hotShot

Such a behavior would conflict with several bridge laws. Ethical player would avoid it even it it were legal, because the behavior at the table can transport UI to partner, or it could mislead opponents.

Please show me where GPS is mentioned. Or you can just read the first sentence of this, which is also a great summary of the entire topic. (Oddly enough, it points to delays as the number 1 reason for this entire system being explored. It's still not my number one reason!) Take a look at: Swiss ministry of air traffic (sorry the English link is not working) It basically says that the GPS log from a plane in Basel in 2005, proved that it was on course. So "they" use GPS. Probably I don't mean the same people that you meant, but I'm still sure that the planes navigation uses/utilizes GPS. If navigation and flight control both use GPS, you create a single point of failiure: The GPS system. The military authorities can distort the GPS system and I won't be surprised if one day some terrorist hacker could do that too.

I'm pretty sure that they are using GPS already. The problems are in small little details like. The shortest route between 2 airports is the same for all plains in all directions. Hurray for the collisions alert.... If a plane is not taking the direct route, it is usually to avoid to fly through restricted areas, the reasons can be military or security (like avoiding nuclear installations).

Bridge at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0pacJNspqk Of cause there are more!

Most (younger) people don't know bridge. Some might have heard rumors about it. Around here there is a prejudice that bridge is only played by rich old ladies during teatime. Chess has an image of being an intellectual challenge, that is attractive. So what we need is a better public image of bridge. Bridge is: - an intellectual game, - it helps you to develope you mathematical scills, - it supports team spirit, - it trains you to evaluate risks and make fast decisions. It is a perfect preparation for management skills. Promote that most bridge players are successful people like: manager, IT-people, layers and scientists. Teach your kids bridge and they have better chances to be successful.

Bertolt Brecht: The Threepenny Opera (1928) Macheath, in Act 3, scene 3 (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht)

Happy birthday!

and that's the very basic reason why any religion that says that a leader is infallible cannot be defended The pope is by definition only infallible in matters of faith/ religion. He is therefore fallible in recognizing antisemitic people.

I think there is some kind of crow or raven that passes this test as well.

If your partner can not catch your throw, maybe it was a bad throw. You hold 14 HCP and opener has 12+ HCP, that leaves your LHO and partner with an average of 7- HCP. Opener has 5+ ♠ and you hold 2, leaving LHO and partner with an average of 3♠ cards. So LHO is likely to have an easy 2♠ bid and neither side is likely to have game. You know that 4 of the 10 honors you don't have would be wasted (♠J and ♣KQJ) in partners hand. The 2♥ bid conceals a lot of that knowledge and leaves the 2♠ bid for LHO. Your partner won't be able to evaluate his hand without the knowledge of your shape. Now parters got a giant bidding problem. If your aim is to find the best 3-level contract your side can have, bidding 2♠ instead seems a reasonable move. Partners bidding problem is much smaller now.

Is it possible to set incomplete hands, like one would have at trick 6 and have cards played to a trick? In that case one could use an external javascript to switch back and forth.

I don't see a trend yet, but I'm sure it will come. There is a trend to use up bidding space, e.g. weak LOTT raises from responder. You can no longer expect to bid your second suit with intermediate hands. There is a trend to value shape over HCP strength, e.g. Zar-points. The logical consequence of these existing trends is to use a continuous range Michaels.

I really don't like 3♣ because it shows a distribution you don't have. Don't blame partner if he bids a slam/grand based on your obvious ♦ single and/or ♣ length. Your 3♣ bid also devalues your partners 5♣ answer (we might not even have a fit), but he must be short in ♠ (no support) and unbalanced (since he did not try 3NT). He can't have much values in ♠ (no cards) or ♥, so there have to be values in the minors. You will have to bid 6♥ now.

Assuming you don't ask that molecules are built from atoms, please look at Trinidads post. As he points out there is room for a god in this model. Science can't prove the existence or nonexistence of god. People used to explain everything they could not understand with a god. Science can explain a lot of things, so there is no need to use god as explanation for these things. But this just proves abuse of the "god model".

Imagine you enter the kitchen after cooking, you will usually find some sort of mess. You can wait as long as you want, it won't reach a state of order on its own. You need an external source of energy, e.g. you working to get the kitchen into a state of order again. No need to involve the universe.

Well that is about right. But since 1828 when Wöhler could produce urea without a living being involved, the separation of inorganic and organic chemistry is more traditional than necessary. You can produce simple amino acids from nitrogen, C02 and water by adding a little energy (although that is very inefficient). If those amino acids combine to chains you get proteins. Proteins that wind around metal ions are prototypes of enzymes. The idea is that if enough organic material is available in a small space together with some primitive form of reproductive molecules they can combine to a cell.

Great post Rik!

South gets the blame. North passed 2♦ and now volunteers to bid 3♠. This should be a penalty dbl in ♦. Promising a good North hand. If you don't play that as penalty dbl in ♦, South is still strong enough to bid 4♠. Which will get North on the right track.

I really hate it when scientists are vague or inaccurate. The strength of scientific theories is that they can be used to transfer knowledge gained at one spot to conclusive explain what has not been observed at another spot. It is great whenever fossils or even living beings are discovered that are missing links in the chain of ancestors of existing species. Each finding strengthens the concept of evolution. Not having found remains of the the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees yet, is sad, but hardly a thread to the theory of evolution, since comparisons of the genome show a close relation. Evolution theory explains the development of multitude of species, it was never intended to explain the origin of life. This is like blaming the theory of gravity for not explaining electricity. The theories that are used to explain the origin of molecules needed for cells are just chemistry. There is indeed no experimental prove that a cell can evolve that way, but that is an expected result. Chemists know that the formation of a cell from a "soup of ingredients" is highly unlikely. Nature had several millions or even a billion years to do that. It will hardly happen in a scientists lifetime. The mutations assumed for evolution can happen without any purpose. The theory states that if a mutation leads to an advantage over other specimens of the original species over time the population of the "old genome" will get smaller while the population of the "new genome" will grow. The theory is not designed to answer question about chemical alternatives, or the purpose of mutations. The number of unsolved problems in science is endless, and for a lot of interesting questions, science will not provide an answer any time soon. There is lot of room for religion and/or philosophy to provide concepts and beliefs. Just ask yourself how your "free will" is transformed into cell chemistry to create the nerve impulse to control the muscles.

Please think of a one cellular being, that reproduces once a day. (Note that this is a very low reproduction rate!) On day one you have a population of 1, at day 2 the population is 2 at day 3 the population is 4. At the n-th day the population is 2^(n-1). After a billion years (1.000.000.000 years) the population is 2^( 365.000.000.000 -1) this is about 10^(109.500.000.000) If you know your math you will realize that if useful mutations only happen with a probability of 10^(-12) once in 1000 billion cases this will happen 10^(109.499.999.988) times. I think that is an astronomic number of times.

Newtons physics was a great discovery and very useful and worked almost perfectly for most problems on earth that were big enough to handle. When people started to think it was an indisputable fact, scientists found that submicroscopic particles of mater behaved like energy and that energy can behave like matter. Something that shook the physics foundations. There were also problems in the astronomic scale with Newtons physics. Einstein could prove that Newtons physics is just a special case of a bigger theory, that is true for "small masses" next to a big mass (Earth) that is moving slowly compared the the speed of light. Today scientist are more careful with their wording, almost everything is "just" a theory, because from our limited view on this universe, they don't know, if that what they found up to now, is not only part of something bigger they can't see or understand right now.

Weak opponents will not bid a grand here, probably not even a slam. The ♦Q is most likely with the long cards in a 3-1 or 4-0 split. I would hate to lose 7♠ because one opp can ruff ♦, and I would hate to lose 7♦ or 7NT to an unfortunate ♦ split or a ♠ ruff, when opps stopped in 5♦ or 4♠. So I'll stop in 6♦.

I would like to see some practical use of the ID-theory. How does ID explain that bacteria develop immunity to antibiotics. How does ID explain that illnesses that only existed in animals, suddenly infect humans. It should be noted that real scientists usually don't claim to have prove that god does not exist. They watch nature, and than they try to build the most simple experiment that can reproduce the watched effects. After that they try to make a model/theory that explains their experiment and they design experiments to challenge their model/theory. If their model can predict the outcome of the new experiments it gets an accepted theory. Real scientists know the limits of their knowledge and answer that they don't know if necessary. They have no method to know anything about the time prior to the big bang or what is outside the expanding universe. They are usually very specific about what their theory is about. Evolution has life as precondition, it explains how a single living cell could evolve into millions of different species. Evolution does not explain the creation of that first cell.

A proper claim includes a statement how declarer is going to play. Online this means typing, for some even in a foreign language. This is inconvenient so people just claim without a comment. To a WC player the double squeeze play may be obvious, but normal opponents will sometimes need a little time to find that the claim is valid, when no line was stated. (Sometimes I suspect that my claiming opponent does not know how to continue, and is claiming just to test if I find a double dummy way to make his contract...) Since the default is set to claim all tricks, misclaims happen much more frequently than offline. So you really need to check each claim.

If it's enough to worship Marx ideas, that almost every country is socialistic. Most people forget that Marx was economist and "invented" the VA, so every county that collects VAT is following (some of) Marx ideas.