Belated application of physics

So, I've heard that the energy extractable from wind goes up as the cube of windspeed. This is easy to follow: the kinetic energy of a mass of air goes up as v^2, and if the wind is v times faster, v times as much mass goes by, for a combined v^3.

Only today did it occur to me that this applies to wind blowing down on you, or your house: double the speed from 10 to 20 mph, octuple the energy involved. Suddenly, hurricane winds of 75 mph and tornado winds of 300 mph snap into perspective.

Perhaps more directly relevant to not being blown over is force, or delta-momentum. A mass of air moving v times faster has v times as much momentum, and again v times as much air mass can go by, so the force exerted on a stationary object goes as v^2. High everyday winds might be 30 mph; a tornado is not 10x as forceful, but 100x. Whee.

I suspect that in a fit of Galilean relativity, all this applies to propelling yourself through a stationary fluid, as well, but I'm not certain of that.

Tangentially, we live in a new era: avalanches on Mars visible almost live.

recent board game experience and thoughts

What have I been up to? Sometimes, too much game playing. Not immediately recently, actually, but a bit ago. Ubuntu Linux makes it easy to install and try out lots of free games.

( Bunch of semi-coherent ejaculations of experiences not worth polishing )

A Eurogamer's take on Go is a funny review of the game, even if you don't know the rules. This is less hilarious but still amusing, and says "Chess has been described as being a knifefight in a telephone booth", which seems apropos.

Which leads us to, hey, Go. I'd been playing Go on my laptop, losing at 3 stones to gnugo, and getting tired and annoyed. Well,one nice thing about computers/robots is that you can completely abuse them: I gave myself 9 stone handicaps and beat it a lot, for the sheer visceral pleasure of going stompy-stompy. Also to see how much I could win by, with a score difference ranging from under 100 (huge, for Go) to 300 a couple of times (ridiculous.) And once I made it resign early on, which shocked me as I hadn't known it could do that. The game was nowhere near to being conventionally done, but gnugo is apparently able to recognize when it's totally screwed, as it was, with a handful of dead stones, maybe one sort-of live group, and no room left anywhere to plausibly get life.

Well, after bullying the poor emotionless program for a while, I started easing up. 7 stones, 5 stones, 3 stones... and know what? The experience of ruthlessly exploiting advantage apparently paid off, because I found myself soaring past the prior point of frustration and being able to play evenly. In fact, a couple of days ago I switched to playing as white, and so far I've won more often than not. So I've learned something, and I think it is a generic something about denying eyespace, guaranteeing my own, cutting enemy grroups and connecting my own, building and using walls more effectively, rather than just exploiting the computer's quirks, which I'm actually not aware of.
( More randomness )

I'd like to play the Buffy game again. Haven't in a while. Hey, I gave a copy to Fanw, and I'm going to Boston!