Practicing Card Counting

Okay, try this:

Shuffle a pack of cards well, then start dealing the cards face-up, one by one. At the same time, keep a silent note of the cards being turned over. With each 2, 4, 5, and 6, minus one to the counter in your head (the counter starts with zero). With each 10, J, Q, K, A, add one from your counter.

Do this as fast as possible, increasing your tempo until the point where you can deal at normal casino speed while keeping an accurate count. Then repeat the whole training, this time while singing to your favourite song on the radio, listening to the evening news, or with whatever distractions you can find.

If you want to beat the house at blackjack, this is the basic card-counting way.

Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's WC 2011 - My Favourite Turbo Duel Deck

29 Monsters:
Flamvell Guard - 1
Battle Fader - 1
Paguespreader Zombie - 1
Shield Wing - 1
Treeborn Frog - 2
Inmato - 2
Cherry Inmato - 3
D.D. Sprite - 2
Dandylion - 2
Glow-Up Bulb - 1
Zaborg the Thunder Monarch - 2
Caius the Shadow Maonarch - 3
Raiza the Storm Monarch - 2
Granmarg the Rock Monarch - 2
Mobius the Frost Moanrch - 3
Gorz the Emissary of Darkness - 1

7 Speed Spells:
Angel Baton
Book of Moon
Double Summon
Fissure
Heavy Storm
Silver Contrails
Summon Speeder

6 Traps:
Bottomles Trap Hole
Dust Tornado
Mirror Force
Raigeki Break
Solemn Judgement
Torrential Tribute

A Pop-Up Question about Physics

Why do magnets attract metals?

To be honest, this question hit my mind at 8am, and I though it might be intriguing to answer it using nothing but what's stored in my memory (I do that all the time, being too lazy to flip pages).

Okay, back to the question.

You see, metals consist of, well, metal atoms. These metal atoms are binded together via intermolecular forces known as the metallic bonds. Each metal achieves stable octet configuration invariably by expelling one or more electrons from their outermost shell. The expulsion is done due to the fact that the outermost electrons can obtain enough energy to be "free" and enter the conduction band from the valence band.

Thus, the metal atoms turn into cations, and the expelled electrons sort of coalesces into a mass with spaces between each individual electrons, known as a "sea" or "cloud" of electrons.

In picture, you can imagine a body of water, with electrons taking the place of water molecules, while metal cations are ice cubes, suspended in meticulous order in this "sea". And, knowing electrons, they're not about to sit tight or stay still.

Since these electrons have energy, they moved. Recall the magnetic force - it is present only on an electrically charged particle if the particle moves in any direction different to the direction of the magnetic field. The direction of the magnetic force, if present, will always be perpendicular to directions of both the velocity of the charged particle and the magnetic field.

Equation : (Magnetic Force, F) = (Electric Charge of Particle, q) * (Velocity of Charged Particle, v) x (Magnetic Field Strength, B)

Electrons within the "sea" moves randomly. When a piece of metal is placed within a magnetic field, the electrons within the "sea" experience magnetic force due to their random motion. Keep in mind that even though the net velocity of the masses of electrons are zero, the net magnetic force is not, since movement parallel to the magnetic field lines do not produce magnetic forces.

The force would not be enough to dispatch the electrons from their "sea" - instead the magnetic force pulls the electrons - along with the metal ions towards the source (magnet) where the magnetic field is at its strongest, since a stronger field exerts more magnetic force upon the electrons.

Macroscopically speaking, the metal is pulled towards the magnet due to the magnetic force exerted upon it. Non-metals have no free electrons in the conduction band, that's why they are not attracted towards magnets.

Quantum Fibonacci

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89...

Looks familiar? This is a number sequence we'd probably seen in high school maths textbooks, without any idea what it means. This is a Fibonacci sequence, a sequence of number where each term is the sum of the two terms before it. For example, the seventh term, 8, is the sum of the fifth and sixth term, 3 and 5.

What most people didn't realized, though, and what most high school maths teacher got wrong, is that the Fibonacci sequence is actually a geometric progression, with a common ratio of 1.618, which is also known as the Golden Ratio. Try it yourself by expanding the sequence - the answer is true.

But what I find more intriguing is how 0, the first term, can turn into 1, the second term. Surely any number multiplied by zero equals nil, so what happened?

My "conjecture" answer is: quantum theory. Or rather, quantum evolution. To explain this, lets go back to the beginning of life, just as this transition from nil to one occurs in the beginning of the Fibonacci sequence. According to quantum theory, the first replicating protein molecule that forms from the polymerization of amino acids did not occur randomly. Just as a potential - life or not life, for the lack of description - can collapse either way, the environment acts a a measuring tool, which in turn, collapse the potential that allows life to form out of the primordial soup of amino acids.

Life started not only because the environment caused it to happen to the act of measuring, it's also because life is the better measuring tool for any potential. Life then evolved because the environment continues to measure It, even as Life measures Itself.

Similarly, won't that be the way nil became one? A collapse of potential because one is a better measuring tool than nil, then the Golden Ratio kicks in to expand the Fibonacci sequence into the infinite. Of course, you may disregard this as nothing but hogwash, and I accept that, because as I said, this is merely conjecture, not a proven theory.

Also, since the Fibonacci sequence has a common ratio, we can reverse the whole sequence by simply changing the Golden Ratio into a negative number, i.e. -1.618. A reminder that just as there are positives and negatives in maths and numbers, life itself may collapse one way or the other.

... -89, 55, -34, 21, -13, 8, -5, 3, -2, 1, -1, 0