Once upon a time there was a database programming language called Dataflex, which only three people on the planet have ever used. The Dataflex compiler worked wonderfully well until one day, for no identifiable reason, the error messages given at compile-time underwent a mysterious transformation. Certain characters in the alphabet became swapped with other letters. For example, all S's became C's, and all U's became E's. So an error that contained the word "SHOULD" would instead contain the word "CHOELD". The bug, or whatever, didn't seem to affect anything else, so we lived with it for awhile and took no further note of it until one day we filled up the hard drive and it tried to display the message "ERROR: DISK FULL". Go ahead, do the math. I'll wait.
When I first heard about _The One_, I was incredibly excited. It sounded like the perfect merger between the Hong Kong action flick and Hollywood special effects. They've been adding big-budget effects to kung-fu oriented films for a while now, but for the most part, they were sed to add some bang to the fight, for big, over-the-top single attacks, or as a replacement for actors with real fighting experience. Here, they would be forced by the nature of the story to actually muck around with the way people move and
interact. Plus, I really liked Jet Li.
That was several years ago. This July, I caught my first glimpse of a trailer for the film at Comic-Con in San Diego. I became excited all over again. It looked like they had really done what I was hoping they would do. Jet Li's
character picks up a motorcycle in one hand and whacks somebody over the head with it. And while that's an obvious biological (and some may argue,
physical) impossibility, the sound and imagery contained enough gravity to convince me. The clips shown had a real impact, something that they'd only begun to incorporate in films like The Matrix and The Duel. Plus, I really liked Jet Li.
Then the TV spots came. Now I watch a lot of television, so I get a bit more exposure to advertising than your average human. I saw the trailer way too many times, and while I'm thankful that they didn't feel the need to put every action shot in the whole movie into the trailer, I did end up seeing the same stuff over and over again. I was still excited, but expose a person to something enough times, and they do get desensitized. But I still really liked Jet Li.
Then the reviews came in. I read bits and pieces of a lot of different reviewers and the consensus seemed to be that while there were some really
good fighting sequences in the movie, the rest of the movie was crap. Critics complained about poor acting performances and stupid plotlines. My
expectations fell significantly. I was still looking forward to what I expected to be a few really nifty action sequences pasted together with some shoddy plot-building scenes and crappy one-liners. But there is no denying the fact that I still really liked Jet Li.
So tonight, I went and saw _The One_. After I'd sat through the first twenty minutes of the movie, I began to wonder where all the awful acting was supposed to be. These certainly weren't Oscar-calibre performances, but Jet Li and Delroy Lindo gave as respectable an acting job as one would find in any good action flick. The storyline made sense. The actions of the characters were well-motivated. I laughed when I was supposed to. It was clear that the premise was over-the-top and that we were dealing with the soft science fiction of convenience and not the hard science fiction of physicists. Many
action movies, both from Hollywood and Hong Kong, seem to ignore the necessity of these elements. The rest of the movie doesn't have to be spectacular, but it has to be good enough to carry the viewers from one action sequence to
another. And _The One_ had enough quality in all the right places to do just that.
Now I realize that this is a lot of build-up for just a review, but I wanted to give a feel for the state of mind that I was in when I went to see this movie. When I first heard about it, I was expecting a bit more than was reasonable to get out of a movie. And yet somehow, _The One_ delivered. This is one damned fine movie. The fights and chases build steadily throughout the
movie as the hero and the villain dance around each other. They don't use their superhuman abilities sparingly. These are the two most powerful beings in the entire multiverse, and _The One_ does an incredible job of letting us
know. Of course all the chasing and dodging is simply rising action. It all leads to a final showdown, like the most classic of kung-fu films. We are promised a fight to end all fights, and we get it. It's not just super-fast
blows and fancy jumping and dodging. Every hit that is landed has the impact of a sledgehammer behind it. This is power.
The special effects are used with remarkable results. While there a few brief instances where a few more hours at a computer could have yielded better results, the overall impression is seamless and transparent. There was no doubt in my mind that there were two Jet Li's on that screen and that they were beating the crap out of each other at the speed of sound. Slow motion is
an effect that is rarely used properly, specially when extremely fast martial arts is involved. _The One_ is an exception. Due to careful attention to the laws of physics and the constant presence of normal-speed motion (e.g. falling sparks and turning machinery) in the background, we get a wonderful gut-feeling of just exactly how fast these guys are moving. Jet Li throws his arms and legs at ludicrous speed as he flies through the air, but at the same time, he's falling at a normal rate. Gravity still works, even though physiology was thrown out the window at the opening.
Incidental effects were also very well done, like the travelling-between-universes effect. The little bits of humor were funny, if a bit silly. Jet Li delivers an understated, but effective performance. Delroy Lindo admirably fills the obligitory nowhere-near-as-good-as-the-hero-or-villain-but-st ill-manages-to-hold-his-own role. I even liked the ending.
In short, this is one good movie, and you should go see it. The critics don't know what they're talking about.
And in case you're wondering, yes, I still really like Jet Li.
I could be totally off my rocker, but I was suffereing under the impression that the reason banner ads were losing popularity was not because there weren't any click-throughs. I thought there were plenty of click-throughs. What I had figured was the problem was the fact that nobody who clicked through ever paid for anything. I never really understood the "Shock the Monkey" banners that were designed to make you click and do nothing else. People clicked, then realized they were duped and backed out. Maybe they got stung by a barrage of pop ups or something, but they didn't really add to the revenue of the advertising site.<p>
I also find myself agreeing with the arguments posted here about how advertising has survived for decades without any click-throughs. An advertisement for Expedia.com on the television serves to permanently link in your mind "travel web sites" to "Expedia.com" (which is why they say the name so much on the commercial). It's designed for name recognition. Nobody gets up and runs to their computer to make travel plans for next summer, so why should people click through right off the bat?<p>
The bottom line is that banner ads should do their best to drill the name of their website into your head. Otherwise the only possible revenue they could attribute is via click-throughs, and we've all been through that rigamarole already.
Obscure, I know, but this annoyed me a lot. In the game Diablo II, there are a few magical items that are utterly ridiculolus. Completely and utterly ridiculous. One of them is the Shroud of the Invincible Llama, whose stat bonuses are just so powerful that it's silly. I assume it was put there as a joke. Well, I only succeeded in finding one page that mentions the shroud, and none that mention a bow my roommate found called the Touch of God Chibi Short Bow. Absolutely none, which I find odd considering so many people have huge lists of items. I wanted to know if there were more such super-powerful items in the game. But alas, I was unable to find such things.
This is an example of a game that is close to the possibility of non-zero sum, but depending on how you think about it, it may not be. But the game is so cool that I just had to talk about it. Cosmic Encounter is a rather old board game about conquest of the galaxy. Each character is dealt an alien race and the goal is to get bases on five extra-solar system planets. It's quite possible to share a planet with other players, and frequently more than one player works together to win the game jointly. The reason why it's probably not exactly zero-sum is that I'm not sure if it's possible to have _everyone_ win the game. I think that with the right combination of alien abilities and a very contrived situation, it might actually be possible to have everyone win, but I haven't thought of how.
Anyway, this is a terribly cool game, but try and find one of the old versions (either mayfair or west end games), and not the most recent (i.e. last couple months) release. It really simplifies the game and really isn't all that cool.
***
Another famous game that I've learned from mathematics is the Hex game. Imagine a gamefield tiled by hexagons, vaguely rhombic in overal shape. Two oposing sides have the same colored border (white) and the other two oposing sides have the other colored border (black). Players take turns coloring hexes until the board is full. In 2-dimensions this is the ultimate in zero-sum. There's a famous theorem that proves that there will be exactly one and one winner.
If you expand the game to multiple dimensions (one dimension for each player) (which would be almost impossible to play, but theoretically interesting) in a specific manner, the game changes so that there is _always_ one winner, but anywhere between 1 and every person could win once the board is filled.
Of course in both these games, if people played to intentionally try to make everyone win, it probably wouldn't be all that interesting of a game. Why? Because virtually all entertainment includes some measure of conflict.
In passive entertainment (movies, fiction, television) the conflict is experienced vicariously through the characters. Even humor is built out of a conflict between expectations and actuality. In interactive entertainment (games), the conflict _still_ needs to be present. Classically, that conflict has been directly with the other player. It was simple; if you rigged it so everyone wanted to win on at least some level, the players would provide enough conflict with each other to make the game enjoyable.
Of course this isn't really the only way to provide conflict. There _are_ games where the conflict is provided elsewhere. In an RPG, the conflict is provided by the gamemaster. The players aren't necessarily playing against the gamemaster, but he provides the necessary resistance. He sets up the NPCs and monsters and dungeons and challenges. This allows for a clever opponent who doesn't exist.
Some games don't require a person to provide the complict. The new Lord of the Rings game is played by a group of people against the game itself. It's supposed to be difficult to win (my friends and I are 1 for 2), but the resistance is provided by situations dictated by cards and on the boards. I don't think I'd like to play this game repeatedly, however, because the opponent never changes. He does the same things every game.
Computers change this. If the computer provides an opponent for a classical-style game, then the game is non-zero sum for the players involved _and_ the opponent is as clever as the AI involved. Of course non-classical games can be programmed as well. But one can always think of the players playing _against_ the game, or the universe presented by the game. In that way, many non-zero-sum games become zero-sum again. The better chance the player has at winning, the worse chance the game has at winning. But only if you think in those terms.
It's not necessary to deal with winners and losers in the traditional sense for a game to be fun, but it certainly is necessary for there to be some sort of resistance or conflict, however it is achieved. In order for this to happen, there has to be a goal, and there has to be at least a perceived chance of success and one of failure. In this way, there always needs to be the potential for winning and losing. What isn't necessary is for there to be any particular number of winners or losers.
When I was in high school, some friends of mine and I tried to start a Magic: the Gathering club. I don't play the game anymore, but at the time, I was really into it. Unfortunately, due to parents' complaints about the "satanic nature" of the game, the school board refused to allow us to have such an organization. Needless to say, I was outraged. I told the story to my parents, who thought it was just as ridiculous. My mother decided to write an anonymous letter to the school board. This is the letter she wrote:
Dear School Board Members:
I have heard a rumor that some of the students at your school have proposed to start a chess club.
I wish to voice my strong objections to the use of school facilities for this purpose. In my opinion, chess is a vile, anti-democratic game that undermines American values by promoting feudalism, human sacrifice of queens, and demonic possession of castle towers.
Chess is full of insidious symbolism that subtly undermines the mental well-being of those who indulge in it. For example, the piece called a "knight" is symbolized by a horse head, confusing our youngsters' concept of human identity with bestial symbols used by organized crime. Furthermore, clergymen are maligned by portraying bishops as sly individuals whose diagonal movement indicates that their motives are never straightforward but always hidden and devious.
Chess is a dreadfully violent game. Children are taught to sacrifice and murder with callous disregard for the sanctity of individual life, especially that of the poor, who are treated as nothing more than pawns.
The origin of this deadly epidemic can be traced to the godless Russians, who, when they saw the decline of their own onerous communist government being caused by this evil influence, dealt a parting blow to the American democracy by infecting us with chess. However, we have one advantage over the Soviets that will allow us to succeed in stamping out chess where they failed -- FREEDOM!
Some may say that chess is "just a game". Don't be fooled by this! The people who play chess may think that it is just a game, but after hours and hours of play they become addicted to it and lose sight of reality. Pretty soon they'll be shooting up drugs and jumping out of windows to land on innocent bystanders.
You wanna know why it doesn't make any sense to you? Because it doesn't make any sense. This guy is not talking about a significant advancement in physics. He's talking about rewriting it from the ground up. Orbit spheres do not exist. We have what are called energy orbits, but one of the fundamental concepts of chemistry is that you can't move them! They're not simply a distance from the nucleus as planetary orbits are. They're specific energy states that electons exist in. You can jump an electron from one energy state (orbit) to another, but you cannot just "shrink" the orbit. Especially not below that of the lowest energy state (which hydrogen atoms usually exist in). This is high school chemistry! He's either a fraud or an idiot. Even though he may have fantastic people skills, that doesn't mean he knows the first thing about physics. And did anyone think to wonder whether or not the $25 mil might be a fraud as well? Maybe he made that part up in order to convince people that he was legit. "He's already got $25mil invested, he can't be a complete crackpot." Right. This is worse than cold fusion. This is just stupid. I hope that whoever wrote the slashdot headline for this one was being facetious when he offered up "ground-breaking science" as a valid option.
Some of them, however, have serious effects. I can't believe that they haven't been taken off the lawbooks yet. In Maricopa County (that's in AZ, including Phoenix), it's illegal for 6 or more unrelated women to live together in a house. The law got there in order to prevent brothels, but now it's just annoying. They actually continue to enforce it. Because of this, there aren't any sorority houses at Arizona State University. All the sorority girls live in the dormitories. Pathetic, no?
Slashdot Mirror
In high school I know a kid named Jason Twenty-five. I am not kidding. His actual last name was a number. Though I don't know how it was spelled.
HC
Once upon a time there was a database programming language called Dataflex, which only three people on the planet have ever used. The Dataflex compiler worked wonderfully well until one day, for no identifiable reason, the error messages given at compile-time underwent a mysterious transformation. Certain characters in the alphabet became swapped with other letters. For example, all S's became C's, and all U's became E's. So an error that contained the word "SHOULD" would instead contain the word "CHOELD". The bug, or whatever, didn't seem to affect anything else, so we lived with it for awhile and took no further note of it until one day we filled up the hard drive and it tried to display the message "ERROR: DISK FULL". Go ahead, do the math. I'll wait.
No, I'm not kidding. It really said that.
When I first heard about _The One_, I was incredibly excited. It sounded like the perfect merger between the Hong Kong action flick and Hollywood special effects. They've been adding big-budget effects to kung-fu oriented films for a while now, but for the most part, they were sed to add some bang to the fight, for big, over-the-top single attacks, or as a replacement for actors with real fighting experience. Here, they would be forced by the nature of the story to actually muck around with the way people move and
t ill-manages-to-hold-his-own role. I even liked the ending.
interact. Plus, I really liked Jet Li.
That was several years ago. This July, I caught my first glimpse of a trailer for the film at Comic-Con in San Diego. I became excited all over again. It looked like they had really done what I was hoping they would do. Jet Li's
character picks up a motorcycle in one hand and whacks somebody over the head with it. And while that's an obvious biological (and some may argue,
physical) impossibility, the sound and imagery contained enough gravity to convince me. The clips shown had a real impact, something that they'd only begun to incorporate in films like The Matrix and The Duel. Plus, I really liked Jet Li.
Then the TV spots came. Now I watch a lot of television, so I get a bit more exposure to advertising than your average human. I saw the trailer way too many times, and while I'm thankful that they didn't feel the need to put every action shot in the whole movie into the trailer, I did end up seeing the same stuff over and over again. I was still excited, but expose a person to something enough times, and they do get desensitized. But I still really liked Jet Li.
Then the reviews came in. I read bits and pieces of a lot of different reviewers and the consensus seemed to be that while there were some really
good fighting sequences in the movie, the rest of the movie was crap. Critics complained about poor acting performances and stupid plotlines. My
expectations fell significantly. I was still looking forward to what I expected to be a few really nifty action sequences pasted together with some shoddy plot-building scenes and crappy one-liners. But there is no denying the fact that I still really liked Jet Li.
So tonight, I went and saw _The One_. After I'd sat through the first twenty minutes of the movie, I began to wonder where all the awful acting was supposed to be. These certainly weren't Oscar-calibre performances, but Jet Li and Delroy Lindo gave as respectable an acting job as one would find in any good action flick. The storyline made sense. The actions of the characters were well-motivated. I laughed when I was supposed to. It was clear that the premise was over-the-top and that we were dealing with the soft science fiction of convenience and not the hard science fiction of physicists. Many
action movies, both from Hollywood and Hong Kong, seem to ignore the necessity of these elements. The rest of the movie doesn't have to be spectacular, but it has to be good enough to carry the viewers from one action sequence to
another. And _The One_ had enough quality in all the right places to do just that.
Now I realize that this is a lot of build-up for just a review, but I wanted to give a feel for the state of mind that I was in when I went to see this movie. When I first heard about it, I was expecting a bit more than was reasonable to get out of a movie. And yet somehow, _The One_ delivered. This is one damned fine movie. The fights and chases build steadily throughout the
movie as the hero and the villain dance around each other. They don't use their superhuman abilities sparingly. These are the two most powerful beings in the entire multiverse, and _The One_ does an incredible job of letting us
know. Of course all the chasing and dodging is simply rising action. It all leads to a final showdown, like the most classic of kung-fu films. We are promised a fight to end all fights, and we get it. It's not just super-fast
blows and fancy jumping and dodging. Every hit that is landed has the impact of a sledgehammer behind it. This is power.
The special effects are used with remarkable results. While there a few brief instances where a few more hours at a computer could have yielded better results, the overall impression is seamless and transparent. There was no doubt in my mind that there were two Jet Li's on that screen and that they were beating the crap out of each other at the speed of sound. Slow motion is
an effect that is rarely used properly, specially when extremely fast martial arts is involved. _The One_ is an exception. Due to careful attention to the laws of physics and the constant presence of normal-speed motion (e.g. falling sparks and turning machinery) in the background, we get a wonderful gut-feeling of just exactly how fast these guys are moving. Jet Li throws his arms and legs at ludicrous speed as he flies through the air, but at the same time, he's falling at a normal rate. Gravity still works, even though physiology was thrown out the window at the opening.
Incidental effects were also very well done, like the travelling-between-universes effect. The little bits of humor were funny, if a bit silly. Jet Li delivers an understated, but effective performance. Delroy Lindo admirably fills the obligitory nowhere-near-as-good-as-the-hero-or-villain-but-s
In short, this is one good movie, and you should go see it. The critics don't know what they're talking about.
And in case you're wondering, yes, I still really like Jet Li.
HC
I could be totally off my rocker, but I was suffereing under the impression that the reason banner ads were losing popularity was not because there weren't any click-throughs. I thought there were plenty of click-throughs. What I had figured was the problem was the fact that nobody who clicked through ever paid for anything. I never really understood the "Shock the Monkey" banners that were designed to make you click and do nothing else. People clicked, then realized they were duped and backed out. Maybe they got stung by a barrage of pop ups or something, but they didn't really add to the revenue of the advertising site.<p>
I also find myself agreeing with the arguments posted here about how advertising has survived for decades without any click-throughs. An advertisement for Expedia.com on the television serves to permanently link in your mind "travel web sites" to "Expedia.com" (which is why they say the name so much on the commercial). It's designed for name recognition. Nobody gets up and runs to their computer to make travel plans for next summer, so why should people click through right off the bat?<p>
The bottom line is that banner ads should do their best to drill the name of their website into your head. Otherwise the only possible revenue they could attribute is via click-throughs, and we've all been through that rigamarole already.
HC
Obscure, I know, but this annoyed me a lot. In the game Diablo II, there are a few magical items that are utterly ridiculolus. Completely and utterly ridiculous. One of them is the Shroud of the Invincible Llama, whose stat bonuses are just so powerful that it's silly. I assume it was put there as a joke. Well, I only succeeded in finding one page that mentions the shroud, and none that mention a bow my roommate found called the Touch of God Chibi Short Bow. Absolutely none, which I find odd considering so many people have huge lists of items. I wanted to know if there were more such super-powerful items in the game. But alas, I was unable to find such things.
HC
This is an example of a game that is close to the possibility of non-zero sum, but depending on how you think about it, it may not be. But the game is so cool that I just had to talk about it. Cosmic Encounter is a rather old board game about conquest of the galaxy. Each character is dealt an alien race and the goal is to get bases on five extra-solar system planets. It's quite possible to share a planet with other players, and frequently more than one player works together to win the game jointly. The reason why it's probably not exactly zero-sum is that I'm not sure if it's possible to have _everyone_ win the game. I think that with the right combination of alien abilities and a very contrived situation, it might actually be possible to have everyone win, but I haven't thought of how.
Anyway, this is a terribly cool game, but try and find one of the old versions (either mayfair or west end games), and not the most recent (i.e. last couple months) release. It really simplifies the game and really isn't all that cool.
***
Another famous game that I've learned from mathematics is the Hex game. Imagine a gamefield tiled by hexagons, vaguely rhombic in overal shape. Two oposing sides have the same colored border (white) and the other two oposing sides have the other colored border (black). Players take turns coloring hexes until the board is full. In 2-dimensions this is the ultimate in zero-sum. There's a famous theorem that proves that there will be exactly one and one winner.
If you expand the game to multiple dimensions (one dimension for each player) (which would be almost impossible to play, but theoretically interesting) in a specific manner, the game changes so that there is _always_ one winner, but anywhere between 1 and every person could win once the board is filled.
Of course in both these games, if people played to intentionally try to make everyone win, it probably wouldn't be all that interesting of a game. Why? Because virtually all entertainment includes some measure of conflict.
In passive entertainment (movies, fiction, television) the conflict is experienced vicariously through the characters. Even humor is built out of a conflict between expectations and actuality. In interactive entertainment (games), the conflict _still_ needs to be present. Classically, that conflict has been directly with the other player. It was simple; if you rigged it so everyone wanted to win on at least some level, the players would provide enough conflict with each other to make the game enjoyable.
Of course this isn't really the only way to provide conflict. There _are_ games where the conflict is provided elsewhere. In an RPG, the conflict is provided by the gamemaster. The players aren't necessarily playing against the gamemaster, but he provides the necessary resistance. He sets up the NPCs and monsters and dungeons and challenges. This allows for a clever opponent who doesn't exist.
Some games don't require a person to provide the complict. The new Lord of the Rings game is played by a group of people against the game itself. It's supposed to be difficult to win (my friends and I are 1 for 2), but the resistance is provided by situations dictated by cards and on the boards. I don't think I'd like to play this game repeatedly, however, because the opponent never changes. He does the same things every game.
Computers change this. If the computer provides an opponent for a classical-style game, then the game is non-zero sum for the players involved _and_ the opponent is as clever as the AI involved. Of course non-classical games can be programmed as well. But one can always think of the players playing _against_ the game, or the universe presented by the game. In that way, many non-zero-sum games become zero-sum again. The better chance the player has at winning, the worse chance the game has at winning. But only if you think in those terms.
It's not necessary to deal with winners and losers in the traditional sense for a game to be fun, but it certainly is necessary for there to be some sort of resistance or conflict, however it is achieved. In order for this to happen, there has to be a goal, and there has to be at least a perceived chance of success and one of failure. In this way, there always needs to be the potential for winning and losing. What isn't necessary is for there to be any particular number of winners or losers.
When I was in high school, some friends of mine and I tried to start a Magic: the Gathering club. I don't play the game anymore, but at the time, I was really into it. Unfortunately, due to parents' complaints about the "satanic nature" of the game, the school board refused to allow us to have such an organization. Needless to say, I was outraged. I told the story to my parents, who thought it was just as ridiculous. My mother decided to write an anonymous letter to the school board. This is the letter she wrote:
Dear School Board Members:
I have heard a rumor that some of the students at your school have proposed to start a chess club.
I wish to voice my strong objections to the use of school facilities for this purpose. In my opinion, chess is a vile, anti-democratic game that undermines American values by promoting feudalism, human sacrifice of queens, and demonic possession of castle towers.
Chess is full of insidious symbolism that subtly undermines the mental well-being of those who indulge in it. For example, the piece called a "knight" is symbolized by a horse head, confusing our youngsters' concept of human identity with bestial symbols used by organized crime. Furthermore, clergymen are maligned by portraying bishops as sly individuals whose diagonal movement indicates that their motives are never straightforward but always hidden and devious.
Chess is a dreadfully violent game. Children are taught to sacrifice and murder with callous disregard for the sanctity of individual life, especially that of the poor, who are treated as nothing more than pawns.
The origin of this deadly epidemic can be traced to the godless Russians, who, when they saw the decline of their own onerous communist government being caused by this evil influence, dealt a parting blow to the American democracy by infecting us with chess. However, we have one advantage over the Soviets that will allow us to succeed in stamping out chess where they failed -- FREEDOM!
Some may say that chess is "just a game". Don't be fooled by this! The people who play chess may think that it is just a game, but after hours and hours of play they become addicted to it and lose sight of reality. Pretty soon they'll be shooting up drugs and jumping out of windows to land on innocent bystanders.
Enough is enough! This MUST STOP!!!!
You wanna know why it doesn't make any sense to you? Because it doesn't make any sense. This guy is not talking about a significant advancement in physics. He's talking about rewriting it from the ground up. Orbit spheres do not exist. We have what are called energy orbits, but one of the fundamental concepts of chemistry is that you can't move them! They're not simply a distance from the nucleus as planetary orbits are. They're specific energy states that electons exist in. You can jump an electron from one energy state (orbit) to another, but you cannot just "shrink" the orbit. Especially not below that of the lowest energy state (which hydrogen atoms usually exist in). This is high school chemistry! He's either a fraud or an idiot. Even though he may have fantastic people skills, that doesn't mean he knows the first thing about physics. And did anyone think to wonder whether or not the $25 mil might be a fraud as well? Maybe he made that part up in order to convince people that he was legit. "He's already got $25mil invested, he can't be a complete crackpot." Right. This is worse than cold fusion. This is just stupid. I hope that whoever wrote the slashdot headline for this one was being facetious when he offered up "ground-breaking science" as a valid option.
Some of them, however, have serious effects. I can't believe that they haven't been taken off the lawbooks yet. In Maricopa County (that's in AZ, including Phoenix), it's illegal for 6 or more unrelated women to live together in a house. The law got there in order to prevent brothels, but now it's just annoying. They actually continue to enforce it. Because of this, there aren't any sorority houses at Arizona State University. All the sorority girls live in the dormitories. Pathetic, no?