"when i argue i see shapes" - idlewild

"i'm not really sure of all this pressure. i'm never going to lose any of my old letters"


i think this is the best idlewild song. by a long way. every other song of theirs ive heard just makes me wish they could do something this good again.

my favourite solid shape is the rhombicosidodecahedron. i think its great. by which i dont mean i think its a "great rhombicosidodecahedron" which is what some people call a truncated icosidodecahedron because although they both have 62 faces theres something about the decagons i really dont like. although strangely the truncated cuboctahedron is much better than the rhombicuboctahedron.
anyway, im getting distracted. the point is that the best archimidean solid is definitely the rhombicosidodecahedron, though i can see why someone might try to argue for the more familar truncated icosahedron.
search the interweb, find yourself a rhombicosidodecahedron net and make yourself one. it might start off looking like a fairly random assortment of hexagons, squares and triangles, but theres beauty in the end product. and, i suspect, a sense of achievement also. its many years since i made one



here, look, ive even done the searching for you

"beautiful girl" - the gadjits

"she's using those number systems from reading blaise pascal. she's making babies for now"



i enjoy that show where noel edmonds asks you whether or not you would like to deal.
i am sure that the decision making process should be based on maths, but have always been frustrated by the fact that - since the deal offered is always less than the expected value of the game - simple probability theory states that you should always decline the deal. i have seen the show enough times to realise that there is almost always a point where the player should have dealt.
i am trying to formulate a strategy based on my new theory that - since the offer is a function of the expected value - the probability of getting a higher offer after the next round is the probability of the expected value being greater.
but the formula is getting more and more complicated and wasting more and more of my time - and i doubt if noel would be impressed were i to ask him to wait for a few minutes while i did some calculations before giving him my response as to whether or not i would like to deal.

sometimes i think that maybe theres an argument for thinking less. certainly the vacuous and thoughtless always seem to be ok, under their own limited definitions