Pappus' plane

More precisely, why is it a World Championship and Olympic event? I am watching what I think is the semi-final of the women's keirin at the track cycling World Cup event in Melbourne, and it is the most extraordinary non-spectacle. It is notionally an eight-lap event. The first five of these laps are paced, and the riders are not allowed to go past the motorbike. The initial tussle for position lasts about two seconds. All that follows, for the next 4.9 laps or so, is the riders going round in slow circles. Only when the motorbike leaves the track after 5 laps does it become a race.

This race could be made a lot more efficient.

I'd heard this term before. I'd also heard of the Rumble in the Jungle. Last night, ESPN was generous enough to replay this fight, and I caught the last five rounds.

It was the first time I'd seen an Ali fight, and my initial impressions were negative. He just leant back on the ropes and let Foreman punch him repeatedly. Then near the end of the round, Ali would land a few jabs. Foreman's guard always seemed to be really low. This pattern repeated itself, till in round eight Ali punched a bit harder and put Foreman on the canvas.

It was compelling viewing.

The cricket just finished, so I channel surfed up a channel to find some competitive fishing being shown.

Commentator: We've got Matt mic'ed up. Matt, what's going through your mind?
Matt: Fish.

The commentators were pretty excited watching one of the top fishermen chopping up his worms. Such comically boring television had me riveted for a few minutes, but once they cut to an interview with one of the top fishermen, my complete lack of interest took over and now I am watching Wolverhampton play Aston Villa.

Another boring sport I watched for a few seconds today: Tractor pulling. This is what happens when you have four 24-hour sports channels....

This is an occasionally interesting topic in number theory. If you wanted to learn about it, you could slowly work your way through the Wikipedia article. But if you wanted to actually find a partition of an integer, you should just ask a darts player.

I was watching some Premier League darts the other night. It's pretty fun to watch, but a proper appreciation of it requires an insane level of speed mental arithmetic. The players start at 501, and the camera zooms in on the treble 20. All good so far. But you can't always stick to aiming at treble 20, you might go for treble 17, or you might miss to the side or something. The drama comes when this happens. The player throws some random score, like a 7 or something, takes his score from 394 to 387, and then the camera immediately moves to the double-16, because it is plainly obvious to anyone who can do this arithmetic that the optimum way to get from 397 to 0 is to go via 365 and then treble 15 etc.

After watching three or four legs I eventually managed to follow it near the end, when one of the players was on something like 56. He threw a 16, and then I knew that he only needed a double top to win. I felt like a three-year-old.

Hahahahahahahaha!