Perfidy

When you're away I'm restless
Lonely, bored, dejected only
Here's the rub my darling dear-
I feel the same way when you're here. Anon.

Poker Hands: Frequency of.

Poker Hands, Frequency of
There are 2,598,960 possible different poker hands, the number of different sets of 5 cards in 52 cards. [5!/(52 -5)! x 5!, or (52,5.)] The 2,598,960 comprise the following numbers of the various possible hands:

40 Straight Flushes
624 hands with four-of-a-kind
3,744 Full Houses
5,105 Flushes
10,200 Straights
54,912 hands with three-of-a-kind
123.552 hands with two pair
1,098,240 hands with one pair
1,302,540 hands with nothing (‘garbage’)

That makes 2,598,960. If you divide 1,302,540 by 2,598,960, you get the percentage of all hands that are ‘garbage,’ 50.1177%. Thus, less than half, 49.8823%, of all possible hands are of value as a poker hand. The deck is 50.1177 to 49.8823 against, to begin with. So don’t feel bad if you get nothing in straight poker--that will happen slightly more than half the time. And note that a high pair in straight poker isn’t a bad hand. But don’t bet the farm...

Sublime Poem

There once was a man who said "Though
It seems that I know that I know
What I would like to see, is the I who sees me
When I know that I know that I know." Anon.

Pessimist? Realist?--you decide.

1. Senator Harry Flood Byrd Jr., (D, VA), the oldest living former U.S. Senator and nephew of the famous Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd said last year: "We are living under a system built on lies, and when the truth is known, the house of cards will fall."
2. In the conning tower of a nuclear powered and armed submarine, a microphone inside and a camcorder outside picked this up--a quiet conversation between James Carter and Admiral Hyman Rickover, 'father' of the submarine Navy who felt the whole surface Navy was a flock of sitting ducks. It is.
Submarines go incredibly fast. Much faster than any other warship. An aircraft Carrier can go 50-60 mph. Enterprise went from mid-Mediterranian to Cuba in 3 days in 1961. That's 50 mph. Newer Carriers can probably do 60 with ease. Maybe more at flank speed. Trident Subs can do 80 mph. No surface tension to break. Anyway, this:

Rickover: General comments re the submarine...
Carter: "Gee, I wish all this was never invented."
Rickover: "Oh, we'll blow ourselves up--it's not if, it's when."

(Rickover stubbornly refused to leave the Navy on schedule and won his fight to stay. They wanted him out for reasons of intelligence and sanity.)

A Little About Geodesic Spheres

All geodesic spheres contain 12 pentagons, the rest hexagons. (a 'dome' is 1/2 a sphere.) The smallest number of facets is 12 pentagons, 20 hexagons. If you want to make a sphere bigger you add hexagons. But the 12/20 dome is the roundest--adding hexagons makes a bigger sphere, but it becomes out of round--the thing bulges at each pentagon. The bigger (more hexagons) the more the bulges protrude and get pointy. At the infinite limit they may become spires., The Epcott Center sphere is not a geodesic sphere--it only mimics one. Hence that tell-tale slash along a side.