Thane Plambeck

Malai Kofta Chile Relleno designed by Bill Gosper

Malai Kofta Chile Relleno designed by Bill Gosper, originally uploaded by migi328.

Dozenegger 82% / municipal bonds / Ethan Berkowitz vs Sarah Palin

1) Greg and I had lunch with Bill Gosper, who provided us with an 82% Dozenegger over lunch at the Jade Palace in Palo Alto.  I was hoping to meet Cheney Xu, the owner of the Jade Palace (and who busted several 80% Dozeneggers in 5- to 7-minutes, Bill said), but he wasn't there.  Cheney hasn't been able solve the 82% Dozenegger despite working on it 5 or 6 months, Bill said.  "He sends me photos showing bogus solutions, and he' s almost begging for the answer," Bill said.  Going back to the Jade Palace kitchen to see if Cheney was there, Bill brought back Cheney's 82% Dozenegger prototype to show to us.  So, if Greg is going to solve this 82% Dozenegger, his work is cut out for him.

2) It seems to me that unless the whole financial world collapses (knock on wood), municipal bonds look like a good investment right now.  You can buy one for a price that yields 6.75% (tax free!) in California right now, and also in the state you live in, too, probably (I guess it depends where you live).   If someone walked into a room and said "you can have your stupid 401K in equities and see what happens, or buy this bond and collect 6.75% for the foreseeable future, tax free," would you say no?   If inflation kicks in I guess this strategy is bad.    There's a county (maybe in Alabama, Jefferson County? [yes]) that turned up some Google hits as a substantial default risk for its munis, but other than that, I don't see to many people talking about muni defaults.  And it looks like Jefferson County, Alabama's problems are related to credit default swap contracts that they entered into to reduce their interest rates.

3) A couple of weeks ago I attended an event in San Francisco where Ethan Berkowitz, a candidate for the unique congressional seat in Alaska, was present.    In the Alaskan gubernatorial race a couple of years ago, Berkowitz debated Sarah Palin a couple of times.  They showed video of these debates, which were interesting (here's a photo of the video):

And here's a photo of Ethan Berkowitz watching it:

Mark Gorenberg pointed out that if the Electoral College US Presidential vote ends in a 269-269 tie, and Berkowitz wins, since the protocol for breaking an Electoral College vote is a vote by members of congress, Ethan Berkowitz would have a vote equal to the vote of the entire state of California. I asked Berkowitz to comment about various Sarah Palin rumors that I've heard (mostly relayed by my wife from the Perez Hilton web site), but he didn't have too many juicy tidbits.  "Just rumors," he said.

Double Cheese?

In Chicago a few days ago, we went to a place called the Billy Goat Tavern.

I tried to order a chicken sandwich (it was even on the menu), but I ended up with a "Double Cheese" instead.

The Bell Tolls for Journey

It's 11:01pm and I can no longer hear the live "music" of Journey wafting in my office window.  They've apparently just finished playing tonight at the Shoreline amphitheater.

Tomorrow night:  Neil Young's Bridge Concert.

Saturday crossword

crossword, originally uploaded by thane.

Using the same crummy pencil as last time, I again had an unpleasant experience with the Saturday NYT crossword, finishing it well before I wanted to be done with it.

I need some way to make these puzzles harder, but without making them impossible.   On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, if I get time to do the puzzle at all, I tear off the Across or Down clues and put them in my pocket.  That makes those puzzles pretty hard sometimes, probably as hard as a difficult Saturday puzzle, and I'm mostly happy with this solution.  But I can't do that to a Saturday puzzle, because that makes the Saturday puzzle impossible (at least for me).  There's also a Schrodinger-Cat in this clue-stripping business:  supposing I fill in the Across clues in a satisfactory way, with acceptable Down answers that I don't have clues for, how certain  can I really be that I've got the right answer at the end?  Do I have to find the *right* answers to the Down clues, when I don't even know what those clues are?  I've taken the philosophical position that since the clues are unknowable (I don't look at them until I've either solved the puzzle or given up), any grid-filling that is reasonably plausible for the Across clues and has very few obscure Down answers is in fact to be considered THE SOLUTION.   It helps to remind myself of this philosophical viewpoint as I work on clue-stripped puzzle. Sometimes my clue-stripped solution is superior to the original intended grid fill, at least in my opinion.

Anyway.  This puzzle wasn't clue-stripped.  What made this puzzle easy?  Here are three things I'm noticing more and more. 

1) Clues ending in '?' are often too easy. For example, the very first thing I wrote in on this puzzle was the answer to Driving ambition? (HOLEINONE), and Not willful? (INTESTATE) didn't give me much trouble either.  36 Across, Med supplier? (IVTUBE) gave me a little trouble though, as did Not grounded? (ALOFT).  Anyway, I increasingly view clues with question marks at the end as being the first place to start.

2) I'm getting better at realizing my mistakes.  It's possible to game the editor of these puzzles I think.  Will Shortz doesn't like having similar-sounding (or looking) answers or clues in the puzzles.  So when I thought Louis Armstrong's "Weather Bird" collaborator might be EARTHAKIT (it's actually spelled KITT), I noticed that I already had KIT as the answer to Young Vixen.   So, one KIT has to go.  EARTHAKIT got erased into EARLHINES. 

3) "Letter scatter." I don't know what to call this, but I've observed that NYT puzzles seem to deploy the 26 letters of our little alphabet in a biased way.   For example, it's not at all unusual to read several pages of English without encountering a Z, or even a J or Q or X.  But in the NYT puzzle, you can expect to see a square or two or more provided for these letters.  It's not something for solving I guess, except in an indirect way.   For example, the lower left hand corner of this puzzle

CHORD
LOOFA
ABZUG
DOYLE

Is just the type of thing I talking about.

I oppose Y

yes-on-n, originally uploaded by thane.

These signs are all over town. I support measure N, but I also wish that were a Measure Y on the local ballot too, in which case in would be hard to avoid the temptation to post two signs in our front yard:

YES on N
NO on Y

Central Avenue, Kearney, NE

Central Avenue, Kearney, NE, originally uploaded by lillisjohn51.

I love that Flickr makes it easy to summon up photos like this one, taken in my home town of Kearney, Nebraska less than two weeks ago.

Using the Flickr "Places" page at http://flickr.com/places/, you can type in a location name, and it will bring up a page specific to that location with "Featured Photographers" identified.

I was shocked to find that I'm a "Featured Photographer" for Kearney, NE.

Granted, this stuff is all automatically generated, but I find it pretty impressive

L-A-U-N-D-R-O-M-A-T

laundromat, originally uploaded by Jef Poskanzer.

Donut alarm! Loud mantra!

Roman adult, tad unmoral

Chicago

chicago-10, originally uploaded by thane.

Another Dozenegger solution

Another Dozenegger solution, originally uploaded by thane.

Sander's blackboard

Sander's blackboard, originally uploaded by Arthur van Dam.

More on Dozenegger

Bill Gosper writes:

Nice work!  This is the first solution by an actual customer!

> Thane wrote:
> There are two disks that can be swapped
>

You have the first copy of the four 80% models I made.  I actually wouldn't have sold them had I known there were multiple solutions.  If this were the intended solution, I would have noticed something so simple as a two-piece swap.

I'm not sure how much more you want me to reveal.  I can tell you:

Whether or not these two solutions were known,
How many solutions to the 80%er are known,
How near or far Greg's are wrt the intended,
How to decode the bottom.

I'm willing, but perhaps not able, to tell you all the known solutions, as I no longer own an 80%er.

In response to learning of the unintended solutions, I sold two 81%ers, based on a solution by Emma Cohen.  Before I could make any more, she found a solution that led to the 82%er, which still remains otherwise unsolved!  (Cheny Xu, who solved many of my earlier designs in 5-7 min, has been working on the 82%er for *months*.)

All three versions have the same cavity--just successively larger pieces.

Greg's Dozenegger Solution

Greg's Dozenegger Solution, originally uploaded by thane.

Greg solved the disk-packing puzzle that I got from Bill Gosper a few months ago.

Prius trifecta, with my car on far left

Prius trifecta, with my car on far left, originally uploaded by thane.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

dunce-cap

dunce-cap
Originally uploaded by thane

Everything seems to be going well with this migration to TypePad, at least so far.

There's quite a bit of work to do to get everything moved over from plambeck.org, and I don't have time to do it, really, anyway, but I think I'll post new stuff here.

I'm eager to get off plambeck.org since the machine is getting creaky.  I think it's been hacked in the last 30 days, too.

I don't see an easy way to get the Haloscan-based comments moved over to this new site.  I'm also not sure how (or if) I'll ever bring over the "quasi-automatic webposting" content I hacked together sometime around 1999, and which runs through October 2003, roughly. 

Then there's the matter of all the cgi-bin stuff, also hacked together, but perhaps more worthy of saving. 

And probably other stuff I've forgotten.  Ick.

Saturday NYT reinkings

Originally uploaded by thane

"Only bad witches are ugly" speaker (6):  I wrote in GLENDA, but had to reink to GLINDA, later, so that the mysterious 8 Down, Inactivity (6), could be IDLING.

Licenses (8).  I wrote in ENABLERS, causing problems in the lower left.  ENTITLES, instead.

Said while pounding the first, say (8).  This clue gave me grief in the lower right hand corner.  I think it's a bad clue.  I wrote in DAMNEDED, which doesn't seem to be a word.  I guess it's just spelled DAMNED?

The answer, DEMANDED, doesn't please me.   I'll be you-know-whatted; it's the you-know-whatedest.

Lame excuse (7).  Maybe just last week (yes!), I wrote in IFORGOT for a similar clue in a NYT puzzle.  The answer then was ILOSTIT.  But this time it really is IFORGOT. 

 

Prefix Prix Fixe

Prefix Prix Fixe
Originally uploaded by thane

Jin Sho lunch menu, Palo Alto

Election quiz

To the student—Study, and describe the pattern.

1) (2008) McCain vs Obama. I prefer Obama.
2) (2004) Bush vs Kerry. I preferred Kerry.
3) (2000) Bush vs Gore. I preferred Gore.
4) (1996) Clinton vs Dole. I preferred Nader.
5) (1992) Clinton vs Bush the First. I preferred Clinton. I threw a big party.
6) (1988) Bush the First versus Dukakis. I preferred Dukakis.
7) (1984) Reagan vs Mondale. Well, I preferred Mondale.
8) (1980) Reagan vs Carter. I preferred Carter.
9) (1976) Carter vs Ford. I preferred Ford, but I was young and stupid.
10) (1972) Nixon vs McGovern. I yelled "Nixon, Nixon, he's our man!" on the playground, but was even younger, and even stupider.
12) (1968) Nixon vs Humphrey. Only 7 years old, but who knows

Looking farther back, I like Adlai Stevenson, and maybe even Herbert Hoover against FDR in the first term.

So?

Appointment with Ike

1) I'm flying into Chicago Sunday (ie tomorrow) night. This morning, it looked like Ike was on his way there too, but I just checked again and it looks like we might not cross paths after all:

How much blowing is left in a hurricane after it hits south Texas, cuts across Arkansas and Missouri, then plods north up into Illinois? They even show the thing threatening Newfoundland by Monday night!

2) David Foster Wallace committed suicide. I've recommended an essay he wrote on tennis to several people with a greater interest in that subject (ie tennis) than I have, always prefacing my suggestion hopefully with "Have you heard of the writer David Foster Wallace?" Even though the answer was always "No," I'd press on with the recommendation. I don't even recall what book it's in (if it was a book). I have it as a photocopy. And yes, you should read it. If you can find it, that is.

3) Saturday NYT crossword reinkings. I don't have it in front of me to take a photo, and in any case I don't think I quite finished it. There was a 15-letter answer running right across the equator of the puzzle reading something like Bond film with Olga Kurylenko as the girl. With precious few crossings and almost no knowledge of .007 films, I wrote in

CASINOROYALETWO

but that's not quite the name of that movie (they didn't call it "Two"), and it's not correct anyway. The answer was

QUANTUMOFSOLACE

which I'd never heard of.

So, an ugly streak of reinkings ran right across the abdomen of this puzzle like a botched biker's tattoo.

It wasn't pretty.