From blahedo@quincy.edu Sat May 24 19:11:11 1997 Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 04:36:21 -0500 From: Don Blaheta To: Fantasy Rules Committee Subject: Summary of round 77 Doug 22 May 00:39:14 Stephen 22 May 10:48:26 Bill 22 May 15:47:00 Jeremy 22 May 21:30:14 John 23 May 00:24:10 Gee, if someone had posted today, they'd have been fine... ah well. John, you're up next.... 77:1 Doug VALID Style: 0.5 ----begin rule The FRC Luau started badly and steadily got worse. Our first mistake was not getting anyone who knew Hawaiian music, so we had to hula to polka music. So we won't make the same mistakes next time, each future rule will mention at least one mistake or accident that occured at the FRC Luau. ----end rule *chuckle* Seems appropriate... and valid... a reasonable start to the round. 77:2 Stephen VALID Style: +0.5 >>>>> Perhaps our biggest mistake was trying to have a multi-cultural luau, with elements from all the countries of the world. We first began to question the wisdom of this ambitious aim when our Norwegian guests insisted on using pickled herring in the stew instead of octopus. Each rule from now on will mention exactly one nationality, which must be one that hasn't previously been mentioned, and say what effect the culture of that nationality had on the luau. >>>>> Progressing the round nicely, although there really isn't anything exciting yet. I like the pickled herring comment. :) 77:3 Bill VALID Style: 0 begin rule: ----------------- The Americans, coming from the melting pot of humanity, insisted that the FRC Luau must be not only culturally diverse, but also in terms of what activities were available there. Then multitudinous committees had to be formed, including the Music Committee, the Dance Committee, the Food Committee, the Shuffleboard Committee, the Stand-on-your-head-and-spit-jellybeans Committee, the Oversight Committee, the Internet Mailing List Committee, and too many others to list. This caused an incredible amount of administrative red tape and jockeying for influence between the committees, so that not much actually happened at the Luau. In the spirit of the American contribution, all FRC rules in this round must talk about a facet of the Luau not previously mentioned in a rule (ie Rule 1: music, rule 2: food, rule 3: administration). The committee names above do not count as "mentions" for the purposes of this rule. ----------------- :end rule Well, it's valid; kind of self-descriptive, really. It adds yet more bureaucracy without significantly restricting the round. All the same, it's really not a bad rule. :) 77:4 John VALID Style: 0 >>>> Okay, first of all, I want to know who allowed the staff of Monty Python to represent the English? Once I realized they were around, I understood the existance of the stand-on-your-head-and-spit-jellybeans committee. Of course, they had to choose "gourmet" jelly beans (after all, they weren't picking up the tab). One of their cast's aim was off--he was trying to hit United States Vice President, Al Gore, who, being part of the Clinton administration, is an expert at red tape and thus was here to straighten out the committees, and who was also using the luau as a bit of advance campaigning--but unfortunantly, he missed. The jellybean (which was jamocha flavored) landed in the stew pot. Learn something new every day--today we've learned that certain preservatives in jamocha flavored gourmet jelly beans cause a severe chemical reaction when mixed with pickled herring stew. The resulting explosion made a mess of quite a few guests (Including VP Gore, much to the culprit's joy), but what's worse, it's seemed to waken one of the long dormant volcanoes that created the Hawaiian islands. Someone's going to have to find a way out of this one QUICK. (No need to save the vice president, of course) (If only Clinton were here too...) Each new rule must explain what was done about the problem explained in the previous rule. >>>> It seems to be valid (no, "United States" is not a nationality), but long and unwieldy. Although it is partially personal preference, I should warn y'all that I find long "story rules" to be relatively unstylish, preferring the short, concise ones. On the other hand, bonus points for the Monty Python reference, and the idea of mixing jamocha and pickled herring. :) Neg for the political commentary, and for a nearly vacuous restriction ("Quick"). A little bit positive for requiring each problem to be dealt with. 77:5 Jeremy VALID Style: +0.5 >>>>>> One of the committees that formed within minutes of members hitting the beach was the Judge's Luau Committee (JLC) whose purpose was the coordination of all other committees (a responsibility delegated only minutes later to the chronically under-staffed Oversight committee), and the planning of future luaus. (All previous rules in this round have been describing the inagural luau held in 1997 on the Hawaiian island of Molokai*) The JLC ruled that as the light of dawn broke after the long night of the luau, each committee whose chairperson was still conscious, could stipulate one restriction on the next year's luau. The JLC itself proposed the restriction that no specifically noted mistakes (as per rule 77.1) could be repeated in future luaus. The basic flaw in the otherwise laudable concept of the FRC luau (which was intended to allow the diverse members of the committee meet face-to-face in a relaxed atmosphere) is that, hey, we're talking about the FRC here, where reality is strange, chaotic and bound to get too complicated real fast. For instance, when the invitations went out this year everyone was told that it was to be a pot-luck luau. Enjoying things multicultural, I brought Thai food, which was much appreciated by those hot spice-loving FRCers (and had the added advantage of not being combustible in the presence of any flavor jelly bean). Unfortunately, Storm showed up late bearing, you guessed it, more Thai food. She was considerably miffed that her offering would get short shrift and so made a last minute switch (borrowing from the Sorcery Round) and turned her Thai food into a Typhoon. As if the pun wasn't bad enough, this threatened to scuttle our escape from the island's volcano on the large yacht we purchased on the US Government's tab after VP Gore called up Billy C. and had him declare Molokai a national disaster area. (But that was a mistake for the next rule to worry about, not me...) *Molokai was chosen humorously because it used to be a leper colony! >>>>>> Unfortunately, it doesn't deal with the business about the volcano, so it's invalid. I like the rule in general, although it is somewhat long; I like the bit about the leper colony. :) (revised to valid) 77:6 John VALID (TIMEOUT) Style: -- >>> Yikes! Round 77 hasn't started yet! I was afraid this would happen... It seems the extreme siezmic (sp?) stress of the volcanic activity, mixed with the atmospheric stresses of Storms Typhoon and the comic stress of the terrible pun have all cancelled each other out--but in the process they have hurled what would be rule 77:6 back in time, so that it is now occurring BEFORE 77:1. There's only one way to fix this. We must keep it contained--so long as each future rule is confined to the island, they will proceed as normal, beginning again with 77:7. If however, they do not, if there is even so much as a phone call to the outside world, this anomoly will force the following rule to be sent back in time to a point before even this rule! Be careful lest we end up in round 76 again. >>>> END RULE From oerjan@nvg.ntnu.no Sat May 24 19:11:11 1997 Date: Sat, 24 May 1997 19:06:53 +0200 (MET DST) From: Orjan Johansen To: Fantasy Rules Committee Subject: Round 77 final status report I think our esteemed Judge's summary lacked a bit of information and, well, summing up, so I have prepared a status report to go with it. The Theme of Round 77 was "The FRC Luau". The Judge was Don Blaheta, the Wizard was Joshua Hall-Bachner. Times are GMT/UTC, autoconverted with the GNU date program. Player Last Rule Style ---------------------------------------------------------- Doug Chatham 77:1 +0.5 New Wizard Jeremy D Selengut 77:5 +0.5 New Wizard John M Goodman, II 77:6 0 Winner and new Judge Stephen Turner 77:2 +0.5 New Wizard William Maciejewski 77:3 0 Poster Rule Validity Style Time Posted ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Doug Chatham 77:1 VALID +0.5 Thu May 15 00:39:14 1997 Stephen Turner 77:2 VALID +0.5 Thu May 15 10:48:26 1997 William Maciejewski 77:3 VALID 0 Thu May 15 15:47:00 1997 John M Goodman, II 77:4 VALID 0 Thu May 15 17:01:54 1997 Jeremy D Selengut 77:5 VALID +0.5 Thu May 15 21:30:14 1997 John M Goodman, II 77:6 VALID (TIMEOUT) Fri May 16 00:24:10 1997 Greetings, Ørjan. -- "The original question was asked by someone who is 8, or at least may have been 8 when this thread started." -- Douglas J. Zare, in sci.math