Posted 2:24 PM by Floyd

One of the great things about bridge tournaments is that anyone has an opportunity to compete against the best players in the world. There are three national tournaments a year in America and Canada, and any player is welcome to enter the top events. It's as if a weekend hacker could pay a small fee to enter a tournament and play against Tiger Woods.

As far as I know, bridge is the only game in which this is possible. Of course it is partly due to the relative obscurity of the sport; there are a lot more people who would like to play against Tiger Woods than top-rated bridge player Bob Hamman. Because a bridge deal takes five to ten minutes to complete, it's typical for tournaments to hold short matches. A two-session pairs consists of 26 two-board matches; a full-day Swiss typically has eight seven-board matches. More matches equals more opponents, which means more of a chance that a player will get to play against a star. And finally, bridge has elements of randomness so that experts do not win all the time. Certainly an expert will beat a novice over the course of many hands, but there is no guarantee that the expert will prevail on any one specific hand.

You don't have to go to a national tournament to play against champions. My friend Scott just started a job at Google, which is very close to my workplace and the Palo Alto Bridge Club. Earlier this week he asked if I wanted to play in the Friday night barometer. I was happy to do so, but it turned out that the game was cancelled due to a regional in town, at the Mariott in San Mateo. So we planned to play there instead.

Now regionals are mostly about all-day events. If you play one session you are stuck in the "side game," or "Continuous Pairs," or as my friend Jo calls them, "Drooly Pairs." These are not strong games.

Friday night did offer a slightly better event, a one-session Swiss. This is for the people who were eliminated from the first round of a two-day knockout. But our other bridge-playing friends were not available, so we were stuck with the pairs.

Yesterday, after a hectic day at work, I drove up to the Mariott. When I first moved to the Bay Area, there was a big sprawling castle of a hotel called the Dunfee, a stone's throw from the intersection of Highways 92 and 101. It was torn down, and a Mariott now stands in its stead. When Scott and I were in line to get entries, I saw Sherrie Greenberg, a local expert. She asked if I wanted to play in the Swiss, and I happily accepted.

We were one of the last teams to buy entries, so we were placed in a three-way match that lasted two rounds. In the first match we played against some Russian guys who played a strange system. Our opponents had the cards and they did fairly well with them, bidding a cold slam and mostly staying out of trouble. Then we played against some local Chinese fellows, some of whom are pretty good. We got some unexpected imps from this bidding foulup:

I was red on white, in second seat, and held AKx Kxx J9xxx Ax. RHO passed and I said, no problem, 1. In our system, the Caroline club, this is nebulous showing diamonds, or diamonds and clubs, or any 4441, or a 13-15 notrump. Scott responded 1 and I rebid 1N.

Scott alerted this and explained it as 10-12 balanced! And he was right! Normally we play 10-12 notrumps in first and second chair but when red on white we play 13-15. I was really sweating as we might miss a vulnerable game. Scott passed and RHO reopened with 2. I could not take advantage of my knowledge that I had more than Scott expected -- it's "unauthorized information" to me -- so I passed. This was passed out.

We beat 2 one trick. Scott had 11 points, and we were supposed to be 3N. But: 3N had no play! At the other table the player with my cards tried everything and found that nothing worked. +50 and +300 added up to a surprising 8 imps.

After two rounds of play we compared. We beat the Russians by 9 and the Chinese by 7. Next we were matched up against a team that included Mike Schneider, who has participated in the Bridge World's Challenge the Champs and is often credited for submitting CtC and Master Solver Club hands. Mike is a big, bearish sort of guy with a gravelly voice, very friendly and quite a good player.

On the first board I picked up this hand: Qxxxxxx x Jxx Kx. Vul against not, Scott dealt and opened 1! RHO passed, I jumped to 4, and LHO overcalled 4N showing the minors (or maybe a two-suiter, I didn't ask). Scott rebid 5, showing equal or longer hearts; this did not fit my hand and I retreated to 5.

Scott held AJxx AKxxxx A xx. A club lead would have beaten him as the Kx was behind the ace, but my RHO led a diamond and now Scott could set up the hearts for pitches. At the other table the opponents bid to 6 and my teammate led A. We gained 13 imps.

Two hands later Scott opened a strong 1. My RHO had AQJT9 and little else; he tried to get in our way with a 2 overcall and we made him pay. I had Kxxxx and he went for 500 against our partscore.

On the last hand I picked up AQTxxx ATxx x xx. Scott opened a 10-12 notrump. I blasted into game (maybe a 4 transfer to spades would have been better) and scored up 420 for a 7-imp pickup. We won the six-board match 37-1, giving us all 20 victory points. We had 47 VP's and were just behind the leaders, who had 50. We would play them in the last round.

The leaders turned out to be the powerhouse George Rosenkranz team. Rosenkranz invented a system (Romex) and for a very long time was one of the top players in Mexico. He is also a very successful industrialist; he founded Syntex, a pharmaceutical company which developed cortisone and the birth control pill.

The other players were multiple national champion Eddie Wold, Bermuda Bowl winner Mike Passell, and expert Bob Morris. We played against Passell, a tall and powerfully built man in his fifties, and Morris, who is smaller and younger, with dyed blonde hair. The only real scoring in the match came on two boards. On board 23 -- the Michael Jordan board -- Scott dealt and passed at all vulnerable. RHO, Passell, opened 2. I held KJTxxx JTx x KQx. I should probably pass since Scott would have opened all hands with 10 or more points. But I couldn't resist competing for the partscore, so I bid 2. Scott then jumped to 4. Uh-oh, I thought, I've really done it now. Well I really did get us +620 when Scott put down A9xx xx Axxx Jxx. This was worth 10 imps.

On the first hand that we played, my LHO, vulnerable against not, opened 2. Partner passed, and RHO raised to 4. I had a fair hand -- T8 KQ8xx AKJx xx -- but decided to believe the vulnerable opponents and passed.

Declarer had AKQxx Jx xxxxx x. Dummy had 9xx AT9x x AKQxx.

At our table, Scott led a club and the contract could not be beaten. Declarer cashed two clubs, pitching a heart, and led a diamond. I won and had no good option. If I return a trump, declarer wins, takes one diamond ruff, pulls trumps, and crosses to dummy with a heart. At the table I returned a heart. Declarer did not score the Q, and was overruffed once by Scott, but three diamond ruffs in dummy were enough to see him home.

Rosenkranz led a heart. Our teammate won, cashed two clubs, and led a diamond. Wold won and returned a trump; declarer won and ruffed a diamond. Now the contract can be made only with the somewhat double-dummy play of a low club (my hand cannot ruff because then the Q can score; if my hand pitches then declarer gets to score both low trumps in his hand). In practice declarer was uppercut and went down.

The lead decision was somewhat random as Scott's hand was Jxx xx Qxx Jxxxx. We lost the match by 5 imps and tied for third place. If that board had been a push, we would have won by 7. But we could not have won the event; while we were battling it out with Rosencranz, a third team with 46 victory points scored a near-blitz and finished first.

Posted 10:05 AM by Floyd

At 8 a.m. this morning San Jose Mercury News technology columnist Dan Gillmor proclaimed "Press Waking Up on Bush AWOL Story":

Editor and Publisher: Reporters Swarm on Alabama in Pursuit of 'AWOL' Story. Newspaper and wire service reporters from around the country are swarming around Montgomery, Ala. -- until this week perhaps best known as the home of country music legend Hank Williams -- in search of anyone who can remember President Bush serving time as a National Guardsman at the local air base in 1972. For the most part, they have come up empty so far.

The swarm should also look at records in Denver and elsewhere, as it's no doubt doing by now.

Any journalist covering this story, however belatedly, should be checking in regularly at Kevin Drum's excellent Calpundit blog, which has been keeping a close eye on the case. (Drum would do everyone a favor if he collected all of the Bush-National Guard postings on a single page, because we have to hunt for them in the current format.)

I wonder if Drum would collect a link to this InstaPundit post from 7:12 a.m. this morning:

THE BOSTON GLOBE REPORTS that the Bush AWOL story is collapsing, as a key witness turns out to have lied. ...

Gillmor shows up to the Bush-was-AWOL party, only to find that the keg has run dry and the police have arrived.

Posted 9:54 AM by Floyd

The San Jose Mercury News, the "newspaper of Silicon Valley," pays Joe Rodriguez a salary and publishes his work twice a week.

Is redemption possible?

YES, JAMES ORTEGA IS A BAD KID, BUT THE SYSTEM MADE A QUICK DECISION -- TRIAL AS AN ADULT -- INSTEAD OF LOOKING DEEPLY INTO HIS CHARACTER

By Joe Rodriguez

Mercury News

How bad does a kid have to be for society to flush him ``down the toilet?''

Let's consider the case of James Ortega, a gang member sent to juvenile hall for fighting, carrying a knife at school and threatening other students. Bad kid? Sure, but not completely hopeless. Which helps explain why he was let out on a weekend pass.

The San Jose Mercury News, the "newspaper of Silicon Valley," pays Joe Rodriguez a salary and publishes his work twice a week.

That's when, just 12 days after his 14th birthday, he and a couple of his homeboys got into a fight with rival gangbangers at a Jack In The Box restaurant in San Jose. (Kid gangsters can't afford romanticized, Godfather-like joints with cloth napkins).

When the fight escalated, Ortega allegedly pulled a pistol and started firing. In the end, two 17-year-olds were dead.

Vicious? You bet. Gang related? Absolutely.

The San Jose Mercury News, the "newspaper of Silicon Valley," pays Joe Rodriguez a salary and publishes his work twice a week.

But does Ortega deserve to be put on trial as an adult and, if convicted, rot in The Hole for life? At 14, is he beyond the juvenile justice system's ability to save him? Prosecutors think so. But I don't.

The San Jose Mercury News, the "newspaper of Silicon Valley," pays Joe Rodriguez a salary and publishes his work twice a week.

A former principal at Ortega's elementary school called him a disciplinary ``project'' but added that ``he wasn't belligerent, an in-your-face guy. When we talked, he'd listen.''

The boy attended a special Catholic school for disadvantaged and troubled boys with college potential. But this reportedly didn't sit well with Ortega's gang.

This certainly doesn't excuse double-homicide. But it does argue for a deeper look into the boy's character and background than we've had up to now.

The San Jose Mercury News, the "newspaper of Silicon Valley," pays Joe Rodriguez a salary and publishes his work twice a week.

The murders occurred on Jan. 3. A mere five days later, Santa Clara County prosecutors had added up his criminal history, maturity, criminal sophistication and chances of rehabilitation to a big ``negative.'' And they decided the community would be safer if they charged him as an adult.

Was that speedy, or what?

...

The San Jose Mercury News, the "newspaper of Silicon Valley," pays Joe Rodriguez a salary and publishes his work twice a week.

Posted 10:30 PM by Floyd

Huzzah! Evan Kirchhoff may yet escape a pretend foreclosure, a pretend bankruptcy, and a make-believe repo man absconding with his car. I have nothing to add to the farce in progress except to raise an eyebrow at this detail:

The nature and details of a claimed two-year relationship, beginning in the Spring of 2001, between a young woman and Kerry is at the center of serious investigations at several media outlets.

After being approached by a top news producer, the woman fled to Africa, where she remains, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

That was well-planned! "I'll just run off to Africa until people forget about me, which should be November ... or January 2009 ... or January 2013 ..."

(Sadly for Evan, while Kerry-wins-nomination contracts on Tradesports have taken a hit from 96 to 81, most of the slack has been taken up by John Edwards, not Howard Dean. Even his long-shot Hillary contracts have not appreciated.)

Posted 9:40 AM by Floyd

Many blogs have comments. I have comments enabled on mine, and occasionally someone posts one. Woo-hoo! Other blogs attract more commenters, and thus the great issues of our day can be resolved:

• Some people -- including academics/foundation executives -- do not understand the concept of "rhetorical questions." (In what is surely a new threshold for efficiency, establishing this fact took only 96 comments.)
  
• Rich Puchalsky is a troll.
  
• Some people do not understand "fair use". Also: If a person can throw a baseball hard and precisely, it is not permissible to anger him in any way whatsoever.
  
• Teachers carry unique and terrible burdens, much like Jesus and his cross, though Jesus never educated any children, or straightened out the ghastly manners that they learned from their uncaring and incompetent parents.
  

Posted 8:05 PM by Floyd

There must be a whole lot of people who love Agatha Christie. I mean I do. Can't get enough. I have two shelves full of Christie paperbacks, another shelf of Rex Stout, all the Dorothy Sayers mysteries, and even a few books by Simenon.

But -- I realize that when you read a murder mystery you have to suspend disbelief. In real life there are no perplexing homicides where there are six suspects with equally strong motives, and the bodies continue to pile up. (Have you ever heard of a high-profile murder where shortly thereafter someone materially involved was murdered?) And of course in real life the most likely suspect really did do it. A real-life murder mystery is, "Did Von Bulow inject his wife with insulin?" Or, "Is O.J. Simpson guilty?"

(No, wait, that last one is an IQ test. Sorry.)

So what do we make of the crowd of people in front of San Quentin who protested the imminent execution of Kevin Cooper? Do they think that Christie mysteries are filed under "true crime?" Let's see: A guy breaks out of prison and is hiding in a neighborhood where four people are hacked to death and blood found at the scene is determined by DNA testing to be his. Well obviously he is the least likely suspect, huh?

Cooper's defenders claim that police planted Cooper's blood. (Very foresighted of them to have done so as DNA testing would not be a standard criminological procedure for several years!) This is an unfalsifiable fantasy. Why not blame UFOs, or possession by demons? Cooper's lawyers "want the sample retested for a particular preservative agent" -- well that's just a no-fuckin'-brainer for a blood sample that's been around for twenty years, eh? What else do they want to test for? That the blood sample was in a laboratory? That it was kept in a test tube? And why would police need to frame a guy who was caught escaping from prison and was sure to go back for a long stretch? So when Southern California cops caught Sirhan Sirhan the first thing they did was to leave his hairs on shoplifting evidence?

Amazingly, the Supreme Court bought into this nonsense and concurred in the Ninth Circuit's stay of execution. (In 1992 the Supremes got so irritated at the Ninth Circuit's perpetual stays on behalf of convicted murderer Richard Alton Harris that they forbade that court from issuing any more stays.) I can only assume that the Supreme Court justices are also taking a page out of Christie's book, and are doing the unexpected to keep the Ninth Circuit on their toes.

Posted 10:00 PM by Floyd

If you want to know why your Bay Area dwelling is so expensive, one reason is that people are actively engaged in trying to keep land out of the hands of homeowners:

Yet in recent decades, encroaching sprawl and economic conditions have compelled many local land owners to sell their land and relinquish a way of life that has sustained some families for five generations. Urban development -- along with traffic congestion and air and water pollution -- are damaging the rugged character of the coast.

Now we have an opportunity to buck the trend. On Wednesday, the Santa Clara County Local Agency Formation Commission will hold a public hearing on the Coastside Protection Program, a proposal to extend the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District's boundaries so coastal land can be preserved for open space and farming. Because current district boundaries cross both Santa Clara and San Mateo county lines, hearings will be held in both counties, with the San Mateo commission having the final say.

...

In addition to preserving land as open space, the plan will preserve coastal farming by purchasing agricultural easements -- property agreements that set aside land for farming and ranching. In response to community concerns, the open space district has also agreed to permanently eliminate its power of eminent domain in the coastside protection area.

...

The Open Space District's conservation efforts seem to be about half voluntary and half coercive; they are paying easements to farmers, but those farmers must know that many people on the coast would do everything in their power to stop farms from being sold to developers. (I am not exaggerating; in 1996 the nearly completed Beach House Inn was destroyed in an arson fire.) Taking this much land out of supply raises housing prices for everyone.

Too many people act as though their love for the environment and their concern for the homeless are twin pillars of benificence. They are members of a congregation that is never challenged, only soothed and praised. Yet they do far more than any greedy slumlord to exploit the poor. (To see how ridiculous "green" beliefs are, consider how developers are demonized. If you are opposed to homelessness, why treat so badly the people who build homes?)

Posted 2:43 PM by Floyd

I have been doing a fair amount of blogging over the weekend, but it has taken place over at Aaron Haspel's blog. Aaron and I and another commenter engaged in a not-too-friendly debate on corporate regulation. Here is an excerpt from my final comment:

Chemical production is inherently dangerous, but the benefits of chemicals are enormous. Therefore any business that manufactures chemicals must choose processes that are reasonably safe but also reasonably efficient.

How do we determine what is "reasonably safe"? Libertarians contend that if a corporation knows that it can be sued for unsafe behavior, that they will choose to modify their behavior to avoid a massive liability. Let's call this "liability avoidance." Other people contend that the government should set rules for industrial production, and verify that corporations follow them. This of course is "regulation."

I contend that liability avoidance is superior to regulation. Liability avoidance is forward looking; regulation is based on the experience of the past. Liability avoidance can be used when dealing with new processes and technology; it is impossible to craft regulation to anticipate future advances.

Liability avoidance is performed by the people who are on the spot and intimately involved with the manufacturing process. Regulation is performed by someone who works in a government office. Liability avoidance is performed by people who have much to lose if they get it wrong; regulators are never punished for stupid or evil or lazy behavior, and are mostly concerned (if they are concerned at all) with public appearance.