Here is yet another experiment in sudoku graphics. I took out the grid lines and added white pixels somewhat randomly, but more likely near the edges than the centers of the cells.
There is actually one grid that is rotating, but it looks like there are several independently rotating grids. See this site for more examples.
Intrade created a contract on the economic bailout. Thursday morning, it was trading at about 80, meaning an 80% chance that there would be a bailout by September 30th. I decided to try out a new theory. Suppose we look at the economic crisis not as economists, but as writers. How would a writer finish this story? The answer is obvious: everybody lives happily ever after, BUT: first, there will be some kind of last-minute problems that have to be overcome. The writers will jerk us around a few times, and the deal will be on again and off again. No problems, no drama.
Translating the drama into a price scenario, I decided that the price would drop, and then go back up. I put in a buy order at 70 and waited. Sure enough, “stuff happened”. McCain got all mavericky and rushed to Washington for a photo op. The price went down and I got the contract. I put in a sell order for 85. The next day, the bailout was back on, and the contract sold. Could I do it again? Just before the debate, the price went down again and I bought the contract back for 67 and put in another sell order for 85. After the debate, the price started up again and by Saturday evening the contract sold.
So here I am after two round trips and a 30% gain. It’s Sunday morning and the price is around 65 again. The temptation is to go for a third round trip, but the closer the contract gets to expiration, the riskier the trade. I’d hate to have a contract expire at zero on September 30th only to have Congress approve a bailout on October 1st.
Enough excitement. Time to reflect. Psychologically I’m more comfortable with arbitrage. In other words, I trust math more than drama. On the other hand, the drama trade was dramatically more profitable. Maybe there is some middle ground with enough risk management to make me comfortable, but still with a greater return than arbitrage.
Here are 2 superposed puzzles. You can solve one puzzle with the digits, using a pencil, and then solve the other puzzle as a color sudoku, using colored markers. Each puzzle has a unique solution, but the two solutions are different, since the digits and colors don’t match consistently (look at the 3s and 9s).
Alternatively, you could try to solve both puzzles at the same time. It seems that the 6s are always light blue, and are easy enough to finish off.
From the Washington Post:
Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration’s prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation — the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration’s claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.
In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might “argue back” against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation. Nyhan and Reifler did not see the same “backfire effect” when liberals were given misinformation and a refutation about the Bush administration’s stance on stem cell research.
Nyhan and Reifler are both Democrats.
Reading about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics seems to have warped my tender little mind. In the spirit of quantum superposition, the digits are arranged in one sudoku pattern, while the colors of the digits are arranged in a different sudoku pattern.
A survey from Baylor University finds that believers in the supernatural are less likely to believe in the paranormal, and vice versa:
The Baylor Survey found that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases credulity, as measured by beliefs in such things as dreams, Bigfoot, UFOs, haunted houses, communicating with the dead and astrology.
The ISR researchers found that conservative religious Americans are far less likely to believe in the occult and paranormal than are other Americans, with self-identified theological liberals and the irreligious far more likely than other Americans to believe.
It’s as if we have only so many superstitious brain cells, and if we fill them up with one kind of superstition, we crowd out other kinds of superstition. I’m not sure whether that’s good news or bad.
Here is a YouTube video by P. Stacey that uses an interesting representation of sudokus. The grid is gone, and the cells are now round dots. No corners, and lots of white space! Different colored dots have different sizes, which adds a sort of visual texture, as well as softening the regularity of the 9-by-9 array.
