Neat trick

This video was created by overlaying 1000 plays of a racing video game, to show the range of possible play sequences all at once.

Rock, paper, scissors, dynamite, tornado, cockroach, quicksand, law, peace, snake, ...

Ahh, the old game of Rock-Paper-Scissors... perfect for making those tough life decisions: Who's going to make dinner? Whose turn is it to ask for an abortion? Which person gets a new desk? But what if we threw a couple more choices in there?

RPS-25 was created to provide a more complex game with more possible outcomes. Each item is dominant over 12 others, and the result is 300 possible outcomes. But why stop there? The inventor of RPS-25 took things 76 steps further & gave us RPS-101. Each gesture defeats 50 of the remaining 100, the result being a total of 5,050 possible outcomes.

Some of my favorites:
DYNAMITE explodes BABY (actually, DYNAMITE explodes a lot of stuff....)
SPIDER in your BEER
BEER diffracts LASER
MATH confuses PRINCESS
MATH enrages MONKEY
SCISSORS alert AIRPLANE security
and any of the BRAIN ones....
BRAIN invents BUTTER
....... foils VAMPIRE
....... performs MATH

Spam and pinochle and cheesecake, oh my!

Over the weekend Ben and I went up to see Spamalot with Ben's dad. We drove up and met him for dinner at the Great Waters Brewing Company, and then walked over to the Ordway for the show.

==== SPOILER WARNING (highlight to view) ====
I enjoyed the show. The multi-media nature of it was intriguing, and some dialog was taken verbatim from the film. I felt that a lot of that was not delivered as well as in the original, although the French Taunter scene was very well executed. The bit at the end where Lancelot marries Prince Herbert - and says, "You know, in a thousand years, this will still be controversial" was a hoot.
==== END SPOILERS ====

The costumes and the set were really well done, and Esther Stillwell, who played The Lady of the Lake, did a great job.

We spent Saturday with Ben's folks, and his mom prepared some great meals for us. Thanks, Kathy! (Thathy) We also played a couple games of pinochle, which was fun.

On Sunday we went to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. Kathy had never eaten there (though she had gotten cheesecake from them in the past). My first impression, upon opening the menu, was that they must be really struggling, financially. About 45% of the menu consisted of ads for everything from purses to jeans to American Express to Carnival Cruise lines. I wondered if I could order those things as well, but decided against asking our waitress (she seemed like the type who wouldn't see the humor in it, even if she did understand the point I was trying to make - which is also unlikely). I think my favorite was the ad for a website where I could look at the ads again, when I got home. The top of the page exhorted the diner "Enjoy our ads again!" - because they were so enthralling the first time around. The next remarkable thing about the restaurant is that about 80% of their entrees are "specialties." Really? That seems a bit ... ridiculous.

Nonetheless, the meal was good, and of course we also got dessert - I ordered a piece of cheesecake, and I believe Ben had one of their "specialty" desserts (not the cheesecake, which was odd, I thought, given the name of the restaurant - but I don't really know much about marketing in the restaurant biz) - it was a chocolate cake. Not a piece of chocolate cake, but an entire cake - at least, it took up the same amount of space. My greatest criticism, I think, is of the prices. Given that almost half of their menu is sold to advertisers, I would have expected the prices to be a bit lower.

In the news

I went to the City Pages web site to search for an article about the Heritage Park housing project northwest of downtown Minneapolis. On their front page, I saw that yesterday's Morning Communiqué notes "a recent study links diet soft drinks with obesity." We learn that researchers were surprised at the "unexpected" finding that drinkers of diet soda have health risks similar to those of their sugar-guzzling compatriots. (I thought scientists were supposed be smart. I guess this is where we differentiate between "book larnin' and "common sense." Maybe they just lack imagination?)

The results may simply signal that the diet-soda drinkers in the study were less healthy to start with [Really? You mean diet soda doesn't instantly cure what ails ya? But I've been chugging "Uncle Coke's Diet Tonic and Elixir" for years! Rats!], and they had turned to sugar-free beverages to help with weight loss or because they had diabetes. The study investigators, who oversee the respected Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts, noted also that the type of person who drinks diet soda may be more likely to eat less-healthful foods [DUH, anyone?]. But they also cited research suggesting that artificially sweetened beverages may affect a person's satiety or cravings for sweets.

The other neat thing I found was "Playing the popular Chinese tile game mahjong can lead to seizures, Hong Kong researchers say, calling the phenomenon 'mahjong epilepsy.'" Video gamers are vindicated!

Then there's: "Judy Hagan caused a stir among plot owners in the Uniontown (IN) City Cemetery when she put up a tombstone for her and her departed rat terrier, Shithead."

And, finally: "A man named Johnson underoges a vasectomy in exchange for getting permission from his wife to purchase an iPhone."

Arrrr, it be addictive

Puzzle Pirates. Not recommended for addictive personalities. Really.