I can highly recommend this DVD by Arthur Ganson. I bought it at G4G6. My kids (9 and 6) love it http://www.arthurganson.com/pages/DVD.html Having provided this public service, I will take this opportunity to plug my paper on how the Sprague Grundy theory of impartial combinatorial games generalizes to misere play via commutative semigroups and the "indistinguishability quotient" construction: http://arxiv.org/abs/math.CO/0501315 I've computed a semigroup presentation for the misere quotient of Dawson's Chess to heap size 30. It has 128 elements and 19 distinguishable P position types. Maybe someone can figure out the algebraic theory of the misere mex rule, which seems to be related to ideal extensions, and this presentation can be extended to a complete analysis. More info here http://www.plambeck.org/oldhtml/mathematics/games/misere/ Thane Plambeck http://www.plambeck.org/ehome.htm Michael Kleber wrote:
This guy is artist-in-residence at MIT, and there's a permanent exhibit of his work at the MIT museum -- which is decidedly worth a visit, if you're in the area.
--Michael Kleber
On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 11:11:27 -0800 (PST), R. William Gosper <rwg@osots.com> wrote:
This subject reminds me that at Gathering for Gardner 6 was a psycho- mechanic named Arthur Ganson who had connected the merrily spinning shaft of a big motor to a long string of 100:1 gearboxes, with the final output shaft firmly planted in a concrete wall. I suggested as a future project a group of protruding arms performing the candle dance rotation with a proffered horizontal tray, but so far haven't heard back. This is understandable, since his immediate project was to connect the shaft of a hefty (but unmoored) motor around to the back of its own housing via 1:1 bevel gears. Presumably this reached infinite angular velocity and sucked him into a time warp. Or maybe he was just overcome with fumes from the incinerated windings. With ratios other than 1:1 (perhaps via a simple pair of chains and sprockets), this gizmo might actually do something interesting. Or maybe 1:1 with a fluid coupling?? What a great auto shop project for a school with a lot of insurance. --rwg IODOMETRIC MOTORICIDE INCINERATES ANCIENTRIES CREATININES
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