Below are the 12 most recent journal entries recorded in Rif Hutchings' LiveJournal:

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
2:10 pm	I took 20th century Russian history in college... ...but it never kicked this much ass: http://www.vimeo.com/1223566 (I'd say PG-13 for moderate-to-awesome zombie violence and Glasnost Girls gettin' their capitalism on.) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, May 16th, 2008
10:58 pm	J! Final (wrap-up) Joey didn't give they other guys much chance to play today, he was all over the buzzer, but interestingly finished behind in points (~40k to Danielle's 43k) but with a lot more wagering leverage based on today's score.  Interestingly, Danielle underwagers (only 3k out of 13k), probably attempting to (1) Protect her 2nd place position and (2) Capture the victory if Joey misses, regardless of whether she is correct.  In any case, it doesn't make much sense to me, if she goes big and misses, worst case she goes home with 30k if both Andrew and Joey get it right, 50k if Andrew misses, and possibly 100k based on Joeys response(also depending on how big he goes, whether defending against "everyone right" or "everyone wrong").  If she gets it right, that's 56k guaranteed and possibly a lot more if Joey misses or underwagers.  Instead she basically trades those scenarios in for 50k guaranteed and only winning everything if Joey misses.  Uncannily, given the wide range of perfectly reasonable wagers, Joey pegs her as a conservative bettor and adjusts to an unnerving degree of precision, and thats the game. I was video conferenced in to Galileo to chat briefly to Andrew and his assembled crowd.  It looked crowded, but I don't think they opened all the wings. Other strangeness: if Andrew had answered correctly he would have went home with 32k, but instead had a "West is Best" message.  Huh.  I thought the final was fairly easy, especially compared to some earlier in the week.  All you need is a rough time frame on the Napoleonic wars, and it's an easy pull, or maybe it was worth it to him to pay 7 grand for a shout out.  I was like "1813, wasn't that the Battle of Leipzig?"  yup, still got it.  (Comment on this)
5:40 pm	J! Final Day 1 Good game, everyone was fairly aggressive on the Final wagering, and it paid off big for everyone except Andrew, leaving a big, 20k,  deficit to start the 2nd day. I'm not saying a win is still impossible, but he'll need to take advantage of every opportunity, wager aggressively, and hope for a bit of luck.  Mudd is showing it on the big screen in Galileo, so they are clearly optimistic about how this final will end.  In the current payout structure, the _difference_ between 2nd and 3rd prize is equal to my entire cash prize back in the day, and I have to wonder if that fact distorts behavior as the contestants decide on wagers. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
1:45 pm	J! Finals (no spoiler yet) Darn, I should have posted predictions for the finalists based on the semifinal matchups, I would have been right on all three.   This will be a tough contest, although Danielle only advanced to the final due to poor wagering, she was very strong in the quarterfinals.  Joey already beat Andrew in their first matchup.  Jeopardy! already "used up" their chem category last night, but we can always hope for a math or physics category to balance things out. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
6:13 pm	Mudd Jeopardy! Update Andrew Chung made the finals in a runaway victory!  The final score was probably more indicative of his opponent's propensity for missing questions than any sort of "board dominance", but like any tournament, a win is a win.    Slightly disappointed that a chemist didn't get the element whose name means "acid creating", but now is no time to dwell on minor knowledge lacunas.  Tricky final, the question writer may have overestimated college student's familiarity with literature from 1863. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 12th, 2008
1:20 pm	HMC student on Jeopardy In case anyone hasn't been following the Jeopardy! College Championship in the last week, here's a few notes/updates. - Andrew Chung of Harvey Mudd advances in the top wild card spot with a score around 19k.  In his place I probably would have shot for a similar score.  Several people knocked themselves out of contention by playing for victories instead of the "uncertainty" of a wild card.  Oddly enough, the doubling of the question values in the last few years hasn't led to anything close to the expected doubling of the wild card qualifying scores.  I'm not sure why that is, conservative Daily Double behavior, perhaps? - Never bet on the Ivy League.  Seriously, something like 20 Ivy Leaguers have appeared in the College Tourney over the years, and their record is only slightly better than the Ivys record in NCAA basketball tournament play.  As always, 3/5 of the quarterfinalists advance, but this year Yale and Harvard are both gone before the second week. - Geographic bias.  In keeping with tradition and the Madison, Wisconsin taping location, the Upper Midwest is overrepresented this year.  I may have been the beneficiary of a similar bias (assuming the contestant folks in '98 actually knew Mudd is in California!), but I still don't see why a nationally syndicated show chooses to do this.   -  I would be remiss if I didn't point out that former HHS secretary Donna Shalala used to be president of U.Wisc. at Madison, I wonder if that little fact will come up again this year? (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006
11:03 pm	Post game analysis I was on Lingo tonight, I'll keep results hidden for a little while longer.   ( Spoilers behind the cut ) Speaking of z's, I should grab some.  I'll post some pictures later. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
10:32 am	Lingo episode tonight Just a little reminder, Game Show Network, 7:30 tonight by all indications. I'm not certain that I'm on tonight, but once I see last night's episodes I should have a reasonable degree of certainty. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 12th, 2006
11:20 pm	Based on what I've been told I believe my "Lingo" episode will air Tuesday, May 23 at 7:30 pm on Game Show Network. For those unable or unwilling to see it air, watch this space for a post game recap, and maybe a picture or two. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 16th, 2006
6:37 pm	The curse of knowing SI prefixes.... ...what an onerous burden it is. The little map thing they give you at Universal Studios in Hollywood claims that the Back to the Future ride is a "21 million jigowatt adventure". This is bothersome on several levels. 1. What the hell kind of spelling is that? 2. That seem a bit high to you? The original flux capacitor ran just fine on 1.21 gigawatts. I can only assume we're talking 21 million gigawatts here, or 21 petawatts. Average world total power output (including gas, electric, etc.) is only a 1/1000th of that at around 20 terawatts, so I'm thinking even the miraculous advances in consumer fusion technology (over the next nine years!) presaged by "Back to the Future" won't quite cut it. Of course they never really said how long such a power output has to be sustained, the duration of a lightning stroke is apparently sufficient. Maybe they should at least watch the movie (and run a spellchecker) when writing stuff like that. I can't be the only person to find it annoying. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 15th, 2005
12:05 am	My Palm is Blinking Red Ah well, I can always hope for life renewal in the fiery ritual of Carousel. :) Current Mood: sleepy (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 8th, 2005
12:27 am	Inaugural Entry Hi all, this my first LJ entry, so in the spirit of new ventures we are going to talk about old accomplishments. For the curious, I have a few things to say about being on Jeopardy! again recently, if for some reason you missed out and want to catch up, let me know. I might have a tape or DVD for you to borrow, in a way that I am sure is highly respectful of Sony's intellectual property. I wanted to blog on this earlier, but Jeopardy! was "uncomfortable" with me "doing my own publicity", so I waited. Now I guess I'm open to questions, should any of you teeming masses have any. *spoiler alert* (revealing game outcome, and honestly, venting just a bit) So I lost in the first round of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions. What can I say? They're all excellent players. A few things, however, I would like point out: The writers didn't do me any favors certainly, with some of my strongest areas marginalized. Note that the only science was a bug category in the first round, the only pop culture was song lyrics, also in the first round. I got 4/5 in each, but no daily doubles, and those topics appearing early seemed to exclude "harder" science and pop culture later on where it would have been worth at least twice as much. Arts is another good area for me, visual arts, classical music, opera, and literature are all some of my favorite topics. I'm not bad at theater, but when they decide to throw a theater category at us where 4/5 questions died with no one answering (apparently plays that were not nearly as famous as they thought they were), and that is the only arts they deign to use for that game it's pretty painful. Also painful is being reduced to a spectator as your competition hits all three daily doubles, when you've been specifically looking for them. Ah well, thats the game I guess. With better writing and different distribution, I definitely might have had an edge. As it was, it was definitely an uphill battle, and pretty much all the breaks went against me. I had a good time, and I was certainly compensated and all, but I like to believe it could have easily gone another way. Current Mood: awake Current Music: Pale Blue Eyes - Velvet Underground (2 Comments |Comment on this)