Tomorrow is the last
day of February. The old saying, “March winds and April showers help to bring
May flowers,” was not likely referring to snow blowing in the wind. But in the
northeastern United States, this winter is now the 6th snowiest on
record, and it will not take too much additional snowfall, which is predicted
for this weekend, to bump it up to the #2 spot. Some might point to this as proof
that we need not be concerned about global warming. Unfortunately, it is not
quite that simple. The concern is not simply about global warming, but of extreme
weather in both directions. I still want to believe that if the people and
countries of the world could stop fighting and focus their collective efforts
on addressing this problem, we might well be able to solve it. I guess you
could say that I have my head in the clouds (and there are plenty out there).
We are staying in New
York this weekend because Barry has meetings at Mount Sinai all day tomorrow.
We have some friends coming for Sabbath lunch and I have been cooking. Barry
just took some roasted root vegetables out of the oven and I can smell the
rosemary all the way down here in the office.
I have written some
about the television game show Jeopardy, which Barry and I watch regularly. For
the two weeks before this one, there was a tournament of college students.
Before that tournament, a fellow named Arthur Chu had won three games, and was
scheduled to return after the tournament. He has been back this week and played
three additional games. He has a rather distinct strategy of play. Most players
start with the easiest (lowest monetary value) question in each category, and
work their way to the most difficult (highest monetary value). But Mr. Chu has
taken a very different approach. He begins by selecting the most difficult
question, and rather than moving up through the questions in decreasing order
of difficulty, he jumps to the next category, selecting the most difficult
question there, and continues in this pattern. He is a very able player, and knows
a lot of the questions, so often ends up in control of the board and able to
make this scheme work. To be honest, we are not especially enjoying his
approach. It is difficult to keep changing gears across the categories. But he
has been trouncing the other contestants, usually going into Final Jeopardy
with enough money that he cannot lose no matter what the other players do.
I discovered this
afternoon that the internet is filled with chat room discussions about the pros
and cons of this approach. The views range from a visceral negative response to
absolute awe.
There is a bit about
this on the NPR website that you can find here:
Jeopardy is on in
just a few minutes but we record and watch it later so that we can fast forward
through the commercials. It is not quite as clever a strategy as Arthur Chu
could probably devise, but it works for me.
Have a nice weekend,
and stay warm!
Love,
Rebecca
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/02/21/280749689/asian-american-contestant-villain-of-jeopardy-set-to-return
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