PRS not the same as drawing straws

I hate it when people use paper, rock, scissors to make a random choice-- when it is the equivalent to drawing straws. On more than one occasion I have been with a friend facing some situation in which one of us had to do something neither of us wanted to. How to decide who falls victim to the unfortunate act? Flip a coin? Draw straws? No, paper, rock scissors always comes up. Now depending how badly I want to get out of said situation, and how fair I want to be to the other person, I will agree or disagree to this. If I agree, I turn what should be a random choice into a definite outcome, and I take away from the skill game of paper, rock, scissors.

What do I mean by this? I mean I will not lose. I know my friends well enough that I will win every two-out-of-three games of paper, rock, scissors along with most one-shots. I know this because it is not a game of chance, it is a game of skill.

Poker comes to mind, a game of skill that involves chance. A good player will profit over a bad player certainly in time, but the element of luck can't guarantee a win for the good player in any one game. Paper, rock, scissors is even less so. It doesn't involve cards or dice or fate, just what you know of the other person. It requires even more of a "read" than poker does.

So here's a tip to improve your game. Until you get very good at predicting what your opponent will throw, focus on predicting what he will not throw. For instance, if he or she just threw rock and you know he wouldn't use it twice in a row, you should throw paper. That way you are safe, and have a 50/50 chance of winning the round.

It's the Social Network Hoedown!

There is a lot out there for social networkites. MySpace is still the leader in number of users, but I'm here to tell you about lesser known, but perhaps better options.

Everyone who would ever consider joining a social network at least knows of Facebook by now. Students have known about it and used it for the longest as it was originally open only to them. Now it's public and has enough users that Yahoo reportedly offered over a billion dollars for the site. The amazing thing is the offer was turned down. I suppose the Facebook founders are holding out for two billion, but I doubt that Facebook will become any more relevent than it is today-- meaning the next offer will no doubt be less.

The social networkites are fickle, you see. And new networks are popping up better than MySpace and Facebook. I just started toying with Virb.com, which has more in common with MySpace but is a whole lot prettier. It allows customizing the HTML and CSS code to make pages look like high-quality web 2.0 sites. Though even without the customization, pages look better than 90% of MySpace profiles.

A little outside the box are sites like Twitter and Jaiku, which are less profile page oriented. Twitter is more like the status option of facebook, or an away message. It is microblogging that answers the question "what are you doing right now?" Actually Twitter's creator was also the guy behind Blogger before Google bought it out. If you want to see how people use Twitter, try out twittervision.com.

Jaiku is different still, it displays your web presence. Visitors can see messages you add, similar to Twitter's microblogging, as well as feeds from other sites you use across the internet. My Jaiku page displays bookmarks to my favorite sites as I add them through del.ici.ous, as well as photos added to Flickr, and new postings to this very blog.

So now you know. Go check them out and be my friend!

Why must God rest?

I clocked in 4 hours of church this Easter weekend and one of the readings that came up was from Genesis, which got me thinking. God is generally accepted as an all-powerful-omnipotent-being... so why did he need to rest on Sunday? Now we must assume this is symbolic, after all there wasn't a calender at the begining of time, much less one like today's. I would go further to say that most of the Bible is symbolic, meaning not literal, especially the Old Testament.

Adam and Eve then, literal or sympolic? If symbolic then all those "theories" of evolution could be true. I am more of a science-minded guy, so I know that the evidence of evolution makes it more then just a theory. And if Adam and Eve was just a moralty story, that means original sin is most likely not the case. That means there is a major crack in most Christian religions.

I'm not trying to disprove Christianity. I, for one, believe most of the new testament to be literal, which is not easy to do considering the miracles preformed thoughout go against science as well. It is just easier for me to accept the version of God portrayed here, then the God of the old testament that often went against his own commandments.