Europeans are struggling even with English as a foreign language, I don't see how, realistically, Chinese (could it be any more foreign?) could become a wide-spread option. At the moment, they're showing not much signs of doing so. A few years ago, a lot of development was happening on Internet Explorer. They even provided their own solutions to develop dynamic web sites. It was all abandoned and IE didn't see any major improvements for a long time now. I personally think they will not give up on Windows and their accompanying proprietary solutions. The problem with web-services from Microsofts perspective is that they cannot lock in their customers anymore in such a scenario. You've already given one of the biggest problems they would be having when you mentioned Linux: if they supported web-based applications, they would commoditize the operating system market. People would not depend any more on a specific operating system, and one of their major cash cows, Windows, would lose importance. That's why all of their competitors support alternative technologies such as Linux and Java: if they can commoditize the OS market, operating systems will become cheaper and a lot more money will be available to spend on hardware (companies such as IBM (supporting Linux) or Sun (Java) are hardware vendors). It would be extremely irrational for MS to give up on Windows, so I don't see it happening. --Sigi

Very easy question: Gotan Project playing the last gig (Sunday night) during a French festival (Eurockeenes de Belfort). On the main stage it was Rammstein, and we all couldn't care less. Our group of people was quite diverse in musical taste, and most of us hadn't even heard of them before, but their gig left us in complete awe. During the first half of their show, they're performing behind a large screen of semi-transparent material which hangs down at the front of the stage, completely disguising the band. Full-screen video material is projected on the screen, but you can see the silouettes of the band from time to time. Before the second half, the veil drops and you have your usual stage performance. They also had an Argentinian tango pair dancing to a few of their songs. Perfect gig for me, and we saw quite a lot of awesome performances during the three days on the festival. I will never forget it. They have published a DVD with their concert lately, which I can recommend to everyone interested in Argentinian Tango or good music in general. --Sigi

I somehow like your relaxed attitude towards piracy ;-).

Germany is a very inconvenient location for people like you right now ;-). --Sig

I just checked the news about the brawl after the match. It says that apparently some Argentinian players continued to taunt the Germans during the penalty shootout. Borowski at some point made a gesture towards them to be quiet. After the match Cufre kicked Mertesacker, supposedly because he had mistaken him for Borowski. Cufre drew a Red Card for that. German team manager Bierhoff, when trying to quell the situation, got attacked as well (apparently he took some visible bruises from it). Emotions, or maybe a part of the dark arts :-). --Sigi

Very close match, Argentina was very strong. I'm sorry that they have to leave now (I wouldn't have cared if it had been any of the other teams). I think the protests were about Lehmann moving too much right before the penalty kicks. I didn't notice during the match. He did a great job, anyway, and finally that made the difference. Those penalty kick decisions aren't very prestigious, I would have preferred an earlier decision as well. The party in Germany continues, Roland. What's next? --Sigi

surely this thread would be incomplete without a reference to William Shatner's classic cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds...... recently voted (not for the first time) by listeners of Canada's CBC radio as the worst recorded song of all time. And thus, presumably, the WORST cover of all time. Uh oh. Don't say that before checking this one out: Hooked on a Feeling done by master Hoff (original by B.J. Thomas?). (I strongly advice people with heart or respirational problems to keep their medication in reach at all times while watching this video.) --Sigi

All they need is a proper opponent. So far they were simply bored by their opposition. I'd like to see them eliminated before the finals, but odds are on that they will make it. Germany vs. England would be a terrific final. So much at stake and I'm sure that Engerrland would play a totally different game from what they've shown until now. France would be bearable as a finalist only because that would mean that they have beaten Brazil ;-). --Sigi

Great idea, jdeegan! I assume it is "Summertime", the Jazz classic. --Sigi