Pilgrim Eye

Dinner tonight

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:40:33 GMT

Hearts of romaine and mushrooms dipped in hummus for appetizer. Slice of cantaloupe. Salad: More romaine topped with tomato, hard-boiled egg, boiled new potatoes, feta, some minced vidalia onion, and drizzled with olive oil-balsamic vinaigrette. Cheap red wine.

Really, really good.

Assignment!

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:16:23 GMT

The Retrograde Paradigm

For wisemonkey.

Xan to his friends, Phil to those who didn't know any better, Xanthophyll Heller III rolled out of bed in his Central Park South penthouse and looked at his affable, charismatic face in the bathroom mirror. It seemed ludicrous, but his recent propensity for torpid lethargy seemed to have vanished like an evanescent dream. If by "recent" one could mean a six-year-long quagmire.

He'd started out just imagining he was stoic, but entropy overtook him like a leviathan, like a juggernaut. Even after a year of living like a vagabond (or how he imagined vagabonds lived, except with servants), he still thought the feeling was transient, that some great moment of fecundity was imminent.

But eventually he'd decided it was just his archetype, a quintessential proclivity for -- let's face it -- laziness. Did it perturb him? Not in the slightest. He had learned to ignore the paradox of his (former) incendiary effervescence, his gregarious -- ebullient, even -- bonhomie, his voracious gastronomical appetite. He could not live as an oxymoron.

But the inertia was there to stay, until over the years his sycophants abandoned him, his friends ostracized him. Even to his family, what was left of them, he was a pariah. Ha! Family. What an ostentatious bastion of malevolent invective. He was well rid of them.

But what was the impetus for this bout of narcissistic introspection? Oh, yes. The letter. It had come yesterday, reminding him that it was the penultimate day of his residence in this inimitable domicile of pretension.

Today his departure was obligatory. He could smite his forehead -- of course this was the catalyst! Asinine of him to even imagine it was an enigmatic question.

Xan returned to the bedroom. The time for half-measures was past -- no time to equivocate, no need to vacillate -- only one thing was pertinent: how was he to live with autonomy as a proletarian?

This was no Catch-22 (to cite the masterwork by his relative Joseph, a case of propinquity Xan had always considered particularly insidious). The answer came to him with cataclysmic clarity. With his first lucid thought in half a decade, Xan realized he had made a gargantuan error, and there was only one way to ameliorate its implications. And what really appealed to his aesthetic sense -- yes! he had one! -- is that the answer had been latent all along in the mundane effluvium of his ignominy.

In a word: it was inevitable.

* * *

Xan didn't even bother stopping at the bank. Some nebulous, tattered remnant of inborn banker's sense told him the balance in his trust fund stopped somewhere short of four digits, which was as near zero as made no difference. He bypassed father's club, as well. The doorman returned his cheery hello with an insipid look, obviously not recognizing him. Well, no chagrin there -- Xan had not been out in... well, too long.

So, not the bank, nor dear old Dad, nor yet his ex-girlfriend's place, uptown -- that would be just plain overzealous, and miss the point in any case. He briefly considered taking a cab, but the thin jingle in his pocket forced him to acknowledge the revolution he was undergoing. He hopped the Number 7 train to Queens.

At the cemetery, he took off his jacket for the stroll up the hill. Six years. The breeze on his face and arms was an anodyne, and a dynamic sense of joy began to undulate through him and coalesce in his limbs, usurping -- nay, supplanting -- the preponderance of his lassitude.

He had little trouble finding the gravesite, though the last time he'd been here there'd been no headstone, and the lawn had suffered an egregious earthen scar. All was pristine now.

Xan stood at his aunt's resting place and read the inscription for the first time: Dora Heller - 1927-2002. No polemic, no rhetoric. Xan decided she would have liked that, this woman who had raised him (in every way that mattered). It came back to him in a rush, his boyhood visits to her rent-controlled garret: the family scion sneaking out to visit the black-sheep aunt. He remembered her booming laugh, her esoteric knowledge, her inane puns. This large, loquacious woman hadn't a vitriolic bone in her body, not a scintilla of prevarication. But among the plethora of reasons for the family to shun her, the principal one was her nefarious disdain for the redundance of wealth.

And then she'd fallen ill, and into a coma, and they -- the family, not Xan -- had pulled the plug. They slept her, transitively speaking -- nothing arcane, just a bland indifference to everything human.

He had come to the funeral prepared to pontificate, but his father's pointed absence, the gash in the ground, the wilting flowers -- everything had produced a synergy of pain, and all that that engendered -- the subsequent months, then years, of psychic immobility.

Dusk was coming on, and Xan became aware of the distant sound of traffic on the avenue, and jets on the flight path into JFK. He whispered goodbye to Aunt Dora, then turned to go. The view across the borough became blurred, coruscating, almost phosphorescent in the setting sun.

He didn't know what was next, but knew he'd figure it out.

* * *

(In case you're wondering, this crap uses every one of the words from C's list of favorite words from when she was about 16.)

More on our diet...

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 01:33:38 GMT

Want

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:17:56 GMT

"I want..."

The child's strident plea seems to be just an expression of desire. It will escalate to "need," often tongue-in-cheek with young adults, who know they don't really need those fashionable shoes or the latest game -- not "need" the way starving [ethnic refugees of your choice] do, as their parents will quickly remind them. We live in a land of privilege and plenty. You don't need those things, you just want them.

The diet we're on has gotten me thinking about such things: hunger, want, and need. Our biological selves have powerful drives, some of which modern society has all too successfully masked -- or subverted.

We forget that in language "want" has many meanings. It's something of a distortion of our evolutionary heritage to believe that all wants are "just" desire, as if all we are is a walking brain with whims for sparkly pretties. We forget what it means to "be in want," to be "found wanting," or to "want but a certain (missing) ingredient."

Some of us, especially, forget what it means to be in want.

Marsh started us on this diet with two basic notions: let's stop eating mammals, and let's -- roughly -- count points the old Weight Watchers way. (Actually, she did NOT say "let's." This was her venture, for herself, and I announced I would tag along. I do know how hard it can be to sustain two warring diets in one household, and I welcomed the opportunity to get healthier.)

But after getting our baseline in the points system after 4-5 days, we stopped counting. (At least I did -- Marsh keeps more numbers in her head minute-by-minute than I am ever aware of.) We're simply relying on having satisfying portions of certain prescribed foods: yogurt, eggs, salad greens, tomatoes, bananas, apples, beans, avocado, bran cereal with low-fat milk. Those are the staples. Other salad ingredients, any vegetables that look good in the store (and, we hope, from our garden, later), fruit, juice, coffee. Lastly, occasional fish and chicken. No unnecessary fat, no pasta.

This is not a diet primer. I know it's a low-fat diet but I've never tried such a low-carb diet before. We're supplementing with vitamins, and exercising. It feels great, unless our blood-sugar crashes and we start to snark at each other. "Eat something," she says. "I'm not hungry," I snarl. :-)

What I find really interesting is that after two weeks my entire approach to food has changed. When I eat I am actually hungry, and actually "want" food -- and not just any food. I'm relishing flavors and textures, and feel my body responding to the various nutritive qualities of our transformed larder.

I feel I have almost reached a new equilibrium, a new economy of physique, where I am truly "in want," and answer my want with just that which will provide true value.

That other "want"? It's real, too. Social norms, peer pressure, commercial messages, all work to awaken in us -- or create -- an emptiness that can only be filled by the latest thing, or the biggest platter. T.G.I.F.'s, McDonald's... operate in a land of plenty by creating need in our brains way above the basic biological level of survival -- and by participating (because it's about food, and everyone actually DOES need food) we give up something very basic: a sensitivity to our true wants, and the discernment to fulfill them with good things.

Lepidoptera!

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:39:24 GMT

Ganked from BoingBoing via M:

http://www.linnean-online.org/

Very cool.

I live in a Terry Gilliam movie

Tue, 27 May 2008 19:23:33 GMT

I'm on the phone with the IRS, trying to make arrangements to pay the rest of what I owe in taxes, and the hold music is the "Trepak" or Russian Dance from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite.

hellbent

Thu, 15 May 2008 04:05:22 GMT

Five decades in, and I have just discovered the magical deliciousness of Lucky Charms.

Irony abounds

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:10:58 GMT

The "one word makes all the difference" department

Fri, 02 May 2008 19:41:31 GMT

My fortune cookie the other night:

"The current year will bring you much happiness."

That food thing

Fri, 02 May 2008 15:41:14 GMT

1. Are you a vegetarian? Vegan?
No. I like all the meats, too much, and can't get overwrought about the cruelty/conditions issue. Or rather, I'm too good at looking the other way. If pressed, I would prefer (and could manage) slaughtering my own.

2. What's your favorite food?
IM-possible question. Anything with a rich melange of textures, flavors and color. Sweet and savory together. Anything fresh.

3. White bread or whole wheat?
Whole wheat. Although fresh home-made white is hard to beat. Sourdough: no thanks.

4. What's for breakfast?
Coffee, juice, toast, honey, banana. Cereal. Sometimes oatmeal. Weekends I like to pull out all the stops -- eggs (any style), pancakes, bacon, fruit bowl. Specialties for breakfast: champagne mimosas; gjetost.

5. You're making a Dagwood sandwich. What's in it?
Ham, salami, cheese (any kind), leaf lettuce, tomato, sweet pickle, mayo, mustard (preferably whole grain), maybe basil pesto, mmm... how about marinated artichoke hearts?

6. What's on your pizza?
Sausage, mushroom. Or sometimes one of those highfalutin feta-chicken-and-broccoli things that some people don't consider pizza. There was a lovely restaurant near me in Boston that would load up its pizzas with whole roasted garlic... yeah.

7. Coffee, tea, milk, or soda?
Yeah, but tea is last. Water is best but I find it hard to be that virtuous all the time. I do try to watch the aspartame and HFCS.

8. Dark, milk, or white chocolate?
Dark, sometimes white. I don't favor most "candy", so a little dark chocolate is a super treat to me.

9. Teetotal, beer, wine, or hard liquor?
Touchy subject? I favor wine -- can't really keep nice beers and especially liquor in the house. It goes too fast, and the next thing I know "Matty's Package Goods" is a line item on the household budget and personal hygiene has slipped. But... tequila. Blue agave.

10. Does cilantro taste like citrus, or like soap?
Neither. It is cilantro, and a godly ingredient of much Mexican cooking. However, nobody in my immediate family can tolerate it, so it stays in the cabinet.

11. Is chorizo the greatest thing ever or is it totally disgusting?
Yes. Oh, sorry -- greatest thing ever. I'm slowly discovering Portuguese cooking. Great.

12. Do you use garlic like a vegetable or like a spice?
Both. It's practically a vegetable in chili (6-8 cloves to a pot); and roast elephant garlic as a spread is ambrosia.

13. Onions: raw, cooked, or not at all?
Again, both, but I lean toward caramelized. Raw minced Vidalias are a fun addition to some salads or as a soup or taco topping.

14. Does broccoli taste sweet or bitter?
"Uh, neither. Broccoli is delicious when cooked properly, but err to either side and it becomes the cliche." - basophil

15. How do you feel about fish?
Give me some. Cooked hot and fast. Any fish, must be fresh. I came late to shellfish, and only discovered the sublime joy of raw oysters a few years ago.

16. How about sushi?
Fabulous. I think I started enjoying sushi as an "adventure," and it quickly became a staple. I don't love EVERY type, but will try anything. Tried making it at home once too -- wow, do I respect the sushi chef skill.

17. Fave ethnic cuisine?
Another impossible question. A year isn't complete without at least once, each: Mexican, Italian, French, Indian, Thai, Chinese (including Dim Sum), Shwarma, American Diner, Spanish (preferably a seafood paella, maybe with chorizo thrown in). We have Honduran and Salvadorian near us which I intend to sample soon.

18. What's your favorite fruit?
Peach, cherry, orange, grape, banana. Prickly pear. Hmm, been a while since I made bananas flambe.

19. Cheese - thumbs up or thumbs down?
UP. Sheesh. I can hang around the cheese section of Whole Foods till the cows come home.

20. Finally, favorite dessert?
Something extravagantly fattening, preferably with chocolate. Something like this.

The butterfly net

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:35:26 GMT

See earlier post.

Synchronicity

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:58:12 GMT

We strike out on the first of what we hope will be two or three walks today -- it's 11:30 and still just early enough and cool enough to qualify as "beating the heat." The birds and the bees are out, kids on trikes, puppies on leashes, it's a gorgeous Saturday morning in spring.

We've gone several hundred yards -- barely a sixth of the route -- and the conversation has already veered and branched several times, from our gardening plans, to the weather forecast, to ~~Scrabble~~something about Living with Purpose, when Marsh pulls me back a couple of paces to observe a flying insect on a railing.

"This one's blue," she says, and as I watch, the plain black thing takes flight revealing a shimmering teal body, and is gone.

"Cool!" I say.

"We didn't bring a jar," she says. We've been trying to collect bugs to add variety to Bambi the chameleon's diet, and save on trips to PetCo for crickets. Crickets bore Bambi. I'd even ordered a butterfly net earlier in the week, knowing that we could harvest many, many grasshoppers in the wild later in the season. We don't know if Bambi will like grasshoppers, but we're always thinking.

"I know," I say, "and the butterfly net didn't come yet. When it does, I'll look like a supreme dork." I pantomime an Edwardian gentleman, pirouetting as I swoop an imaginary butterfly net. Marsh laughs, charitably. (I'm actually an old and rusty pro with an insect net, but that's another story.)

As we're laughing dorkily, I spy the mail truck careening into the neighborhood. In the time it takes me to register its arrival, in the time it takes me to start to feel embarrassed that our mailman has seen me dancing like a loon, the little white van has swerved over to the curb and stopped opposite us. The lovely mailman -- is he Pakistani? Yemeni? Algerian? I cannot tell -- says to us, to me, "Mr. Van Pelt?"

"Yes?"

He's smiling, he enjoys his work, he enjoys knowing the real people behind the thousands of numbered slots and lockboxes. "I have a package for you today, I can give it now." He reaches beside his seat, next to heaps, mounds of trays and bundles of sorted mail, and pulls out a shipping box, bigger than a book but smaller than a breadbox, not heavy.

I'm thinking, as I'm sure Marsh is, do we want to carry a box all the way around with us, on our walk? He has handed it to me, he senses our hesitation. "It's okay -- I can leave it down there," he offers, nodding toward the mailboxes.

"No, no," I say. "It's fine, it's great, we'll take it. Thank you!" I turn to Marsh. "It's the butterfly net."

"You had ordered the net," you may say. "Its arrival was imminent. This was no coincidence." Even so, it's impossible to convey the feeling of unlikelihood in that moment. We unpacked and assembled the net as we continued our walk, and marveled at the universe.

Cat physics

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:16:31 GMT

Sagan spends parts of each day now among the rafters of the basement storeroom, knocking things off the high shelves. We can provide daily reports, if desired, of the continuing efficacy of gravity (at least in the Northern Virginia area).

Babies

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 04:01:14 GMT

We've been nurturing young things -- a cat, a pup, a chameleon, teens, lettuce seedlings, creative ventures. Why is the lettuce so pale, droopy, and spindly? I moved some under the grow-lamps; it's a quasi-scientific approach to determining if they need more or less light, water, soil, or something different.

Sagan is on a 100% tilapia filet diet, which she loves and seems to thrive on. But she's very hungry come mealtime, and we may introduce some variety -- bones, offal, etc.

Bambi the lizard turns grey and frail-looking when hungry. According to the literature, he can tire of a monotonous diet. Still, we're only feeding him small crickets, and he is growing. The crickets are supposed to be dusted with calcium occasionally. And soon we'll switch it up a bit: bloodworms, other insects. Although there are concerns about taking insects from the suburban "wild", and their elevated toxin levels.

Babies tell us what they need, in their way -- a parent learns amazingly fast how to read that cry. It used to baffle me until I had my own girls; then it was pretty much unerring -- were they hungry? Tired? Wet? A parent knows.

Teens don't need you at all. You know? And then you see a young adult, grown in such wonderful ways.

What about ideas? How do they tell you what their diet should be? Anything but neglect or disdain, I think.

Chatting...

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:11:44 GMT

...about love this evening, and the irrational love that one has towards one's offspring:

"You're thrilled when they're happy, you're terrified when they're hurt, and you're furious when they want you to be."

Supper

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:32:09 GMT

I basically dumped the refrigerator drawer out into the salad bowl -- broccoli, lettuce, snow peas, mushrooms....

And there are extra hearty grilled-cheese sandwiches, which apparently means extra butter and extra cheese.

We love the goat cheese Jamie picked out.

Aaaah!

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:14:42 GMT

A rattlesnake!

Sex still sells, Infiniti hopes

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:12:54 GMT

The advertisement seems to be saying, "Infiniti EX conveys the same feeling a beautiful woman enjoys from caressing her clitoris."

The model's featured middle finger follows images of her grasping the neck of a cello, sliding the instrument into the rear cargo space of the car, and taking off her jacket, leaving her in just a diaphanous gown -- and, apparently, adjusting the driver's seat to a half-recline.

GRRM

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 21:33:22 GMT

I have officially joined the ranks of those eagerly awaiting the next volume in George R. R.. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series.

Family of exotica

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:58:30 GMT

Bambi, the latest member of the family, a veiled chameleon (Chamaeleo calyptratus), is Emly's pride and joy. Bambi's terrarium is next to Thumper's, both under heat lamps. Bambi eats 3-5 live small crickets daily and needs plenty of moisture to simulate a tropical environment. He (or she) is quite young, and so far is doing well.

I am having an odd, restrained reaction to this. On the one hand, there's an imposed distance. Emly's dad bought it for her, with all the gear -- it was her heart's desire last week, and she really needed a heart's desire filled. I am so glad he did it, and glad for her. And the pet is hers... you know? I want her to discover and appreciate everything on her own.

On the other hand, I have my own associations -- from growing up in South and Central America -- and from a youth that could so easily have led me to become a biologist instead of an artist and writer. I adore reptiles, especially lizards. Some of my earliest memories include rescuing foot-long iguanas from our dog, who had chased them indoors. My mother would call for my help if a tree frog (I know, an amphibian) landed on her in the shower. And the brightly colored skinks that scampered across the sunlit patio are an integral part of my memories of Costa Rica.

This changeable little guy isn't mine, but he awakens things in me that are deeply felt, deeply "me."

Recap from the cheap seats

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:48:02 GMT

I've been thinking about what looked like polarized opinions -- Joe Edley, Dan Pratt, perhaps others, on one side, and myself on the other -- and especially about Joe's 'good old days' post which I tried to puncture, and I've come to a key conclusion.

Putting myself in Joe's place, there *was* something distinct about the NSC incident: the bingo is what he intended -- in fact, for a brief second, he believed he had played it.

Let's look at a closely similar case: Player A sets down LANYARD, and as he is reaching to place the S, there's a loud disruption at the next table, he drops the S in the wrong spot, and hits the clock.

In the latter case it is (a) even more clear what Player A intended, and (b) the distraction was public and shared. In such a case I am guessing that a majority of directors would rule that the S could go where it was intended, and play proceed. I could be wrong.

In the actual case, I'm guessing that real director rulings on the spot would be a little more mixed -- possibly leaning toward disallowing Joe's S. But Joe is a great arguer, so I could be wrong :)

For comparison, I've been on the side of arguing that the blank designation process should account for "what was intended." It seemed absurd for this newfangled written form to supersede a clearly announced "T" in ELA?ION, and for the bingo to be disallowed when the Florida court examined the chads and determined the "S" had a bit more of the ink on it. Especially when the designation forms themselves don't have a standard format and can lend themselves to confusion.

I guess that puts me in the same camp with Joe and Dan -- what is happening to the game, when petty-minded rules and minuscule procedures can overtake the simple act of putting down the damn word and adding up the damn score?

The NSC case feels different from two angles.

One, hitting the clock is more sacrosanct than writing down a blank. Hitting the clock is used as the definitive marker for many other rules, including challenging, calculating overtime, and more. On the other hand, as we've seen this week, we have no problem coming up with other outlier scenarios where the spirit of the game can be applied to overtake it: dropping a tile, confusion after returning from a judging station, accidental clock-hitting-while-sneezing, clock malfunctions, etc.

I'll be blunt about the second angle: it's Joe.

The rhetoric (including my own) in this week's discussion obscured an important distinction. Were we asking: "Would a reasonable person, in either JKB's place, or in a director's place, allow LANYARDS?" Or were we asking: "Should Joe have asked?" And when many of us opined that Joe should not have asked, I believe others took it to mean that no reasonable person would agree to this.

I will state that MANY reasonable people would have agreed to this -- in fact, till now, I've taken pains not to bring JKB into this, but the fact is there: Jason is as strong, bright, and reasonable as they come, and he agreed to it. If we're asking the first question, the answer is far from a no-brainer. I'd like to think that I would insist on bringing over a director, but I can't be sure. It was a unique circumstance.

But when we ask "Should Joe have asked?", we're actually making an inquiry into "right behavior." It's not particularly about the rules, or exceptions from the rules; it's not rigid constructionism vs. feel-good 'spirit of the game' -- because asking for something is not a decision. And the answer has a gray area -- a larger gray area, certainly, than I initially proposed. No newly written rule is going to dictate that one can't or shouldn't ask for a ruling in the case of some weird occurrence.

For example, if it had been me, in the heat of the moment, I might have turned my rack to ruefully show my opponent the "S" I'd left there, to explain why I had announced 70-something instead of 20-something. Would that action have constituted "asking"? What if my opponent then committed an "act of kindness"? So there are gray areas.

What if the 7LW had been a phony? What if the 8LW would have been a phony? The mind boggles.

In my mind it comes back to that very personal reaction to having hit the clock. It's very clear to me that the purest, cleanest, most knightly, BEST action is to gut it out -- you flubbed it, take your lumps. The distraction was of his own making. The "S" was still on his rack. A bizarre mistake, but an "angelic" player would not ask.

News flash: A lot of us are not angelic. This is a GAME (read, "war"), and the objective is to win. So this to me becomes a very interesting example of a case where "integrity" doesn't tell the whole story. Don't you consider it a breach of integrity to not try your hardest to win? So we get into all those other interesting areas, like intentional phonies, body language, and other aggressive gamesmanship that is short of coffeehousing and every bit a part of tournament SCRABBLE.

It's a little like losing by 2, and being asked in the hallway, "Did you recount?" If you answer, "Nah, too much trouble," some players look at you like a lesser mortal -- why wouldn't everyone do everything possible within the rules to win?

Should Joe Edley be held to the "angelic" standard? I think that's what a lot of us were, in effect, saying. Given his position and profile, it seemed shocking that he took the most aggressive (verging on breaking-of-the-rules) course, rather than an intermediate course (calling a director, or ruefully displaying the "S" as I might have done) or the purest course (sucking it up).

But you know, I think that's Joe. A 3-time National Champion is going to be someone with some chops (some kind of chops). You may not like 'em, but he is who he is.

It's a separate question altogether whether that's the person to represent SCRABBLE, especially if "representation" encompasses writing the rules, commenting on the rules, appointing AB members, directing, directing directors, competing, writing books, authorizing books, and more. I'm not saying Joe isn't fit for any of this, just that the job description has inherent conflict of interest, and sometimes you need someone who can articulate the side of the angels.

Hitting the clock

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:54:34 GMT

Let's not get distracted. This is not about accidentally hitting the clock.

Nor is this about random acts of kindness. Kindness would have been if Player A had said nothing, and Player B volunteered, "76 points? Maybe you meant to add a 7th tile? Here, why don't I restart your clock, and let you do that."

Kindness is allowing this sort of thing with a newbie in a club.

Kindness is often a component of "spirit of the game" exceptions, especially when they're volunteered, and especially in the lower divisions. We all want Scrabble to have a spirit of comity. This type of comity is about extending courtesies with the expectation (real or imagined) that they will be reciprocated. It makes our community a nicer place, which is important for a lot of players who aren't just about cutthroat competition.

Not relevant here, where someone requested a courtesy.

What is this really about? It's about five things:

1. What's right? And if there are shades of rightness, then it's about what's most right. With that in mind, I invite folks to consider:

Player A and Player B are at the Nationals finals table, being taped for television. Player A gets distracted, calls a score of 76 for a 20-pt play, and starts Player B's clock. Would Player A be in the right to interrupt Player B's time to request that he be allowed to make a different play from the one he made?
Player A and Player B are in 3rd and 4th place in one of the KOTH rounds of a prominent regional tournament. The players in 1st and 2nd are at the next table, and all four are separated only by spread. Player A gets distracted, calls a score of 76 for a 20-pt play, and starts Player B's clock. Would Player A be in the right to interrupt Player B's time to request that he be allowed to make a different play from the one he made?
Players A and B are in the middle ranks of Div C, early in a backwater one-day tournament -- top prize, dinner for two at Denny's. Player A gets distracted, calls a score of 76 for a 20-pt play, and starts Player B's clock. Would Player A be in the right to interrupt Player B's time to request that he be allowed to make a different play from the one he made?

2. What's the harm in asking, indeed? Only that you're imposing a burden of distraction on your opponent, and asking them to make a bizarre judgment call ("should I be correct, or kind?") just when they should be concentrating, on their own time, on their next response.

More to the point, asking in itself implies that there is validity to the question -- an implication that carries all the more weight if Player A happens to be in a position of influence with respect to the rules.

Asking implies that Player A doesn't in fact know what Player B's response should be, which is patently dishonest -- he knows that Player B's answer should be no. The only reason to ask has nothing to do with any judgment call about what may be allowed (unless we want the rules to devolve to whatever individual opponents permit each other) -- it is solely to recapture the bingo score.

I could well imagine, if Player B says no, that Player A would wryly grin and say, "Nah, I didn't think so." Well, if you don't think so, you don't ask. No game should turn on such a blatant fling of gamesmanship, when the bulk of the rules go so far to try to ensure that outcomes derive solely from skill, knowledge, and the definitive plays made by each player, each turn.

Asking the question put Player A's score for that turn in Player B's hands, which should never happen.

3. The cause of the distraction should not be a factor, because that's so subjective, but it is. Unfortunately for Player A, the cause was not a car bomb going off in the hotel parking lot. (Presumably a few plays around the tournament room would have to be reviewed in such an event.) The cause here was Player A's own carelessness. I would even surmise from accounts of the incident that his carelessness caused tiles to be drawn out of turn (albeit possibly in Player B's favor, since Player A's discards had not been returned to the bag).

But at the instant of discovery -- which happened to coincide with the misplay/mis-score -- here's what I would expect Player A to do:

Player A: "Ugh... jeez... 20 points? Right. Ugh." [Pauses clock.] "Director!"

[To Player B]: "I didn't return my tiles to the bag after exchanging."

[Director arrives -- situation explained -- tiles returned to bag -- play resumes with Player A replenishing 6 tiles, and Player B's clock restarted. No mention made of misplay/mis-score.]

[After game, in hallway, to Player B]: "You know that play...? I had the S...." [groans and laughs all around].

Summary: Two things had gone wrong. One was a mechanical error in the order of play, and the second was a subsequent mental lapse by Player A that affected only himself. The priority should have been on correcting the error in procedure and getting the game back on track -- not on erasing Player A's mental lapse by a compounded error of procedure.

4. Imagine that in this case Player A happens to be famous for his mental discipline. He rarely makes such errors, rarely gets distracted, rarely loses focus. In addition, imagine he is a famous and vocal proponent of mental focus, and has often attributed his winning ways, in part, to a variety of techniques that minimize distraction.

If this were the actual scenario, the incident becomes even more outrageous: for a player so well-known for insisting that failures of focus should be considered a primary cause of losses and suboptimal performance, to request special dispensation, in defiance of the rulebook, to erase just such a lapse.

This player could never afterward really take the same pedagogical stance, could they? Maybe they would have to add a chapter to their book (if they had one) on Bonus Kindness Techniques for minimizing the effects of errors and lapses on tournament performance:

Now that you have mastered my techniques for maintaining focus, let's look at how to get out of trouble in those rare cases where you will, inevitably, still screw up...

A rare, one-of-a-kind error? All the more reason to let it stand, rather than seek to circumvent it.

5. The fifth thing that this is about, to me, has to do with Player A's real identity, and the aftermath to these disclosures. I could imagine, if Player A were just some run-of-the-mill player, more interested in self-defense than in the principle of the thing, that she would argue with my point (1) above, thusly: "Look, this wasn't a final, this wasn't a semifinal, this wasn't [insert high stakes scenario here]. This was just [insert self-serving description of why such a remarkable exception to the rules should not be remarkable here]."

But the Director of Tournaments, Rules Committee member, majority scribe of the rulebook, many-times champion, book author, hero and leader of men, would never take the tack of seeking a loophole for a situation that would not pass muster at the game's highest levels. Would they? Such a player would be honor-bound, if this incident had occurred as described, to concede that it was ill-advised and should in no wise be taken as precedent for any sort of regular expert conduct.

That Player A instead continues to assert the appropriateness of his actions in this case raises profound doubts in my mind as to his capacity to judge what is and what is not proper, and if he were a candidate for a position of leadership I would withhold my support.

P.S. Why are so many of us so indignant about this? Here is exactly why: We all screw up. We all put IX or OT or leave a tile on the board or spill the bag or overdraw or mis-score. And every time it happens, every one of us takes it as an express invitation to do the right thing.

We're all smart and we're all competitive. None of us has any trouble (witness some of the things that get concocted on CGP) imagining Player A/Player B scenarios where someone could derive some unfair advantage. But most of us, regularly and with unswerving integrity, deliberately do the right thing -- and it's usually personally painful.

And here comes this incident -- just about the most painful flub that I've ever heard of -- and the one guy who is supposed to set the pace, blows it. It's a dream case for demonstrating one's integrity, and he totally blows it, and refuses to acknowledge that he blew it.

Four for The Ides

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 14:35:52 GMT

1. Overtoast should be a word.

2. When GWB correctly said (in a radio address about an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), "...three words: class action lawsuits...," somehow it still sounded wrong, as if lawsuits were really two words.

3. Freecycle is great, and we really appreciate being able to give away things that we might otherwise trash, and receive things that other people might otherwise trash. (Most recently, we picked up a full-size upright freezer, which is old but still has plenty of life in it, and will help us conserve even more by allowing us to buy in bulk.) But sometimes, when you read the Freecycle posts ("half-used box of #2 pencils," "shoe box," etc.), it all feels like nothing so much as a huge perpetual neighborhood yard sale, with the kids from each family running around and buying each other's outgrown toys for 25¢, and exchanging them all again the next spring.

4. The cat uses a lot of toner. She jumps onto a cabinet, using the printer keys as her springboard. We find random printouts of whatever was left on the scanner platen, or the contents of some camera disk.

Totally.

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:21:54 GMT

Watched the lunar eclipse last night. It was rad.

Quote of the Day

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 23:17:08 GMT

Begone, lettuce and tomato!