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[ by Charles Cameron — a non-alcoholic Monday morning pick-me-up ]
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Congratulations to this year’s winner of the Rooney Literary Prize, for more reasons than one — first, for an exemplary example of life imitating art..

Second: that’s wonderful!

And huzzah! is a polite, secular hallelujah!

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Sources:

Good Will Hunting:

Washington Post, This author also works as a janitor.

See also:

Quartz, A prestigious university just awarded a literary prize to one of its janitors

it was the fact that Lally scrubs lecture halls, offices, and a library at Trinity every morning, rising at 4:45 am, and cleaning from 6 am to 9:30 am, before returning home to care for her infant daughter, that brought her international media attention.

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Nota bene: I am not the first to note the parallel between Good Will Hunting‘s plot line and this year’s Rooney Prize story — but the pair of them also make for an exemplary DoubleQuote example, eh?

[ by Charles Cameron — between the cloture vote and the final Senate nomination vote on Judge Kavanaugh for the USSC, a moral moment ]
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Two to be read in counterpoint:

Brett Kavanaugh, I Am an Independent, Impartial Judge

Brett Kavanaugh, The Judge as Umpire: Ten Principles

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Judge Kavanaugh‘s extended description of the function of the judge as umpire deserves its place right alongside his recent op-ed apologia and apology — indeed it’s interesting to see an apology within an apologia, which, as Cardinal Newman well knew, is not inherently about apologizing but an apologia pro vita sua or [proactive] defence of one’s own life — both as an expanded sports and politics metaphor, and as an urgent indicator within which to frame his op-ed.

Now is decision time: consider these two in tandem.

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With Sens. Collins’ and Manchin’s Yes votes now declared shortly after I posted the above, the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court seems all but assurred.

[ by Charles Cameron — lady justice courted by an unsuitable suitor? ]
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Kavanaugh‘s op-ed. and my learned friend’s comment:

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Sources:

Wikipedia, Nemo iudex in causa sua

Wall Street Journal, I Am an Independent, Impartial Judge

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One of the texts embedded in our Zenpundit graphical header is by James Madison in Federalist 10:

No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.

I think we have two or three headers, so look up at the top of this page and you may see it..

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Of course, writing an op-ed isn’t a judgment, it’s not an amicus curiae brief either — it’s advocacy, in fact self-representation. So maybe the better legal tag would be:

A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.

Even that’s not exact, but I don’t know quite how to pin it down: something is fishy in the state of play? Is that vague enough? I think there’s an ouroboros loose in the title of Judge Kavanaugh’s op-ed, is all..

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Written after the procedural vote and before the final vote:

In his WSJ op-ed, Judge Kavanaugh says, “I Said a Few Things I Should Not Have Said”. Is someone who at a crucial point under oath addressing the Senate Judiciary Committee, by his own admission said things, acutely partisan, visibly furious things he should not have said, is someone to be relied upon to avoid doing the same on the Supreme bench on issues of inflamed political passions and high consequences?

[ by Charles Cameron — ternary logic is of special import because it upsets binary oppositional thinking ]
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In a recent comment, I said that to connect with my various posts on three-player games, there’s this from an episode of Designated Survivor:

transnational three-way spy trade

For the record, that’s a win-win-win strategy.

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While we’re on the subject of threeness games, there’s Brett Kavanaugh‘s explanation of Devil’s Triangle as a drinking game in his testimony:

Sen Whitehouse: Devil’s Triangle?
Judge Kavanaugh: Drinking game.
Sen Whitehouse: How’s it played?
Judge Kavanaugh: Three glasses, in a triangle..
Sen Whitehouse: And?
Judge Kavanaugh: You ever play Quarters?
Sen Whitehouse: No.
Judge Kavanaugh: It’s a Quarters game.

Here’s a more conventional explanation:

A “Devil’s Triangle” is a widely used term for an act of sexual congress between two men and a woman; but during his hearing, Brett Kavanaugh nonsensically insisted that this was some sort of drinking game.

Okay, these matters are interesting not because they deal with threeness as in friend or foe games in which temporary alliances (twos) can overcome single ones while new alliances can switch losers for winners — nor as in Konrad Lorenz‘s goose pecking order example, where a > b > c > a — but simply because threeness is involved — three players, three cups &c.

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For good measure, from MIT Tech Review, The first “social network” of brains lets three people transmit thoughts to each other’s heads:

In recent years, physicists and neuroscientists have developed an armory of tools that can sense certain kinds of thoughts and transmit information about them into other brains. That has made brain-to-brain communication a reality.

These tools include electroencephalograms (EEGs) that record electrical activity in the brain and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which can transmit information into the brain.

That — apart from the brains themselves — is the basic tech involved.

In 2015, Andrea Stocco and his colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle used this gear to connect two people via a brain-to-brain interface. The people then played a 20 questions–type game.

An obvious next step is to allow several people to join such a conversation, and today Stocco and his colleagues announced they have achieved this using a world-first brain-to-brain network. The network, which they call BrainNet, allows a small group to play a collaborative Tetris-like game.

That’s the gaming.

And here’s the pretty diagram that allows those like myself who have only the haziest of ideas where or what the occipital cortex is to nod sagely, acknowledging that we learn something new every day..

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One isn’t, I’ve argued, even a number: one is one and all alone, and ever more shall be so. Two is the first number, standing as it does both for binary systems (duel and duet, competition and collaboration) and for many or all, as in the one and the many, or one and all..

But three — ah, three is the first differentiated number, neither two nor two plus two (aka two multiplied by two, two to its own power, two squared, four).. It stands in its own right: three.

In the number series, it offers us our first hint that there are shades of grey possible between none and one, yes and no, day and night, black and white..

Three is the tie-breaker, the umpire, balance, justice — three is the liminal number par excellence.

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And one last scrap of detail:

The proof-of-principle network connects three people: two senders and one person able to receive and transmit, all in separate rooms and unable to communicate conventionally. The group together has to solve a Tetris-like game in which a falling block has to be rotated so that it fits into a space at the bottom of the screen.

The two senders, wearing EEGs, can both see the full screen. The game is designed so the shape of the descending block fits in the bottom row either if it is rotated by 180 degrees or if it is not rotated. The senders have to decide which and broadcast the information to the third member of the group.

This is all a bit primitive thus far, but then it’s also a beginning — a window on vast possibilities.

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Zenpundit, Numbers by the numbers: three / pt 1,

Zenpundit, Spectacularly non-obvious, I: Elkus on strategy & games

Zenpundit, Spectacularly non-obvious, 2: threeness games

Zenpundit, Spectacular illustration of a game of three

& no doubt, more..

Three — watch out for it, in Hegel, in CS Peirce, in George Boole, in Clausewitz, everywhere!