Bridge As an Olympic Sport?

Back in the 1990s and into 2001 and early 2002, bridge players tried hard to make their card game an Olympic sport.  Essentially the same effort was made by chess players.  They failed. 

A simple question, “Who was right?” gets into a snake pit of philosophical and moral arguments that rise all the way to the level of whether reductionism can be relied upon as an absolute.  Is it true that all worth knowing and worth using for making decisions can be expressed as written language in the form of rules?  The argument to exclude bridge and chess seems to take that position.

Arguments in Favor of Including Bridge and Chess

Through 1948, military guard duty was included as an Olympic sport (!).  There is an intensive connection between war and bridge and chess.  Not only are the games analogs of military issues and protocols, but key personnel in World War II were bridge players or chess players, especially in the intelligence community. Ely Culbertson himself said that the proposed United Nations would be useless without a military branch that involved enforcement.  Spy-planner Ian Fleming and his fictional agent James Bond were both bridge players (read the book Moonraker). 

Most sports involve strategic planning and teamwork.  These are essential for bridge playing teams.

A sport should have an analog with life in general.  Life is something like a footrace.  A white collar career is something like a tennis match.  Life, overall, is about making decisions on incomplete information, the central element of bridge.  In life, there is always something important that is still worth learning.  In bridge, every dedicated player is still learning something new.

Here’s the 2002 Wall Street Journal article dealing with the failure of bridge to become an Olympic sport:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB101242911751880560

Probabilistic Risk Assessmenrt

Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is a systematic and comprehensive methodology to evaluate risks associated with a complex engineered technological entity (such as an airliner or nuclear power plant).

Risk in a PRA is defined as a feasible detrimental outcome of an activity or action. In a PRA, risk is characterized by two quantities:

1. the magnitude (severity) of the possible adverse consequence(s), and
2. the likelihood (probability) of occurrence of each consequence.

Consequences are expressed numerically (e.g., the number of people potentially hurt or killed) and their likelihoods of occurrence are expressed as probabilities or frequencies (i.e., the number of occurrences or the probability of occurrence per unit time). The total risk is the expected loss: the sum of the products of the consequences multiplied by their probabilities.

The spectrum of risks across classes of events are also of concern, and are usually controlled in licensing processes – it would be of concern if rare but high consequence events were found to dominate the overall risk, particularly as these risk assessments are very sensitive to assumptions (how rare is a high consequence event?).

Probabilistic Risk Assessment usually answers three basic questions:

1. What can go wrong with the studied technological entity, or what are the initiators or initiating events (undesirable starting events) that lead to adverse consequence(s)?
2. What and how severe are the potential detriments, or the adverse consequences that the technological entity may be eventually subjected to as a result of the occurrence of the initiator?
3. How likely to occur are these undesirable consequences, or what are their probabilities or frequencies?

Two common methods of answering this last question are Event Tree Analysis and Fault Tree Analysis - for explanations of these, see safety engineering.

In addition to the above methods, PRA studies require special but often very important analysis tools like human reliability analysis (HRA) and common-cause-failure analysis (CCF). HRA deals with methods for modeling human error while CCF deals with methods for evaluating the effect of inter-system and intra-system dependencies which tend to cause simultaneous failures and thus significant increases in overall risk.

In 2007 France was criticised for failing to use a PRA approach to evaluate the seismic risks of French nuclear power plants.

Criticism

Theoretically, the probabilistic risk assessment method suffers from several problems:

Nancy Leveson of MIT and her collaborators have argued that the chain-of-event conception of accidents typically used for such risk assessments cannot account for the indirect, non-linear, and feedback relationships that characterize many accidents in complex systems. These risk assessments do a poor job of modeling human actions and their impact on known, let alone unknown, failure modes. Also, as a 1978 Risk Assessment Review Group Report to the NRC pointed out, it is "conceptually impossible to be complete in a mathematical sense in the construction of event-trees and fault-trees … This inherent limitation means that any calculation using this methodology is always subject to revision and to doubt as to its completeness."

In the case of many accidents, probabilistic risk assessment models do not account for unexpected failure modes:

At Japan's Kashiwazaki Kariwa reactors, for example, after the 2007 Chuetsu earthquake some radioactive materials escaped into the sea when ground subsidence pulled underground electric cables downward and created an opening in the reactor's basement wall. As a Tokyo Electric Power Company official remarked then, "It was beyond our imagination that a space could be made in the hole on the outer wall for the electric cables."

When it comes to future safety, nuclear designers and operators often assume that they know what is likely to happen, which is what allows them to assert that they have planned for all possible contingencies. Yet there is one weakness of the probabilistic risk assessment method that has been emphatically demonstrated with the Fukushima I nuclear accidents -- the difficulty of modeling common-cause or common-mode failures:

From most reports it seems clear that a single event, the tsunami, resulted in a number of failures that set the stage for the accidents. These failures included the loss of offsite electrical power to the reactor complex, the loss of oil tanks and replacement fuel for diesel generators, the flooding of the electrical switchyard, and perhaps damage to the inlets that brought in cooling water from the ocean. As a result, even though there were multiple ways of removing heat from the core, all of them failed.

However, a PRA analysis that assumed an initiating event of a beyond design basis tsunami of the magnitude that occurred would have identified most, if not all, of the above consequences. In this case, the challenge is not with the PRA method but with the selection of initiating events. For any given design, a low probability high magnitude initiating event can be assumed for which the design will fail. However, selecting an unrealistically severe initiator defeats the purpose of the analysis, as potential vulnerabilities to realistic scenarios will be masked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilistic_risk_assessment

Jerry Goldsmith's Soundtracks

Jerrald King "Jerry" Goldsmith (February 10, 1929 – July 21, 2004) was an American composer and conductor most known for his work in film and television scoring.

He composed scores for such noteworthy films as The Sand Pebbles, Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes, Patton, Chinatown, The Wind and the Lion, The Omen, The Boys from Brazil, Night Crossing, Alien, Poltergeist, The Secret of NIMH, Gremlins, Hoosiers, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Rudy, Air Force One, L.A. Confidential, Mulan, The Mummy, three Rambo films and five Star Trek films.  He was nominated for six Grammy Awards, nine Golden Globe Awardsm four British Acadent Film Awards, and eighteen Academy Awards.  In 1976, he was awarded an Oscar for The Omen.

He collaborated with some of film history's most prolific directors, including Robert Wise (The Sand Pebbles, Star Trek: The Motion Picture), Howard Hawks (Rio Lobo), Otto Preminger (In Harms Way), Joe Dante (the Gremlins films, The ‘Burbs, Small Soldiers), Roman Polanski (Chinatown), Ridley Scott (Alien, Legend), Steven Spielberg (Twilight Zone: The Movie), and Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Hollow Man). However, his most notable collaboration was arguably that of with Franklin J. Schaffner, for whom Goldsmith scored such films as Planet of the Apes, Patton, Papillon, and The Boys from Brazil.

Style and Influences

Goldsmith was greatly influenced by movements of early 20^th century classical music, notably Modernism, Americana, Impressionism, Dodecaphonism, and early film scores. He has cited Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Miklos Rozsa, Bernard Herrmann, Bela Bartok and Alban Berg, among others, as some of the main influences to his style of composition.

His composition style has been noted for its unique instrumentation, utilizing a vast array of ethnic instruments, recorded sounds, synthetic textures, and the traditional orchestra, often concurrently

When asked about his inclination for embracing new techniques and constantly shifting his musical palette throughout his career, Goldsmith said, “It seems like it’s me, and that’s that! Certain composers are doing the same thing over and over again, which I feel is sort of uninteresting. I don’t find that you grow very much in that way. I like to keep changing, trying to do new things. Basically, I’m saying the same thing with a little different twist on it. Once you get caught up in the creative process, something inside takes over, and your subconscious just does it for you.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Goldsmith

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 

Comment by the Blog Author

The theme for The Man from Uncle, the soundtrack for Chinatown and the soundtrack for The Russia House may be Goldsmith’s very best works.

ISIL Ideology and Beliefs

 ISIL is a Salafi group.  It follows an extreme interpretation of Islam, promotes religious violence, and regards those who do not agree with its interpretations as infidels or apostates.  ISIL has demonstrated that ideology and adherence to Islamic beliefs and laws are secondary to its criminal financial enterprises supporting the group's activities.  According to Hayder al Khoei, ISIL's philosophy is represented by the symbolism in the Black Standard variant of the legendary battle flag of Muhammad that it has adopted: the flag shows the Seal of Muhmmad within a white circle, with the phrase above it, "There is no God but Allah".Such symbolism has been said to point to ISIL's belief that it represents the restoration of the caliphate of early Islam, with all the political, religious and eschatological ramifications that this would imply.  Saudi Arabia was criticised by Noam Chomsky in October 2014 of having "long been the major source of funding for ISIS as well as providing its ideological roots" (i.e. Salafism or Wahhabism).  According to Owen Jones at The Guardian, "Salafists across the Middle East receive ideological and material backing from within the kingdom" of Saudi Arabia, and America knows this, with Hillary Clinton having called Saudi donors "the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide".  Some people in Saudi Arabia applaud ISIL for fighting Iranian Shi’ite "fire" with Sunni "fire".

According to some observers, ISIL emerged from the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, the first post-Ottoman Islamist group dating back to the late 1920s in Egypt.  It adheres to global jihadist principles and follows the hard-line ideology of al-Qaeda and many other modern-day jihadist groups.

However, other sources trace the group's roots not to the Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood and the more mainstream jihadism of al-Qaeda, but to Wahhabism. The New York Times wrote:

For their guiding principles, the leaders of the Islamic State ... are open and clear about their almost exclusive commitment to the Wahhabi movement of Sunni Islam. The group circulates images of Wahhabi religious textbooks from Saudi Arabia in the schools it controls. Videos from the group’s territory have shown Wahhabi texts plastered on the sides of an official missionary van.

ISIL aims to return to the early days of Islam, rejecting all innovations in the religion, which it believes corrupts its original spirit. It condemns later caliphates and the Ottoman Empire for deviating from what it calls pure Islam, and seeks to revive the original Wahhabi project of the restoration of the caliphate governed by strict Salafist doctrine. Following Salafi-Wahhabi tradition, ISIL condemns the followers of secular law as disbelievers, putting the current Saudi government in that category.

Salafists such as ISIL believe that only a legitimate authority can undertake the leadership of jihad, and that the first priority over other areas of combat, such as fighting non-Muslim countries, is the purification of Islamic society. For example, ISIL regards the Palestinian Sunni group Hamas as apostates who have no legitimate authority to lead jihad and it regards fighting Hamas as the first step toward confrontation with Israel.

Eschatology

One difference between ISIL and other Islamist and jihadist movements is its emphasis on eschatology and apocalypticism, and its belief that the arrival of the Mahdi is imminent. ISIL believes it will defeat the army of "Rome" at the town of Dabiq in fulfilment of prophecy.

Theological objections

According to The New York Times, "All of the most influential jihadist theorists are criticizing the Islamic State as deviant, calling its self-proclaimed caliphate null and void" and have denounced it for its beheading of journalists and aid workers.  ISIL is widely denounced by a broad range of Islamic clerics, including al-Qaeda-oriented and Saudi clerics.

Sunni critics, including Salafi and jihadist muftis such as Adnan al-Aroor and Abu Basir al-Tartusi, say that ISIL and related terrorist groups are not Sunnis, but modern-day Khawarij—Muslims who have stepped outside the mainstream of Islam—serving an imperial anti-Islamic agenda.  Other critics of ISIL's brand of Sunni Islam include Salafists who previously publicly supported jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda, for example the Saudi government official Saleh Al-Fawzan, known for his extremist views, who claims that ISIL is a creation of "Zionists, Crusaders and Safavids", and the Jordanian-Palestinian writer Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, the former spiritual mentor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was released from prison in Jordan in June 2014 and accuses ISIL of driving a wedge between Muslims.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant

The Bogeyman Legend

Bogeyman (also spelled bogieman, boogeyman, or boogie man) is a common allusion to a mythical creature in many cultures used by adults or older children to frighten bad children into good behavior. This monster has no specific appearance, and conceptions about it can vary drastically from household to household within the same community; in many cases, he has no set appearance in the mind of an adult or child, but is simply a non-specific embodiment of terror. Parents may tell their children that if they misbehave, the bogeyman will get them. Bogeymen may target a specific mischief—for instance, a bogeyman that punishes children who suck their thumbs—or general misbehaviour, depending on what purpose needs serving. In some cases, the bogeyman is a nickname for the Devil.

Bogeyman tales vary by region. The bogeyman is usually a masculine entity but can be any gender or simply androgynous.

The Bogeyman in the United States

• The Jersey Devil, which originated in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, is believed by many to be an old time Bogeyman created by residents to scare off travelers from coming into the area. Bloody Bones, also known as Rawhead or Tommy Rawhead, is a boogeyman of the U.S. South. Bloody Bones tales originated in Britain.  Bogeyman may be called "Boogerman" or "Boogermonster" in rural areas of the American South, and was most often used to keep young children from playing outside past dark, or wandering off in the forest. During the Corn Festival, young Cherokee males wearing caricature masks would make fun of politicians, frighten children into being good, and moreover shake their masks at young women and chase them around. Male participants in this Booger Dance were referred to as the Booger Man.  In some Midwestern states of the United States, the bogeyman scratches at the window. In the Pacific Northwest, he may manifest in "green fog". In other places, he hides or appears from under the bed or in the closet and tickles children when they go to sleep at night, while in others, he is a tall figure in a black hooded cloak who puts children in a sack. It is said that a wart can be transmitted to someone by the bogeyman.
• The Nalusa Falaya (long black being) of Choctaw mythology.
• Cipelahq (or Chebelakw) is a dangerous bird spirit of Wabanaki folklore, used in stories told to scare children into obeying their parents. Chebelakw has an unearthly cry and resembles a large diving owl, with only its head and talons visible. Similar monsters called Stinkini and Big Owl, were found in Seminole and Apache mythologies respectively.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogeyman

Contract Bridge Humor (!)

The Lighter Side Of Bridge – Get a
Giggle From Your Bridge Game
Posted 29 April 2009

The Umpire Strikes Back
A scream for the Director frequently disrupts the game for the other players. On one occasion when the stillness of the game was shattered by a raucous shout of 'Di-rek-tor', the Director went to the microphone and softly, oh so softly, said :
   'Who called? Please raise your paw.'

In major events, it is common to use 'silent bidding'. Instead of the bids being called out, they are written on a special bidding pad. This has many advantages. It cuts down the noise level, it reduces the chances of overhearing another table, it cuts out the need for a review of the bidding and it eliminates the arguments about the final contract.

Before silent bidding came into vogue, this incident took place at a club in New Zealand:
    North : No bid.
    East : Double.
The Director was called and East explained that he did not hear North's pass, but heard a bid at the next table. Thinking that was what North bid, East doubled.
    North : May I ask East what he thought I bid?
    Director : No, you can't.
    North : Well, may I go over to the other table and ask for a review of their auction?

You know things may not go well for your side when there's a dispute at the table and you suggest that the Director be called and your sweet young opponent raises her hand and calls out :
   'Dar-ling'!!

Actually, Directors tend to be tough on their spouses and friends so that there can be no possibility of a charge of bias. Also, many Directors bend over backwards to try to keep everybody happy, an impossible task.
When the Director was called to a table to resolve a dispute, everyone was talking at once, so the Director hollered 'Quiet!' When the fracas abated, he continued :
   'Now, let me hear the details from each side in turn.'
North then proceeded to tell his version of what had happened. At the end, the Director said :
   'You're right.'
East then gave his version of what had taken place and this was radically different from North's account. At the end of East's tale, the Director said,
   'You're right.'
South then remonstrated : 'But that can't be so. First you said North was right. Then you said East was right. They can't both be right.'
   'You're right, too,' replied the Director. 

The call was loud and clear :
   'Di-rek-tor!'
The Director hurried over to the table :
   'Yes?'
   'My opponent,' said the declarer, 'has made a premature gloat.'

A glove was found on the tournament floor and handed in to the Director who stepped up to the microphone and announced :
   'Have I got a hand for you!' 

The Director had just completed the scoring and mentioned to the players huddled around the scoring table that it was curious that there had been no slams that evening.
    'Oh yes, there was,' piped up one of the players. 'On Board 7.'
The Director flipped over to Board 7, noticed that 12 of the scores were +680 and said,
   'Yes, but no one bid it.'
   'We did,' said the player. 'See that minus-100?'

In top class tournaments the organisers provide bidding boxes rather than use written bidding. These boxes which often hang from the table contain a card for every possible bid, together with special cards that read Tournament Director and Alert.
In the final of such an event, a player discovered that someone had spilled water over his bidding box. He called for the Director to ask for the box to be replaced.
When the Director arrived, the player's partner explained the position :
   'Yeah, his bids are all wet . . . as usual.'

In a game where bidding boxes were in use, the auction had gone : 1 Diamond . . .
2 Spades . . . 2 Diamonds . . .
   'Insufficient card,' said one of the opponents.
'Director,' shouted the North player.
When the Director scurried over, North complained :'East bid before I had a chance to call'.
'Just as well,' said the Director, looking down. 'East is the dealer on this board.'

Sometimes a Director spots a score that is patently wrong. To discover what has happened, the Director can ask the players involved, but if they are in the middle of a hand, the Director does not like to disturb them and instead will often take a look at their personal score card, which may reveal what the correct entry on the travelling scoresheet should be.
On one such occasion, the Director approached a table and seeing that the players were busy playing, spoke softly to the dummy.
'Are you keeping a private score card?'
'Yes, I am.'
'Could I see it, please?'
'Certainly.' (Hands the card to the Director.)
'But it's blank?'
'I don't keep the scores, just the score card.'

A player who had vowed never to lead from an ace died. When he  awoke he found himself in a bridge game holding :
A 4 2       
A 8 7 4           
A 7 5 4        
K 3
As he was on lead against 3 he did not need the Director to tell him where he was.

When there is a large tournament and there are many sections, it is not uncommon for a pair to wander to the wrong table and frequently into a wrong section. At the excellent Gold Coast Congress, held each February in Surfers Paradise by the Queensland Bridge Association, two pairs were both trying to sit in the East-West seats at the one table. Obviously one of the pairs was at the wrong table. The Director was called and, to sort out the problem, tried to ascertain the table the players had just left.
Director : Where have you come from?
Player, helpfully : Sydney.

During large tournaments, the Directors are assisted by 'caddies', young players or non-players who move the boards, put out the bidding pads, pick up the leftover supplies after a session, and so on. At one tournament, the Director sent out a new caddy near the end of the session to retrieve the excess supplies. Finally she came back, looking pale and exhausted and close to tears, with just seven pencils and a few table numbers.
'They just wouldn't hand over their cards and their system cards,' she explained.

Overheard at a major tournament :
One caddy to another : 'I'm going outside for a couple of minutes. You stay here in case the Directors need someone to yell at.'

http://www.ronklingerbridge.com/blog/2354/lighter-side-bridge-get-giggle-your-bridge-game

Motive [in Law]

 A motive, in law, especially criminal law, is the cause that moves people to induce a certain action.  Motive, in itself, is not an element of any given crime; however, the legal system typically allows motive to be proven in order to make plausible the accused's reasons for committing a crime, at least when those motives may be obscure or hard to identify with. However, a motive is not required to reach a verdict. Motives are also used in other aspects of a specific case, for instance, when police are initially investigating.

The law technically distinguishes between motive and intent. "Intent" in criminal law is synonymous with mens rea, which means no more than the specific mental purpose to perform a deed that is forbidden by a criminal statute, or the reckless disregard of whether the law will be violated.  "Motive" describes instead the reasons in the accused's background and station in life that are supposed to have induced the crime. Motives are oftentimes broken down into three categories; biological, social and personal.

Motive is particularly important in prosecutions for homicide.  First, murder is so drastic a crime that most people recoil from the thought of its commission; proof of motive explains why the accused did so desperate an act. Even though jurors are required to be non bias, their own motives unconsciously effect their decisions.  Jurors also don't decide the sentence, they only have a say in if the defendant is guilty or not.

Moreover, most common law jurisdictions (laws developed by judges) have statutes that provide for degrees of homicide, based in part on the accused's mental state. The lesser offence of voluntary manslaughter, for example, traditionally required that the accused knowingly and voluntarily kill the victim (as in murder); in addition, it must be shown that the killing took place in the "sudden heat of passion," an excess of rage or anger coming from a contemporary provocation, which clouded the accused's judgment. Homicides motivated by such factors are a lesser offense than murder "in cold blood."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motive_(law)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Means, Motive and Opportunity

In US Criminal law, means, motive, and opportunity is a popular cultural summation of the three aspects of a crime that must be established before guilt can be determined in a criminal proceeding.  Respectively, they refer to: the ability of the defendant to commit the crime (means), the reason the defendant felt the need to commit the crime (motive), and whether or not the defendant had the chance to commit the crime (opportunity). Opportunity is most often disproved by use of an alibi, which can prove the accused was not able to commit the crime as he or she did not have the correct set of circumstances to commit the crime as it occurred. Motive is not an element of many crimes, but proving motive can often make it easier to convince a jury of the elements that must be proved for a conviction.

Establishing the presence of these three elements is not, in and of itself, sufficient to convict beyond a reasonable doubt; the evidence must prove that an opportunity presented was indeed taken by the accused and for the crime with which he or she is charged. For an example, consider this ruling in the case of a suspect accused of robbery and assault:

... evidence of motive, means, opportunity, and consciousness of guilt are not enough to establish guilt. Compare Commonwealth v. Mandile, 403 Mass. 93, 98 (1988) (evidence of motive, means, unexplained possession of property, and consciousness of guilt not enough to establish robbery). On this record the evidence is insufficient to permit a rational jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was the victim's assailant... Nothing in the record sufficiently links the defendant to the crime to permit the conclusion beyond a reasonable doubt that he was the perpetrator.

Contrary to popular depictions in the fictional media, the court cannot convict merely on these three famous elements, but must provide convincing evidence, and opportunity actually acted upon by the defendant charged.

For example, if a criminal shot someone with a handgun and took his/her money when the victim was in an isolated, secluded area at night, the means would be the handgun, the motive financial (i.e., the money they stole), and the opportunity the fact that it would be unlikely someone else would witness or stop them. For the majority of crimes, means and opportunity are the easiest to prove; however, for some offenses (such as rape or serial killing), the motive can be hard to define.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Means,_motive,_and_opportunity