Diplomacy Zine -- EP #200 Chapter Seven From: Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com Date: Thu, 20 Sep 1990 02:14:29 +0000 Issue #200 of ELECTRONIC PROTOCOL: ************************************************************************ PLAYER Hey, Flash, check out the mature quail heading this way. FLASH Yeah, mama. MARGE Excuse me, Mr... Flash? FLASH Hi, there, little lady. What can I do for you? EXT. PARK - STANDS - A LITTLE LATER Marge rejoins the family, holding the ball. MARGE Here you go, Bart. She hands the ball to Bart. BART (READING) "Room 26, Springfield Kozy Kort...How 'bout it? -- Flash." (THEN) Hey, cool. HOMER Wow! Flash Bailor came on to my wife! (IMPRESSED) You've still got the magic, Marge. ************************************************************************ Chapter One contains: BLITZKRIEG, GETTYSBURG, RED STORM RISING, and PASSCHENDAELE And is published by daybell@aludra.usc.edu/Donald Daybell Chapter Two contains: DRAGONSLAYER, JACAL, MANHATTAN, VERSAILLES, DRESDEN, and KHAN And is published by sinhaa@mcmaster.ca/Anand Sinha Chapter Three contains: DAWN PATROL, BERLIN, EL ALAMEIN, SQUALANE, UNGAWE, CAPTAIN CAVEMAN, BRUSILOV OFFENSIVE And is published by cwekx@htikub5.bitnet/Constantijn Wekx Chapter Four contains: NICKEL, OZARK, DEADLY DAGGERS, YORKTOWN, MONTREUIL-SUR-MER, FIRE WHEN READY Chapter Five contains: ARCHANGEL, BORDEL, ERIS, MASADA, and YALTA And is published by jjcarette@watami.waterloo.edu/David Gibbs Chapter Six contains: TOKUGAWA, BERLIN WALL, HIROSHIMA, GENGHIS KHAN, SEA LION, VIOLENT PEACE And is published by ps9zrhmc@miamiu.bitnet/Peter Sweeney ------------ Chapter Seven ------------ No games in this issue. Publisher comments: Scene is from "Dancin' Homer", a future Simpsons episode. (I own a time machine.) From August 1990 Discover: COMMON SENSE AND THE COMPUTER By David H. Freedman Continued from issue #200... To expand this basic library of concepts, Lenat sometimes picked random sentences and tried to figure out everything the computer would need to know to understand them -- much the same process Pittman and the other programmers use today. As it turned out, Cyc needed to know a lot. One of the first sentences -- "Napoleon died in 1821; Wellington was saddened" -- required Lenat's spending two months explaining such global concepts as life, death, communication, and human emotions before the seven words made any sense to the computer. "It seemed like a never-ending process", says Lenat, but when the programmers were finally through, Cyc had been given a basic version of what AI researchers call an ontology, or a worldview, through which it could make sense of reality. It was only this past year that Lenat's group began to pour in the millions of bits of knowledge that make up that reality. Now each bit of data Cyc records makes processing the next bit that much easier. "If we want to teach Cyc what a cheetah is", Lenat says, "we just call up what it knows about lions and tigers and make a few changes." The data base now contains 2 million pieces of knowledge; although that's a long way from 100 million, Lenat belives that with Cyc's increasing speed, four years is plenty of time to knock off the remaining 98 million. Cyc's growth is partly due to Lenat's efforts to find people who are good at analyzing and entering knowledge. Most people, he found, simply don't have a knack for it. Eventually Lenat came across Pittman, who is a botanist by training, and Nick Siegel, a cultural anthropologist. "Doug wanted people with some cross-cultural experience, who could examine the implicit knowledge in society", explains Siegel. There are now three dozen people who enter information into Cyc on at least a part-time basis, but Pittman and Siegel are the only full-time knowledge enterers and are responsible for much of what Cyc knows. Every day Pittman, Siegel, and others read a wide variety of publications (including this one) and ask themselves what Cyc would need to know to understand them. A group favorite is the World Weekly News. "What are the things we know", muses Lenat, "that allow us to reject as untrue an article about the discovery of a human skeleton on the moon?" After teaching the new knowledge to Cyc, team members ask it questions to see if the lesson has sunk it. Having been told that someone drove to work in the morning, for example, Cyc might be asked how that person got home that evening. If Cyc answers "by boat", something obviously went wrong. Cyc can also ask questions of its own to clarify points, resolve apparent contradictions, and fill in gaps. Displayed on the computer screen in plain English, the questions reflect a keen and curious mind. One recent inquiry: "Reproductions make sense for works of art, but someone is using the word to apply to something else besides a work of art. Is it okay for something that is partially tangible to have reproductions made of it?" One of Cyc's most poignant questions came up when it was told that intelligent things tend to like other intelligent things of the same type and then was later told that Mary Shepherd liked Cyc. "Am I a person?" asked Cyc. "Or is Mary Shepherd a computer program?" At night, Cyc is left alone to mediate. That is, it looks over its knowledge base in search of interesting analogies. These analogies are examined in the morning by Lenat and others as a way of weeding out flaws. So far, Cyc has come up with a good number of imaginative associations. A recent night's ruminations included the following analogies: dad to dictator and head of state; automobile to elevator, escalator, and consumer electronics; owns to physically contains and is aware of; profession to prominent for and occupant of. Although some of the analogies seem strained, the meanings are similar enough to indicate that Cyc absorbed its lessons. Often, however, the pupil misses the point. When Cyc analogized United States to USA, the programmers had to explain that the two terms were not analogous, but synonymous. If Cyc can learn to digest plain English, the rate of growth of its knowledge base will explode. Instead of relying on a handful of people to type in selected crumbs of information, it will tear into everything from Descartes to People. But getting a computer to understand English or any other natural language is an elusive goal. Still, Lenat thinks he will succeed, and his reasoning is predictable. "You can't do natural language undestanding without at least a preliminary Cyc-type knowledge base." Natural language programs have generally focused on teaching computers grammar and syntax, under the assumption that if a machine knows something about the various types of words, meaning will follow. But, notes Lenat, pulling out the many possible meanings of a word in a typical sentence can be a herculean task. "What is a red conductor?" he asks. "Is it a piece of metal that's red? A Communist musical conductor? Or take the two sentences, 'Mary saw a bicycle in the store window. She wanted it.' How do we know that she wanted the bicycle, and not the store or the window?" Things get even stickier in the real world, where Cyc would have to deal with newspaper headlines like BRITISH LEFT WAFFLES ON FALKLANDS. Cyc's natural language interface is being designed by a group of programmers down the hall from Lenat. The interface will work in conjunction with Cyc to analyze an English sentence for all its possible meanings and then select the one that best jibes with its common sense. There are some early signs that the intended synergy is paying off: when recently informed that someone had "read Melville", Cyc guessed the person had read Moby Dick, even though it had never been told the meaning of the expression "to read an author". But Cyc could fail before it ever gets a chance to read. The key danger, says Lenat, comes from divergence -- that is from different pieces of knowledge conflicting with or obscuring one another. A certain amount of divergence is inevitable. Different people are bound to provide Cyc with different ways of looking at the same thing, such as when Cyc is told by one person that father is a man who begets a child and by another that it is a male parent. Lenat insists that most incosistencies can be caught through Cyc's nighttime analogy hunts. Even if some slip through, he points out, Cyc's ability to recognize the fallibility of the "truths" in its knowledge base prevents it from crashing. However, Lenat concedes that the growth of the knowledge base could conceivably outstrip this protection mechanism and allow fatal divergence to set in. "If there are too many inconsistencies", he says, "the knowledge base will collapse". With all its energy devoted to reconciling contradictions, Cyc would lose the ability to do anything else. For now, however, Cyc's knowledge enterers have been able to stay in agreement -- and this keeps Lenat hopeful. Others are less confident, claiming that Lenat has done a better job raising expectations for Cyc that he is likely to do building it. There are many throny AI problems that have to be solved, critics say, before he can achieve the kind of results he's after. For example, Cyc needs a better way to distinguish between statements of fact like "Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system" and statements of opinion like "The Reds are the best team in the National League." Even Lenat's friend and supporter Marvin Minsky, famed MIT professor and artifical intelligence pioneer, expresses some worry about Cyc's approach to knowledge. "Cyc has a rather logical structure", he notes. "Lenat is trying to make it more flexible with frames, but it's still a single way of representing knowledge, and no one representation will work well. I think the systems of the future will have two or three different ways of representing knowledge with cross-links between them. That's how the brain works: one part has knowledge about people, another about how things work, and so on, to hundreds of specialized areas." Most researchers seem to think that Lenat's most unrealistic prediction is that Cyc will read English within five years. Minsky too is skeptical, but he insists it isn't an issue worth debating. "Who cares if it takes twenty years", he asks, "as long as it works?" In fact, AI researchers are quick to point out that even in failure Cyc would be a huge boon to the field. "This is one of the riskiest projects in AI, but it's also one of the most interesting and visionary", says Fanya Montalvo, a resarcher at Digital Equipment who is working with Cyc. "If it doesn't work, we're likely to find out why and learn from it." Of course, Lenat himself has no intention of producing an interesting failure, insisting that Cyc will change the way we live and work. Schools will use Cyc to provide one-on-one tutoring to students, he says, and retail stores will keep the computer on hand to custom design products for individual consumers. Cyc will make scientific discoveries, apply justice, and even counsel unhappy couples. As Cyc continues to grow, he predicts, pieces of it will be stored in computers around the world, its contents made available through phone lines and radio waves. Cyc's intelligence, he claims, will flow like electricity through a gigantic, ubiquitious knowledge grid. Clearly, Lenat is not a man plagued by self-doubt. As for others' doubts, he chalks some of it up to our misplaced need to attribute something unique to human intelligence. "It's normally nice to mystify the way people reason", he says. "But it's even nicer for us to demystify it. We're not as inscrutable as we think." Eric's notes: I have a really good Computer Chess article if anyone would like to scribe it. I also have plenty of Diplomacy articles that need to be scribed... And here is part one of the MetaDiplomat #18, I will publish the rest of it in a future issue of EP: THE METADIPLOMAT #18 August 12, 1990 Published by: Jeff McKee 481 Westbrook St. Apt. 105G So. Portland ME 04106-1939 (207) 761-0246 Internet: "73357.1630@COMPUSERVE.COM" Cost: 75 cents per issue, or $7.50 for 12 issues. DEADLINES: Gunboat Games: Saturday, September 1st, 9PM EDT. Regular Games: Saturday, September 22nd, 9PM EDT. Letter Column: Depends on whether #19 is a full issue or not; shoot for September 1st and you'll be in the money either way. METADIPLOMAT NEWS If someone had asked me ten days ago if I could time-warp ahead ten days and not have to go through them, knowing what I do now about the last ten days I would have agreed. No offense to Vince Lutterbie and the PoolCon gang; PoolCon was probably the only worthwhile 36 hours I spent in the entire period. I haven't had the energy to pick up Meta, which has been sitting in my room waiting to be done for almost a week now. As it is, I'm starting this issue after Midnight on Friday night, late. Sorry; I hope you all understand. Randy Davis, you can phone in your orders when you get back from vacation, collect if you wish. IRAQ ANNEXES KUWAIT, NECESSITATES LATE-NIGHT CALLS TO SAUDI ARABIA Later on you'll hear the PoolCon story. But I didn't come home to good news either. You see, my father works for ARAMCO, the "Arabian-American Company," and is currently living in Saudi Arabia. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and subsequent fears of an invasion of Saudi Arabia, explained to me why my father is making so much money to work over there. My father lives in Dhahran, which is about 200 miles down the Persian Gulf coast from Kuwait. As you have probably guessed by now, he works in the oil business, too. It took me a full 24 hours to get through to him on the telephone, and boy is he nervous! I was worthless the whole first half of the week, trying to get hourly updates, fully expecting a preemptive invasion of Saudi Arabia. Things seem better, now that there are plenty of American and British troops in the neighborhood. Thank God that King Fahd had enough sense to allow a Western military presence in Saudi Arabia at least until the crisis becomes manageable. Meanwhile: Dhahran is basically a foreign camp. It is a self-contained city that the Arabs designed to give the foreigners a place to live without requiring them to become assimilated into Arab culture (which the Arabs decidedly do NOT want). Compared to the average Saudi, they live like kings. They make lots of money, have access to fully-stocked supermarkets, recreational facilities, and so on. They just have to live under some Saudi laws. Women cannot be outside alone at night, not because of fear of being raped, but because it's illegal. (They don't have to cover their heads, though.) There are no alcoholic beverages. My father's records ("albums" for those who don't understand "records," like Mainers) were confiscated when he moved, so they could determine if there was seditious material involved. Anyway, foreigners are being evacuated from the camp, starting with the families of the folks who are working. The spouses and children have already started being airlifted out in private charter planes. I don't know to where, but anyplace outside the Middle East ought to be fine. Then the employees are scheduled to go next. My father doesn't know when they'll get to him, but he says it's better to get rid of the dependents first, because their fears are the most difficult to deal with, plus they are really getting in the way. He says that the smaller nations on the southern end of the Arabian peninsula have suspended visa rules and are allowing foreigners to enter with only US passports for the time being. So, his car is loaded up with water and canned goods, and he's prepared to drive south if the Iraqis decide to make a go of it. Good luck, Dad. POOLCON 1990--THE REVENGE OF THE TURDS The Hobby Old Farts Society met in Marshall, Missouri, the weekend of August 4th to celebrate POOLCON, formerly PUDGECON, that unmistakable gathering of hobby old farts from the far reaches of the pit of hell. I had a great time. Playing-wise, the weekend was half a pepperoni and mushroom pizza better than a total bust. But, I didn't go to win, and therefore still had a terrific time! It's amazing what you can learn about people while you watch them "play cards competitively." Kathy Caruso said she expected me to be more of the nerdish type. I don't think I turned out quite like she wanted, but the two of us as we are turned out to have a great time together. At least now I'm better prepared to interview her in such a way that she doesn't get bored answering the questions. Larry Botimer turned out to be a great surprise. I expected a cringy old fart who didn't do much of anything. Wrong-o, the Bo(t) far exceeded my expectations. He's got a terrific, biting sense of humor, and he had fun doing everything from GMing Dip to losing at Titan to playing basketball. We got along really well--it's certainly going to add a new dimension to the press war we've been having in REBEL! The list of other folks I met for the first time, or had met before and couldn't keep them straight from other people: Ron Cameron, Don Williams, Tom Johnston, and Eric Ozog. Old familiars: Marc Peters, Cathy Ozog, Jason Bergmann, Gary Behnen, Ron Bottner, the Lutterbies, and I'm sure I've left a few people off the list. It was a great cast and a great time. I'm not going to bore you with what happened in my Dip game there; suffice to say that the "nice guy" approach doesn't always work when it's 1 on 2 in the West. Marc Peters' England and Eric Ozog's Germany decided to munch my perfectly docile France, despite my warnings that it would take them a very long time. The game ended in F'03 (!) with a E/G/R northern triple...if it had been a postal game, or a tournament game, there was no way that alliance would have held. Germany just wasn't getting anywhere against me and was completely at E/R's mercy. It was wonderful watching Eric draw France in the Gunboat game I GMed later that night, watching him get mercilessly pounded (but not to death, of course) by England and Germany ("you're loving this, aren't you?"). FACE-TO-FACE GUNBOAT, DOES IT SUCK, OR WHAT? The highlight of the weekend was GMing a Face-to-face game of Gunboat. I was sitting there, knowing that in 15 minutes I'd be GMing a face to face game, without the benefit of the little booklets that David Hood had prepared for DipCon. All we had was one pad of 5x7 yellow paper. So I wrote folks' names in the upper-right corner, they drew blocks, and I wrote their countrys' names in the upper left corner. Everything was fine until in F'01 I read "Caruso's" orders instead of "France's" orders! I guess you had to be there to fully appreciate the blunder, but I was completely humbled, and suffered through the jeers and laughter of the players. I guess all we can do is REDRAW!! Thinking "Obviously I can't write the names of the players and countries on the sheet, so I'll have them draw the blocks and keep track of their countries themselves." Everyone drew blocks and we were off. Everything was fine until I got S'01 orders from everyone, and had two sets of orders for Italy and none for France. Guess who got to let the players in on the little secret? Yup, and here come the jeers and laughs of the players. "They're not laughing AT you, they're laughing WITH you!" Pth. So, we need to REDRAW again! OK, the third time I had everyone come into the well-lighted laundry room, and I wrote down their country assignments and got them started. Everything was fine until Kathy started giving me shit about everything and anything. Sort of an "I've enjoyed the previous two screwups so much, I'm going to see if I can distract him enough to help him to a third!" Finally I just told Kathy to shut up because Marc Peters was trying to sleep in the easy chair (never mind that he was a player in the game)! She shut up, but damned if she didn't crinkle her order sheets just to spite me, folding them a billion times over before handing them in, which meant I had to unfold them and it made shuffling them a real mess. Everything was fine. Kathy was playing Italy, of course, and let me know at every opportunity she wished I hadn't screwed up the first game where she was France. She said she didn't use the Byrne opening because she thought everyone would know who she was. Kathy, if you played even a lick of Quantity Gunboat you'd know that 4 out of 5 Italys use the Byrne opening in Gunboat and they wouldn't have thought anything of it. So she tried Piedmont, then scooting armies around Tyro-Boh-Sil, and was devastated by a Turkish convoy to Apulia. No shock. Her orders for F'05 were "I have gone to BED." She wasn't eliminated until F'06, though, so she saw the position into its grave before seeing herself into hers. Everything was fine. Except that Marc Peters didn't answer the bell for F'03 because he was still asleep. Don Williams, as Russia, was trying to finagle his way into Peters' position (whatever it was), but I wouldn't let him do it until his Russia was eliminated. So in F'03 Russia's moving off his supply centers, and wouldn't you know it, but Peters wakes up, notices that he can't be prevented from getting a build, and all of a sudden he's wide awake, after being warned he'll lose his position if he doesn't show up the next turn. Then Kathy starts to nod off and Williams is still alive with one unit in Moscow. Williams starts wanting to take over Kathy's position. But Kathy is Italy, and I tell him so. Tough luck, Don. His Russia and Kathy's Italy are eliminated the same turn. Everything was fine. Except that Ron Cameron refused to write all his orders on only one side of the page, making the handing of his orders back to him all the more difficult. Except that Jason Bergman was so tired by 4AM that he was tossing his orders across the table for all to see. Eric Ozog in France was getting pummeled by E/G but they weren't getting too far. He never got back to 5 centers but never went below 4 either. The endgame position was a very strong A/T plus a small F vs a tired E and a belligerent G. E/G was trying to draw a stalemate, but F was supporting Turkey into the Atlantic from Portugal. England stabs Germany to get the game over with, but it doesn't work. One vote from a different player each time keeps the A/T draw from passing. Well, almost, most of the vetos were coming from France. Shame our regular game wasn't Gunboat, huh, Eric? You know *I'd* have never voted for that Northern Triple! But, alas, everything was fine. The draw passed in Spring 1910. You'd have never known I'd be in for a marathon GMing session after the first two faux-pais' to start the game. But the game ran until S'10, and from what I could tell, none of the players could correctly guess the rest of the lineup. Kathy says she's going to write about this in KK and I can hardly wait to see what she's going to say...! GETTING TO POOLCON AND BACK SHOULD BE EASIER THAN THIS One thing that Portland, Maine and Wichita, Kansas have in common is that the airlines practice rampant price-gouging in and out of their airports. The 14-day deadline for reasonably priced tickets came and went and I had not bought my ticket. I wasn't even sure I was going to go. But, taking my roommate to the travel agency to get set up on his trip to New York City, we discovered that the airlines have cheap 3-day advance tickets from Boston to Kansas City. Cheap enough to make the trip, $268 round-trip. Wouldn't you know that the day after I bought my ticket, Eastern announces a $189 round trip fare to K.C., 3-day advance. Too late to change now. So, wouldn't you know it, my co-worker, friend, and general pain-in-the-ass David Tungate (who will probably be thoroughly amused to see his name in print in my zine) made a travel suggestion. See, it costs around $18/night to park at Boston's airport. I had a coupon for $7 a night at a nearby parking lot but I didn't know where it was! Good ole' Dave suggests I park in the 'T' station (subway) in Lexington, which is 20-25 miles from Logan (airport), take the 'T' to the airport, and I'd only have to pay $4 a day for parking. Great idea! Meanwhile, I'm worried about my connecting flight in Pittsburgh because I don't have a seat assignment and the flight is overbooked. Somehow I got the 12:15 departure out of Boston and the 1:50 departure out of Pittsburgh crossed up. So, I park at the 'T' station and arrive in plenty of time to catch my flight to Pittsburgh, 12:18. I don't see my flight on the TV monitor anywhere so I check my ticket and do the O.J. Simpson thing to the gate, just to see it has just pulled away from the gate and is sitting out on the taxiway ready to take off. The lady at the counter says both other flights to K.C. that afternoon are both overbooked and my best shot is the 5:35 through Baltimore. So, I'm sitting in the airport spending $4.95 on a cheeseburger, reading the Bridge books I've brought along, killing FIVE hours until that flight. Fortunately everything went OK and I got on the plane to Baltimore, but without a boarding pass. I'm really tense and unrestrained when we get to Baltimore, so I want to get off the plane. The guy tells me I have to go to the ticket counter and get a boarding pass or he won't let me back on the plane. Great. So I go to get my boarding pass and find that my entire reservation has been cancelled because I missed my first flight. Plus they didn't put me in the computer in Boston as being on the plane to Baltimore. She gets it all worked out, puts my return reservation back into the computer, and gives me a boarding pass. But, of course, I have to pre-board because I have a new seat assignment and have to move my stuff. So I get to K.C. and nobody is there yet to pick me up. So I wait the precious few minutes and then call the Lutterbies to find out who's coming. As soon as I get through spending the money for an operator-assisted call, who drives up, but Vince and Danny. We make the 100 mile trip to Vince's place and it's after Midnight when I get there. I play a few hands of cards, drink a beer, and call it a night. I knew I was in trouble again on Sunday morning when US Air calls me to tell me my flight will be 30 minutes late departing from Kansas City, leaving at 4:35 instead of 4:05. OK, then, we head to the airport and get there around 4:00. By then, the departure time had been ripped off of the USAir scoreboard, and so I ask what's up. "The plane is still on the ground in Los Angeles with mechanical trouble." So, after they get their departing flights out the door, I ask them to buy me dinner, and they agree. At least this time it's $4.95 of someone else's money for my food. I go to the other side of the terminal to find Caruso's gang, which have disappeared. The Midway Airlines signs look like they're written in Swahili and I can't even tell if her plane has left yet. Turns out she and the others were in the bar having a going-away drink and I never found them. So I had dinner and checked into the ticket counter at 6:30. Still on the ground in L.A. About 7:00 I see a woman screaming bloody hell through the telephone, and figure she's got to be on the same flight as me. She's screaming at some USAir bigshot, who is largely ignoring her. It wasn't until this time that it occurred to me that the 'T' in Boston may not run 24 hours. I asked her, when she got off the phone, and she said it stops for the night at Midnight. Meanwhile the plane finally leaves L.A. at 7:00 and should arrive in K.C. by about 9:20, with an ultimate arrival time of 12:15 AM in Boston. So, I return to the Ticket Counter and tell them my car is parked 25 miles from the airport in a 'T' station and would they please call Boston and find out if I'll be able to get to it. They'd rather not call Boston, so they write me a voucher for taxi fare from Logan to the 'T' station, which I figure ought to be about $30 worth. They also give me a first-class upgrade voucher for a future flight. So I'm satisfied, until about 8:30 it dawns on me, that this 'T' station's parking garage is in the middle of a business park in the suburbs, and there isn't going to be an attendant to let me get my car out! I stroll back to the counter and ask them to call Boston and ask Boston to call the 'T' office and find out if I'll be able to get my car out. They call Boston, and Boston says I should worry about it when I get there. Needless to say, the plane was late getting into K.C.; it got in around 9:45. Scheduled arrival in Boston: 1:30 AM. There were only about 10 people on this overbooked flight by now. We arrived in Boston about 1:45. There's one guy left in the whole building to meet our flight. Of course, he knows nothing about my car and so I have to go through the whole story again. He doesn't have a phone book, so he tries to call information to get the number for the 'T' office. Information doesn't answer the phone. He apologizes and says he's sorry, but he can't help me. I slump myself over his counter, completely helpless, and I don't say anything for three minutes or so. He finally gets the grand prize when he says "we could put you up for the night," shortly after I ask him if the airport is open 24 hours. He calls the agent who makes the hotel reservations; no answer. "I've tried everything I can think of," he says. After a couple of minutes of energy-summoning, I ask him, "I understand that this is not your fault. Will there be someone here at 8 AM who has the authority to make things right? Believe me, if I have to sleep in an airport, I'm going to want to talk to someone important." He says, realizing it's not likely that he's going to get to go home either until he does something drastic, "it is my job to take care of our passengers. I'll call the hotel myself." Yay. He calls the hotel, writes me another voucher, and I'm on my way to the Ramada. I've also got a free $2.50 phone call on this voucher. So I call my boss at 9AM and talk for two minutes. When I go to check out, they want $1.56 over and above the $2.50, for the phone call! I take the 'T' back to my car, and crash into my bed about 12:30 Monday afternoon, a TKO compliments of USAir. And now you know why I'd just as soon not have gone through the last ten days, Poolcon notwithstanding. And I didn't even get to play Bridge. ENOUGH OF ME, HERE'RE'RE YOUR LETTERS! We'll start with the Modern Mme. DeFarge, MELANIE WINTERS: I haven't got very much time before Stan the mailman arrives, so we'll have to forego your monthly upbraiding until next issue (SIGH!). Before you go thinking you've gotten off scot-free, I'll warn you that I haven't forgotten the tits remarks. Randy is paying for that now--your turn will come later!! ((I maintain I have said NOTHING about your tits. Why do you insist on calling them 'tits,' anyway? I have noticed Randy was awfully quiet this issue...what have you done to him? Not to worry, Ms., but it will take more than idle threats to shut me up!!)) By the time you get this, we will be beach-hopping along the coast of sunny California between Big Sur and Morro Bay. ((Some punishment.)) We're going to Hearst Castle, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and anything else that strikes our fancy. The entire coastline is a sea otter refuge and about as romantic as you could ask for. Obviously, Randy has managed to get back into my good graces--what are you going to do to appease me? ((For starters, I'm going to keep talking about your, er, well....HEY, why don't you pick on Steven in Steve Reeves for a change! He's much more lewd than me!)) He's a tough act to follow, especially when he wears his tight little cut-offs! ((I can't understand what either sex sees in looking at the others' behinds.... What's so good about a butt, anyway? This ought to get some interesting comments, but keep them nice, ok?)) Just because you're on the other side of the country doesn't mean you're safe ((I maintain it means exactly that)), you know. Being a Navy brat, I've got friends and relatives throughout the U.S. "Withstood Melanie" indeed! You may have to eat those words, my dear. Perhaps you'd better work on your groveling skills? ((I thought you said you didn't have time to write...are you holding Stan the Mailman prisoner whilst you write??)) Hopefully you won't "accidentally misplace" my orders. I'm due for another PMS attack soon. ((Men blame their hormones, women blame PMS... Same sh*t, different day)) Maybe soon we can say _nice_ things to each other--I can be a real sweetheart when I want to. Then on the other hand, I AM the Queen Bitch. Are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into? Randy didn't, and now look at him. It's truly pitiful! ((I suppose having you staring at him in his cut-offs has nothing to do with it, right?? And she has the NERVE to sign the letter, "See ya later, love"??? <g> )) Look, Mel, here's your pal STEVE SULZBY now: I noticed that on one page you were begging for material to be sent in. There was no evidence anywhere of any of the stuff that I had sent in. Was it too distasteful? Or is there just a one-issue delay for format planning? Hey! If you're not going to print it, what's the use of sending it? (( OK, here's the status of your submissions. I'm planning to run the 'ad' this issue. The typewritten page of jokes were too distasteful for my taste. (If you want to judge my tastes, then consider anything the ACLU would run as tasteful.) The picture will be run someday, even though it's a bit computer-specific for anti-computer junkies like Caruso, but I'll have to find a darker copy of it because it's too light. The other thing 'The Plan' has already been in my files for some time and I haven't run it yet. I do appreciate the submissions, and you're not the only one who has made submissions that have not been printed (ask Malinda Matney, who said "Am I throwing these down a hole, or what?").)) (( The reason I fight the 23 page barrier is because I lose money publishing. I lost 83 cents PER COPY of #16 to most of my subbers. I could raise rates and go to a 48-page layout, but I'm not yet willing to up my commitment to that level, and I'd just as soon keep the level of work where it is, to avoid burnout later on. If you don't see your stuff right away, don't panic! I held that World History article a long time, I wanted to run it from Issue #5! In fact, that piece is the reason that #16 was larger than 23 pages!! My priorities are the game reports, then as many letters as I receive, and then funny stuff to fill in the gaps. If I get the gumption up, I'll do another large issue and run a lot of the funny stuff at once. But try and be patient, ok?)) Just when you thought it was safe, here's PETE GAUGHAN! What makes you think anything goes on on the Caruso's living room carpet? If you're talking about ByrneCon and such, that was the old house. And Jawn and Katie are so old and decrepit that nothing _else_ certainly happens on the carpet, except maybe Mandy playing on it. ((Kathy??)) Guns don't kill people, gunmen kill paople. Thassal for now... ((Thanks for the picture, will use it almost as you suggest....<g>)) Tape-delayed, from Munds Park, Arizona, here's CATHY OZOG! You know, Jeff, that there is no perfect scoring system. I would have liked to have seen 4 rounds available with only the top two counting. Sometimes you just get stuck in a weird position where a player has it in for you and no amount of Diplomacy or tactical skill can save you. ((Sounds like something your husband did to me....)) Look at Steve Smith's results. ((Oh no, not another Smith toady....)) They hardly reflect his true skill as a player--of course he has this evil smile that makes a player of him--not like your innocent face. Why, look at Jason Bergmann, now there's a baby face which will never be trusted again. Just give Jason some serpents and dice in a Titan game and you will see him transformed into a hideous monster muttering "Die, Die, Die." Not a pleasant sight, let me tell you. ((Smith looks like he knows something about your mother. Jason behaves like an angry child, which scares ordinary human beings into being nice to him, to avoid his rage and wrath over the Diplomacy table.)) Anyways, if you have a better point system then send it to Canada and see if they will use it. Mind you, someone else will bitch afterwards that your system sucks. That is the way it always seems to go. ((I'll try it.)) Now, here's half an interview with VINCE LUTTERBIE! 1. Yes. 2. Why would you ask that? 3. Only if they're under 16. 4. Oh--I thought you meant centers, not sinners. 5. Usually green--with little chunks. 6. Susan Welter. 7. Tom Nash's beachfront property. 8. Susan Welter and Tom Nash's beachfront property. 9. Titan, what else? 10. Acquire, what else? 11. Probably David Hood, but a case could be made for John Crosby. 12. Brush your teeth after every meal. Now, what were the questions again? (( OK, readers, identify the questions and win a USAir flight attendant! )) Uh-oh. Look what the mailman slipped under my doormat...TOM NASH. Jeff, why are you feeling so abandoned? I have said many times, in writing, both in my zine and yours, that SC count is a stupid consideration in scoring systems. I stand by that. And again, I re-iterate my support for the system you have not yet acknowledged but which I believe meets all of your criteria: the ManorCon scoring system the Brits use. Simply: the player with the most wins wins the tourney. If there is a tie, or no wins, then you go to most 2 ways. And on to three ways, etc. IN this system, the 4 (was it?) players with a win and a two way after 2 games would be faced with the decision to one: settle for a four way tie for the tourney championship, or play another game. Since surviving or elimination would not HURT their score, they'd have nothing to lose and everything to gain by playing that third game, as even a 7 way would put them ahead of the player who sat out the 3rd and 4th rounds. I'm not saying it's a perfect system, but I'd like to see it tried. Bottom line is it encourages everyone to play EVERY game for the best possible outcome, and encourages people to play more games. ((I'd like to go a step further and say that even a survival or an elimination in the third game would be better than a player who only played in two games...as long as the games are reasonably scheduled such that nobody could legitemately claim exhaustion. The thing that's been missing the last couple years is some measure of determining player consistency.)) I'm not sure what the Brits do with absolute ties... i.e. 2 players with a win, a 2 way and 3 way. Do they declare it a tied title, or go to another tie breaker. Could be like World Cup soccer: each player gets 5 chances to take a center, and the person who gets the most wins! Since you don't have any British subbers, I guess we'll have to raise the issue in BTDT to get it answered. ((You do that.)) Ken Hill is right. If Doug Brown is truly the Melinda Holley of US Railway Rivals, Mickey is the Mark Walsh or Jim Diehl. His play is truly sad. Mine's not too hot, but his... wow. What slays me about your ongoing resistence and snootiness about Rail games, is you object on PRINCIPLE. You haven't even tried the dang games. I remember you used to talk about TITAN the same way. Now you're addicted to it. ((IMPOSSIBLE to survive at a Dip con without knowing how to play Titan. The real reason I avoid rail games like the plague is that I'm already overloaded with games and am afraid that a heavy interest in a new one will sacrifice me to the wolves in one or more of the others.)) There is nothing intrinsicly good about games that happen to be based on Railroads. Rail Baron is a horrible, stupid, boring game. Empire Builder/British Rails is great, for about 15-20 plays, and then gets stale. Railway Rivals and 1830 are not great *RAIL* games, there are, simply, great games, period. RR because of the sheer variety of the maps. If you had to play the game on the same map all the time, it'd wear thin VERY fast, but the dozens of different maps means a new strategy and new challenge every time. Like all the map variants of Dip. 1830, on the other hand, is simply a sublime game. The high level of strategic planning involved in what, once you master the rules, is a simple game, the number of differnt potential winning strategies, the room for either cooperation or sheer unmitigated backstabbing and nastiness, is unparralled except for, and is quite similar to Dip. And face it, you're alone. Even the hard core Dip only crowd in TAD is all trying it out. Smith, Blau, Heinze, and even Morris are all playing RR now, and Smith stayed up until 4 AM Sunday night at DipCon playing not one, but two games of 1830! ((Smith and I stayed up until 6:30 playing Titan, too.)) Finally, *why* do you like the fact that ZR beat out BTDT? You know, first it was interviews, now the practice of popping out of proportional font into fixed space courier to get the SC tables even. ((My suggestion....)) Meta looks, and reads more like BTDT every day! ((I've been slimed!!)) At least you could footnote and attribute the ideas you steal from me. ((The reason I interviewed Melinda Holley had nothing to do with you. I simply asked her questions I wanted the answers to. Purely selfish. Notice I haven't taken to it (neither have you) despite pestilent demands from my subbers that I do so. Just wait, banana-breath. )) And this sleazy practice of numbering game flyers that only a few of your subbers get to bulk up the number of "issues" it appears you've produced. ((Unlike you, Pete receives the in-between issues. If they take me 18 hours to produce, I'm going to put a number on them!! Call me sleazy if you like, it's not the worst thing you've called me.)) Tsk, tsk. Well it may have fooled Pete Gaughan, but it's not even original. About 2 years ago 2 Brit pubbers were racing to reach the 150 issue milestone. Richard Walkerdine did the same thing you are... number adjudication flyers, and thus beat out Pete Birks to issue 150 by a week or two. And was ROUNDLY made fun of by the British hobby for such a sleazy trick! You're lucky Americans are so dumb they fall for it ("Wow, McKee did 15 issues his first year!). Get real, Jeff! ((Fine. I'll go to 6-week deadlines so that you can justify each issue to yourself. At least I have reasonable deadlines for Gunboat. Note I didn't start numbering the interim issues until they contained 16 games per issue. When have you ever GMed 16 games at once?)) Last two issues have been much better. Certainly worth every penny of the .75 you charge! ((Not that you've paid a red cent!)) Even if the "insurance thing" I've seen about 8 times in different places, and I don't for one second believe half the "fractured history" stuff. Yes, high school students are dumb enough, but some of those were too CLEVER in their supposed dumbness. Methinks the author couldn't resist thrwowing in a few he made up and thought were really funny. ((Well, at least you read it, despite it's potential tragic flaws.)) Here are some heavily edited comments from AN ANONYMOUS GUNBOAT PLAYER that contradict my basic premises about British Style play. I have heavily edited game-specific stuff out, and while some of the essence has been lost, the point still lives on. I'm s'posed to make comments on the British system. I will admit that the British system has been no trouble so far. On the other hand, it makes retreats and builds feel like random events. In American, building is something you do. In British, building is something that happens to you. Maybe some people like that approach, but I'd rather be in control of the game more. So I contradict your claim in the ZR that all those who've tried it prefer it. For instance, I really don't know what my retreats and builds should be in this game. [Game-specific stuff edited out.] But where should [my army] retreat? I sure don't know. Let's just write down a list of likely spots and hope something good happens. Similarly for the builds -- basically they're predicated on [basic notions about the country I'm playing.] Note [my first build on the list probably] cannot come up. But it's cheap enough to write, and if I can build [there] by some weird occurrance, I probably should! Is a fleet build good? Maybe, maybe not. But the conditionals to accurately define the cases in which it is good are impossible. [More game-specific stuff.] I think British rules fanciers are the kind that like the game to come to them rather than going after it themselves, *or* they write far more detailed conditional build orders than even I can imagine (and I'm not famous for being afraid of conditionals). ((Sorry about the hack-and-slash stuff. I hope you're satisfied with my presentation of your thoughts without your details. I'll concede that your points will make a difference to players who are seriously concerned about the detail of their games. But I still stick to my basic premises about British Style....that the majority of people would prefer to write their orders (Spring and Fall, not retreats or adjustments) with the total knowledge of where the enemies' units lie, and without delays to set the units in place. There are going to be complicated problems in either system. Those who welcome complexity will choose American style; those who prefer simplicity at the expense of a little control will prefer British.)) ****************************************************************************** To join in the fun, send your name, home address, home and work phone numbers, and country preferences to Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com. ****************************************************************************** Up