Degenerate Strategies and Cheating

Why isn't using a degenerate strategy considered cheating? Degenerate strategies take advantage of weaknesses in the rules of a game, but do not actually violate the rules. What kind of player would play in this way? The answer is both a dedicated player, who is overzealously seeking the perfect strategy, and an unsportsmanlike player, who has found a hole in the rules to exploit, even though he understands that he is not playing the game the way it was intended. These two kinds of players ca...

 How a Nerd Walks Up the Stairs

Your steps should be in a cycle: short, long, long. Long in this case means a double step. Thus, you will cover five stairs in one short-long-long cycle. In addition, you should always start the first cycle on the same foot. Suppose you start on the left foot, then after two cycles you are back on the left foot, having covered ten stairs. While you are walking the stairs in this way, it is clear where you are in the cycle. By the end of the staircase, you will know the number of stairs modulo...

 How Utopian Stories Can Encourage Work in Reality

"I do a lot of public speaking, often debating public figures on television or other high profile settings, or giving speeches to large audiences," one Fellow, an immigration rights lobbyist, wrote in her query response. "I am constantly, almost involuntarily, honing my skills by debating adversaries or giving speeches when I'm alone (in the car or walking to the metro). They're not exactly imaginary worlds, but rather imagined versions of real-life settings in which I find myself" Equally ...

 Beginning to Reason

Beginning to reason is like stepping onto an escalator that leads upward and out of sight. Once we take the first step, the distance to be traveled is independent of our will and we cannot know in advance where we shall end.... If we do not understand what an escalator is, we might get on it intending to go a few meters, only to find that once we are on, it is difficult to avoid going all the way to the end. Similarly, once reasoning has got started it is hard to tell where it will stop. The...

 Running In Elderly Promotes Walking-Economy of Youth

Older runners had a 7–10% better walking economy than older walkers over the range of speeds tested (p = .016) and had walking economy similar to young sedentary adults over a similar range of speeds (p = .237). We found no substantial biomechanical differences between older walkers and runners. In contrast to older runners, older walkers had similar walking economy as older sedentary adults (p = .461) and ~26% worse walking economy than young adults (p<.0001).

 Teleporters Homogenize the World

In Munich he walked. The air was warm and clean; it cleared some of the fumes from his head. He walked the brightly lighted slidewalks, adding his own pace to their ten-miles-per-hour speed. It occurred to him then that every city in the world had slidewalks, and that they all moved at ten miles per hour. The thought was intolerable. Not new; just intolerable. Louis Wu saw how thoroughly Munich resembled Cairo and Resht ... and San Francisco and Topeka and London and Amsterdam. The st...

 Understanding Awe

It can be hard to generalize what people consider jaw-dropping, but Vohs says research demonstrates what consistently creates an awesome experience. Travel ranks high. So does gazing at the cosmos on a clear night or watching a sensational film, as well as anytime we encounter massive quantities: colorful tulips in bloom, a bustling market in India, or a stunning school of fish. Novelty and perceptual vastness forces us into the present moment. The study underscores the importance of cultiva...

 加油 as a Term of Encouragement

The Chinese characters say 加油 (Jia1 you2).加 is composed of 力 (power) and 口 (mouth). It means 'to add'油 is made out of 水 (氵, water) and 由(from/ due). It means oil.加（to add） 油（oil）= add oil or make an extra effort 加油 is a terribly common phrase in day to day life. If you want to encourage someone to carry on great work, or in a sports competition, you say 加油! A bit like 'go on!' in English. Of course another literal meaning of 加油 is to refuel.

 Hand-in-Hand Behind the Back Body Posture

Several prominent male members of the British Royal Family are noted for their habit of walking with their head up, chin out and one palm gripping the other hand behind the back. Not only does British Royalty use this gesture; it is common among Royalty of many countries. On the local scene, the gesture is used by the policeman patrolling his beat, the headmaster of the local school when he is walking through the school yard, senior military personnel and others in a position of authority. T...

 Mercury Sun Walkers

The sun is always just about to rise. Mercury rotates so slowly that you can walk fast enough over its rocky surface to stay ahead of the dawn; and so many people do. Many have made this a way of life. They walk roughly westward, staying always ahead of the stupendous day. Some of them hurry from location to location, pausing to look in cracks they earlier inoculated with bioleaching metallophytes, quickly scraping free any accumulated residues of gold or tungsten or uranium. But most of them...