From: cgdemarc@ai.mit.edu (Carl de Marcken)
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 94 20:08:51 EST
To: all-ai
Subject: GSB, Friday Dec 2nd, 5:30PM, 7AI



I suppose most of you know about the GSB money box.  You toss some bills at
it once a week and occasionally grab whatever coins you need from it.  You
marvel at the red "Beer" label once drawn with a whiteboard marker and now
dispersed by water till only the "B" is clear.  One or two of you might
even know about the American Whitewater sticker on the bottom.

But did you know that Dave and I work every week to ensure that the GSB box
is as light as possible, just so that you don't hurt yourself by picking it
up or accidentally kicking it?  It's true- we do.  And by buying
Apple-Cinnamon Rice Cakes downstairs with GSB change every night, we're now
to the point that 6 quarters and 4 nickels (one Canadian) are all the
silver left.  But there are still 104 pennies in the box.  I know because I
arranged them into 4 equal-size piles, divided one of the piles in two,
divided it again and found the last two asymetric, with six in the smaller.
Use Macsyma if you need to.

The Wine and Cheese Cask gets upset when I give them too many pennies.  So
what are we going to do with them?  One possibility is that some noble soul
will put in a $1 bill and take out all but 4 of copper menaces.  But I've
been thinking.  The Olympics are coming up.

How about we give each team 26 pennies?  Each team will mark their coins
with some distinguishing feature.  Then, we all go up to the ninth floor
and, one at a time, drop the pennies down the middle of the stairwell.
There's not much clearance, only an inch or so, so it's awfully difficult
to drop a penny all the way to the basement.  The team that has the lowest
center of penny gravity at the end wins (we can haggle over scoring systems
at GSB).  Then, if everybody's had a good time doing this, we can drop
other things down.  8088's.  Ice cubes.  SCSI terminators.

It's just an idea.  I'm not saying it's a good one.  Impress me with your
own at this week's

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