j

-CD quote: "SWISSTEC BY SKY MEDIA"-

I had an involving dream last night in which I was in some sort of race. The first part involved setting off a firework and taking vitamins or supplements of some sort, if necessary (they were for health reasons, not increased speed, and the pills were enormous and like jellied Listerine strips in texture) and then going upstairs to the kitchen to make some sort of cold blueberry puree. Finding the food processor in all the cupboards took a good deal of time.

Fun little party game to make a small wad of cash:

THE DOLLAR AUCTION

You pull a $1 bill (or some other small denomination) out of your wallet and announce to your friends that you are auctioning it off. Bidding starts at 1 penny (or similar ridiculously small amount) and there are only two rules.

1. Each bid must be at least 1 cent higher than the previous one.
2. When bidding is finished, both the highest bidder and the second-highest bidder must pay you their highest bids. However, only the highest bidder receives the dollar.

With a couple minutes' thought, you can see where this is going. Bidding starts fast, as people try to get some free money. Gradually, though, as bidding gets higher, people start to drop off, so by the time bidding nears $1, there are only two people left, we'll call them Mark and Robert. Mark bids 98¢, and Robert follows up with 99¢. A hesitation. Then, not wanting to lose 98¢ for nothing, Mark bids $1 to break even. Of course, Robert quickly realizes that losing 1¢ is better than losing 99, so he proceeds to bid $1.01 for a $1 bill. And the process continues.

Human greed nearly guarantees that you will come out on top. However, if your friends are smart (and this is why you don't do this more than once to the same group of people) they will team up at the beginning and stop bidding well under a dollar, splitting the cost and the earnings between themselves.

Search "game theory" to find more dilemmas of this kind.

Reality check. This trick was originally found in a GAMES magazine -- wonderful publication by the way.