"Semi" Weekly Word Division #2

							C	A	S	K
			+	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
A	R	C	|	B	I	C	K	E	R	S
				S	A	E	E
				-	-	-	-
					S	E	S	E
					S	D	I	B
					-	-	-	-
						E	I	C	R
						V	S	K	D
						-	-	-	-
							B	K	R	S
							B	E	B	I
							-	-	-	-
								E	S	V

TV Review: Dresden Files

I saw an ad for the show, which made it sound like the SciFi version of CSI. CSI + SciFi should = a good show, right?

Well, it's not very much CSI. One "crime", which he was able to immediately solve, or at least identify what was going on. As a means of learning about Dresden's world, it's not a bad method: we went straight to commercial break and I spent the entire break assimilating the information into the plot to figure out what was going to happen next. On the other hand, if we meet a new monster every week, we're going to have a lot of monsters pretty quickly. SciFi is really pushing the crime scene analysis angle, for no good reason that I can tell, since it doesn't appear to exist. Maybe the next episodes.

But still, the backstories are pretty good: we've already met the big bad villain; whether we're going to deal with him every week or just on special occasions remains to be seen. We'll see if they revisit the woman problem. Bob looks familiar, but I never saw him in any of the things listed in his cast biography, so I don't know.

It's going on my schedule to watch for the next few weeks at least.

Semi Weekly Word Division #1

All the letters below represent a different number between 0 and 9, and every number from 0--9 is represented. Your job is just to find out what ten-letter word or phrase is spelled out by the letters 0--9.

									P	R	O
				+	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
P	A	I	L	|	L	I	L	D	R	O	P
					L	F	I	O	P
					-	-	-	-	-
						L	D	P	I	O
						L	U	L	F	R
						-	-	-	-	-
							I	L	I	L	P
							I	F	R	I	O
							-	-	-	-	-
									R	N	U

(This spacing isn't perfect, but I want to keep it all HTML.)

A practical application of graph theory

I created a directed graph out of the 32 NFL teams, with an edge going from Team A to Team B if Team A defeated Team B during the regular season. So there are 2 edges coming out of Oakland (Arizona and Pittsburgh), and 2 edges coming in to San Diego (Baltimore and Kansas City). Given this season, it is not at all surprising that there is path leading from any team to any other team. (For instance, to get from Oakland to San Diego, you need a three-step path, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, San Diego.) What might be surprising is that you can get from any team to any other team in just four steps. (The six pairs that require four steps are: OAK-HOU, OAK-IND, TEN-SD, ARI-SD, CHI-SD, and DET-SD.) There's an extra credit assignment in here somewhere.