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George Duke wrote on Tue, Jan 13, 2009 07:29 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
Gilman is fun writer of CVs, so he knows how to take this comment in his style of irony. You may get reminded of a little history and a little classicism in a typical ''Gilman,'' so each new one is as welcome as any other. But Missing Ox can be convenient object lesson too. Gilman writes, ''Orphan might have worked.... blah blah blah,'' as if his piece-types are carefully chosen. Sure, and sure enough. The lesson instead is mathematical. The assumption rather is that the agglomeration of pieces is really more or less random, and Gilman is being amusing, certainly not seeking to design something playable. Therefore, it is logical to ask, can we not find 10 piece-types beginning with 'A'? Alfil, Amazon, Antelope... And 10 with 'B'? And 'C'? Now if we find 10 for each letter, that makes in combinations 10^26 CVs. Earlier research at Comments of ''91.5 Trillion...'' shows 10^26 to be how many atoms (not cells) there are in body of animal like human or rhinoceros or dog, or any sizable craniate. That's a lot and the lesson is the superficality of the prolificist ethos. Then I am sure in a week I could find and devise 1100 piece-types beginning with 'A'. If we find 1100 piece-types for each letter, and just plug each combination into Missing Ox Chess (a project for up to a year), and perfectly respectable activity in the currrent fashion, that happens to be about 1100^26, which is approximately 10^80 -- which is how many atoms closely there are in the known Universe. Hopefully in finite time, the CVPage ethos will die a dignified death along with mediaeval counting angels on head of a pin.

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