Cabos submarinos

atravessando o Atlântico para telecomunicações são uma tecnologia de 160 anos atrás! Instalados por navios especiais no que imagino seja uma operação fascinante, depositados no fundo do mar numa ligação sólida ininterrupta de milhares de quilômetros, esta velharia é basicamente a mesma estrutura que hoje nos liga em alta velocidade a todos os continentes, exceto a Antártica.

Mais incrivelmente ainda, alguma parcela pequena destes cabos deixa de funcionar de vez em quando - comumente por conta de terremotos, mas às vezes por mordidas de tubarão mesmo - e é reposta! Obviamente é impossível monitorar toda a fiação, o que levou a planos mirabolantes de interceptações por submarinos, ou simples cortes, durante a Primeira Guerra.

Getting the right pizza size (pi for the pie)

Felt a little stupid last night when my pizza was delivered and it was way too small. But of course pizza places don't tell you the areas of the pizzas, which is precisely the information you need to compare their relative sizes. In fact, being circles, pizzas are very tricky in that you may actually have two pizzas side by side and you probably won't be able to tell by how much the area of one is larger than that of the other. On the other hand, if you had one square beside another and the first were four times as large as the second, it would be very clear as in your mind you could actually fit four of the second one perfectly into the first one. That, however, is not how circles are made. You can't fit four circles side by side in a circle that's four times as big - you'd have to, well, melt them and reshape the resulting area. 

Okay. This problem, of course, is exactly why pi exists. Pi will allow us to find the truth here where looking at pizzas just won't cut it. There is a formula for this, but look out because it looks a lot for another formula. What we want is the area, and that's radius times pi squared; the other one is for the circumference (which we don't care about), and that's 2 times pi times radius. 

So what the pizza place does give me is the diameter, which is twice the radius. There's a 25cm-diameter pie and a 35cm-diameter one, which translates to a radius of 12.5 and another of 17.5. This is what explains the confusion. The difference between 35cm and 25cm (or between their halves) doesn't seem that big. That's because we tend to think about this as if measuring distances with a ruler. But what matters here is the difference between the squares. And that's basically all you need to compare - meaning, since square centimeteres probably won't meaning anything to you (as in, "oh, that look like 500cm2) and pi will stay the same for every pizza, just comparing the sizes of the squares of the radii will give you your answer. 12.5 squared is 156.25 and 17.5 squared is 306.25. 

So you see, a pizza whose diameter is only 1.4 as large as another is actually 1.96 as big. And in case you're wondering, yes, 1.96 is the square of 1.4, which gives us perhaps the best way to do all this. Just divide the large diameter by the smaller one, and get the square of that result, and that's by how much the bigger pizza is truly bigger. 

As for the actual options I had in this example, they were 20cm, 25, 35 and 40 cm. Let's take the smallest as our pizza-size unit. 

25 divided by 20 is 1.25, which squared is 1.5625

35 divided by 20 is 1.75, which squared is 3.0625

40 divided by 20 is 2, which squared is 4

And that's all you need. If you know the size of the small one, now you know that the biggest one is 4 times as big, and the next one is 3 times as big. One very simple and useful thing to keep in mind is that a pizza that sound twice as big is actually 4 times as big (so it would be fair even if it cost 3 times as much)! And that's also about all that you can use. A pizza that sounded 3 times as big as another would be 9 times as big, which seems quite unlikely to come across. 

Cinquenta pessoas

já ligaram pra minha casa perguntando pelo Vinícius do Mercado livre, cuja página erroneamente mostra o número daqui - não sei se por ele ser um trambiqueiro, ou por engano, ou o quê, mas enfim. 

Ontem a quinquagésima me ligou, e eu já sabia que era a respeito dum anúncio, e decidi perguntar se, por acaso, ela saberia me dizer o endereço de email do Vinícius. Calhou de o rapaz sabê-lo. Um breve email enviado para o Vinícius e, veja só, não é que recebo logo uma resposta dizendo que ele o tinha consertado? 

Não vejo o que ele ganharia mentindo neste caso, de modo que presumo que este seja o fim dos enganos. Só me arrependo de uma coisa - não lhe ter sugerido trocá-lo pelo número do meu amigo Pablo. 

Refuting astrology

Finally looked into something Sheldon mentioned way back in episode 1-16 of The Big Bang Theory, namely the work of Bertrand Forer. In 1948 he gave a personality test to all his students, but instead of giving them individual evaluations, he gave them all the same description of their personality, which he had compiled from newspaper astrology sections. The students in return gave the description an average 4.26 out of 5 accuracy score, believing of course that the professor had himself carefully evaluated each one. for more details read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect

This agrees with something else that I read elsewhere that is also very interesting. I believe it was in the amazing poker book Winning Strategies in No-limit Hold'em. The concept is that, while humans are great at discovering patterns, we are absolutely awful at measuring frequencies of events. That latter part is the only thing that keeps astrologers in business - meaning that even though they're going to err some 98% of the time, people are completely unable to remember that frequency and what it represents (that it's all bullshit), and instead tend to only remember those times some predictions seems to click magically (which of course must happen through sheer repetition). 

The most fantastic chess moves ever made

This selection is just amazing. I have the feeling you can spend your whole life going back to these occasionally and be perpetually flabbergasted.

http://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess/mfm2130.htm

The original website does not allow you to play through the moves. But you can solve that easily by pasting the moves onto this handy replayer site  http://www.apronus.com/chess/wbeditor.php  and then clicking "absorb PGN."

Here, for instance, Karpov comes up with the unbelievable concept to play Ng2 against Kasparov for the 1984 WC. The automatic gh4 we would have all played leaves no penetration points. Instead he gets his King in through the h-file and it's curtains. 

Olafsson simply played Re6 here, and after fe6 Ng5 Black is completely lost, since Bg2 is met by Qe6 Kh8 NF7 Kg8 Nh6 Kh8 Qg8

But this may be my favorite. White to play and win. 

This is just about as close to magic as it gets. If you can believe it, White, who has a kingside attack that would definitely look decisive with just a couple of extra tempi, procedes to throw both his Knights on... d7! Yes, on d7, into complete vacuum. The first one goes in just so that the second one can get to e5 with tempo, attacking Black's Queen, and then, he just throws himself onto d7 too, where again there is nothing. However, by maneuvering thus, the second Knight accomplishes two things: he clears the e3 Rook's path and distracts Black's Queen from attacking the f6 pivot. The game continued  23.Nd7 Qxd7 24.Ne5 Qd8 25.Nd7 Qxd7 26.Rh3 h5 27.gxh5 g5 28.Qxg5 Qd8 29.h6 Qxf6 30.Qg7+ Nxg7 31.hxg7+ Qh6 32.gxf8N+ Kh8 33.Rxh6 mate . 

What's so aesthetically wonderful here is that, if someone were bored and trying to just lose material in the silliest possible way, they could have very easily played Nd7-Ne5-Nd7. The fact that in reality this process of saying "take my pieces" with no regard for anything is correct just slaps you across the face. It kind of sums up all of chess. In a game where logic is everything and competent players know more or less what their opponent is thinking, the greatest moves are the ones that just shatter expectations, sidestep common patterns and look wildly unpredictable... while, of course, remaining completely logical!

People that it's just awkward aren't dead

Sometimes people do some fucked up shit that it's weird that they're still alive afterwards. Sometimes it's something so widely publicized that it's quite certain that the person is never, ever, anywhere in the world, going to be at a restaurant where there won't be people whispering, "Can you believe it, it's that guy." 

This type of shame is something so powerful an ubiquitous that, as crazy as they are, you know that most mass-murderers have it. For instance, it's weird to think that the Batman killer is still alive. It's expected for him to have killed himself, right? It's what these guys usually do. As insane as they are, they realize very clearly that they're hurting people in the most horrible way, and that it's irreversible, and they really don't want to face the consequences of continuing to live a life where they have done that. 

It's weird for me that Chris Brown isn't dead, also. Not to try to assume too much about what kind of person Rihanna is, but I'm just saying that I actually had a crazy girlfriend recently, the type that really won't shut up after you've begged her to, the type that - and this is fucked up but I think it's not all that rare - seems like she actually wants you to kill her so that you go to jail, just because you're saying something logical and she can't stand it that you're right. (By the way, one of her ex-boyfriends actually did beat her almost to death.) But still, man, you just walk away. I mean, we real people sometimes have that type of real-life problem where you actually can't afford to go anywhere else, but of course to Chris Brown it's easy to check into a great hotel no matter when and go hit some watermellons with a baseball bat. And he really messed her up. It wasn't just that first "enough!" punch; he kept going, thankfully not all the way, but man. Now he's doing concerts again, showing his face, and people are fine with it. Not that he should go to jail for life, but, well, it's weird. 

And then there's this guy. His name is Howard Lederer, and until not so long ago he seemed like a very respectable poker pro. This guy founded Full Tilt, and he stole some 100 million dollars from online poker players. He sat out for a year, and guess what, now he's back. Here he's seen playing high-stakes at the Bellagio. Yes, with the suckers' money. I actually hate him more than Chris Brown, because, well, that singer definitely did not plan to kill his girlfriend. He just went off in a crazy rage - something I think I'd never do, thank God I do not have a short temper that would make this likely, but if you ask me, I would also not like to be judged based on my worst moments. But Lederer, the cunning that goes into pretending that you have the money of millions of people safely tucked away for whenever they need to withdraw it, when you in fact have spent on your...

wait for it...

42-million-dollar house, and God knows what else - well, you should have killed yourself, and I don't see how there aren't at least a dozen players at that very casino who would kill you in the right circumstances.

Capablanca on film

No way this exists! Short film called "Chess fever" starring the greatest genius in chess history, José Raúl Capablanca playing himself. The film is awful, but it's the first time I've ever seen Capa in decent quality. Shot during the 1925 Moscow tournament, it also features video of Grunfeld, Marshall, Spielmann, Reti and even chess aficionado Vladimir Nabokov.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3727820471573567512