The Torch to Bear (another math question)

Here's another fun math question, and I believe Side Bar may have posed this question some time ago in another context at a Margaret Street BBQ but anyway...

Four people have to get through a dark tunnel with a torch. A maximum of two people can go through at a time, with the torch always being needed to see where you are going (so the carrier of the torch must go each way). The four people have different rates of getting through the tunnel - 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 2 minutes, and 1 minute. What is the minimum number of minutes needed to get all 4 people through the tunnel?

Hot Chicks with Douchebags - The Douchies

If you are bored, check out the website http://www.hotchickswithdouchebags.com. It's a fun time waster and every December people vote for the Douchiest Douchebags in different categories.

Sound weird? Just go check it out.

Math Fact of the Day

A fellow teacher told me this today and it struck me as being interesting. Therefore, I wanted to share it.

Suppose you leave your house and walk a path to some other destination at 8 A.M. on Monday. You can walk at any speed you want, you can even stop your walk and stand still for a while, and you can even backtrack your path and then walk forward again. But, at some point on Monday, you reach your destination and sleep over.

Then, on Tuesday morning, you leave your destination at 8 A.M. and return home again. You walk with your speed being totally random and independent of your speed from Monday. Infact, for the sake of argument, you do something totally different (like, you sprint all the way home on Tuesday when on Monday you crawled, stood still, went back and forth, etc...)

So, here's the fact: There will be a location between your home and the destination that you passed both going to the destination and returning home at the exact same instant on both days.

Weird...

Shakira, Shakira!

As you can clearly read in the article above which recently appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Shakira is an intellectual, a philanthropist, and an admirable human being who just happens to sing catchy pop music.

That is why I am interested in her. It's not for any other reason.

And by the way, click here if you've never seen one of her videos incase you've never seen her. Apparently, her hips don't lie... whatever that means.

P.S. Wyclef Jean is still a fucking douchebag.

BotG Ivey (aka Evan Hellmuth Jr.)

When I first started playing Texas hold ‘em I used to hold Poker Pro’s in the highest regard. I believed that Poker Pro’s could know what everyone’s cards were at the table, based on “reads.” I also thought that based on those “reads” they would be able to inevitably beat everyone who was not a pro. I watched the movie Rounder’s and believed the scene that showed Mike McDermott read the entire professor’s hands blind. So, after watching this year’s World Series of Poker, I realized something, I was wrong about all my beliefs about Poker. The clowns at the final table (minus Phil Ivey) had no idea what the other person had and just basically bet (sometimes) when they have a good hand. If you break down the play at this year’s final table, you see many times when players did the right thing, statically, and lost. Players were going “all in” on great hands versus bad hands and losing, like having hands such as Pocket Queens versus Pocket Threes. The guy, who won, Joe Cada, did so many “wrong” plays and still won. On the other hand, Phil Ivey always did the statically best move and went out in 6th. As a guy who’s played a lot of poker it’s frustrating to think that you no matter how much you play, you can’t really get much better past a certain point. This years World Series made me realize something true about the book Outliers. If you haven’t read it, the book is basically about, with anything, you need to be somewhat gifted, have lots of practice, but what separates the “best” in any field is chance, not being the most gifted. You just have to be good enough and fall into the right circumstance. So, at this point I realize I should either: a) Not play poker anymore, due to the fact that at my skill level it’s basically luck versus other guy’s who play as much as me. b) Play poker all the time, because no one is that much better than me. What to do, what to do…

Happy Holiday's

Apparently we're invited to a "Happy Holiday's" party at our clubhouse.

Jeez... I don't know why this misuse of apostrophes pisses me off so much.

Walt "Clyde" Frazier's Stream of Consciousness...

... will now feature contributions from none other than Walt Clyde's brother, Beer-on-the-Girl. Stay tuned!

Potential

As I've become an adult, I've had this persistent, nagging worry that somehow I'm "not living up to my potential" or "not using my talents". That would be certainly be a shame. A wiser man than myself once said, "The saddest thing in life is wasted talent". (What's that, some kind of Eastern thing? Far from it.) And that certainly would be a reason for concern and re-evaluation of what I'm doing with myself, it is was true.

But I'm starting to re-evaluate the whole thing. How does one objectively measure potential? Maybe I don't have as much "potential" (whatever that means) as I've always thought I had for certain facets of my life. It seems like it's much more complex than just saying that person x has "talent" or "potential" to do whatever it is that they do, and wondering why or how much they're "using it".

I'm wondering: when other people get introspective about their lives and what they're doing and what will make them happy, etc... do they wonder about this whole "using my potential" thing?

Teaneck Represent

From this past Sunday's (11/8/2009) Philadelphia Inquirer...

Check out 59 Across and the solution in the puzzle.

Teaneck, baby!

Beer-on-the-Girl turns 30

Walt Clyde's brother, Beer-on-the-Girl, turned 30 on Halloween. We rocked it out in style for his birthday. Halloween night - NYC. Then, to Atlantic City for debauchery. (Though, I must say, I am vowing NEVER to go to Manhattan on Halloween in the future, especially the next time Halloween falls on a Friday or Saturday. It was absolutely insane.)

Happy 30th, BotG.