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WM 2006 (World Cup 2006)

by | May 11, 2006 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, travel, Uncategorized

Germany has gone football mad. (That’s soccer for those that don’t understand the subleties of the game).

I’ve been in half a dozen cities this week – and everywhere is wall to wall World Cup merchandise and memorabilia. I got a nice world cup shirt in Trier today.

I was listening to BFBS during my drive today – and heard a truly dreadful, yet stunningly simple England world cup song. The Tonedef Allstars are soon to release a single “Who do you think you are kidding Juergen Klinnsmann’. You have to be English to understand the genius at work here. Listen here.

So many people have already blogged on this, it’s also been written up in all manner of media from The Sun to The Telegraph – it must be the ‘unofficial hit’ – just wait until England v Germany in the quarter finals; you’ll hear this on the terraces.

For record – here are the World Cup songs – from this year and prior years. New Order’s ‘World in Motion’ is still the one to beat. I can’t believe that Stan Boardman has “the Germans bombed our Chippie” as a song.

“This tastes just like Miller Lite”

by | May 9, 2006 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, travel, Uncategorized

I am in a bar in the hotel in Duesseldorf.

Three American gents drinking at the next table. They look at their small glasses of pils – and “This tastes just like Miller Lite”.

Me and my big mouth, I got to use another legendary line: “Did they serve you a glass of chilled piss by mistake then?” We’re debating the merits of American “Beer” vs. German Beer.

The Prisoners’ Dilemma puzzle

by | Apr 25, 2006 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, Uncategorized


Here is an interesting find:

Prisoners’ Dilemma is a game which has been and continues to be studied by people in a variety of disciplines, ranging from biology through sociology and public policy. Among its interesting characteristics are that it is a “non-zero-sum”game: the best strategy for a given player is often one that increases the payoff to one’s partner as well. It has also been shown that there is no single “best” strategy: how to maximize one’s own payoff depends on the strategy adopted by one’s partner. Serendip uses a particular strategy (called “tit for tat”) which is believed to be optimal under the widest possible set of partner strategies.

http://www.brembs.net/ipd/ipd.html

There is an online version here: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/pd.html