Contest Luck Quotes

Greeting to the final contestants of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games. The earlier revision has been revoked. Closer examination of the rule book has disclosed that only one winner may be allowed," he says. "Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be—if there is to be a world. Write about all the things that men have written about since the beginning of writing and talking—but write to a point. Work hard at it, care about it. Write about our people: tell their story. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don’t pass it up. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don’t pass it up. Use it. Good luck to you. The Nation needs your gifts. Lorraine Hansberry speech, “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” given to Readers Digest/United Negro College Fund creative writing contest winners, NYC, May 1, 1964.

She punches like a man, and she pulls hair like a beauty queen contestant on steroids.

Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be—if there is to be a world. Write about all the things that men have written about since the beginning of writing and talking—but write to a point. Work hard at it, care about it. Write about our people: tell their story. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don’t pass it up. Use it. Good luck to you. The Nation needs your gifts. Lorraine Hansberry speech, “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” given to Readers Digest/United Negro College Fund creative writing contest winners, NYC, May 1, 1964.

Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be—if there is to be a world. Write about all the things that men have written about since the beginning of writing and talking—but write to a point. Work hard at it, care about it. Write about our people: tell their story. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don’t pass it up. Don’t pass it up. Use it. Good luck to you. The Nation needs your gifts. Lorraine Hansberry speech, “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” given to Readers Digest/United Negro College Fund creative writing contest winners, NYC, May 1, 1964.

Distributions can only be based on measurements, but as in the case of measuring intelligence, the nature of measurement is often complicated and troubled by ambiguities. Consider the problem of noise, or what is known as luck in human affairs. Since the rise of the new digital economy, around the turn of the century, there has been a distinct heightening of obsessions with contests like American Idol, or other rituals in which an anointed individual will suddenly become rich and famous. When it comes to winner-take-all contests, onlookers are inevitably fascinated by the role of luck. Yes, the winner of a singing contest is good enough to be the winner, but even the slightest flickering of fate might have changed circumstances to make someone else the winner. Maybe a different shade of makeup would have turned the tables. And yet the rewards of winning and losing are vastly different. While some critics might have aesthetic or ethical objections to winner-take-all outcomes, a mathematical problem with them is that noise is amplified. Therefore, if a societal system depends too much on winner-take-all contests, then the acuity of that system will suffer. It will become less reality-based.

The problem for him in high school was that debate made you a nerd and poetry made you a pussy – even if both could help you get to the vaguely imagines East Coast city from which your experiences in Topeka would be recounted with great irony. The key was to narrate participation in debate as a form of linguistic combat; the key was to be a bully, quick and vicious and ready to spread an interlocutor with insults at the at the smallest provocation. Poetry could be excused if it upped your game, became cipher and flow, if it was part of why Amber was fucking you and not Reynolds et al. If linguistic prowess could do damage and get you laid, then it could be integrated into the adolescent social realm without entirely departing from the household values of intellect and expression. It was not a reconciliation, but a workable tension. His disastrous tonsorial compromise. The migraines. Fortunately for Adam, this shifting of aggression to the domain of language was sanctioned by one of the practices the types had appropriated: after several hours of drinking, if no fight or noise complain had broken up the party, you were likely to encounter freestyling. In many ways, this was the most shameful of all the poses, the clearest manifestation of a crisis in white masculinity and its representational regimes, a small group of privileged crackers often arrhythmically recycling the genre’s dominant and to them totally inapplicable clichés. But it was socially essential for him: the rap battle transmuted his prowess as a public speaker and aspiring poet into something cool. His luck was dizzying: that there was a rapid, ritualized poetic insult exchange bridging the gap between his Saturday afternoons in abandoned high schools and his Saturday nights in unsupervised houses, allowing him to transition from one contest to the other.

In all my experience in both startups and large companies, including and especially at Facebook, I would always prefer - a hundred times prefer - being subject to the rigors of the market, the fickleness of luck, and the whims of users than to navigate the popularity-contest politics of a large company, surrounded by the mediocre duffers who've succeeded in life through nothing more than guile and appearances.

Deprive a cat of sleep and it would die in two weeks. Deprive a human and he would become psychotic. His work was killing people. How was he supposed to frighten these guys? Run up behind them in a halloween mask and shout boo? He never saw the point of views -- what did it matter if it was an ocean or a brick wall you were looking at? People travelled hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to commit suicide someplace with a beautiful view. Did a view matter when oblivion beckoned? They could put him in a garbage bin after he was gone, for all he cared. That's all the human race was anyway. Garbage with attitude. A cutting word is worse than a bowstring. A cut may heal but a cut of the tongue does not. The Sakawa students were all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. Sakawa was a mix of religious juju and modern internet technology. They were taught, in structured classes, the art of online fraud as well as arcane African rituals -- which included animal sacrifice -- to have a voodoo effect on their victims, ensuring the success of each fraud. of which there was a wide variety. The British Empire spend five hundred years plundering the world. The word is 'thanks'. 'That's what it is, Roy! He won't come out, he has locked the doors! What if he self-harms, Roy! I mean -- what if he kills himself?' 'I will have to take him off my Christmas list.' "Any chance you can recover any of it?' 'You sitting near a window, Gerry?' 'Near a window? Sure, right by a window?' 'Can you see the sky?' 'Uh-huh. Got a clear view.' 'See any pigs flying past?' To dream of death is good for those in fear, for the death have no more fears. '...Cleo took me to the opera once. I spent the whole time praying for a fat lady to come on stage and start singing. Or a heart attack --whichever come sooner.' '..there is something strongly powerful -- almost magnetic -- about internet romances. A connection that is far stronger than a traditional meeting of two people. Maybe because on the internet you can lie all the time, each person gives the other their good side. It's intoxicating. That's one of the things which makes it so dangerous -- and such easy pickings for fraudsters.' He was more than a little pleased that he was about to ruin his boss's morning -- and, with a bit of luck, his entire day. ..a guy who had been born angry and had just got even angrier with each passing year. '...Then at some point in the future, I'll probably die in an overcrowded hospital corridor with some bloody hung-over medical student jumping up and down on my chest because they couldn't find a defibrillator. 'Give me your hand, bro,' the shorter one said. 'That one, the right one, yeah.' On the screen the MasterChef contestant said, 'Now with a sharp knife...' Jules de Copland drove away from Gatwick Airport in.a new car, a small Kia, hired under a different name and card, from a different rental firm, Avis. 'I was talking about her attitude. But I'll tell you this, Roy. The day I can't say a woman -- or a man -- is plug ugly, that's the day I want to be taken out and shot.' It seems to me the world is in a strange place where everyone chooses to be offended all the time. 'But not too much in the way of brains,' GlennBranson chipped in. 'Would have needed the old Specialist Search Unite to find any trace of them.' 'Ever heard of knocking on a door?' 'Dunno that film -- was it on Netflix?' 'One word, four letters. Begins with an S for Sierra, ends with a T for Tango. Or if you'd like the longest version, we've been one word, six letters, begins with F for Foxtrot, ends with D for Delta.' No Cop liked entering a prison. In general there was a deep cultural dislike of all police officers by the inmates. And every officer entering.a prison, for whatever purposes, was always aware that if a riot kicked off while they were there, they could be both an instant hostage and a prime target for violence.

Deprive a cat of sleep and it would die in two weeks. Deprive a human and he would become psychotic. His work was killing people. How was he supposed to frighten these guys? Run up behind them in a halloween mask and shout boo? He never saw the point of views -- what did it matter if it was an ocean or a brick wall you were looking at? People travelled hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to commit suicide someplace with a beautiful view. Did a view matter when oblivion beckoned? They could put him in a garbage bin after he was gone, for all he cared. That's all the human race was anyway. Garbage with attitude. A cutting word is worse than a bowstring. A cut may heal but a cut of the tongue does not. The Sakawa students were all from poor, underprivileged backgrounds. Sakawa was a mix of religious juju and modern internet technology. They were taught, in structured classes, the art of online fraud as well as arcane African rituals -- which included animal sacrifice -- to have a voodoo effect on their victims, ensuring the success of each fraud. of which there was a wide variety. The British Empire spend five hundred years plundering the world. The word is 'thanks'. 'That's what it is, Roy! He won't come out, he has locked the doors! What if he self-harms, Roy! I mean -- what if he kills himself?' 'I will have to take him off my Christmas list.' "Any chance you can recover any of it?' 'You sitting near a window, Gerry?' 'Near a window? Sure, right by a window?' 'Can you see the sky?' 'Uh-huh. Got a clear view.' 'See any pigs flying past?' To dream of death is good for those in fear, for the death have no more fears. '...Cleo took me to the opera once. I spent the whole time praying for a fat lady to come on stage and start singing. Or a heart attack --whichever come sooner.' '..there is something strongly powerful -- almost magnetic -- about internet romances. A connection that is far stronger than a traditional meeting of two people. Maybe because on the internet you can lie all the time, each person gives the other their good side. It's intoxicating. That's one of the things which makes it so dangerous -- and such easy pickings for fraudsters.' He was more than a little pleased that he was about to ruin his boss's morning -- and, with a bit of luck, his entire day. ..a guy who had been born angry and had just got even angrier with each passing year. '...Then at some point in the future, I'll probably die in an overcrowded hospital corridor with some bloody hung-over medical student jumping up and down on my chest because they couldn't find a defibrillator. 'Give me your hand, bro,' the shorter one said. 'That one, the right one, yeah.' On the screen the MasterChef contestant said, 'Now with a sharp knife...' Jules de Copland drove away from Gatwick Airport in.a new car, a small Kia, hired under a different name and card, from a different rental firm, Avis. 'I was talking about her attitude. But I'll tell you this, Roy. The day I can't say a woman -- or a man -- is plug ugly, that's the day I want to be taken out and shot.' It seems to me the world is in a strange place where everyone chooses to be offended all the time. 'But not too much in the way of brains,' GlennBranson chipped in. 'Would have needed the old Specialist Search Unite to find any trace of them.' 'Ever heard of knocking on a door?' 'Dunno that film -- was it on Netflix?' 'One word, four letters. Begins with an S for Sierra, ends with a T for Tango. Or if you'd like the longest version, we've been one word, six letters, begins with F for Foxtrot, ends with D for Delta.' No Cop liked entering a prison. In general there was a deep cultural dislike of all police officers by the inmates. And every officer entering.a prison, for whatever purposes, was always aware that if a riot kicked off while they were there, they could be both an instant hostage and a prime target for violence.

So even when luck has only a minor influence on performance, the most talented and hardworking of all contestants will usually be outdone by a rival who is almost as talented and hardworking but also considerably luckier.

This has the added negative effect of giving them the illusion of confidence. It is a hard lesson to accept, but the success of many people is due to luck, not knowledge. If a thousand people try a thousand different methods and one of them hits the jackpot, it is an illusion to think the winner necessarily had more knowledge or skill than the losers. If two psychics pick opposite winners in an athletic contest, one of them may appear to have more knowledge that the other, but the appearance is an illusion.

pot /po/ I. nm 1. (récipient, contenu) container; (en verre) jar; (en plastique) carton, tub; (en faïence, terre) pot; (pichet) jug • ~ de verre | glass jar • mettre qch en ~ | to put [sth] into jars [confiture, fruits]; to pot [plante] • plante en ~ | potted plant • ~ de marmelade | jar of marmalade • ~ de yaourt (en verre) jar of yoghurt; (en plastique) carton of yoghurt • acheter un ~ de peinture | to buy a tin of paint • garder les ~s de confiture | to save jam jars • réutiliser les ~s de peinture | to re-use the paint tins • il a fallu trois ~s de peinture | it took three tins of paint voir aussi: cuiller 2. (de chambre) pot; (de bébé) potty • aller sur le ~ (ponctuellement) to go on the potty • depuis un mois il va sur le ~ | he's been potty-trained for a month now 3. ○(boisson) drink • prendre un ~ | to have a drink 4. ○(réunion) do (familier) (GB), drinks party • ~ d'accueil/d'adieu | welcoming/farewell party 5. ○(chance) luck • elle n'a pas eu de ~ | she hasn't had much luck • avoir du ~ | to be lucky • avoir un coup de ~ | to have a stroke of luck • (par un) coup de ~, la porte était ouverte | as luck would have it, the door was open 6. (argent commun) kitty • ramasser le ~ | (Jeux) to win the kitty II. Idiomes 1. payer les pots cassés | to pick up the pieces 2. c'est le pot de terre contre le pot de fer | it's an unequal contest 3. ce sera à la fortune du pot | you'll have to take pot luck 4. découvrir le pot aux roses | to stumble on what's been going on 5. être sourd comme un pot○ | to be as deaf as a post 6. tourner autour du pot | to beat about the bush 7. payer plein pot○ | to pay full price 8. partir or démarrer plein pot○ | to be off ou go off like a shot (familier) pot catalytique catalytic converter pot de chambre chamber pot pot de colle (lit) pot of glue; (fig) informal leech pot à eau water jug (GB), pitcher (US) pot d'échappement (silencieux) silencer (GB), muffler (US); (système) exhaust

In 2013, on the auspicious date of April 1, I received an email from Tetlock inviting me to join what he described as “a major new research program funded in part by Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, an agency within the U.S. intelligence community.” The core of the program, which had been running since 2011, was a collection of quantifiable forecasts much like Tetlock’s long-running study. The forecasts would be of economic and geopolitical events, “real and pressing matters of the sort that concern the intelligence community—whether Greece will default, whether there will be a military strike on Iran, etc.” These forecasts took the form of a tournament with thousands of contestants; the tournament ran for four annual seasons. “You would simply log on to a website,” Tetlock’s email continued, “give your best judgment about matters you may be following anyway, and update that judgment if and when you feel it should be. When time passes and forecasts are judged, you could compare your results with those of others.” I did not participate. I told myself I was too busy; perhaps I was too much of a coward as well. But the truth is that I did not participate because, largely thanks to Tetlock’s work, I had concluded that the forecasting task was impossible. Still, more than 20,000 people embraced the idea. Some could reasonably be described as having some professional standing, with experience in intelligence analysis, think tanks, or academia. Others were pure amateurs. Tetlock and two other psychologists, Barbara Mellers (Mellers and Tetlock are married) and Don Moore, ran experiments with the cooperation of this army of volunteers. Some were given training in some basic statistical techniques (more on this in a moment); some were assembled into teams; some were given information about other forecasts; and others operated in isolation. The entire exercise was given the name Good Judgment Project, and the aim was to find better ways to see into the future. This vast project has produced a number of insights, but the most striking is that there was a select group of people whose forecasts, while they were by no means perfect, were vastly better than the dart-throwing-chimp standard reached by the typical prognosticator. What is more, they got better over time rather than fading away as their luck changed. Tetlock, with an uncharacteristic touch of hyperbole, called this group “superforecasters.” The cynics were too hasty: it is possible to see into the future after all. What makes a superforecaster? Not subject-matter expertise: professors were no better than well-informed amateurs. Nor was it a matter of intelligence; otherwise Irving Fisher would have been just fine. But there were a few common traits among the better forecasters.