by Garth Sundem
Uncle Sam doesn't quite make the cut as a Big Three mythical figure in American culture, his story remains cool: After his birth from the initials U.S. on meat rations during the War of 1812, Uncle Sam has appeared on recruiting posters, as a Grateful Dead mascot, and as the undead antagonist of the 1997 horror film that shares his name. Come the Fourth of July, it is time to worship the old coot (with a massive display of gluttony, inebriation, and firepower).
THERE IS NO EASTER BUNNY
• Eggs and rabbits were common fertility symbols of the ancient world. Today come the spring equinox, we continue to worship the pagan, egg-laying bunny (with a massive display of consumerism).
• Saint Nicolas of Myra presented three impoverished girls with dowries so they would not have to become prostitutes. His modern incarnation was created and popularized by the nineteenth-century cartoonist Thomas Nast. Come winter solstice, it's time to worship the jolly old elf (with a massive display of consumerism).
• In the eighteenth-century French fairy tale “La Bonne Petit Souris,” the title mouse changes into a fairy before hiding under an evil king's pillow and knocking out all his teeth while he sleeps. In American culture, the fairy brings us money.
RACISM AND GENOCIDE IN THE MMORPG LINEAGE II
Lineage II is a massive multi-player online role-playing game in which characters exist, act, and interact in an elves/orcs/swords/ monsters fantasy world. The currency of this world is adena, with which avatars purchase equipment, skills, etc. Unfortunately, adena doesn't grow on trees. Your avatar must accumulate adena through combat, quests, and other tasks. Your character can and will accumulate adena in the normal progress of play, but most L2 players choose to “farm” adena, jumping through the rather mundane hoops needed to accumulate enough adena and thus quickly create a rather kick-ass character (‘cause who wants to role-play a gimp?). The character class that can most quickly generate adena is the female dwarf.
There is, in fact, another way to accumulate adena without spending endless hours solo hunting green and blue con mobs: Pay someone to farm adena for you. Yes, using American dollars on sites like eBay, you can purchase adena for your character.
The supply that meets this demand is provided, in large part, by Chinese companies that pay employees around $3 a day to play Lineage II with the sole purpose of gathering adena (or by automated bots that do the same). Of course, commercial adena farmers play female dwarfs.
In her 2006 paper for Games and Culture magazine (vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 199–213), Constance Steinkuehler describes the result: “a whole new form of virtual racism has emerged, with an in-game character class substituted for real world differences between China and America.” In Lineage II, non-adena-farming, largely American players initiate periodic pogroms, cleansing the game of perceived adena farmers—i.e., they commit genocide of girl dwarfs (of course, some innocent avatars are “cleansed” in this process). So deep is the association between Chinese players and avatars that farm adena for resale that American L2 players are likely to distrust—and at times go out of their way to kill—any avatar they suspect is being played by a Chinese operator.
The question, Steinkuehler asks, is whether labeling an avatar with the in-game insult “Chinese” will remain a comment about an avatar's gaming style, or whether this moniker, in fact, affects real-world racial perceptions.
FUTURE COOLNESS AS PROMISED BY NASA
Since the days of the first Mercury capsules, rockets have been propelled by combustible chemical fuels, using the rule of equal and opposite, similar to J. K. Rowling's blast-ended skrewt. Technological advancement has been limited to better fuels, offering more bang per kilogram (though decidedly not more bang per buck). Enter VASIMR, or variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket. First a word about plasma: it's a very cool type of gas that is highly electrically conductive (to massively oversimplify things). As you can see in the NASA diagram, VASIMR uses nuclear-generated electricity to ionize hydrogen, helium, or deuterium fuel into plasma, which is then heated by a laser death ray to add some zip and finally directed by electromagnetic fields out the back of the hypothetical rocket craft (shooting it forward like the aforementioned skrewt). There are a couple benefits of hydrogen: It is an effective radiation shield and is found almost everywhere in the known universe, allowing a ship to blast off with only enough hydrogen to power it to another hydrogen source (i.e., Mars).
INFORM AND INTERACTIVE FICTION
It is the calendar year 948 GUE, and you are standing near a white house. Inside the house are a brass lantern, an empty trophy case, and an engraved sword. Under the rug, a trapdoor leads into the Great Underground Empire (beware the grues, trolls, etc.). Playing perfectly, you can restore the twenty-one Treasures of Zork to the trophy case and finish the game in exactly 236 moves. Good luck.
As good as Zork was, it is but the progenitor of a massive and ever growing library of interactive fiction, with other standouts including Planetfall, Amnesia, and Slouching Toward Bedlam (the last notable also for its setting in the übergeek steampunk milieu). In fact, for many geeks, interactive fiction provided our intro to the world of programming (this author remembers writing choose-your-own adventures in BASIC, circa 1986). Consider exploring the composing environment of Inform, created in 1993 by Graham Nelson, which allows immediate and intuitive access to the IF framework, allowing you to focus on creating your environment and plot.
Once you have engineered/ written your masterpiece, submit it to the yearly IF competition at the site www.ifcomp.org (where you can download contest rules and past winning stories).
VASIMR
LABORATORY EXPERIMENT
SPAM HAIKU
The art of haiku poetry originated in Japan, with roots stretching back to the ninth century or earlier. According to the U.S. Census of 2000, people of pure Japanese descent make up 16.7 percent of the population of Hawaii. Residents of Hawaii annually consume nearly seven million cans of SPAM, or about six cans per capita.
If you do the math, it leads you inevitably to the work of Keola Beamer, the Hawaiian slack-key guitar player and leading advocate of SPAM haiku, who graciously contributed the following, deeply moving verses:*
Silent, former pig
One communal awareness
Myriad pink bricks
In mud you frolicked
Till they cut, cleaned and canned you
How now, ground sow?
Pinky beef temptress
I can no longer remain
Vegetarian
Twist, pull the sharp lid
Jerks and cuts me deeply but
Spam, aaah, my poultice
“Slow down,” she whispered
now guiding my trembling hands
“Turn the key slowly.”
I put my shoes on
But remember far too late
My secret Spam stash.
* With contributions of friends and fans of kbeamer.com.
BLINKENLIGHTS: COURTESY OF IBM, 1955
ACHTUNG!
ALLES TURISTEN UND
NONTEKNISCHEN
LOOKENPEEPERS!
DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE
IST NICHT FÜR DER
GEFINGERPOKEN UND
MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE
IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN
DER SPRINGENWERK,
BLOWENFUSEN UND
POPPENCORKEN MIT
SPITZENSPARKSEN.
IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN
BEI DUMMKOPFEN.
DER RUBBERNECKEN
SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS
COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN
DAS POCKETS MUSS.
ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN
DER BLINKENLICHTEN.
BEER'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE FIELD OF STATISTICS
William Sealy Gosset was best known to his contemporaries in early-1900s Ireland by his pseudonym Student. This is because the Guinness Brewery, where he was employed, disallowed its biochemists and statisticians to publish papers after a previous employee
leaked brewery secrets (think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Thus Gosset's most famous statistical achievement is known today as Student's t-distribution. This distribution allows one to estimate the mean in a population of small sample size. In other words (and with obvious irony) Guinness beer is responsible for your professors’ ability to estimate the standard deviation on a prelim using only the small sample size of students who took the test. Without beer, there would be no grading on the curve.
THE ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS MATING STRATEGY OF THE SIDE-BLOTCHED LIZARD
If you are a side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana), then you have an orange, a yellow, or a blue throat (easily determined by looking in mirror). If your throat is orange, then you will easily kick the ass of anyone with a blue throat and steal his lady lizards. If your throat is blue, you can still defend your women against the überwussy yellow-throats. If your throat is yellow, you are weak but deft and can sneak among the meatheaded orange-throaters and covertly snog their women (but the blue-throated lizards are too smart and will ferret out your clever ruse and give you a thumping). Thus, orange trumps blue, blue trumps yellow, and yellow trumps orange.
HEAD PICKLING THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY
The traditions of most cultures include the transformation of everyday things into sacred objects. For some cultures this takes the (somewhat) benign form of holiday fruitcake; other cultures, such as South America's Jivaro, prefer head shrinking. Here's how it's done:
Kill enemy.
Cut off head.
Carefully pull skull out through neck hole, leaving bag of head flesh.
Place red seeds under eyelids; sew shut.
Pin mouth shut using three palm stakes.
Boil flesh in tannin-rich water.
Dry with hot rocks and sand.
Be careful not to lose pleasing pseudohuman shape! Remold if necessary.
Rub with charcoal and decorate festively.
WORLD LEADERS WHO ALSO HAPPEN TO BE HOT
Inclusion on this list depends on having reached a threshold of combined power and pulchritude; thus Elizabeth Kucinich and French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's wife, the former Italian model Carla Bruni, don't quite make the list (underpowered), while Dick Cheney misses by only a hair (a face fit for cackling maniacally while stroking a hairless cat, not flashing a dashing come-hither). Note: both Putin and Medvedev made this list due to the author's wish to avoid polonium-210 radiation poisoning; and about Ahmadinejad: has anyone in the act of denying the Holocaust ever looked so dapper?
VERY GEEKY PUZZLE ANSWERS
“PROOF” THAT 2 = 1
(p. 2)
To get from the proof's fourth line to its fifth requires dividing by (a − b). If a = b, then a − b = 0, and dividing by zero is verboten.
A SAM LOYD PICTURE PUZZLE
(p. 13)
A SAM LOYD ALGEBRA PUZZLE
(p. 19)
In the second picture, imagine adding three cubes to each side. Now the only difference between the first and second pictures is that in the second, four cubes replace four marbles—thus a marble equals a cube, and it will take nine marbles to balance the top.
THREE REAL-WORLD PROBLEMS YOU CAN SOLVE WITH THE PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM (A2 + B2 = C2)
(p. 19)
127 feet (and change)
104.8 inches
7.4 feet
A SAM LOYD PICTURE PUZZLE
(p. 34)
A SAM LOYD LOGIC PUZZLE
(p. 50)
The solution requires thirty-two moves: The first engine (F, labeling the cars alphabetically from left to right) passes alone through the switch via C, B, A (two moves), pulls the other engine (E) to D, and then passes through the switch again via C, B, and A. It then pulls car D to track D, pushing out engine E and again traveling through the switch. It repeats with G, B, and A before passing through the switch (seventeen moves; the left train is now pointing forward, through the switch). Engine F goes to the right, then draws all cars left, and then backs G onto the switch; draws A, B, C, D, and E to the left, then backs them right; goes to the left alone, backs up on the switch at A and takes G to the left; goes to the right, then takes everything out left, backs H and I onto switch; pulls G, A, B, C, D, and E out left, backs them to the right, then takes F to the right, backs up to the switch, and connects G to H and I; and is now prepared to go ahead on the thirty-second move.
SUDOKU STRATEGY
(p. 58)
Upper-right box of question #6:
A SAM LOYD PICTURE PUZZLE
(p. 60)
THE CLASSIC LOGIC PROBLEM
(p. 65)
Tom = knee, soccer Fred = concussions, curling Bill = shoulder, baseball Andy = wrist, basketball Carl = hip, football
A SAM LOYD LOGIC PUZZLE
(p. 75)
Top row: Matthew, Alfred, Eastman. Second row: Richard, Theodore, Luke, Oom. Bottom row: Hisswald, Shirmer, Fletcher, Arthur, Alden.
A SAM LOYD MATHEMATICS PUZZLE
(p. 92)
17 + 17 + 17 + 17 + 16 + 16 = 100
A SAM LOYD PICTURE PUZZLE
(p. 109)
The lost star is in the lower right, as shown.
A SAM LOYD MATHEMATICS PUZZLE
(p. 120)
The cat wins, with exactly one hundred leaps. The dog must make sixty-eight leaps (traveling 102 feet each way), but makes them only two thirds as rapidly.
SIX SOMEWHAT FIENDISH CHESS PROBLEMS
(p. 124)
1. cxb6 e.p. (Black's only possible previous move is b7-b5.)
2. gxf6 e.p. (Black's only possible previous move is f7-f5.)
3. This is very tricky! Retrograde analysis shows that Black has castled illegally on the previous move and must thus replace the Rook at h8 and, by rule, must move the King. If Kxd7, then Bxc6 mate; if Kf8, then Rxh8 mate.
4. Qd3 and Bb8 mate.
5. Assuming Black cannot castle, Rxa6 and Ra8 mate, or Rd2 and Rd8 mate.
6. Assuming Black cannot castle, Rxa7 and Ra8 mate.
A SAM LOYD MATHEMATICS PUZZLE
(p. 129)
Exactly 8 hours, 18 minutes, and 279/13; seconds.
MORSE CODE
(p. 134)
If you can read this, then you are within this book's stated target market.
A SAM LOYD MATHEMATICS PUZZLE
(p. 137)
Lady is 135 pounds; Baby is 25 pounds; Dog is 10 pounds.
A SAM LOYD MATHEMATICS PUZZLE
(p. 146)
The girls weigh 56, 58, 60, 64, and 65 pounds.
A SAM LOYD MATHEMATICS PROBLEM
(p. 154)
This is tricky. In mathematics notation, a dot over a decimal number fills the same purpose as a straight line, making the decimal infinitely repeat. Thus (replacing repeat-dots with lines for clarity):
CHEMICAL EQUATION PUZZLES: IF THESE ARE FUN, YOU ARE A GEEK
(p. 163)
A SAM LOYD
PICTURE PUZZLE
(p. 175)
A SAM LOYD LOGIC PUZZLE
(p. 189)
Rip should knock out pin number six, dividing the pins into groups of one, three, and seven, thus ensuring his victory no matter his opponent's next play.
A SAM LOYD LOGIC PUZZLE
(p. 205)
There are a several best moves, all of which use the strategy of waiting instead of scoring all possible boxes. One way is by marking G–H (opponent follows with J–K), then marking K–O and P–L, then playing the waiting move L–H instead of scoring the two remaining possible boxes. The opponent scores these two boxes, leaving the first player to score the remaining five boxes.
SPECIES IN D&D, MIDDLE-EARTH, WINNIE-THE-POOH, AND MAGIC: THE GATHERING
(p. 223)
D&D—abishai, beholder, blink dog, bugbear, chaos beast, doppelgänger, drow, eladrin, frost worm, hell hound, phasm, purple worm, winter wolf, yugoloth.
Middle-earth—Balrog, Barrow-wight, Ent, fell beast, great spiders, Hobbit, Nazgûl, Uruk-hai, Valar.
&
nbsp; Winnie-the-Pooh—heffalump.
Magic: The Gathering: Myr, Saproling, Skulk, Thrull
A SAM LOYD SLIDING-TILE PUZZLE
(p. 226)
The sequence of movements is: whisky flask, scrubbing brush, flatiron, whisky flask, pepperbox, mousetrap, whisky flask, flatiron, scrubbing brush, pepperbox, flatiron, whisky bottle, mousetrap, flatiron, pepperbox, scrubbing brush, whisky bottle