From: Andy Toth (antst20+@pitt.edu)
Date: Fri Aug 25 2000 - 22:51:31 MDT
no, there should be heavily color-driven, geometric games where
average kinetic energy, and total capacity take stage center. do the
olympics have to be knocked over in order to reoptimize and place new
games? or are these games that we speak of already in place in
industry-society? the gay man won because he had the highest 'index
of effectiveness' (see andromeda strain, again) :)
Andy
Spike Jones wrote:
>
> As we go into this Olympic season we are again reminded of the
> traditional nature of sports. All the games have had the optimal
> strategies long since worked out, the athletes have honed all the
> same skills to within a hairs breadth of perfection, all the competitors
>
> in each event look alike, all doing the same tricks, etc.
>
> Booooorrrrringggggg.
>
> What we need now are new sports, where the optimal strategy
> is still debatable. Consider the Survivor game, which you have
> surely heard about. I didnt see any but the last half hour of the
> last show, but I understand there were three remaining players
> who participated in a challenge, the winner given the opportunity
> to vote off one of the others. The last three included an unpopular
> man, a moderately popular woman and a very popular man.
>
> There is a strange loop here, for the unpopular man must have
> realized that the only possible way he could win the prize is
> to lose the challenge! Reasoning: if he won the challenge, then
> he would face a vote by the last 7 contestants between himself
> and either the moderately popular woman or the highly popular
> man. So, he lost the challenge, which was won by the woman,
> who acted in her own best interest in voting off the popular man
> (to whom she would have lost in the final election) but in so doing,
> she lost popularity with the jury of seven and so lost the final
> election to the unpopular man!
>
> Now thats a cool strange-loop.
>
> In the spirit of survivor, I propose a new sport, the optimal
> strategy of which is unclear. The game is to see who can
> walk (or run) the greatest distance, assuming that the competitor
> must carry *all* necessary supplies, food, water, whatever else
> might be needed.
>
> To make the competition end in a reasonable time, we would
> make the competition in Death Valley in the early fall, so its not
> so very hot, but is very dry. This means most of the payload
> would be water. Again to speed the competition, the walk
> ends if the competitor stops for more than 5 minutes. All the
> competitors get a GPS receiver connected to a phone. If
> that receiver gets the same number for 4.5 minutes, a warning
> tone sounds, and if it hasnt changed 30 seconds later, the
> pickup crew is called. This of course would preclude sleeping,
> so the contest is unlikely to last more than about 30-40 hrs,
> the winners having traveled perhaps 150 km.
>
> Under those conditions, men and women could compete
> equally, for it is unclear what advantage, if any, accrues to
> the biggest. Also, there may be an advantage to the tall
> skinny people, for they would cover more real estate with
> each step, yet throw off access heat efficiently, thereby
> making the best use of their water and food. For this
> reason, it may be clear why I like this game.
>
> Has anyone ideas or suggestions? spike
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