Old Jedi Never Die

It was a moral victory. Sure, by the numbers we were in a race for last place, but morally we were winning. We'd spent all weekend writing the AI for a programming contest, stayed up late, woke up early, and still hadn't managed to get the physics of the system working. See, it was a 2D torroidal universe with a really sweet physics system--our starships /kept/ /moving/ in the direction they were going. Wonderful theory, but it was harder than we expected to get the math. So we didn't really have much time to work on our AI.

Our goal was to design the AI for a fleet of four spaceships, to retrieve the most useful asteroids from an asteroid field. And to not die in the process. But when it got down to the last couple hours of the competition and we were still having problems refraining from appearing to have drunken starship pilots, I decided it was time to try something else. For the system of course also came with trash-talking capabilities.

So being set in space, we based our ships on the Star Wars universe. Palpatine, Vader, we had a fleet of four (very nimble) SSDs (Star Destroyers). Apparently all of the captains had been drinking the night before, but at least it was /synchronized/ drunken flying.

And then there was Thrawn. Generally a quiet guy, get him drunk and he's very talkative. Or at least he'd like to be talkative, if he could think of anything to say. Instead, the trash-talk part of the simulation just read:

Message from Thrawn:
Message from Thrawn:
Message from Thrawn:

Repeated about a bazillion times, anyway. But the audience loved us. One of our ships would accidentally pick up an asteroid and get bumped into the base, and we'd get a room full of cheers. And then, of course, there was Thrawn. His ship was down to the last of its health (drunkenly bumping into too many asteroids), and he saw his doom approaching.

Message from Thrawn: Old Jedi never die.. they just fade away.

And then his ship was no more. No more messages from Thrawn, but the crowd wouldn't have heard them anyway. It was a moral victory.

Good Ol' Rock

Some people, to make easy decisions and settle arguments, will play a swift game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. I, however, tend to prefer the game Rock, Rock, Rock.

Very few people actually play Rock, Rock, Rock well. But one of the best characteristics of this game is it's possible for both people to win. In fact, both people almost always do. One of them just may not realize it.

There are two ways to win at a game of Rock, Rock, Rock. First, and most obvious, is to be the person that can pick rock more times than the other person. The one that is more persistent, that can outlast. If you're the last person to pick rock, you win. The decision goes in your favor. You don't have to order the pizza tonight, even if you still have to pay for your share of it.

The other way of winning is by being the person that quits playing. If you're willing to admit that the other person is more annoyingly persistent for no good reason than you are, then while you may not have won the game, you have the moral victory. Which is often the better choice. Wouldn't the real loser by the couple that spends eighteen hours, both refusing to quit? So the true winner would be choosing nothing, letting the other person "win".

Which just shows that it's true. Nothing beats rock.