Douglas Whaley

A Bridge Tournament Are you the sort of person who likes challenging intellectual games? If so, the best game in the world is calling you to learn to play bridge. Why is bridge the best game in the world? Because it combines a basic card game with complex rules, an artificial bidding system that can be as complicated as you want to make it (including adding your own inventions), a play of the cards requiring concentrated analysis and application of skill, all of this combined with the fact that you and your partner must be in perfect sync to make it all work. Daunting? Sure? But rewarding, even at a the beginner's level? Oh yes. Take a few lessons at your local bridge center and you'll be hooked for life. Pick up the hand in the photo below and you can take all the tricks (a "Grand Slam").  How often do you think this happens? Alas, this wonderful game is dying out. Why is that? The truth is that it was once very popular, but when young people discovered...

Here's my list: 1. Put Things Where You'll Look For Them This turns out to be very useful advice. If you just put things down—willy-nilly—at some later date you'll likely stand and ponder where the hell they went. But if you train yourself to first ask " Where will I look for this?" you'll have fewer problems locating them. It also helps to have specific places in your house/office for different items: tools, boxes, toiletries, paper files, miscellaneous junk, etc. 2. Measure Twice, Cut Once This old carpenter's law applies to much of our lives. Plan the task, then think it through and ask if the first decision was the best one or can yet be improved. This question, again, is a matter of habit. Particularly with physical tasks is it easy to just jump in and make a dog's breakfast of the whole affair. I'm myself bad at remembering my own advice here, witness "The Many Faults of Douglas Whaley" (see Related Posts below). B...

Is it okay not to use proper English?  Of course it is if you’re in a situation where you’re just clowning around with your friends, say on Facebook or Twitter.   Even the deliberate use of bad English is fine where it’s clear you’re joking and know better.   But in any communication where the other person might judge you based on how well you communicate, the misuse of the English language will get you branded as someone who doesn’t understand basic rules of communication. For an example, take the following Garfield comic strip panel.   Read it and tell me what’s wrong with it. The answer is that it contains a grammatical error.   In the final panel the TV voice should have said, “But there’s one fewer cat on the planet!”   The rule is to use “fewer” for objects that can be counted (number of cats on the planet) and “less” when an exact count is not possible.   So if you want to comment on the amount of salt in a pot of soup...

. When should you touch another person, and when is doing so a mistake?   It’s a matter of some consequence because doing it right can lead to one of life’s greatest joys, and doing it wrong will get you labelled as a fool who can’t be trusted without guards nearby.   What a difference!   What to do? In 1888 the English playwright William S. Gilbert penned the following words that were then set to music with a lovely melody by the composter Arthur Sullivan in an opera called “The Yeomen of the Guard” [see http://math.boisestate.edu/gas/yeomen/html/index.html ]:                                         A man who would woo a fair maid,                      ...